Workers cover a glacier with large plastic sheets on the peak of Germany's highest mountain Zugspitze near Garmisch-Partenkirchen on May 10, 2011. The sheets are meant to keep the glacier from melting during the summer months.(Photo: Matthias Schrader, AP)
A controversial report this week put geoengineering — artificial techniques that change the climate — squarely in news headlines, a place where climate change ought to remain.
The National Research Council (NRC) released a two-volume report Tuesday, stating that climate-intervention techniques should be examined and could "contribute to a broader portfolio of climate change responses."
"That scientists are even considering technological interventions should be a wake-up call that we need to do more now to reduce emissions, which is the most effective, least risky way to combat climate change," said NRC committee chair Marcia McNutt. "But the longer we wait, the more likely it will become that we will need to deploy some forms of carbon dioxide removal to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
The two areas the NRC focuses on are carbon dioxide removal and sequestration — a fancy way of saying sucking carbon out of the air and storing it somewhere — and albedo-modification research, or blocking the sun's rays.
Some of the techniques proposed in these areas include: Ships on autopilot that crisscross the seas and spray seawater into the air to cool the planet. Dump trucks full of iron ore that disperse it offshore to enhance cloud reflectivity. A giant parasol that hovers high in the atmosphere to block the sun.
Orwellian? For sure. But necessary? I believe so. (I can hear the alacrity already.)
For decades, weather modification techniques have been explored and used in various circumstances by governments around the world. (And, no, I am not talking about nut pie contrail theories of government conspiracy.) Cloud seeding and ionization techniques, for example, have been utilized in war time and when the weather gets dry.
Yet when climate altering technologies are proposed as Plan B alternatives, there are outcries.
"President Obama has been working assiduously to persuade the world that the United States is at last serious about Plan A — winding back its greenhouse gas emissions," Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Australia and author of Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering wrote in a New York Times opinion piece.
"The suspicions of much of the world would be reignited if the United States were the first major power to invest heavily in Plan B," he wrote.
Al Gore, meanwhile, has dubbed geoengineering techniques "simply nuts." And a litany of other environmental advocates and outlets have called artificially interfering with Mother Nature "insane."
Here's a reminder: We are already artificially messing with the environment not only by excreting massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere daily, but also through irrigation, land development, leveeing rivers and plundering seas, among numerous other human activities.
Plan A isn't working. It is risky and indeed reckless not to have a Plan B. Note the order, folks.
We need to fix our Plan A and address climate change head on, full scale. At the same time, alternatives need to be explored.
The NRC committee said it would be "irrational and irresponsible" to implement modification techniques without also pursuing emissions mitigation.
I couldn't agree more. We need more than one plan for our survival.
Thomas M. Kostigen is the founder of TheClimateSurvivalist.com and a New York Times best-selling author and journalist. He is the National Geographic author of "The Extreme Weather Survival Guide: Understand, Prepare, Survive, Recover" and the NG Kids book "Extreme Weather: Surviving Tornadoes, Tsunamis, Hailstorms, Thundersnow, Hurricanes and More!" Follow him @weathersurvival, or e-mail [email protected]
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