Quick Study
Given Our Worsening Climate Situation, Geoengineering Research Makes Sense. Unfortunately.
SOURCE: NASA
Arctic sea ice coverage is at a record low. The red line is the 2007 minimum, as of September 15. The green line indicates the 2005 minimum, the previous record low. The yellow line indicates the median minimum from 1979 to 2000.
“I find myself looking at and thinking about a lot more unpleasant options than I used to look at.”
“I really think we’re in an awful place where we have to explore something that makes many of us feel uncomfortable, and yet the alternative may be worse.”
“I think a lot of us came away from that meeting much more scared than we were when we went into the meeting. Frightened about climate change, and frightened about what humans might get desperate enough to do about it.”
These commentaries by top climate researchers, compiled recently by Science magazine, suggest a disturbing reality. Not only is global warming happening; but recent observations, particularly of record Arctic sea ice decline and growing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, suggest it may be moving more quickly than expected. As a consequence, scientists and policymakers are now seriously entertaining ideas that might once have been considered beyond the pale.
And so it should come as no small surprise that geoengineering research—the scientific study of how humans could deliberately alter the Earth to achieve a desired climatic end—recently won endorsement from a convocation of top climate experts at a meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts organized by Harvard and the University of Calgary. Put more bluntly, geoengineering is the study of how to mess with the planet even more than we already have, with the hope of moving the global climate back in the other direction. These scientists aren’t saying we should immediately try anything in particular, or that we should try it any time soon. But they do point out that given the climate outlook for the next few hundred years, we’d be fools not to consider taking out an insurance policy. Hence, they say, further research on ideas for Earth modification, such as adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere in an attempt to mimic the cooling effect of a large volcanic eruption, ought to begin immediately.
The endorsement is particularly surprising when you consider that outside of sci-fi novels like Frank Herbert’s Dune or TV series like Joss Whedon’s Firefly, geoengineering has a pretty checkered history. There have long been various hare-brained ideas about weather and climate modification—stopping hurricanes with nuclear bombs being my own personal favorite—and an aura of crankery has come to pervade the whole arena. But the recent Cambridge conference is just the latest indicator that this may be changing.
The example of chlorofluorocarbons should make us exceedingly cautious to meddle with the Earth’s system in any way whatsoever.
Another is that top journals are already publishing scientific research on geoengineering, albeit of a limited sort. For example, in a recent paper in Science, climate expert Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research considers various scenarios for the future, including some that combine mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions with a geoengineering scheme—specifically, in this case, the aforementioned injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere (which seems one of the most popular ideas currently circulating). Wigley found that geoengineering, hand in hand with emission cuts, could give us extra time to get the climate back under control.
Much like the Harvard meeting, Wigley’s paper, along with a series of papers by the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Ken Caldeira, shows that the world’s top minds are already thinking along these lines. This isn’t quackery, this is research. Like it or not, the ideas are churning. That certainly won’t stop as the climate situation keeps worsening; if anything, it will quicken. As a consequence, I’m convinced that we’re witnessing the beginnings of a great and possibly seismic science-policy debate, one that could ultimately rival arguments over the nuclear bomb.
The strongest case against geoengineering inevitably involves unintended consequences. Given the complexity of the atmosphere-ocean system, we can never know the full implications of a particular perturbation to it. Yes, we know that the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines temporarily cooled the Earth; but do we really think we can perfectly mimic that eruption? And what if something goes awry? The example of chlorofluorocarbons, the wonder work of chemistry that turned out to have a totally unforeseen consequence—depletion of stratospheric ozone—should make us exceedingly cautious to meddle with the Earth’s system in any way whatsoever.
But research is different than meddling. Sure, research might make ultimate meddling more likely. But then, isn’t the climate situation forcing our hand anyway? What if a rogue government, or a crazy billionaire, decides to unilaterally execute one of these geoengineering proposals regardless of what the rest of the world thinks? In that case we will need to know as much as possible about the consequences, if only to know how best to convince would-be geoengineers to hold back, or barring that, to prepare for what they unleash.
I sincerely hope the day never comes when we have massive protests in the streets aimed at preventing a geoengineering project that has finally gotten the go-ahead from our government or from many governments. But having heard the scientists talk, I now fear, just as they do, that that day may come. It’s a possible future. And whenever we’re talking about grappling with the future, more knowledge is definitely going to be better than less; and more options are better than fewer.
So as much as I hate to say this, I don’t see how you reach any other conclusion than that of the scientists in Cambridge: geoengineering research should go forward, with proper restrictions and safeguards, perhaps outlined by ethicists or by the National Academy of Sciences. And it should receive government funding.
It’s a sad, sad day.
Chris Mooney is the Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. He blogs on The Intersection with Sheril Kirshenbaum.
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