Could geo-engineering help save the planet? – asks BBC weather presenter

The notion that ‘saving the planet’ is required at all is taken for granted by climate alarmists and promoted at every opportunity – like this one. They then indulge in a variety of control fantasies, but note the question mark in the title. Many others are wholly unconvinced that ‘manipulating the climate’, as the article describes it, is in reality anything more than unnecessary gambling on the poorly understood effects of short-term interference with weather systems.
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If we can’t control rising global temperatures by drastically cutting carbon emissions, could something called geo-engineering be a way to cool the planet? – wonders the BBC’s lead weather presenter.

In what is already a £103bn ($135bn) industry, scientists around the world, including in the UK, are researching geo-engineering – ways of manipulating the climate to tackle global warming.

Some experts are concerned there are too many risks associated with it, fearing it could mess with global weather patterns or actually warm some regions, not cool them.

As the industry grows, so have conspiracy theories.

BBC Weather has seen a large increase in social media comments around geo-engineering since January, accusing us of covering up secret projects and wrongly blaming geo-engineering for the cool and wet weather we’ve recently had.

Worldwide, there have been twice as many mentions of geo-engineering this year on X, formerly known as Twitter, than over the last six months of 2023.

Some geo-engineering ideas include reflecting sunlight back out to space to cool Earth. The most advanced area of geo-engineering is direct air carbon capture with small-scale facilities in operation across Europe, the US and Canada.

These currently remove around 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year (one third of London’s annual emissions), meaning it would need massively scaling up to make any difference to the roughly 35 billion tonnes we emit globally.

“We need to start to think about other things that we can do in order to limit any further warming,” says Professor Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society. “That’s where geo-engineering starts to become an interesting discussion.”

Aside from fears about exacerbating the effects of climate change, some experts are worried it’s tempting to see geo-engineering as a quick fix that could also distract us from efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Less weird than it seems
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but the idea of reflecting solar radiation, the technical term for sunlight, is not as crazy as it might sound and sometimes happens in the natural world.

During volcanic eruptions, huge amounts of ash and aerosols – tiny particles – can be transported into the high atmosphere which can then reflect solar radiation back into space.
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Researchers are studying two kinds of solar radiation management: marine cloud brightening and stratospheric aerosol injection.

Full article here.