I've been meaning to write about an article, called Climate Repair Made Simple, I saw in last month's Wired magazine on geoengineering as a solution to climate change. The piece nicely details the history of the concept and covering both sides of the argument, but kinda misses the point.

If you aren't familiar, the basic idea of atmospheric geoengineering is to use large amounts of sulfur dioxide to reflect sunlight, counteracting the effects of mounting atmospheric carbon dioxide. Every once in a while, nature demonstrates the idea for us by blowing the top off a volcano, as it did with Mount Pinatubo in 1991, which cooled global temperatures by half a degree Celcius.

Some scientists worry that unintended consequences may occur, decreasing precipitation, destroying ozone, and increasing acid rain. However, it should be said that humanity's carbon-rich lifestyle is already causing havoc in all of these areas.

I did have a problem, however, with Wired's assertion that geoengineering means that "Americans can drive their gas-guzzling SUVs to their hearts' content, and China can build as many coal-powered electricity plants as it wants." I'm sorry, exactly what planet are you on?

Geoengineering is not the solution to global warming. It is a stop-gap that will buy us time to replace fossil fuels with renewables. And let's not forget all of the other environmental and health issues caused by coal and oil.

Still, it's a much better showing than their article a few months ago, which I panned for completely missing the mark in arguing for a carbon-only strategy.

The models seem to show that the negative consequences will be minor compared to the planetary meltdown promised by global warming. As much as I hate the geoengineering to offset our past geoengineering, I think we have to seriously consider it.

But make no mistake, geoengineering the climate is not a substitute for drastically reducing CO2. It's just not that simple.


Bonus Link: A TED talk by environmental scientist David Keith making the argument for strato-seeding is also worth a look.