Page 276 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

desk for a number of years. He and Chris Rapley have recently proposed their
own geoengineering fix for the “pathology of global warming,” specifically, a vast
array of vertical pipes placed in the oceans to bring colder, nutrient-rich water to
the surface to spur the growth of carbon dioxide–absorbing plankton. But many
worry that the idea might interfere with fishing, disrupt whale populations,
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and release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it captures. Most
recently Lovelock has supported “biochar,” the conversion of massive amounts
of agricultural “waste” into non-biodegradable charcoal and its subsequent
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burial. This surely qualifies for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hall of Fantasy, since it
would mark the end of composting and would generate massive amounts of the
known carcinogen benzo[a]pyrene. Its practitioners risk the fate of Hawthorne’s
Dr. Cacaphodel, “who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continu-
ally stooping over charcoal furnaces and inhaling unwholesome fumes during
his researches.” 92
In the Philosophical Transactions special issue on geoengineering, two teams of
oceanographers examined ocean iron fertilization field experiments and model
studies to gauge whether this technique can “become a viable option to sequester
Co .” Victor Smetacek and S. W. A. Naqvi impugned the current “apparent con-
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sensus against oIF [as] premature.” They praised vague but possibly positive side
effects of the widespread use and commercialization of this technique (more krill
may mean more whales), while they minimized discussion of any negative side
effects, such as disruption of the ocean food chain or the creation of anoxic dead
zones. Without providing any details, they offered the hollow reassurance that
“negative effects of possible commercialization of oIF could be controlled by
the establishment of an international body headed by scientists to supervise and
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monitor its implementation” (emphasis added). Scientists typically have little
or no training in history, ethics, or public policy, while global climate change is a
human problem, not merely a scientific issue.
The article by John Latham and colleagues rehearsed the idea of seeding
marine stratus clouds with seawater to increase their albedo and possibly make
them more persistent. They concluded, to no one’s surprise, that it might—just
might—work. A companion piece by Steven Salter and colleagues pointed out
that an armada of robotic spray ships plying the high seas would be needed
and that their spray would make the clouds brighter by introducing so many
cloud condensation nuclei that the cloud droplets would be much smaller
and more numerous. This “overseeding” technique was attempted using sil-
ver iodide in the 1950s as a means to prevent rain. Thus the worldwide array of
brighter clouds proposed by Latham and Salter might produce less rain than
unaltered clouds, with unknown environmental consequences. It looks like the

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