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Geoengineering rests on shaky foundations and poor social planning.

Geoengineering rests on shaky foundations and poor social planning.  I think there’s evidence of the government trying to obfuscate information by changing the names of programs and initiatives, to try to render information exposed to the public in previous reporting facially out of date.  

First off, this is reminding me of Naomi Klein’s chapter on geoengineering, which is very skeptical of the whole idea, as we should all be.

Some highlights from that chapter:

  • Alan Robock wrote a paper published in 2008 in Geophysical Research that geoengineering would “disrupt the Asian and African Monsoon and Pacific Monsoons, reducing precipitation to the food supply for billions of people.”
  • Computer models show that geoengineering would crash crop productivity in the Sahel, leading to desertification.
  • Further computer models show a 20% reduction in rainfall in the Amazon from geoengineering.  
  • Historical evidence connects volcano eruptions with droughts, meaning we would be risking one climate disaster while risking everything to fix another.  
  • The eruption of Laki resulted in the lowest flow in the Nile River in the 18th century, remarked on by Constantin-François Volney, who also noted its tragic effects on the population.  
  • The eruption of Katmai resulted in the lowest flow in the Nile River in the 20th century.  
  • Wendell Berry, calling geoengineering “arrogant ignorance”, and adding, “we identify arrogant ignorance by its willingness to work on too big a scale and thus to put too much at risk.”

Geoengineering is ultimately a reluctant approach to our survival, which I do not find facially credible, and those who say that it would benefit all, and therefore it doesn’t matter if the benefits are not equally shared and the costs, not equally borne, are espousing a logical fallacy.  Just because a policy would in fact benefit those who it would make the worst off does not mean that the policy will not benefit the rich and powerful, and in this case, lucky at the expense of the worst off.  This logical fallacy leads to climate inequality.  So I reject it, but I also warn against it.  

Zooming out a bit, which I think this article allows us to do, lets us say that the weather manipulation efforts currently underway domestically to increase rainfall in the Colorado River basin that have not met with much success are clearly distinguishable in effect and consequence from any “Pinatubo option.” This is not to mention that they are clearly different in intent.  However, they are being used to conflate weather manipulation with geoengineering.  So we can clear up some confusion there.  To be perfectly frank, I find it incredible that anybody is trying to justify a bad idea with an unrelated bad idea, in fact, a famously bad idea, but to the extent that is happening, that is ridiculous and absurd.  Now let's look at the consequence; with weather manipulation or whatever, possibly it rains and most likely it doesn’t.  The Pinatubo option produces the nightmare situation, especially I hasten to add for the Colorado Basin itself: drought.  So I think it's untenable to link these two ideas together.  

Another part of this story is the familiar problem with the bloated military budget, and I think people could frame it better because, of course, the Vietnam connection is best framed in this way. During the Dust Bowl, the American West experienced drought, and people got to thinking, “Well, could we make it rain?” This was just barely updated during the Vietnam War with the passing thought, “Well, what if we could make it stop raining as well?”  Now, to a normal person, this sounds completely absurd because who has the money to spend on answering questions like that, and why would they possibly believe it was a good idea to pursue that research? But that's exactly the point of the comment I made: it is a consequence of the bloated military budget that we spend money on these things.  This increases the chance of dangerous ideas being nearby in a crisis. A rational, humane society would not agree to pass this off as reason, but clearly we do not live in such a society.  


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