Hack the planet? Geoengineering research, ethics, governance explored
by Hannah Hickey
Hacking the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming – a subject that elicits strong reactions from both sides – is the topic of a December special issue of the journal Climatic Change. A dozen research papers include the most detailed description yet of the proposed Oxford Principles to govern geoengineering research, as well as surveys on the technical hurdles, ethics and regulatory issues related to deliberately manipulating the planet’s climate.
- “Geoengineering research and its limitations,” a December special issue of the journal Climatic Change
- Edited by three UW faculty from atmospheric sciences and philosophy
University of Washington researchers led the three-year project to gather leading thinkers and publish a snapshot of a field that they say is rapidly gaining credibility in the scientific community.
“In the past five years or so, geoengineering has moved from the realm of quackery to being the subject of scientific research,” said co-editor Rob Wood, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “We wanted to contribute to a serious intellectual discourse.”
Creating clouds over the ocean that would reflect back sunlight is the subject of a chapter by Wood, whose research is on the interaction among air pollution, clouds and climate. He and co-author Tom Ackerman, a UW atmospheric sciences professor, look at what it would take to test the idea with a field experiment.
A conceptualized image of a wind-powered, remotely controlled ship that could seed clouds over the ocean to deflect sunlight.
“I don’t want to prove it right, I just want to know if it’s feasible,” Wood said. “If you look at the projections for how much the Earth’s air temperature is supposed to warm over the next century, it is frightening. We should at least know the options. Is geoengineering feasible if there were to be what people call a ‘climate emergency’?”
Also explored in the journal issue is the idea of injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere, subject of a 2006 paper in Climatic Change by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen and central to Seattle entrepreneur Nathan Myhrvold’s proposed StratoShield. Yet another idea is iron fertilization of ocean microbes, though Wood said preliminary tests suggest this is not as successful at drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as its proponents had originally thought.
How to govern geoengineering is a topic of hot debate. In one paper, U.K. authors flesh out the so-called Oxford Principles, which suggest how geoengineering could be regulated as a global public good. The five principles described in the paper concern the research, publication, assessment and deployment of geoengineering techniques.
Many of the authors spoke at the UW during a 2011 seminar series, and more attended a 2012 workshop where they developed their paper ideas.
While discussions were civil, Wood said, the contributors didn’t all agree. A UW philosopher questions whether geoengineering can even be described in the Oxford Principles as a global public good.
“Just spraying sulfates into the stratosphere is not the kind of thing that necessarily benefits everyone, so in that sense it seems a mistake to call it a global public good,” said co-editor Stephen Gardiner, a UW philosophy professor who has written a book on ethics and climate change. There are decisions about how to conduct sulfate spraying, he writes, and potential tradeoffs between short-term benefits and long-term risks.
Gardiner also questions whether something should be done in people’s benefit but without their permission, and if accepting geoengineering as a necessary evil ignores other science or policy options.
He’s not the only social scientist to be looking at climate issues.
“A lot of people, from across the academy, are getting interested in the Anthropocene – the idea that we may have entered a new geological era where human influence is a dominant feature, and what that means for various issues,” Gardiner said.
The collection aims to prompt a serious academic discussion the editors say has so far been lacking.
“It’s an interdisciplinary discussion with an emphasis on the research angle – whether and how we should be researching geoengineering,” said co-editor Lauren Hartzell-Nichols, a UW lecturer in philosophy. “We hope it helps people think about this issue in a more interdisciplinary and integrated way.”
The seminars and workshop that led to the issue’s creation were supported by the UW College of the Environment.
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For more information, contact Wood at 206-543-1203 or robwood@atmos.washington.edu and Gardiner at 206-221-6459 or smgard@uw.edu.
It is still quackery…..
Why wait, we can go straight to the age old expedient of burning witches, far more reliable, it worked when the last mini ice age struck.
Now as the new one starts repeat as necessary, expect a 300 year lag before results.
Yes sarcasm, but given the current drop off in solar output and the surplus of idiots in academia, I can see a winning solution.
Designate all climate castrologists as witches and fire them into the sun.
Wait 30 to 300 years then claim success.
Examples of man mucking about with nature:
Toads introduced in Australia to control sugar cane beetles multiplied and now number >200 megatoads. They have been known to spread disease and have caused large environmental detriment, but there is also no evidence that they have had any impact on the bugs they were meant to eradicate.
Rabbits were introduced into Australia for hunting purposes, but bred like rabbits and caused millions of dollars of crop damage. Myxomatosis and other horrible deseases have been deployed to kill the poor bunnehs.
Allan Savory engaged in the unsavoury practise of killing elephants in Africa to halt errosion, slaughtering ~40k before determining that they were not causing it.
So yeah, lets engineer the weather. What could go wrong?
Geoengineering? Here is an example of how Mother Nature does it:-
The Chesapeake Bay impact crater
The environmental regulations are growing more and more environmentally harmful, ie CFLs, low water-use clothing detergents which burn the skin, and worthless windturbines. Sulfate spraying certainly fits the existing pattern.
Once the environmentally harmful environmental mandates are in place, will it not all be blamed on the free market, which has so far given us the most prosperous people and the cleanest water and air in the world?
Well as part of an OU course years ago I looked at the energies required to replace natural function, hydroponics to grow food and the like. Generally speaking the energy input and material use was so huge it wasn’t practical. I don’t see man made clouds or man made algae blooms or plantations to capture CO2 as being any different. The natural process is on such a vast scale that man made changes pale to insignificance. Look at the “Hiroshima Equivalent” bollocks working out to 0.6 watts per square metre (see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/25/the-4hiroshimas-app-propaganda-of-the-worst-kind/). It seems clear either, we’ve screwed the climate, in which case we need to adapt survive and overcome rather than piss about with belated prevention, or we haven’t in which case butchering the global economy on the alter of alarmism would be profoundly stupid…
These people are the insane genius scientists that early James Bond movies were based on.
They are obsessed with geoengineering and will not stop until they get to carry out their mission.
There is actually a UN convention against it but I don’t think this will stop them. One day, they will destroy the Ozone layer or something. More effective measures will be required to stop the David Keith’s for example.
Oh, the insanity.
Mark and two Cats says:
December 17, 2013 at 3:56 pm “Examples of man mucking about with nature:”
Then there was the time the government introduced the Kudzu vine, which is incredibly invasive, and then introduced an insect that eats it – and soybeans as well.
‘Kudzu bug’ threatens soybeans, too
By Allen G. Breed
Associated Press
October 17, 2011 at 7:19 p.m.
BLACKVILLE, S.C. — Kudzu — the “plant that ate the South” — has finally met a pest that’s just as voracious. Trouble is, the so-called “kudzu bug” also is fond of another East Asian transplant that we happen to like, and that is big money for American farmers.
Soybeans.
“When this insect is feeding on kudzu, it’s beneficial,” Clemson University entomologist Jeremy Greene said as he stoold in a field swarming with the brown, pea-sized critters. “When it’s feeding on soybeans, it’s a pest.”
Like kudzu, which was introduced to the South from Japan in the late 19th century as a fodder and a way to stem erosion on the region’s worn-out farmlands, this insect is native to the Far East. And like the invasive vine, which “Deliverance” author James Dickey famously deemed “a vegetable form of cancer,” the kudzu bug is running rampant.”
(Courtesy of El Chiefio http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/edible-kudzu/ in comments)
Now, that really is worse than we thought!
They just want to find new ways to make money out of this Catastrophic scam. Why act on global temperature when there has been no global surface warming for 17 years and counting? What if future warming is not dangerous (see climate sensitivity turned down recently), then what. An utter waste of money. Don’t believe me? See the desal plants mothballed in Australia because they were getting ready for perpetual drought. It’s a con.
What if things go wrong? Below is what might happen to the carbonphobic climate geoengineers.
——————
I’ll be blunt – geoengineers are polluters…on a massive scale.
All past attempts at weather modification worked so well, it’s time to take it up a level.
/not
Bring on WW III. I’m sure that a nuclear winter will take care of any global warming remaining.
/sarc
So what do they do with the salt?
“A lot of people, from across the academy, are getting interested in the Anthropocene – the idea that we may have entered a new geological era where human influence is a dominant feature, and what that means for various issues,”
What do these people think “Carbon” reduction is, if the ‘Anthropocene’ is unconscious geoengineering!
With a mathematical understanding of orders of magnitude and a good feel for the vastness of the oceans and atmosphere, I’m not too worried about any catastrophic anthropogenic manipulation of the global climate. (But then again, there’s that flap of a butterfly’s wing…) What I’m more worried about is the drain on the taxpayers money building all these useless geoengineering gadgets.
Dear God in Heaven.
And all clouds are going to do is reflect sunshine eh? You moron.
Now they’ve done it. They made Pamela Gray say words. (;
Mark;
“Toads introduced in Australia to control sugar cane beetles …………but there is also no evidence that they have had any impact on the bugs they were meant to eradicate.”
Funny thing about that little “Geo-engineering” project. The toads are quite heavy and stay at ground level, and the beetles like to eat the fresh tender sugar cane at the top (8 feet up or so).
Doooh, who could have possibly known that………
Perhaps they needed the “extra long tongued toad” with the 3 meter long tongue, simply a slight specification error, that’s all. Next version of the project we will fix that little detail.
These “Geo-Engineering” people are NUTZ………
Cheers, Kevin
Can they outrun a typhoon/hurricane???
Alternatively, could these feed a typhoon/hurricane???
Expedite the end of the interglacial … yeahhhhhh … thaaaaat’s the ticket! Of course, even without overt efforts, Ma Nature will likely give us a good Age of Migrations. Ah … I get so warm and cuddly thinking about warring tribes with thermonuclear weapons.