Geoengineering

• Geoengineering is a process that allows humans to terraform the planet according to the climate and world.
• Certain geoengineering techniques aim to reduce carbon dioxide in the world, and they also allow for editing the climate and weather.
• Not only editing nature, but certain geoengineering techniques like cool roofs help in reducing carbon footprints by just small edits to homes and offices, etc.

Why is Geoengineering needed?

The earth is rapidly changing, and global warming is threatening life as we know it for all species. The majority of these problems are caused by humans, and therefore need to be fixed by humans. Geoengineering offers effective solutions to this problem with minimal endangerment of other species.

Scientists and policymakers need to stay unbiased. If they are biased, all the solutions wouldn’t help as such. There would be lots of corruption, and scientists would not be able to be transparent.

CO2 Removal Strategies

• Afforestation: It is the process of planting many trees, and increasing green cover.
• Increasing soil carbon: This includes planting specialized plants, or embedding carbon in the soil. This reduces CO2 and extracts it out of the air. This however is not a very widely practiced technique.
• Bio-energy: Burning biomass and storing the resulting CO2 for future uses. This bio-capture technique has gained momentum and now is being implemented in certain factories and industries.
• Increasing ocean alkalinity: Adding greater carbon-rich minerals to the ocean. This neutralizes the CO2
• Air-capture: Certain agencies collect CO2, and bury the cylinders underground. Some also reuse the collected CO2 and use it to generate carbon etc.
• Ocean fertilization: fertilizing oceans to boost phytoplankton growth. Phytoplankton neutralize CO2 in the air and pass it to the seabed
• Building with Biomass: embedding carbon in biomass used in construction like wood. This allows for structures to absorb CO2 and purify the air.

Private agencies should be allowed to practice CO2 removal, as long as it is free or highly subsidized.

Terms related to these techniques

• Carbon sequestration: The process of capturing CO2 and storing it in carbon pools, assimilating it back into the earth, etc.
• Land use management: This is a planning technique that focuses on maximizing the used potential of resources. This method focuses on minimal work and maximum yield.
• Biochar: Biochar is a carbon-rich ash-like material that is made by burning biomass in low oxygen conditions. It is used in increasing soil carbon.
• Biomass: Biomass is a plant-based material often used as fuel. It includes timber, dry leaves, etc.
• Enhanced weathering: This is a process that maximizes the CO2 intake of natural rocks underwater. It allows for these rocks to be spread across large areas and improve absorption etc. the CO2 collected by phytoplankton can get deposited onto these rocks.
• Ocean upwelling: making artificial currents that allow for the lower part of the seas to cycle to the top. The lower parts usually have more nutrients.
• GHG removal: Greenhouse gases like nitrogen usually are simple to remove and will probably be easier to eradicate than CO2

Solar Geoengineering

Solar geoengineering is the process of geoengineering to slow down or cancel out global warming.

• Aerosol Injection: The process of spraying specialized aerosols in the stratosphere. These aerosols have gases like sulfuric acid. When volcanic gases combine with these aerosols, they create layers that can reflect oncoming sunlight creating the second ozone of sorts.
• Marine cloud brightening: This is the process of ships spraying salt water into the sky. This increases cloud condensation, which allows for clouds to be brighter and larger. This prevents excess sunlight from heating the planet.
• Maximizing Albedo: Albedo is the unitless quantity that defines the amount of sunlight reflected—growing crops with high albedo feedback and making buildings with high albedo materials. This increases the amount of reflected sunlight. White buildings reflect light allowing them to stay cool.
• Ocean mirroring: This process uses fleets of ships to create millions of microbubbles on the ocean surface. This increases the reflectivity of the ocean.
• Cloud thinning: this process removes cirrus clouds in the atmosphere. Cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals. These crystals absorb solar radiation and warm the earth.
• Space mirrors: a fleet of orbiting satellites with mirrors, designed to limit the amount of sunlight on the planet.

Key terms related to the sunlight management

• Solar radiation: Electromagnetic radiation generated by the sun.
• Ice albedo feedback is a positive feedback loop. Ice reflects the sunlight, cooling the earth, which increases ice and so on.
• Radiative forcing: it is the process of maximising sun energy from space and channeling that to the earth.
• Desert reflectors are networks of mirrors placed in deserts to reflect off sunlight.
• Cool roofs: they are specially designed roofs aiming at reflecting maximum light.
• Sunshield: A sunshield is a roof of sorts that allows light to enter but acts as an opposite greenhouse. It does not allow heat to enter.
• The ice in the arctic has trapped millions of bubbles of methane over the years. If a sudden melt of this ice would cause an uprise in the methane levels in the world.

We should restore the weather to a balance where the earth can support all life forms. The ideal year for this would be sometime in the past when the human footprint was not too major. Perhaps after the Jurassic period.

It seems that Antarctica might become habitable in a few centuries. To decide the habitation, countries with the potential of drowning or the chance of becoming uninhabitable. 

Non-Natural Geoengineering

• Cloud seeding: The process of adding artificial chemicals to help the clouds condensate faster increasing snow and rainfall
• Fog harps: An apparatus made up of special strings on a frame that collect water from fog.
• Bioprecipitation: Injecting bacteria into clouds such that they can collect vapour and moisture better.
• Cloudbusters: missile launcher kind of machines that throw ‘orgone energy’ into the clouds up above.
• Hail cannons: They are machines that send disrupting waves into clouds to prevent hail from forming, this prevents mass destruction caused by hail. The largest hailstones were recorded in 1986 in Bangladesh when they had an average diameter of 5 centimeters