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LONDON: Sci-fi proposals to cool the Earth are laden with risk but may be our only hope if politicians fail to tackle global warming, says the biggest evaluation yet of geo-engineering.
The verdict by Britain's Royal Society comes little more than three months before a U.N. showdown in Copenhagen on how to reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change.
John Shepherd, a professor at the University of Southampton, who chaired a 12-member panel which assessed the evidence, said geo-engineering was filling a perilous political void.
Last resort
"Our research found that some geo-engineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems - yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them," he said.
The report cautiously said some geo-engineering schemes were technically feasible but were shadowed by safety worries and doubts about affordability. Provided these questions were answered, such projects could be a useful tool as part of a worldwide switch to a low-carbon economy, it said.
But, the report warned, other geo-engineering schemes are so costly or so freighted with risk and unknowns that they should only be considered a last-ditch fix.
First serious hearing
Just five years ago, geo-engineering was widely dismissed by mainstream climate scientists as quirky or delusional. As recently as 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cautioned of its potential risk and unquantified cost.
But the schemes (see Seven wacky ways to battle global warming, Cosmos Online) are now getting a serious hearing in many quarters, helped by mounting evidence that climate change is advancing faster than thought while progress towards a carbon-curbing U.N. treaty is moving at glacial speed. Supporters say geo-engineering can buy time to let politicians hammer out a deal or wean the global economy off polluting fossil fuels.
The report – Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty – was based mainly on peer-reviewed literature. It took a year to carry out, and the Royal Society came under fire from green groups who accused it of handing a cloak of respectability to a once-mocked scientific fringe.
Cooling and Already Cooling Earth
We seem to have a serious disconnect from reality at the Agence France-Presse. Currently, the Sun is going into the deepest minimum we've seen in 100 years. That means we might just be heading into period of global cooling, rather than warming. In fact, according to Dr. Roy Spencer, temperatures around the world have dropped, rather than risen, since 1998. And Dr. Robert Felix makes a compelling case that the world is about to enter into an ice age.
And now we want to cool the Earth even further? How does this make sense?
The article quotes Ken Caldeira, of Stanford University:
"We need to think if Greenland were to be sliding into the sea rapidly, causing rapid sea-level rise, or if methane started to de-gas rapidly from the Siberian permafrost, or if rainfall patterns were to shift in such a way that wide-spread famines were induced..."
That was an awful lot of "if"'s there! Maybe, being a "professor of climate modeling" he can tell us which of the models has accurately predicted the current cooling of the Earth? Or, perhaps he'd be so kind as to inform the public which model predicted the current solar minimum.
Until he, and other proponents of AGW or ACC can answer these questions, shouldn't we take predictions of Greenland sliding into the sea with a healthy dose of salt?
One fact remains, Folks: Nature is far bigger and far more powerful than Mankind. Nothing we do can overwhelm the affects of solar activity, cosmic rays, vulcanism or ocean currents. We just ain't that big and powerful. Nor do we truly understand enough of what make our Earth and its climate tick.
To think otherwise is delusional thinking, at best. Hopefully, it isn't some vast hoax, aimed at separating us from out Liberty!
The Planet
It's what the Earth does.We can't stop. Even if we go 100% green, in three hundred years we will have cleaner air, cleaner water and a very warm planet.
S.Kelly
Flushing NY
Easier way
And so, Earth's handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last minute fix: We drop a giant block of ice in the ocean every now and then. Of course the gas is still building up so the block has to be bigger each time, thus solving the problem forever.