Page 30 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

in the stratospheric ozone layer and issued a clear warning about the coming
dangers of climate engineering.
Finally, chapter 8 examines recent and current ideas and proposals regarding
geoengineering. Driven by the fear of global warming and their underlying cer-
tainty that mitigation and adaptation will not be sufficient to prevent a climate
catastrophe, the climate engineers are pushing for the authority and the where-
withal to go beyond paper studies and computer models to field trials and full-
scale implementation as a technological fix for global warming. But in their quest
to create a “planetary thermostat,” they lack a widespread following and appear
to most mainstream scientists, environmentalists, and policymakers as overly
aggressive in their vocal advocacy for untested, and perhaps untestable, practices.
It is likely that humanity as a whole has done too little in response to the problem,
but the climate engineers are seeking to do too much.
Attempted control of the environment may not be a good thing, especially
when it is based on simplistic assumptions (for example, that hurricanes may be
readily redirected or that basic radiation physics controls the Earth’s climate) or
when it exceeds the knowledge base or verges on science fantasy. Like the pseudo-
scientific rainmakers of yore, today’s aspiring climate engineers wildly exagger-
ate what is possible and scarcely consider the political or ethical implications
of attempting to manage the world’s climate—with potential consequences far
greater than any of their predecessors were ever likely to face.
Who has the moral right to modify the weather or the global climate? Where
will a global thermostat be located, and who gets to control it? Will climate engi-
neering reduce incentives to mitigate carbon emissions? What about unknown
side effects? Should it be commercialized? What if nations or companies do it
unilaterally? Does it violate existing treaties? Why is the military so interested?
once it begins, can we ever stop it? How will weather and climate engineering
alter fundamental human relationships to nature?
This book is grounded in the practices of the past and provides perspec-
tives on the largely fantastic claims of the current batch of geoscientific spec-
ulators, collectively known as the climate engineers, who are proposing to
cool the planet in response to fears of global warming. In facing the unprec-
edented challenges posed by humanity’s current confrontation with the
elements—a situation exacerbated by world population, a host of aer-
ial effluents, and generally rising affluence—it is good to seek histor-
ical precedents.
The current generation of climate engineers is not the first to consider
planetary-scale environmental manipulation. Indeed, they are heirs to a long
and checkered history of weather and climate control populated by a colorful

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