geoengineering

The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World

by Oliver Morton  · 26 Sep 2015  · 469pp  · 142,230 words

earth system or might seek to have in the future.” —Tim Kruger, University of Oxford THE PLANET REMADE Oliver Morton The Planet Remade How Geoengineering Could Change the World PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford Published in the United States and Canada in 2016 by Princeton University Press, 41 William

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Two: Substances 7 Nitrogen 175 The Making of the Population Bomb 184 Defusing the Population Bomb 189 Far from Fixed 195 How to Spot a Geoengineer 201 8 Carbon Past, Carbon Present 209 The Anthropocene 219 The Greening Planet 229 9 Carbon Present, Carbon Future 243 Ocean Anaemia 251 Cultivating

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wherewithal to commission studies on subjects they are interested in from commercial aircraft makers. But Keith, probably the single most influential researcher in the climate geoengineering field, is not a typical professor. Among other things, he and his friend Ken Caldeira, an earthsystem scientist at the Carnegie Institute, have for

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broad-ranging and politically engaged climate modeller called Stephen Schneider. Schneider had a taste for things that would provoke debate; he engaged with ideas about geoengineering more than any other leading climate scientist of his generation. While Marchetti imagined ocean-floor lakes of carbon dioxide, Freeman Dyson, a mathematical physicist with

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, suggested that, if the world needed cooling, aircraft burning sulphur-enriched fuel might be sufficient to the need. By the 1980s Marchetti’s term ‘geoengineering’ had come to encompass all such technological schemes to counteract human intensification of the greenhouse effect, whatever specific technology they might employ. When, in 1988

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made the cover of the prestigious journal Nature in 1992 – but from 1991 to 2001 it published not a single scientific article mentioning climate geoengineering. What distinguished geoengineering from those other ideas was that it had to do with something that actually mattered. There were no asteroids on impact courses that the

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increasing number of conferences and conference sessions devoted to the topic. Reports on the subject – including the most influential one, the Royal Society’s 2009 ‘Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty’ – would typically have Keith, Caldeira and some other members of the clique among their authors. The clique was

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GeoMIP, was and is resolutely sceptical about the idea that stratospheric veils are a promising intervention. His most widely read article on climate geoengineering is ‘Twenty Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea’. Clive Hamilton, a philosopher and public intellectual from Australia whom I first met at the Copenhagen conference,

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occasional flashes of genuine rancour. The constituency for debate has expanded steadily since the early days of the geoclique; the first international academic conference on geoengineering research, held in Berlin in the summer of 2014, attracted about four hundred.* GeoMIP has brought in a number of early-career natural scientists.

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Germany, which has a number of well-funded interdisciplinary projects looking at the natural science, social science and policy implications of various approaches to climate geoengineering. Germany is also home to the world’s most ambitious strategy for moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy, the Energiewende. Even if

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obstacles may prove insurmountable, what risks unacceptable, and how research can be governed responsibly. Such expansion would be a fine consequence of bringing discussion of geoengineering into the mainstream of climate politics. It is not the only outcome imaginable, though. There is, as always, the fear of the superfreak pivot –

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the title of a conference. When Caldeira, one of the organizers, heard of their concerns, he responded in partial jest that they should just replace ‘geoengineering’ with the dreariest management-speak circumlocution they could come up with – ‘something like “solar-radiation management”’. The term stuck and, abbreviated by the initials

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the mechanisms at work within clouds. This, their proponents hope, could win them support from a broader community of scientists than just those interested in geoengineering – as happened with iron-fertilization experiments, and could happen with the experiments in the stratosphere that David Keith and others plan to propose. Experiments

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aimed at understanding earthsystem processes as well as possible geoengineering approaches seem much more likely to be acceptable to scientists – and to civil-society organizations – than those geared towards simply looking at the feasibility

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willingness of General Pete Worden, the begetter of the Clementine mission and until recently the head of NASAs Ames Research Center, to host meetings on geoengineering, there has been little close involvement. But the deep links between the military, weather modification, climate control and nuclear-power Prometheanism are undoubtedly worth

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of the planet too.* There are, though, a few possibilities for weaponization that should at least be mentioned. One is sometimes called ‘counter-geoengineering’. If a strong solar geoengineering programme were enacted unilaterally, it would be possible for other powers to counteract its effects by temporarily strengthening the greenhouse effect. Difluoromethane is

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current asteroid-diversion technologies, a damaging asteroid strike would, in many parts of the world, be blamed on America. * A third option – if they geoengineer, you should geoengineer even more – is explored in a remarkable 1947 novelette by Gerald Heard, a friend of Aldous Huxley, whom we encountered championing the sublime power

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response to climate change. And it seems to me that the possibility of linkage between mitigation and veilmaking strengthens the case for such an approach. Geoengineering has attributes that inadvertent climate change lacks, and they make coming to agreements about who should do what easier. International agreements on climate change

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effects. There are clear responsibilities and prompt effects, and that would seem to make the problem inherently more tractable. Developing a governance approach to climate geoengineering that yokes these characteristics to the harder question of governing mitigation could give you a more workable system. A certainty? Of course not; as

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) Orion Press Badash, Lawrence (2009) A Nuclear Winter’s Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s MIT Press Bala, Govindasamy and Caldeira, Ken (2000) ‘Geoengineering Earth’s Radiation Balance to Mitigate CO2–Induced Climate Change’ Geophysical Research Letters, 27 2141–2144 Bala, Govindasamy et al. (2007) ‘Combined Climate and Carbon

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Land Use on Climate: Model Simulations of Radiative Forcing and Large-Scale Temperature Change’ Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 142 216–233 Bipartisan Policy Center (2011) Geoengineering: A National Strategic Plan for Research on the Potential Effectiveness, Feasibility, and Consequences of Climate Remediation Technologies Blackbourn, David (2006) The Conquest of Nature:

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Jennifer A., Davis, Steven J., and Lobell, David B. (2010) ‘Greenhouse Gas Mitigation by Agricultural Intensification’ PNAS 107 12052–12057 Cairns, Rose C. (2014a) ‘Climate Geoengineering: Issues of Path-Dependence and Socio-Technical Lock-In’ WIREs Climate Change doi: 10.1002/wcc.296 Cairns, Rose C. (2014b) ‘Climates of Suspicion: “Chemtrail

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the Nineteenth Century MIT Press Crook, Julia, Jackson, Lawrence and Forster, Piers (2015) ‘A Comparison of Temperature and Precipitation Responses to Different Earth Radiation Management Geoengineering Schemes’ Journal of Geophysical Research (in press) Crookes, William (1898) ‘Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science’ Chemical News 78 125

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Forest to the Mount Pinatubo Eruption: Enhanced Photosynthesis’ Science 28 2035–2038 Hale, Benjamin (2012) ‘The World that Would Have Been: Moral Hazard Arguments Against Geoengineering’ in Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management ed Christopher J. Preston, Lexington Books Hamblin, Jacob Darwin (2012) Arming Mother Nature: The

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Fetish: Marx, Latour, and the Cultural Foundations of Capitalism’ Theory, Culture and Society doi: 10.1177/0263276413488960 Horton, Joshua (2015) ‘The Emergency Framing of Solar Geoengineering: Time for a Different Approach’ Anthropocene Review (in press) House, Joanna I., Prentice, I. Colin and Lequéré, Corinne (2002) ‘Maximum Impacts of Future Reforestation

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‘Human Effects on the Global Atmosphere’ Annual Review of Physical Chemistry 35 481–505 Jones, Andy, Haywood, Jim and Boucher, Olivier (2009) ‘Climate Impacts of Geoengineering Maritime Stratocumulus Clouds’ Journal of Geophysical Research doi: 10.1029/2008JD011450 Jones, Andy et al. (2013) ‘The Impact of Abrupt Suspension of Solar Radiation Management

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(Termination Effect) in Experiment G2 of the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP)’ Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres doi: 10.1002/jgrd.50762 Keeling, Charles D. (1998) ‘Rewards and Penalties of Monitoring the

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sons Klein, Naomi (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate Simon & Schuster (2014) Kravitz, Ben et al. (2013) ‘Climate Model Response from the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP)’ Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres doi: 10.1002/jgrd.50646 Kravitz, Ben et al. (2014) ‘A Multi-Model Assessment of Regional

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Hot Air UIT – See also the excellent associated website http://www.withouthotair.com/ MacMartin, Douglas G. et al. (2012) ‘Management of Trade-Offs in Geoengineering Through Optimal Choice of Non-Uniform Radiative Forcing’ Nature Climate Change doi: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1722 Maddox, John (1972) The Doomsday Syndrome: an Attack on Pessimism

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(documentary film, directed by Paul King), BBC Mazower, Mark (2012) Governing the World: The History of an Idea Allen Lane McClellan, Justin et al. (2010) Geoengineering Cost Analysis (AR10–182) Aurora Flight Sciences McCormick, M. Patrick, Thomason, Larry W. and Trepte, Charles R. (1995) ‘Atmospheric Effects of the Mt Pinatubo

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The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy Princeton University Press Pongratz, Julia et al. (2012) ‘Crop Yields in a Geoengineered Climate’ Nature Climate Change, doi: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1373 Poole, Robert (2010) Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth Yale University Press President’s Science Advisory

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‘Regional Response to Solar-Radiation Management’ Nature Geoscience doi: 10.1038/NGEO0915 Ridgwell, Andy et al. (2009) ‘Tackling Regional Climate Change by Leaf Albedo Bio-Geoengineering’ Current Biology 19 146–150 Robinson, Kim Stanley (1993) Red Mars Harper Voyager Robinson, Kim Stanley (1994) Green Mars Harper Voyager Robinson, Kim Stanley (1996

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Fall Meeting poster U43A-0043 Rosenfeld, Daniel et al. (2008) ‘Flood or Drought: How Do Aerosols Affect Precipitation’ Science 321 1309–1313 Royal Society (2009) Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty Ruddiman, William (2005) Plows, Plagues and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate Princeton University Press Ruddiman, William (2013

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paper Vernadsky, Vladimir (1989) The Biosphere (revised and annotated by Mark McMenamin, translated by David Langmuir) Copernicus Victor, David G. (2008) ‘On the Regulation of Geoengineering’ Oxford Review of Economic Policy 24 322–326 Victor, David G. (2011) Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet Cambridge University

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), Harvard University Press – further expanded online at http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm Weisenstein, Debra K. and Keith, David W. (2015) ‘Solar Geoengineering Using Solid Aerosol in the Stratosphere’ Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 15 1179–1185 Weitzman, Martin L. (2012) ‘A Voting Architecture for the Governance of

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Free-Driver Externalities, with Application to Geoengineering’ NBER Working Paper 18622 Wells, Herbert George (1898) The War of the Worlds Heinemann Wells, Herbert George (1914) The World Set Free: A Story

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of Mankind Macmillan Westbroek, Peter (1992) Life as a Geological Force: Dynamics of the Earth W.W. Norton Wigley, Tom (2006) ‘A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization’ Science 314 452–454 Wilcox, Jennifer (2012) Carbon Capture, Springer Williams, Rosalind (2013) The Triumph of Human Empire: Verne, Morris

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and Stevenson at the End of the World University of Chicago Press Williamson, Phillip et al. (2012) ‘Ocean Fertilization for Geoengineering: A Review of Effectiveness, Environmental Impacts and Emerging Governance’ Process Safety and Environmental Protection 90 475–488 Winebrake, James J. et al. (2009) ‘Mitigating

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– for example, Ken Caldeira, David Keith and Alan Robock – maintain full online archives of their publications. Some other useful websites include: The Oxford Geoengineering Governance Program – http://www.geoengineering-governance-research.org/cgg-working-papers.php Climate Engineering, hosted by the Kiel Earth Institute – http://www.climate-engineering.eu/home-35.html

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veilmaking afforestation see trees Africa: aerosols over, 297; and colonialism, 178; early humans in, 230; and global warming, 116; Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, 344–5; potential geoengineering effects, 121–2, 371; prehistoric climate, 241–2; see also Sahara Desert; Sahel; South Africa agreements see air pollution: agreements; climate negotiations and agreements; nuclear

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exajoules, definition, 211 Exeter, University of, 240 exosphere, 41 experiment: earthsystem as subject of, 42–44, 91, 137, 253–54, 340; case for in geoengineering research, 169, 288 explosives, 189–90, 193 extinctions, 25, 321–2, 328 extraterrestrials, 324 farming see agriculture and farming fertilizers, synthetic: environmental problems caused by

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William, 192 GCMs, 314, 317 Gellner, Ernest, 211 General Electric research laboratory, 268–70 genetic modification, 289–90 ‘geoclique’, 157–8, 163, 286 geoengineering, climate see climate geoengineering geology, 40, 321–2 GeoMIP, 113–20, 122, 158 George, Russ, 254–5, 256 George C. Marshall Institute, 154 germ theory of disease,

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129 Germany: explosives industry, 190; geoengineering research, 159; nuclear industry, 17, 358; renewable energy (Energiewende), 19, 20, 106, 159; scientific research, 182 Gernsback, Hugo, 243 glaciers and ice: Arctic melting,

Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth

by Mark Hertsgaard  · 15 Jan 2011  · 326pp  · 48,727 words

annual global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Fourth Assessment Report. Other methods for removing CO2 or nullifying its effect—often referred to as geoengineering—include deploying mirrors in space to reflect some of the sun's rays away from Earth. But such schemes are highly controversial; some scientists warn

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that humans don't know enough about the earth's systems to undertake geoengineering safely—they might well make a bad situation worse. "The geoengineering approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood

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of serious side effects," John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, said in April 2009. For example, some geoengineering proponents have suggested pumping large amounts of sulfur particles into the stratosphere, a higher layer of the atmosphere, just as volcanic eruptions do. Invisibly small

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out, Pinatubo's eruption also appears to have substantially reduced rainfall, suggesting that "major adverse effects, including drought, could arise from geoengineering solutions." White roofs are a better idea. Dubbed "geoengineering-lite" by Joseph Romm, a former U.S. assistant secretary of energy who blogs at climateprogress.org, the idea is to

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the same about nuclear power and carbon capture-and-storage, as well as many of the ideas for reversing global warming that are classified as geoengineering. These are controversial technologies, and I know that some have very significant drawbacks. However, we no longer have easy choices in the climate fight. My

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in the atmosphere. Temperatures can stop climbing only if the absolute amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere declines. That is the goal of many geoengineering schemes: to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or ocean. But a moment's thought reveals that agriculture offers the most direct means to this

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emissions magically halted overnight. Keeping the eventual increase within 2°C would therefore require bringing down atmospheric concentrations fast. Schellnhuber did not favor relying on geoengineering to solve this problem; like many scientists, he believed it would "only make things worse." Right or wrong, that assumption meant that global greenhouse gas

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by the Worldwatch Institute (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009). The most up-to-date discussion of geoengineering for the non-specialist reader is supplied by Jeff Goodell in How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). John Holdren

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.eea.europa.eu/publications/technical_report_2004_1/; and a Reuters dispatch on September 24, 2009, reporting the G20 decision. The Royal Society's report, Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty, is available at http://royalsociety.org/geoengineeringclimate/. The features of cap-and-dividend are explained at http://www.capanddividend

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

by Elizabeth Kolbert  · 15 Mar 2021  · 221pp  · 59,755 words

by his kids. A chemist by training, Keutsch is one of the leading scientists with Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, an effort funded, in part, by Bill Gates. The premise behind solar geoengineering—or, as it’s sometimes more soothingly called, “solar radiation management”—is that if volcanoes can cool the

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stop rising—or at least not rise as much—and disaster will be averted. Even in an age of electrified rivers and redesigned rodents, solar geoengineering is out there. It has been described as “dangerous beyond belief,” “a broad highway to hell,” “unimaginably drastic,” and also as “inevitable.” “I thought the

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if there’s pressure from the public to do something fast, my concern is that there will be no tools at hand other than stratospheric geoengineering. And if we start doing research at that point, I am concerned it’s too late, because with stratospheric

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geoengineering, you’re interfering with a highly complex system. I will add that there are a number of people who do not agree with this. “When

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I started this, I was perhaps, oddly, not as worried about it,” he observed a few minutes later. “Because the idea that geoengineering would actually happen seemed quite remote. But, over the years, as I see our lack of action on climate, I sometimes get quite anxious that

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about eleven miles above the surface of the earth, and at the poles it sits much lower—about six miles above the surface. From a geoengineering point of view, what’s key about the stratosphere is that it’s stable—much more stable than the troposphere—and also reasonably accessible. Commercial

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in the tropics will tend to drift toward the poles and then, after a few years, drop back to earth. Since the point of solar geoengineering is to reduce the amount of energy reaching the earth, any sort of reflective particle, in principle at least, would do. “The best possible material

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to maintain current climatic conditions,” Budyko wrote. * * * — David Keith, a professor of applied physics at Harvard, has been described as “perhaps the foremost proponent of geoengineering,” a characterization that he bristles at. “I’m a proponent of reality,” he wrote in a letter to the editor of The New York Times

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in 2015. Keith founded the university’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program in 2017, and he regularly receives hate mail. Twice he’s gotten death threats worrisome enough to report to the police. His office

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is just down the hall from Keutsch’s, in a building known as the Link. “Solar geoengineering is not a thing you can study in the abstract,” he told me when I went to speak to him a few days after I

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. “It depends on human choices about how we use it. So whenever anybody makes a statement that solar geoengineering will imperil millions or save the world or whatever, you should always ask, ‘What solar geoengineering? Done what way?’ ” Keith is tall and angular, with a Lincoln-esque beard. An avid mountaineer, he

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Barrier Reef. The best way forward, he argues, is to do everything: cut emissions, work on carbon removal, and look a lot more seriously at geoengineering. On the basis of computer modeling, he’s proposed that the safest option would be to put up enough aerosols to cut warming in half

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made worse off. That result, I think, is really stunning.” I asked Keith about what is sometimes called the “moral hazard” problem. If people think geoengineering is going to avert the worst effects of climate change, won’t that reduce their motivation to cut emissions? He agreed this was a worry

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. But he said the opposite was also possible: “opening up the range of options” could inspire greater action. Solar geoengineering could potentially be used to “cut the top off” the risks of climate change. “Moving away from the kind of monomania that says, ‘The only

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’s kind of working. “To be clear, I’m not saying that modifications mostly do work. I’m saying it’s a wide, undefined set.” * * * — Geoengineering is not something you can do with a mail-order kit in your kitchen. Still, as world-altering projects go, it looks to be surprisingly

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and the money to launch such a program,” the researchers—Wake Smith, a lecturer at Yale, and Gernot Wagner, a professor at NYU—observed. Solar geoengineering would not just be cheap, relatively speaking; it would also be speedy. Pretty much as soon as the fleet of SAILs went into operation, cooling

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-rate solution, that’s primarily because it isn’t a solution. What the technology addresses are warming’s symptoms, not its cause. For this reason, geoengineering has been compared to treating a heroin habit with methadone, though perhaps a more apt comparison would be to treating a heroin habit with amphetamines

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warming, entailing more flights.) The more particles injected into the stratosphere, the greater the chance of weird side effects. Researchers who looked into using solar geoengineering to offset carbon dioxide levels of five hundred and sixty parts per million—levels that could easily be reached later this century—determined it would

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after large volcanic eruptions.” Alan Robock is a climate scientist at Rutgers and one of the leaders of the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project, or GeoMIP. Robock maintains a list of concerns about geoengineering; the latest version has more than two dozen entries. Number 1 is the possibility that it could disrupt rainfall

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direction and sail back through the plume of particles, so that their behavior could be monitored. The goal of the experiment is not to test geoengineering per se—a couple of pounds of calcium carbonate or sulfur dioxide is nowhere near enough to make an observable difference to the climate. Nonetheless

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gondola. “But the actual physical risk, just to be clear, is that something falls apart and falls on somebody’s head.” So far, Harvard’s geoengineering research program is the world’s best-financed, with funding of almost $20 million. But there are several other research groups in the United States

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.” * * * — Dan Schrag is the director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment and a MacArthur “genius” grant winner. He helped set up Harvard’s geoengineering program and sits on its advisory board. “Some have expressed consternation at the prospect of engineering the climate for the entire planet,” he has written

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beyond the official threshold of disaster, it’s heading into territory that’s probably best described as unthinkable.) “The idea that somehow research on solar geoengineering is going to open Pandora’s box, I think that’s just unbelievably naïve,” Schrag said. “Do you really believe that the U.S. military

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is not a new idea, and it’s not a secret. “People have to get their heads away from thinking about whether they like solar geoengineering or not, whether they think it should be done or not. They have to understand that we don’t get to decide. The United States

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Macfarlane, a professor at George Washington University and a former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When he told her we were discussing geoengineering, she made a thumbs-down gesture. “It’s the unintended consequences,” she said. “You think you’re doing the right thing. From what you know

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do it and it completely backfires and something else happens.” “The real world of climate change is that we’re up against it,” Schrag responded. “Geoengineering is not something to do lightly. The reason we’re thinking about it is because the real world has dealt us a shitty hand.” “We

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in this context that interventions like assisted evolution and gene drives and digging millions of trenches to bury billions of trees have to be assessed. Geoengineering may be “entirely crazy and quite disconcerting,” but if it could slow the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or take some of “the pain

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have to be considered? Andy Parker is the project director for the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, which works to expand the “global conversation” around geoengineering. His preferred drug analogy for the technology is chemotherapy. No one in his right mind would undergo chemotherapy were better options available. “We live in

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to COVID. I want to thank them all for taking the time to walk me through the many complexities—both technical and ethical—of solar geoengineering. Thanks to Allison Macfarlane, who, in a very real sense, walked onto these pages, and also to Lizzie Burns, Zhen Dai, Sir David King, Andy

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”: This assessment comes from Tim Flannery, cited in Mark White, “The Crazy Climate Technofix,” SBS (May 27, 2016), sbs.com.au/topics/science/earth/feature/geoengineering-the-crazy-climate-technofix. “unimaginably drastic”: Holly Jean Buck, After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (London: Verso, 2019), 3. and also as “inevitable”: Dave Levitan

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, “Geoengineering Is Inevitable,” Gizmodo (Oct. 9, 2018), earther.gizmodo.com/geoengineering-is-inevitable-1829623031. a brief downturn in global temperatures: “Global Effects of Mount Pinatubo,” NASA Earth Observatory (June 15, 2001), earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1510/

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: Peace Publishers, 1962), 61–63. “New projects for transforming nature”: Rusin and Flit, Man Versus Climate, 174. Public concern about the environment: David W. Keith, “Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 25 (2000), 245–284. “rockets and different types of missiles”: Mikhail Budyko, Climatic

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Changes, American Geophysical Union, trans. (Baltimore: Waverly, 1977), 241. “climate modification will become necessary”: Budyko, Climatic Changes, 236. “foremost proponent of geoengineering”: Joe Nocera, “Chemo for the Planet,” The New York Times (May 19, 2015), A25. “I’m a proponent of reality”: David Keith, Letter to the

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and Wagner, “Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Tactics and Costs.” determined it would change the appearance of the sky: Ben Kravitz, Douglas G. MacMartin, and Ken Caldeira, “Geoengineering: Whiter Skies?” Geophysical Research Letters, 39 (2012), doi.org/10.1029/2012GL051652. the latest version has more than two dozen entries: Alan Robock, “Benefits and

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Risks of Stratospheric Solar Radiation Management for Climate Intervention (Geoengineering),” The Bridge (Spring 2020), 59–67. “Ironically, such engineering efforts”: Dan Schrag, “Geobiology of the Anthropocene,” in Fundamentals of Geobiology, Andrew H. Knoll, Donald E

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.com/storm-brewing-over-giant-6-mile-sea-wall-to-defend-new-york-from-future-floods. “We understand the hesitancy”: John C. Moore et al., “Geoengineer Polar Glaciers to Slow Sea-Level Rise,” Nature, 555 (2018), 303–305. “We live in a world”: Andy Parker is quoted in Brian Kahn, “No

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein  · 15 Sep 2014  · 829pp  · 229,566 words

research, Kahan and others argue, environmentalists should sell climate action by playing up concerns about national security and emphasizing responses such as nuclear power and “geoengineering”—global-scale technological interventions that would attempt to reverse rapid warming by, for instance, blocking a portion of the sun’s rays, or by “

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this approach is that rather than challenging the warped values fueling both disaster denialism and disaster capitalism, it actively reinforces those values. Nuclear power and geoengineering are not solutions to the ecological crisis; they are a doubling down on exactly the kind of reckless, short-term thinking that got us

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quo extended indefinitely. It is climate-change-fueled disaster capitalism—profiteering disguised as emission reduction, privatized hyper-militarized borders, and, quite possibly, high-risk geoengineering when things spiral out of control. So how realistic is it to imagine that the climate crisis could be a political game changer, a unifier

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1971. “I was a criminal,” Branson writes of his jailhouse revelation in his autobiography. 8 * * * DIMMING THE SUN The Solution to Pollution Is . . . Pollution? “Geoengineering holds forth the promise of addressing global warming concerns for just a few billion dollars a year.” —Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S

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prepare a technological Plan B. In a report published in 2009, it called upon the British government to devote significant resources to researching which geoengineering methods might prove most effective. Two years later it declared that planetary-scale engineering interventions that would block a portion of the sun’s rays

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reducing global temperatures quickly in the event of a climate emergency.”3 The retreat in Buckinghamshire has a relatively narrow focus: How should research into geoengineering, as well as eventual deployment, be governed? What rules should researchers follow? What bodies, if any, will regulate these experiments? National governments? The United

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Nations? What constitutes “good governance” of geoengineering? To answer these questions and others, the society has teamed up with two cosponsors for the retreat: the World Academy of Sciences based in Italy

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invited to the wood-paneled library. There, about thirty scientists, lawyers, environmentalists, and policy wonks gather for the opening “technical briefing” on the different geoengineering schemes under consideration. A Royal Society scientist takes us through a slide show that includes “fertilizing” oceans with iron to pull carbon out of the

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injecting particles into the atmosphere in order to reflect more sunlight back to space, thereby reducing the amount of heat that reaches the earth. In geoengineering lingo, this is known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM)—since these methods would be attempting to literally “manage” the amount of sunlight that reaches

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available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects,” he wrote.11 Crutzen created some space for preliminary research to take place, but geoengineering’s real breakthrough came after the Copenhagen summit flopped in 2009, the same year that climate legislation tanked in the U.S. Senate. Soaring

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one sentence pretty much sums up the tone of grim resignation that has characterized the steady stream of conferences and government reports that have inched geoengineering into the political mainstream. This gathering at Chicheley Hall is another milestone in this gradual process of normalization. Rather than debate whether or not

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not just of inevitability but general banality, the organizers have even given this process a clunky acronym: SRMGI, the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative. Geoengineering debate generally takes place within a remarkably small and incestuous world, with the same group of scientists, inventors, and funders promoting each other’s work

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as legal ethicists, experts in international treaties and conventions, and staffers from several green NGOs, including Greenpeace and WWF-UK (Greenpeace does not support geoengineering, but WWF-UK has come out in cautious support of “research into geo-engineering approaches in order to find out what is possible”).19 The

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with some measure of regulation? I spend the morning eavesdropping on the different breakouts and before long a pattern emerges. The scientists already engaged in geoengineering research tend to categorize their positions somewhere between “regulate” and “promote,” while most everyone else leans toward “prohibit” and “regulate.” Several of the participants

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more.III27 As Martin Bunzl, a Rutgers philosopher and climate change expert, points out, these facts alone present an enormous, perhaps insurmountable ethical problem for geoengineering. In medicine, he writes, “You can test a vaccine on one person, putting that person at risk, without putting everyone else at risk.” But

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States, say, or the precise extent to which drought will impact crop production in India or Australia. This uncertainty has allowed some would-be geoengineers to scoff at findings that make SRM look like a potential humanitarian disaster, insisting that regional climate models are inherently unreliable, while simultaneously pointing to

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preparing food aid immediately, “allowing society time to plan for and remediate the consequences.”39 So how, given all this readily available evidence, could geoengineering boosters invoke the historical record for “proof of harmlessness”? The truth is the mirror opposite: of all the extreme events the planet periodically lobs our

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would almost surely be in an atmosphere of collective panic with scarce time for calm deliberation. Its defenders readily concede as much. Bill Gates describes geoengineering as “just an insurance policy,” something to have “in the back pocket in case things happen faster.” Nathan Myhrvold likens SRM to “having fire

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of Sciences copublished a controversial report titled Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming. To the consternation of many climate scientists, the document included a series of geoengineering options, some of them rather outlandish, from sending fifty thousand mirrors into earth’s orbit to putting “billions of aluminized, hydrogen-filled balloons in

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influence the environment.”50 And notably, it was BP’s chief scientist, Steven Koonin, who convened one of the first formal scientific gatherings on geoengineering back in 2008. The gathering produced a report outlining a decade-long research project into climate modification, with a particular focus on Solar Radiation Management

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inconvenient opinions about how they should be used and who should benefit from their development. This lethal amensia is once again rearing its head in geoengineering discussions like the one at Chicheley Hall. It is awfully reassuring to imagine that a technological intervention could save Arctic ice from melting but,

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official sessions are exempt from these rules.) II. It’s particularly troubling that within the small group of scientists, engineers, and inventors who dominate the geoengineering debate, there have been a disproportionate share of big public errors in the past. Take, for instance, Lowell Wood, co-creator of Myhrvold’s

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“Star Wars” missile defense program, widely discredited as expensive and reckless. III. That said, we would be wise to anticipate even small amounts of geoengineering unleashing a new age of weather-related geopolitical recrimination, paranoia, and possibly retaliation, with every future natural disaster being blamed—rightly or wrongly—on the

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, my longtime research assistant, regrettably had to leave this project in 2012. Before she did, she made enormous contributions, particularly to the sections on geoengineering, messianic billionaires, and climate debt. She also helped train Rajiv and Alexandra. She is one of the great collaborators of my career and I miss

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Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1903), 70. 35. Clive Hamilton, “The Ethical Foundations of Climate Engineering,” in Climate Change Geoengineering: Philosophical Perspectives, Legal Issues, and Governance Frameworks, ed. Wil C. G. Burns and Andrew L. Strauss (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 58. 36.

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Human Events, June 3, 2008. 2. William James, The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans Green, 1907), 54. 3. “Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty,” Royal Society, September 2009, p. 62; “Solar Radiation Management: the Governance of Research,” Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, convened

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by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Royal Society, and TWAS, 2011, p. 11. 4. Environmental Defense Fund, “Geoengineering: A ‘Cure’ Worse Than the Disease?” Solutions 41 (Spring 2010): 10–11. 5. EXPERIMENTS: Patrick Martin et al., “Iron Fertilization Enhanced Net Community Production

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2013): 871–881; “The Haida Salmon Restoration Project: The Story So Far,” Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, September 2012; PEER-REVIEWED PAPERS: GeoLibrary, Oxford Geoengineering Programme, http://www.geoengineer ing.ox.ac.uk; SHIPS AND PLANES: John Latham et al., “Marine Cloud Brightening,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 370 (2012): 4247

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HOSES: David Rotman, “A Cheap and Easy Plan to Stop Global Warming,” MIT Technology Review, February 8, 2013; Daniel Cressey, “Cancelled Project Spurs Debate over Geoengineering Patents,” Nature 485 (2012): 429. 6. P. J. Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?” Climatic Change

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GPS, CNN, December 20, 2009. 14. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, SuperFreakonomics (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 194. 15. “A Future Tense Event: Geoengineering,” New America Foundation, http://www.newamerica.net. 16. Eli Kintisch, Hack the Planet: Science’s Best Hope—or Worst Nightmare—for Averting Climate Catastrophe (Hoboken

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(Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005), 54. 25. Petra Tschakert, “Whose Hands Are Allowed at the Thermostat? Voices from Africa,” presentation at “The Ethics of Geoengineering: Investigating the Moral Challenges of Solar Radiation Management,” University of Montana, Missoula, October 18, 2010. 26. Alan Robock, Martin Bunzl, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy L

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American Association for the Advancement of Science, February 20, 2010; Fleming, Fixing the Sky, 2. 29. Robock, Oman, and Stenchikov, “Regional Climate Responses to Geoengineering with Tropical and Arctic SO2 Injections”; K. Niranjan Kumar et al., “On the Observed Variability of Monsoon Droughts over India,” Weather and Climate Extremes 1

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potentially harmful impacts on the global water cycle and regional precipitation patterns. Notable recent examples include: Simone Tilmes et al., “The Hydrological Impact of Geoengineering in the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP),” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 118 (2013): 11,036–11,058; Angus J. Ferraro, Eleanor J. Highwood, and Andrew

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J. Charlton-Perez, “Weakened Tropical Circulation and Reduced Precipitation in Response to Geoengineering,” Environmental Research Letters 9 (2014): 014001. The 2012 study is: H. Schmidt et al., “Solar Irradiance Reduction to Counteract Radiative Forcing from a Quadrupling of

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New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre, 2009, p. 38. 32. Ken Caldeira, “Can Solar Radiation Management Be Tested?” email to the Google Group listserv “Geoengineering,” September 27, 2010; Levitt and Dubner, SuperFreakonomics, 197. 33. Ibid., 176. 34. Personal interview with Aiguo Dai, June 6, 2012; Kevin E. Trenberth and

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Aiguo Dai, “Effects of Mount Pinatubo Volcanic Eruption on the Hydrological Cycle as an Analog of Geoengineering,” Geophysical Research Letters 34 (2007): L15702; “Climate Change and Variability in Southern Africa: Impacts and Adaptation Strategies in the Agricultural Sector,” United Nations Environment

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18, 1992. 35. Dai interview, June 6, 2012; Trenberth and Dai, “Effects of Mount Pinatubo Volcanic Eruption on the Hydrological Cycle as an Analog of Geoengineering.” 36. Volney’s full name was Constantin-François de Chasseboeuf, count de Volney. “WEAKER THAN NORMAL”: Personal interview with Alan Robock, October 19, 2010;

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(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 10, 54. 41. Trenberth and Dai, “Effects of Mount Pinatubo Volcanic Eruption on the Hydrological Cycle as an Analog of Geoengineering.” 42. Ed King, “Scientists Warn Earth Cooling Proposals Are No Climate ‘Silver Bullet,’ ” Responding to Climate Change, July 14, 2013; Haywood et al., “Asymmetric

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American Environmentalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 170–172; Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary (New York: Penguin, 2009). 60. Leonard David, “People to Become Martians This Century?” NBC News, June 25, 2007. 61. “Richard Branson on

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www.eia.gov. 63. Kenneth Brower, “The Danger of Cosmic Genius,” The Atlantic, October 27, 2010. 64. Christopher Borick and Barry Rabe, “Americans Cool on Geoengineering Approaches to Addressing Climate Change,” Brookings Institution, Issues in Governance Studies No. 46, May 2012, p. 3-4; Malcolm J. Wright, Damon A. H.

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peoples, 387, 388–99, 408 seen as politically toxic, 414 Climate Depot, 32, 45 Climategate, 41 climate justice, see climate debt climate manipulation, see geoengineering climate movement: coming of age of, 11–12 deregulated capitalism and, 20 economic justice and, see climate debt growing power and interconnectedness of, 451–52

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Royal Society conference on, 256–61, 263–67, 280–81, 284–85, 451 as shock doctrine, 276–78 see also Pinatubo Option; Solar Radiation Management “Geoengineering: The Horrifying Idea Whose Time Has Come” (forum), 263 geologists, economic, 46 Geophysical Research Letters, 329 George, Russ, 268 Georgia Institute of Technology, 432

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, Canada, 313 Montreal, Maine & Atlantic railroad, 333 Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion, 220 moose, disappearance of, 26–27 Morales, Evo, 180–81 moral hazard, geoengineering and, 261 moral imperative: in abolition movement, 462–63 in climate movement, 336, 386–87, 464 divestment movement and, 354–55 in social movements, 462

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/11, 6, 63 Nixon, Richard, 125 Nixon, Rob, 276 Nompraseurt, Torm, 321 nonbinding agreements, at Copenhagen, 12, 13–14, 150 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 362 geoengineering and, 264, 280 Norgaard, Kari, 462 Norse Energy Corporation USA, 365 North Africa, 274 North America, 182 emissions from, 40 program cuts in, 110 wealth

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

by Rowan Hooper  · 15 Jan 2020  · 285pp  · 86,858 words

cool the planet. That’s the idea, anyway, and it’s a seductive one for people looking for a technological fix for climate change. But geoengineering is an idea fraught with danger and uncertainty. When Krakatoa cooled the planet, it also skewed weather systems around the world. Southern California had a

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people adversely affected. Any budget will factor in these kinds of payments to the total cost. But we may need to try some kind of geoengineering scheme – or at least to prepare the way, to have the possibility of setting one in motion, if (or when) it is essential. In 2019

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, johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said that the climate emergency was so severe that we should consider geoengineering.2 It is in some sense already too late. A rise in sea level is already locked in, while the decline of many mountain glaciers

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emissions, they didn’t recommend reducing fossil fuel use. They instead suggested increasing the reflectivity of the Earth to offset the heating. In other words, geoengineering. The Convention on Biological Diversity defines this as ‘a deliberate intervention in the planetary environment of a nature and scale intended to counteract anthropogenic climate

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change and/or its impacts’. Now, we’re going to look at three different kinds of engineering solutions. First, ideas inspired by Krakatoa. ‘Solar geoengineering’ is the term given to proposals to screen out some of the sunlight reaching the surface of the planet. Some people call this solar radiation

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side effects might be. It’s promising, for sure, but we’re a long way from being confident in it. One major problem with solar geoengineering is that it will cool the tropics more than the poles, so it will be of limited help with curbing sea level rise.7 Second

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-natural way, which means growing plants for fuel and then catching and burying the carbon dioxide produced when the fuel is burned. As with solar geoengineering, we don’t yet know if this ‘negative emissions’ technology of carbon dioxide removal will work well enough at scale, or be cost-effective. However

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should acknowledge the extreme sensitivity around this topic, and particularly around solar radiation management. Most climate scientists shudder at the thought. One leading advocate of geoengineering angrily told me it was ‘illegitimate’ to spend my money on solar radiation management and that it would be the precise opposite of good governance

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. Even many of those who work on it say that the best use of geoengineering would be to find a way to avoid doing it and, failing that, we should use it only when it is tied to reductions in

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it to removing what we’ve already put into the atmosphere). As we’ll see, there is a lot of interest among billionaires in various geoengineering schemes, but something that affects the entire planet must be something regulated and governed democratically, and we can tie that sort of oversight into our

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spending. Critics say that proponents of geoengineering are enablers; that it will empower us to carry on burning fossil fuels and that it won’t force us to make the emissions cuts

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(CCS): people fear that the lure of this unproven technology will prevent us from making emissions reductions. Not that we’re making them, anyway. And geoengineering might instead encourage emissions cuts. ‘Maybe intervention would be positive,’ said Cecilia Bitz, a sea-ice physicist at the University of Washington, Seattle, ‘showing that

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we have the capacity to improve the environment.’ A study in 20158 found that just learning about geoengineering increased public concern around climate change. $ $ $ BEFORE WE LAUNCH INTO THE TECH, let’s be clear why it’s still essential to make emissions cuts

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will wipe out all our gains. We could face a sudden, dizzying and nightmarish jump in warming. If that happened, the pressure to attempt a geoengineering fix may be irresistible. It is essential we make plans so we can deal with any emergency with some degree of preparedness. But even without

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don’t properly understand the climate. So we will commit to invest in research to properly understand it. The Academy also doesn’t talk about geoengineering as one subject, splitting it into two in the same way we have and talking about reflecting sunlight, and removing carbon dioxide. $ $ $ THE MOST DRAMATIC

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FORMS of geoengineering are methods that attempt to change the reflectivity, or albedo, of the planet. The National Academy of Sciences prefers to talk about albedo modification rather

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in the air) block sunlight from reaching the ground. The most advanced plans to date are those devised by David Keith, of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program (Bill Gates is a backer). Keith’s group aims to release a plume of calcium carbonate particles – chalk dust, basically – some 20 kilometres

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when it died. The plan didn’t really work out. When news of his venture leaked, George was labelled an eco-terrorist and a rogue geoengineer; the New Yorker called him the world’s first ‘geovigilante’. Scientists have not been able to verify independently if his experiment worked or not, and

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it’s worth funding a proper research programme to find out, just as David Keith’s plans to make even a limited test of solar geoengineering should go ahead as soon as possible. There is an organisation, the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, that oversees this sort of thing. They have

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will probably be perceptibly whiter than now. If, and again it’s a huge if, the world decides that on balance the benefits of solar geoengineering outweigh the risks, we will still fully prepare for those risks. If we predict increased drought in some regions, or floods in others, as a

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research right away. And there are a couple of very real dangers to be aware of. The first is that a flood of money into geoengineering research could tilt the public and politicians into pushing for deployment, say of a solar veil, before we know what we’re doing. The second

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brake on carbon emissions we’re trying to make. Again: emissions cuts are essential and unavoidable. $ $ $ THERE ARE NUMEROUS OTHER PROPOSALS for different forms of geoengineering. A massive project, currently being examined, is the idea to stop the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica from collapsing. Thwaites is a brute, a glacier

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if anything went wrong; the problem is it would cost tens of trillions of dollars. So let’s just look at one other method of geoengineering, the idea to brighten clouds. In the 1990s, climatologist John Latham, then at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado (he’s now at

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probably be some knock-on effects on rainfall in other parts of the world. It is also attractive because it is a local form of geoengineering. At least at first, we would try it in the Arctic. Later we might modify clouds in the tropics. Kelly Wanser is director of SilverLining

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, a geoengineering NGO based in Washington, DC. She says that, among ideas to prevent Arctic collapse, the most viable involve increasing the reflection of sunlight from the

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levels.’ We will fund immediate research into cloud brightening, to the tune of half a dozen Neymars. $ $ $ WHILE WE ARE INITIATING URGENT RESEARCH into solar geoengineering, we will accelerate attempts to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. One of the less-known details of international climate agreements, and of the

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. What a legacy for billionaire philanthropists, and what a public-relations opportunity for trillion-dollar businesses. We started this chapter with art inspired by natural geoengineering – and so shall we close. When Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in 1815, the ash cloud caused an abrubt change in the world’s climate

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of stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections to preserve the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’. Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1002/2015GL064314 8 Dan Kahan et al. (2015) ‘Geoengineering and climate change polarization: testing a two-channel model of science communication’. ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 658(1), 192

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.org/climate/the-climate-policy-mile-stone-that-was-buried-in-the-2020-budget/ 12 Jonathan Proctor et al. (2018) ‘Estimating global agricultural effects of geoengineering using volcanic eruptions’. Nature 560, 480–483. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0417-3 13 Wake Smith and Gernot Wagner (2018) ‘Stratospheric aerosol injection tactics

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

by James E. Lovelock  · 1 Jan 2009  · 239pp  · 68,598 words

of Illustrations Acknowledgements Foreword 1 The Journey in Space and Time 2 The Climate Forecast 3 Consequences and Survival 4 Energy and Food Sources 5 Geoengineering 6 The History of Gaia Theory 7 Perceptions of Gaia 8 To Be or Not To Be Green 9 To the Next World Glossary Further

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accept this: a continuing series of volcanic eruptions as powerful as Pinatubo in 1991 could reverse climate change, as might one or more of the geoengineering schemes now being considered; and possibly our projections are flawed. But pessimism is justified by the difference between the forecasts of the IPCC and what

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commit the Earth to irreversible heating. There may be no alternative but the direct use of the global cooling techniques discussed in Chapter 5 on geoengineering, including an attempt to massively decarbonize the atmosphere by burying charcoal. Whether or not these efforts succeed in cooling the Earth to its previous self

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soon must we. Moreover the observed positive feedback on heating makes it unlikely to slow or stop before the next stable state is reached. Through geoengineering we may ameliorate some of the early consequences of heating but I greatly doubt that we have the wisdom or intelligence to reverse it. Like

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for a while and be happy while it lasts? We could – but not for long. Apart from a lucky break of a natural or a geoengineered kind, in a few decades the Earth could cease to be the habitat of 7 billion humans; it will save itself as it dispatches all

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as predicted. Nothing is certain; and I have to allow that none of this may happen. Instead, one or more of the several proposals to geoengineer the Earth and stop global heating might work, or some natural event such as a series of giant volcanic eruptions might intervene, or the models

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and well educated would perhaps provide an automatic curb to population growth. If this were global in extent, disruption by war might be less likely. Geoengineering There are signs that we can treat global heating by engineering or other means. We have proved that our unscheduled and unintended experiment of adding

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experiment than as a panic response to, for example, the simultaneous flooding of several coastal cities. If geoengineering is defined as purposeful human activity that significantly alters the state of the Earth, we became geoengineers soon after our species started using fire for cooking, land clearance, and smelting bronze and iron. There

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planetary scale. Our use of fires as a biocide to clear land of natural forests and replace them with farmland was our second act of geoengineering. Third was industry for the last 200 years. Together these acts have led us and the Earth to evolve to its current state. As a

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of the atmosphere make prediction unreal. The response of the biosphere to climate and compositional change is even less well understood. We may soon need geoengineering applied empirically, because careful observation and measurement show that even today some parts of climate change, for example sea‐level rise, are happening faster than

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the gloomiest of the forecasts. GEOENGINEERING TECHNIQUES Geoengineering methods fall into three main categories: physical means of amelioration such as the manipulation of the planetary albedo (the amount of sunlight reflected back to

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space); biological geoengineering that includes tree planting, the fertilization of ocean algal ecosystems with iron, the direct synthesis of food from inorganic raw materials and the production of

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biofuels; and, finally, active or Gaian geoengineering that involves the use of the Earth’s ecosystem to power the process, or to change the nature of climate feedback from positive to negative

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Philippines when the volcano erupted, there do not seem to have been environmental changes significant enough to rule out the use of sulphur compounds for geoengineering. Many environmental scientists oppose the idea on the grounds that it would encourage business as usual and the continued emissions of carbon dioxide. Moreover, while

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side effects than the stratospheric aerosols, it should be tried on a sufficient scale to assess its worth. It seems there is no shortage of geoengineering methods to offset global heating. Used alone they are no cure, since carbon dioxide would continue to increase and do damage in other ways than

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heating, but they could usefully provide a stay of execution while a more permanent treatment is developed. SEQUESTERING CARBON DIOXIDE The next class of geoengineering schemes are based on ways to remove carbon dioxide either from effluents of power stations and other large emitters, or even directly from the air

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it would release land that could return to its former natural state with the capacity to regulate the climate. Although not usually thought of as geoengineering, the synthesis of food and liquid fuels from carbon dioxide and water, using high temperature nuclear reactors to produce the carbon compound feed‐stock, is

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the historic response of the Earth system would think it unwise to assume that climate change can simply be reversed by reducing emissions or by geoengineering. The long‐term history of the Earth suggests the existence of hot and cold stable states that geologists refer to as the greenhouses and the

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3 degrees of global cooling caused by the atmospheric aerosol of man‐made pollution. PLANETARY MEDICINE AND ETHICS What are the planetary health risks of geoengineering intervention? Nothing we do is likely to sterilize the Earth, but the consequences of planetary‐scale intervention could hugely affect humans. Putative

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geoengineers are in a similar position to that of physicians before the 1940s. In his book The Youngest Profession the physician Lewis Thomas beautifully described the

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the same merciless way that we have eliminated so many species by changing their environment into one where survival is difficult. But before we start geoengineering we have to ask: Are we sufficiently talented to take on what might become the onerous permanent task of keeping the Earth in homeostasis? Consider

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alternative is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself. Whatever we do as geoengineers is unlikely to stop dangerous climate change or prevent death on a scale that makes all previous wars, famines and disasters small; but to continue

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refuge areas of the world that escape the worst heat and drought. We have to marshal our resources soon, and if a safe form of geoengineering can buy us a little time then we must use it. Parts of the world, such as oceanic islands, the Arctic basin and oases on

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living system Gaia Theory, history 105–22, 166 Gardiner, Brian 42 Garrels, Robert 110 gas, natural 78–9, 83 genes, ‘selfish’ 153 geochemistry 108–10 geoengineering 92–104 Geological Society of London, 2003 Wollaston Medal 120 geologists, and Gaia 110, 119 geophysics 32 geophysiology 31, 100–102 global dimming 36, 102

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

by Jane McGonigal  · 22 Mar 2022  · 420pp  · 135,569 words

they can’t afford to refuse: any country that wants access to their humanity-saving technology must first completely dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Want this geoengineering solution that safely reverses the local effects of climate change? First get rid of your bombs. Want a vaccine for this deadly, uncontrollable virus? Disarm

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woke up in an upside-down future where we faced global wintering instead? Imagine it: in this future, the world has access to a breakthrough geoengineering technology that can partially block the sun’s rays and cool the planet. It could potentially reverse decades of global warming. It could give the

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be the end of our climate nightmare and the beginning of climate healing. But who should have the legal and moral authority to make extreme geoengineering decisions like this? What voice should ordinary people have in the process? How can the science be communicated to the public—and will it be

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. Refresh. There it is: “YES.” So that’s it. We’re really doing this. The world voted yes. Yes to dimming the sun. Yes to geoengineering our way out of the climate crisis. In 2016, there was Brexit. In 2029, there was Calexit. And now, in 2033, the Sun Exit. It

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high temperature will be the previous average low temperature. That’s a swing of potentially twenty degrees. It’s a much more dramatic intervention than geoengineers were talking about earlier in the twenty-first century when the field was first getting underway. But ultimately, it’s what all the most powerful

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Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model. It won’t be a permanent winter, thank goodness. It will end, hopefully, sometime in 2043. Geoengineers will stop seeding the clouds with sulfate as soon as the planet recovers from its mega-drought, extreme heat, and endless wildfires—all of which

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faster, in the early 2030s than even the most dire climate forecasts had predicted. If it had been even just a little less severe, maybe geoengineering would still be off the table. But, “it’s this or Mars,” or so went the popular joke leading up to the Sun Exit vote

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new planet 234 million miles away. In the meantime, humans still have to get their sustainability act together. As you’ve heard a million times: “Geoengineering is not an alternative to cutting carbon emissions. It’s a way to buy precious time.” And the YES campaign has promised to use that

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of the future: What everyday object might exist in this scenario that doesn’t exist today? Maybe it’s an informational flyer explaining how solar geoengineering works (you can easily download and print one online today), with a handwritten message across the top: “Science is real! Vote YES on Sun Exit

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a list of what people will need and want during a ten-year winter. As society adjusts to its new reality, and the effects of geoengineering are felt worldwide . . . What new problems will be common? What help or support will people ask for? What mental health challenges will people have? What

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, or to a family member or loved one, your town, or the whole world. What do you want them to know about life on a geoengineered planet? How would you encourage them to prepare for a future like this? What words of wisdom or advice can you share from the year

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? Let’s look at some of the signals of change and future forces behind “The Ten-Year Winter.” Geoengineering, once considered a fringe idea, is becoming a serious scientific discipline. The Oxford Geoengineering Programme defines it as “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change

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.”3 In the past five years, more than 13,500 peer-reviewed scientific papers on geoengineering ideas have been published.4 Proposals include sending a giant mirror into orbit to reflect sun away from the earth; using genetically engineered E. coli

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so that they become just a little bigger and brighter, enough to cool specific areas of the planet while leaving the rest unchanged.5 The geoengineering idea that’s furthest along, with the biggest potential impact, is solar radiation management (SRM), in which sulfate particles are injected into the atmosphere—just

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, Engineering, and Medicine recommended that the US government establish a $200 million federal research program to investigate solar geoengineering.6 The Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative is another signal: it promotes and funds geoengineering research in the most climate-vulnerable countries in the global south. Since 2018, it has funded half a

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countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Indonesia, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, and South Africa.7 Meanwhile, Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s largest incubator, is requesting proposals from geoengineering-focused start-ups.8 And in the summer of 2021, IEEE Spectrum, the flagship magazine and website of the IEEE, the world’s largest professional

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potential.9 That said, governments are just barely beginning to try to figure out how to regulate and coordinate geoengineering efforts. In 2015, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity established a moratorium on geoengineering activities, with 196 countries signing on. It cited the moral hazard of one country acting unilaterally to change

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carried out on potential risks.11 The Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G), an advocacy group based in New York City, is working to have solar geoengineering discussed again at the UN General Assembly in 2023. It has an eye toward advancing a framework for approving and risk-mitigating larger, strategic experiments

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would, ideally, be closer to one to two degrees, not twenty. In that regard, the 2033 scenario is a significant and fantastical departure from what geoengineers think would actually happen if they could implement their desired plans. In a best-case scenario, SRM wouldn’t dramatically cool the planet. It would

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, you can dial back the drama of the scenario and imagine a much milder winterization effect. That’s the more likely future, as long as geoengineers continue to call for conservative climate intervention. But it’s certainly possible that SRM recommendations will evolve. In 2021, precedent-shattering flooding in Germany and

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that far out, it’s worth playing with the possibilities. How would scientists know when it’s finally time to undertake the kind of dramatic geoengineering efforts described in “The Ten-Year Winter”? The climate supercomputers mentioned in the scenario are real, and many more like them are being developed. They

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can expect these kinds of debates, alongside coordinated efforts from researchers and governments to increase supercomputer trust, to become commonplace in the next decade. Would geoengineering ever be put to a public vote, as it is in “The Ten-Year Winter”? I don’t know of any mechanisms in place yet

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the planet we once knew also means we no longer have the lives we once lived.”19 Whatever the actual climate future holds, whether we geoengineer the results or not, it is essential that we practice pre-feeling that vertigo now. Imagining ourselves living through a dramatic scenario like “The Ten

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find experts to follow on social media and discover new signals of change by investigating these search terms: “solar radiation management” “climate supercomputers” “global governance” “geoengineering ethics” You’ve just explored three possible versions of the year 2033: Trash becomes illegal, virtually overnight—and garbage removal as we know it is

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a ten-year project to carefully, thoughtfully, and equitably move one billion people across borders to climate-safer homes. A global vote approves an unprecedented geoengineering effort, and the whole world voluntarily enters into a decade-long winter. No futurist would seriously predict these things—if by “predict,” we mean to

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/the-epic-volcano-eruption-that-led-to-the-year-without-a-summer/. 3 “What Is Geoengineering?,” Oxford Geoengineering Programme, accessed August 27, 2021, http://www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/what-is-geoengineering/what-is-geoengineering/. 4 Based on a Google Scholar search for scientific papers published between 2016 and mid-2021

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with the keywords “geoengineering” and “climate change.” 5 Daisy Dunne, “Explainer: Six Ideas to Limit Global Warming with

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Solar Geoengineering,” Carbon Brief, September 5, 2018, https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-six-ideas-to-limit-global-warming-with

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-solar-geoengineering; Aylin Woodward, “We’re Altering the Climate So Severely That We’ll Soon Face Apocalyptic Consequences. Here Are 11 Last-Ditch Ways We Could Hack

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the Planet to Reverse That Trend,” Business Insider, April 20, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/geoengineering-how-to-reverse-climate-change-2019-4. 6 Jeff Tollefson, “US Urged to Invest in Sun-Dimming Studies as Climate Warms,” Nature, March 29, 2021

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Can Disrupt Climate Change,” IEEE Spectrum, June 28, 2021, https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/engineers-you-can-disrupt-climate-change. 10 “Climate-Related Geoengineering and Biodiversity: Technical and Regulatory Matters on Geoengineering in Relation to the CBD; COP Decisions,” Convention on Biological Diversity, March 23, 2017, https://www.cbd.int/climate

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/geoengineering/. 11 Natalie L. Kahn and Simon J. Levien, “Indigenous Group Petitions Harvard to Shut Down Controversial Geoengineering Project to Block Sun,” Harvard Crimson, June 27, 2021, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/6/27

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand  · 15 Mar 2009  · 422pp  · 113,525 words

agriculture, preparing for masses of climate refugees, and keeping resource warfare localized. And amelioration is adjusting the nature of the planet itself through large-scale geoengineering. Civilization is at risk, but civilization is the problem. The key positive feedback in the current Earth system is us. Accelerating wealth (especially in

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distrusted and now need to embrace, plus one we love that has to be scaled up. The unwelcome four are urbanization, nuclear power, biotechnology, and geoengineering. The familiar one is natural-system restoration, which may be better framed as megagardening—restoring Gaia’s health at every scale from local soil to

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. . . . A record not made is gone for good.” The idea of adjusting Earth’s climate directly is anathema to most, for good reason. All geoengineering schemes look like attempts to sow the wind that are sure to reap the whirlwind. The dangers are certain, enormous, and inescapable. The imagined benefits

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and unproven theory. Surrendering to such shortcuts is the height of irresponsibility, we tell each other. But the tenor of the discussion is changing, and geoengineering is being taken seriously, sooner than expected, because of emerging realizations. Realization 1. The stupendous cost, disruption, and time required to build a low-

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Arctic have gone up over 4°C since 1950. The suddenness of a self-accelerating phenomenon invites proportionally immediate response. Realization 5. Some forms of geoengineering, expensive as they are, may be a hundred to a thousand times cheaper than building Renewistan, and some of them would have an instantaneous effect

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on climate rather than one delayed by decades. As soon as climatic conditions become frightening and urgent, geoengineering schemes will suddenly jump from “plausible but dangerous” to “dangerous but we have no choice.” The cost is low enough that a single nation

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or even a wealthy individual could set in motion a geoengineering project that would affect everyone on Earth. (A growing number of work-shops are addressing the specter of unilateral

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geoengineering.) • Any one of those realizations is sufficient; in combination they are overwhelming. Geoengineering schemes will be in high demand shortly, but what exactly is on offer? Here’s the catalog as of

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that’s a paltry list, considering the potential need. But examining these will give a sense of the ingenuity, daunting scale, and potential hazards of geoengineering strategies. Employing stratospheric sulfates is the first choice of most climatologists because it has already been proven to work. In 1991 a volcano in the

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the idea couldn’t work; instead his models suggested it might work very well, with relatively few side effects. Caldeira became a convert to geoengineering and began cowriting papers with Wood. In 2006 Paul Crutzen published an essay in Climatic Change that signaled a major shift in scientific opinion. He

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amplify the cooling effect by reflecting even more sunlight. It could be, editor Oliver Morton wrote in Nature, “as low-impact an option as the geoengineer’s toolbox offers.” • Even more attractive, in terms of the ability to turn it off easily, is the idea of a fleet of oceangoing

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potential adverse side effects than the stratospheric aerosols, it should be tried on a sufficient scale to assess its worth.” • So far, the most controversial geoengineering proposal has to do with feeding iron to the ocean’s carbon-fixing algae (also called phytoplankton, diatoms, and coccolithophores). Vast regions of the ocean

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protest, quoting an environmental lawyer from South Africa’s Center for Biosafety: “We do not believe our country should be aiding and abetting these controversial geoengineers in breaking the global moratorium. We have formally asked our Environment Ministry to compel the ship to return to port and offload its cargo of

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“Most of the research has been at the hobby level.” Environmental scientists Thomas Homer-Dixon and David Keith wrote in the New York Times that geoengineering “is so taboo that governments have provided virtually no research money.” They urged that we should begin with “real-world tests of various technologies that

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thing is to get scientists, environmentalists and global-warming skeptics alike out of the nonsensical all-or-nothing dichotomy that characterizes much current thinking about geoengineering—that we either do it full scale, or we don’t do it at all.” So test the ideas we have, and keep thinking

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, not cause unacceptable environmental damage, and be economical.” • How does the current roster of notions stand up to criticism? Oliver Morton reported in Nature: “Geoengineering, many say, is a way to feed society’s addiction to fossil fuels. ‘It’s like a junkie figuring out new ways of stealing from

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in three ways to head off climate change. It is a genuine natural negative feedback process that moderates global warming. As the Earth heats up, geoengineer Ehux responds by fixing more carbon and brightening the ocean’s albedo, which helps Earth cool. Get this organism a grant. (Once the ocean

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probably have to do something radical to alter what the Earth does with sunlight—dim it or reflect it. • There remains a larger issue. Suppose geoengineering works technically. How can it work politically? Who decides to do it? Who runs it and balances its various forms? Who pays for it?

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Who accepts responsibility? Who compensates those who are harmed by it? Who decides which claims for compensation are valid? Does taking responsibility for climate geoengineering also mean taking responsibility for climate refugees? It’s easy to govern a negative. No one has to take responsibility for global warming because it

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was brought about by damn near everyone, and unintentionally. But geoengineering is intentional, an act of commission. Everything it accomplishes and fails to accomplish and inadvertently causes and is accused of causing has an identifiable human

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-change issues. Here I’ll draw mainly on a 2008 paper he wrote for the Oxford Review of Economic Policy titled “On the Regulation of Geoengineering.” People imagine, Victor says, that what is needed is a “legally binding regulatory treaty” like the Montreal Protocol governing harm to the ozone layer.

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But he thinks that “most treaties on geoengineering will be useless or actively harmful because, at present, experts and governments do not know enough about the scope and hazards of possible

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geoengineering activities to frame a meaningful treaty negotiation.” He especially worries about treaties that would make geoengineering taboo, because “a taboo is likely to be most constraining on the countries (and their subjects)

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who are likely to do the most responsible testing, assessment, and (if needed) deployment of geoengineering systems. A taboo would leave less responsible governments and individuals—those most prone to ignore or avoid inconvenient international norms—to control the technology’s

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fate.” Because the cost of some geoengineering schemes is so low, Victor predicts, “A lone Greenfinger, self-appointed protector of the planet and working with a small fraction of the Gates

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bank account, could force a lot of geoengineering on his own.” The way to head off unilateral geoengineering and premature treaties, Victor suggests, is with a growing body of norms rather than rules:Meaningful norms are not crafted

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an intensive process of research and assessment that is probably best organized by the academies of sciences in the few countries with the potential to geoengineer. . . . Most likely . . . is that the impacts of global climate change will have reached such a nasty state by the time societies deploy large

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-scale geoengineering that some side effects will be tolerated. The . . . systems they deploy will not be a silver bullet but rather many interventions deployed in tandem—

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the central disease and others to fix the ancillary harms. To my mind, a useful role for Greenfinger entrepreneurs might be to jump-start serious geoengineering research while national academies of science are spending years making up their minds to act. Then the privately funded researchers could bring real data to

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all, but if it has to be used, it must be done effectively and minimally, and if possible, for a limited period. Like abortion, geoengineering should be “safe, legal, and rare.” That still leaves the question of who runs things—“whose hands will be allowed on the thermostat,” as David

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Organization provided oversight and funding, and the Smallpox Eradication Unit, led by Donald Henderson, did the work. In Victor’s formulation, norms and leadership for geoengineering will emerge from an intensifying sequence of conferences, research projects, data sharing, and brainstorming. The most effective early players will determine the play, and funding

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will determine the pace. Geoengineering is government-scale infrastructure; it will need government-scale money. Once one nation commits, I suspect, other nations will join in, lest they be left

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out. If China says, “We’re going to geoengineer,” the United States, Russia, the European Union, Japan, Brazil, and India are not going to say, “Fine, let us know how it works out.”

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gravitationally close to an asteroid and drives gently in the desired direction, drawing the asteroid with it.) Schweickart says that asteroid deflection is similar to geoengineering for climate change, “only much simpler, better understood, and cheaper.” As with climate, you’re taking global action on a global problem, based on

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excellent online source for environmental news: Environment 360—“Opinion, Analysis, Reporting & Debate”—run by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. There was significant geoengineering news. A step toward asteroid control was taken by the Obama administration. While canceling a return to the moon by NASA, the president proposed that

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“would demonstrate once and for all that we’re smarter than the dinosaurs and can therefore avoid what they didn’t.” Two good books on geoengineering finally arrived: How to Cool the Planet (2010) by Jeff Goodell and Hack the Planet (2010) by Eli Kintisch. Both writers talked to most

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Victor. One new scheme has been put forward by Harvard’s Russell Seitz to brighten parts of the ocean by aerating the water with microbubbles. Geoengineers gathered in cautionary mode at the Asilomar Conference Center in California, echoing the recombinant DNA gathering there back in 1975. Environmental organizations were invited, and

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so was I. The conference adopted terminology from an influential report by the Royal Society, noting that geoengineering comes in two major forms—solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The view emerged that carbon dioxide projects would necessarily be slow

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the “Oxford Principles” first proposed in a 2009 memorandum to the British Parliament by Steve Raynor from Oxford University:• Geoengineering regulated as a public good • Public participation in geoengineering decision-making • Disclosure of geoengineering research and open publication of results • Independent assessment of impacts • Governance before deployment In other words, one way

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thorough field research distinguishes this account of what life gets up to as soon as humans step away. It is a fascinating read. GEOENGINEERING How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate (2010), Jeff Goodell. Hack the Planet: Science’s Best Hope—or Worst

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(2010), Eli Kintisch. The books overlap; I slightly favor Goodell’s as the more thorough. Both authors spent time with most of the major early geoengineers—Ken Caldeira, Lowell Wood, John Latham, Stephen Salter, Russ George, David Keith, James Lovelock, David Victor—and share their view that real-world research

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on the various schemes must go forward soon and at scale, or half-baked geoengineering projects desperately deployed could wind up having worse effects than what they attempt to fix. Geoengineering research will tell us a great deal about how climate works. Up to now we have never

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the Balance (Gore) Earth Day Earth First! Earth Liberation Front Earthrise (Poole) E. coli ecological inheritance Ecologist Economist Eco-pragmatism (Farber) ecosystem engineering see also geoengineering ecosystem services ecotechnology Ecotrust Ehrlich, Paul Eighth Day of Creation, The (Judson) electric power nuclear power and elephants Elmqvist, Thomas EMBO Reports Empty Cradle, The

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generation of stories related to synthetic biology and violence and Genetic Glass Ceilings (Gressel) genetic inertia genetic use restriction technology (GURT) gene transfer genome, human geoengineering asteroid deflection and biochar and carbon-fixing algae and cloud machines and criticisms of governance and ocean water piping and space mirrors and stratospheric sulfates

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Long Emergency, The (Kunstler) Longman, Phillip Long Now Foundation Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Angeles Times Losey, John Love, Stanley Lovelock, James genetic engineering and geoengineering and nuclear power and Lovins, Amory genetic engineering and nuclear energy and Lu, Edward Luckey, T. D. McClure, Michael McIntyre, Joan McKibben, Bill McKnight Foundation

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Organization, Canadian nuclear weapons Nuffield Council on Bioethics Obama, Barack oceans Odling-Smee, John oil Omnivore’s Dilemma, The (Pollan) OnEarth “On the Regulation of Geoengineering” (Victor) “Organic Agriculture Requires Process Rather Than Evaluation of Novel Breeding Techniques,” organic farming Organic Gardening and Farming Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Orion

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 5 Oct 2020  · 583pp  · 182,990 words

.” “Yes, I just saw it this morning,” she said. “Have they given us the details of their plan?” “They came half an hour ago. Our geoengineering people are saying that if they do it as planned, it will equate to about the same as the Pinatubo volcanic eruption of 1991. That

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when some petty war criminal gets caught and everyone decides to look virtuous.” Mary nodded unhappily. The Indians’ flouting of the Paris Agreement with their geoengineering, not much different legally than the general disregard for the Agreement’s emission reduction targets, was just the latest example of this kind of behavior

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. Prone to despair. Elena Quintero, agriculture. Buenos Aires. She and Estevan joke about Argentina-Chile rivalry. She cheers him up very skillfully. Indra Dalit, Jakarta. Geoengineering. Works with Bob and Jurgen. Dick Bosworth, Australian, economist. A card. Taxes and political economy. Our reality check. Janus Athena, AI, internet, all things digital

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this up at the session today? It was about this acceleration of glaciers.” Slawek quickly shook his head. “Not my thing. A scientist gets into geoengineering, they’re not a scientist anymore, they’re a politician. Get hate mail, rocks through window, no one takes their real work seriously, all that

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what you might call apprehensive. Pete, this might turn out to be another fantasy solution, one of my postdocs said to me. One of those geoengineering dreams of redemption. Silver bullet fix that just shoots us in the head kind of thing. I sure hope not, I said. I like the

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beach. Hey, someone else said, geoengineering isn’t always just a fantasy. The Indians did that sulfur dioxide thing and that worked. Temperatures dropped for years after that. Big deal, someone

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, monsoonwise. Why no graph? Staff peck around a bit and bring up graph. Monsoon rain indeed fluctuating more through last two decades, and after their geoengineering maybe a bit more so. Second year after application particularly low, semi-drought, especially in the west. Another problem, C points out. Monsoon not the

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locals. Aggressive pride. Don’t tread on me. No outsider gets to tell India what to do, not anymore. Never again. Post-colonial anger? Post-geoengineering defensiveness? Tired of the Western world condescending to India? All of the above? 35 We came into Switzerland on a train from Austria. Austria was

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sea level rise problem gets solved. Beaches still in existence. So, someone asked tonight in the mess tent, is what we’re doing down here geoengineering? Who the hell knows! What’s in a word? Call it Glacier Elevation Operations, Based on Estimates of Godawfulness Gobsmacking Interested Nations’ Goodness: GEO-BEGGING

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the road a century, not bad compared to not kicking it at all. Emergency definition, in effect. Indra: This is part of why geoengineering no longer a useful word or concept. Everything people do at scale is geoengineering. Glacier slowdown, direct air capture, soil projects like 4 per 1000, they’re all

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geoengineering. Mary: But solar radiation management is definitely geoengineering. Indra: Sure but so what? The American heat wave has brought that one back again for sure

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all ways carbon drawdown could be quantified and confirmed, in ways that would allow for carbon coins to be created and paid to individuals. All geoengineering, all good. The word itself needs to be rehabilitated. Mary: Good luck with that. Dick, what’s going on with finance? World still in Super

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of ice to the northern horizon, was yellow. Naturally this looked awful, like some vast toxic spill; in fact it was geoengineering, no doubt the most visible act of geoengineering ever, and as such widely reviled. But the solar heating of the Arctic Ocean when there was no ice covering it might

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.47 for yellow water. The amount of energy thus bounced back out into space was simply stupendous, the benefit-to-cost ratio off the charts. Geoengineering? Yes. Ugly? Very much so. Dangerous? Possibly. Necessary? Yes. Or put it this way; the international community had decided through their international treaty system to

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, he said, “You could come with me again. Be my celebrity guide. We could make a tour of all the greatest landscape restoration sites, or geoengineering projects.” “God spare me.” He laughed. “Or whatever you like. Your favorite cities. You could be a guest curator or whatnot.” “I’d rather just

SuperFreakonomics

by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner  · 19 Oct 2009  · 302pp  · 83,116 words

carbon dioxide the wrong villain?…“Big-ass volcanoes” and climate change…How to cool the earth…The “garden hose to the sky”…Reasons to hate geoengineering…Jumping the repugnance barrier…“Soggy mirrors” and the puffy-cloud solution…Why behavior change is so hard…Dirty hands and deadly doctors…Foreskins are falling

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and, one year later, a 900-page report from the National Academy of Sciences called Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming. It included a chapter on geoengineering, which the NAS defined as “large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry.” In

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writing, he used a good bit of the far-out science he picked up in Schenectady. The 1992 NAS report gave a credibility boost to geoengineering, which until then had largely been seen as the province of crackpots and rogue governments. Still, some of the NAS proposals would have seemed outlandish

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test Wood’s claims. “The intent,” he says, “was to put an end to all the geoengineering talk.” He failed. As much as Caldeira disliked the concept, his model backed up Wood’s claims that geoengineering could stabilize the climate even in the face of a large spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide

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, and he wrote a paper saying so. Caldeira, the most reluctant geoengineer imaginable, became a convert—willing, at least, to explore the idea. Which is how it comes to pass that, more than ten years later, Caldeira

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injection of sulfur in the stratosphere “is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects.” Crutzen’s embrace of geoengineering was considered such a heresy within the climate-science community that some peers tried to stop publication of his essay. How could the man reverently

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“could be stopped on short notice…which would allow the atmosphere to return to its prior state within a few years.” Another fundamental objection to geoengineering is that it intentionally alters the earth’s natural state. To that, Myhrvold has a simple answer: “We’ve already

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geoengineered the earth.” In just a few centuries, we will have burned up most of the fossil fuel that took 300 million years of biological accumulation

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an “excuse to pollute.” That is, rather than buying time for us to create new energy solutions, it would lure people into complacency. But blaming geoengineering for this, Myhrvold says, is like blaming a heart surgeon for saving the life of someone who fails to exercise and eats too many french

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occurs anyway.” Just as important, he says, “it gives you breathing room to move to carbon-free energy sources.” He is also eager to get geoengineering moving forward because of what he sees as “a real head of steam” that global-warming activists have gathered in recent years. “They are seriously

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such a solution. But they are mere scientists. The real heavyweights in this fight are people like Al Gore. And what does he think of geoengineering? “In a word,” Gore says, “I think it’s nuts.” If the garden-hose-to-the-sky idea doesn’t fly, IV has another proposal

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annals of cheap and simple solutions to vexing problems, it is hard to think of a more elegant example than John Latham’s soggy mirrors—geoengineering that the greenest green could love. That said, Myhrvold fears that even IV’s gentlest proposals will find little favor within certain environmentalist circles. To

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carbon emissions. “The scary scenarios could occur even if we make herculean efforts to reduce our emissions, in which case the only real answer is geoengineering.” Al Gore, meanwhile, counters with his own logic. “If we don’t know enough to stop putting 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into

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Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor,” Science, April 2002; and T.M.L. Wigley, “A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization,” Science, October 2006. INTELLECTUAL VENTURES AND GEOENGINEERING: This section is primarily drawn from a visit we made to the Intellectual Ventures lab in Bellevue, Washington, in early

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truths) behind the losers. On this particular question, Myhrvold’s short answer is: yes. / 181 Wood himself was a protégé: for an excellent exploration of geoengineering that is also a dual profile of Lowell Wood and Ken Caldeira, see Chris Mooney, “Can a Million Tons of Sulfur Dioxide Combat Climate Change

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Hard-charging environmental activist: see Mooney, above, for interesting reading on Caldeira’s background / 184 Caldeira mentions a study: see Caldeira et al., “Impact of Geoengineering Schemes on the Terrestrial Biosphere,” Geophysical Research Letters 29, no. 22 (2002). / 186 Trees as environmental scourge: see Caldeira et al., “Climate Effects of Global

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wages, 21–22, 44, 45–47 See also women General Electric, 190–91 Genovese, Kitty, murder of, 97–100, 104–5, 106, 110, 125–31 geoengineering, 191–92, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203. See also Budyko’s Blanket germ theory, 138, 204 Germany, trash-tax avoiders in, 139 “gifted,” 61 Gladwell

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Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar  · 2 Nov 2021

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth

by Chris Smaje  · 14 Aug 2020  · 375pp  · 105,586 words

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

by Paul Kingsnorth  · 23 Sep 2025  · 388pp  · 110,920 words

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril

by Satyajit Das  · 9 Feb 2016  · 327pp  · 90,542 words

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

by Peter Frase  · 10 Mar 2015  · 121pp  · 36,908 words

Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming

by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby  · 22 Nov 2013  · 165pp  · 45,397 words

This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook

by Extinction Rebellion  · 12 Jun 2019  · 138pp  · 40,525 words

The Terraformers

by Annalee Newitz  · 404pp  · 118,036 words

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth

by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato  · 31 Jul 2016  · 370pp  · 102,823 words

Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World

by Timothy Garton Ash  · 23 May 2016  · 743pp  · 201,651 words

Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics

by Francis Fukuyama  · 27 Aug 2007

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

by Annalee Newitz  · 2 Feb 2021  · 290pp  · 82,220 words

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

by Adam Greenfield  · 29 May 2017  · 410pp  · 119,823 words

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire

by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson  · 14 Apr 2020  · 491pp  · 141,690 words

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future

by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway  · 30 Jun 2014  · 105pp  · 18,832 words

2312

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 22 May 2012  · 561pp  · 167,631 words

The Techno-Human Condition

by Braden R. Allenby and Daniel R. Sarewitz  · 15 Feb 2011

Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers

by Stephen Graham  · 8 Nov 2016  · 519pp  · 136,708 words

Hopes and Prospects

by Noam Chomsky  · 1 Jan 2009

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety

by Gideon Rachman  · 1 Feb 2011  · 391pp  · 102,301 words

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

by Bill McKibben  · 15 Apr 2019

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

by Amy Webb  · 5 Mar 2019  · 340pp  · 97,723 words

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

by Jane McGonigal  · 20 Jan 2011  · 470pp  · 128,328 words

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks

by Scott J. Shapiro  · 523pp  · 154,042 words

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet

by Edward Luce  · 13 May 2025  · 612pp  · 235,188 words

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

by George Marshall  · 18 Aug 2014  · 298pp  · 85,386 words

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

by Alan Weisman  · 21 Apr 2025  · 599pp  · 149,014 words

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy

by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake  · 7 Nov 2017  · 346pp  · 89,180 words

Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization

by K. Eric Drexler  · 6 May 2013  · 445pp  · 105,255 words

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure

by Tim Harford  · 1 Jun 2011  · 459pp  · 103,153 words

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

by Laurence C. Smith  · 22 Sep 2010  · 421pp  · 120,332 words

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck  · 13 Nov 2012  · 342pp  · 86,256 words

How We'll Live on Mars (TED Books)

by Stephen Petranek  · 6 Jul 2015  · 70pp  · 22,172 words

The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century

by Alex Prud'Homme  · 6 Jun 2011  · 692pp  · 167,950 words

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History

by Lewis Dartnell  · 13 May 2019  · 424pp  · 108,768 words

Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World

by Michal Zalewski  · 11 Jan 2022  · 337pp  · 96,666 words

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence

by James Bridle  · 6 Apr 2022  · 502pp  · 132,062 words

Aurora

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 6 Jul 2015  · 488pp  · 148,340 words

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams  · 1 Oct 2015  · 357pp  · 95,986 words

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

by Vaclav Smil  · 23 Sep 2019

Reamde

by Neal Stephenson  · 19 Sep 2011  · 1,318pp  · 403,894 words

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions

by Jason Hickel  · 3 May 2017  · 332pp  · 106,197 words

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

by Stuart Russell  · 7 Oct 2019  · 416pp  · 112,268 words

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters

by Oliver Franklin-Wallis  · 21 Jun 2023  · 309pp  · 121,279 words

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

by Elizabeth Kolbert  · 11 Feb 2014  · 308pp  · 94,447 words