RACA Journal I April 2024 1
RACA Journal : ISSN 1812-772X
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RACA Journal Publication www . refrigerationandaircon . co . za eamonn @ interactmedia . co . za
AIR POLLUTION THE ANSWER TO GLOBAL WARMING ?
We live in an age of climate doomerism . Over the past six months , several governments and international organisations – including various UN bodies , the White House , the EU , British research agency ARIA , and the Climate Overshoot Commission – have produced reports that cautiously advocate releasing aerosols into the atmosphere in order to block sunlight from hitting Earth ’ s surface . The concept is known as solar engineering , or solar radiation modification ( SRM ). It ’ s a specific type of geoengineering that aims to offset climate change by reflecting sunlight (‘ solar radiation ’) back into space .
The idea of SRM is not new , but for a long time it was relegated to the fringes of the scientific community . However , the concept has been attracting more and more attention in recent years following the growing hysteria over climate change . Much of the interest in SRM lies in the fact that , unlike other slow-moving climate mitigation policies , “ SRM offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years ,” according to a White House report .
That report followed on from a 2021 study by the US National Academies of Sciences , Engineering , and Medicine ( NASEM ), ‘ Reflecting Sunlight ’, which suggested that “ the US should cautiously pursue solar geoengineering research to better understand options for responding to climate change risks ”. Earlier this year , more than 100 scientists signed an open letter calling on governments to increase research into solar geoengineering . Scientists point to large historical volcanic eruptions – which result in massive quantities of sulphur dioxide and dust particles being spewed into the atmosphere – as examples of the effectiveness of ‘ stratospheric aerosol injection ’. They ’ re right , the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 cooled the planet by about half a degree Celsius on average for many months . So , the idea goes , by spraying a certain amount of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere , we could replicate the effects of a major eruption and cool the Earth .
However , all the reports acknowledge that there are serious risks associated with SRM , which could affect human health , biodiversity and geopolitics . That ’ s because modifying sunlight could alter global weather patterns , disrupt food supplies and in fact lead to abrupt warming if the practice was widely deployed and then halted .
What actually matters here isn ’ t so much the content of these reports — which each rightly highlight the risks of such interventions and the need to proceed with caution . What ’ s more
www . refrigerationandaircon . co . za important is the mere fact that the issue is treated as a topic of legitimate debate , thereby slowly getting the public accustomed to the concept , much like originally occurred with global warming . More alarming now that the geoengineering genie is out of the bottle is , can we really expect governments and institutions to keep it under control ?
We live in an era in which private and corporate power has largely unshackled itself from any form of meaningful governance , often subordinating institutions of the state to its own logic . As a result , billionaires , philanthro-capitalists and investment funds arguably exercise a greater influence over society than most governments – and they love playing God when it offers massive opportunities for profit . Think how many times companies have to replace their cooling equipment as refrigerants are outlawed , and their replacements too ultimately ‘ phased down ’. Much of the pressure for SRM comes from this rarefied community .
Backing SRM are the usual names : the Gates Foundation ; George Soros ; Jeff Bezos ; Facebook billionaire Dustin Moskovitz , co-founder of Open Philanthropy ; geoengineering non-profit SilverLining ; all helping to create models that show what would happen if we blocked out some of the sun ’ s rays . The ever-lurking Bill Gates in 2021 backed a sun-dimming project by the Harvard Solar Geoengineering Research Program called the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment ( SCoPEx ), which aimed to spray calcium carbonate into the atmosphere in the skies over Sweden to test its effects on sunlight scattering .
The project , however , was strongly criticised by environmentalists and indigenous groups , with 30 groups from around the world calling upon Harvard University to abandon the Gates-backed plans to test its solar geoengineering tech .
Maybe we can return to pollutant refrigerants with so much pollution to be sprayed into the atmosphere ! RACA
Eamonn
REFERENCES
1 . https :// www . unep . org / news-and-stories / story / new-report-exploresissues-around-solar-radiation-modification
2 . https :// www . whitehouse . gov / ostp / news-updates / 2023 / 06 / 30 / congressionally-mandated-report-on-solar-radiation-modification /
3 . https :// nap . nationalacademies . org / catalog / 25762 / reflecting-sunlightrecommendations-for-solar-geoengineering-research-and-researchgovernance
4 . https :// geoengineering . environment . harvard . edu / frank-keutschstratospheric-controlled-perturbation-experiment
RACA Journal I April 2024 1