Sweet Opportunity to Sign up and Win Krispy Kreme Vouchers at…Upsides of Social Media MarketingGiven that the serious impacts of climate change are rapidly escalating, some scientists, backed up increasingly by governments, are looking into extreme measures such as geoengineering to slow the rate of change.The report ranked tried and true measures, like restoring peatlands, the highest, but some geoengineering ideas, such as solar geoengineering, also ranked high.
The definition of geoengineering remains fluid, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2022 stopped using the term when talking about carbon-removal methods or technologies such as direct air capture of carbon or reforestation. This leaves methods to decrease the sun’s radiative heat as the major form of geoengineering.
“Many of these projects had just been suggested once, or were only promoted by a small group of advocates, with very little critical reflection,” van Wijngaarden says. The goal was essentially to separate the wheat from the chaff.Not surprisingly, some of the highest-scoring ideas were ones that didn’t involve geoengineering, had a long history of development, and came with major known benefits. Among these were rewilding, reforestation, and managing northern wildfires.
“Climate change in the Arctic is multifaceted, and there is no silver-bullet solution,” van Wijngaarden cautions. “So, even though we tried to give some clarity as to what the potential merits and downsides of proposals might be, it is very much up to our readers to look at the goals and issues they find important.”
Van Wijngaarden says one of the “big benefits” of the report is to weed out the worst ideas, such as removing sea ice to somehow “increase the amount of outgoing radiation to space” — not something Arctic researchers are keen on, given they’re trying to save reflective sea ice.