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CURRENT GEOENGINEERING ATTEMPTS BRIEFING: SCOPEX 2021

Download PDF version: Sweden_SCoPEx_Briefing

Location:

Esrange Space Centre,

Kiruna, Sweden

Researchers in charge:

Frank Keutsch (Principal Investigator), David Keith (Mission Scientist), based at Harvard University.

Objectives

The project stated objectives are:

To carry field experiments to advance understanding of solar geoengineering

To develop norms, mechanisms and practices that can serve as templates for future solar geoengineering field experiments

Key Dates

The first field test flight is scheduled for June 2021 and intends to test the hardware. Further flights will be announced in the fall of 2021, these flights may release particles into the stratosphere. The project has indicated that it will use calcium carbonate for the first particle release, previously they had mentioned sulphur particles and other substances.

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI)

As the climate crisis accelerates, a few institutions have started research and development on geoengineering technologies that do not reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, but aim to mask their warming effects instead.

One of the most controversial of these potential approaches is Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). SAI proposes to reflect sunlight back into space in order to lower the earth’s temperature by spraying large quantities of tiny reflective particles high into the Earth’s stratosphere.

The SCoPEx project, hosted at Harvard University through the Harvard´s Solar Geoengineering Research Program aims to make experiments towards the development of SAI. The main researchers are Frank Keutsch and David Keith. The stated aim of SCoPEx field tests is to disperse particles from a high-altitude balloon, monitor the injected particles for chemical reactions with the atmosphere and measure how much sunlight they block from reaching the earth. The data will be used for modelling, aiming to predict larger-scale effects of SAI and to prepare for larger-scale experiments.

Sun-dimming technology to be tested in Sweden

In December 2020, after several unsuccessful plans to conduct SCoPEx field tests in Tucson, Arizona and in New Mexico, SCoPEx announced plans to move the first part of their experiment to Sweden. The test is now planned to be hosted at the Swedish Space Corporation in Kiruna, northern Sweden. The first flight, with the aim of testing equipment, is scheduled for June 2021, and is a prerequisite for the ensuing flights where SCoPEx plans to disperse particles into the atmosphere.

Risks and impacts associated with SAI

Members of the SCoPEx team promote SAI as a quick and cheap way of engineering the climate. This can create a false sense that a technological quick-fix could tackle the climate crisis, which risks deflating the necessary pressure to rapidly phase out fossil fuel production and would provide the fossil fuel industry with an argument to delay action and thus worsen climate change.

Computer models and simulations suggest that SAI is likely to produce significant negative impacts and changes in weather and monsoon patterns, which would be disproportionately borne by the Global South and have particularly severe impacts on the world’s most vulnerable populations.

The major risks identified by those models include endangering the source of food and water for two billion people and causing severe droughts in Africa and Asia.1 Impacts would vary significantly by region and with in combination with the variable effects of climate change itself, even potentially devastating impacts might be difficult to detect until after significant damages have already occurred. Because of the unequal impacts among regions, SAI also has the potential to be weaponized.

Ocean acidification would continue to worsen since SAI masks the warming effects of CO2 but does not reduce the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere that cause ocean acidification. Depending on the reflective particles eventually deployed, the ozone layer could be at risk of being further damaged by SAI, which would undermine efforts to restore the ozone layer.

CONTINUED AT LINK:

Posted by Conspiracy Cafe on February 11, 2022 at 12:18 PM

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