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Business Standard
10 hours ago
- Science
- Business Standard
Plan B for the planet depends on oversight, not technology alone
Not too long ago, the idea of cooling Earth by bouncing sunlight back into space would have seemed like a fringe fantasy — equal parts sci-fi and geopolitical taboo. These days, it's inching into the heart of serious climate conversations. This is no coincidence. Climate forecasts, once laden with caveats, are now sounding more like sirens. The World Meteorological Organization has warned that global temperatures could rise as much as 2°C above pre-industrial levels in the next five years, breaching a climate red line. At that mark, we're looking at shrinking crop yields, collapsing ecosystems, and more than a third of the global population potentially exposed to extreme heat. In this climate of urgency, Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), a subfield of solar geoengineering, is garnering attention. The concept is simple: Reflect a small portion of sunlight back into space to artificially cool the planet. The methods vary wildly — from injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to spreading reflective glass particles over Arctic ice. Elegant in theory but risky in practice. Tinker with the global thermostat to cool one region, and you might cause drought in another. The models are incomplete, risks planetary, and governance nearly absent. Still, money is flowing in. According to SRM360, a non-profit tracking developments in the field, funding between 2020 and 2024 reached $112.1 million — over 3x the $34.9 million spent between 2010 and 2014. And the momentum isn't slowing: $164.7 million has already been committed for the next phase, from 2025 through 2029. A key player in this new wave is the UK's Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA), which has pledged roughly $80 million towards real-world SRM experiments. Its 'Exploring Climate Cooling' initiative is pushing boundaries: Researchers under the programme aim to test whether they can thicken Arctic ice, brighten marine clouds, or even simulate the effects of orbital mirrors. Mark Symes, ARIA's programme director, put it bluntly in a recent BBC interview: 'There is a critical missing gap in our knowledge on the feasibility and impacts of SRM, and to fill that gap requires real-world outdoor experiments.' But that approach carries reputational risks. Over the past decade, several respected institutions— including Harvard and a UK university consortium involving Oxford — have launched SRM projects, only to pause or cancel them in the face of political backlash and scientific hesitation. But not everyone is waiting for academic approval. Since 2017, the Arctic Ice Project — a privately run effort — has scattered tiny reflective glass beads across 17,500 square metres of Arctic sea ice. The move drew protests from Native Alaskan leaders. It now hopes to scale up its deployment across 100,000 square kilometres. Then there's the do-it-yourself crowd. In 2022, a British independent researcher launched a weather balloon that released sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, dubbing the project SATAN — Stratospheric Aerosol Transport and Nucleation. Around the same time, Silicon Valley-backed startup Make Sunsets began launching similar balloons while planning to sell 'cooling credits' to fund the operation. Critics argue that such experiments, if conducted without rigorous review, may violate international environmental laws, including the 1985 Vienna Convention, which protects the ozone layer. Some participants point to a lack of national regulation as justification. That legal vacuum, however, doesn't equal a green light. SRM360 has also flagged $1.1 million in anonymous donations to SRM efforts, raising concerns about transparency in a field with potential global consequences. And then, there's the spectre that haunts every SRM debate: Fossil fuel interests. Critics worry that solar geoengineering could offer a convenient excuse to avoid the harder — and more politically painful — task of cutting emissions.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Soon Should Companies Prepare for a 2°C World?
A billboard shows the current temperature over 100 degrees in June 2024 in Phoenix. Credit - Photo byLook through the new five-year outlook from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and you won't see the U.N. atmospheric science body use the words 'emergency' or 'disaster.' And yet it would be hard for anyone even semi-literate in the science of climate change to flip through it without a sense of urgency and alarm. The report, released earlier this week, finds that global temperatures will continue at or near record levels with a possibility that the temperature-rise since the Industrial Revolution nears 2°C by 2030. Already, warming momentarily breached 1.5°C of warming in 2024. It's a big marker: decades ago policymakers settled on 2°C as an ideal cap of sorts. That's because, at some point between 1.5°C and 2°C, we might expect to begin seeing climate effects that are both dire and, perhaps more importantly, irreversible. The WMO report reaffirms that the world has entered that danger zone—and the risks posed by the planet's warming are on the verge of growing dramatically. The increasingly dire atmospheric reality, underscored by this new report, might lead to some urgent calls for companies to cut their emissions. Indeed, reducing emissions is the only way to keep the problem from getting worse. But our temperature-rise trajectory should also push companies to take a hard look at how prepared they are for the changes that will come on the road to 2°C—not decades from now but in the next five years. 'We are in a climate emergency, and the situation worsens every year,' Sonia I. Seneviratne, a professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science of the ETH Zurich, told me earlier this year. 'It's not necessarily making the headlines, because there are also many other crises, but we shouldn't forget it.' The WMO report outlines a number of alarming predictions for the next half-decade. For the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures are expected to exceed averages in previous decades 'almost everywhere.' In the Arctic during the Northern winter season, the warming is expected to be particularly extreme, with the temperature anomaly more than 3.5 times as large as the global anomaly. And sea ice is expected to continue to decline across the Arctic. Perhaps more importantly, and left uncovered by the report, are the second-order effects of a warmer planet. Between 1.5°C and 2°C, heat waves become more frequent and intense, according to the U.N.'s climate science body. Crop yields decline. And coral reefs may be wiped out completely. This spells trouble for a wide range of companies. Infrastructure faces increased flood and fire risk. Demand for air conditioning will stretch electric utilities thin. Farmers and agriculture companies not only face crop losses but also declining worker productivity in the heat and other extreme weather. All of this adds up to a massive headwind poised to slow economic growth. A 2021 report from Swiss reinsurance giant Swiss Re found that 2°C of warming would lead to global GDP that is 11% lower by the mid-century. Don't get me wrong. Sophisticated companies are aware of the challenges on the horizon. Research has shown that a growing number of firms are disclosing the risks posed to their business by the physical effects of climate change. Nonetheless, many companies are still early in grappling with these challenges. Few are able to quantify the risk in financial terms and most lack comprehensive plans to even for the most forward-thinking firms, the problem with this new atmosphere in which we find ourselves is that it's impossible to fully understand what destruction these hotter temperatures will bring—and, therefore, what can be done to prepare. With each fraction of a degree that global temperatures rise, the further we get into uncharted territory that stretches our scientific analysis. Climate deniers use uncertainty to argue that we should slow our efforts to reduce emissions: why should we spend trillions to address something we don't fully understand? But the truth is that the present uncertainty is far scarier than even potentially hyperbolic messaging about climate change ending the world. The new climate reality means we can expect a variety of extreme weather events, seemingly unpredictably. Over the next half-decade, we will get a good sense of who has prepared effectively. To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter here. Write to Justin Worland at
Time Magazine
11 hours ago
- Science
- Time Magazine
How Soon Should Companies Prepare for a 2°C World?
Look through the new five-year outlook from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and you won't see the U.N. atmospheric science body use the words 'emergency' or 'disaster.' And yet it would be hard for anyone even semi-literate in the science of climate change to flip through it without a sense of urgency and alarm. The report, released earlier this week, finds that global temperatures will continue at or near record levels with a possibility that the temperature-rise since the Industrial Revolution nears 2°C by 2030. Already, warming momentarily breached 1.5°C of warming in 2024. It's a big marker: decades ago policymakers settled on 2°C as an ideal cap of sorts. That's because, at some point between 1.5°C and 2°C, we might expect to begin seeing climate effects that are both dire and, perhaps more importantly, irreversible. The WMO report reaffirms that the world has entered that danger zone—and the risks posed by the planet's warming are on the verge of growing dramatically. The increasingly dire atmospheric reality, underscored by this new report, might lead to some urgent calls for companies to cut their emissions. Indeed, reducing emissions is the only way to keep the problem from getting worse. But our temperature-rise trajectory should also push companies to take a hard look at how prepared they are for the changes that will come on the road to 2°C—not decades from now but in the next five years. 'We are in a climate emergency, and the situation worsens every year,' Sonia I. Seneviratne, a professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science of the ETH Zurich, told me earlier this year. 'It's not necessarily making the headlines, because there are also many other crises, but we shouldn't forget it.' The WMO report outlines a number of alarming predictions for the next half-decade. For the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures are expected to exceed averages in previous decades 'almost everywhere.' In the Arctic during the Northern winter season, the warming is expected to be particularly extreme, with the temperature anomaly more than 3.5 times as large as the global anomaly. And sea ice is expected to continue to decline across the Arctic. Perhaps more importantly, and left uncovered by the report, are the second-order effects of a warmer planet. Between 1.5°C and 2°C, heat waves become more frequent and intense, according to the U.N.'s climate science body. Crop yields decline. And coral reefs may be wiped out completely. This spells trouble for a wide range of companies. Infrastructure faces increased flood and fire risk. Demand for air conditioning will stretch electric utilities thin. Farmers and agriculture companies not only face crop losses but also declining worker productivity in the heat and other extreme weather. All of this adds up to a massive headwind poised to slow economic growth. A 2021 report from Swiss reinsurance giant Swiss Re found that 2°C of warming would lead to global GDP that is 11% lower by the mid-century. Don't get me wrong. Sophisticated companies are aware of the challenges on the horizon. Research has shown that a growing number of firms are disclosing the risks posed to their business by the physical effects of climate change. Nonetheless, many companies are still early in grappling with these challenges. Few are able to quantify the risk in financial terms and most lack comprehensive plans to prepare. And, even for the most forward-thinking firms, the problem with this new atmosphere in which we find ourselves is that it's impossible to fully understand what destruction these hotter temperatures will bring—and, therefore, what can be done to prepare. With each fraction of a degree that global temperatures rise, the further we get into uncharted territory that stretches our scientific analysis. Climate deniers use uncertainty to argue that we should slow our efforts to reduce emissions: why should we spend trillions to address something we don't fully understand? But the truth is that the present uncertainty is far scarier than even potentially hyperbolic messaging about climate change ending the world. The new climate reality means we can expect a variety of extreme weather events, seemingly unpredictably. Over the next half-decade, we will get a good sense of who has prepared effectively.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Flood fears recede after Swiss glacier collapse
An artificial lake building up behind the rubble left by a glacier that dramatically plunged down a Swiss mountainside, destroying a village, is beginning to drain, authorities said Friday, reducing fears of a second catastrophe. The huge barricade of debris formed when the Birch glacier collapsed on Wednesday has blocked the river Lonza in Switzerland's southern Wallis region, fuelling concern the dam of rubble could give way and flood the valley. But as reconnaissance flights and inspections progressed, authorities said the water from the newly formed lake, which has been slowly submerging the remaining houses in the obliterated village of Blatten, was beginning to find its way over, through and around the blockage. "This development is positive, but we remain cautious," said Stephane Ganzer, head of the regional security department. "The risk remains, even if it is diminishing," he told a press conference, stressing that "no evacuations are planned" in the villages downstream in the Lotschental valley, one of the most beautiful in southern Switzerland. The outflow "makes us optimistic and suggests that the water is finding a good path", explained Christian Studer of the Wallis canton's Natural Hazards Service. However, work to pump water from the lake has still not begun as the ground remains too unstable, particularly on the mountainside. The Lotschental valley stretches for just under 30 kilometres (20 miles) and is home to around 1,500 inhabitants. It is renowned for the beauty of its landscapes dominated by snow-capped peaks, its small traditional villages, and its spectacular hiking trails. But its face has been forever changed by the glacier collapse. - One person still missing - Authorities remain on alert, and communities downstream from the landslide, including in the Rhone Valley, which the Lonza flows into, are nonetheless preparing for a possible evacuation. An artificial dam in the village of Ferden, downstream in the Lotschental valley, has been emptied and should be able to contain any downward rush of water, authorities say. One 64-year-old man, believed to have been in the danger zone at the time, remains missing. The collapsed glacier destroyed most of Blatten, which had been home to 300 people and was evacuated last week due to the impending danger. "That shows the importance of early warnings and early action," Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization, told a press briefing in Geneva. "The landscape will never be the same again. The village will never be the same again. But it is an example of how we can use forecasts and warnings to save people's lives," she said. Nullis said the Swiss had provided a "textbook example" of what should be done, but stressed that not all countries had such highly developed early warning systems in place. The landslide was so heavy it was even picked up by Switzerland's seismographs. "This is probably the most catastrophic event for the last 150 years in Switzerland and probably in the whole Alps," in terms of a rock and ice avalanche, Christophe Lambiel, senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne's Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, told AFP. - 'Erased within seconds' - The glacier was below the 3,342-metre (10,965-foot) high Kleines Nesthorn peak. In the fortnight before its collapse, a series of falls from the mountain dumped three million cubic metres of rock onto the ice surface. That increased the weight, and with the glacier on a steep slope, it ultimately gave way in dramatic fashion, plunging down on Blatten, at 1,540 metres' altitude in the valley floor. Experts said it was too early to make a direct link to climate change, but told AFP that thawing permafrost in the cracks in the rock likely played a role in destabilising the mountain. Matthias Huss, the director of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS), said the drastic collapse might bring global attention to the Alpine glaciers, and ultimately the impact of climate change on them. "Often a big disaster has to strike before people realise that something is going on," he told AFP. "It's very tangible: the destruction of a whole village is easily understandable to everybody. People have lived there for hundreds of years -- and everything has been erased within seconds." bur-vog-rjm/jhb
France 24
12 hours ago
- Climate
- France 24
Flood fears recede after Swiss glacier collapse
The huge barricade of debris formed when the Birch glacier collapsed on Wednesday has blocked the river Lonza in Switzerland's southern Wallis region, fuelling concern the dam of rubble could give way and flood the valley. But as reconnaissance flights and inspections progressed, authorities said the water from the newly formed lake, which has been slowly submerging the remaining houses in the obliterated village of Blatten, was beginning to find its way over, through and around the blockage. "This development is positive, but we remain cautious," said Stephane Ganzer, head of the regional security department. "The risk remains, even if it is diminishing," he told a press conference, stressing that "no evacuations are planned" in the villages downstream in the Lotschental valley, one of the most beautiful in southern Switzerland. The outflow "makes us optimistic and suggests that the water is finding a good path", explained Christian Studer of the Wallis canton's Natural Hazards Service. However, work to pump water from the lake has still not begun as the ground remains too unstable, particularly on the mountainside. The Lotschental valley stretches for just under 30 kilometres (20 miles) and is home to around 1,500 inhabitants. It is renowned for the beauty of its landscapes dominated by snow-capped peaks, its small traditional villages, and its spectacular hiking trails. But its face has been forever changed by the glacier collapse. One person still missing Authorities remain on alert, and communities downstream from the landslide, including in the Rhone Valley, which the Lonza flows into, are nonetheless preparing for a possible evacuation. An artificial dam in the village of Ferden, downstream in the Lotschental valley, has been emptied and should be able to contain any downward rush of water, authorities say. One 64-year-old man, believed to have been in the danger zone at the time, remains missing. The collapsed glacier destroyed most of Blatten, which had been home to 300 people and was evacuated last week due to the impending danger. "That shows the importance of early warnings and early action," Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization, told a press briefing in Geneva. "The landscape will never be the same again. The village will never be the same again. But it is an example of how we can use forecasts and warnings to save people's lives," she said. Nullis said the Swiss had provided a "textbook example" of what should be done, but stressed that not all countries had such highly developed early warning systems in place. The landslide was so heavy it was even picked up by Switzerland's seismographs. "This is probably the most catastrophic event for the last 150 years in Switzerland and probably in the whole Alps," in terms of a rock and ice avalanche, Christophe Lambiel, senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne's Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, told AFP. 'Erased within seconds' The glacier was below the 3,342-metre (10,965-foot) high Kleines Nesthorn peak. In the fortnight before its collapse, a series of falls from the mountain dumped three million cubic metres of rock onto the ice surface. That increased the weight, and with the glacier on a steep slope, it ultimately gave way in dramatic fashion, plunging down on Blatten, at 1,540 metres' altitude in the valley floor. Experts said it was too early to make a direct link to climate change, but told AFP that thawing permafrost in the cracks in the rock likely played a role in destabilising the mountain. Matthias Huss, the director of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS), said the drastic collapse might bring global attention to the Alpine glaciers, and ultimately the impact of climate change on them. "Often a big disaster has to strike before people realise that something is going on," he told AFP. "It's very tangible: the destruction of a whole village is easily understandable to everybody. People have lived there for hundreds of years -- and everything has been erased within seconds." © 2025 AFP
