The historic Paris climate agreement started a mantra from developing countries: "1.5 to stay alive." It refers to the international aim to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.8 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial times.
www.sciencealert.com
The world is already facing natural disasters of epic proportions as temperatures rise. Heat records are routinely broken. Wildfire seasons are more extreme. Hurricane strength is increasing. Sea level rise is slowly submerging small island nations and coastal areas.
The only known method able to quickly arrest this temperature rise is climate engineering. (It's sometimes called GEOENGINEERING, sunlight reduction methods or solar climate intervention.)
These actions include mimicking the cooling effects of large volcanic eruptions by putting large amounts of reflective particles in the atmosphere, or making low clouds over the ocean brighter. Both strategies would reflect a small amount of sunlight back to space to cool the planet.
There are many unanswered questions, however, about the effects of deliberately altering the climate, and there is no consensus about whether it is even a good idea to find out.
One of the largest concerns for many countries when it comes to climate change is NATIONAL SECURITY. That doesn't just mean wars. Risks to food, energy and water supplies are national security issues, as is climate-induced migration.
Could climate engineering help reduce the national security risks of climate change, or would it make things worse? Answering that question is not simple, but researchers who study climate change and national security like we do have some idea of the risks ahead.
However, a single Country or a coalition of Countries witnessing the harms of climate change could make a cost and geopolitical calculation and decide to begin climate engineering on its own.
This is the so-called "free driver" problem, meaning that one country of at least medium wealth could unilaterally affect the world's climate.
For example, countries with increasingly dangerous heat waves may want to cause cooling. Australia is currently exploring the feasibility of rapidly cooling the Great Barrier Reef to prevent its demise.
The climate doesn't respect national borders. So, a climate engineering project in one country is likely to affect temperature and rainfall in neighboring countries. That could be good or bad for crops, water supplies and flood risk. It could also have widespread unintended consequences.
Some studies show that a moderate amount of climate engineering would likely have widespread benefits compared with climate change. But not every country would be affected in the same way.
Once climate engineering is deployed, countries may be more likely to blame climate engineering for extreme events such as hurricanes, floods and droughts, regardless of the evidence.
Climate engineering may spark CONFLICTS AMONG COUNTRIES, leading to sanctions and demands for compensation.
So, as it is stated above, there are serious risks related to GEOENGINEERING that single Countries could decide to implement unilaterally.
This GEOENGINEERING issue is crystal clear a matter od GLOBAL SECURITY and, as such, has to be handled by the UN Security Council as soon as possible together with the whole Global Climate Change issue IMO.
www.theguardian.com
