As you read this, toxic fumes are being emitted from power plants, car tailpipes and commercial aircraft.
The carbon dioxide they emit can remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Even if we manage to largely phase out fossil fuel use in the future, we will still need to reverse the effects of some of these emissions to meet our climate goals.
Scientists are currently working on technologies that could help, but the Trump administration’s anti-climate agenda is hampering their progress.
Geoengineering: SRM and CDR at a glance
There are several types of climate action, sometimes called geoengineering, that the world may need to resort to to manage the impact of our carbon emissions. The most controversial of these is called Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), which involves releasing aerosols into the stratosphere to slightly reduce solar radiation. There are also less controversial measures such as carbon capture (CDR), which can take various forms and involves the actual removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
When people hear about SRM, they think of science fiction stories about blocking the sun – but that’s not entirely true. The aerosols would reflect back one or two percent of the sunlight that would otherwise reach Earth. However, we don’t yet know much about the long-term consequences of releasing aerosols into the stratosphere, so there are legitimate concerns about this idea.
Because CDR is simply about removing CO2 from the atmosphere, it is seen as a more direct, logical approach to dealing with our accumulated emissions. Scientists still need to refine this technology, and there is still much to learn.
Although SRM is controversial, many scientists believe it should be studied further should it be necessary to avoid some of the harsher impacts of climate change in the future. CDR, on the other hand, is integrated into many climate models, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on how we can achieve our climate goals.
The Trump administration’s cuts to science funding, layoffs at agencies like NOAA, elimination of key science programs at federal agencies, and other actions resulting from its disregard for the climate crisis have negatively impacted research into climate intervention methods like SRM and CDR.
Scientists are sounding the alarm
“I had received a grant from NOAA, but they told me they didn’t have money for me and so I couldn’t do the project,” Daniele Visioni, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, tells Rolling Stone. “This was explicitly research for the program, which aims to understand and reduce uncertainties in geoengineering model predictions over the longer term.”
SRM in particular requires much more research before it can possibly be put into practice, from how to actually release aerosols to predicting their impact on the environment. Some of the work may be done using models rather than field research.
“Solar geoengineering, which involves reflecting some of the incoming sunlight, would require a small fleet of aircraft or other mechanisms to deliver particles into the stratosphere that would then circulate around the globe,” says Holly Buck, associate professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo. “The problem is that we haven’t done enough research to understand what impact that would have.”
Buck also notes that CDR will be necessary to achieve our climate goals. Some of the current issues revolve around how to do this on the scale needed and at an affordable price.
CDR: Big promises, uncertain implementation
“CDR is a technology that, if someone could manage to use it on a large scale, which is completely unclear, would be a good thing,” says Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of planetary physics at the Oxford University. “It would be helpful.”
David Ho, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, says layoffs and funding cuts have had a significant impact on the advancement of CDR techniques, including machines that suck CO2 out of the air, called direct air capture, and the concept of reducing the acidity of the ocean so that it naturally absorbs more CO2 than before.
About 22 million tons of carbon dioxide are already entering the ocean every day, and reducing the acidity of the ocean is helping to increase those numbers naturally. This can be achieved by grinding up silicate rock and putting it into the ocean.
“When they laid off a whole bunch of employees – the indiscriminate firing of employees – this carbon removal effort was still in its infancy, so many of the employees were on their probationary periods,” says Ho. “They’re all gone.”
Direct air capture centers that were under development are at risk from Department of Energy funding cuts, and many other carbon removal projects also face an uncertain future. As Ho says, “Nobody knows exactly what’s really happening,” and that makes research and development quite difficult.
Political blockades and the consequences for the climate
In addition to cutting funding for renewable energy and trying to boost the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration is hampering efforts to research and deploy these climate policies that may be necessary in the long term to win the fight against climate change. It is unclear what will be required if this threat increases in the future, so research is key to being prepared for any eventuality.
The Trump administration is hindering science in America and making the world less prepared to deal with whatever scenarios the future may bring.