Sunday, April 04, 2004
Changing Global Climates

Can we change global climates to combat global climate change? This idea – of indulging in massive engineering projects to fight the impact global warming – is now being taken seriously by normally quite sober climate scientists.

This could be interpreted in two ways: First, it could be seen as a severe panic reaction by climatologists to the slothish pace and dithering of the major emitting nations in bringing down CO₂ emissions. It could be simply self-preservation for example. Furthermore, climate change may well create its own dynamic (drying of forests, releasing more CO₂ and so on) and we may already be beyond the point of no return.

Alternatively, and I think more likely, it could be interpreted as the guardians of a long term global future free of global warming have been brought inside the industrial development paradigm to advocate ‘techno-fix’ as the answer to the world’s ills.

At a recent conference in Cambridge, UK, leading climatologists were openly suggesting that engineering schemes to combat global warming will be seriously considered within a year. The US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has recently recommended over US$60 million be put into researching such schemes. (Well, being one of the international community's Kyoto pariahs, they would, wouldn’t they?)

Of course, the research bodies (such as M.I.T. Boston) that are the homes to these climate scientists will be openly advocating inquiry into these schemes. It is these very institutions that will be the major financial beneficiaries of such public funding. So much for the ‘objective’ view of scientific inquiry.

Schemes to alter the planet’s climate are not new. Soviet technology from the 1960s claimed to able to ‘seed’ clouds to encourage them to precipitate and boost cotton production (perhaps the most ‘thirsty’ of crops). Technologies that are now being mooted to ‘fix’ global warming include small, hydrogen filled, reflecting balloons high above the oceans and giant satellite mirrors to directly reflect the sun’s solar radiation before it even enters the earth’s atmosphere.

These schemes slot nicely into a Promethean discourse of environmental protection: the enduring ingenuity and opportunism of mankind will always find a way of protecting and enhancing the species’ lifestyle. The easy answer – of refraining from releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere to remove climate change from the equation, only suppresses this ingenuity and restricts freedom and economic growth. What we need to fix big planetary issues is not abstinence but big planetary engineering projects.

This will allow energy from fossil fuels – ‘our’ resources - to be exploited until they are exhausted. CO₂ levels in the atmosphere could be allowed to rise as the worst parts (the global warming and its associated undulation of low-lying areas, the melting of icecaps, the destruction of ecosystems and the general catastrophic environmental damage) of the greenhouse effect could be averted. Better still, advocates claim, the increased levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere (8 or 12 times the current levels) would have a beneficial effect for plants and agriculturalists – allowing forests and crops to grow at a faster rate and help, presumably, the world’s poorest to thrive. Wow, that is an argument you just can’t argue with.

Get real! Who is buying this? Engineering feats that stave off climate change and improve our welfare. It is George Bush’s private fantasy but so far removed from reality that it is shocking that it is being even mooted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, the Kyoto mafia). It demonstrates just how far business and oil extraction interests have infested global governing bodies. As if the evolution of carbon-sinks and emission trading was not concession enough to the US.

How is the balance between reflecting the sun and emitting CO₂ going to acquired precisely? What are the effects on plankton and algae levels in the areas blotted out from sunshine? What is the impact of increased levels of CO₂ in the upper atmosphere on hydroxyls scrubbing the air and ozone that protects us? Why cannot simple abstinence from burning fossil fuels and releasing CO₂ be the answer? Just who is going to insure against the enormous risks of getting it wrong? How could we place the future of global warming in the hands of a view technicians operating the satellites from their laptops?

And, without getting too sanctimonious, what gives us the right to control the climate over every other natural object?

We must go back to the ‘laws’ of ecology: You cannot only do one thing! Creating technologies to combat climate change instead of grappling with issues that generate it will most likely create further path dependencies that are more perverse and more damaging than what we have at present. Rolling out more of the same technology will not solve any ecological problem, only shift it somewhere else.

Wrapping it all up in the cloak of a win-win situation (ie. we can continue to pollute and farmers in the developing world will benefit) is just a further example of the power of rhetoric in the conveyance of science has furthered the interests of big business and oil. The IPCC must not be diverted from their ambition to averting global warming through combating its cause – burning fossil fuels.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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