geoengineering

The balmy, shallow waters of Apalachicola Bay, off Florida’s panhandle, supply about 10% of U.S. oysters. But the industry has declined in recent years, in part because the bay is warming and its waters are acidifying because of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. Things got so bad that in 2020, the state banned oyster harvesting for 5 years. Soon afterward, state officials encouraged climate scientists to perform an unusual experiment to see whether they could…

Researchers have rebuffed a wild idea to use tiny, hollow glass beads to halt sea ice loss, finding that a coating of microspheres would actually accelerate ice melt instead of slowing it.In 2018, a study proposed spraying layers of glass powder, in the form of hollow glass spheres about the thickness of a human hair, over Arctic sea ice to brighten its surface.This, the study authors said, would enhance the amount of sunlight reflected in a part of the world that is seeing some of the worst effects of climate change,…

Measurements being performed on the Maludam, a tropical peat-draining river in Malaysia. The typically dark color of the water indicates a high levels of dissolved carbon, which is why peat-draining rivers are also known as blackwater rivers. Credit: Alexandra Klemme, University of Bremen The Earth is warming up at an increasing rate. A contributing factor is carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, prompting researchers to…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A group of international scientists led by Cornell University is—more rigorously and systematically than ever before—evaluating if and how the stratosphere could be made just a little bit "brighter," reflecting more incoming sunlight so that an ever-warming Earth maintains its cool. …

Why’s it so controversial?: Geoengineering was long a taboo topic among scientists, and some argue it should remain one. There are questions about its potential environmental side effects, and concerns that the impacts will be felt unevenly across the globe. Some feel it’s too dangerous to ever try or even to investigate, arguing that just talking about the possibility could weaken the need to address the underlying causes of climate change.But it’s going ahead?: Despite the concerns, as the threat of climate change…

The move, which has not been previously reported on, marks the first federally coordinated US effort of this kind. It could set the stage for more funding and research into the feasibility, benefits, and risks of such interventions. The effort may also contribute to the perception that geoengineering is an appropriate and important area of research as global temperatures rise. Solar geoengineering encompasses a range of different approaches. The one that’s gained the most attention is using planes or balloons to…

And exactly how much carbon they remove can vary quite a bit based on variables like the health of the vegetation. “One of the major risks of some of these biology-based proposals is that an assumption gets made that you can easily equate X number of trees to X million tons of carbon without actually looking at what kinds of trees they are, and where they're being planted,” says Cox. The amount of captured carbon might end up being negligible. “You have a lot of trees, which is brilliant. You haven't necessarily got the…