Geo-engineering world climate: five plans that will end civilisation and one that won’t #ecoalchemy

What happens when science meets the sci-fi urges of tech-billionaires? We could be about to find out and the results aren’t likely to be good for humanity. Geo-engineering world climate will bring an end to civilisation as we know it. The only real solution is to rebuild wildlife populations.

Geo-engineering is defined as efforts to alter planetary processes to suit human needs. With politicians, billionaires and big-business desperately grasping at straws for a way to commercialise themselves out of a problem caused by erosion of planetary natural values, we are entering a dangerous new era for our species.

#1 Reversing ocean-acidification by dumping crushed rock in the ocean ❌

Last week, Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor tweeted ‘Could dumping save the reef? CSIRO finds it’s possible to turn back clock on effects of fossil fuel burning by dumping tonnes of crushed rock, but it comes with with “as yet unquantified risks”’

The answer? No it can’t!

EcosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More don’t operate in isolation and require resilienceReferring to an ecosystem’s ability to maintain a steady stable-state. The need to build resilience is entirely anthropocentric and symptomatic of ecosystems that are damaged or declining, leading to loss of ecosystem services on which humans depend. More to function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More. Dumped rock might work in a lab but in the ocean, it will create far more harm and destabilise an already fragile system.

CSIRO’s suggestion is a kind of eco-alchemy. At worse, it’s fraudulently opine, as there is simply no way it would make things better. It takes animals to run coral reefs – lots of them! All crushed rock will do, is homogenise an extremely complex system and in the lust for a technical solution to an ecological problem, will distract from the urgent need to rebuild actual functioning ecosystems.

#2 Geo-engineering carbon capture by fertilising the ocean ❌

Ocean biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More (the combination of factors that delivers life support) were built on functional processes driven by animal communities over millions of years. The clinical precision by which animals deliver nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More in time and space is part of a long-term lifecycle. If precision isn’t reached, the system doesn’t stabilise and the animals don’t survive – and if the animals don’t survive, precision can’t be reached.

The existence of animals is the mechanism for stability and human existence. We cannot replace the many and varied interactions of trillions of animals with one piece of blunt chemistry.

Scientists are nonetheless seriously proposing fertilising the ocean with iron, a trace element that causes huge growth in algae. The logic is that more algae means more carbon capture. The consequence of having more carbon capture by plants is that the excess also needs somewhere to go and without animals, it becomes an even greater problem.  

Again, efforts for geo-engineering world climate are dangerously over-simplified. Throwing massive amounts of free surplus energyThe energy of a system that is emitted as waste and is not part of ecosystem processes. There is always some free surplus energy as this creates the basis for evolution where new species exploit gaps in the ecosystem where free energy becomes available. Surplus energy can occur as a result of disruption or disturbance. When free surplus energy reaches More at a complex system that drives a planet’s core functionality for human survival will collapse the food chain and destroy the amplification effects created by animals.

#3 Solar geo-engineering to reduce the heat in Earth’s climate ❌

The US have recently supported an initiative to cautiously pursue solar geo-engineering of world climate. The proposals are backed by people from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommending that the US government spends $100 million–$200 million to seriously investigate the options.

Physics Today is asking the question: ‘Should solar geoengineering be part of how humanity counters climate change?’

Again, no! This work may be more dangerous to the stability of planetary ecosystems than almost anything else. We’d be introducing more disruptionThe result of an action that creates a sudden change in the stability of an ecosystem or process. This tends to create a gap where there is free surplus energy and organisms will move in to fill the space. Disruption might be a tree fall, or the application of pesticide to farmland. Disruption is important to maintain dynamics in ecosystems More into a system already in chaos(Of energy and ecosystems). Ecosystems are thermodynamically driven. Disorder occurs when energy dissipates and becomes more chaotic. For example, the release of hot air into the atmosphere results in that energy is freer to disperse (maximum entropy). The opposite is true when energy is locked into biological processes, when it is stored inside molecules (minimum entropy). Stability in ecosystems occurs More due to biodiversity loss and that would merely perpetuate and increase the problems we’re already facing. If you try to reduce sunlight, this won’t be uniformly across the planet.

#4 Cloud seeding to geo-engineer world rain ❌

Cloud seeding has been done since the 1940s, often in targeted ways, to try to help agriculture. China used cloud-seeding to ensure clear-skies before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. In Australia it was first trialled in 1947 and hydro dam operators still routinely use it to fill water storage.

Yet before there was research science or governments prepared to spend billions of dollars on weather-making, animals were doing this job quite precisely. Seabird colonies, for example, are responsible for the production of rainfall across entire continents. There is only so much moisture in the air and the energy that delivers this is balanced around ecosystems. Climate change has thrown those processes into chaos so what makes us think that disrupting this further will make things better? The answer is, it won’t.

And where would it end? What happens when countries grasp this technology and run with it? Creating rain in one place means a drought in another. Would we end up with climate wars?

#5 Saving us from climate warming by planting billions of trees ❌

Industrial-scale tree-planting is not a solution to climate change. The world is already re-greening due to elevated levels of carbon dioxide and warming but this is not the diverse ecology we need for the living resources we tap for farming and fisheries. Meanwhile, we are destroying the existing high-biodiversity areas on which we depend for resilience.

Tree planting may cool the planet but in the mean time, we lose our food security while adding more plant waste into a system that can only be moderated by animal life. Already there are examples of governments in the UK planting trees to capture carbon on top of vital, species-rich peatland habitat. What we will end up creating are animal-less static monocultures that further disrupt a system. This offsets any opportunity we may have had, to employ animals to restabilise ecosystems through diversity and abundance.

✅ The only solution: conserve animals and allow wildlife to rebuild nature

By failing to understand how ecosystems work and their inherent reliance on animals for functioning, we are making dangerous decisions about our future.

Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and building nature-based solutions are the only way we can fix our world’s problems. Because it’s only animals in their infinite design, abilities and abundance that can rapidly and comprehensively bring ecosystem processes back under control. The reality is, our technology is practically stone-age capacity when compared to animal-driven ecosystems.

So, what’s the answer to our climate problems?

Build a world with a richer abundance of wildlife.