Critical evaluation of climate engineering options to cut CO2 emissions
With shifting seasons, sea levels rising, high temperatures, changing landscapes, increased risk of drought, fire and floods, stronger storms, more heat-related illness and diseases and economic losses, the effects of climate change has become too glaring to deny. In the face of this situation, the world’s bourgeoning demand for oil warrants and oil majors confidence that oil will still serve as the world’s major energy need for the next 50 years, warrants critical evaluation about the world’s option for managing the fallout of burning fossil fuel.
British journal, the Lancet has published a research indicating that climate change will adversely impact food production. It created a model for measuring the impact of climate change and projects that by 2050, climate change will lead to per-person reductions of 3·2 percent in global food availability, 4 percent in fruit and vegetable consumption, and 0·7 percent in red meat consumption.”
“Climate change leads to changes in temperature and precipitation that are expected to reduce global crop productivity cause changes in food production and consumption and affect global population health by changing the composition of diets and, with it, the profile of dietary and weight-related risk factors and associated mortalities. The results of this study indicate that even quite modest reductions in per-person food availability could lead to changes in the energy content and composition of diets that are associated with substantial negative health implications.”
Scientists have long shown that though the reasons for climate change are natural but most of the current changes are said to be man-made and the biggest culprit by far is burning of fossil fuels. Government policies, it has been discovered are inadvertently contributing to carbon emissions. Subsidies like the $4 billion annual fossil-fuel subsidy offered by the United States Treasury as tax breaks for drillers provides less incentives to decarbonize the world. Governments in Africa, Middle East and Latin America who subsidize consumers of fossil fuels pose a greater threat to the environment.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a global think tank, some 40 countries subsidize fossil-fuel consumption, creating a huge incentive to release carbon dioxide. Their governments spend about half-trillion dollars on subsidies, about four times more than global subsidies for renewables such as solar and wind energy.
To reduce the effect of climate change, scientist have advocated for geoengineering the environment as an accompanying strategy to emission control. Science Daily says geoengineering, is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in earth’s climatic system with the aim of reducing global warming. Climate engineering has two categories of technologies- carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management.
Carbon dioxide removal addresses a cause of climate change by removing one of the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Solar radiation management attempts to offset effects of greenhouse gases by causing Earth to absorb less solar radiation.
Reviews of geoengineering techniques for climate control according to the science publication have emphasized that they are not substitutes for emission controls and have identified potentially stronger and weaker schemes. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 2007 that geoengineering options for climate change “remained largely speculative and unproven.” The costs, benefits, and risks of many geoengineering approaches to climate change are not well understood.
Researchers from University of California, Los Angelis (UCLA), and five other universities evaluated various approaches to climate change mitigation – focusing on reducing emissions, sequestering carbon through biological means on land and in the ocean, storing carbon dioxide in a liquefied form in underground geological formations and wells, and increasing the earth’s cloud cover and solar reflection. None came close to reducing emissions as much as limiting the amount of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere.
“While abatement remains the most desirable policy, certain climate engineering strategies, including forest and soil management for carbon sequestration, merit broad-scale application,” researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. “Other proposed strategies, such as biochar production and geological carbon capture and storage, are rated somewhat lower, but deserve further research and development said the report.
The researchers who took into account the feasibility, cost-effectiveness and risk of each of these alternatives, also recognized the role that other green strategies could play in the global warming battle. They alluded to certain climate engineering strategies, include forest and soil management for carbon sequestration, merit broad-scale application. Other proposed strategies, such as biochar production and geological carbon capture and storage, are rated somewhat lower, but deserve further research and development
Some industry buffs have argued that the biggest value will not be found via subsidies or mandates of high-cost alternative technologies, but rather through open-market competition among a wide range of practical, lower-carbon options.
However the “practical options” advanced by oil industry practitioners – essentially increasing energy efficiencies – will not fully address the challenge posed by fossil fuels. According to a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), human activity adds roughly 7 billion metric tons of carbon to the environment every year, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels indicating that reducing carbon emission as strategy will not bring much respite.
ISAAC ANYAOGU