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Earth Science

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.
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Harvard Scientists Say It's Time To Start Thinking About Engineering the Climate

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  • Might as well learn to be good at mopping.

  • by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh@@@gmail...com> on Friday November 21, 2014 @02:41PM (#48436139) Journal

    We've been doing unintentional geoengineering for hundreds of years now, why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?

    • 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.

      • 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

        • Okay, the way in which you have agreed with me, and the similar arguments you brought up have convinced me I was wrong.

          • Just curious: are you saying you don't believe GMO corn spread beyond its boundaries and hybridized with other corn, after Monsanto had claimed that wasn't possible in its applications to USDA? (Hint: it has been proven in court.)

            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.
            • 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.

              • 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.

            • 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.

        • 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

        • 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.

    • 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,

      • >On a side note, can you imagine the United Nations agreeing to a planetary geoengineering plan? I can't.

        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.
      • 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

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      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.

      • 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.

    • One could say that our unintentional geoengineering is now intentional as we now know what it is doing to the climate.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by radtea ( 464814 )

      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

    • by Hartree ( 191324 )

      "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

      • "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.

        • by Hartree ( 191324 )

          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.

    • Two Words: Biosphere 2 Not the horrible movie Bio-Dome.I mean the Texas experiment in 1991. It was meant to be a fully self sustaining isolated environment. Everything started dying off quickly that led to the premature closure of the experiment. Until I can see something successfully ran like this I will not even consider the re-engineering experiment that are proposed.
  • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @02:42PM (#48436145)

    Their own students have already started trying to manipulate global warming by suing their precious alma mater

  • It's bringing back suppressed memories of Highlander 2!
  • by Zorlon ( 181163 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @02:52PM (#48436247)
    Then if it works we'll have a bonus planet to live it. Win Win :)
    • First sensible idea I've heard so far.
    • +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.

    • by mbone ( 558574 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @03:32PM (#48436543)

      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.

    • 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

  • by crmanriq ( 63162 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @02:54PM (#48436257)

    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."

    • 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).

      • by crmanriq ( 63162 )

        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

        • by itzly ( 3699663 )
          "not warmer than today" would be a reasonable start.
          • by crmanriq ( 63162 )

            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

            • by itzly ( 3699663 )
              You keep talking about optimum, but there's not requirement that we reach an optimum. All we would need is to avoid it getting worse.

              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.

              • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

                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.

      • 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?

    • "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?

  • by aristotle-dude ( 626586 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @03:00PM (#48436299)
    I think it was called Snow Piercer. Do we really want to do this?
  • We have already adjusted the earth's climate - both intentionally and unintentionally.

    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.

    • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

      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.

  • by bigsexyjoe ( 581721 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @03:03PM (#48436337)

    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?

    • 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.

    • 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.

      • Capitialism is destroying the environment, it is a very stupid way to do things. It will be the end of us.

  • Countries (including US) are actively doing things to adjust the climate already. The sad part is we are already doing things to influence the climate that we have no clue how we are affecting things in the long term. We can't even come to a real conclusion on global warming and what is causing it... let alone figuring out what would happen if we try to correct it or adjust it purposefully. Even if we could adjust the climate temperature it could just be building us up for a much bigger natural adjustmen
    • 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)

    by lurker412 ( 706164 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @03:10PM (#48436389)
    It seemed remarkably appropriate that this was the cookie at the bottom of the thread:

    "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
  • 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)

    by mbone ( 558574 ) on Friday November 21, 2014 @03:26PM (#48436517)

    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.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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

  • 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.

  • The article is specifically talking about Solar Radiation Management (SRM). This is adjusting temperature by reflecting more heat back to space, not by reducing CO2 emissions or sequestering CO2. So any other effects of increased CO2, such as ocean acidification, remain in place.
  • 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!)

  • who gave us the Harvard MBA.

    That hasn't worked out so well.

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