So let's start with one word: Hubris:
Hacking the planet: The only climate solution left?
In a room in London late last year, a group of British politicians were grilling a selection of climate scientists on geoengineering - the notion that to save the planet from climate change, we must artificially tweak its thermostat by firing fine dust into the atmosphere to deflect the sun's rays, for instance, or perhaps even by launching clouds of mirrors into space.
Surely the scientists gave such a heretical idea short shrift. After all, messing with the climate is exactly what got us into such trouble in the first place. The politicians on the committee certainly seemed to believe so. "It is not sensible, is it? It is not a serious suggestion?"
Had the question been posed a few years ago, most climate scientists would have agreed. But the mood is changing. In the face of potentially catastrophic climate change, the politicians and scientists all agreed that since cuts to carbon emissions will likely fall short we need to be exploring "Plan B". Climatologists have hit a "social tipping point" says Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia, UK.
What's more, respected scientists, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, and groups such as the UK's Royal Society, are already assessing the risks and benefits. Are we ready to try to turn down the thermostat? Who will have the authority to push the button? And what would happen if one nation or well-intentioned "green finger" individual decided to go it alone?
Geoengineering schemes range from the low-tech, such as planting trees, to sci-fi, such as placing mirrors in orbit between Earth and the sun. All would work either by diverting solar energy away from Earth or by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to dampen the greenhouse effect...
...take a look at one of the more mature geoengineering schemes that could provide us with instant cooling today - pumping sulphate particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays back into space. If one country forged ahead, it could have detrimental effects on others. A 2007 study suggested sulphate sunshades could trigger catastrophic drought in some regions. "There would inevitably be winners and losers, as there is not a single global thermostat which will bring about universal and consistent cooling," says David Santillo, senior research scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories in Exeter, UK. "By its very nature, if there is to be any purpose in geoengineering, it would have to exert an impact over a vast proportion of the planet..."
You think global warming is bad? According to the fossil record, the most biologically diverse times in history have been when the tropics extended to the poles. The cooling has been a recent thing.
You want ecological disaster? How about a polar ice cap extending to where the Ohio river is now, and a Gulf of Mexico as cool as Hudson's Bay?
You don't dim the face of the sun. You think a sea level rise of 20 meters over the next hundred years due to global warming is a bad thing? Think instead of the American MidWest under a kilometer of ice. Exactly where are you going to grow the food to feed five billion people?
In a warm world, Canada and Siberia become more habitable. The greater part of the land masses of the earth get easier to live in. Many islands disappear, yes. The coastlines change, and populations will be on the move. There will be troubles. But food can still be grown, and the sea level changes are not happening overnight.
If global warming proceeds, humanity had better take its chances with the Gulf up to Shreveport and Manhattan under water instead of under a glacier.
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