How To Hack Earth | Unveiled

How to Hack Earth and Stop Climate Change

The biggest threat facing humanity is man-made climate change. Human activities produce greenhouse gases, particularly through carbon emissions, and greenhouse gases trap heat. Slowly but surely, the planet heats up, and if we don’t do something about it in the next ten years humanity is going to be its own downfall.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; how do we hack Earth and stop climate change?

It’s now impossible for us to curb our emissions enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, without the help of vast geoengineering projects. Geoengineering involves using technology to manipulate the Earth’s climate in some way, and needs to be implemented alongside efforts to reduce carbon emissions. In other words, it’s no longer enough to aim to be carbon neutral, due to the greenhouse gases we’ve already produced: we now need to turn our attention to becoming carbon negative. If we could successfully build these technologies we would become a Kardashev Type I civilization, meaning we have mastery over all the energy available on Earth. It’s the lowest type but is one step closer to becoming the interplanetary and intergalactic civilisation we dream of. So, what are these technologies and how can we use them?

One of the most popular initiatives is called CCS, Carbon Capture and Storage, and involves preventing burned carbon from ever getting into the atmosphere in the first place. The technology is used at fossil fuel power plants, and is able to capture up to 90% of the carbon produced from burning these fossil fuels. The carbon is then stored somewhere, usually buried deep underground or under the ocean somewhere. This is what nature does with the carbon in the air already, as trees absorb carbon, die, and slowly get buried, only sped up. Since 80% of the world’s energy is currently generated by fossil fuels, Carbon Capture and Storage initially sounds like a pretty good way to reduce emissions, not to mention that the technology is safe and tested. But it has some pretty major issues. First, few US coal plants are actually using the technology; second, CCS discourages energy suppliers from seeking out renewable alternatives.

A similar initiative to Carbon Capture is Direct Air Capture, which is a way of removing carbon directly from the air using filters. The technology is being most prominently developed by Swiss company Climeworks, who says that from 2019 onwards the technology will be available to everybody who wants to use it. CO2 is captured, mixed with water, and pumped into basalt rock where it eventually calcifies. Hopefully, in the next five years this method to remove carbon from the air directly will catch on. The problem with Direct Air Capture is that it’s expensive and doesn’t produce anything of monetary value, so there’s no financial incentive.

Other projects involve using the Earth’s natural processes to dispose of carbon. Ocean greening, for instance, involves fertilising the seas with iron particles from boats. The iron encourages plankton to grow, which absorbs CO2 through photosynthesis. The effectiveness of ocean greening is up for debate, however, especially because it runs the risk of permanently damaging ocean ecosystems. A similar initiative involves increasing ocean alkalinity. The ocean absorbs about a quarter of all our carbon emissions, but this is steadily making the water more and more acidic. Reversing this acidification is paramount in slowing or stopping climate change, so some scientists say we should dissolve certain minerals in the ocean to create elements capable of absorbing CO2, thereby storing it and slowly reducing the acidity of the seas.

Similar to ocean greening is reforestation. It’s currently estimated that around 751 million acres of deforested land in the tropics could be restored. There are various initiatives to plant more trees, but deforestation continues at an alarming rate – we lose 18.7 million acres of forest every year. One method to keep up with the rapid deforestation is by using drones, an initiative suggested by ex-NASA engineer Lauren Fletcher. Fletcher says that these drones could plant a billion trees a year, more quickly and cheaply than planting trees by hand. Like ocean greening, it could help the Earth naturally siphon carbon from the air.

Solar radiation management, SRM, is another major geoengineering idea with different approaches. Generally speaking, it refers to methods to reflect sunlight back away from the Earth. The most ambitious geoengineering project proposed thus far envisions an enormous shield of moon or asteroid dust put into orbit between Earth and the Sun, to block out enough solar radiation for the planet to cool down. This is vital because if the Earth’s average temperature increases by just an additional 1.5 degrees Celsius, climate change will have devastating effects.

While creating such a shield would be incredibly difficult, there are other, less far-fetched SRM ideas. Many people think the answer could lie in mirrors. A particularly exciting suggestion involves creating an “ocean mirror.” Specially-designed boats would stir up the sea, creating bubbly seafoam that would reflect sunlight. There are concerns however that this could negatively affect ocean ecology. We could instead do something similar with sea ice, using tiny glass beads in the arctic ice to make it more reflective and therefore less vulnerable to melting. This could keep the planet cool and stop sea levels from rising.

Lastly, we can turn to clouds. Also a strain of SRM, Cirrus Cloud Thinning is exactly what you’d expect: a plan to reduce the atmosphere’s cirrus clouds, which exist at high altitudes and absorb and trap lots of solar radiation, preventing it from being reflected back into space. We would need to use water depleting aerosols to thin them, but this isn’t widely tested and might have negative effects on the environment we can’t foresee. But we do have a track record of manipulating clouds, and cloud seeding technology has been around for the better part of a century. Similar is stratospheric aerosol injection, which seeks to mimic the effects of a volcanic eruption by dumping sulphur into the air to block out sunlight; understandably, however, people don’t like the idea of filling the air with sulphur, which isn’t the best thing to be breathing.

Ultimately, the biggest problems geoengineering projects of all scales face is getting the funding and the support to go ahead. Governments and companies can’t agree amongst themselves how they want to tackle climate change, and climate change denial remains an issue.

Mastering our climate would take a worldwide effort of scientific collaboration. Curbing emissions isn’t enough, and geoengineering can’t help us if we’re still producing greenhouse gases. We may need a combination of the two, and it will definitely take everyone working together to lower the thermostat of global warming. And that’s how to hack Earth and stop climate change.