Dear all,
I agree with virtually everything in Clive's op-ed in the New York Times
today. That is because I wrote it several years ago, first in my 20
reasons why geoengineering might be a bad idea, and then in several
articles since then. But he gives no indication that these are not his
original ideas.
You can see all my papers at
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/robock_geopapers.html
Here is the op-ed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/opinion/geoengineering-our-last-hope-or-a-false-promise.html?hp&pagewanted=print
Geoengineering: Our Last Hope, or a False Promise?
By CLIVE HAMILTON
CANBERRA, Australia --- THE concentration of carbon dioxide in the
earth's atmosphere recently surpassed
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html>
400 parts per million for the first time in three million years. If you
are not frightened by this fact, then you are ignoring or denying science.
Relentlessly rising greenhouse-gas emissions, and the fear that the
earth might enter a climate emergency from which there would be no
return, have prompted many climate scientists to conclude that we
urgently need a Plan B: geoengineering.
Geoengineering --- the deliberate, large-scale intervention in the
climate system to counter global warming
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
or offset some of its effects --- may enable humanity to mobilize its
technological power to seize control of the planet's climate system, and
regulate it in perpetuity.
But is it wise to try to play God with the climate? For all its allure,
a geoengineered Plan B may lead us into an impossible morass.
While some proposals, like launching a cloud of mirrors into space to
deflect some of the sun's heat, sound like science fiction, the more
serious schemes require no insurmountable technical feats. Two or three
leading ones rely on technology that is readily available and could be
quickly deployed.
Some approaches, like turning biomass into biochar, a charcoal whose
carbon resists breakdown, and painting roofs white to increase their
reflectivity and reduce air-conditioning demand, are relatively benign,
but would have minimal effect on a global scale. Another prominent
scheme, extracting carbon dioxide directly from the air, is harmless in
itself, as long as we can find somewhere safe to bury enormous volumes
of it for centuries.
But to capture from the air the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by,
say, a 1,000-megawatt coal power plant, it would require air-sucking
machinery about 30 feet in height and 18 miles in length, according to a
study by the American Physical Society
<http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/assessments/upload/dac2011.pdf>, as
well as huge collection facilities and a network of equipment to
transport and store the waste underground.
The idea of building a vast industrial infrastructure to offset the
effects of another vast industrial infrastructure (instead of shifting
to renewable energy) only highlights our unwillingness to confront the
deeper causes of global warming --- the power of the fossil-fuel lobby
and the reluctance of wealthy consumers to make even small sacrifices.
Even so, greater anxieties arise from those geoengineering technologies
designed to intervene in the functioning of the earth system as a whole.
They include ocean iron fertilization and sulfate aerosol spraying, each
of which now has a scientific-commercial constituency.
How confident can we be, even after research and testing, that the
chosen technology will work as planned? After all, ocean fertilization
--- spreading iron slurry across the seas to persuade them to soak up
more carbon dioxide --- means changing the chemical composition and
biological functioning of the oceans. In the process it will interfere
with marine ecosystems and affect cloud formation in ways we barely
understand.
Enveloping the earth with a layer of sulfate particles would cool the
planet by regulating the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth's
surface. One group of scientists is urging its deployment over the
melting Arctic now.
Plant life, already trying to adapt to a changing climate, would have to
deal with reduced sunlight, the basis of photosynthesis. A solar filter
made of sulfate particles may be effective at cooling the globe, but its
impact on weather systems, including the Indian monsoon on which a
billion people depend for their sustenance, is unclear.
Some of these uncertainties can be reduced by research. Yet if there is
one lesson we have learned from ecology, it is that the more closely we
look at an ecosystem the more complex it becomes. Now we are
contemplating technologies that would attempt to manipulate the grandest
and most complex ecosystem of them all --- the planet itself. Sulfate
aerosol spraying would change not just the temperature but the ozone
layer, global rainfall patterns and the biosphere, too.
Spraying sulfate particles, the method most likely to be implemented, is
classified as a form of "solar radiation management," an Orwellian term
that some of its advocates have sought to reframe as "climate remediation."
Yet if the "remedy" were fully deployed to reduce the earth's
temperature, then at least 10 years of global climate observations would
be needed to separate out the effects of the solar filter from other
causes of climatic variability, according to some scientists.
If after five years of filtered sunlight a disaster occurred --- a
drought in India and Pakistan, for example, a possible effect in one of
the modeling studies --- we would not know whether it was caused by
global warming, the solar filter or natural variability. And if India
suffered from the effects of global dimming while the United States
enjoyed more clement weather, it would matter a great deal which country
had its hand on the global thermostat.
So who would be turning the dial on the earth's climate? Research is
concentrated in the United States, Britain and Germany, though China
recently added geoengineering to its research priorities.
Some geoengineering schemes are sufficiently cheap and uncomplicated to
be deployed by any midsize nation, or even a billionaire with a messiah
complex.
We can imagine a situation 30 years hence in which the Chinese Communist
Party's grip on power is threatened by chaotic protests ignited by a
devastating drought and famine. If the alternative to losing power were
attempting a rapid cooling of the planet through a sulfate aerosol
shield, how would it play out? A United States president might publicly
condemn the Chinese but privately commit to not shooting down their
planes, or to engage in "counter-geoengineering."
Little wonder that military strategists are taking a close interest in
geoengineering. Anxious about Western geopolitical hubris, developing
nations have begun to argue for a moratorium on experiments until there
is agreement on some kind of global governance system.
Engineering the climate is intuitively appealing to a powerful strand of
Western technological thought that sees no ethical or other obstacle to
total domination of nature. And that is why some conservative think
tanks that have for years denied or downplayed the science of climate
change suddenly support geoengineering, the solution to a problem they
once said did not exist.
All of which points to perhaps the greatest risk of research into
geoengineering --- it will erode the incentive to curb emissions. Think
about it: no need to take on powerful fossil-fuel companies, no need to
tax gasoline or electricity, no need to change our lifestyles.
In the end, how we think about geoengineering depends on how we
understand climate disruption. If our failure to cut emissions is a
result of the power of corporate interests, the fetish for economic
growth and the comfortable conservatism of a consumer society, then
resorting to climate engineering allows us to avoid facing up to social
dysfunction, at least for as long as it works.
So the battle lines are being drawn over the future of the planet. While
the Pentagon "weaponeer" and geoengineering enthusiast Lowell Wood, an
astrophysicist, has proclaimed, "We've engineered every other
environment we live in --- why not the planet?" a more humble climate
scientist, Ronald G. Prinn <http://web.mit.edu/rprinn/> of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has asked, "How can you engineer
a system you don't understand?"
Clive Hamilton <http://www.cappe.edu.au/staff/clive-hamilton.htm>, a
professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, is the author
<http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300186673>, most recently,
of "Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering."
--
Alan Robock
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644
14 College Farm Road E-mail: [email protected]
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
