Planetary engineering

From involuntary climate change to active climate management?

IEEE Spectrum online has published an article by William B. Gail on the feasibility of humankind actively controlling the earth’s climate. Gail advocates developing such planetary engineering projects. This should not be too surprising given his professional positions: he is Director of Strategic Development at Microsoft Virtual Earth and also serves on the U.S. National Research Council’s Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space. Fortunately, he has not forgotten the uncertainties and risks planetary engineering carry, and presents the subject in a balanced manner.

The article first sketches out how humankind is currently influencing the earth’s climate (see recent blog post). Subsequently, Gail asks the question of whether we should try to channel our capacity to change climate to our benefit, or whether we should try to avoid having any impact. He advocates the first option, but admits that we are still far from being able to carry this out. His article clearly demonstrates that our tools and skills are still totally insufficient for planetary engineering, technologically as well as politically.

A new political dimension

Since climate control would serve a global goal and most probably have global consequences, we would need new international institutions to manage such projects. Strong international cooperation would be equally necessary to fund such projects. Likewise, international agreement would be required to prevent climate control from being used for military purposes.

Improving the power of forecasts

Technically, major breakthroughs would be required in climate forecasting as well as in systems management for climate manipulation. We currently lack the computational power, relevant monitoring data and knowledge of climate physics to make accurate climate change forecasts. Climate is mathematically chaotic, meaning that calculations need extremely accurate starting data. Moreover, taking all feedback mechanisms into account makes it an extremely complex problem.

The best is yet to come?

The next challenge would be to advance from prediction to manipulation. This is a step with potentially high risks, so it would demand extreme caution. Concepts exist, but as of now, all of them seem to be far too expensive, difficult or risky. Gail hopes the concepts that have already been studied ‘are neither the last nor the best ideas science and engineering will have to offer’.

Gail admits that it would take decades, if not centuries, to achieve the goal, but no matter how big or risky it may seem, the risks of not acting could even be worse, he writes. This raises the question of whether climate manipulation is really the fastest, most cost-effective, reliable, desirable, secure, humble and human way of acting.