In the fight to resist and mitigate the harmful effects of climate change, many scientists have been proposing geoengineering techniques more and more frequently. Although the public is just finding out about these practices in recent years, the underlying ideas and proposition of geoengineering have been around for decades. When concerns about the impact of human actions on the climate became more main-stream, especially concerns related to ozone depletion, acid rain and the greenhouse effect, more researchers began looking towards geoengineering techniques as a legitimate solution. Over time, a few articles have become integral in the advancement in geoengineering research and theory. Few articles, though, have had the same impact as W.W. Kellogg and S.H. Schneider’s article titled “Climate Stabilization: For Better or for Worse?”.
Written in 1974, this article was one of the first papers that analyzed the human impact on the climate and the proposition for intentional alteration of the Earth’s climate (1). This paper discusses the urgent need to study the climate, the potential for climate control and the resulting benefits and negative effect, and highlights the extreme short-comings in current knowledge. The behavior of the climate itself is affected by the interactions of innumerable systems of temperature, water and weather systems world-wide. It is affected by almost every system on the planet, from the hydrological system to the movement of plate tectonics. Temperature regulation, for example, is regulated by the rotation of the Earth, wind direction and speed, the transport of sensible and latent heat, the behaviors of snow and ice, cloud formations and the hydrological cycle in general. At the time this article was written, the impact of human action on these dynamic systems was hard to predict. Projects often are oversimplified, altering only a few factors at one time while assuming that all others will remain constant. Due to the dynamic and complicated nature of the climate, no model has been successful in creating an accurate depiction of climatic function. Basic models are often oversimplified and complex models are too large to compute accurately or even to compute at all. Kellogg and Schneider were one of the first to note that society already alters the climate and that once we grasp how the climate works, we can use our accidental knowledge as leverage to control climatic function and behavior. The authors pointed out that our current level of knowledge made it possible to predict short-term and small scale effects of alterations. Science already understood that carbon dioxide was a huge contributor to global temperature rise. Many scientists had also been studying the effect of aerosol dispersion as well and know that the particles in aerosols can scatter and absorb heat and influence cloud formation and precipitation. Based on prior knowledge, the authors made some of the first suggestions in using techniques like cloud seeding, solar radiation management strategies and the elimination of the Arctic Ocean Ice Pack as intentional climate modifiers. The article discussed the potential hazards and harmful effects of climate modifications. Questions are raised regarding who makes the decisions to use and employ strategies and to what degree as well as who will benefit and who will loose vital processes from an altered climate. The article wraps up with a warning from the authors. Due to a lack of clear understanding of the climate and how modifications will affect the overall system, it would be irresponsible to employ any of the strategies suggested without intense, further study. But with the threat of climate change worsening every day, it is vital that research is advanced now.
The preliminary suggestions and warnings made in this article heavily influence the multiple spheres of interest surrounding the issue today. After reviewing a random selection of articles associated with the Kellogg and Schneider article, three areas of research appeared to utilize its findings the most. The first area is purely economic and uses cost-benefit analysis as well as environmental economics to weigh and compare the financial benefits of geoengineering techniques and other mitigation strategies. One article written by Herman Daly outlines the social controls needed to maintain a steady-state economy while encouraging moral growth (2). Kellogg and Schneider hint at this moral-economic perspective when they suggest a “no-fault climate disaster insurance” near the end of their article (1, p. 1170). It’s paramount that researchers include the cost of compensating those hurt by climate modifications in analysis and suggest that the benefiting countries submit to paying off and supplementing those who will lose vital ecosystem resources. Other articles discuss corporate strategies towards sustainability and further analyze models and calculations used to estimate the cost of carbon reduction and projects like solar radiation management implementation. Another sphere that builds on the work of Kellogg and Schneider is the field of climate modification and its influence on the overall climate system. One article further researches cloud seeding and analyzes a cost-benefit model that shows a positive correlation between increased precipitation and environmental condition during normal to dry years (3). The article echoes the concerns of Kellogg and states that the introduction of cloud seeding could have potential negative effects on an isolated population during wetter years. Another article expands research past the modification of Earth’s climate solely on earth-based strategies and calls for research of another type (4). It ties in the potential benefits of altering the climate from space and exalts geoengineering as a viable policy response if the threat of climate change remains severe. Countless other articles explore the complexities of the climate and offer new and improved models that come closer to modeling the climatic system. No one model or combination of models has yet to be highly accurate. The last sphere of interest revolving around geoengineering that gained a base of study from the Kellogg and Schneider article is the study of human interactions with the climate. A book entitled The Ethics of Environmental Concern discusses the growing relationships between humans and the environment, specifically the growing problems of the greenhouse effect, acid rain, ozone depletion and rainforest destruction (5). Much like Kellogg and Schneider warned, an unequal distribution between benefit and harm will be experienced by any climate modification. The book’s authors and other researchers are also beginning to study the effects of climate modifications on Third World nations. Other human processes like agriculture are intently studied to show how individual human processes can have a notable impact on climatic function. Reverse processes are also the focus of study as climatic function and human action coupled together are leading to processes like desertification world-wide. In this sphere, many other researchers are studying the extent and limitation of human technology.
A preliminary review of articles that build on the knowledge presented in Kellogg and Schneider’s article shows that the early analysis on climate and human influence can lead to the creation of different spheres of research. The multiple topics discussed and glossed over in this article have themselves become areas of research. The idea that humans already unintentionally alter the climate and can learn to do so in intentional and meaningful ways has sprouted a new field of study in the fight against climate change. As climate modification techniques are further researched, their economic, physical and social values are also being studied to gain a better understanding of the practices’ universal costs and benefits.
Sources:
1. Kellogg, W.W., & Schneider, S.H. (1974, Dec. 27). Climate stabilization: For better of for worse? Science, 186(4170), 1163-1172
2. Daly, H.E. (1993). The steady-state economy: Toward a political economy of biophysical equilibrium and moral growth. In H.E. Daly & K.N. Townsend (Ed), Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology and Ethics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
3. Merchant, W.N. & Dennis, A.S. (1990). Weather modification as a response to variations in weather and climate; Managing water resources in the west under conditions of climate uncertainty. National Academy Press. (pp 296-302).
4. Jenkins, L.M., (1992). Global change: Geoengineering and space exploration. The 3rd International Conference on Engineering, Construction and Operations in Space - SPACE '92. Denver, CO, USA, 5/31-6/04/1992. Pp. 2072-2081
5. Attfield, R. (1991). The ethics of environmental concern (2nd ed.). Athens: Georgia Press.