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Great tech hope will not solve climate change

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could ignore the root causes of our problems and rely on technological wizardry to fix them?

For example, what if you smoked and developed a persistent cough? You could decide to stop smoking and get a medical checkup. Or you could say, “Some big scientific breakthrough will probably banish cancer soon. Enjoy yourself and light up that cigarette. Life’s short.”

We can apply this attitude about cigarette smoke to greenhouse gas emissions, according to the recent Orange County Register editorial with the headline “Technology changing the climate debate,” which I read reprinted in my hometown newspaper. According to the Register, “Our best technologists have begun to lay the groundwork for scientific advancements that can upend stale debates about capping (greenhouse) emissions and the like.

“… scientists … have broached the idea of tweaking our climate the way Google’s Nest thermostat keeps a handle on your Heating, Venting and Air Conditioning. In a study … the National Academy of Sciences has called for experiments in geoengineering …”

The editorial concludes, “In light of these developments, the climate policy debate of the rapidly approaching future isn’t about how we need to live, but how we want to live.”

We can keep loading our atmosphere and oceans with carbon dioxide (CO2) and geoengineering – the Great Technofix in the Sky – will save us from ourselves.

Well, not quite.

To understand why this wishful thinking is dangerous, we need to learn a little bit about “geoengineering,” and what the recent National Academy of Sciences report actually recommended. Geoengineering proposals are of two types: (1) removing and sequestering atmospheric CO2, and (2) “albedo (reflectivity) modification,” or cooling the Earth by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space. This could be done by spraying aerosol particles into the upper atmosphere, mimicking the global cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions.

Environmentally beneficial CO2 removal – growing more forests, for example – is a sound idea. However, scaling up programs that could even partially reduce our massive CO2 surplus would take decades.

Albedo modification schemes – the Register’s “thermostat tweaking” – amount to playing with dynamite. In the staid language of the NAS report, “... deploying albedo modification techniques at climatically important scales would bring an array of environmental, social, legal, economic, ethical and political risks.

“These include decreases in stratospheric ozone and changes to the amount and patterns of precipitation” the report said.

Many climate scientists predict that said changes in precipitation patterns would likely cause destabilization of the Asian monsoons that bring life-giving rain to almost 2 billion people (possibly leading to nuclear warfare in the area), flooding across vast regions of the northern hemisphere and severe drought in others and disruption of the crucial timing of weather events.

In short, the climate chaos caused by geoengineering could quickly exceed that which is anticipated from global warming. In light of this, the NAS report stated that “research is needed to determine if albedo modification could be a viable (component of) climate response in the future” – while insisting that drastic emissions reductions is the fundamental, indispensable response.

So why did the Register editorial suggest that geoengineering can replace emissions reductions while spuriously claiming that the NAS supports that position?

Perhaps like many pundits who formerly denied and now reluctantly accept the reality of global warming, they are parroting a new meme.

Originating in fossil-fuel-industry-sponsored think tanks that supply talking points to the media, the meme goes something like this: “Yes, global warming is real. But don’t worry. We’ve got a (profitable) technofix” for our ecological house.

Philip S. Wenz, who grew up in Durango and Boulder, now lives in Corvallis, Ore., where he teaches and writes about environmental issues. www.your-ecological-house.com.



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