Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[Kat Stevens]

Damn, forgot the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.

 

[Antoine]

A good show is now on French CBC (TV) about the geo-economical-political turns in our North melting. It is not the first documentary about this, however, it is always good to know why in couple of years, CF are going to go North more often than today. The new Klondike gold rush !

http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/decouverte/2008-2009/Reportage.asp?idDoc=71745

 

[a_majoor]

Since the icepack is not melting, the show alluded to isn't a documentary but Science Fiction. (Not that I have anything against good SF, but not so much for Fantasy.... >)

http://canadianbluelemons.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-proof-you-provide-doesnt-prove.html

When the Proof You Provide Doesn't Prove Your Point Shut Down Your Proof

Dig this. The University of Illinois has posted for several years a utility to compare ice levels.
Historically.

Now, all of a sudden, when the news is not so favourable - that arctic ice is actually at it's most robust in at least 30 years, there is a technical problem and the utility has to be shut down.

Looks pretty sketchy and shady to me.

 

[a_majoor]

Al Gore celebrated "Human Achievement Day" instead of Earth Day after all.....

http://holycoast.blogspot.com/2009/03/earth-hour-at-al-gores-house-eyewitness.html

Earth Hour at Al Gore's House - An Eyewitness Account

Hat's off to Drew Johnson who took a drive by Al Gore's mansion during Earth Hour to see how the Goreacle was celebrating the pagan festival:

    I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.

    In fact, most of the windows were lit by the familiar blue-ish hue indicating that floor lamps and ceiling fixtures were off, but TV screens and computer monitors were hard at work. (In other words, his house looked the way most houses look about 1:45am when their inhabitants are distractedly watching “Cheaters” or “Chelsea Lately” reruns.)

    The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.

    I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees.

To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds: I'll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it's a crisis act like it's a crisis.

 

[Kat Stevens]

Last day of March, -18 at my house this AM, still 10 inches of snow on the ground.  Global Warming, my lily white English arse.

 

[JBG]

Al Gore celebrated "Human Achievement Day" instead of Earth Day after all.....

http://holycoast.blogspot.com/2009/03/earth-hour-at-al-gores-house-eyewitness.html

My gesture on Earth Hour was to suddenly stop my car in fast-moving traffic on I-287, Westchester County, New York. My gesture disabled about seven cars in a chain reaction crackup, reducing the carbon footprint.

Al Gore definitely rules!!!

 

[c_canuk]

As far as Environment Canada is concerned, where else can you be regularly and consistently wrong, and not get fired.

I don't know about that, the weather network has consistently underestimated the weather this winter and has been a hell of a lot more vague than environment canada, especially in their long range forecasts.

I don't trust the weather network anymore and stick the environment Canada's website

also, the point being made was that the people doing the 20 year long range forecasts using computers to compare current weather conditions to historical data to extrapolate the future are doing exactly what environment canada and the weather channel are doing to come up with their long range forcasts.

We know that long range forecasts are generally useless 2 weeks out, yet they pretend their 20 year forecast is fact and able to detect future fluctuations of fractions of a degree which are smaller than the margin of error that we're dealing with with historical data from before we had digital thermometers.

The fact is that there are too many factors, each doubling the amount of possible outcomes, that the idea of predicting changes so miniscule that far in advance is nonsense. You can't extract data from noise.

 

[Old Sweat]

Both the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen ran a front page story on a report by NOAA that links at least part of global warning to natural causes. The link to the Citizen's story is here:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Nature+just+blame+global+warming+scientists/1454205/story.html

 

[daftandbarmy]

The Great Game Moves North

Summary --
The Arctic is rich in natural resources and lies at the epicenter of a rapidly changing climate -- and it is time the United States paid more attention to the region.

SCOTT G. BORGERSON is Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Arctic Meltdown
Scott G. Borgerson

Thanks to global warming, the Arctic icecap is rapidly melting, opening up access to massive natural resources and creating shipping shortcuts that could save billions of dollars a year. But there are currently no clear rules governing this economically and strategically vital region. Unless Washington leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution, the Arctic could descend into armed conflict.
The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on earth and continues to melt at a breathtaking rate. Last summer, for the first time in history, the polar icecap retreated far enough to open sea routes north of Eurasia as well as North America, and it is expected to be completely ice-free during the summer months in 2013. Boreal forests are appearing where there was once just frozen tundra, and last summer, the first wild fire was recorded north of Alaska's Brooks range, in a region where the local Inuit dialects lack a word for forest fire.
In an article in Foreign Affairs last year, I described how not only is the climate changing fast, but the region's geopolitics are also rapidly transforming. As the Arctic coastal states begin to make claims over both these transit passages and newly accessible deep-water resources, a Great Game is developing in the world's far north.
The next few years will be critical in determining whether the region's long-term future will be one of international harmony and the rule of law, or a Hobbesian free-for-all. Although the Bush administration took a huge step by publishing a new Arctic policy during its final week in office, the Obama administration must do far more to keep Washington from being further marginalized in this geostrategically important region.
The polar icecap in the central Arctic Ocean thinned by half between 2001 and 2007. Other signs -- such as warmer deep-water ocean currents, greater albedo feedback loops, and massive ice shelves breaking free -- point to further melting. Scientists are increasingly concerned that the thawing permafrost will disgorge millions of tons of methane, unleashing what some refer to as a "climate bomb," a runaway warming cycle that could dramatically raise the planet's temperature.
The next few years will be critical in determining whether the region’s long-term future will be one of international harmony and the rule of law, or a Hobbesian free-for-all.
The Arctic may be open to year-round shipping within a few decades, if not sooner. Eventually, the Arctic, like the Baltic Sea or Great Lakes, will freeze in the winter and melt in the summer. Shipping companies are taking notice. The German-based Beluga Shipping company, for example, is planning to move cargo from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Northeast Passage this summer unassisted by icebreaker escort.
Last July, the U.S. Geological Survey released the first-ever comprehensive assessment of the region's oil and gas potential, and the numbers are staggering. Based on a resource appraisal of technically recoverable hydrocarbons, the Arctic contains about 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and about 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas. Together this represents 22 percent of all untapped but technically recoverable hydrocarbons. More than 80 percent of these resources lie offshore.
Due to the ongoing global economic crisis, development of these oil and gas fields has proceeded in fits and starts. The price of energy needs to be high enough to make production in such an extreme environment economically viable. To complicate matters even more, some Arctic coastal states have not settled on the regulatory standards for development. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court, for example, ruled last November that before the Royal Dutch Shell company can move forward with exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska -- for which it had already paid the U.S. government billions of dollars in leases -- the U.S. Interior Department needs to further study the environmental impacts of drilling on the sea's bowhead whale population and nearby indigenous communities.
Similarly, Norway has barred production of oil and gas in some of its northern waters, despite the Norwegian company StatoilHydro partnering with Gazprom, the state-owned Russian energy giant, in the Russian Arctic. While Norway is struggling with this contradiction, Russia seems to have no such qualms and has dived headlong into massive Arctic nonrenewable energy projects. Gazprom hopes to bring the enormous Shtokman field, in the Barents Sea, on stream by 2013. The field holds enough gas to provide all of the United States' electricity needs for six years, and Gazprom is eagerly eyeing the U.S. energy market, envisioning regular shipments of liquefied natural gas to import facilities in Maryland and Georgia.
Given the high stakes and pace of Arctic climate change, countries that border the ocean are working to extend their sovereignty in the region. After its controversial flag-planting on the North Pole seafloor in 2007, Russia moved to further bolster its Arctic presence in 2008. In addition to strategic bomber flights to the edge of U.S., Canadian, Norwegian, and Danish airspace, the Russian navy began patrolling Arctic waters last summer for the first time since the Cold War. On the eve of President Barack Obama's first visit to Canada in late February, the Canadian air force scrambled fighter jets to intercept Russian long-range bombers.
The Russian federal government plans to invest more than a billion dollars in the northern port of Murmansk, doubling the port's capacity by 2015. Moscow also pledged last summer to build at least three new nuclear icebreaker ships to join what is already the world's largest icebreaker fleet. And much to the chagrin of environmentalists, Moscow completed a reactor vessel for the first floating nuclear power plant in October 2008.
Russia has developed a muscular new national security program that views the Arctic as a strategically vital territory. Last September, Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB) and current secretary of the Russian Security Council, declared that "the Arctic must become Russia's main strategic resource base," and a forthcoming Russian plan for developing the Arctic over the next decade reportedly threatens that it "cannot be ruled out that the battle for raw materials will be waged with military means."
Russia is not alone. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a cabinet meeting last August in the Arctic town of Inuvik, more than 2,500 miles north of Ottawa, to pledge his commitment to defend Canadian Arctic sovereignty. In 2008, Canada conducted its largest military exercise ever in the region and blocked the sale of Canadian radar technology to a U.S. buyer on national security grounds. In addition, Ottawa committed $40 million to scientific research projects to support its Arctic seabed claims. Meanwhile, Greenland passed a home-rule referendum in November that will eventually lead to independence from Denmark "in the not too distant future," in the words of Hans Enoksen, the current Siumut prime minister; the European Union has a new Arctic policy and plans for building its own icebreaker; and at the end of January, NATO held a conference in Iceland about its future mission in the Arctic.
Even Asian countries with no Arctic coastlines are getting into the game. The Chinese sent its icebreaker, the Snow Dragon, on its third Arctic expedition last summer. Beijing successfully earned observer status to the Arctic Council and also plans to install its first long-term deep-sea monitoring system in the Arctic to keep an eye on long-term marine changes and the impacts of global warming on China's climate. South Korean and Singaporean shipyards are building massive new icebreakers and ice-strengthened tankers to navigate new Arctic routes. Japan is closely watching the shorter shipping routes opening up in the region, which will benefit Japanese businesses due to the country's northern latitude.
Last May, top officials from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Russia gathered in Greenland to declare their mutual commitment to the rule of law and to behaving peacefully in the new Arctic. At the same time, Arctic countries are closely collaborating on mapping the area's seafloor, with scientists from one country frequently sailing on icebreakers of another. On the face of it, everyone seems to be getting along swimmingly.
Russia has developed a muscular new national security program that views the Arctic as a strategically vital territory.
But all of this camaraderie is at odds with the growing remilitarization of the Arctic. The region is in the midst of transforming from a frozen, sleepy backwater into a potential epicenter of world affairs. How this all plays out in the geopolitical development of the region is a story that is very much still being written. The plot is full of characters espousing the rhetoric of cooperation yet pursuing their self-interests, and the conclusion could lead in multiple directions.
The United States, however, remains largely asleep at the wheel. In the future, contests over fresh water, political instability from forced migrations, and increasingly severe pandemics due to global warming will become only more common. To prepare for such threats, U.S. national security strategy should focus not only on efforts to mitigate greenhouse gases but also on how to adapt to their effects. Nowhere is this more urgent than in the Arctic. The United States still needs to ratify the UN Law of the Sea Convention, reach out to Canada on new Arctic cooperative initiatives, and replenish its geriatric icebreaker fleet (the latter doesn't look to be happening anytime soon, unfortunately, with no money allotted to it in recent U.S. budget plans). And in line with a renewed interest in multilateralism, the United States should consider novel avenues for Arctic diplomacy, such as pushing for the creation of a polar park at the North Pole as part of the current International Polar Year.
Leaders in Moscow, Ottawa, Oslo, and Copenhagen are certainly aware of the sea change on their northern borders. Responsible statecraft requires those in Washington to take notice of the fast-changing politics on America's fifth coast as well.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64905/scott-g-borgerson/the-great-game-moves-north

 

[Kirkhill]

More trashing of windmills.....Don Quixote would be proud.

Source

Wind power is a complete disaster
Posted: April 08, 2009, 7:29 PM by NP Editor
wind power, Michael J. Trebilcock

By Michael J. Trebilcock

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).


....more at link

 

[Kat Stevens]

April 18th, 100 KM North of Edmonton, -2C overnight, ice still on the dugouts.... 'nuff said.

 

[JBG]

The Great Game Moves North

Summary --
The Arctic is rich in natural resources and lies at the epicenter of a rapidly changing climate -- and it is time the United States paid more attention to the region.

SCOTT G. BORGERSON is Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Arctic Meltdown
Scott G. Borgerson

Thanks to global warming, the Arctic icecap is rapidly melting, opening up access to massive natural resources and creating shipping shortcuts that could save billions of dollars a year. But there are currently no clear rules governing this economically and strategically vital region. Unless Washington leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution, the Arctic could descend into armed conflict.

Oh really? I don't think so.

 

[GDawg]

That chart is hard on the eyes. its tough for me to draw a conclusion from it. Apparently more ice melts nowadays, but it mostly bounces back. If we have any resident ice scientists feel free to chime in...

 

[c_canuk]

I'm not an Ice Scientitst, but it looks to me like 2007 had the most ice melted by fall, but 2008 had less, and judging by 2009's position this spring compared to previous years, 2009 will probably have as little ice melting as 2005 or earlier and that it's all irrelavant since it goes right back to where it started every winter regardless of how much it melted.

it also looks like the worst year, 2007, only deviated from the norm by about 16%:

total max yearly change 15-4=11
 
difference between 2007 and the average 1.8

1.8/11= .1636363636363636




to me it looks like the the global yearly average temperature hasn't changed, but in 2007 and 2008 we had a longer hotter summer offset with sharper winters resulting in no change of actual global temperature judged by actual melting of ice.

I figure this supports my view that "measured" global warming is just statistical noise

 

[George Wallace]

I figure this supports my view that "measured" global warming is just statistical noise

Too bad there weren't 'Ear Defenders' for that noise.

 

[GDawg]

We spent centuries wishing we could navigate the northwest passage, and now that we may be able to do so (if but only part of the year) its pretty much the worst thing since Genghis Khan. When the cycle swings back the other way we will lament the good old days when ships could bypass the Panama Canal.

 

[c_canuk]

Too bad there weren't 'Ear Defenders' for that noise.

not sure if by that noise you are refering to my comment or data that shows a slight trend towards global warming.

GDawg... I think that the graph above is showing that the north west passage isn't really opening up permanantly, just more ice was melted by fall than usual last 2007 & 2008 but it has refrozen back to the same amount every year resulting in no net increase in permanantly melted ice.

 

[a_majoor]

One thing the climate change alarmists like to use as a carrot are so called "green" jobs. Once real economists turn their attention to this topic, the promised green jobs evaporate like morning mist.....

OF course if imposing and enforcing serfdom on a large portion of the population is the real goal, then it all makes sense:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1358423

Green Jobs Myths

Andrew P. Morriss
University of Illinois College of Law; PERC - Property and Environment Research Center; George Mason University - Mercatus Center

William T. Bogart
York College of Pennsylvania

Andrew Dorchak
Case Western Reserve University Law Library

Roger E. Meiners
University of Texas at Arlington


March 12, 2009

U Illinois Law & Economics Research Paper No. LE09-001
Case Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-15

Abstract:     
A rapidly growing literature promises that a massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with green jobs. Not only will these jobs improve the environment, but they will be high paying, interesting, and provide collective rights. This literature is built on mythologies about economics, forecasting, and technology.

Myth: Everyone understands what a green job is.

Reality: No standard definition of a green job exists.

Myth: Creating green jobs will boost productive employment.

Reality: Green jobs estimates include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption.

Myth: Green jobs forecasts are reliable.

Reality: The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions.

Myth: Green jobs promote employment growth.

Reality: By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions. Economic growth cannot be ordered by Congress or by the United Nations. Government interference - such as restricting successful technologies in favor of speculative technologies favored by special interests - will generate stagnation.

Myth: The world economy can be remade by reducing trade and relying on local production and reduced consumption without dramatically decreasing our standard of living.

Reality: History shows that nations cannot produce everything their citizens need or desire. People and firms have talents that allow specialization that make goods and services ever more efficient and lower-cost, thereby enriching society.

Myth: Government mandates are a substitute for free markets.

Reality: Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers and markets, than to cumbersome government mandates.

Myth: Imposing technological progress by regulation is desirable.

Reality: Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today's demands and could be counterproductive to environmental quality.

In this Article, we survey the green jobs literature, analyze its assumptions, and show how the special interest groups promoting the idea of green jobs have embedded dubious assumptions and techniques within their analyses. Before undertaking efforts to restructure and possibly impoverish our society, careful analysis and informed public debate about these assumptions and prescriptions are necessary.
Working Paper Series

 

[JBG]

That chart is hard on the eyes. its tough for me to draw a conclusion from it. Apparently more ice melts nowadays, but it mostly bounces back. If we have any resident ice scientists feel free to chime in...

There has actually always been a large ice-melt followed by re-freeze in the winter. That's what happens when you go from 24/7 daylight to 24/7 darkness.

 

[a_majoor]

The perils of DIY geo engineering. Things are even worse if you do a knee jerk geoengineering project because you "think" climate change isn't a perfectly natural occurance:

http://www.slate.com/id/2217230/

The Politics of Climate Hacking
What happens if one country decides to start geoengineering on its own?
By Eli Kintisch
Posted Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at 4:51 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Add this to your list of climate nightmare scenarios: In 2040, facing rising seas, the Qatari government starts polluting the stratosphere in order to cool the planet, precipitating an international crisis and possibly upsetting monsoon patterns.

Freelance atmospheric modification may sound far-fetched, but the potboiler concept was on the agenda last week at an invitation-only, international workshop in Lisbon, Portugal. The private event was the first global powwow designed to explore the political aspects of geoengineering, or the deliberate manipulation of the climate. About 30 scientists and bureaucrats, representing 14 nations, mulled over the implications of global climate control in a wood-paneled conference room. The setting was the verdant grounds of an arts-and-science foundation started half a century ago by Armenian oil baron Calouste Gulbenkian.

The idea that we might solve our climate woes through planet hacking had its political coming-out earlier this month, when White House science adviser John Holdren said geoengineering research has "got to be looked at" by scientists. The work to which he was referring has quietly emerged over the last two years in a steady stream of meetings, a small but increasing number of papers, and substantial ongoing efforts by major science societies. The Lisbon meeting marked the introduction of what had once been the domain of fringe science to the international foreign-policy wonkocracy.

The first presenter, Carnegie Mellon engineer Granger Morgan, began with a review of the geoengineering options at our disposal. Employing a smiling cartoon sun to illustrate the ways radiation might be adjusted in the atmosphere, he rattled them off one by one: carbon-sucking machines, man-made jumbo algae blooms, planetary-scale sunshades to deflect solar rays, brightening clouds to reflect more sunlight. But Morgan's main topic—and the focus for the rest of the meeting—was the concept of spewing aerosol gunk into the stratosphere, known among the geoengineering intelligentsia as the "Pinatubo option." That Ludlum-esque moniker derives from the 1991 volcanic eruption that spewed 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, blocking out a fraction of the sun's rays and cooling the planet by 1 degree Fahrenheit. A Pinatubo approach to geoengineering would involve the deliberate spraying of more sulfur dioxide, or an alternative aerosol, at high altitudes. It's almost certainly the cheapest and most effective method we have for cooling the planet fast. For Morgan and the others, that's exactly what makes it so dangerous.

Modeling studies and data from volcanoes suggest the Pinatubo option could lower global temperatures by 3 degrees or more and compensate for skyrocketing carbon pollution in a matter of months. We wouldn't need any outlandish technology to make it work—just some jet aircraft, naval guns, or aerosol tanks. Reputable studies have suggested that the whole thing wouldn't cost very much, either: To offset the warming caused by all current CO2 emissions would require an outlay of at most $100 billion dollars per year. That's one-five-hundredth of the world's GDP or one-eighth of an economic stimulus package.

"This is not at all hard to do," Granger told the audience, declaring that "a single large nation"—especially a nuclear power, which might act with relative impunity—could easily exercise the option. A run of bad news from the climate scientists might convince a government that the breakup of the Greenland ice sheet was accelerating, and that Earth's low-lying areas were facing an imminent rise of 3 feet or more in sea level. "If, say, a Huckabee administration suddenly woke up and started geoengineering the planet, what could anybody else do about it?" Morgan asked. (One could equally envision a left-leaning, low-lying European nation with the same inclination.) Geoengineering "turns the normal debate over climate change on its head," he and some co-authors wrote recently in Foreign Affairs. Getting nations to agree to cut their greenhouse pollution has proved to be the ultimate free-rider problem, as the biggest nations must all cooperate or the planet will keep getting warmer. The Pinatubo option creates the opposite dilemma: As the discussions in Lisbon made clear, any of a dozen nations could change the global temperature all by itself.

The Pinatubo option could have some very unpleasant side effects, too. An Indian space scientist suggested that deploying the scheme might disrupt various monsoon cycles that provide water to hundreds of millions of people across the world. Granger's graduate student got up afterward and warned the group that computer simulations suggest the technique might lead to a drop in global rainfall. (The aerosols would block solar energy, which drives precipitation systems. She did note that higher temperatures in a world without geoengineering might also yield drier areas.)

Whatever its specific effects, it's easy to see how geoengineering would create confusion and sow international conflict. "If a country like the United States were to do this on their own and China [happened] to go into a decadelong drought, [the Chinese would] want to know what was the cause," explained Ken Caldeira, a geochemist from the Carnegie Institution. "Climate science is not at the point of attributing the cause of weather events." Not every expert at the meeting thought that the unilateral scenario was realistic, but no one downplayed the emerging strategic risk that geoengineering represents. Some mused that rich individuals or corporations—"climate pirates" perhaps?—might even issue their own "Pinatubo ultimatum."

None of the participants were eager to geo-engineer; they'd much rather see humanity stem the problem by ending its greenhouse-gas binge. But they wonder whether it may one day become a necessity. At any rate, it's better to explore it now, they say, so we're as prepared as possible. Everyone at the meeting thought field tests were inevitable fairly soon.

It's not clear how nations would go about regulating such a technology. "There aren't very good analogies," University of Maryland arms-control expert John Steinbruner told me. Treaties that might apply—the Weather Modification Convention, the Outer Space Treaty, the ol' Law of the Sea—wouldn't really cover geoengineering experiments or deployments, he said. Participants wondered whether the U.N. Security Council or a new international treaty might eventually regulate geoengineering, but to cover experiments on the shorter term, scientific societies, national science academies, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were each proposed as possible venues for some sort of geoengineering accord.

Or is it too early to be discussing the Pinatubo option at all? Just under the surface of the Lisbon workshop lurked the ever-present worry among scientists that exploring geoengineering could dissuade the public from aggressive and expensive emissions-cutting measures—the risk of moral hazard. In a way, one might hope that the geoengineering alternative weren't available at all, said University of Calgary physicist David Keith. He asked us to imagine one could open a box ("call it Pandora's box") to find out for certain whether it would work. "Which do you wish for?" If it does work, it's going to be a colossal mess, he said. "But on the other hand, if it really serves to be a method of reducing the climate risk, and the climate risk is the essential thing. …" Later, he e-mailed me: "We should wish it works," he wrote.

Eli Kintisch edits Science magazine's Science Insider blog and is writing a book on geoengineering.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2217230/

Of course you yourself can do some geoengineering by painting your driveway and roof white, and planting additional trees in your yard. (If everyone in a city were to do that, the "urban heat island" effect could be greatly reduced by reflecting away solar energy).