This summer, the volume and extent of arctic sea ice fell to the lowest level on record; America experienced one of the hottest seasons in the last century; and the United Nations issued warnings about a coming world food crisis that could be catastrophic for tens of millions of people across the globe. All this, argues Bill McKibben, the patron saint of environmental soothsaying, is the New Normal. So what’s a world to do as we get increasingly hotter, more extreme weather events? Block out the sun, of course. Geoenginnering is the strange, far-from-perfect, science of deliberately ... Read More
The Cheapest Way to Fight Climate Change? Block Out the Sun
September 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Governing Geoengineering: Hot Topic For a Warming Planet
March 28, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Research scientist Gail Osherenko is blogging for Miller-McCune from the Planet Under Pressure Conference in London. For other posts from her, click here. As I walked out of a panel on geoengineering governance this morning at the Planet Under Pressure Conference taking place in London, I was handed a flyer calling on governments to “Act Immediately to COOL THE ARCTIC.” I do not take the dire warnings of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group lightly, but a call to use geoengineering among other means to cool the Arctic is both premature and scary. As the panel’s experts explained, ... Read More
Bipartisan Group Wants U.S. to Get Serious About Geoengineering
October 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Geoengineering is the somewhat Orwellian term for mankind intentionally changing the dynamics of the planet's natural processes using technology. We stress "intentionally" because once man mastered the plow and fire, geoengineering on a slow scale commenced; spurred by climate change, geoengineering ideas these days are both intentional and, based on geological time frames, instantaneous. On Oct. 4, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Bipartisan Policy Center issued a report that called for the United States to seriously examine geoengineering as a "climate remediation" strategy. The ... Read More
Let’s Just Rejigger the Globe to Cool it Off
September 1, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
In July the American Meteorological Society stepped gingerly into the far outer reaches of the climate debate, a place where a reluctant but growing number of scientists, and even more science fiction fans, have been talking about geoengineering. The controversial idea suggests that if we can't curb our greenhouse gas emissions in time to avert cataclysmic climate change, maybe we should contemplate changing the Earth system itself — fertilizing the oceans with iron to stimulate plankton that would sequester carbon dioxide or spraying the stratosphere with dust particles that would ... Read More
