Geoengineering climate experiments 'now necessary'

By Daniel Nelson Climate change is now such a pressing problem that “it is both prudent and necessary” to try out geoengineering schemes, the director of London’s Science Museum and the former Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Professor Chris Rapley, told a meeting on Sunday. Rapley admitted he was previously opposed to such experiments - not least because of the unintended consequences that could occur – but the urgency of the situation had forced him to change his position. Changes in the Arctic were occurring faster than the models had predicted and many in the scientific community were describing their previous estimates of what constituted a threshold level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as too optimistic – a reassessment described by Rapley as “a bit startling”. Yet although geoengineering experiments were self-evidently necessary and small-scale, the reaction to them was “extraordinarily venomous”. Proposals for experiments were met by scepticism and lack of funding. Asked about coordinating such projects, Rapley said the United Nations had been coordinating efforts to understand the scientific evidence, “but the problem with the UN is necessarily it’s so slow.” His co-panellist at the all-day IQ2 Green Festival on Climate Change at the Royal Geographical Society in London, Prof Stephen Salter, emeritus professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, outlined a proposal for a fleet of hi-tech yachts that would pump particles of sea-water into clouds, thickening them to reflect more of the Sun's rays. Salter said the cost of building the craft needed for a trial and running it for three or four years was about $200 million, the cost of a big international conference: “If you hadn’t had Bali [the international climate change summit in Indonesia in 2007] you could have got this up and running,” he said with a smile. In another conference session, Dr Steve Koonin said that because of the danger that CO2 emissions would not be curbed fast enough “we should look at geoengineering” and check out the risks and benefits. “It’s very unpleasant to think about, but as a scientist I think it’s irresponsible not to think about it,” he told the meeting.

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