Paris goals ebb, geoengineering emerges

Marlowe Hood - Even if you are terrified of heights, jumping out of a plane with a makeshift parachute may begin to look like a good idea once you know the aircraft is running out of fuel. adidas pure boost That, arguably, is akin to the mindset of climate scientists and policy-makers brainstorming in Berlin this week on how to compensate for humanity’s failure to curb the greenhouse gases that drive global warming. Nike Cortez In 2015, 195 nations vowed to cap the rise of the Earth’s average surface temperature at “well below” two degrees Celsius and make a good-faith effort to hold the line at a 1.5 C. But the Paris Agreement did not mandate how or when to hit those targets. ugg mens shoe sale With A single degree Celsius of warming so far, a crescendo of impacts — including tropical storms along with deadly heatwaves, fires and droughts — suggest time is not on our side and the range of options is narrowing. “It has become very clear that getting to 2 C, and especially 1.5 C, is very dependent on our ability to remove large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere,” Naomi Vaughan, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, told the opening plenary of the Climate Engineering Conference 2017. Michael Taylor, an atmospheric scientist from the University of West Indies, underscored the urgency in the aftermath of the two Category Five hurricanes that recently ravaged the Caribbean. “The region’s climate will be so significantly altered that it will not just be unfamiliar,” he said. One of two broad categories under the geo-engineering umbrella, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) schemes include “enhanced weathering” of rocks that soak up CO2; large-scale production of charcoal from organic waste; sequestering CO2 cast off from burning biofuel plants; and sucking carbon dioxide directly from the air with high-tech machines. asics red Even the massive planting of trees — which store CO2 as they grow — is seen as part of the “CDR” arsenal. adidas zx 500 The other, far more controversial approach to climate engineering, known as solar radiation management, would deflect enough sunlight back into space to cool the planet a degree or two. This, proponents say, could be done by injecting billions of tiny reflective particles into the stratosphere, or chemically brightening mirror-like ocean clouds. new balance sale “It will be very difficult to meet the Paris Agreement goal of even staying below 2 C without resorting to at least one, if not both, of these forms of climate engineering,” said Mark Lawrence, scientific director of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, which is hosting the four-day conference. Nike Air Max 97 Some scientists think climate engineering of any kind is a slippery slope. asics blue “It diverts attention away from the need to reduce emissions,” Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, and a former vice-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said. “CO2 removal gives the illusion that we can continue using fossil fuels indefinitely,” he said. Other experts who have reluctantly embraced the necessity of geo-engineering to help fix the climate are more nervous about fiddling with the sun’s radiative force. ugg boots sale “This is the first time since the development of nuclear weapons that we have a set of technologies which has the potential of impacting Earth, as well as human society, at a planetary scale,” said Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water in New Delhi. nike soldes Solar radiation management could disrupt rainfall patterns, and thus agriculture, say critics who also worry about what is sometimes called “termination shock” — a sudden warming if the system were to fail.