A wide array of geoengineering 'solutions' to the catastrophic rise in atmospheric CO2 have been proposed recently: automated cloud ships plying the oceans spraying fine mist into the air; jillions of sparklies put into space; small nukes to mimic volcanic spewage of SO2 to cool the atmosphere; iron powder scattered on the ocean to stimulate carbon-sucking algae to bloom....
Huge, ambitious, expensive, exciting... projects that make engineers drool.
Most of the proposed "solutions" are designed to treat a symptom: global warming.
But what's the disease? And what are the likely consequences of the treatment? And what alternatives are possible?
From the short, free, hopefully funny book my fellow ApocaDoc and I have just finished:
The 'Docs think geoengineering solutions will just allow humans to pretend that we are still in control. These schemes will propagate the fundamental craziness that got us into this mess in the first place -- and will keep those who perpetrated it firmly in control.
Abusive parents do not deserve the return of their family, do they? If a guide left you lost in a treeless plain of sticker-bushes, would you hire him again?
Of course not! So why should we believe that the purveyors and profiteers of the status quo will have the answer?
Hubris, you may remember from your high-school Greek Mythology, is "overweening pride and arrogance." Generally, in those myths (and in modern legends), the gods smack down any overweening weenie who thinks he's as a god: Icarus plunges, Victor Frankenstein is crushed, Doctor Faustus pays with his soul. Prometheus has his liver eaten daily by an eagle.
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Take two hubrii and call me in the morning. |
Unfortunately, geoengineering is not just hubristic, but is also, alas, incredibly stupid. It is masking single symptoms, not addressing the disease.
It is a toxic band-aid that prevents the wound from healing.
What did we learn [elsewhere in book]? That it's all interconnected. You can't do one thing (say, artificially overfertilizing and spraying pesticides on crops for decades) without it affecting other things (eventually, downriver, overfertilizing algae and creating oxygen-free dead zones the size of small countries in the ocean). When we do some large-scale altering, like increasing the CO2 level of the atmosphere 25% over 100 years, there are unintended consequences. That's why we're in this hole.
Is it not madness to think that there won't be massive unintended consequences from trillions of sparkly nanobots in the atmosphere? We often can't even get the little things right, like introducing cane toads into the Australian ecosystem to eat the sugar cane grubs. Isn't it likely that billions of clouds pumped from cloudships will not just cool the atmosphere, but reshape the patterns of warming and cooling? [Isn't it likely that] Russia or China [might get] a little testy about their agriculture being wiped out by climate manipulation?
Humans simply do not understand climate patterns well enough -- especially in a disrupted world -- to choreograph it with new, amateur ballerinas.
Someone will say "But computer models...", to which we say "look how well our models have done with the converging emergencies."
The people proposing these plans are well-meaning savants. They tend to be engineers trained to build solutions; economists trained to presume that endless growth is not just possible, but a human right; technocrats trained to propogate the existing worldview; and politicians pandering to their funding base.
The ApocaDocs have yet to see prominent life scientists propose a geoengineering solution, probably because biologists have been trained in ecosystem interrelationships, and so think a few steps further down Implication Road.
But things are going so bad, so fast -- much faster than expected -- that very soon Something Must Be Done.
I lean toward "superengineering" instead of "geoengineering." Building solutions for society, not trying to learn the j-stroke as we careen down the whitewater of climate chaos.
So what kind of large-scale, super-thing do I mean by "Superengineering"?
Consider creating a World Smart Grid.
If we can imagine and seriously consider stupendously expensive (in cost and unintended consequences) geoengineering schemes, then why can't we plan out a World Energy Grid? Also at stupendous cost, but with stupendously wondrous consequences. Daytime wind and solar energy in Africa can power North America at night, and the same is true in reverse. Honestly: we could figure out, in five years, how to build a worldwide [carbon-free] energy network, and implement it in the following five. All it takes is will. But uh-oh: bureaucracy ahead.
We could have it built by 2020, and powering carbon sequestration, biochar production, and other carbon-recovery tasks from 2015 on. It's an Apollo project worthy of our fondest dreams.
Compared to all the other geoengineering schemes, this one has the fewest likely unintended consequences. It'd probably be cheaper than the Iraq War, without civilian casualties. It'd still make a lot of contractors and stockholders a lot of money.
And all it would take is international cooperation, and a global recognition of the need for radical change, and a framework of fairness and shared sacrifice.
Yeah. That's all(!)
But let's start shifting the conversation from pathology-perpetuating solutions, to pathology-recovery solutions.
Got any other bright ideas?