continuations:

If you either follow the Freakonomics blog or any of the global warming / CO2 coverage, you will have by now encountered the tiff over the “climate chapter” (Chapter 5) of Superfreakonomics.  If not, you can read Levitt’s most recent defense and compare with an impact summary written from the other side. I don’t want to weigh on the particular chapter, but it does raise the topic of geo-engineering which deserves more attention.

I am finally meeting with a lawyer and an accountant this afternoon about moving forward with my idea for helping raise money and awareness for longtail threats and geo-engineering is exactly the type of project that I want to target.  My a priori believe is that geo-engineering is extremely difficult and dangerous.  Our historic track record is terrible as can be illustrated by any number of examples,  such as the historic introduction and the subsequent attempts of controlling the rabbit population in Australia (which seems like a much simpler problem than “regulating the Earth’s thermostat”).

Nonetheless, I believe it is essential that we research geo-engineering options.  Why?  Because I would rather do this now when there is time, than if we are down to the wire.  There are many feedback loops in the climate that if disrupted (Gulf stream) or triggered (Methane clathrate) could have catastrophic impacts.  No matter how much work we do on containing and hopefully reducing CO2, shouldn’t we also prepare for what to do en cas des sinistre?

What most people don’t seem to understand (and I’m not talking about Albert here) is that it is WORSE if humans aren’t causing climate change. If it isn’t something we’re doing that we can just stop, then we either need to grin and bear it, or try and actually engineer the environment.

We can put some bounds on the latter. If we find out that our CO2 emissions didn’t cause climate change, than we would need to remove _all_ human CO2, and then some, to affect the climate. There are certainly other ways to cool, but just think about the scale here.

For Albert, my main piece of feedback would be to forget about “raising awareness”. At some point, that awareness needs to translate to action, and that means you’re trying to convince leaders. So take a direct approach. It doesn’t cost much to fund a grad student. Funds for his non-profit should back research, and maybe publicize the findings.