“The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World” by Oliver Morton
Summary
“The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World” by Oliver Morton explores the concept of geoengineering—deliberately manipulating the Earth’s climate to combat global warming. Morton examines various technologies and strategies, such as carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management, which could be used to alter the climate. He delves into the scientific, ethical, and political challenges of these methods, addressing both their potential benefits and risks. Morton emphasizes that while geoengineering is not a perfect solution, it could be a necessary tool to mitigate climate change, complementing other efforts like reducing emissions.
Introduction: Two Questions
Do you believe that climate change is serious enough to take action against it? Is it hard to rearrange the industrial economy to reach zero carbon dioxide emissions?
Those two questions lay the base of a conversation on climate change. However, we’re not here to discuss the answers to those. They are there to help you situate yourself in the context of this book. So take a moment to answer those two questions.
If you answered Yes to both questions, it might come as a surprise to you that the ‘mild’ version of climate change could actually be helpful. Things like increased rainfall could aid the growth of crops. Or higher temperature could reduce the damage done by cold in some areas. Using those arguments, some people argue that climate change is actually beneficial and no action should be taken against it.
But there is no scenario where climate change is good for everyone. The inequality here is especially tragic given the fact that those who will end up worse off are the most likely to start off poorer. They’re contribution to the issue is likely to be small, while they’re the ones to be impacted the most.
The human population is expected to grow to around 10 billion by 2100. To provide good living conditions for everyone, we will need a lot more energy. A human body burns energy from food at around 100 watts. While Toyota Corolla generates around 50,000 watts of power. And a big wind turbine generates electricity at around 5,000,000 watts. And a big economy like Europe’s uses around a trillion watts (a terawatt - 1TW).
Some governments in ‘60s and ‘70s encouraged the use of nuclear power. However, due to the economic situation and the fear of nuclear accidents causing nuclear anxiety were a big obstacle in further use of nuclear energy. However, an exception is France, which uses nuclear reactors to generate 80% of its electricity. While other programs get as little as 20%.
In this book, the Earth is presented as a one big system. Humans have such a big impact on the current state of our planet that it is proposed to call it the Anthropocene. The era of humankind when we dictate the rate of the flow of energy through the living systems of our planet. Emitting greenhouse gases, building dams, controlling nutrients in the soil through agriculture and erasing other species from the Earth’s surface.
This book serves to introduce us to the tools, which can be used to re-imagine and re-make the planet into an environment that promotes justice for all living creatures. Not only do we need the tools to do that, but also we need compassion to use them appropriately. We need science, politics and technology - all combining their forces. It’s a planetary project. It’s “The Planet Remade”.
Tags: climate risk fossil fuels energy wind turbine anthropocene science politics technology
Chapter 1: The Top of the World
- Stratosphere is the most likely place for geoengineering to take place.
- Stratosphere has a volume of around 15 billion cubic kilometres.
- Other planets also have stratospheres (e.g. Mars or Jupiter).
- In 1985, a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was discovered.
There is no place on the Earth’s surface that does not have a stratosphere above it. In other words, you cannot leave Earth and head off to your space adventure without passing through the stratosphere. It is finite and stretches over 20 km above our planet’s surface.
The stratosphere is full of ozone. Ozone becomes hot when it absorbs ultraviolet radiation. The top of the stratosphere warms up more compared to its bottom due to thinner air and stronger radiation. Many different molecules react with each other and as a result either create or destroy ozone particles, depending on various circumstances.
This is the ‘ozone layer’ that we all have heard about. However, it’s actually not a clear-cut layer, since ozone is distributed throughout most of the stratosphere. But if measured at room temperature and at sea level - it would be just 2.5 mm thick. It allows for some radiation that is an element of sunlight to pass through and help us make vitamin D.
The ozone layer has never been very thick. However now it is getting even thinner. One thing that has been extremely harmful to it are chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs have been used to cool fridges, contain hairsprays and many more. But once they raise to the stratosphere, they destroy ozone particles. With one CFC having the capacity to destroy 100,000 ozone particles.
Tags: stratosphere ozone layer vitamin D chlorofluorocarbons
Chapter 2: A Planet Called Weather
- Earth is not fragile - it’s been heritable for the last 4 billion years
- The clouds reflect 30% of the sunlight.
- Every second, 18 billion tonnes of water are recycled back to the sky as vapour.
Why is Earth called the “Earth”?
From the perspective of a person standing on the moon, the Earth does not look very ‘earthy’ at all. Of course, given how much surface is covered by the oceans, perhaps a better name for our planet would be “Ocean”? But this is still not what can be seen from afar. Given the actual looks of Earth from the moon, perhaps the most accurate name for our planet would be “Cloud”, or “Weather”.
Energy cannot be destroyed. But it can be turned from a form which can be used to a one that cannot. This is often referred to as ‘waste heat’. All engines redistribute energy and all of it at the end of the day is still there. In case of sunlight, the plant engines through movement of hydrogen ions can turn it into chemical energy. That’s what we call photosynthesis. And all of the rays that reach the Earth end up as heat at the end, regardless of their previous adventures. That heat is then emitted back to space as infrared radiation.
Ever hear of ‘albedo’? Albedo is the property of a planet that describes the amount of sunlight it reflects back into space. The Earth’s surface receives more energy as infrared radiation from the sky above, than it does from the sunlight itself. The lower atmosphere also gets less heat from the sun than it does from the ground. It is very much the disproportion between the heat coming in and out that is the main underlying issue causing climate change.
Tags: cloud sunlight engine photosynthesis infrared radiation
Chapter 3: Pinatubo
- Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to enter the orbit of Mars (1971).
- 1991 - Mount Pinatubo eruption.
- 1992 - biggest drop in stratospheric ozone levels ever recorded.
- Pinatubo bears - polar bears that grew bigger due to cooler springs that led to more and longer-lived ice in Hudson Bay.
Unfortunately, given how catastrophic earthquakes and volcano eruptions are on their own, they also have an influence on the climate.
The Pinatubo eruption released a pillar of lava that stretched over 30 km up, and 400 km across. That combined with a tropical storm called Yunya created valleys of mud that killed hundreds of people. The eruption also released a cloud of gases, including around 20 mln tonnes of sulphur dioxide.
Sulphur dioxide, oxidised to sulphate ions and combined with water vapour in the stratosphere (in general, there isn’t much vapour up there, because of how cold it is - but still there’s some) created droplets of sulphuric acid with a surface area of a large dessert. The droplets in turn cooled the planet down by reflecting the sunlight, redirecting it away from the Earth.
Before, volcano eruptions were believed to cause increases in the temperature and as a whole, have a negative impact on the environment. However, while the stratosphere is warming up, the lower atmosphere is actually cooling down. Which is majorly due to the water vapour feedback that was included in the models and the opportunity of Pinatubo eruption to test various assumptions around the topic.
However, before you go away thinking that causing volcano eruptions might be our way forward to stop the climate change, there are some other effects you need to know about.
The sulphate aerosols in the stratosphere caused thinning of the ozone layer by reacting with chlorine and faster than ever seen before. They also warmed the stratosphere itself by giving away the infrared radiation.
And yes, the hallmarks of climate change - our beloved coral reefs and polar bears - were also influenced by the eruption, albeit differently.
While the polar bears grew stronger, the coral reefs were dying off. The post-Pinatubo cooling effects included changes in water circulation in the Red Sea, which in turn made algae and plankton bloom, while killing off coral reefs.
Tags: eruption volcano climate stratosphere ozone layer coral reef polar bear
Chapter 4: Dimming the Noontime Sun
- Researcher David Keith, a name you want to know in the climate geoengineering field.
- It takes about 70 kilowatt-hours of energy to lift a tonne of anything into the stratosphere.
- ‘Chemtrails’ is a conspiracy theory arguing that the vapour trails left by aircrafts on the sky are in fact harmful substances sprayed on purpose.
Speaking of delivering things into the stratosphere, the technology we would need is already in place. The Aurora analysis reported that a fleet of 14 Boeing 747-400 jumbo jets would be sufficient to carry a million tonnes of something with the same density as water to certain parts of the stratosphere.
Actually, aeroplanes are only one of our options. Some researchers prefer balloons. Those large balloons would be connected by 30-kilometre long pipes to the gas pumping stations on the ground. As poetic as it sounds, this could be the cheapest option on the table. But yes, those would be very, VERY big balloons.
Now, back to the cool part. Volcanoes!
Again, under no circumstances are we to advise you to go ahead and fire up a volcano. That being said, I feel like some of you might still need more encouragement NOT to try, so here are some pointers.
Why NOT to fire up a volcano list:
- Not a good idea.
- Volcanoes waste energy.
- The sulphur particles they manage to put in the stratosphere do not form optimised cooling aerosol particles.
- Again, NOT a good idea!
The fact that there is more than one point on the list is already concerning, but we’ll move on.
Tags: stratosphere chemtrails volcano jet balloon
Chapter 5: Coming to Think This Way
- Sydney Chapman was the first to explain the science behind the ozone layer in the 1930s.
- Term ‘geoengineering’ appeared for the first time in a paper published in Climatic Change in 1977 (by Cesare Marchetti).
- ‘Terraforming’ goes beyond saving a planet, it aims to bring a dead planet back to life.
The difficult question that needs to be asked at some point:
‘Would geoengineering mean the loss of all nature and hence an inevitable and dangerous power shift?’
Well, as you might imagine, the answer is not an easy one to give. Geoengineering indeed entails intentional climate change, which will fundamentally alter our environment. While the lack of action could potentially have terrible consequences. Understandably, it might seem like both sides of the coin are rather unlucky.
Now, according to this book’s author, the worry is appreciated and not baseless. However, it might not be as dramatic and novel of a change as one might think. Firstly, the author argues that nature cannot be so easily ended once and for all (that’s the good news right there). And secondly, geoengineering is not ‘new’, at least the idea of it. It’s been around for centuries.
Interestingly enough, Earth is not the only planet we’ve been thinking about. Percival Lowell, an American astronomer, had a curious theory about the linear channels observed on the surface of Mars in the late 19th century, today considered to be an optical illusion. According to Lowell, those were a part of a planet-wide complex irrigation channel system created by ancient alien civilization. Since he assumed Mars to be an older than Earth planet that dried out as it aged, the Martians must have been advanced enough to change their environment on a large scale.
H. G. Wells took it a step further, entertaining the thought of this alien culture applying even more advanced geoengineering techniques as interplanetary conquerors.
Was it very scientific? Not really, but it was fun for sure!
Tags: nature Mars martians sci-fi
Chapter 6: Moving to Goalposts
- The oceans on Earth are slightly alkaline.
- The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987, is a global treaty to protect the stratospheric ozone layer.
- Researching geoengineering is a call-to-action spread hoping that there will never be the need to actually use it.
What is the pH of an ocean?
Our oceans are on the alkaline side of the scale. So when we use the term ‘acidification’, what we mean is that they become less alkaline. The acidification in this case does not mean that seawater will become acidic. It means that when carbon dioxide dissolves in water, a weak acid is produced, which shifts the scale slightly more towards the acidic side.
This is not news, though. It has simply been majorly dismissed. Until a new player entered the game, Paul Crutzen, who I guess you can say was the scientific influencer of his time. He won a share in a Nobel Prize for his work on the stratospheric ozone layer, which gave base to the Montreal Protocol.
If you don’t mind, I would like to take the liberty of inserting a direct quote from the book describing Crutzen, simply because it might be the coolest sentence I’ve ever read. The quote refers to the researcher winning a Nobel Prize:
“He [Crutzen] would have been respected in atmospheric science for that alone, but he had an understated, rather Dutch, slightly Yoda-ish charisma that added yet more to his influence, both in Europe and in the United States”.
Come on now, how cool must that guy have been? I mean, if that’s what people were to write about me once I’m gone, I’d take it!
Crutzen argued in favour of the cooling sulphate aerosols, explaining that such action wouldn’t potentially harm the precious ozone layer. Unfortunately, the stratospheric veil could never replace reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the first place. Nonetheless, the words spoken by such a highly respected figure were just enough to make geoengineering ever so slightly less politically suspicious.
Tags: pH ozone layer ocean acidification stratosphere sulphate
Chapter 7: Nitrogen
- Nitrogen is needed by all life on Earth.
- Nitrogen is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere.
- Thallium was discovered by Sir William Crookes in the 1860s.
- Nitrogen fixation uses 1.5% of the world’s energy.
Now we enter the ‘substantial’ part of the book (pun intended).
All life on Earth requires nitrogen to build and replicate itself. This vital element is needed for making DNA and proteins, which are essential for all biological processes. However, nitrogen present in the atmosphere is quite tricky to obtain by organisms. Its form needs to be changed, or ‘fixed’, to be accessible to the majority of living creatures.
The job of fixing the nitrogen in the early days of life on Earth was mostly done by naturally occurring lightning bolts. Those would break apart the otherwise impenetrable nitrogen molecules, freeing them to bind with oxygens from carbon dioxide and therefore creating nitrogen oxides which could be accessed by life forms.
A proper storm is not the only way to go about getting nitrogen, though. As the classical quote by Ian Malcolm from the “Jurassic Park” movie goes, “Life finds a way”. And indeed, a number of different organisms have evolved to obtain the power of fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere by themselves. That lucky group includes some bacteria, for example.
In the late 1890s, the supply of wheat became a concern in Britain. Due to a growing population, there was a continuously increasing demand for the crops, but the land to grow it on wasn’t expanding as rapidly. A need for fertiliser emerged.
The game-changing discovery in the matter was provided by Fritz Haber, who came up with an efficient system for ammonia production. A continuous stream of nitrogen and hydrogen was passed at high pressure and temperature, which resulted in the assembly of ammonia molecules. This gave base to further scale-up and industrialisation of the nitrogen fixation.
The author of this book argues that given the scope of this innovation (more than a hundred million tonnes of nitrogen being fixed annually) makes it worthy of the term ‘geoengineering’. Partially because the danger was not obvious, however identifiable by experts - a similar characteristic to climate change.
Tags: nitrogen ammonia fertiliser industrialisation wheat
Chapter 8: Carbon Past, Carbon Present
- Radioactivity was discovered in 1897.
- 1920-1970, while oil production was growing by a factor of 10, its price dropped threefold.
- The plants first ‘stepped out’ on land around 500 million years ago.
We’ve been using the term ‘The Anthropocene” for a while now. It actually took off after our friend, the Jedi master Paul Crutzen, emphasised it in 2000. Ever since then, many have been claiming its meaning under their umbrella. But regardless of your background, the understanding of ‘anthropocene’ in general is about stressing the impact of human action on our natural environment and the planet as a whole.
However, there is a dark side to everything, especially science.
Some object to the idea, as it could be seen as a propaganda leading to more power for the already powerful. Or, it could try and justify the current state of human action (and destruction), while the goal should be to keep reducing it. While others argue that the term shouldn’t exist in the first place, as it brings more harm to the other essential scientific disciplines.
But before you pick a side, let’s look at the one thing that speaks for itself - the CO2 levels (referred to here as ‘carbon’).
The natural cycle of carbon used to be well-balanced before the Industrial Revolution. 100 billion tonnes of carbon were taken up by photosynthesising terrestrial plants each year. An additional 50 billion tonnes were dealt with by the oceanic microorganisms. Simple act of breathing was returning the carbon back to the atmosphere at the same speed.
Generally speaking, there are three majorly accessible pots of carbon in nature: the atmosphere, the biomaterial of the biosphere and the oceans (containing dissolved CO2). All three were more or less stable.
Most of the carbon in the biosphere was present in the soil and constituted 3-5x as much as the carbon in the atmosphere. The oceans had around 40 trillion tonnes of carbon (20x more than the biosphere) as bicarbonate ions, in general. Carbon travelled through those areas constantly, but the ratio remained more or less the same.
Now, humans add around 10 billion tonnes of carbon each year. This might not seem as much, compared to the other numbers. But our carbon goes straight to the atmosphere, one of the three pools and the smallest one.
Needless to say - the balance is gone.
Tags: radioactivity oil plant anthropocene industrial revolution carbon atmosphere biosphere ocean
Chapter 9: Carbon Present, Carbon Future
- Hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 excess is present in our atmosphere.
- Energy and food supplies are the two giants in carbon emissions.
- Photosynthesis and ocean absorption of CO2 are already removing half of our annual carbon emissions.
So how could we ever get rid of all this excess of CO2? Broadly speaking, there are three paths that we can take:
- Pulling the carbon out of the atmosphere.
- Increasing its absorption by plants.
- Increasing its absorption by oceans.
CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) technology is a way of getting rid of carbon dioxide particles from flue gas. It’s not a complicated endeavour in principle, yet it remains highly unfunded. The worrying for some part of it is that it could allow the fossil fuel producing companies to stay in business.
On the other hand, direct-air capture is a much more complicated task than CCS. The aim is to remove the carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, where understandably its concentration is significantly lower than in sources of industrial emissions.
Now, what about the oceans?
In the oceans, the inorganic carbon is present in three different forms (carbonic acid, bicarbonate ions and carbonate ions). There is a constant flow between those forms, which reaches an equilibrium. This means that the flow in and out is stable.
If we wanted to encourage the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide, we would need to disturb that equilibrium. And to achieve that, the waters need to become more alkaline.
But this is heavy work requiring a lot of energy. If we were to use three billion tonnes of calcium oxide to take up a billion tonnes of CO2, we would need as much energy to produce it in a year as is the demand of the entire United Kingdom.
Tags: carbon capture sequestration ocean photosynthesis alkaline UK calcium oxide
Chapter 10: Sulphur and Soggy Mirrors
- Volcanoes and plankton are the natural sources of sulphur in the atmosphere.
- The global temperature has been increasing consistently since the mid-1970s.
- Painting our houses white might provide some cooling in the cities over the summer.
“Soggy mirrors”? Yes, my dear reader, yes indeed!
Of course we mean clouds! They are made of many water droplets that reflect the sunlight on their surfaces. Therefore an eight-year-old, connecting the dots as he should, figures that the clouds are indeed soggy mirrors.
Dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) and silver iodide can be used to make clouds rain, as they make droplets of water freeze much quicker than they would on their own. As it became known that just grams of dry ice or silver iodide could bring tonnes of rain, cloud-seeding began.
Interestingly, the brightness of the cloud depends on varying concentrations of cloud-condensation nuclei (where the droplets of water form). Changing the brightness of a cloud could increase the amount of sunlight that this cloud reflects back into space.
The role of various aerosols in climate change is quite difficult to measure. Some reflect the sunshine like sulphates, while others absorb heat like soot. Some can destroy clouds, while others can amplify their shiny effect. Those interactions and the unpredictability of cloud behaviour make it hard to estimate the net role of aerosols.
Rough calculations, however, suggest that there is an overall cooling influence. Which could be anything from 0.1 to 1.9 watts per square metre. This means that either very little, or more than half of carbon dioxide induced warming is being masked by cooling caused by aerosols.
Tags: cloud sulphur plankton dry ice sulphate cooling silver iodide
Chapter 11: The Ends of the World
- A nuclear war could decrease the ozone layer by two thirds over the northern hemisphere.
- In 1945, the first programmable computer was given its first problem - a simulation of a hydrogen bomb.
- The chances of you dying in an asteroid impact are 1 in 30,000.
Oh man, this is a tough one… So many ways to die!
Are you afraid that an asteroid could end your entire existence? Well, I sure wasn’t. At least up until 10 minutes ago, before reading this chapter!
First, the nuclear war potentially releasing massive amounts of nitrogen oxides and therefore slimming the ozone layer. Then the tropical forest fires, and the fear of them spreading all over the cities and oil refineries.
Being the first ones to realise that we’re truly endangering our planet and putting our civilization at risk, since the 1950s.
Melting the Arctic’s ice to flood New York and many other apocalyptic visions. Sometimes even without any clear reason, like in Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”. Personally, I think it’s an amazing read, but at the same time it left me staring through the window for way too long. I guess apocalyptic fiction comes at a price.
The point here though, is not to scare you off. It just goes to show that fear of the world as we know it ending has always been there. For different reasons, some of which are more justified than others. Geoengineering also comes with various concerns, but not without hope.
Tags: asteroid nuclear war flood hydrogen bomb apocalypse
Chapter 12: The Deliberate Planet
The previous chapter showed how easily we give in to the negativity and accept the thoughts of distraction. But in this very last chapter of the book, we take a more positive spin, looking into the future with hope.
What if things actually worked out?
Imagine that they did and that by the end of the twenty-first century we only release 2 gigatonnes of CO2 annually (compared to the current 10 gigatonnes). Even though we didn’t manage to stop all emissions, there are some up-and-running carbon removal technologies to mitigate that.
The oceans are still full of marine species, even though some of them had to adapt to the acidification induced changes. The programs introducing clouds to more dry areas are in place, with significant progress in recovering parts of Sahara. Similarly, there are efforts to refreeze the Greenland ice caps using liquefied air.
Of course, some people would agree that this engineering is helpful and enriches the planet’s beauty that we managed to disturb. While others would criticise and fear the intervention.
Just something to think about.
Tags: future hope geoengineering