Geoengineering Earth's Climate: Resetting the Thermostat
there there 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 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 An Abrupt ChAnge in ClimA te 7
NORTH AMERICAN COASTLINES BEFORE AND AFTER PROJECTED MELTING OF EARTH’S ICE NORTH AMERICA P A C I F I C O C E A N Existing coastlines Landmass after melting A T L A N T I C O C E A N SOUTH AMERICA Sea levels have already begun to rise due to global warming if all the polar ice on earth were to melt large areas of coastline would end up underwater this map shows what north America would look like in that case Florida would be submerged along with vast stretches of coast along the Atlantic ocean and the gulf of mexico 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 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 An Abrupt ChAnge in ClimAte 9
