Climate Engineering

paranormalized writes "Good aricle on Climate Engineering at ChooseClimate.org. It's getting old (Nov 1996), but it makes a lot more sense than the Bacteria to Destroy Greenhouse Gasses article you posted last Thursday afternoon. And since only one other registered user posted a comment eight hours later about Oceanic fertilization with iron dust, I figured the /. crowd needed reminding of the ideas herein."

Comments

Choosing our climate ...

[JoeGee]

I propose using ice core samples to determine the proportions of atmoshperic SO2, CO2, and methane for pre-industrial Earth circa the mid 1700's, and adopting those ratios as a goal for future climate engineering.

Nations would be responsible for donating expertise, financial resources, or physical resources as they are able, to meet a reduction in greenhouse gases in proportion to their real world consumption of products contributing to warming.

Once mid eighteenth century levels have been reached, through a program of management nations would be able to increase or decrease their greenhouse gas output to modify these ratios to keep ocean levels, icepack thickness, and world temperatures relatively consistent.

Dangerous experiments with the potential to rapidly modify the global climate, such as widescale seeding of the Antarctic ocean with iron sulphate would be prohibited without a consensus mandate of member nations.

We are getting to the point where macroscopic engineering projects are possible. I think it's important to think through the ramifications of these projects before we implement them, as our current experience demonstrates.

This is just my two cent knee-jerk reaction to the whole topic. Feedback will probably prove my comments full of holes. :)

Solutions, but is there a problem?

[JohnTheFisherman]

A very comprehensive review on solutions for something that many scientists don't think is happening.

As the article submitter I must object to the dept

[paranormalized]

...that Michael filed this under.

As /.-ers have pointed out, man has been playing God from the beginnings of civilization, breeding animals and crops to our desired specifications. And as Jared Diamond has pointed out so eloquently in his book, The Third Chimpanzee, man has been changing the climate and ecology(accidentally, perhaps, but changing nonetheless) of our planet since he first deforested Lebanon. If the possibility exists to reverse damages we have inflicted on the world, we have the right, and even perhaps the duty, to do so.

God himself has given man license to 'play god', so to speak, from Adam onwards. He knew what He was setting us up for when He gave us intelligence, and hopes to see us do good with our tools.

As David Brin pointed out so eloquently in his essays in the book Otherness, what does God, if He is a loving father, want of us? Does He want blind obedience, as one would from a dog rather than a child? Or does He want to see us grow and mature, taking up His tools as we grow older, creating beautiful things with them? As an avowed Christian, I must believe in a loving God who expects the latter.

This is not to say that iron fertilization is a good idea. We don't yet have anywhere near the foresight and knowledge that our Father has, and humility demands we admit this. We should definitely make plans to curb the greenhouse effect, but we need to know our limitations. Unintended consequences have a way of popping up in the oddest ways...however, we must take drastic action to prevent global warming, and climate engineering is just another tool in our toolbox, though it is a dangerous one.

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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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