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!

Ecosystems don’t operate in isolation and require resilience to function. 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 biodiversity (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 nutrients 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 energy 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 disruption into a system already in chaos 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.