Page 19 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

They have come to the conclusion that the twenty-first century will be “geotech-
nic”—that the atmosphere is humanity’s aerial sewer, sorely in need of treatment,
and the Earth needs a thermostat or perhaps global air-conditioning. They seek a
technological fix through geoengineering, which they loosely define as the inten-
tional large-scale manipulation of the global environment. Some have called it
the “ultimate technological fix”; critics say it has unlimited potential for plan-
etary mischief. Shade the planet by launching a solar shield into orbit. Shoot
sulfates or reflective nanoparticles into the upper atmosphere, turning the blue
sky milky white. Make the clouds thicker and brighter. Fertilize the oceans to
stimulate massive algae blooms that turn the blue seas soupy green. Suck carbon
dioxide (Co ) out of the air with hundreds of thousands of giant artificial trees.
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Flood the Sahara and the Australian outback to plant mega-forests of eucalyp-
tus trees. Surround the Arctic sea ice with a white plastic flotilla. While all this
may sound like science fiction, it is actually just the latest set of installments in
the perennial story of weather and climate control. For more than a century, sci-
entists, soldiers, and charlatans have hatched schemes to manipulate the weather
and climate. Like them, today’s aspiring climate engineers wildly exaggerate what
is possible, while scarcely considering the political, military, and ethical implica-
tions of attempting to manage the world’s climate. This is not, in essence, a heroic
saga about new scientific discoveries that can save the planet, as many of the par-
ticipants claim, but a tragicomedy of overreaching, hubris, and self-delusion. At
a National Academy of Sciences meeting in June 2009 on geoengineering, plan-
etary scientist Brian Toon told the audience that we do not have the technology
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to engineer the planet. We do not have the wisdom either. Global climate engi-
neering is untested and untestable, and dangerous beyond belief.
The latest resurgence of interest in geoengineering dates to an editorial written
in 2006 by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric
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Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?” The question
mark is well placed, for far from solving a policy dilemma, he actually opened
a can of worms, albeit from a historical pantry filled with such cans. Crutzen’s
basic message, that “research on the feasibility and environmental consequences
of climate engineering . . . should not be tabooed,” was but the latest round in an
ancient quest for ultimate control of the atmosphere—a quest with very deep
roots in traditional cultures, practices, myth, fiction, and history.
Ever since Archimedes, engineers have been excited about technological
leverage, but they have never had the “standing” or the ability to predict all or
even most of the consequences of their actions. This is a perennial issue. Yet
today’s geoengineers exude a false confidence when they proclaim that their
tools and techniques have now matured to the extent that fixing the sky—cool-

2 | introduCtion