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Okay, so you probably haven't even heard of climate engineering. But of course, engineering is never far behind science and you have heard of climate science. Climate engineering then is taking our growing "understanding" of climate and applying to methods and tools to manipulate it. (I put "understanding" in scare quotes because human knowledge is always situated and evolving.) So now there are tools and methods, which arguably we could employ immediately, that we can use to modify our climate.
I mean, duh, we're doing it by accident already!
But now we can do it on purpose. But should we? What if we knew it could give some time to reduce our CO2 emissions and reduce some negative climate change impacts? But what would the side effects be? Ultimately would it increase or decrease our climate-related disaster risk?
If this peaks your interest, then a) you're a Luddite (you think about the effects of technology and engineering) and b) you should watch this talk by David Keith on www.ted.com:
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Climate Engineering; Risk Reduction or Amplification?
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1 comment:
Great clip! While climate engineering is an interesting idea, it is an technology (like nuclear technology, genetic modification of plants, ozone, etc) that is inherently global in its impacts. One country cannot decide to do this alone. We are currently a long way from having a smooth international treaty or decision making process to deal with these issues. If we can't even get Kyoto ratified in this country, how is it that a technology like climate engineering really going to work?
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