When it comes to global warming and climate change, the public reacts to the projections with alarm and seeks action. Geoscientists respect the uncertainties of current forecasts and crave data. But all agree that we need to know much, much more about climate.
Technical Challenges for Climate Research
Humanity has been altering global climate by sheer accident; civilization is a great unintended greenhouse experiment. Climatology promises to let us catch up with our mistakes and foresee a better outcome. But this field of science is far more difficult and uncertain than the public knows. The balance of gases in the atmosphere, the amount of energy entering it from the sun, the feedbacks and responses of the biogeochemical system, the history of Earth's climate—all of these factors have large error bars. Computer power will be limited for many years to come. Experiment and theory must advance many generations before we can have confidence in our understanding.
Until then our policy choices must be flexible and sensitive to the uncertainties of climatic science. A few things are certain: global warming is real, and its link to human activity is now considered firm. Beyond that, the details we need before trying counteractions are scant.
The Promise of Climate Science
Society must support climatology research the same way it supports medical research: generously and for the long haul. As it advances, climate science will give us, one after the other, new powers.
- First will be insight, something we are beginning to achieve today.
- Next will come foresight, the ability to model the evolving climate before and after our lifetimes, flexibly and in regional detail.
- With that we will gradually learn methods of avoidance and mitigation—better ways to dodge and parry the blows that Earth rains down on us.
- The ultimate promise of climatology is active control of the atmospheric environment. At that point, which is barely imaginable today, climatology would become climateering—climatic engineering.
Researchers are beginning to look at grand engineering ideas that one day may be taken seriously. One scheme calls for injecting material into the upper atmosphere, in effect putting a veil over the globe, to cut down on incoming sunlight. Kevin Trenberth and Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research examined this idea by studying a natural analog—the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo, which put huge amounts of sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere and cooled the Earth as a whole by a full degree Celsius. They reported in Geophysical Research Letters in August 2007 that the eruption apparently made world rainfall fall at the same time. Drought would be an unwelcome side effect.
Another type of climateering technology relies on tinkering with ocean chemistry to regulate the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere. Early ideas centered around fertilizing the sea with iron. A more recent proposal mimics the natural breakdown of rocks in an industrial setting. Many other ideas are sure to come.
Moral Challenges for Climateers
From the standpoint of today the challenges of the climateering age are daunting. Scientific and engineering obstacles, it can be argued, will inevitably fall as our knowledge advances. But the moral challenges will only grow as our capabilities increase:
- Who will decide what climate is best? Action by the United Nations can be vetoed by any nation in the Security Council. Is it right for one nation to place its well-being over that of the rest of the world? Private or nongovernmental bodies could take action on their own. Who will they answer to?
- If human activity has changed the climate, who is liable? The UN Environmental Modification Convention already forbids nations from changing the environment in ways that injure other nations. The USA put it into force in 1980. Could the heaviest greenhouse emitters be prosecuted under it?
- What regions will win and lose? Perhaps Canada and Russia will come to welcome the warmth. Cruise lines are already thinking about extending tourism into an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Oil exploration could expand there. Who really needs the snows of Kilimanjaro?
- Is a little bit of climateering OK if it helps get us past the worst of the coming warm age? Or will people just use it to persist in bad practices? Researcher David Keith of the University of Calgary likens this situation to the "moral hazard" of flood insurance, which has allowed more building in flood zones and raised flood damages as a result.
- Is it ethical for climatologists to support altering the climate? Climate scientist Richard Somerville argues no, but for a subtle reason: climate models are not suited for studying such projects. Until they can be well modeled, he says, climate-changing experiments are unethical.
These questions may seem premature, but climate researchers are beginning to talk about them. And everyone, not just climatologists, can think about them today, before we achieve the tools. The sources in my Climate Change list may sometimes be difficult to understand but they are for everyone, to help them think about these questions. The answers we find will govern not how we steer the clouds, but how we steer ourselves.
PS: Beyond climateering lies something even greater: planeteering. The examples of Venus and Mars, not just Earth, have made it plain that the state of the atmosphere has effects that extend all the way into the mantle and possibly even the core—and vice versa. Today's climatology, the first truly holistic science, is just the first baby step toward the mastery of worlds.
