Why We Need To Study Geohacking -Dangers of Reconfiguring The Planet's Ecology

Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren recently outlined options for geohacking, forcibly reconfiguring parts of the planet's ecology.  Since this is a country where you can't set up a windfarm without someone opposing it this set off a storm of protest.  But the most vocal cry was "We shouldn't study it because we don't know how it would work", indicating that the those opponents don't understand what some of their own words mean.

It's important to note that Holdren was advising the study of scientific options, kind of like you'd expect a science adviser to do.  The plan (that of pumping the atmosphere full aerosols) certainly has a couple of potentially-planet-pulverising problems, but that's exactly his point - it needs study.  He's a scientist, you see, where admitting you don't know something is a vital step towards finding a solution.  Unfortunately he's talking to politicians and the media.

One the one hand you've got the ultra-Luddite response, that of any scientific change of anything being bad.  The sort of people who'd be running everywhere and tutting loudly when one of those fancy "wheelamajigged" things came along if they'd been born earlier.  Given their opposition not just to doing something, but even learning about how it might work, we can only assume they learned speech by accident or before they came up with their "Don't learn what I don't already know" viewpoint.

On the other hand, uncontrolled geohacking could be the closest thing to real life Bond villainy we'll ever really see.  Even if the government has no interest in altering Earth's environment, they need to understand exactly what they don't like about it - and where the dangers are - to prevent others from doing the same.  Corporations won't think twice about altering the environment if it benefits them in even the shortest term, and technology will soon bring ecotinkering from the national to the corporate budget level.

Geohacking needs to be studied as a scientific problem: we don't know how it works, and we want to, so let' learn.  That's how science works.  We've been altering Earth since we first worked out that things burned - ecogineering isn't some blasphemous defilement of Gaia's green glory, it's humanity saying "Let's see if we can actually fix things on purpose instead of breaking them all the time."

Geohacking needs federal support    

Comments

[Dr.Earth]

Why does the author assume that this isn't being researched?

Whoever wrote this needs to get their facts straight

[Frank Glover]

(shrug) I run into that all the time.

People who demand that "We should take all the money that's being spent on 'x' and spend it on 'y,' typically don't know how much is *really* being spent on 'x' (usually much less than they think) or how much is *already* being spent on 'y.' (usually much more than they think...)

[Michael Francis Wood]

How interesting that your piece on 'geo-engineering', atmospheric fiddling and research into such activity was followed by an item largely about earth-bound observatories and what they see. Not a lot, if they don't soon speak out about atmospheric seeding to cool global warming! Already, most children think that the night sky is orange. What colour will it be if the aerosol sprayers have their way -- and HOW MANY STARS SHALL WE SEE THEN??

Does it really need research to tell us the answer to that?

[James Benford]

There is little funded research in this area. Most enviros oppose it. As carbon-restriction methods increasingly is seen as not working (note failure of Kyoto, EU carbon cap & trade), this will become more attractive.
Calculations predict that the change to the slight shift in the color of the atmosphere due to aerosol injection will by undetectable to the human eye. The stars will still be as visible.

[kaye]

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