If humans can't reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, can we design our way out of climate-change catastrophe" Last week's UN report shone a light on geoengineering, a discipline that proposes large-scale interventions to counteract global warming. So what ideas are geoengineers proposing"
Also known as climate engineering, geoengineering is an umbrella term for human interventions that change the earth's climate system. It can be seen as a redesign of the planet and could offer a more viable solution to climate change than expecting humans to modify their existing behaviour to reduce emissions.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlighted geoengineering as a necessary Plan B if temperature rises can't be capped at a manageable level. Geoengineering will be subject of a special Good Design for a Bad World talk at Dutch Design Week on Saturday 20 October. IPCC report gives geoengineering research tentative approval
There are currently two main approaches under the geoengineering umbrella: carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM).
CDR tackles the root cause of global warming by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere ? think carbon capture and storage. SRM, meanwhile, leaves greenhouse gases untouched, but offsets their impact by reflecting sunlight away from the earth.
The science, which is still largely based on theoretical models, has been criticised for being untested, risky and offering a...