Climate Photocatalyst is one of several methods being proposed to stave off catastrophic climate change while net zero carbon emissions is achieved. The cost is estimated to be in the low 10s of $billions per year, possibly even under $10 billion per year.
It works by adding non-toxic microscopic particles to the existing sea spray, mineral dust, sulphuric acid, and other substances that already combine together with water vapour to form cooling clouds over the ocean. At the same time, it can be configured to remove methane from the air, by mimicking the part of the natural methane sink that is also driven by these substances in combination with sunshine.
Climate and policy predicament
It is now not uncommon in some parts of the world for a whole month’s rainfall to arrive in just a few hours. Moreover, if the climate is allowed to continue warming in the coming decades, this year’s extreme weather events are likely to look tame by comparison. Meteorologists warn that as temperatures increase, the warming amplification of water vapour – itself a powerful greenhouse gas – will dwarf the warming influence of legacy greenhouse gas emissions. It’s the extreme heatwaves with high humidity that kill people and ecosystems. This year large swathes of coral reefs, which are important nurseries for fisheries, have died before even getting a chance to bleach (Ref). A recent study estimated the global cost of extreme weather events at $143 billion per year (Newman, 2023) [*check droughts]. That does not include the economic cost of long-term droughts and the spread of tropical diseases such as dengue fever. We could go on.
While it’s important to pursue Net Zero efforts, it’s also crucial to be aware that even Net Zero tomorrow would not stop the climate warming. The current warming influence, driven mainly by cumulative emissions, is now heating the oceans by an amount equivalent to around six Hiroshima bombs per second. If feedback mechanisms are considered, that puts another 10°C of warming in the pipeline (Hansen 2023), with 4°C likely by 2100 – a catastrophic outcome for human civilization.
Hansen’s climate predictions have been broadly correct since his Congressional deposition in the 1980s when he warned of the dangers of “delayed effects”. Those effects are now in operation as self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms, which are multiplying each other. The cornucopia of these mechanisms is also making the future speed of climate breakdown difficult to predict, even by the most expert climate scientists. In addition, the nature of self-reinforcing feedback means the conditions worsened by each day of delayed action are becoming more difficult to reverse.
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