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Geo-engineering given short shrift

Sunday, May 13 at 12:01 AM

By Sol Shapiro

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Mitigation Section issued its Summary for Policy Makers on May 4. For the first time in a summary for policy-makers,, the panel included a “backhanded” reference to the feasibility that geo-engineering may be able to stop global warming in short order. That reference on Page 20 of the Summary is presented below:

17. Geo-engineering options, such as ocean fertilization to remove CO₂ directly from the atmosphere, or blocking sunlight by bringing material into the upper atmosphere, remain largely speculative and unproven, and with the risk of unknown side-effects. Reliable cost estimates for these options have not been published (medium agreement, limited evidence) [11.2].

What is sorely lacking in this inclusion of geo-engineering is a call for study! Instead the panel placed emphasis on negative effects and uncertainties, rather than that it represents a potential to keep Bangladesh from flooding and reduce the risks of hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Study of geo-engineering has been recommended over the past 30 years by such notables as the president of the National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone, in 2006 and Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, in 1998. The panel would have served the world better if it had called for significant funding for these studies, rather than leave the issue of what to do hanging.

The IPCC has, with some validity, been reluctant to speak to the public of the use of geo-engineering lest the feasibility that climate change can be put on hold would be used as an excuse to keep polluting. Documentation of this fear exists in published papers.

Most of the environmental community, similarly, does not want to discuss the feasibility of a short-term solution to global warming. Many of my phone calls to such organizations as the Sierra Club have not been returned.

But if we are closing in on disaster, as has been suggested by Al Gore, it is now a moral issue to put major funding toward studying geo-engineering leading to possible deployment. I fear that there will be some hurricane or major flood over the next several years, and if the public blames the IPCC and the environmental community for not looking at these short-term solutions, they will be deserving of the condemnation of the public.

Sol Shapiro is a resident of Aurora. He was a member of the Western Governors’ Association’s Solar Task Force.

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