Image: Wired

In a totally unexpected development, I spent most of the last week manically consuming information about sustainability. I’m hoping to apply this knowledge in some coordinated way in the future, but for now I just want to mention a fascinating and terrifying article that I came across a few days ago. It’s called “The Geoengineering Option” and is featured in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. Here’s a link, although only an extract is printed on the FA website. Here’s the summary they provide:

Global warming is accelerating, and although engineering the climate strikes most people as a bad idea, it is time to take it seriously.

Well, that might sound innocent enough, but, as I alluded before, this article freaked me right out. I actually think it’s of enormous importance in terms of framing the discussion on climate change and establishing just what the risks of inaction really are, so I’m going to make a synopsis of the article’s main points…

The basic premise is that the challenges of establishing a coordinated global policy on limiting carbon emissions are so great that we have to begin assuming that some sort of major eco-catastrophe is inevitable.

Eliminating all the risks of climate change is impossible because carbon dioxide emissions, the chief human contribution to global warming, are unlike conventional air pollutants, which stay in the atmosphere for only hours or days. Once carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, much of it remains for over a hundred years. Emissions from anywhere on the planet contribute to the global problem, and once headed in the wrong direction, the climate system is slow to respond to attempts at reversal. As with a bathtub that has a large faucet and a small drain, the only practical way to lower the level is by dramatically cutting the inflow. Holding global warming steady at its current rate would require a worldwide 60-80 percent cut in emissions, and it would still take decades for the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to stabilize.

This essentially means that we need to imagine environmental interventions that will slow global warming or limit its consequences (rising sea levels, increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, etc.)

These strategies, often called “geoengineering” envision deploying systems on a planetary scale, such as launching reflective particles into the atmosphere or positioning sunshades to cool the earth.

Ok. You see where this is going. Sci-fi shit. Here’s the science:

The earth’s climate is largely driven by the fine balance between the light energy with which the sun bathes the earth and the heat that the earth radiates back to space. On average, about 70 percent of the earth’s incoming sunlight is absorbed by the atmosphere and the planet’s surface; the remainder is reflected back into space. Increasing the reflectivity of the planet (known as the albedo) by about one percentage point would have an effect on the climate system large enough to offset the gross increase in warming that is likely over the next century as a result of a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The piece explains later that volcanic eruptions demonstrate how by adjusting the chemical composition in the atmosphere we could shave off that crucial 1 percentage point and possibly offset the effects of global warming.

When Mount Pinatubo, in the Philipines, erupted in 1991, it ejected plumes of sulfate and other fine particles into the atmosphere, which reflected a bit more sunlight and cooled the planet about 0.5 degrees Celsius over the course of the year.

Apparently, poposals for floating man-made volcanoes have been on the drawing board for years already…

Image: New York Times

Bit that’s just one of a suite of possible God play exercises.

Other schemes include seeding bright reflective clouds by blowing seawater or other substances into the lower atmosphere… Substantial reductions of global warming are also possible to achieve by converting dark places that absorb lots of sunlight to lighter shades – for example, by replacing dark forests with more reflective grasslands. (Engineered planets might be designed for the task.)

More ambitious projects could include launching a huge cloud of thin refracting discs into a special space orbit that parks the discs between the sun and the earth in order to bend just a bit of sunlight away before it hits the planet.

As I person with deep sci-fi nerd tendencies, there’s something exciting about the idea of an epic scientific effort like this, a global megaproject that could unite the world’s scientists in a way that the space race (or pursuit of the A-Bomb) didn’t.

But assuming a massive ‘we are the world’ type of collaboration is not a good way to begin formulating a doomsday strategy, and the article goes on to explain what the more likely situation will be.

Actually raising the shield would be a political choice. One nation’s emergency can be another’s opportunity, and it is unlikely that all countries will have similar assessments of how to balance the ills of unchecked climate change with the risk that geoengineering could do more harm than good.

Then it starts getting a bit scarier.

A geoengineering system would require frequent maintenance, since most particles lofted into the stratosphere would disappear in a year or two … Once a geoengineering project were under way, there would be strong incentives to continue it, since failure to keep the shield in place could allow particularly harmful changes in the earth’s climate, such as warming so speedy that ecosystems would collapse because they had no time to adjust.

And, to make matters worse (or better?), because “there is general agreement that the strategies are cheap,” experimenting with the climate wouldn’t require the massive investment or expertise of the engineering megaprojects of yesteryear. This sets up the possibility of multiple competing strategies being deployed at the same time.

Image: Lightwatcher.com

Geoengineering is an option at the disposal of any reasonably advanced nation… A single country could deploy geoengineering systems from its own territory without consulting the rest of the planet. Geoengineers keen to alter their own country’s climate might not assess or even care about the dangers their actions could create for climates, ecosystems, and economies elsewhere. A unilateral geoengineering project could impose costs on other countries, such as changes in precipitation and river flows or adverse impacts on agriculture, marine fishing, and tourism.

And even if through the current or future international organizations and regulatory mechanisms we could prevent countries from acting unilaterally, there still remains the possibility of private-sector involvement in geoengineering.

Although governments are the most likely actors some geoengineering options are cheap enough to be deployed by wealthy and capable individuals or corporations … Already, private companies have been running experiments on ocean fertilization in the hope of sequestering carbon dioxide and earning credits that they could trade in carbon markets.

The rest of the piece is primarily a response to the potential dangers of this scenario and a call for scientists to take the threat seriously, before it’s too late.

At some point in the near future, it is conceivable that a nation that has not done enough to confront climate change will conclude that global warming has become so harmful to its interests that it should unilaterally engage in geoengineering. Although it is hardly wise to mess with a poorly understood global climate system using instruments whose effects are also unknown, politicians must take geoengineering seriously because it is cheap, easy, and takes only one government with sufficient hubris or desperation to set it in motion.

And, although the topic of geoengineering is considered politically radioactive - because most people see it as a defeatist approach to controlling climate change that will let producers off the hook - the authors end the piece by announcing, “It is time for geoengineering to come out of the closet” so that the proper institutions and procesess can be put in place to oversee its development.

Eventually, a dedicated international entity overseen by the leading academies, provided with a large budget, and suffused with the norms of transparency and peer review is necessary…

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