Climate Geoengineering: Risks to Oceans and Coral Reefs
Climate geoengineering—deliberate climate manipulation—is being explored to mitigate global warming, with billionaire Bill Gates playing a notable role. Two main approaches, solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), carry significant risks, especially to oceans and light-dependent ecosystems like coral reefs.
Gates has funded SRM research, notably through Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program (SGRP), contributing over $4.5 million since 2007 to study methods like stratospheric aerosol injection, which disperses particles like calcium carbonate to reflect sunlight.
A planned 2021 SGRP experiment in Sweden, backed by Gates, was halted due to protests from Indigenous groups and environmentalists. SRM could cool Earth by 1-2°C, per Harvard models, but it doesn’t address ocean acidification, which has reduced coral cover by 14% since the 1980s, per NOAA. It may also darken oceans by reducing sunlight up to 10%, per a 2021 Nature Geoscience study, harming photosynthetic organisms like coral reefs and phytoplankton, which produce 50% of Earth’s oxygen, per NASA. Disrupted ocean currents could further threaten marine ecosystems and fisheries.
Gates also supports CDR, investing in David Keith’s Carbon Engineering, a direct air capture (DAC) startup recently sold for $1.1 billion. DAC captures CO2 at $600-$1,000 per ton, but scaling is energy-intensive. Natural CDR, like ocean fertilization, risks oxygen-depleted “dead zones,” as seen in the 2009 LOHAFEX experiment. Land-based CDR competes with agriculture, stressing coastal habitats.
Geoengineering’s ocean impacts—acidification, darkened waters, and ecosystem disruption—threaten coral reefs and marine life. This is not safe science.
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