Science of GeoEngineering: An Essential Guide for Busy People in Everyday Language - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

This book is an essential guide to geoengineering: the controversial science of deliberately altering Earth’s climate. Written in everyday language, we explore the technologies, risks, ethics, and power struggles behind the idea of “hacking the planet” in response to climate change.

What happens when cutting emissions is no longer the only tool on the table? We begin with the growing urgency of planetary boundaries, rising carbon dioxide levels, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, freshwater stress, and the cascading crises reshaping life on Earth. We introduce the three great families of geoengineering: Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), Solar Radiation Management (SRM), and weather modification.

We explore Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), asking whether humanity can clean up the carbon already in the atmosphere. The book looks at direct air capture, carbon capture and storage, bioenergy with carbon capture, biochar, ocean fertilization, artificial upwelling, and vast underwater forests. Each idea raises the same question: can we remove carbon at the scale required without creating new ecological and political problems?

We then turn to Solar Radiation Management (SRM), the most dramatic and unsettling branch of geoengineering. Could we cool Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space? We discuss Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), marine cloud brightening, reflective ocean surfaces, Arctic ice-albedo modification, and space mirrors, while asking what happens if a planetary cooling system works too well or stops suddenly.

The book also explores weather modification, from cloud seeding and artificial snowpacks to hurricane suppression, ocean cooling, and the stranger dream of controlling storms themselves. Finally, we confront the deepest question: who gets to decide the planet's climate?

We explore the ethics of geoengineering, the danger of termination shock, the possibility of weather warfare, and the unsettling future of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-controlled climate systems.

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