Many of those pushing the climate alarmism are degrowth advocates. Some are Marxists of various stripes. The last thing they would want is a technological "fix".
I am, of course, worried about unintended consequences from any human intervention in the climate. We do not understand the climate system well enough to do this yet. Climate is a complex system, subject to nonlinear dynamics. We are not sure what our intentional interference might do on a global scale.
We have been attempting to "cloud seed" in small areas for many decades, with some mixed success. And I expect that eventually, we might reach a point where we have more control over the weather. But we are a long, long ways from that level of understanding and technology now.
I guess my point is that we are intentionally interfering already and increasing the albedo would be a fairly non-complex way to reduce that interference.
Controlling the weather is a very different and much more arcane field than simply increasing the albedo globally, which happens all the time from volcanic aerosols. And, indeed, we were already doing it with fuel SO2 emissions - that is why we are now seeing a huge spike in warming since it was banned a few years ago.
Spent much of my career at EPA working to reduce SO2 emissions from high sulfur coal burning power plants in order to protect sensitive lakes in the Northeast and Canada. Seems that I fucked up. 😎
Sensible people (e.g., Bjorn Lomborg, Judith Curry, Matt Ridley) agree on global warming, likely with humans contributing at the margin. Despite the incentives and corruption of Big Science, the evidence of glaciers anyone can see is hard to ignore.
That said, there are so many examples of misguided human intervention (see Cane toads for a funny example) that the idea of geoengineering is alarming. Politician's do not seem to "understand" piloting and scaling, and that effects tend to decline with scale.
Lomborg's economic points are well made; there are many better ideas to improve the environment and promote human flourishing. Current trends will see the human population stabilize if not decline by 2100, especially in rich, high fossil fuel burning countries. I'm not a biologist but it's almost like nature is solving it's own problem.
I can see that. Main point with this intervention is that we were doing it already with SO2 from fuels and volcanoes do it all the time. It's not like we don't know quite a lot about what would happen, and the lifetime of the particles in the atmosphere is so short that if you want to stop it... you just stop! :)
The controversy is not over the issue of anthropogenic glogal warming but rather is over the issue of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. The appearance of the latter is created by an application of the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness under which an "abstract" event of the future for Earth's climate system is mistaken for a "concrete" event of the future for this system, where an "abstract" event of the future lacks a location in space and time whereas a "concrete" event of the future has such a location.
Playing God at this level seems dangerous and irresponsible. Doing "research" would be fine, of course, but we know that once risky research gets far enough, it almost always has real-world consequences.
Bear in mind we already did it for decades with So2 from fuels. Banning it has resulted in a sharp warming in the last 2 years. volcanoes do it all time, too. Plus, the aerosol particles only last 6 months to a few years. If you want to stop, you can literally just stop and the warming effect is gone. The cooling is albedo related, so it's also hard for me to imagine how it could really get out of hand. it's tried and tested by us and by nature, and it would just be reversing the current dangerous and irresponsible playing God act of warming the planet.
You seem to be eager to write about a straw man in these paragraphs:
"The above problems must be contended with. [I agree.] However, I am perplexed that many people falling more on the side of climate alarmism have so far denigrated and dismissed the idea of direct intervention. In many cases, the idea of even doing the research is shot down and a blanket ban has been discussed. The political ramifications of this include UN committees vetoing any funding of studies in this direction. [My reading of the cited article doesn't suggest that about the UN.]
"I do not understand this. If one is a climate alarmist then anything and everything we can do to stop the problem from getting worse should be on the table. The fact that people want to summarily reject a (quasi-)solution that could be safe, clean, cheap, and effective just does not make sense to me and speaks to an ideological blind-spot that is holding the discussion back.
In my view, the major risk of implementing geoengineering in various forms is the risk of making things worse by misunderstanding a very complex system, and also diverting attention and resources from those approaches thought to be more effective and less risky. Studies of geoengineering may contribute to the latter; that's the concern, which can be written glibly as "...ah ... (supposedly) we'll solve climate change more inexpensively by geoengineering than by converting away from unsustainable and profligate burning of fossil fuels...."
The emission of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels in the past century is not debated, except maybe by flat Earthers. But then there's lots of (mostly disingenuous and self serving but some reasonable) debate about the effects of all that CO2. It doesn't surprise me that there's debate about geoengineering. Something as simple as "more CO2 --> higher temperatures" has all this debate, so why shouldn't there be doubt and distrust about studying geoengineering? or implementing it.
Also, just as nations choose to emit greenhouse gases for their own residents' benefit, some nations may choose to implement geoengineering (cloud brightening, dikes to hold back sea water, slowing the motions (and melting) of glaciers). There might be some treaties regulating the behaviors of signatories, but in the end, powerful nations will do as they please and that might include controlling what the other nations do.
Thanks for the article. It makes my point for me! "... geoengineering experiments such as this one should be prohibited under a number of international agreements, which have put in place a de facto moratorium on this kind of research. "
As for the unexpected consequences, this genuinely is something that can't simply go haywire. Increasing the albedo will reduce the temperature, and vice versa. We are quite uncontroversially seeing a spike in warming over last 2 year saftey banning SO2 emitting fuels and we have loads of studies of these events from post-volcanic cooling over time. In general, aerosols and reflectance are a fairly simple cooling pathway, other than issues with acid rain. Ultimately, if we are deciding that warming is catastrophic then inducing some cooling makes sense. It might not be that catastrophic, but guarding against the possibility makes sense to me.
Of course the implementation would not necessarily be simply easy, but we should absolutely do the research to know either way. If things get out of hand, we will want to be able to turn to these ideas with good evidence behind our plan of action.
Here's a thought experiment. A nation decides to test some geoengineering that will affect the entire planet. The consensus of its scientists asserts that the test is safe, its effects will be measurable and reversible, and not something that can go haywire. Some other scientists, in your own country, have concerns. What to do?
A real life parallel was the very small chance of setting the atmosphere on fire with the Trinity nuclear test. Per the anthropic principle, we are here to discuss it only because it didn't happen when they executed the test. And then in the Castle Bravo test, not all the theory was correct - an almost unbelievably simple alternative reaction had been overlooked, causing the explosive yield to be more than twice that expected.
Roger Angel (the U of A astronomer) had the unusual idea of placing zillions of disks at the L1 point between the Sun and the Earth in order to divert a controllable fraction of sunlight from the Earth. Although fanciful, such ideas seem harmless to me to study with pencil and paper, or computer simulations. But any idea, when it reaches a moment of truth, i.e. about to be implemented, will have a lot of trouble with that fundamental problem of risk of making things worse in some unforeseen way (or even in foreseeen ways). One idea that was championed by DOE secretary Steven Chu was painting roofs (and roads) white to reflect some sunlight. If you look at the bottom of the following blog post, there's a British study that compares various geoengineering cost-benefits. Painting a roof white does reduce the AC needed to keep the building cool in summer, but according to that study, it's an expensive way to change the albedo of the overall Earth by anything interesting. https://2020science.org/2009/05/27/steve-chus-white-revolution/
Many of those pushing the climate alarmism are degrowth advocates. Some are Marxists of various stripes. The last thing they would want is a technological "fix".
I am, of course, worried about unintended consequences from any human intervention in the climate. We do not understand the climate system well enough to do this yet. Climate is a complex system, subject to nonlinear dynamics. We are not sure what our intentional interference might do on a global scale.
We have been attempting to "cloud seed" in small areas for many decades, with some mixed success. And I expect that eventually, we might reach a point where we have more control over the weather. But we are a long, long ways from that level of understanding and technology now.
I guess my point is that we are intentionally interfering already and increasing the albedo would be a fairly non-complex way to reduce that interference.
Controlling the weather is a very different and much more arcane field than simply increasing the albedo globally, which happens all the time from volcanic aerosols. And, indeed, we were already doing it with fuel SO2 emissions - that is why we are now seeing a huge spike in warming since it was banned a few years ago.
I love science.
But:
-climate science is inexact;
-politicians (e.g. Al Gore, ...) and ecofanatics (Greta, ...) have been predicting doom for years, and have been totally wrong.
Rx:
-get the best climate scientists together to study the issue and produce a good report, based on science alone;
-tell all countries, especially China and Inida, that's it's all or none - everybody helps fix any identified problems or everyone is on their own.
Greta just spreads anti-scientific guff about the end of the world, indeed.
Spent much of my career at EPA working to reduce SO2 emissions from high sulfur coal burning power plants in order to protect sensitive lakes in the Northeast and Canada. Seems that I fucked up. 😎
Yeah the acidity issue is a major downside. I struggle to believe there would be no alternative to SO2, though.
Sensible people (e.g., Bjorn Lomborg, Judith Curry, Matt Ridley) agree on global warming, likely with humans contributing at the margin. Despite the incentives and corruption of Big Science, the evidence of glaciers anyone can see is hard to ignore.
That said, there are so many examples of misguided human intervention (see Cane toads for a funny example) that the idea of geoengineering is alarming. Politician's do not seem to "understand" piloting and scaling, and that effects tend to decline with scale.
Lomborg's economic points are well made; there are many better ideas to improve the environment and promote human flourishing. Current trends will see the human population stabilize if not decline by 2100, especially in rich, high fossil fuel burning countries. I'm not a biologist but it's almost like nature is solving it's own problem.
I can see that. Main point with this intervention is that we were doing it already with SO2 from fuels and volcanoes do it all the time. It's not like we don't know quite a lot about what would happen, and the lifetime of the particles in the atmosphere is so short that if you want to stop it... you just stop! :)
Fair point. Although, (tongue in cheek) government programs never stop. For example, subsidies / tax breaks for fossil fuel exploration. Tragicomic.
The controversy is not over the issue of anthropogenic glogal warming but rather is over the issue of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. The appearance of the latter is created by an application of the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness under which an "abstract" event of the future for Earth's climate system is mistaken for a "concrete" event of the future for this system, where an "abstract" event of the future lacks a location in space and time whereas a "concrete" event of the future has such a location.
Terry Oldberg
Engineer/Scientist/Public Policy Researcher
Los Altos Hills, California
Playing God at this level seems dangerous and irresponsible. Doing "research" would be fine, of course, but we know that once risky research gets far enough, it almost always has real-world consequences.
Bear in mind we already did it for decades with So2 from fuels. Banning it has resulted in a sharp warming in the last 2 years. volcanoes do it all time, too. Plus, the aerosol particles only last 6 months to a few years. If you want to stop, you can literally just stop and the warming effect is gone. The cooling is albedo related, so it's also hard for me to imagine how it could really get out of hand. it's tried and tested by us and by nature, and it would just be reversing the current dangerous and irresponsible playing God act of warming the planet.
Possibly relevant to the motives of alarmists, not limited to the case of Marxists:
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/a-revealing-cartoon
This article would have more credibility if it had mentioned some geoengineering studies, e..g this cloud brightening experiment in California, even if to note that it was halted. https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2024/06/city-of-alameda-mcbp/
You seem to be eager to write about a straw man in these paragraphs:
"The above problems must be contended with. [I agree.] However, I am perplexed that many people falling more on the side of climate alarmism have so far denigrated and dismissed the idea of direct intervention. In many cases, the idea of even doing the research is shot down and a blanket ban has been discussed. The political ramifications of this include UN committees vetoing any funding of studies in this direction. [My reading of the cited article doesn't suggest that about the UN.]
"I do not understand this. If one is a climate alarmist then anything and everything we can do to stop the problem from getting worse should be on the table. The fact that people want to summarily reject a (quasi-)solution that could be safe, clean, cheap, and effective just does not make sense to me and speaks to an ideological blind-spot that is holding the discussion back.
In my view, the major risk of implementing geoengineering in various forms is the risk of making things worse by misunderstanding a very complex system, and also diverting attention and resources from those approaches thought to be more effective and less risky. Studies of geoengineering may contribute to the latter; that's the concern, which can be written glibly as "...ah ... (supposedly) we'll solve climate change more inexpensively by geoengineering than by converting away from unsustainable and profligate burning of fossil fuels...."
The emission of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels in the past century is not debated, except maybe by flat Earthers. But then there's lots of (mostly disingenuous and self serving but some reasonable) debate about the effects of all that CO2. It doesn't surprise me that there's debate about geoengineering. Something as simple as "more CO2 --> higher temperatures" has all this debate, so why shouldn't there be doubt and distrust about studying geoengineering? or implementing it.
Also, just as nations choose to emit greenhouse gases for their own residents' benefit, some nations may choose to implement geoengineering (cloud brightening, dikes to hold back sea water, slowing the motions (and melting) of glaciers). There might be some treaties regulating the behaviors of signatories, but in the end, powerful nations will do as they please and that might include controlling what the other nations do.
Thanks for the article. It makes my point for me! "... geoengineering experiments such as this one should be prohibited under a number of international agreements, which have put in place a de facto moratorium on this kind of research. "
As for the unexpected consequences, this genuinely is something that can't simply go haywire. Increasing the albedo will reduce the temperature, and vice versa. We are quite uncontroversially seeing a spike in warming over last 2 year saftey banning SO2 emitting fuels and we have loads of studies of these events from post-volcanic cooling over time. In general, aerosols and reflectance are a fairly simple cooling pathway, other than issues with acid rain. Ultimately, if we are deciding that warming is catastrophic then inducing some cooling makes sense. It might not be that catastrophic, but guarding against the possibility makes sense to me.
Of course the implementation would not necessarily be simply easy, but we should absolutely do the research to know either way. If things get out of hand, we will want to be able to turn to these ideas with good evidence behind our plan of action.
Here's a thought experiment. A nation decides to test some geoengineering that will affect the entire planet. The consensus of its scientists asserts that the test is safe, its effects will be measurable and reversible, and not something that can go haywire. Some other scientists, in your own country, have concerns. What to do?
A real life parallel was the very small chance of setting the atmosphere on fire with the Trinity nuclear test. Per the anthropic principle, we are here to discuss it only because it didn't happen when they executed the test. And then in the Castle Bravo test, not all the theory was correct - an almost unbelievably simple alternative reaction had been overlooked, causing the explosive yield to be more than twice that expected.
Roger Angel (the U of A astronomer) had the unusual idea of placing zillions of disks at the L1 point between the Sun and the Earth in order to divert a controllable fraction of sunlight from the Earth. Although fanciful, such ideas seem harmless to me to study with pencil and paper, or computer simulations. But any idea, when it reaches a moment of truth, i.e. about to be implemented, will have a lot of trouble with that fundamental problem of risk of making things worse in some unforeseen way (or even in foreseeen ways). One idea that was championed by DOE secretary Steven Chu was painting roofs (and roads) white to reflect some sunlight. If you look at the bottom of the following blog post, there's a British study that compares various geoengineering cost-benefits. Painting a roof white does reduce the AC needed to keep the building cool in summer, but according to that study, it's an expensive way to change the albedo of the overall Earth by anything interesting. https://2020science.org/2009/05/27/steve-chus-white-revolution/
https://2020science.org/2009/09/01/geoengineering-the-climate-a-clear-perspective-from-the-royal-society/
There's also a good essay linked at the bottom of that that expands on some of the things you expressed in yours:
https://2020science.org/2009/06/14/geoengineering-are-we-grown-up-enough-to-handle-it/