Scientists from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have been studying the possible "consequences of several climate engineering methods" that were originally aimed to "limit the effects of climate change through the large-scale manipulation of Earth systems". However well intented, the truth is that these plans might be "unable to significantly reduce global warming if CO2 emissions remain high, or they could not be stopped without causing dangerous climate disruption". While global warming is an important issue that must be addressed every day, it's hard to think of a solution as complex as "artificially" trying to slow it down.
Some examples of this climate engineering have been ideas to "fertilize the oceans, so that stimulated plankton can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere" or to "reduce the Sun's incoming radiation with atmospheric aerosols or mirrors in space". While there may be initial benefits, these scientists are proving that the benefits are limited and the consequences could be lethal. For example, "the fertilization of the oceans allowed plankton to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but also changed the size of ocean oxygen minimum zones". Maybe what we need to fix isn't the Earth itself. Maybe we need to simply fix the way we treat it, no climate engineering required.
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