Recently, my pal Victor hit me with February’s MIT Technology Review, which contains another “Yeah, it’d be kinda pricey and irresponsible, but we might just fucking have to, mightn’t we?” geoengineering article. As I’ve mentioned, CMU’s Jay Apt and M. Granger Morgan (the latter occasionally quoted in Bill “Only government is big enough to force us to not be evil” O’Driscoll’s CP articles and evidently not completely deranged as he’s down with LEDs), along with John “We don’t have the luxury” Holdren, have been pushing this idea for a goodly while now and raising clouds of dander across the blogosphere.
But it’s not just AGW critics, or NWO or chemtrail geeks, calling a major foul on these desperate remedies. The article quotes Daniel Schrag and Ronald Prinn on the “artificial volcano” method and David Victor on possible scenarios, but lamely concludes with David Battisti‘s Malthusian musings and cavalier if-then. As you have to pay to read the thing, I’ll transcribe a bit:
“We know Pinatubo cooled the earth, but that’s not the question,” Schrag says. “Average temperature is not the only issue.” You’ve also got to account for regional variations in temperature and effects on precipitation, he explains – the very things that climate models are notoriously bad at accounting for. Prinn concurs: “If we lower levels of sunlight, we are unsure of the exact response of the climate system to doing that, for the same reason that we don’t know exactly how the climate will respond to a particular level of greenhouse gases.” He adds, “That’s the big issue. How can you engineer a system you don’t fully understand?”
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David Victor, the director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego, sees two scenarios in which it might happen. First, “the desperate Hail Mary pass”: “A country quite vulnerable to changing climate is desperate to alter outcomes and sees that efforts to cut emissions are not bearing fruit. Crude geoengineering schemes could be very inexpensive, and thus this option might even be available to a Trinidad or Bangladesh – the former rich in gas exports and quite vulnerable, and the latter poor but large enough that it might do something seen as essential for survival.” And second, “the Soviet-style arrogant engineering scenario”: “A country run by engineers and not overly exposed to public opinion or to dissenting voices undertakes geoengineering as a national mission – much like massive building of poorly designed nuclear reactors, river diversion projects, resettlement of populations, and other national missions that are hard to pursue when the public is informed, responsive, and in power.” In either case, a single country acting alone could influence the climate of the entire world.
How would the world react? In extreme cases, Victor says, it could lead to war. Some countries might object to cooling the earth, especially if higher temperatures have brought them advantages such as longer growing seasons and milder winters. And if geoengineering decreases rainfall, countries that have experienced droughts due to global warming could suffer even more.
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Speaking at a geoengineering symposium at MIT this fall, Battisti said, “By the end of the century, just due to temperature alone, we’re looking at a 30 to 40 percent reduction in [crop] yields, while in the next 50 years demand for food is expected to more than double.”
Battisti is well aware of the uncertainties that surround geoengineering. According to research he’s conducted recently, the first computer models that tried to show how shading the earth would affect climate were off by 2 °C to 3 °C in predictions of regional temperature change and by as much as 40 percent in predictions of regional rainfall. But with a billion people already malnourished and billions more who could go hungry if global warming disrupts agriculture. Battisti has reluctantly conceded that we may need to consider “a climate-engineering patch.” Better data and better models will help clarify the effects of geoengineering. “Give us 30 or 40 years and we’ll be there,” he said at the MIT symposium. “But in 30 to 40 years, at the level we’re increasing CO2, we’re going to need this, whether we’re ready or not.”
“The Geoengineering Gambit” by Kevin Bullis, Technology Review Feb. 2010
I was also surprised and pleased to find on TR ‘s site this correction, to Bullis’ credit, re: disappearing glaciers. While I can’t claim total citational rigor on this blog, I do endeavor, especially when it comes to more out-there/contentious assertions, to provide sources (even if occasionally lousy sources) for the reader to evaluate – which is more than I can say for these characters.
Have fun and cuídate.