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What Happens When Geoengineers 'Hack The Planet'? (thebulletin.org)
Dan Drollette shares an article by an Oxford physics professor who's concerned about the popularity of radical new proposals to fight global warming.
The Christian Science Monitor wonders if it's time to re-engineer our climate. MIT's Technology Review basically thinks the answer is "yes," having described it earlier as "cheap and easy." The Atlantic seems quite smitten with Economist writer Oliver Morton's vision of remaking the planet, which geoengineering booster Jane Long breathlessly called "geopoetry." The idea received recent coverage (much of it favorable) by New Scientist, NBC, and in TED talks; I myself have recently participated in an NPR panel discussion on the subject... But what has really catapulted the idea into the public eye is Harvard's reckless plan for a privately-funded field trial testing some of the key elements needed... Proceeding to field experimentation crosses a thin red line beyond which lies the slippery slope down to ever-larger field trials and ultimately deployment.
Harvard's experiment -- which is partially funded by Bill Gates -- is "subject to no governance save what Harvard chooses to impose upon itself," according to the article. The experiment involves "putting something in the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back out into space," which the article warns will create "enduring" effects -- and require humanity to commit to maintaining the same atmospheric conditions forever.
Harvard's experiment -- which is partially funded by Bill Gates -- is "subject to no governance save what Harvard chooses to impose upon itself," according to the article. The experiment involves "putting something in the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back out into space," which the article warns will create "enduring" effects -- and require humanity to commit to maintaining the same atmospheric conditions forever.
Please don't trust that you understand all of the ways this might go wrong. Ensure that every change can be backed out before you make it.
Because when engineers had found this safe, non-toxic and stable gas they and the industry were all like hurray, let's use this like crazy because there are no negative consequences. Until many years later scientists start discovering that while locally, CFC is harmless enough, but on global scale it is very negative for the ozone layer.
And it's not because the engineers were careless, stupid or did not care. They genuinely believed that CFC was a safe and harmless product. It was just because no one thought about the potential connection with the ozone layer (and granted, CFC were discovered before the basic physical and chemical processes that lead to the formation of an ozone layer). And while if CFC turned out to be relatively harmless locally, it's not like history is lacking examples of products that are initially considered safe, only to later be discovered to be anything but.
There is exactly zero chance that similar oh, we did not think of that issues will pop up for attempts to "positively" modify the earth's climate on global scale.
The core of the problem is that humans are polluting. We should stop polluting.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
I'm reminded of the policies of the U.S. in managing national forests at the start of the 20th century. For decades the policy of the U.S. was to put out all forest fires immediately, not realizing that forest fires play a role in forest ecology out West. (Some pine trees cannot reproduce, for example, without a fire to help open up pine cones full of seeds. Fire also helps to clear out dry undergrowth which chokes out forests.)
That policy lead to several unintended consequences. Without fire, timber harvests shrank as trees wound up competing with undergrowth for resources. Fuel for fire also accumulated (as it was not being regularly burned off)--and that lead to several incredibly catastrophic forest fires which persist to this day.
It doesn't help that, thinking the risk of fire had been controlled, a lot of homes have been built adjacent to at-risk forests.
Every time I hear of some group wanting to engage in planet-scale geo-engineering, I think of how poorly we understand the ecology of forests, and the forest fires out west which regularly burn millions of acres each year. I think of the 2007 California wildfires which caused the evacuation of towns all over the Southern California area--at one point displacing 1 million people.
But I'm sure today's geo-hackers will do a better job. </sarcasm>
One problem with that First Post is, most of the climate-science deniers are rich, or funded by the rich. The rich like things the way they are, because that's how they got rich. They oppose pollution controls (costs the rich money!) and they oppose reducing the use of fossil fuels (earns the rich money!). The rich want to be free to pollute the air because then they can make money selling purified air, and they want to be free to pollute the water because then they can make money selling purified water. How dare clean air and water be free!
Yeeeeah, never going to happen.
Actually, this does happen. Look into what has happened with acid rain the last couple of decades. USA has seen a significant reduction and Europe has seen a massive reduction. This is the result of dedicated political effort into solving this problem. Has it been easy? Of course not. Is the problem gone? No it is not. Has this been free or cheap? No, there have been costs involved for this, including losing jobs for someone, which have had to be spread onto multiple receivers, some possibly unfairly hit. But just because a 100% perfect and fair solution is not possible does not mean that we should not try to do our best.
Of course you have a point in that this is by no means a simple problem, and to some degree possibly unsolvable due to human nature. But framing this as a problem consisting of individual actions is missing the point. Both that industry is a much bigger contributor to pollution than consumers, and that solutions have to be political, giving incentives for wanted behaviour and punishment for unwanted behaviour. Of course that is much simpler in theory than in practice, but that is no excuse for not trying.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
It reminds me of the kid's song, "The old Lady that swallowed the fly", where a woman kept swallowing larger and large animals to catch the animal she swallowed earlier.
Except in this version after swallowing the spider the old lady will probably decide that now she can swallow all the flies she wants, the spider over eats on flies and dies and she now has a fly problem ten times the size of the one she started with.