Geoengineering Technologies

Seeds of doubt over iron boost for algae

by Alex Kirby (Climate News Network) New research suggests that fertilising oceans with iron to increase the growth of algae that absorb carbon dioxide is not the hoped-for answer to reducing global warming. LONDON, 28 January, 2016 – One keenly-argued possible way of...

The dubious promise of bioenergy plus carbon capture

by Richard Martin (MIT Technology Review) Climate change agreements rest on negative emissions technologies that may be unachievable. While many scientists and climate change activists hailed December’s Paris agreement as a historic step forward for international...

Talks in the city of light generate more heat

Rather than relying on far-off negative-emissions technologies, Paris needed to deliver a low-carbon road map for today, argues Kevin Anderson in Nature. (A longer version of this article can be found here.) The climate agreement delivered earlier this month in Paris...

Sign-on letter: No to 1.5°C with geoengineering!

Paris, 11 December 2015 Seemingly out of the blue (or rather, out of the black smog of the UNFCCC process), some of the largest historical culprits for climate change, countries including the United States, Canada and the European Union, have decided to back an...

The Paris Climate-Change Spectacular

by Neth Daño and Pat Mooney (Project Syndicate) OTTAWA – The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December will feature all the tightly choreographed production values of a Hollywood blockbuster. The cast will be huge: presidents and prime ministers at...

Recklessly playing God with the planet

A government-sponsored scientific panel called for more research on geoengineering — here’s why we shouldn’t even consider it by Shannon Hall (ScienceLine) Geoengineering — that wild and grandiose idea that suggests we could offset and even reverse the alarming...

False promise of ‘carbon capture’ exposed

The Ecologist The widely touted 'carbon capture and storage' technology is much more expensive than wind and solar, says a Greenpeace report. It also represents a perverse subsidy to the fossil fuel sector that will only boost coal and oil, and delay the transition to...

Geoengineering Is Not a Solution to Climate Change

Using technofixes to tinker with global climate systems is an excuse to avoid unpopular but necessary measures to reduce carbon emissions by Clive Hamilton (Scientific American) The geoengineering juggernaut has shifted into higher gear with the release of a...

Should We Experiment With Climate Geoengineering?

by Rachel Smolker and Almuth Ernsting (Truthout) The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced its long-awaited reports on climate geoengineering in mid-February. The reports intelligently state at the outset that geoengineering is no substitute for reducing...

What If We Lost the Sky?

by Anna North (New York Times) What is the sky worth? This sounds like a philosophical question, but it might become a more concrete one. A report released last week by the National Research Council called for research into reversing climate changethrough a process...

Geoengineering is no place for corporate profit making

There is no shortage of ideas from business to save the environment – the problem is when they want to make a fast buck by Clive Hamilton (Guardian) “Save the world and make a little cash on the side.” That’s the motto of Russ George, the colourful entrepreneur behind...

Can the CIA weaponise the weather?

A leading climate-change scientist has warned that the US secret service’s interest in geoengineering technology may not be benign. But it’s not the first time a government has tried to control weather patterns by Patrick Barkham (Guardian) Using the weather as a...

Climate Hacking Is Barking Mad

You can’t fix the Earth with these geoengineering proposals, but you can sure make it worse. by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert (Slate) Some years ago, in the question-and-answer session after a lecture at the American Geophysical Union, I described certain geoengineering...

Plan B? What Happened to Plan A?

Why we shouldn’t fund geoengineering experimentation, and what we still need to learn about the climate by Pat Mooney (ETC Group) The US National Academy of Sciences has released two reports on geoengineering that recommend investments in solar radiation management...