EXPERIMENT EARTH

In their 2009 report entitled Geo-engineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty, the Royal Society defines geo-engineering as the 'deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climatic system with the aim of reducing global warming', principally through solar radiation management (SRM). This area has become the focus of a controversial debate on responsible science and innovation with the underlying idea of taking responsibility for the climate. This has become more publicly thinkable since the publication in 2006 of the paper by Paul Crutzen - the inventor of the term Anthropocene – entitled Albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulphur injections: a contribution to resolve a policy dilemma? This is encapsulated in the Royal Society press release for the above report with an apparent ultimatum: Stop emitting CO2 or geo-engineering could be our only hope. In the foreword to the report, the then president, Lord Martin Rees refers to geo-engineering as a plan B for climate change.

This book draws on three years of sociological research with scientists, particularly from the SPICE project, an acronym for stratospheric particle injection for climate engineering. Human development is already interwoven with the evolution of climate, and the possibility of geo-engineering takes things a stage further through deliberate reflection of solar radiation through spraying particles into the upper atmosphere. The Royal Society press release is somewhat chilling in its implications as CO2 emissions continue to grow and with this fact the pressure will grow for a technical fix without any fundamental alteration in our ways of life, especially as some proponents insist that the technology is cheap and relatively safe.

The Royal Society report does not take this view and many participants were reluctant to have the field opened up – their conclusions are summarised in two tables (pp. 116, 118) charting the affordability and safety of various possible interventions. Stratospheric aerosols are thought to be potentially highly effective and highly affordable, while questions exist about their safety. A major issue is that once the process of SRM is initiated, it has to continue indefinitely, otherwise there would be a sharp temperature increase - and experiments would have to be large-scale in order to yield significant results. Moreover, the skies would turn from blue to white. The science and politics of geo-engineering are inextricably entwined, and the topic was also broached in a 2013 IPCC report, building on an earlier one in 2007. They warn that both carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and SRM carry side effects and long term consequences on a global scale. Interestingly, research models are based on the effects of volcanic eruption, especially that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

Ethically, geo-engineering involves both responsibility and uncertainty with a mixture of knowns and unknowns, but also, inevitably, unknown unknowns. In addition, there is a danger of tackling a wicked non-linear challenge with a linear way of thinking. Then there are the challenges of governance and what the author calls a radical new architecture of responsibility in terms of the gradual technocratic ownership of the climate. He says that we should not be scared of geo-engineering, at least not yet, as it is neither as exciting nor as terrifying as we have been led to believe, 'for the simple reason that it doesn't exist. The technologies of geo-engineering…. remain imaginary. (p. 199) But is this actually true?

The documentary Look Up and the website www.geoengineeringwatch.com provide evidence that geo-engineering is already going on. It is a curious phenomenon of being both overt and covert at the same time – overt in the sense that the evidence is there to see in the sky, but covert because governments insist that nothing is actually going on. What is undoubtedly true, however, is that emissions from aircraft can, under certain atmospheric conditions, spread out into thin cloud; sometimes these clouds join together to form the kind of white haze described in a Scientific American feature. I have observed these trails and subsequent clouds in various parts of the world. A further issue is that many of these sprays are toxic, and what goes up must eventually come down. This is a form of pollution, in any event, and is associated overall with global dimming.

Speaking to the Council for Foreign Relations at the end of June 2016, CIA director John Brennan refers to geo-engineering technologies, and specifically SRM as potentially helping to reverse the warming effects of global climate change - now denied by the Trump administration. Stratospheric aerosol injection has gained Brennan's attention in the context of the security threat posed by catastrophic climate change. He sees this as a possible way of giving the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels, and quotes an estimate by the National Research Council that the cost of deployment would only be $10 billion a year. He envisages other measures as also being necessary in view of, for instance, ocean acidification.

A paper published in the Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2015, 12(8), 9375-9390 by J Marvin Hendon and entitled Evidence of Coal-Fly-Ash Toxic Chemical Geoengineering in the Troposphere: Consequences for Public Health (http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/8/9375/htm) argues that this process is already going on. The author uses two methods: '(1) Comparison of 8 elements analysed in rainwater, leached from aerosolised particulates, with corresponding elements leached into water from coal fly ash in published laboratory experiments, and (2) Comparison of 14 elements analysed in dust collected outdoors on a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter with corresponding elements analysed in un-leached coal fly ash material. The results show: (1) the assemblage of elements in rainwater and in the corresponding experimental leachate are essentially identical.' The author noticed the phenomenon I described above occurring in the skies above San Diego from the spring of 2014: 'In a matter of minutes, the aerosol trails exiting the tanker-jets would start to diffuse, eventually forming cirrus-like clouds that further diffuse to form a white haze that scattered sunlight, often occluding or dimming the sun.' He found aluminium and barium in post-spraying rainwater, elements that are not normally present. The author also found that there had been a systematic campaign of disinformation, with claims that these trails were nothing more than a condensation of ice particles. In addition, there has been 'no public disclosure, no informed consent, and no public health warnings.' So we have an interesting situation of theoretical discussion, good evidence that spraying is going on and may be toxic and therefore harmful, while governments deny that any such geo-engineering experiments are already taking place. So it looks to me as if this book is excellent as far as it goes, but does not go far enough in addressing what is actually happening. This is another controversial area where readers will have to conduct their own research and reach their own conclusions. There is undoubtedly something that requires further explanation.