Can We Geoengineer the Climate?
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the FutureBy Elizabeth KolbertCrown (2021)“Geoengineering” is increasingly discussed as a way to neutralize or even roll back the effects of climate change. It proposes various gigantic projects to cool the Earth, or absorb carbon dioxide, or otherwise mitigate the climate disaster we’ve got ourselves into. The brilliant design of the boomerangWe understand that our metastatic spread across the planet, enhanced by ever-improving technology, is causing a climate crisis as well as environmental catastrophes and mass extinctions. The pupfish live in the top 75 feet of the pool, which at one end is 500-feet deep and fed by an enormous aquifer. But the scientists think that at best they’re buying the Great Barrier Reef a few decades of life while we somehow manage to halt emissions and begin to cool the planet.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate: geoengineering
As the threat of climate change has gone from theoretical to apparent, proposals for a more aggressive attempt at mitigation through geoengineering have gained currency in some scientific corners, drawn skepticism or outright opposition in others. Prospects for geoengineering would likely improve in inverse proportion to prospects for nations to hit their emissions targets to slow, then reverse the warming of the planet.