Hi Ken, It seems your inspiration in this is largely a defensive one. In essence you’re suggesting that organized objection to geoengineering will be too great an impediment, and that if there’s this pejorative connotation that’s grown around “geoengineering,” then let’s get the needed research done under the radar and get around geoengineering adversaries through different add-ons to established research programs, etc. Perhaps that should be one track, sure, but not the only one.
In the end, geoengineering could/should never get deployed unless there is widespread acceptance. If the very word has become so stigmatized that one is afraid to deal with it publicly, how can one proceed? Clearly, there needs to be broad change in its image. Another response to the current situation could be to try to push back against the geoengineer-demonizers and attempt, say, to start a media campaign to help the image of geoengineering, and to get broader comprehension of the facts. Sure, image campaigns can take huge sums of money, but without having any money to speak of at all, the anti-geoengineering folks are getting quite far with their message – because they are really the only ones putting out a message meant for the general public. There need to be some pro-geoengineering advocay groups out there. Right now, if you google geoengineering, you get “geoengineeringwatch.com” right near the top, just after Wikipedia. It’s absurd. Perhaps the new website Michael’s been talking about should be “Geoengineering.com” and be a simple first step in this direction, a site devoted to debunking the demonizers’ hyperbolic nonsense, to helping public understanding of climate engineering, and to putting forth a well-balanced description of it, its real risks, etc. It could be one very inexpensive way of starting to correct that situation..... In some cases, when need be, it also might be better to simply accept having both enemies and supporters, then to avoid having enemies by existing only in the shadows. And I also think in your title, the biggest open question is the “need” part. The real question is how fast one needs to develop things now. Let me give an example: a few months ago I was having an exchange with Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA Langley. I felt he wasn’t taking good account of aerosol negative forcings in something he said, and he shot back, “This is what you do about aerosols,” and sent me a proposal that they have drawn up at Langley for what wouldl be the largest and most advanced chamber for cloud/aerosol studies (maybe I should post it here?.....). Anyhow, my first thought was – wow, that’s just what’s needed for those who want to develop aerosol SRM. But then, my second thought: wait, there is no thought at all of getting such a thing operational in less than a decade, minimum. And it’s hard to imagine anyone pushing for expediting it, unless perhaps you could convince the right people of the need of the geoengineering implications of it. So, what if things progress very rapidly in the arctic, and there's nothing ready to deal with it? Lastly, if there were no organized objections to have to fight against, I bet that you would agree that a program devoted to geoengineering research could possibly expedite greatly getting the minimal answers you’ll need to just those problems you’ll face in getting a functional program up and running soon (indeed, many things discussed on this list, like approaches to combining Latham's idea w/ aerosol SRM, go quite against what you're saying here, and demand a unified approach to research, it seems to me). I didn’t enjoy the exchanges about the Manhattan project, and this is August 6th, so I won’t go there, but to take a different example - the lunar missions - it’s a little like Buckminster Fuller’s talking about a “critical path.” That critical path demanded lots of feeding back on itself. It’s fine to have separate bits of research done on aerosol size issues, various aerosol/aerosol interactions or whatever, but as Stuart Kaufmann has said, “Idea space is infinite,” so you can get lots of valid and even relevant information without getting the needed job done, which really only comes about when you are constantly getting your hands dirty, revising the very questions that you ask yourself, and keeping looking back at the big picture, always geared towards your goal....... cheers, Nathan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
