Humanity is currently facing some of its greatest challenges to date. We are witnessing debilitating droughts and ravaging wildfires, destructive floods and the loss of biodiversity — all things scientists have said for decades would happen due to our greenhouse gas emissions.
Apocalypse Plan B, a documentary from The Nature of Things, investigates some of the methods scientists are considering to slow down climate change, limit the damage that’s already done and cool the planet.
Dimming the sun by adding more gas to the atmosphere
David Keith is a Canadian professor of applied physics at Harvard University. He’s developed a strategy that could decrease the sun’s impact on Earth in an effort to keep us cool.
It’s based on the “volcano effect,” which happens when large volcanic eruptions spew tonnes of polluting gases like sulphur into the atmosphere. Gas particles that make it high into the atmosphere actually block some of the sun’s rays from reaching Earth’s surface, creating a surprising cooling effect.
Keith’s idea: intentionally release tonnes of sulphur gas into the stratosphere using aircraft. “It turns from a gas into little tiny particles, and those particles reflect away sunlight and can cool the planet a little bit,” he says in the documentary.
This isn’t a one-time fix. “We would have to start by putting 20,000 tonnes of sulphur in the stratosphere the first year,” Keith says in a talk featured in the film. “After 50 years, we’d be putting a million tonnes a year of sulphur in the stratosphere.”
Keith is quick to point out that this proposal only helps to cool the planet slightly while we still tackle the underlying problem of our emissions. “If anybody thinks this is a way to solve the problem of putting out CO2, they’re insane,” he says in the film.
Dimming the sun by adding more gas to the atmosphere | Apocalypse Plan B
This scientist has a proposal to fight climate change: intentionally release tonnes of sulphur gas into the stratosphere using aircraft, to dim the sun’s rays.
Some scientists are worried by the idea. “We can see that [dimming the sun] actually disrupts plant productivity because you change the distribution of sunlight,” says climate scientist Michael Mann. “That can end up shifting ocean currents and atmospheric wind patterns.”
Brightening clouds using fleets of autonomous ships
Sarah Doherty, a senior research scientist with the University of Washington’s department of atmospheric sciences, has her head in the clouds.
“Clouds are a really critical part of the climate system,” she explains in the documentary. “One of the factors that controls the temperature of the planet is how much cloud cover we have.”
Clouds work to reflect sunlight back out into space, and the whiter and brighter the clouds, the more sunlight is reflected. Doherty’s found that the more cloud cover we have, particularly low cloud cover, the cooler our planet. She’s been researching how we might brighten clouds over the oceans by using sea salt to enrich marine clouds.
In Australia, one team has put Doherty’s theory to the test. “We showed that it’s technically feasible to pump sea water and atomize it into trillions per second of tiny little sea water droplets,” says Daniel Harrison, an oceanographer and engineer at Southern Cross University. They are interested to see how the technology could help the Great Barrier Reef, which has experienced numerous mass bleaching events in recent years due to warming oceans. “In theory, [those droplets] can go on to help brighten clouds and cool the reef.”
To brighten clouds on a large scale would take a lot of autonomous ships patrolling ocean regions and responding to weather conditions. (Grand Passage Media)
But to brighten clouds on a large scale would take ships — a lot of ships — to make an impact. “You would need thousands,” says Doherty. She envisions an autonomous fleet that would run on renewable energy, patrol specific ocean regions and respond to weather conditions.
Capturing carbon and storing it underground
Carbon capture is an attractive technology for the oil, gas, cement and steel industries, which are among the biggest emitters. It allows them to sequester much of the CO2 that’s produced by their operations, compress and liquify it, and pump it underground instead of releasing it to the air.
“Carbon capture and sequestration is very seductive,” says Mann. “[It] sounds like we can continue to burn fossil fuels and not worsen the climate crisis.”
But he’s quick to point out that there are still carbon emissions being released into the atmosphere. “In the very best cases, these plants capture maybe 70, maybe 80 per cent of the carbon pollution they generate.”
So what can be done about the carbon that’s accumulating in the atmosphere over time?
Direct air capture may offer a solution. This technology uses giant fans like a big vacuum, sucking up air and filtering out the CO2.
“We extract CO2 from the air and permanently remove it by storing it underground in rock formations,” says Jan Wurzbacher of Climeworks, an Iceland-based carbon capture company that isn’t associated with the fossil fuel industry.
Currently, their plant uses only green energy to remove an amount of carbon equivalent to what’s emitted by 870 cars every year. But the company has ambitious plans to remove one gigatonne every year — just over the amount that humans emit every month — by 2050.
“It’s not as invasive and dangerous as some of the other technologies that are being talked about,” says Mann. “[But] you’re trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and that’s difficult to do.”
Harnessing Earth’s very own carbon capture technology: forests
The Earth has seen huge climate fluctuations over its 4.5 billion-year history. Over time, the climate stabilized, and the planet’s animal and plant life began to recycle carbon in a balanced way.
One of the best examples of this all-natural carbon capture technology? Trees.
“I’d estimate that this tree stores about 5,000 kilograms of carbon,” says Lola Fatoyinbo in the film as she examines just one tree in a forest. “That’s five tonnes of carbon.”
Fatoyinbo is a research scientist with NASA’s biospheric sciences lab, and she studies forest ecosystems from space. In Fatoyinbo’s research, she uses data gathered from instruments on the International Space Station to map the density of the world’s forests, understanding their role in fighting climate change and how much CO2 they can remove from the atmosphere each year.
Every spring and summer, toxic rivers of CO2 are removed from our atmosphere – thanks to trees and plants | Apocalypse Plan B
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Lola Fatoyinbo is a NASA research scientist who studies forest ecosystems from space. Using data gathered from instruments on the space station, she’s able to map the world’s forests, and the effect they have on our planet.
“Restoration of mangroves, forests and wetlands — these are really important mechanisms that are part of our fight,” says Fatoyinbo.
Rethinking farming
Gabrielle Bastien holds up a single clump of soil. “[This clump] contains more microorganisms than there are humans on this Earth.” Bastien is the founder of Regeneration Canada, part of a global movement among farmers to change how we grow our food.
“It’s a whole ecosystem in there,” she says in the documentary. Today’s common farming practices, however, lead to soil degradation — one of the biggest contributors to climate change.
“Soils are actually the largest terrestrial carbon sink,” says Bastien. “Aside from oceans, they contain the largest reserve of carbon on Earth.” When that rich, biodiverse soil ecosystem is disrupted by plowing and tilling, its carbon content is largely emitted to the atmosphere.
In Apocalypse Plan B, Bastien visits Sebastien Angers, a farmer who is doing things a little differently. He’s adopted regenerative farming practices that mimic nature, such as using a no-till drill to plant seeds and seeding a variety of crops in the same field so they can nourish each other. “If you think of a natural ecosystem, it’s a very biodiverse system,” he says.
Angers also uses cover crops to shade the soil. This helps keep the earth moist and cool, increases the diversity in his fields and reduces the need for pesticides.
“We need this richness,” says Angers. “If you plow, you lose that. This field [took] 15 years to get this earthworm, fungi richness. It’s really long to build, really easy to destroy.”
But is it too late to affect change?
When it comes to fighting climate change, there appear to be many potential technological and natural tools in our arsenal, but how much time do we really have to use them?
“Because we’ve left it so late, we need to draw down as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as we can and turn it into solid carbon,” says environmental writer and activist George Monbiot in the documentary. “The best, quickest and cheapest way of doing that is to turn it into trees, to turn it into wetlands, to turn it into other ecosystems.”
“It really is not too late because social change can happen at great speed,” he says. “We can change to being an ecological civilization, and we can change very rapidly indeed.”
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
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