Rain on their parade
* Cool reception for planet-cooling concepts
* Cloud the issue
* Reflect and absorb
The very best scientists have been cooking up quixotic ways to undo your sterling efforts to cook the planet. Giant space mirrors, flotillas of artificial cloud-makers and ‘man-made volcanoes’ are all touted as a panacea for runaway global warming. You must do all that is humanly possible to ensure world governments believe their technological fix is the solution. It was technology, after all, that got us into this fix in the first place. An even bigger dose of the same might be the last thing the planet needs. Any chef who has added too much pepper then tossed in extra chilli to negate the damage understands that trying to undo mistakes can only exacerbate the problem.
You must ensure faith in bizarre and ambitious schemes continues. Doing so will ensure billions of pounds and scientific resources are diverted away from genuine attempts to curb emissions. Political will to enforce changes in carbon-rich lifestyles will fade, international protocols will be suspended, and clean technologies put on hold. In the heightened scramble to save the earth, renewable energy will be seen as a little too dull. Why stick a solar panel or a windmill on the garage roof when you can invest trillions on hurling tiny mirrors into outer space?
But the real bonus in these schemes lies in their ability to let the world carry on with the status quo. While hope of a quick-fix solution remains, humanity will continue pumping 8.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, to levels unmatched since dinosaurs ruled the earth. Climate scientists insist that the only way to save the planet is to coax the world down to practically zero emissions over the next two decades. In essence, the promise of a technological silver bullet to climate change is the greatest smokescreen ever, the ideal camouflage for ensuring nothing ever changes. Let world leaders make their empty promises, let their people hope. Let them twiddle their thumbs as the earth burns.
Commendably, the sun is fulfilling her primary duties, giving life to earth. Yet, recently, the feeling is that perhaps she has gone a touch overboard. It is 2014 and, amid another hotter than usual afternoon, an international climate-change summit enters its closing stages, with leaders discussing how precisely they intend to reduce the sun’s radiative influence on proceedings. Odds appear stacked in favour of controversial plans to fire mammoth mirrors into orbit in order to help block out the heat and hence reduce global warming. On hearing the news, you call up the University of Arizona and ask for astronomical-optics expert Roger Angel. You warmly congratulate him on his well-received plan to create a 1.8 million-square-mile solar shield consisting of a trillion mirrors. It will be hurled into space using electromagnetic coil guns. The cost is satisfyingly significant; even in 2008 it stood at £2.5 trillion, more than twice the entire GDP of Britain, and both inflation and development costs have almost doubled those forecasts in the time since. The vast majority of key global-research projects to tackle climate change have been shelved in order to pool funding for Angel’s mirror scheme. Estimates put the reduction in solar radiation, if trials are successful, at 3 per cent, which would be enough to lower temperatures to reasonable levels.
There had, though, been an unsettling period when world governments almost opted for tax rebates on carbon emissions and increased energy-efficiency incentives for cars and homes. Thankfully, these schemes foundered at the last hurdle to allow for something bigger and better, something that would preserve the life you were accustomed to as well as showing her – the sun – that you had the measure of her ways. Meanwhile, carbon emissions kept on growing, the latest forecasts from the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change estimating a maximum 6°C increase by the end of the century.
You also managed to help overrule some more mundane solutions. During 2009, governments and scientists had hoped that fluffy low-flying clouds could be utilized to reflect the sun’s harmful rays away from the broiling land below. You spent months writing letters and releasing bogus online studies to discredit the efforts of John Latham of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, and Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University. They had designed a fleet of unmanned, self-propelled vessels that could cross the world’s oceans and ‘seed’ clouds by firing a mist of seawater high into the air. A thousand of these ships could, they calculated, increase cloud cover by 4 per cent – enough to counter a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the plan was riven with drawbacks. For a start, it was too cheap and relatively low-tech, which meant it would be quick to build and reliable to use. Worst of all was the gut-wrenching fear that it might even work. Your lobbying focused on the potential unpredictability of changing weather patterns that the scheme might induce, such as undesirable rainfall over drought-stricken African countries. Thankfully, negotiations descended into the usual squabbling between the developed and developing worlds and the idea was strangled at birth.
Having proved beyond question that anything nature can do, humans can, quite frankly, do better, an idea has surfaced to create a man-made ‘natural’ catastrophe. Scientists noticed that when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, the average temperature across the earth decreased by 0.6°C. The finger of blame pointed at the 10 million tonnes of sunlight-blocking sulphur that the volcano ejected into the stratosphere. You must establish formal contact with the eminent Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel prize in 1995 for his work on the ozone layer, and whose idea it was to replicate a Pinatubo-type explosion. His visionary plans involve hundreds of vehicles filled with sulphur – maybe aeroplanes or giant cannonballs, blasted into the stratosphere to create a cooling blanket that would block the sun’s rays from reaching earth. You love it. You absolutely love it. You have meticulously researched the concerns of other scientists who claim that such a massive input of sulphur into the upper atmosphere could increase acid rain or damage the ozone layer. You learn that the Pinatubo explosion also caused a significant depletion in the ozone and, in the period following the eruption, the hole over the South Pole grew to a record size. You endeavour to track down Carnegie Institution climatologist Ken Caldeira and persuade him to keep these concerns to himself. Caldeira, a thorough and analytical scientist, can at times get bogged down with the most piffling of details. After all, he believes that putting sulphate particles into the stratosphere would actually ‘destroy’ the ozone layer. No, just damage it, my friend. A world of difference.
Crutzen’s plan is perfect. True, global warming might slow, but ultimately the planet would fry to death. If all goes predictably wrong, it will take years for the particles to fall from orbit, years in which the planet may never recover.
Meanwhile, what you really must discourage are proposals that involve the mass planting of carbon-dioxide-absorbing trees. Scientists have proposed synthetic trees which, despite looking gratifyingly rubbish – they don’t flower or leaf, and resemble ‘goal posts with Venetian blinds’ – can soak up carbon dioxide at dauntingly impressive levels. Klaus Lackner of Columbia University also needs to be silenced. His tree proposal at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science garnered valuable publicity for funding. Impressive calculations show that one of his trees could remove about 90,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a single year – the output of more than 15,000 cars and a thousand-fold improvement on the poor old natural equivalent.
You write to every wildlife organization and newspaper, warning of a planned age of ‘Frankenstein foliage’ which, surely, will ‘upset ecosystems by replacing healthy forests with floppy, disease-prone monocultures’. This, for a moment, actually sounds rather enticing, but sometimes even the defacing of aesthetics should take a backseat when it comes to truly screwing the planet.
You also intend to fight the resurgence of plans to paint the ground white. Under these proposals, roads, oceans and deserts would be covered with reflective material, increasing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space and so cooling the planet. Far too sensible and achievable for starters and, worst of all, it might even prove value-for-money.
* Trials of painting surfaces white are abandoned after a series of crashes caused by drivers and pilots who are blinded by the light. Maybe.
* Attempts to fire giant mirrors into space suspended after series of technological hiccups. Costs soar to more than £5 trillion. Likely.
* Trials using artificial-cloud-making technology are declared a partial success. They do increase cloud, but also create an intense hurricane system that runs riot across the mid-west of America. Plausible.
* US and Chinese governments announce joint partnership to re-position the planet. By shifting its orbit away from the sun, they hope to cool it down. The energy of 5,000 million trillion hydrogen bombs is deemed sufficient to move earth’s orbit by 1 mile and compensate for a doubling of carbon dioxide as a result. Nuclear warhead production goes into overdrive. Unlikely.
* Ideas come and go, promises are made but technological solutions fail. Emissions keep on rising. More promises are made. Inevitable.
Likelihood of any of the schemes having a major impact on climate change by 2015: 17%