I just finished reading an article by Jamais Cascio in the Wall Street Journal on geoengineering. I was directed there from Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog and while this isn’t my usual thing it’s one of those ideas that’s both intriguing and deeply disturbing to me.

I’ve read other pieces by Cascio and find him to be a very thoughtful writer so I’m inclined to pay attention when he writes about something. From what I can gather after reading his article, geoengineering needs to be seriously considered now that climate change is rapidly approaching a crisis/tipping point. (Others may disagree with whether or not we are having a crisis but that’s another discussion.) We have not sufficiently decreased the amount of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere thereby allowing us to reverse the changes currently taking place. Cascio is proposing that we consider geoengineering not as a solution to too much carbon being released but as a stopgap (breathing space) while we seriously address the issues. You can read Cascio’s article here and you can read Andrew Maynard’s comments about it here.

The most feasible solutions as described by Cascio make me very nervous (either pump sulfates or seawater up into the atmosphere) but he presents a persuasive case for a geoengineering solution coupled with serious efforts to reduce carbon emissions.