A new report has found that although technologies have the potential to mitigate climate change in decades to come, they will not have an impact in the short-term.
The study, involving Edinburgh University scientists, finds engineering initiatives against climate change are not enough to limit global warming in the near future, calling on governments to lower their carbon dioxide emissions in the run up to the Climate Summit in Paris later this year.
Currently, 99 countries produce nearly all the World’s carbon emissions and only six out of ten of those countries are taking serious legal steps to slow down climate change.
Stuart Haszeldine, Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage argues we need to speed up our response, identifying five reasons why we are failing to combat climate change:
Limited research
So far we know that in the short-term (five years) “we need to migrate away from fossil fuels and think seriously about renewable resources.
“Carrying out projects like engineering clouds- where we change clouds to reflect light out from the earth require a lot of research. We will be waiting at least five decades for the processes to be ready.
“Managing how we decide where in the World the clouds will be is also key. But we just don’t know enough about the long term damage of some of the measures we are wanting to take.”
Not working together
Fourteen research teams around Europe, including Professor Haszeldine, have concluded in a report by the European Transdiciplinary Assessment of Climate Engineering that the work needs to be done gradually and with full information about each technique.
Some things can be done by governments, like spraying sulphate into the atmosphere or biomass combustion whereby we can neutralise carbon dioxide.
But if Britain does this alone, it just won’t work.
And so it’s clear that even if Britain did everything it could, the impact on the wider world would be limited.
Politically maneuvering to resolve the issue
A bigger problem is that more and more countries are proving that they are developing faster and doing their bit to stop climate change, in doing so research has been rushed and uncompleted before initiatives are taken on by governments.
In January at least 15 per cent of Brits saw climate change as an immediate risk to their lives.
“But without medium term and long-term research, and with none of the short term initiatives being taken up on a large enough scale, the impact on the climate is limited.”
And without more information advisers will always be reluctant to initiate governments along this process.
Letting money do the talking
No country wants to be paying for it alone, but fixing climate change is expensive.
One quick way of fixing the planet is neutralising carbon dioxide by recapturing it from the air, and capturing it from fuel stations, but these measures are expensive and would absorb so much public money for the infrastructure that the possibility to do it is limited.
“Getting [the planet] liposuction rather than not eating as much”
“Ad hoc support for the planet addresses the symptoms but doesn’t find the cure.”
Another immediate measure is spraying sulphate into the air and cooling it down, it could be done easily but if Britain was the only country that took part, the impact would be very limited because of its after action nature: “It fails to target the problem and instead offers a quick fix, it’s like getting liposuction, rather than just not eating so much” .
