Will geoengineering through CO2 sequestering and aerosols spraying in the atmosphere be capable to reverse climate change?
What are the potential risks of this technology on regional climates?
According to an article in Science doing this could trigger chemical reactions which would lead to destruction of the ozone layer.
While anthropogenic CO2 currently seems to be the parameter driving current changes, there are other parameters (natural and anthropogenic) that have the potential of overwhelm the current CO2 forcing. If we start tinkering around, on the assumption that all those other parameters are going to stay constant, then we could end up amplifying some new, undesirable development and end up in a worse situation. Just one hypothetical scenario would be a dramatic change in volcanic emissions of cooling aerosols.
In my opinion it would be far better to stop (or minimize) our messing around with natural systems rather than intentionally messing around with them more. We don't understand the operation of the natural systems even half as well as some would have us believe. Metaphorically speaking, we are still just peaking through a keyhole into a vast auditorium.
Again, speaking hypothetically, we could try and dial-in a 2 degree downward correction and accidentally get a 4 degree downward correction followed by a 3 degree downward correction due to some natural event(s).
The magnitude of the current anthropogenic CO2 change is still relatively small in comparison to past, natural excursions (let me emphasize I am referring to magnitudes, not rates, in this statement. Past rates have large uncertainties due to the resolution of our climate surrogates.).
The sun and not carbon dioxide, drives climate and if people do not understand that and use geoengineering a lot of harm can happen.
The combination of external and internal forcings are responsible for the big picture of the climate. Climate may be modified on a very small scale but controlling bigger systems is out of the picture.
Injecting aerosol sulfates into Earth’s stratosphere is the fastest known solar-geoengineering technique for cooling the planet, and it’s comparatively inexpensive. So it is crucial to improve our murky understanding of its consequences, says climate scientist Kate Ricke. The involvement of scientists worldwide is crucial before some entity is tempted to use the technique, she argues. “I'm having a hard time seeing how we’re not going to do it at this point, actually,” says Ricke. “But in order to have collective decision-making at the global scale, you need science that's viewed as legitimate by everyone.”
https://www.wired.com/story/think-climate-change-is-messy-wait-until-geoengineering/
Americans Are Missing a Key Stratum of Modern Knowledge
To understand how climate change is altering our planet, it helps to know a little Earth science...
Some of the biggest problems facing society are climate change, energy, land use, food, and so forth. And all are deeply, deeply grounded in the Earth sciences...
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/05/earth-science-education-climate-change/629761/
Please kindly consider the following paper by Aaron and Klemp:
”A Fate Worse Than Warming? Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Global Catastrophic Risk”
JOURNAL=Frontiers in Climate, VOLUME=3, YEAR=2021
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.720312/full
Many climate scientists think that solar-geoengineering research comes with unacceptable risks, but we must engage with it anyway, argues Katharine Ricke. “Shunning this research is riskier than studying it,” she writes. Private companies are already conducting rogue experiments, despite the fact that we have little evidence on efficacy or the risks to weather, agriculture, human health or other living things...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00413-6
Confronting the Riddle of Geoengineering
"According to climate expert Rob Bellamy, large-scale technological interventions like solar geoengineering that seek to change the Earth’s environment or atmosphere to counter the effects of global warming carry enormous potential, but the risks and challenges are equally daunting..."
https://undark.org/2024/02/16/interview-rob-bellamy/
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