Climate Scientists Expect SRM Deployment Attempt This Century

This survey reveals that climate change is an issue that is incredibly consequential and will likely remain so for the next century. While we may feel that needed progress on emissions reductions remains an uphill battle, we also know that we mustn’t lose hope. Cutting emissions is the only way to truly address the root of the climate change problem. Looking ahead, it’s quite possible to see dramatic progress in innovation in the energy system as we have seen in solar energy and battery storage in the past 15 years.

This study also shows that we cannot ignore SRM as a possible technology to temporarily reduce global temperatures. We must therefore accelerate research into the technology to be prepared for a future when deployment might be considered. We still know very little about how SRM might affect agriculture on the ground, or ecosystems, or water supply, for example. Research into SRM must be transparent, well-governed, and relevant to questions that the public and decision makers might have. Research can help to inform future decisions. Research should not be seen as a step to deployment, but rather as a way for society to gain wider insight into the risks and benefits. Ignorance is not an option.

These results are very interesting, as they indicate that solar geoengineering is becoming more and more an unavoidable topic for climate science. Many are and will always be uncomfortable talking about this: its relevance is yet another dire warning of the dangers we face due to climate change, both considering the very slim chances we have to stay below 2°C as the Paris Agreement intended, and considering the emerging impacts we are observing already at current levels of warming. If reticence is understandable, burying our collective head in the sand is not.

I hope this will lead more climate scientists to engage seriously with the topic, expanding our collective understanding of the potential risks of solar geoengineering – but also of its potential to help ameliorate some climate change impacts. Ultimately, the service we, as a scientific community, owe society is to provide an unbiased assessment of what the best available research tells us: we still have much to do in expanding this kind of research, and who is doing it, both geographically and in terms of disciplines, moving past taboos or concerns about social ostracism.

The solution to climate change is both incredibly simple and fiendishly complicated: cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. While this goal is easy to state and scientifically sound, getting there will require technological, economic and societal change on a global scale. It is no wonder then that solar geoengineering is increasingly talked about as an alternative option that would allow us to cool the climate. But unlike cutting emissions, attempting to dim the sun would be a huge gamble – and not one taken lightly.

Climate change has been a massive, unplanned global experiment, conducted largely by richer nations but affecting everyone. Solar geoengineering would be an extreme version of this, with the potential for a single nation or even a sole billionaire to alter the atmosphere with unknown consequences. At the same time, it is not an option we can completely dismiss out of hand, when all ideas to tackle climate change need to remain on the table.

It is this tension that inspired New Scientist to conduct our survey of climate researchers and measure the mood of people at the front line of research. The fact that respondents were overwhelmingly in favour of an international treaty to regulate solar geoengineering should make policymakers sit up and pay attention. If we are going to take such drastic action, it needs to be done by the whole world, and not at the whim of the few.