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    Geoengineering Earth's Climate: Resetting the Thermostat
    Geoengineering Earth's Climate: Resetting the Thermostat
    Geoengineering Earth's Climate: Resetting the Thermostat
    Ebook127 pages2 hours

    Geoengineering Earth's Climate: Resetting the Thermostat

    By Jennifer Swanson

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    About this ebook

    Most scientists agree that Earth is warming rapidly. Glaciers are melting and rising seawaters are submerging islands and coastal cities. In the coming decades, millions will likely have to escape extreme weather caused by climate change.

    Some scientists say we need to act faster and with radical new technologies—now—to save our planet. They propose geoengineering, or "engineering Earth," to reset our global thermostat. Ideas include thickening clouds with chemicals to reduce the amount of sunlight and pulling carbon dioxide from the air with machines. However, critics say that geoengineering could backfire and create even worse weather. Is geoengineering too risky? Or is it our best hope of survival?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLerner Publishing
    Release dateAug 1, 2017
    ISBN9781512467871
    Geoengineering Earth's Climate: Resetting the Thermostat
    Author

    Jennifer Swanson

    Jennifer Swanson is the author of 45+ nonfiction books for kids. Her passion for science and technology resonates in all her books and her work has won multiple awards including a Green Earth Book Honor Award, three Florida Book Awards, California Reading Association awards, a Parent's Choice Gold award, and a 2021 Kirkus Best Books Award. Jennifer is an accomplished speaker at events and schools around the country, the Highlights Foundation, the National NSTA conferences, the World Science Festival in NYC, and the Library of Congress' National Book Festival. She lives in Jacksonville with her husband and two dogs.

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      Book preview

      Geoengineering Earth's Climate - Jennifer Swanson

      Index

      Author’s Note

      Geoengineering is a fascinating field of study. Some say it is the most important topic of our time. With the effects of climate change creeping into every aspect of our planet, it is easy to see why.

      While many geoengineering ideas are controversial, the fact that we are discussing them and researching them shows a collective spirit and one that is interested in resetting Earth’s thermostat. I encourage everyone who reads this book to continue learning about this controversial topic. Research. Theorize. Engage in debate. Devise your own ideas if you think you have one that might work. It is the job of the entire planet to solve this issue.

      I would also like to thank those leaders in the field who took time out of their busy schedules to speak with me about their projects. The list includes

      Dr. Peter Eisenberger, Global Thermostat

      Dr. Clare Heyward, University of Warwick

      Dr. Richard Houghton, Woods Hole Research Center

      Dr. David Keith, Harvard University

      Dr. Piers Forster, University of Leeds

      Dr. John Sterman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

      They were all happy to share their beliefs and passion for their subjects with me and, by extension, with the readers of this book. I am very grateful to them.

      —Jennifer Swanson

      One

      An Abrupt Change in Climate

      Rising seas. Flooded islands. Catastrophic droughts, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Scientists say that these trends, which have been increasing in the twenty-first century, are caused by climate change, created by the warming of Earth. Most scientists also say that humans have caused climate change by burning fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas), which release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. As levels of these gases increase, the planet grows warmer. The higher temperatures have led to extreme weather events. Most experts agree that if humans don’t take action to prevent Earth from warming further, the climate will undergo even more drastic changes. And these will ultimately affect every living thing on Earth. What can humans do to counteract climate change?

      Some engineers propose using geoengineering to tackle the problem. The prefix geo means relating to Earth, so geoengineering means engineering Earth. A more formal definition of geoengineering is the active transformation of Earth’s climate through human intervention—or using technology to reverse the effects of climate change. Sounds good, right? Maybe so. But geoengineering is one of the most complex and controversial topics in the world. Messing with Earth’s climate is a big deal and could have lasting consequences, both positive and negative.

      Cra-ck!

      Tiny cracks have appeared in a glacier (a large body of moving ice) along Evigheds Fjord in western Greenland. In the past, ice and snow completely covered the towering mountains that surround the fjord. But in the twenty-first century, dense rock is visible underneath the ice. The extremely cold weather that allows Greenland’s coastal mountains to remain covered in ice and snow year-round has changed. Warmer temperatures in Earth’s atmosphere are melting the top of the glacier, sending rivulets of ice water into the ocean. Warming waters of the North Atlantic Ocean are melting the glacier from the bottom as well.

      Chunks of ice break off a glacier on the southeastern coast of Greenland and fall into the Denmark Strait. Warmer air and water temperatures are melting ice in Earth’s polar regions, causing sea levels to rise.

      The melting glacier on the Evigheds Fjord is part of a much larger formation called an ice sheet. Earth has two major ice sheets—one on Greenland and one on Antarctica. Measuring more than 660,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers), Greenland’s ice sheet is approximately the size of Texas. On average, the ice sheet is 1 mile (1.6 km) deep. Its greatest depth is 3 miles (4.8 km). If it were to melt entirely, the total amount of water it contains would raise the oceans by about 23 feet (7 meters). The rising waters would flood the coasts of every country on the planet and submerge many inhabited islands.

      While the probability of the entire Greenland ice sheet melting is slim, climatologists (scientists who study Earth’s climate) note that Greenland is shedding more ice during summer than it regains from snowfall in winter. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reports that Greenland’s ice sheet is losing about 31 billion tons (28 billion metric tons) of ice annually. Some of the melting ice evaporates (turns into water vapor) or stays on the land, but most of it goes directly into the ocean. And studies show that the melting on Greenland is increasing every year.

      NASA uses satellites to measure the depth of Earth’s oceans. The agency has noticed a definite rise in ocean levels over the last century, with an average yearly rise of about 0.13 inches (3.3 millimeters). While that may seem small, it adds up to a 4- to 8-inch (10- to 20-centimeter) rise over the past one hundred years. If that water were lying in the street, it could flow over curbs and into houses. If you were standing next to the ocean, the rising water would cover your legs to mid-calf. Imagine that much water flooding the entire world. And if the ice sheets continue to melt, the water levels will only get higher.

      NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally says that the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet is like a canary in a coal mine. Before coal mines used modern air-quality detectors, miners sometimes took live canaries with them into mineshafts. If the birds stopped singing, miners knew that deadly carbon monoxide, which is frequently found inside coal mines, had risen to dangerous levels and killed the birds. Miners then knew it was time to hightail it out of the shaft.

      NORTH AMERICAN COASTLINES BEFORE AND AFTER PROJECTED MELTING OF EARTH’S ICE

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      Climatologists think of Greenland as a canary, or an early warning system, for the rest of the planet. Since the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets account for almost 99 percent of all freshwater ice on the planet, the melting of either sheet would spell trouble. As Greenland warms and sheds its ice, so do other parts of the Arctic, including Alaska. Many climatologists think that the melted ice streaming into the Arctic Ocean and other northern waters is a signal that the canary has stopped singing. They say that climate change has reached a dire tipping point. Why is this occurring? The answer is related to Earth’s atmosphere.

      Iceland Rising!

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