Who you calling a crackpot scientist?

There’s an interesting article in the South African news media about a UN moratorium on the sort of geo-engineering ideas described in my recent discussion with Pete Strutton.  The general gist of the moratorium is that the UN is saying “lets not do any more of this sort of research until we have a better idea whether its going to work and at what cost”; its not an ethical prohibition in the sense of the human cloning sort of ban.  Consequently, the South African piece describing proposers of geo-engineering as “crackpot scientists” is absurdly harsh and sensationalist journalism at its worst.  I can say with confidence that scientists studying geo-engineering concepts are simply trying to propose solutions to what will certainly be the most vexing global challenge of our generation.  As stated in this Scientific American piece:

“Major scientific organizations — including the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the U.K. Royal Society — have issued cautious calls for more research, though warning that geoengineering approaches shouldn’t supplant efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.”

In my ideal world, it would be a social norm that you can’t object to an idea unless you propose a justifiably better alternative.  Certainly there are questions to be answered about who gets to make the call on these global-level solutions (even mentioned here back in March).  But as it stands, with Kyoto and Copenhagen essentially failing to effectively retard the source of the issue (greenhouse gas emissions), we can ill-afford the UN to be hindering research into possible solutions, without offering something better.

More on the geo-hacking idea

Not so long ago I posted about the idea of capturing all the extra atmospheric CO2 into the worlds oceans by fertilising them and thereby creating enormous plantkon blooms that would convert all the CO2 to plant tissues, which would then sink to the bottom and be buried in the ocean depths.  This new scientist article probes a different angle that I didn't think of, which is Who decides what we will or won't do to change these things?  The author Jim Giles refers not just to ocean fertilising, but engineering the whole planet to combat climate change - what has become popularly known as "geo-hacking" - including sensible concepts like reforestation and cloud seeding, as well as the more absurd notions such as building giant reflectors to bounce the sunlight away.  Its a thought provoking question, so who do you think should decide these issues?  The US? UN? UNESCO?  Perhaps we need a new body with that as its sole charter?