Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "geoengineering"

Yale University Press, New Haven, 2013

Note the publication date! The author explores the pros and cons of geoengineering to “deal with carbon emissions. He asks why we should “construct an immense industrial infrastructure” to correct the carbon problem when “we could just stop burning fossil fuels.”

Professor Hamilton (Public Ethics at Charles Stuart University in Canberra) also looks at three ways of controlling solar radiation problems: “…marine cloud brightening, cirrus cloud modification, and …sulphate aerosal sprayings.” The only answer to avoid too rapid warming on Earth is to reduce the level of pollution” until CO2 can be reduced by “natural or artificial means.”

The author looks at current ideas, such as Bill Gates’s “Silver Lining” to brighten marine clouds. He also looks at the politics of geoengineering in 2013. His review of how politics has tarnished science is a scary warning, when he suggests that geoengineering is a necessary global technofix. The “strident tone of environmentalists doesn’t help. The author explores these problems in depth in his chapter “Prometheus Dreams.”

Is engineering the climate inevitable? The author suggests and may believe it is, and that the largest nations will need to act. In 2011 China gave geoengineering priority. Some people suggest that “changing peoples lifestyle” is be a better option.

The author suggests the obvious--international coordination, regulation of climate engineering, and international governing of geoengineering. Is the social change required to solve our problems of overuse ‘utopian?” Are we unwilling today (in 2020) to change the “economic, social and political structures” required for the needed “technofix?” Or is that social change “inconceivable?” Is the only answer to”buy time…to deal with an inevitable climate emergency”?

The author reminds us that the CO2 we put in the atmosphere will…alter the climate of the Earth for thousands of years.” Are we too addicted to “endless expansion?”