Is the impact on the climate real?
- Humanity has long influenced the climate by cutting down forests. Therefore, the simplest and most economical geoengineering projects are associated with the greening of deserted areas. China is building the Green Wall of China, the largest landscaping project in history to prevent deserts from expanding. It began in the 1970s and will continue until 2050. It is planned to plant 350,000 square kilometers of greenery, roughly equivalent to the area of Germany.
This project is very similar to ours, begun in the USSR under Stalin, and stalled under Khrushchev. The “Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature” involved planting forest belts, stocking lakes and ponds. It was planned that this will intensify agriculture on an area of 120 million hectares - it's like two France. It was partially implemented, and the remnants of this project can still be observed not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, but, unfortunately, these forests were then not on ceremony and were actively cut down.
The Great Green Wall is now being built in Africa. It is designed to combat the spread of deserts south of the Sahara. The green strip will run through 11 countries from the Red Sea to the Atlantic.
“There seems to be a law requiring every Chinese to plant three to five trees in their lifetime. We wish we had one
- There will be no one to monitor its execution, so it will not suit us.
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What else does geoengineering propose to do besides forest plantations?
- The main goal of existing geoengineering projects is to combat global warming, because over the past hundred years there has been a sharp increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Is carbon dioxide dangerous due to the greenhouse effect?
- Yes and no. The main producer of the greenhouse effect is water vapor in the atmosphere. Its concentration depends on evaporation. But even with a small increase in temperature, evaporation increases. This slight increase in temperature is precisely due to the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which also quite strongly absorbs the radiation of the underlying surface. It turns out that the addition of a small amount of carbon dioxide leads to a slight increase in ocean temperature, but due to this, evaporation and water vapor content in the atmosphere increase, thereby increasing the greenhouse effect and in turn further increasing the temperature.
Thus, an increase in carbon dioxide concentration increases the inverse relationship between an increase in temperature and an increase in the greenhouse effect. It should be taken into account that over the past hundred years, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by more than 30 percent - and all due to human activities.
And how are they trying to fight this?
- To combat global warming, you can either work to reduce the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or to reduce the temperature of the underlying surface.
There are projects for the industrial absorption of carbon dioxide by special installations (they are sometimes called artificial trees), but this is expensive. This installation draws in a large amount of ambient air. Carbon dioxide from the air is chemically bound in special filters. Once these filters are saturated with gas, they are heat treated and carbon dioxide is released and captured as concentrated gas. The air purified from CO2 is returned to the atmosphere. The first carbon dioxide absorption plant has already been designed and will be erected near Zurich. There, 18 collectors will be installed on the roof, which will capture 900 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
It's a lot?
“This is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 190 passenger cars. More than 250,000 of these plants would need to be built to meet the goal of reducing global CO2 levels by 1 percent. That now, as we understand it, is impossible. And then what is one percent if there is a third more carbon dioxide in the air than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century!
Unfortunately, if the cultivation of forests will lead to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it will not be very soon. Trees are known to only absorb carbon dioxide when exposed to light through photosynthesis. At night, they breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide just like humans and animals.
Scientists now believe that the most effective way to reduce CO2 is to breed ocean phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are microscopic algae. They absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. If the ocean is "fertilized" with iron sulfate, then the phytoplankton mass can double in a few weeks. Algae not only use carbon dioxide, but trap it and, when dying, store it in their bodies, which fall to the seabed. No gas enters the atmosphere. However, not everything is clear here either. In addition to phytoplankton, there is also zooplankton, which eats and multiplies its fellow. And he does not photosynthesize, but breathes, emitting carbon dioxide. In general, the first experiments did not give the expected effect.
Is it true that the Americans are going to spray sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere over the ocean in order to reduce the flow of solar energy and also prevent the greenhouse effect?
- Firstly, it was not the Americans who came up with it, but the Nobel laureate Dutchman Paul Krutzen. In our country, this idea was promoted by academician Yuri Izrael. Secondly, it is still unclear how the aerosol will spread in the stratosphere, how it will be removed from there, and how it will affect the ozone layer. Thirdly, not sulfate aerosols, but calcium carbonate. In the United States, it is planned to carry out two launches of balloons into the stratosphere, which will spray over the southwestern part of the territory a hundred-gram portions of calcium carbonate (this is as much as the airliner emits in one minute of flight), and then track how these particles will disperse. Calcium carbonate was chosen because, unlike sulfur dioxide, it does not accelerate the destruction of the ozone layer.
Do you believe in the effectiveness of this?
- Sulfate clouds will not solve the problem of greenhouse gases anyway. They are aimed at combating the consequence of the growth of the greenhouse effect - an increase in the temperature of the underlying surface. By the way, computer modeling of the impact of sulfate aerosol on the stratosphere has shown that the amount of rain is decreasing. Moreover, the changes will not be uniform: some areas will receive less rain than others, and this leads to droughts. Such serious consequences are possible due to this interference. The consequences can generally be planetary in nature.
So it's better not to experiment
- In general, such experiments in geoengineering contradict the accepted international agreements. In particular, a moratorium on geoengineering impacts was announced in 2010 under the UN Treaty on Biodiversity. The document was adopted by 190 countries. Among them, however, was not the United States.
What are we?
- Russia somehow evaded a direct answer: it seems for a ban, but somehow not very much.
And what have China and Japan come up with?
- China has formed one of the largest geoengineering research programs in the world. The government has allocated large funds to study the possibilities of targeted climate change. Japan's highly developed meteorological science has traditionally focused on solving problems that are important for the life of the country. Their supercomputer is capable of forecasting earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes. Japan supports all international projects aimed at environmental protection.
Now geoengineering projects appear where there are free resources for their implementation. But since the projects are mega-expensive, and their effectiveness has not been confirmed by anything, they are in no hurry to implement them. And thank God.
- When in 2010 we had an unprecedented heat, and in 2011 in Japan - a devastating tsunami, only the lazy did not discuss the theory of the use of climate weapons. It's a myth, isn't it?
- I must say right away that the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Means of Influencing the Natural Environment entered into force back in 1978. Scientists believe that there are no climate weapons, but the military imposes a secrecy stamp on any attempts to discuss these issues.
Have there been any attempts to use it?
- The local application of active influence on geophysical processes for solving specific combat missions has already been practiced. For example, the Americans during the Vietnam War tried to seed clouds with silver iodide, which led to an increase in precipitation by 30 percent. Then scientists conducted a lot of research on the creation of such weapons, and it was found that the results of its use are comparable to the consequences of major natural disasters or the massive use of atomic weapons. It was then that the Convention I mentioned appeared.
So, it is impossible to undermine an unloved country with the help of its own volcano?
- Volcanism and earthquakes are natural phenomena, the energy of which is many times greater than what a person already has. How to curb and direct them, no one knows. People are just learning to predict their individual manifestations. Throw in with the impact - you can blow up an entire continent, if not the entire planet.
Artificial methods of influencing the environment, except perhaps for nuclear explosions, have much less energy than natural ones. For example, the Americans in 1997 launched the HAARP project in Alaska. We installed radar antennas that create a magnetic field in the ionosphere. The goal was to study the nature of the ionosphere and the development of air defense and missile defense systems. The press argued that the work of the project's systems is capable of modifying the weather, turning off satellites, controlling the mind of people, that it is used as a weapon against terrorists, is guilty of earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes, floods, and diseases. Experts believe that most of the "theories" put forward go beyond the natural sciences. However, the achievements of scientists can be used for military purposes, even if there is no intention to interfere with natural processes. The ability to accurately predict the forthcoming adverse geophysical environment is a great advantage. As for climatic weapons, so far nothing more terrible than the atomic and hydrogen bombs has been invented.
Can you try to use atomic bombs to change the climate?
- Professor Julian Huxley, biologist and secretary general of UNESCO, in the second half of the forties, proposed detonating atomic bombs at an appropriate height above the polar regions in order to raise the temperature of the Arctic Ocean and warm the entire northern temperate zone. And in the early 60s, Academician Sakharov had the idea to create a torpedo with a hydrogen bomb and, having detonated it, organize a tsunami off the eastern coast of the United States.
In general, geoengineering projects are very diverse. My generation of scientists remember the project to build a dam across the Bering Strait, also aimed at eliminating the ice in the Arctic. Now this happens naturally, and people, it turns out, are not at all happy about it.
And even earlier, German engineer Zergel created an ambitious climate change project by damming the Strait of Gibraltar. Projects for turning the great northern rivers have existed in Canada and Russia, and similar projects have recently been launched in China. These projects aimed at watering drylands and climate mitigation.
Much earlier, in 1872, Captain Silas Missouri, a colleague of the famous oceanographer Mori, declared that America could at any moment destroy the forces and livelihoods of Europe, simply by blocking the movement north of the Gulf Stream. Moreover, almost half a century later, this project was brought to accurate calculations by a well-known mechanical engineer in the United States, Riker, and even turned out to be quite economically feasible.
- And how did Europe react to this proposal?
- The Silas Missouri project so frightened the British public that ten years later, scientists had to calm them down, explaining in the press that a canal like Panama would not affect the climate of Britain. The Gulf Stream cannot stop while the trade wind exists. In an area where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current, the latter dives under the Gulf Stream and encourages some of its waters, which we call the North Atlantic Current, to turn towards northern Europe. At the same time, there are air currents that act on the North Atlantic Current. Depending on which atmospheric process prevails, warmer or colder weather sets in Europe. It is not the Gulf Stream that stops, but the volume of water carried by the North Atlantic Current changes.
From time to time it is said that the Gulf Stream can change the current without any human intervention. And then what to do?
- There is an apocalyptic hypothesis by Alexei Karnaukhov, according to which instead of warming in five years the average temperature in our area will drop by 10-15 degrees. So far, it has not been confirmed either by calculations or theoretically. However, if this happens, humanity, of course, will have to resort to directed changes in conditions on Earth. Otherwise, we will not survive. Although it would be better if it happened later, only when the peoples teach their governments to live without wars. And whether this is possible, I do not know.
Nina Astafieva