The United States must seriously consider the idea of playing with the atmosphere to cool a warming Earth and to accelerate research into how and whether humanity should hack the planet, the National Academy of Sciences said Thursday.
Academy report, created by Abraham Lincoln to provide specialized advice to the government, does not recommend conducting solar geoengineering to repel heat back into space. At least not yet.
But an emergency plan needs to be reported and explored says the extreme weather caused by climate change has worsened since the last academy looked at the highly charged issue in 2015. This requires coordinated research into the workings of air conditioning technology, its potentially dangerous side effects, ethics and the potential for political decline.
The report looks at three possible ways to cool the air: introducing heat-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, changing the brightness of ocean clouds, and thinning high clouds.
“Climate engineering is a really stupid idea, but it may not be as stupid as doing nothing right now or continuing to do what we did,” said atmospheric chemist Scripps Institution of Oceanography Lynn Russell, co-author of the report. The Associated Press. “It has a lot of risks and these are important to learn as much as we can.”
The panel recommended increasing research spending several times to $ 40 million a year, along with “exit ramps” to end the study if an unacceptable risk is found.
“Honestly, I don’t know if it will make sense or not,” said Chris Field University chairman Chris Field.
Critics, such as Raymond Pierrehumbert of Oxford University, worry that there is a “moral hazard” that offers a tempting option to use questionable technology instead of the necessary reduction in carbon pollution. He said the term geoengineering makes it seem wrong that people have control over heat like a thermostat.
Andrew Dessler, University of Texas A&M, considers geoengineering a safety feature for the planet, such as the car airbags you hope you never need.
A Harvard team is working on a small-scale experiment where in the end a balloon would put a few kilograms of aerosols in 20 kilometers in the air to reflect the sun. That group hopes to conduct a system test, without chemical injection, later this year over Sweden.
This report is stronger than the 2015 version, detailing government oversight and how research should be done, said academy president Marcia McNutt, who led the previous study.
Is geoengineering too risky to consider?
“It doesn’t play with fire as much as it researches fire, so we understand it well enough to implement it if necessary,” said Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA scientist who has been in the group since 2015. ” Sometimes you have to look at very risky options when the stakes are as high as climate change. ”
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.
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