Harvard Scientists Say It's Time To Start Thinking About Engineering the Climate 367
merbs writes: Harvard has long been home to one of the fiercest advocates for climate engineering. This week, Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences published a research announcement headlined "Adjusting Earth's Thermostat, With Caution." That might read as oxymoronic — intentionally altering the planet's climate has rarely been considered a cautious enterprise — but it fairly accurately reflects the thrust of several new studies published by the Royal Society, all focused on exploring the controversial field of geoengineering.
We can't get the toddler to stop throwing food (Score:2)
Might as well learn to be good at mopping.
We've been doing it for a long time (Score:4, Insightful)
We've been doing unintentional geoengineering for hundreds of years now, why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?
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Because purposeful geoengineering is, by its nature, going to be of larger scale of effect. Making mistakes about degree of effect or feedbacks could be very bad for us. It's devil you know versus devil you don't, and you only get one planet to try with. Relatively small chances of error are still kind of a big deal.
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Because purposeful geoengineering is, by its nature, going to be of larger scale of effect. Making mistakes about degree of effect or feedbacks could be very bad for us. It's devil you know versus devil you don't, and you only get one planet to try with. Relatively small chances of error are still kind of a big deal.
Pretty much this. It's the same precautionary principle that should have been used with GMOs, which are already causing serious problems. And I don't mean health problems, I mean ecology. Such as roudup-ready corn spreading in the wild, and passing some of its modified genes to other plants, when it wasn't supposed to.
The whole global warming scare made it abundantly obvious that the current state of science (plus politics) is incapable of intelligently managing the climate, or perhaps even managing it a
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Okay, the way in which you have agreed with me, and the similar arguments you brought up have convinced me I was wrong.
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Are you claiming that the roundup-ready genes have NOT been found in other plants growing near cornfields?
As I say: I am just curious what your point is here.
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That I don't view genetic modification as an extraordinary source of danger, life spreads, no matter where its genetic sequences come from, and the science about it isn't ambiguous: human added genes aren't magic.
It made me realize if the science about control measures weren't ambiguous, there'd still be people making extremely stupid arguments of chance against it, and I don't want to be one.
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That I don't view genetic modification as an extraordinary source of danger
Well, in my opinion -- I admit that's all it is -- that suggests that you may not understand it very well.
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Are you claiming that the roundup-ready genes have NOT been found in other plants growing near cornfields?
We all know Monsanto are pricks in their dealings with small farmers who refuse to buy their seed, but what "damage" has been done to human health or the environment by GMO plants of any kind? - Resistance to roundup and cabbages that glow in the dark is not "damage".
Aside from that, scientific claims cannot be "proven in court" and your well known non-belief in AGW has nothing to do with science.
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It gives people who don't bathe often enough the heebie-jeebies.
Arguably not the GMO that caused harm here (Score:2)
I would suggest that the GMO itself isn't actually harming anything. Rather, it's the regulatory framework around it that let Monsantu patent gene sequences and then sue farmers over them.
In many cases direct genetic modification is *less* intrusive than other techniques of creating more suitable species of plants...the non-GMO method generally involves forcing random mutations via chemicals/radiation and then selecting for the traits you want. Of course there may be a bunch of other mutations that you di
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The whole global warming scare made it abundantly obvious that the current state of science (plus politics) is incapable of intelligently managing the climate, or perhaps even managing it at all, much less intelligently.
But, hey, look what Harvard Economists have done with engineering the economy! Can't we have some ivory tower academics "fixing" the planet too?
But seriously, an upper-bound projected sea level rise of 4 inches is completely unprecedented [wikimedia.org], so we should seek to thwart the productive capacit
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Such as roundup-ready corn spreading in the wild, and passing some of its modified genes to other plants, when it wasn't supposed to.
Care to cite anything that supports this statement? All I can fined is a specific experiment with rice [nature.com] where the GMO rice passed the gene to non-GMO weed rice. The fact that both are species of rice may mean that their pollen is compatible. I believe that is called cross pollination. Can you cite any research where GMO genes have jumped species? I do not believe there are any weed corn varieties so cross pollination can not occur.
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what i don't get, is that we're taking something as fantastically fucking complex as the global climate -- and using a single variable to explain / model it. That seems mind boggling naive to me.
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If the globe isn't warming, that must mean the oceans aren't warming because they're part of the globe. Is that the case, Jane?
I stated what I stated. If you have a specific argument to make, then make it. Otherwise kindly go away. I won't argue over insinuations.
Re:We've been doing it for a long time (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that source concludes: "The net warming of the ocean implies an energy imbalance for the Earth of 0.64 +/- 0.44 W/m^2 from 2005 to 2013."
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If the house is getting warmer, that must mean that the refrigerator is getting warmer, since the 'frig is part of they house, right?
That's an example of an elementary fallacy that we call the "Does Not Follow" (that's a (semi-)literary reference - anyone remember from what?).
Do note that PART of the Earth warming in no way implies that ALL of the Earth is warming.
Likewise, PART
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People are cheaper than rockets.
Harvard is clamoring for this because they smell profit.
Money drives everything.
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Maybe two planets. I propose testing it on Mars first. Costs more but no people to kill.
Maybe someone already did....
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planetist! I identify as a planet-fluid life-form, and I'm now triggered. check your privilege.
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Yeah, cool mars more... good one!
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Better to try Venus. Don't expect terraforming, just see if you can cool it a bit.
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Our unintentional geoengineering has made it clear that the climate is a very complicated thing with vast opportunities for unintended consequences. Diving into a dynamical system that we don't understand all that well anyway is a sure recipe for disaster. We might just be better off adapting to the changes that are coming. There will be some winners and lots of losers, but at least it will be caused by all of us together rather than an adventuresome nation trying to cover its own losses.
On a side note,
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Definitely, once the problem is obvious to even the derpiest right-wingers. When the people propagandized into driving civilization off a cliff feel the impact of climate change themselves, they'll actually acknowledge the problem, and may do something about it. It's just too abstract right now for less intelligent people to respond to it.
Unintentional Geoengineering (Score:2)
On a side note, can you imagine the United Nations agreeing to a planetary geoengineering plan? I can't.
Yes I can, actually. And they will. The question is, how many billions of people are going to die before this happens. Climate change is occurring, this is a hard fact. Most times in nature, change doesn't precipitate gradual linear effects, but rather a tipping point where things happen very rapidly. Sooner or later, we are going to cross an environmental tipping point, and you will see some sudden massive flooding or crop failure and a lot of people will die.Hopefully, not too many, but I suspect that it
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Harvard could make a significant contribution by divesting from coal and telling everybody why, but it has dec
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How do you get the different countries committed to the same climate change ... and to hold their decision long enough to have a desired effect?
I think the politics are too chaotic and short-sighted to make geoengineering feasible, even if there weren't a great need to avoid mistakes.
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We get them to agree to a set of target temperatures matching a certain time period - that shouldn't be too difficult a debate. Few countries stand to benefit from warming even if considered individually, so nobody stands to benfit from inaction.
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We've been doing unintentional geoengineering for hundreds of years now, why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?
Because it might allow us to continue with global trade, industrial capitalism and rising prosperity.
Show me any practical, proven technology whose wide-spread deployment would significantly reduce GHG emissions and I will show you a green activist group vehemently opposed to it.
Wind: http://www.energyenvironmental... [energyenvi...tallaw.com]
Solar: http://www.kcet.org/news/redef... [kcet.org]
Hydro: http://www.theglobeandmail.com... [theglobeandmail.com]
And of course Nuclear: http://www.nationaljournal.com... [nationaljournal.com]
Some people will claim that green activists aren't oppose
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"why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?"
If it fails, not much.
But if it works, and global warming is controlled, it would undercut the best fundraising, societal engineering and lobbying arguments many organizations have.
Example: It'd remove a massive issue for the Democrats and Republicans to argue about and scare voters with.
Repeat that with both environmental and conservative organizations losing that issue, and you have a worse crisis for them than just the prospect of getting cooked by ri
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"why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?" If it fails, not much.
There are two ways it could fail. Only one would result in "not much bad". The other would be catastrophic.
Given the history of man's failures in managing large scale environment and ecological issues, don't rule out the catastrophic failure modes (not all of which we even know or can readily predict) of geoengineering. Geoengineering that results in the equivalent of The Australian Rabbit Infestation but on a global scale would be, well, pretty not good for everyone.
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If it fails as badly as the rabbit infestation, you've given the pols another wonderful issue to send out direct mailings about!
Not to mention, a whole slew of disaster movies that will make Night of the Lepus look positively tame.
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They're a bit late to the party (Score:3)
Their own students have already started trying to manipulate global warming by suing their precious alma mater
I've got a bad feeling about this... (Score:2)
How about we beta test on Venus? (Score:5, Interesting)
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+1
Also, there's nothing controversial about geo and climate engineering, it's just a dumb idea, since we don't actually understand climate yet, or even just the weather. Let 'em write papers, but make sure they keep their hands off of actual "engineering" for a few more decades. We'll be busy coping with our most recent climate engineering attempt and its results, the release of several hundred million years' worth of carbon.
Re:How about we beta test on Venus? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, an Earth sun-shade would need to block at most a few % of the sunshine falling on the Earh, while for Venus (if we want to cool the planet off this millennium) we will need to block all of the Sun's rays for a while, so the engineering is a bit more difficult. Add to this the detail that the Venus Lagrange point 1 is quite a bit further away than the Earth's, and energetically harder to reach, and I think a more reasonable conclusion is that the Earth would be training wheels for Venus, and not vice versa.
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forget the terraforming, just cool Venus by a few degrees and take notes as you do.
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You people talk about terraforming mars or venus as if that were so easy.
Newsflash: Mars and Venus are very far away. Like, I mean, enormously freaking huge distances.
It took rosetta 10 years to rendevous with a comet that's basically crossing through earths nearest neighborhood. And that was a satellite the size of a car. And it did not have to transport and sustain humans and their life-requirements.
Until significant advancemens in getting stuff to orbit, massive advancements in material and propulsion te
Optimum Temperature (Score:5, Funny)
Sure. Let's engineer it. Just tell me what the optimum global mean temperature is, and I'll get right on it.
(It's no more difficult than any of the other projects that I've been assigned. "Invent a machine that can do X. At a lower cost than a worker in China."
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The optimum temperature would be one in which extreme droughts, storms, etc are at most regional events limited to a few years and don't have long lasting global effects (with minimal outliers). Kinda like what the global mean has been for the last few thousand years and that we will be exiting in the next few decades or century if the status quo continues (one could argue a global temperature shift would be much less jarring to human society if it happens over many thousands of years, as it normally does).
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Well, in the last two thousand years, we've had the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. So we've had some genuinely large variation.
How do we pick a specific mean temperature that doesn't tick off somebody, somewhere? Do we look to cool equatorial regions to lessen droughts? Or do we warm temperate regions to prolong the growing season? Who decides what the climate optimum is?
If we're going to make an engineering target, then we have to have a means to choose the proper e
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So let me preface this by saying I am not trying to be facetious.
On what basis do we say "not warmer than today"? I know there is a lot of research that has been done demonstrating warming in the last several decades. Is there any research that has been done to determine optimum temperature?
Huge tracts of land in Canada and Russia are plagued by short growing seasons. Would a longer growing season in these regions allow us to grow more food to feed the (7 billion?) people of earth?
Or would cooling the ea
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Huge tracts of land in Canada and Russia are plagued by short growing seasons
These are basically frozen swamps, not very suitable for growing crops as they thaw. In addition, they get poor amounts of sunlight.
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They were once covered with lush vegetation and quite warm.
100 million years ago, surface waters around Antarctica were about 15 degrees Celsius. At this time, the vegetation on the peninsula was lush, and there were conifers. The mean annual temperatures has been estimated at 17 to 19 degrees Celsius.
Re:Optimum Temperature for a Maunder Repeat? (Score:2)
You tweak a bit on the cooling side and get a repeat of the Maunder Minimum; then what?
Do you lose 25% of the population by starvation and freezing again as before?
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"Invent a machine that can do X. At a lower cost than a worker in China."
Sounds like a fun place to work. Are you hiring?
Saw a movie about this involving a train (Score:3)
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Yes. Because it's absurd.
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We already do that (Score:2)
We screwed up the ozone layer but are already well along the way to fix it. reference [washingtonpost.com]
We can create conditions favorable for earthquakes (fracking) and we can redirect lava flows. reference [usgs.gov]
The reason why people think climate can not be engineered is ignorance.
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And it's ignorant to think we know enough to do it right. What we have is livable, even the most radical environmental global warming proponent's projections wont mean the end of life on this planet. Start adjusting things without an absolute certainty of what we're doing and this planet can become a snowball. Imagine frigid temperatures at the equator. It's happened in the far past and it could happen again.
How about engineering the economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the idea that we are going to engineer the environment is crazy and dangerous. The fact is we don't HAVE to keep dumping CO2 into the air. We can dramatically shift our priorities and resources to finding alternative energy.
Granted, the economic incentives for clean energy aren't there right now, but is capitalism a suicide pact?
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Granted, the economic incentives for clean energy aren't there right now, but is capitalism a suicide pact?
Sort of, but it would be hard to literally kill ourselves with it. This problem should sort itself out within the next 10-20 years, as long as nobody invents an enforcement droid first.
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The fact is we don't HAVE to keep dumping CO2 into the air.
We tried that but the environmentalists said they preferred coal to nuclear.
Granted, the economic incentives for clean energy aren't there right now, but is capitalism a suicide pact?
No, but so far it's proven to be the least stupid way to do things.
No (Score:2)
Capitialism is destroying the environment, it is a very stupid way to do things. It will be the end of us.
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No. They never tried it. What's this "other people's wealth" the Earth has resources and the human race has the capacity to do work.
Already being done (cloud seeding) (Score:2)
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Human emissions of CO2 are what is causing global warming. There is almost no scientific resistance to this idea. There are a bunch of people that own a lot of carbon based energy that have their fingers in their ears and a bunch of people like you that they've convinced of a story alternate to reality but there is no doubt what is causing global warming.
Fortune cookie (Score:5, Interesting)
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell
Yikes! (Score:2)
Let's hope that Harvard teaches their engineers more restraint, balance, common-sense, concern for the common good, and other things that are positive for society and the world than they teach their MBAs.
Sun shade (Score:4, Insightful)
I am convinced we will eventually build a sunshade, out at the first (inner) Earth-Sun Lagrange point. It won't help with ocean acidification, but it would make a global thermostat possible.
And, it will be good practice on fixing Venus.
Let's go out of our way to alter the ecology. (Score:2)
RE:RE:RE:RE: the thing someone said (Score:2)
1. Since these scientists are a long way from sure about which projection/simulations they do are correct, wouldn't such Geo-engineering would be pointless?
2. The Geo-engineering we are talking about here "typically consists of dispersing sulfate aerosols - sulfuric acid - into the atmosphere". FFS that's like the way doctors treat people by pumping them full of drugs instead of treating the causes of disease. Have these scientists considered re-forestation, perhaps schemes to take back deserts, schemes to
My first post got eaten (Score:2)
So herewith, a repost: If we really are changing the climate, we're already geoengineering, so why not geoengineer the world back to normal? The biggest problem with doing so would be defining "normal". Russia and Canada like the world a little warmer, and are not going to appreciate our refreezing it.
Fixing one aspect and not another (Score:2)
Can I have it a bit warmer please? (Score:2)
I would like the temperature raised by 10ÂF. That would be most pleasant. Oh, wait, we're already making significant progress on that! Bravo! I like.
(If you want to complain about warming please move to Vermont or Maine, or any other northern region this time of year. We'll show you why warming is such a great idea!)
Remember: These are the same people... (Score:2)
who gave us the Harvard MBA.
That hasn't worked out so well.
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Yes, if we do it before Russia and Canada warm up :-P
Re:Global warming is bunk anyway. (Score:5, Interesting)
We shouldn't be fooling around like this. It's obvious we don't understand, or are too corrupt and greedy to admit, that there's no problem.
Its ironic that one of the potential benefits of geoengineering research is that it will force many climate change deniers to admit that its possible for human activity to have major deleterious effects on Earth's climate.
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Its ironic that one of the potential benefits of geoengineering research is that it will force many climate change deniers to admit that its possible for human activity to have major deleterious effects on Earth's climate.
...assuming it works, doesn't require the entire GDP of multiple nations, and a timescale that would put trees to shame, let alone humans.
Here's the funny part: in your haste to make a snark, you forget something: Humans can certainly alter clime - on a micro scale. Whether or not they can do it on a macro scale (let alone global) within any sort of sane time frame is a whole different (and honestly open) debate.
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Actually wouldn't that prove humans can have a POSITIVE effect? To prove a deliterious one they would have to fail, and fail catostrophically.
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Its ironic that one of the potential benefits of geoengineering research is that it will force many climate change deniers to admit that its possible for human activity to have major deleterious effects on Earth's climate.
Probably not. Consider the thoroughly-documented example of the evolutionary process at work in the modern world. This doesn't affect the belief systems of the religious folks, who still insist that evolution is bogus, and has nothing to do with our modern world. One of the major cases is with the over-use of antibiotics, especially in agriculture. This is forcing the evolution of resistance in most of our disease organisms, destroying the value of many of our medicines. The evidence of all this has
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Sure, just redesign the Euro to be shiny paper and print enough of it to cover about a hemisphere or so.
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Global warming failed to kill us fast enough so we have to help it along?
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Ahh!! It's so hard not to feed the troll!
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In the arctic and antarctic there is plenty of warming - the ice sheets and glaciers are thinning, and that is something that is very measurable.
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For which, there are a lot of excuses but not much warming... all that time CO2 has continue to increase so obviously what temperature changes there are, is disconnected from CO2.
If you find that reassuring I don't think you understand the scale of the problem.
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There was a 30-year period in the mid-1900's when there was significant cooling. That does not negate the fact that the trend over the last 150 years is, by human historical standards, rapid heating.
Now, do you think that 20 years of little to no warming disproves the connection between CO2 and average temperature?
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Yes, there has been rapid heating over the last 150 years, as the Earth recovered from the effects of The Little Ice Age. [wikipedia.org] Nothing particularly unusual or exiting about it, because the one thing that's known for sure about the Earth's climate is that it's always changing.
The first picture on that page shows an ominous-looking and unprecedented (in the 2000-year period covered by the graph) temperature spike over the last 150 years. This coincides with a rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Even if that is just a coincidence we still have to face the fact that we are probably headed for CO2 concentrations in the 1000+ ppm range, a range where the atmosphere has not been since the Jurassic.
We can hope that the warming will be significantly less severe than the models
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And the warming that there has been was more often the low temperatures becoming less cool rather than the high temperature becoming higher; most consider this a sign of the Urban Heat Island effect rather than a CO2 heat retention effect.
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Re:Global warming is bunk anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)
You use the word "facts". Let's talk about facts. Suppose I tried to debate this nutjob.
First of all, this person already decided what they "believe," and everything they read will be twisted into evidence supporting their predetermined conclusion. Therefore, right off the bat, actual debate is impossible. They've already decided what they think is true.
So, we'd go back and forth. They would post evidence supporting their perspective, and off to Google I'd go to dig up rebuttals from actual climatologists. That will take time because the climate change denial groups are always generating new bunk data, new misinterpretations of published papers, and new misrepresentations of past quotes. One can't just keep a database of counterevidence because they've always got new bullshit.
After however much time I'd spend researching rebuttals, that person would just keep replying with more bullshit. They either wouldn't read the counterpoints or wouldn't understand them. Then they'd pull out the ever-present Final Tactic by telling me that they know what they're talking about because they're a pilot, physics student, congressional aide, or whatever. They'll try to follow up bunk "science" with anecdote.
By the time the whole thing concluded, I will have failed to convince them because it was never a possibility to begin with. They will have failed to convince me because I actually look at the science and don't delude myself. Then, out there somewhere at their keyboard will sit some layperson who just wants to get along with their church group, some paid anti-climate change shill, or just an everyday idiot repeating what they've been told.
So.
1. They won't convince anybody.
2. Nobody can convince them.
Therefore, their bringing the subject up to start with is masturbatory and annoying. It accomplishes nothing that walking into a movie theater and announcing over a megaphone that the world is flat wouldn't accomplish.
The most constructive response is thus, "God damnit, can you just stop this already?" Optionally, this may be peppered with, "Please just go away."
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That's not entirely why these people do this. Craziness, I mean. Religion isn't really it either, so much as something usually involved with it. There are three things about human beings that lead to climate change deniers, to include the anthropogenic deniers who don't deny the change itself.
The first influence is that people will usually believe anything repeated to them often enough. Certain pundits have been drilling
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Ahh, I wish it were that simple. I could just sit myself and my family down to a marathon of Fox News. Then we would be magically wisked into a universe where us and our descendants will never have to deal with climate change.
Screw you guys! I'm going to the Right Dimension!
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You are assuming that a warming climate is more helpful, but you could have a warm dry desert which doesn't help any of us. Or it may be that in some areas it will be a desert - in others it might be more like what you describe.
There are no guarantees that the outcome will be one to our liking.
Wrong, moisture comes from evaporation. (Score:2)
You are assuming that a warming climate is more helpful, but you could have a warm dry desert
Wrong. A warmer climate releases more moisture into the atmosphere from the oceans, which winds up on land. You always have a net positive effect on moisture...
This has also been noted in explanations of why snowfall amounts are up in some areas.
Deserts are the result of specific weather patterns not allowing moisture to flow to a region, but it always goes somewhere...
We also have proof of this simple fact, the m
Not that simple (Score:2)
Imagine you have a temperate zone with low-moderate precipitation. (Like the north american prairies, for example.)
Now suppose a warming climate modified the weather systems so that some of that area got monsoon rains (washing away all the topsoil, flooding the cities, etc.) and the other part became a desert. The overall precipitation could be slightly net-positive, but it's vastly worse from a usefulness-to-humans standpoint.
Re:Err on the side of warmth (Score:4, Insightful)
You have only to look at the jungle compared to that arctic to realize that...
Unless you also compare the jungle to, say, the Sahara.
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There's this thing called a "desert," you should look it up.
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Said the anonymous coward.
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Not going well is right, not the way you think (Score:2)
We've been conducting a geo-engineering experiment by increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere and, so far, it isn't going well.
You're right. As an experiment to show CO2 causes warming it totally has sucked, because it shows in fact the opposite - over a decade without warming even as CO2 emissions continue to increase.
It's quite obvious at this point temperature changes have very little correlation to CO2 added to the atmosphere. Which was only logical one you realized what a tiny part of the atmosp