Geoengineering: Ticking timebomb

Hi everybody,

Today I am going to explain my reasoning behind the dramatic title of this blog. When first conducting research into this field I found that many of the academic papers I came across were titled in an equally dramatic manner, the majority of which with rhetorical questions  such as:

•          ‘The Geoengineering Dilemma: To Speak or Not to Speak’ (Lawrence, 2006)
•           ‘Geoengineering climate change: Treating the symptom over the cause’ (Kiehl, 2006)
•           ‘The Geoengineering Option: A Last Resort Against Global Warming’ (Victor, et al., 2009)
•           ‘Geoengineering: Could – Or Should- We do It?’(Schneider, 1996)

This was the first reason for the dramatic title, as right from the onset, even before reading the papers, it can be seen that the topic of Geoengineering is controversial, debatable and is surrounded by ethical and moral issues. Further reading then lead to the creation of the title for this blog as it became apparent that the prospect of Geoengineering could be compared to a ticking timebomb in so many ways: 

1. Even discussing it could have catastrophic impacts as it could cause people to question whether or not they should cut emissions if there are alternate solutions. Therefore even discussing Geoengineering options could give politicians, companies and people an excuse to carry on living their life without fear of the repercussions (Victor, et al., 2009).
2.  Deployment – this has been briefly touched upon in previous posts. Many of the options e.g. ocean fertilisation, enhancing the cloud albedo, injecting aerosols into the atmosphere – these could be carried out by individual countries or even private companies. Therefore, unlike cutting emissions, it does not require a collective effort to be deployed. If one government was to decide they no longer want to cut emissions and that they would prefer to adopt a less costly approach e.g. injecting aerosols (see last post) then they could do so. However, the impacts that this may have are still heavily unknown! (Victor, et al., 2009).
3. It is difficult to police – if a government or private company was to adopt a geoengineering approach e.g. injecting aerosols or enhancing cloud albedo, then it would be difficult to determine who initiated the action (Schneider, 1996).
4.  What is the boundary– unlike testing in other scientific fields that are deemed risky e.g. GM foods or nuclear weapons or nuclear power, although some of the impacts of these activities may be difficult to localise, it is still easier compared to Geoengineering approaches. Where is the line? At what point or amount does injecting aerosols into the atmosphere move from being an experiment, to significantly altering the climate of a region? Ocean fertilisation is easy to limit, but approaches that involve the atmosphere such as injecting aerosols or enhancing cloud albedo, become difficult to limit (Lawrence, 2006).

All of these factors make the Geoengineering field a very dynamic; one that as climate change continues, this field will gain more and more attention. However, to ensure that the negative consequences of Geoengineering do not occur (that the bomb doesn’t go off), a governing body is needed to monitor and regulate all Geoengineering activity. Currently, different projects have captured the attention of different bodies such as the IPCC, US Department of Energy, NASA, UNFCCC, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Royal Society. This shows that a variety of bodies are interested in Geoengineering, but due to its global nature, an overarching body is required to ensure that the symptom to climate change does not turn out to be worse than the cure.