There are problems with a geoengineering techno-fix for the climate crisis | Mike Hume
#stratospheric aerosol injection #SAI #geoengineering #global temperature #weather impacts #climate policy #greenhouse gas emissions #carbon removal #resilience #atmospheric circulation #volcanic eruptions #monsoon #El Niño #Mike Hulme
📌 Key Takeaways
- SAI is presented as a tech‑fix that aims to lower global temperature by injecting aerosol particles into the stratosphere.
- Hulme argues that using global temperature as the sole metric ignores the complex, multiscale harms associated with climate change, such as shifts in regional weather patterns and ocean acidification.
- Injecting particles changes atmospheric circulation, exemplified by volcanic analogues, potentially altering hurricane tracks, monsoon strength, and El Niño behavior.
- The author contends that SAI risks exacerbating regional weather hazards and adds new risks with limited benefit to overall climate resilience.
- He calls for a policy focus on emission reductions, carbon removal, and adaptive resilience rather than geoengineering interventions.
- The piece frames SAI as a risky distraction from proven, cost‑effective climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.
📖 Full Retelling
Mike Hulme, a climate scientist, critiques the use of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) as a planet‑wide thermostat to curb global temperature. In his analysis, Hulme argues that SAI, first proposed in the early 2020s, does little to mitigate the major regional and local climate harms that people and ecosystems face, and may in fact exacerbate them by altering atmospheric circulation. He emphasizes that the focus of climate policy should remain on reducing greenhouse‑gas emissions, removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, and building resilience to weather extremes, rather than on adding new particles to the stratosphere.
🏷️ Themes
Geoengineering, Climate Policy and Governance, Atmospheric Sciences, Risk Management, Climate Adaptation, Emission Reduction
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Original Source
Injecting particulates into the atmosphere isn’t a magical fix for the climate crisis Mike Hulme Geoengineering does little to defuse most of the risks that really matter for people – and it runs the risk of making some harms worse P lanetary-scale solar geoengineering interventions involve the deliberate injection of either natural or artificial particulates into the stratosphere – stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI – with a view to offset some of the global heating caused by greenhouse gases. If implemented, the technology would create a metaphorical thermostat for the planet. Such a thermostat is advocated on the grounds that controlling global temperature reduces the harms associated with the climate crisis . I wish to challenge this assertion. Global temperature was first adopted at the beginning of this century as a way of indexing the extent of human impact on the climate system. Since then, managing global temperature has become the primary object of climate policy, thus the Paris agreement’s stated aim being to contain global warming between 1.5C and 2C. The policy goal of net zero emissions is derived from this target temperature range. SAI seeks to shave off a few hundredths, or possibly two or three tenths, of a degree Celsius from this temperature index. It does so not by removing the cause of the undesired heating – the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – but by deliberately adding new elements, active particles, into the atmosphere. In global-average terms, this might slow the buildup of heat in the climate system; it may indeed discernibly lower the global temperature. In my view, there are many problems with this techno-fix for the climate crisis. But I wish to draw attention here to just two: it does little to defuse most of the risks that really matter for people and ecosystems and, worse than this, it runs the risk of making some of these harms worse, perhaps even many of them. Both relate to the difference between global te...
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