From RUTGERS UNIVERSITY and the “don’t start” department.
Rutgers researchers co-author first study on biological impacts of abruptly ending efforts to cool Earth’s climate
Facing a climate crisis, we may someday spray sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to form a cloud that cools the Earth, but suddenly stopping the spraying would have a severe global impact on animals and plants, according to the first study on the potential biological impacts of geoengineering, or climate intervention.
The study was published online today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The paper was co-authored by Rutgers Distinguished Professor Alan Robock, research associate Lili Xia and postdoc Brian Zambri, all from the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Other co-authors were from the University of Maryland, Yale University and Stony Brook University.
“Rapid warming after stopping geoengineering would be a huge threat to the natural environment and biodiversity,” Robock said. “If geoengineering ever stopped abruptly, it would be devastating, so you would have to be sure that it could be stopped gradually, and it is easy to think of scenarios that would prevent that. Imagine large droughts or floods around the world that could be blamed on geoengineering, and demands that it stop. Can we ever risk that?”
Geoengineering means attempting to control the climate in addition to stopping the burning of fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming, Robock said. While scientists have studied the climate impacts of geoengineering in detail, they know almost nothing about its potential impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, the study notes.
The geoengineering idea that’s attracted the most attention is to create a sulfuric acid cloud in the upper atmosphere as large volcanic eruptions do, Robock said. The cloud, formed after airplanes spray sulfur dioxide, would reflect solar radiation and cool the planet. But airplanes would have to continuously fly into the upper atmosphere to maintain the cloud because it would last only about a year if spraying stopped, Robock said. He added that the airplane spraying technology may be developed within a decade or two.
In their study, the scientists used a global scenario with moderate cooling through geoengineering, and looked at the impacts on land and in the ocean from suddenly stopping it. They assumed that airplanes would spray 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide a year into the upper atmosphere at the Equator from 2020 to 2070. That’s the annual equivalent of about one quarter of the sulfur dioxide ejected during the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, Robock said.
The spraying would lead to an even distribution of sulfuric acid clouds in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. And that would lower the global temperature by about 1 degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) – about the level of global warming since the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-1800s. But halting geoengineering would lead to rapid warming – 10 times faster than if geoengineering had not been deployed, Robock said.
The scientists then calculated how fast organisms would have to move to remain in the climate – in terms of both temperature and precipitation — that they are accustomed to and could survive in, he said.
“In many cases, you’d have to go one direction to find the same temperature but a different direction to find the same precipitation,” Robock said. “Plants, of course, can’t move reasonably at all. Some animals can move and some can’t.”
He noted that national parks, forests and wildlife refuges serve as sanctuaries for animals, plants and other organisms. But if rapid warming forced them to move, and even if they could move fast enough, they may not be able find places with enough food to survive, he said.
One surprising side effect of rapidly starting geoengineering would be an El Niño warming of the sea surface in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which would cause a devastating drought in the Amazon, he said.
“We really need to look in a lot more detail at the impact on specific organisms and how they might adapt if geoengineering stops suddenly,” he said.
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The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0431-0
Potentially dangerous consequences for biodiversity of solar geoengineering implementation and termination
Abstract
Solar geoengineering is receiving increased policy attention as a potential tool to offset climate warming. While climate responses to geoengineering have been studied in detail, the potential biodiversity consequences are largely unknown. To avoid extinction, species must either adapt or move to track shifting climates. Here, we assess the effects of the rapid implementation, continuation and sudden termination of geoengineering on climate velocities—the speeds and directions that species would need to move to track changes in climate. Compared to a moderate climate change scenario (RCP4.5), rapid geoengineering implementation reduces temperature velocities towards zero in terrestrial biodiversity hotspots. In contrast, sudden termination increases both ocean and land temperature velocities to unprecedented speeds (global medians >10 km yr−1) that are more than double the temperature velocities for recent and future climate change in global biodiversity hotspots. Furthermore, as climate velocities more than double in speed, rapid climate fragmentation occurs in biomes such as temperate grasslands and forests where temperature and precipitation velocity vectors diverge spatially by >90°. Rapid geoengineering termination would significantly increase the threats to biodiversity from climate change.
Climate Engineering, (or whatever the ” Fifth Column” behind every major government wants to call it .) – is already here. Really ? Industrialists, politicians and scientists relying on computer models ? Were supposed to trust then as they *snip – profanity, even with … is still profanity* our planet and poison us ? Please people wake up.
and if me or you went into a public place and persisted in throwing sulphuric acid around…….
Armed police would materialise as if from Star Trek and blow us completely away. No questions asked
Basically= Terrorism
So what gives these muppets free licence to suggest such action?
The truly scary thing is these C02 for brains are given the money by idiots every day. Look at how many people just give to any environmental org. without checking into it, or they just assume that CACC is real. It’s a grass roots idiocy without bounds because the globalists are so power hungry they’ll do anything to get more funding including destroying the planet while telling the morons they’re saving it. At least this fellow admits there’s a danger in completely obliterating the rainforest, (makes deforestation look like a lawn mowing). He also notes that it could have a catastrophic affect on many thousands of ecosystems.
Actually, when you read the end of the article you realize he’s not as dumb as many of his donors. I still think it’s a complete waste of time and money even if it did work, but I don’t donate to the fascist environmentalist causes so I have no impact on their judgement.
batshit crazy as a starting point and all downhill from there.
they need to be sectioned not employed!
They are using geoengineering as a straw man. Honestly, I think that is what most of the Climatists are doing when they talk about it. They are merely offering a false choice, based on false science.
University is the land of the fools, those who couldn’t make a proper living out of their art, so they taught it instead.
It is the land of the nuts, unchecked by reality.
It is the land of those who don’t care, making the best use of their time: trying to get sex, drug, and Rock and roll
Why we care so much about their “studies” is the real mystery for me.
Humans routinely do geoengineering. The drain swamp, build cities, dikes, lakes, cut or plant forests, etc. They even have moderate success at having rain, or preventing frost. They do all this for an obvious profit, and never stop as long as the profit exist. And all these are local.
Who would pay for a global geoengineering? For what profit? Why would he stop, if profit does occur for him?
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
The whole story being that humans broke it.
Such geodabbling would have many side effects. For one, this would cause iron oxide dust to become bioavailable for iron seeding the iron deficient oceans. This would cause decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide . The synergy might bring on an ice age.
Dr John Martin faced hurdles in iron seeding experimentation. Sulfur dioxide seeding seems far more difficult. Millions of tons? Cost?
How about ‘Climate-engineering would have severe impacts if STARTED.’
I fear nothing about Climate Change other than what eco-fascist psychopath control-freaks try to do about it.
AND how opportunists will try to exploit it.
So they’re going to do something at a quarter the level that natural events (volcanos) already do. Then they’re going to suddenly stop – which volcanos also do. But the climate impact of stopping will somehow be catastrophic even though there was no such catastrophic effect after the Mt Pinatubo emissions cleared themselves out of the atmosphere…
I also have to wonder what the fossil fuel budget is for lifting 5 million tons a year into the upper atmosphere. For reference, a C-141B has a cargo capacity of a little over 45 tons. Call it 110,000 flights a year. A C-141 has a fuel capacity of about 24,000 gallons. Even if you only needed half that to get up to altitude and your assigned dispersal area, run the dispersement pattern and return, that’s 1.3 billion gallons of jet fuel a year.
I’m a time traveler from the 23rd century.
Saying – “stop! Don’t do it!”
Geoengineering will result in disastrous vandalism of the planet and a horrible indescribable mess to clean up.
O yes – and in the 2020 Superbowl the Washington Redskins will beat the Denver Broncos. And Trump gets a second term. Enjoy the good times – while they last.
Geoengineering has global effects even if only pursued by the USA, therefore any attempts by US organisations to pursue unilateral geoengineering should lead to global sanctions aimed at doing to Americans what Rex Tillerson and Mafelaine Albright consider good metrics for evaluating warmongering in the Middle East….
If Mr Watts considers US a superior nations and US humans superior, he had better say so…..
So if somebody launched a bunch of space junk between the sun and the earth and lowered the temperature by 1 degree C or 1.8 degrees F, these scientists don’t think that organisms could adapt to a sudden 1.8 F increase if the space junk stopped blocking the sun?
Let’s face it, most organisms that live outdoors face temperature fluctuations of 20 F between day and night. They could easily handle one-tenth of that fluctuation if a little space junk moved out of the way of the sun. Do any organisms die when a cloud moves away and lets the sun shine through a patch of blue sky?