Page 259 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

concerns was food and water shortages ravaging Africa and whether climatolo-
gists could do anything to alleviate this situation while simultaneously cooling
the planet. Noting that human activities were increasingly pushing on certain
“leverage points” that control the heat balance of the system, they admitted that,
as yet, there was no comprehensive theory that could explain—much less pre-
dict—temperature trends or rainfall patterns. They drove this point home by list-
ing as a “cause” of climate change the behavior of the climate system as described
by Edward Lorenz: “An interactive system as complex as the oceans and atmo-
42
sphere can have long-period self-fluctuations, even with fixed external inputs.”
According to Lorenz, chaotically forced internal fluctuations with timescales lon-
ger than the thirty- to forty-year interval used to define a climatological average
might easily be misinterpreted or confused with climatic changes forced by exter-
nal variations. This fundamental property of complex systems has vexed those
seeking to attribute climate change to any one factor. 43
Nevertheless, imagining a future in which climate changes could be forecast,
Kellogg and Schneider laid out three basic (but not morally equivalent) options:
(1) do nothing, (2) alter our patterns of land and sea use in order to lessen the
impact of climate change, or (3) anticipate climate change and implement
schemes to control it. As they noted, the third option would be extremely con-
tentious and would inevitably generate conflict, for the atmosphere is a highly
complex and interactive resource common to all nations. The second option is
related to the “middle path.”
What if one nation developed the skills to predict climate? This would dra-
matically change international economic market strategies and might lead
to pressure for climate control. What if, after purposeful manipulation, cli-
matic cause-and-effect linkages could be traced? Accusations would abound,
and nations might use perceived damages as an excuse for hostility. Given the
immense costs of miscalculation (or perception of miscalculation), who then
would decide and who would implement climate modification and control
schemes? Kellogg and Schneider noted with some irony, but prophetically, “We
have the impression that more schemes will be proposed for climate control
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than for control of the climate controllers.” They ended their article by calling
for interdisciplinary studies of climate change and its consequences for society.
These sorts of studies have subsequently been pursued by the IPCC, but so far
with little attention given to geoengineering fantasies.
In 1977 Cesare Marchetti used the term “geoengineering” to refer to the cap-
45
ture and injection of carbon dioxide into the ocean in down-welling currents.
He identified the Mediterranean undercurrent at Gibraltar as a likely candidate,
with the capacity to sequester all the carbon dioxide emissions of Europe. Today,

242 | tHe Climate enGineerS