What's Another Name for Geoengineering?

Geoengineering. That's what they're calling some of the more high-tech proposals for solving the climate crisis. Geoengineering strategies all involve intentional manipulation of the earth's climate in order to offset the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions--for example, installing orbital mirrors in space, artificially "enhancing" clouds with reflective particulates, and spreading light-colored and reflective materials across vast swaths of unpopulated land, all to prevent the sun's rays from being absorbed into the atmosphere.

It's a controversial topic, at least among those of us familiar with the concept (which is only about three percent of us, according to Jeff Goodell, who wrote this account of a recent conference on geoengineering at Asilomar, published yesterday on Yale's environment360). There are unanswered questions about who would finance these measures (read: rich countries), who might feel negative impacts like crop disruption (read: poor countries) even if the net effects were positive, what the unknown risks might be, and whether the massive investment that would be necessary to pull off some of these high-tech strategies on a large scale might be better spent on, say, greenhouse gas mitigation or climate adaptation. (See our September 2009 EBN feature on designing for climate adaptation or this sidebar for BuildingGreen's take on geoengineering.)

With tongue only partially in cheek, Wired last week published a handy list (along with some great images) of "Six Ways We're Already Geoengineering the Planet." No, it isn't a list of hush-hush experiments or field tests of any of the aforementioned strategies. Nor is it an argument that we should give geoengineering a free pass. It was just a clever way of reminding us, lest we should get caught up in the futuristic excitement of some of these ideas, that we've been tinkering with the climate for nearly 200 years--we've just been doing it in the wrong direction.