The only correct way to save the world
On purity in dire circumstances
I have a couple thoughts about the challenge of saving the world in the “right” way that I haven’t brought up and don’t really like. Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk my way out of them, and because we’re literally and figuratively in this together…
You’re not going to like the geoengineers
The primary responses to geoengineering generally, and Stardust’s announcement specifically, could broadly be summarized as:
A for-profit private company?! This is bad, and I don’t trust it.
Using technology that is potentially secret or trademarked? This is also bad?!
And, I get this knee-jerk response, but, who did you think was going to do this work?
The UN? Flying planes owned by the… UN?
A global consortium of… military aircraft?
A not-quite-so-global group of… military aircraft?
Or maybe, outsourced to primes like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics? Maybe Chinese or Indian primes?
Outsourced to VC-backed space companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin?
Ultra high net-worth individuals sponsoring SRM executed by commercial airlines? (Pour one out for the chem-trail folks if it comes to that.)
Look at that list, it’s… overwhelmingly made up of groups the general public is at best, skeptical, of. Every instance is nightmare fuel of some portion of the population. Which is to say: you’re almost certainly going to hate the geoengineers. And, that’s okay! Stop freaking out about this! The companies that make tanks to fight wars, make spaceships and satellites, and deliver lots of opaque public goods to our gov’t and military are often 1) private for profit companies, using 2) technology that is secret and trademarked.
Look, it doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies either. I would love for us to save the world as a community, to hold hands while we do the right thing. But, looking at our track record, that isn’t how we save the world. Two World Wars summoned the military industrial complex, which in a narrow sense, worked. We won. The question of what do to with that infrastructure, lobbying network, and incentive structures after we win the war is a good question. Let’s talk about that! But, can we put down the idea that we’re going to geoengineer the planet in a way that’s “pure”?
The sooner we start, the better
I feel less certain about this one, and don’t like the implications to start with, but the basic idea is this: assuming we decide that a thermostat for the planet is required, what do we set the thermostat to? How do we decide what the baseline target temperature is?
This one is fraught because there will be explicit tradeoffs. A colder planet benefits some but not others. Will the new temperature be optimized for: newly planted vineyards in England, increasingly productive grain fields in Russia? Prime California agricultural land that is drying out? A reliable Monsoon and snowpack in the Himalayas?
Once we decide to deploy, it would make sense to try for the global optimal temperature, but I suspect our ability to decide what that temp is, and particularly how to compensate the losers, dies in committee and we revert to something like, “just make sure it doesn’t get worse.” If the modal outcome is to “stop” additional warming, it seems likely the baseline will be relative to when we begin to deploy this technology (or the triggering event), not relative to some specific temperature. To spell it out: the longer we wait before deploying, the higher the baseline temp that we will try to return to.
And perhaps I am overstating here; there are reasons that we might want to hold off in deploying SRM for six months, or a year, or some period. But the idea that waiting doesn’t cost us anything is wrong, and deserves to be challenged. If deploying sooner (even at a smaller scale and with less information) allows us to set the “baseline” in mind of the public, that will have a tremendous long term impact, and we’d be right to consider it in “we should we start” calculus.
Absolutely right.. "the sooner we start, the better".
A wedoable now is surface reflection. Brighten up the built zone. Save a few million.
Reflect Baby! Reflect!
Interesting consideration about the optimization function for geoengineering efforts.
Your listed examples all focus on specific geographic precipitation patterns. My broad (and skimmed) read of the modeling literature suggests that SAI is a blunt instrument that will reliably decrease radiative heating, however, it comes with very uncertain changes to precipitation patterns. My own thinking is that SAI could (will be?) used to limit extreme heat and potentially pull us back from one or more tipping points.
Local and regional weather modification is already happening to increase precipitation (https://www.rainmaker.com/) and decrease severe hail events (http://www.weathermodification.com/). These sorts of for-profit private companies will probably become more numerous to provide hyperlocal to regional weather services.