There have recently been urgent calls for geoengineering (see Arctic News) to stop the Arctic from melting. The argument put forward by the proponents of geoengineering is that scientists failed to predict the massive melting of the Arctic ice and this melting now threatens to cause huge methane releases that might kill us all. These proponents are horrified that all of the best climate scientists in the world failed to predict Arctic climate change so they are asking world leaders to trust them, a group of internet bloggers and activists, to "fix" the climate.
The attitude of these amateur mechanics sums up the geoengineering argument. They look at a hugely complicated system that even the best scientists in the world failed to predict and say "trust us, we know better".
The proposers of geoengineering produce cheerful pictures such as:
Like snapshots from some estate agent's brochure. The Arctic is dark and will be made even darker. Geoengineering really looks like this:
If geoengineering were to be successful in the Arctic (unlikely, but possible) then it would spread and the picture above is what the geoengineers have got in mind for all of us. Welcome to Earth, the Geoengineers are Creatures of Darkness, Men of Mordor.
Other types of geoengineering have, of course, been tried before. We have moved on from witch doctors taking money to perform rain dances to companies speculating on "seeding" clouds to make rain. The communists, who have the same gung ho attitude as the modern Arctic geoengineers, have tried geoengineering on many occasions. One of the most recent attempts caused snow and storms in Beijing in early November (see China overdoes cloud seeding). Notice that this intervention had unpredictable side effects.
The increasingly frequent droughts are tempting many countries to indulge in rain making. India, Indonesia and several other countries are also toying with this technology. An obvious draw back of using geoengineering is that the clouds only contain so much water. If one country ends a drought it can create a drought elsewhere. Rain making is akin to river damming - divert the water to your own land and those downstream get less. Geoengineering is a Meteorological Weapon which might well be used if there were ever a war between modern superpowers.
The call by British and American pressure groups to black out the Arctic might be interpreted by the Russians as a threat of war. It would definitely be unpopular if it went even slightly wrong and the people of Archangel died in thousands because the temperature fell too far. Look forward to Russian papers with headlines such as "Americans to use Climate Weapons Against Russia" or, in Russian: "Американцы использования климатического оружия против России".
The greatest danger from geoengineering is that there will be a climate catastrophe and the amateur mechanics will get the ear of the press. They will say "we can cure it, give us a chance", there will then be a huge clamour in the media for geoengineered intervention. The Russian, Chinese and American policy makers will know that geoengineering is dangerous and unpredictable but will be forced to let it happen. They will go over all the possible outcomes and, so long as they believe that the side effects of geoengineering will hurt other people and not themselves they will support it. God help the Africans, South Americans and Polynesians.
The greatest argument for using geoengineering to tackle climate change is that if it worked it would allow us some more time. Time for what? Time to carry on as normal. Time to make the underlying problems worse so that we become addicted to geoengineering. But geoengineering based on reducing sunlight will probably not work and has huge risks.
All emergency measures for tackling arctic climate change rely upon reducing the amount of light received from the sun. This will have dramatic consequences from reducing rainfall and hence causing drought to destroying whole ecosystems. Worse still, if it did work the world will just carry on as normal increasing CO2 emissions until a war or economic crisis means that the geoengineering is interrupted and a climate catastrophe occurs on an unimaginable scale.
The attitude of these amateur mechanics sums up the geoengineering argument. They look at a hugely complicated system that even the best scientists in the world failed to predict and say "trust us, we know better".
The proposers of geoengineering produce cheerful pictures such as:
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| Geoengineering the Arctic? |
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| Geoengineering the Arctic. What geoengineering really looks like. |
If geoengineering were to be successful in the Arctic (unlikely, but possible) then it would spread and the picture above is what the geoengineers have got in mind for all of us. Welcome to Earth, the Geoengineers are Creatures of Darkness, Men of Mordor.
Other types of geoengineering have, of course, been tried before. We have moved on from witch doctors taking money to perform rain dances to companies speculating on "seeding" clouds to make rain. The communists, who have the same gung ho attitude as the modern Arctic geoengineers, have tried geoengineering on many occasions. One of the most recent attempts caused snow and storms in Beijing in early November (see China overdoes cloud seeding). Notice that this intervention had unpredictable side effects.
The increasingly frequent droughts are tempting many countries to indulge in rain making. India, Indonesia and several other countries are also toying with this technology. An obvious draw back of using geoengineering is that the clouds only contain so much water. If one country ends a drought it can create a drought elsewhere. Rain making is akin to river damming - divert the water to your own land and those downstream get less. Geoengineering is a Meteorological Weapon which might well be used if there were ever a war between modern superpowers.
The call by British and American pressure groups to black out the Arctic might be interpreted by the Russians as a threat of war. It would definitely be unpopular if it went even slightly wrong and the people of Archangel died in thousands because the temperature fell too far. Look forward to Russian papers with headlines such as "Americans to use Climate Weapons Against Russia" or, in Russian: "Американцы использования климатического оружия против России".
The greatest danger from geoengineering is that there will be a climate catastrophe and the amateur mechanics will get the ear of the press. They will say "we can cure it, give us a chance", there will then be a huge clamour in the media for geoengineered intervention. The Russian, Chinese and American policy makers will know that geoengineering is dangerous and unpredictable but will be forced to let it happen. They will go over all the possible outcomes and, so long as they believe that the side effects of geoengineering will hurt other people and not themselves they will support it. God help the Africans, South Americans and Polynesians.
The greatest argument for using geoengineering to tackle climate change is that if it worked it would allow us some more time. Time for what? Time to carry on as normal. Time to make the underlying problems worse so that we become addicted to geoengineering. But geoengineering based on reducing sunlight will probably not work and has huge risks.
All emergency measures for tackling arctic climate change rely upon reducing the amount of light received from the sun. This will have dramatic consequences from reducing rainfall and hence causing drought to destroying whole ecosystems. Worse still, if it did work the world will just carry on as normal increasing CO2 emissions until a war or economic crisis means that the geoengineering is interrupted and a climate catastrophe occurs on an unimaginable scale.
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