Thinking the unthinkable: Engineering Earth’s climate

[The usual Desdemona disclaimer: So the leaders of men conceived of their most desperate strategy yet.]

12 October 2011 A U.S. panel has called for a concerted effort to study proposals to manipulate the climate to slow global warming — a heretical notion among some environmentalists. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Jane C. S. Long, the group’s chairwoman, explains why we need to know more about the possibilities and perils of geoengineering. Jane C. S. Long, associate director-at-large of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, is convinced that the only sensible way to combat climate change is to work toward “a zero-emission energy system as fast as possible.” But as chairwoman of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s 18-member task force on geoengineering, the hydrologist and energy expert realized two fundamental things: that the world has still not come to its senses on global warming, and that science would be remiss if it didn’t consider the possibility that CO2 emissions will continue to soar for decades. This scenario lies at the heart of a report issued last week by the task force, composed of noted experts in climate science, social science, and foreign policy. It called for a comprehensive study of geoengineering options — including removing CO2 from the atmosphere and reflecting solar energy back into space — in case the Earth’s climate crosses certain tipping points, such as a mass release of methane from the Arctic that would drastically warm the planet. The report drew sharp criticism from some climate activists, who accused the task force of trying to put a positive marketing spin on doomsday technologies by labeling them efforts at “climate remediation.” But Long and her colleagues say it is best to be well informed about geoengineering options should they one day be needed. “Everyone I know who works on this is scared to death of this stuff,” Long said in an interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne. “People aren’t doing this because they think, ‘Oh whoopee! We can change the Earth!’ They’re doing it because they just don’t see any progress [on CO2 emissions] and it just seems to be getting worse and they want options on the table.” Yale Environment 360: What factors led the task force to the conclusion that it was time for the U.S. government to take a serious look at whether geoengineering, or climate remediation, was possible or advisable? Jane Long: Number one, of course, is the fact that we’re still producing greenhouse gases, and they are getting to be at a dangerous level and they’re going higher and nobody really knows what’s going to happen. The risks seem to be very large and there’s a strong sense that even if we were by some magic wand able to stop emitting tomorrow, we still have a problem with a lot of unknowns. So in the long run the chance that we would hit something that was very, very difficult for both humans and ecosystems to be able to handle successfully was significant. And we felt it was prudent to start doing research. There are other factors, such as other countries beginning to look at this. Certainly the UK has and it behooves the United States to be a member of this group that’s looking at it, rather than on the sidelines and just having to accept what other people do. There was definitely not a sense that we should get ready to deploy these things right now. We have to consider it, but we’re not planning to do it. So the idea is just really to become informed. […] e360: One thing you make very clear is that by far the preference of the people on the panel is to lower, or mitigate, greenhouse gas emissions. But given what’s happening now — we had records emissions in 2010, China and India are booming, the U.S. is not making a lot of progress — are you optimistic that the world is going to get its act together in the next 10 or 20 years to really start lowering CO2 emissions? Long: I think we will start, but we won’t necessarily do it in time. I’m afraid it’s going to become absolutely obvious that we have to do it. And we will start doing it for a variety of reasons. But will it change in time? I have to admit to a certain amount of pessimism. I don’t think we will avoid some of the really difficult impacts of this. […] e360: There was an interesting comment in the report concerning tipping points, that science to date has in fact underestimated some of the physical impacts taking place, such as the rate of melting Arctic Ocean ice. Long: Absolutely. I mean [Harvard atmospheric chemist] Jim Anderson was on our committee and he was the most articulate about this issue. We’re not even tracking what’s actually happening the way we ought to be tracking it. We have the potential for the release of huge amounts of methane gas, but we have no methane observation system in the Arctic. And he points out that if a small percentage of the methane locked up in the Arctic were released every year, it would overwhelm, by a factor of ten, all emissions due to energy. If you reach one of these tipping points, it’s conceivable that mitigation won’t even make any difference anymore. And that is the nightmare scenario. […]

Thinking the Unthinkable: Engineering Earth’s Climate