The shifts in weather patterns everywhere are disrupting agricultural planting and harvesting cycles and facilitating the multiplication of destructive plant pests. Together, these shifts are progressively reducing crop yields, causing more frequent famines across the globe.
At the same time, ocean acidification and higher ocean water temperatures are causing the decline of sensitive fisheries around the world. Most of the world’s population depends on fisheries for protein. The destruction of fish populations means even more starvation and malnutrition.
Woodmont: What are these “nonlinear” threats you mentioned?
Hartquist: The nonlinear, potentially irreversible effects are even more frightening. Let me list a few of the many disaster possibilities that have recently been identified:
Collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf or other Antarctic glaciers, which could produce a three- to six-foot rise in sea level within a few decades,
Reduction in the freshwater runoff from Greenland and Iceland that drives global ocean currents, which would radically change climate conditions everywhere,
Massive, irreversible releases of currently frozen natural methane from the Arctic permafrost, which could exceed current industrial methane emissions, and
Saturation of the oceans with carbon dioxide, so they no longer absorb carbon, but instead release it into the air, accelerating global warming.
Woodmont: You’ve painted a grim picture of what we can expect if we continue on this path. Is there anything we can do to reduce the risk of these disasters?
Hartquist: That is the most complex question. Scientists in various fields have suggested several potential approaches that would intentionally change the earth’s oceanic and atmospheric chemistry. Collectively, they are often lumped together under the term “geoengineering.”
Adding iron or other nutrients to the ocean so marine organisms absorb more carbon is one proposal. Another method is solar radiation management, known as SRM, primarily in the form of a stratospheric veil. We could create the veil by dispersing chemicals into the upper atmosphere to reflect more sunlight away from the earth.
The difficulty with these proposals is that we cannot test and calibrate such a large-scale engineering project in the real world without risking adverse consequences. We have no “Planet B” to experiment with. On the other hand, our current situation is equally fraught with dangers.
I tend to think that a physical veil is simpler and less risky than a biological ocean fertilization approach that causes and depends upon the far more complex interactions of live organisms.
The scientific community has not reached consensus on what approach is the most feasible or least risky. But the current threats won’t wait.
Woodmont: Well! That’s a lot to think about. Thank you, Dr. Hartquist, for your enlightening explanation of this complex problem. I’m sure we will hear other views on this subject in the days ahead, and then we may want to talk with you again.
Hartquist: My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Ilsa was pleased with the interview. She felt that Woodmont’s aggressive questioning had allowed her to articulate her disagreements with the IPCC clearly and precisely. She had drawn attention to methane and HCFCs and introduced the concept of a stratospheric veil to a much larger audience. She felt hopeful that her widely-publicized analysis would have a tangible effect on the policies of the US Government.
But the President continued to contend the whole idea of global warming was a hoax, even in the face of the opposite conclusions reached by the Federal Government’s November 2017 Climate Science Special Report.
That Report, cooperatively produced and reviewed by representatives of all the relevant Federal agencies, reached significantly different conclusions:
1 Global annually averaged surface air temperature has increased by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) over the last 115 years (1901–2016). This period is now the warmest in the history of modern civilization. The last few years have also seen record-breaking climate-related weather extremes, and the last three years have been the warmest years on record for the globe.
2 It is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.
Dr. Hartquist was outraged that the President was blatantly disregarding the considered judgment of the scientific community in and out of the Federal Government.
A year later, in desperation, she adopted a more radical position, which she announced in an Opinion column in the New York Times. She selected the publication date, October 1, 2018, with an eye toward influencing the upcoming US Congressional elections.
Her column began with a brief statement of the latest scientific consensus:
The natural atmospheric and oceanic systems that have sustained human survival for millennia are breaking down. These effects will likely disrupt and destabilize contemporary civilization long before the 100-year increase in CO2 makes the earth uninhabitable.
Her policy recommendations, however, were far more controversial:
In my view, governments around the world must promptly initiate a variety of active engineering projects that intervene in our climate system to increase the earth’s albedo—its reflectivity—and cool the planet.
First, governments must immediately pursue a program of solar radiation management (SRM), creating a chemical veil for the planet to scatter more sunlight back into space.
Second, governments must implement every other imaginable reflectivity mechanism on the earth’s surface as quickly as possible. All man-made structures and vehicles should be colored white, including building roofs, streets, and highways. Less valuable forests should be cut down and buried to create more reflective open land, even though that would reduce the amount of CO2 the earth’s forests will ultimately absorb.
Some will object that SRM or any other intervention must wait until we can resolve the scientific uncertainties about its potential adverse effects. But we no longer have the luxury of time. At this point, only radical steps can save us from the damage being caused by a century of mistaken and shortsighted policies.
When a person is drowning in an icy ocean, you don’t debate whether the life preserver or the rope will be most effective to save him. And you don’t try just one to see if it works before trying the other. You throw both, fully aware that he might not catch either one, or he might catch one and still freeze before he is rescued, or he might even get tangled in the lines and drown more quickly. Because action is the only hope.
That is the circumstance in which we find our home, planet earth. We must act now with the knowledge and tools we have at hand.
Finally, I must stress that while SRM may work to cool the earth and minimize the risk of immediate catastrophe, we still have only a few decades to end the use of fossil fuels. The most successful stratospheric veil will not affect many of the long-run destructive impacts of increased atmospheric carbon from fossil fuels.
The 2018 elections succeeded in breaking down the climate-denier majority in Congress. But the President didn’t reverse his decision to withdraw from the Paris Accords in 2019, which would make the United States the only nation in the world that was not a party. Less visibly, the EPA Administrator continued to nullify all regulations designed to implement the binding commitments the US had accepted in the Paris Accords.
Dr. Hartquist’s call to action produced no positive response either in the US or at the international level. At the same time, both back-to-nature environmentalists and reactionary climate deniers attacked her controversial