Phew. It looks like a potentially disastrous gamble based on little more than arrogance and wishful thinking, but we should be aware that we have been geoengineering for 200 years by adding carbon to the atmosphere. Geoengineering may well be essential if we are to rescue the climate from runaway overheating through positive feedbacks. My preferred approach would be a direct method of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it, but whatever the method eventually chosen, and this sulphur one seems far-fetched to me, we can’t afford to close our minds to this field of research.

 

Tom

 

 

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	The Return of Dr Strangelove: Politics of geoengineering
Date:	Mon, 7 Jun 2010 17:58:43 +1000
From:	Clive Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To:	Clive Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
To:	Climate Change Info Mailing List <[log in to unmask]>

 

NEW PAPER ON GEOENGINEERING

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr Strangelove was the unhinged US general

who risked nuclear apocalypse by ordering a first strike against the

Soviet Union. The character was modelled on Dr Edward Teller, “the father

of the hydrogen bomb”. In the 1990s, Teller and his colleague at the

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lowell Wood (a weapons researcher

nicknamed “Dr Evil”), were among the first to advocate responding to

global warming by transforming the chemical composition of the Earth’s

atmosphere.

Taking control of the climate by injecting sulphur particles into the

upper atmosphere sounds like science fiction, but there is now a powerful

alliance of scientists and venture capitalists backing the idea. It’s

endorsed by climate deniers in conservative think tanks, but the public

remains mostly in the dark. This paper, by Clive Hamilton, explores the

strange politics of geoengineering.

Read it here:

http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/index.php?page=articles

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