Page 277 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

international body of scientists mentioned by the oceanographers will be busy
monitoring this technique too. 94
Ken Caldeira and Lowell Wood offered perhaps the most disingenuous paper
by using an “idealized” (read: relatively simple) climate model in which they
turned down the sunlight at the top of the atmosphere by using various aerosols.
They did not specify where this magic knob might actually be located, but every
undergraduate student in atmospheric science knows that the “knob” is built
into the models as an indication of the climate’s sensitivity to solar insolation.
Wonder of wonders, when the sunlight is turned down, the planet cools; and
when the sunlight is turned down over the Arctic Circle, the Arctic cools and
parameterized sea ice grows. By focusing on physics rather than on the complexi-
ties of atmospheric science or ecology, and by tuning their model assumptions,
they concluded that their “engineered high Co climate” could be made to emu-
2
late a perhaps more desirable but presently unattainable low Co climate. Cal-
2
deira and Wood used back-of-the-envelope calculations to push forward their
case for military hardware with unspecified failure rates delivering unspecified
aerosols into the stratosphere with unknown environmental consequences. They
ignored the recent, more sophisticated modeling work of Alan Robock, Luke
oman, and Georgiy Stenchikov indicating that stratospheric aerosols injected at
high latitudes would soon be carried by the winds as far south as 30°N, interfer-
ing with the Asian summer monsoon. Since stratospheric aerosols would not stay
confined above the Arctic Circle, the “yarmulke plan” of Caldeira and Wood is
physically impossible. Their non-sequitur conclusion: “Implementing insolation
modulation appears to be feasible.” Their most honest admission: “Modeling of
climate engineering is in its infancy.” 95
The article in the volume with the greatest integrity, by the most sophisticated
team of modelers, and the one that offered a fresh and rather sobering assess-
ment of the consequences of injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere was
by Philip Rasch and his colleagues. Their simulations indicated that while the
Northern Hemisphere might cool overall after such an intervention, significant
and undesirable reductions in precipitation could occur over vulnerable areas
such as North Africa and India, possibly leading to drought conditions and
damage to agricultural productivity. Such climate engineering would also cause
significant changes in the overall spectrum of solar radiation, with more biologi-
cally damaging ultraviolet-B radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, with negative
consequences likely for human health and biological populations. The world-
wide sulfate haze would also reduce direct-beam solar radiation and increase
diffuse sky radiation with unwelcome aesthetic effects, interfere with optical
astronomy, dramatically reduce the capacity for generation of solar power, and

260 | tHe Climate enGineerS