US Global Change Research Program recommends research into geoengineering for climate change action

The White House Wants Scientists To Explore Geoengineering, Gizmodo, Maddie Stone Jan 12, 2017, Geoengineering, or hacking the climate system to cool it off, is the latest science fictional idea to make its way into a White House strategic roadmap, following a report last week on how we should be preparing for the apocalypse asteroid. Seeing as the apocalypse asteroid won’t have a chance to annihilate us if the climate spirals out of control first, it would appear the White House is trying to cover all bases.

The fact that geoengineering, a controversial subject the White House avoided mentioning for years, is now getting serious treatment in a policy roadmap is also the latest indication that Obama does not think we are acting to reduce our emissions quickly enough, and that aggressive technological interventions may be required.

The roadmap, which was submitted to Congress this week by the US Global Change Research Program, the governing body of the 13 federal agencies conducting research on global environmental change, lays out future directions of study on familiar topics, such as the rapidly-warming Arctic and humanity’s impact on the global water cycle. It also urges research into two of the most widely discussed planet-hacking concepts: Solar engineering, or injecting particles into the stratosphere to make it more reflective, and carbon capture, or sucking CO2 right out of the sky.

While the report does not suggest scientists conduct a climate experiment any time soon — solar engineering and direct carbon capture from the air are both highly speculative ideas — it recommends we start laying some groundwork, by improving models and observational capabilities that can predict the consequences of geoengineering. “Such research would also define the smallest scale of intervention experiments that would yield meaningful scientific understanding,” the report reads…….

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and an outspoken critic of geonengineering, had a somewhat darker view on the new White House recommendations. “I do believe it is dangerous to consider engaging in massive planetary interventions with a system we understand imperfectly,” he told Gizmodo. “The law of unintended consequences reigns supreme.”

“The one possible exception is direct air capture, a relatively benign form of geoengineering,” Mann continued. “With respect to other schemes, like stratospheric sulphate aerosol injection, the only legitimate reason to study them right now, in my view, is to get a better sense of just what dangers might result from implementing such schemes.”…… more http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/01/the-white-house-wants-scientists-to-explore-geoengineering/