Solar engineering, also known as solar geoengineering, is the deliberate manipulation of the Earth's climate system to counteract the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of solar engineering is to reduce global warming and mitigate the impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise and extreme weather events. However, there are also risks associated with solar engineering that must be considered before any large-scale deployment.
As humans, we think of ourselves as a single organism even though we are systems with trillions of microbes. Well, we live in a self-contained living organism with far greater complexity that we call Earth.
In the branch of mathematics known as Chaos Theory as applied to natural science, we study the sensitive dependencies between structural units that co-exist in an organism. These units exist together as dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to conditions at any point across a time domain.
Essentially, it’s the idea that small changes in system can have significant and unpredictable consequences.
But in living organisms, change is inevitable and often amplified over time. A living organism will self-optimize based on these changes to achieve a balance required to survive and evolve. There is an underlying predictability in this optimization, however the massive scale of inter-relationships and sensitive dependencies between units at the quantum and macro scale makes it impossible for us to comprehend given our current knowledge of science. Even with the current state of technologies such as AI and supercomputers it is beyond our ability to predict.
We have only begun to understand Earth’s atmosphere and its sensitivity to external forces. What we do know is that the atmosphere is highly dynamic and complex. Any solar geoengineering experiment could not yield useful results unless it is done at sufficient scale, both geo and time. This is primarily due to the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. The significant variations in a small-scale experiment would effectively make measurements across a time domain inconclusive.
On the other hand, introducing new components into the atmosphere at scale changes its dynamics and introduces new sensitive dependencies which we do not have the knowledge to model or predict.
The Earth's climate is a complex system, and it is difficult to predict how it will respond to changes. Some areas where solar engineering could have a negative impact would be the ozone layer, weather patterns and Earth’s fragile micro-ecosystems.
Solar geoengineering involves reflecting some of the sun's incoming energy back into space by injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere. Some of these particles could react with ozone molecules in the stratosphere leading to the depletion of the ozone layer. This could increase increased exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation, increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts, among other health problems.
Injecting particles into the upper atmosphere will be a highly inexact process where the variable distribution of particles could alter how solar radiation is distributed across the planet. This could disrupt regional weather patterns. For example, a reduction in solar radiation over the Artic could impact the jet stream, changing patterns over Europe and North American. We could see more extreme weather events such as extreme temperatures, bringing droughts in some areas, flooding in others.
It could also disrupt the delicate balance of Earth’s micro-ecosystems having unintended consequences on biodiversity. A reduction of solar radiation could impact the amount and timing of rainfall in some regions. This would negatively impact the growth and reproduction of plant species. Temperature and precipitation changes could also affect migratory patterns and behaviours of animals, which could lead to declines in biodiversity. The injection of reflective particles into the atmosphere could affect the growth and survival of phytoplankton in the oceans, which form the base of many marine food webs.
Solar geoengineering is not intended to be the solution for climate change, it is only an effort to temporarily mitigate the impact until we have a long-term solution. Once a long-term solution is pervasive, we will experience the "clean up" effect. By reversing solar geoengineering too quickly, we risk shocking our ecosystem since for many species and ecosystems adaptation would be impossible.
The risks with solar geoengineering – disrupting weather patterns, declines in biodiversity, shocks to our fragile ecosystems. Does this sound familiar? Isn’t this what we are trying to avoid by finding a solution to climate change?
Undertaking solar geoengineering at this point in the development of human knowledge is inappropriate and irresponsible. The unintended consequences of these actions could have a greater negative impact than the problem we all agree that needs to be solved.
Though, If I were ever to write a Sci-Fi / Horror novel, the topic of solar geoengineering opens many possibilities.
