Page 275 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

a royal Society Smoke Screen

The Royal Society of London recently dedicated a special issue of its venerable
Philosophical Transactions to the topic “Geoscale Engineering to Avert Danger-
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ous Climate Change.” The journal bills itself as “essential reading for mathema-
ticians, physicists, engineers and other physical scientists,” which is noteworthy,
since climate engineering is not solely or even essentially a technical problem and
none of the eleven papers in the special issue were written by historians, ethicists,
or other humanists or social scientists. Editors Brian Launder, an engineer, and
Michael Thompson, an applied mathematician/solar physicist, began by blam-
ing China and India for their soaring greenhouse gas emissions, praising the
developed world (at least the European Union) for struggling to meet its carbon-
reduction targets, and wondering if the day may come when geoengineering solu-
tions are “universally perceived to be less risky than doing nothing” (emphasis
added). only a few of the articles did what the editors promised: subject macro-
engineering options to “critical appraisal by acknowledged experts in the field.”
Most of the articles had been recycled from the 2004 Tyndall Centre meeting on
climate engineering and were written by advocates standing to benefit directly
from any increase in funding.
Survey articles by Stephen Schneider and James Lovelock questioned, in
broad brushstrokes, the validity and overall viability of the geoengineering
enterprise. Schneider briefly reviewed the fifty-year history of schemes to mod-
ify large-scale environmental systems or control climate. He pointed out that
schemes are typically presented as cost-effective alternatives or as ways to buy
time for mitigation, but he expressed doubts that they would work as planned or
that they would be socially feasible, given the potential for transboundary con-
flicts if negative climatic events occur during geoengineering activities. 88
Lovelock, invoking a metaphor he has long used, posed as a “geophysiologist,”
or planetary physician, and diagnosed the Earth as having a fever induced by the
parasite Disseminated primatemia (the superabundance of humans). As treat-
ment, he recommended a low-carbon diet combined with nuclear medicine. He
likened geoengineering to crude planetary surgery, as practiced by the butcher/
barber surgeons of old. While the patient would definitely survive, the para-
sites had a much lower probability: “our ignorance of the Earth system is over-
whelming. . . . Planetary scale engineering might be able to combat global warm-
ing, but as with nineteenth century medicine, the best option may simply be
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kind words and letting Nature take its course.” Lovelock is a freethinker who
advocates nuclear power, imagines dystopian futures caused by climate change,
and has had Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph pinned on the wall above his

258 | tHe Climate enGineerS