Geoengineering and The Global Climate Crisis

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Does one ever think of the potential catastrophic harm they’re causing by turning on the lights or by using their cars? Don’t we want a world where our grandchildren and great grandchildren can live safety and comfortably? At the rate were going this will not be possible; we’ve added more than 1.4 trillion tones of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in just two hundred years, and its messing up our planet (Siegel 1). The use of fossil fuels has greatly increased the amount of atmospheric and oceanic CO2 to a point where it’s ruining the natural flow of the world; the earth’s temperature is rising. As a result, the polar ice caps are melting causing the seas to rise. With only a 1 meter increase in sea level the United States alone could lose over 10,000 square miles of land, and thousands of houses will be destroyed. The effects will be just as prominent around the world: many islands will become submerged, 17% of Bangladesh will be underwater, and tens of thousands of people will be displaced (“Global Warming” 3). Not only will this be catastrophic for the humans, but animal and plant life will suffer too (“Global Warming” 4, 10, Than 1-4). The oceans will become more polluted and warmer which will cause fish along with coral reefs will die (“Global Warming” 4). The heat will bring animals to extinction; their migration patterns will be altered, change their diet, and force them to live in different locations in order to find a suitable climate (Than 1). Additionally, the warming will hurt the crop production. Crops have a very specific range of temperatures they should grow in order to maximize their yield, and if the earth is going to be above the temperature then crop yield will suffer. Projections for the year 2050 show... ... middle of paper ... ...9). The proposal calls for ships that blow micro sized drops of seawater into the air, and use the Twomey effect to increase the reflectivity; the water uses the salt as a nucleus and when the small drops of water reach the cloud level, they will bond with the existing clouds, increasing the amount of water in the cloud, and therefore making it more reflective (I 2). The plan also calls for ships that run off the wind, and therefore don’t contribute to the CO2 production. Additionally, these ships could be used to target specific areas that need to be cooled sooner rather than later: above the ice caps, and by coral reefs. This proposal has the ability to “hold the earth’s temperature constant for many decades” (Schneider 9), through the ability to add more ships to meet our CO2 production, very natural, and relatively cheap: a proposed $1.5- 3 million per ship.

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