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A Case for Climate Engineering
A leading scientist argues that we must consider deploying climate engineering technology to slow the pace of global warming. Climate engineering—which could slow the pace of global warming by injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere—has emerged in recent years as an extremely controversial technology. And for good it carries unknown risks and it may undermine commitments to conserving energy. Some critics also view it as an immoral human breach of the natural world. The latter objection, David Keith argues in A Scientist's Case for Climate Engineering , is groundless; we have been using technology to alter our environment for years. But he agrees that there are large issues at stake. A leading scientist long concerned about climate change, Keith offers no naïve proposal for an easy fix to what is perhaps the most challenging question of our time; climate engineering is no silver bullet. But he argues that after decades during which very little progress has been made in reducing carbon emissions we must put this technology on the table and consider it responsibly. That doesn't mean we will deploy it, and it doesn't mean that we can abandon efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But we must understand fully what research needs to be done and how the technology might be designed and used. This book provides a clear and accessible overview of what the costs and risks might be, and how climate engineering might fit into a larger program for managing climate change.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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295 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 18, 2014
In this very short book, David Keith recommends that a large-scale research program be started. The program would investigate whether climate engineering would be practical, and assess its practicality and side effects.
By "climate engineering", Keith means spraying the upper stratosphere with sulfate aerosol, in order to decrease solar insolation. The intention is to decrease the rate of global warming. Keith makes it quite clear, that he would not want to replace a program of cutting down on emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. His intention is to supplement a reduction in greenhouse gases, in order to alleviate the worst effects of global warming.
Keith goes through a number of arguments for and against such a program of climate engineering. He factors in the costs, the side effects, and the politics of such a program. He sees the most insidious side effect, as a reduction in the political will to reduce greenhouse gas production.
Keith lays out the science, and describes the political problems that are involved. He makes it clear that the decision to go ahead with such a program is not one to be made by scientists. The decision is a political one, to be made by the general public in assessing the benefits and the risks.
This is an excellent book for understanding this intriguing approach toward alleviating (but not reversing) global warming. My only reservation in recommending this book is this: David Keith, hire a good editor! The book is filled with so many typos and grammatical errors; they distracted my attention from the interesting content.
By "climate engineering", Keith means spraying the upper stratosphere with sulfate aerosol, in order to decrease solar insolation. The intention is to decrease the rate of global warming. Keith makes it quite clear, that he would not want to replace a program of cutting down on emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. His intention is to supplement a reduction in greenhouse gases, in order to alleviate the worst effects of global warming.
Keith goes through a number of arguments for and against such a program of climate engineering. He factors in the costs, the side effects, and the politics of such a program. He sees the most insidious side effect, as a reduction in the political will to reduce greenhouse gas production.
Keith lays out the science, and describes the political problems that are involved. He makes it clear that the decision to go ahead with such a program is not one to be made by scientists. The decision is a political one, to be made by the general public in assessing the benefits and the risks.
This is an excellent book for understanding this intriguing approach toward alleviating (but not reversing) global warming. My only reservation in recommending this book is this: David Keith, hire a good editor! The book is filled with so many typos and grammatical errors; they distracted my attention from the interesting content.
September 6, 2021
It was a good read. I liked the insight into how sulfur dioxide can reflect sunlight before going on to explain the geopolitical nature surrounding its contention. The utilitarian nature of the world is what is mainly discussed as implementing geoengineering impacts can result in unfavourable outcomes for certain regions which leads in to the possible selfish intent of countries. The ethics associated with geoengineering is a bit of a mindfuck but we move. I especially liked the section on how geoengineering may start as a means to offset the impacts of carbon dioxide, but could be used for manipulating the weather and climate for personal gains such as increased agricultural production.
October 13, 2020
I found the book disappointing largely because I assumed it was written recently. It wasn't. It was published in 2013 before a lot of the more compelling evidence had been developed. Solar dimming has advanced a great deal since 2013. A number of researchers have come up with credible alternatives to sulfuric acid aerosols. Better climate models linked to better solar dimming models show that if dimming is used to cut average global mean temperature increases by 50% there is little likelihood that any regions on the planet would experience a reduction in precipitation.
This sets out a number of arguments and concerns that are mostly social and political in nature. Clearly Keith is trying to convince skeptics that geoengineering is not evil. I believe we are past that point. Geoengineering is not evil. At the very least the arguments supporting research into geoengineering are far advanced over the arguments Keith presents in this book. In particular Ken Caldeira has managed to improve the modelling needed to predict what the outcomes of solar dimming (geoengineering) will be.
I think it is safe to say that we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are not going to meet our emission reduction targets in time even if the political will is starting to reach a point where the general public is concerned about climate change. We are going to need to be prepared to deploy solar dimming technology in order go prevent serious climate change.
By the time the public is ready to get behind serious emission reduction programmes the impact of climate change will be serious. Everyone will be convinced because the climate will have changed. At that point we will need to be in a position to engage in geoengineering to avert average global temperature increases of more than 3 degrees celsius. At this point we are on a trajectory that leads to as much as a 4 degree celsius increase in temperature by 2100.
This sets out a number of arguments and concerns that are mostly social and political in nature. Clearly Keith is trying to convince skeptics that geoengineering is not evil. I believe we are past that point. Geoengineering is not evil. At the very least the arguments supporting research into geoengineering are far advanced over the arguments Keith presents in this book. In particular Ken Caldeira has managed to improve the modelling needed to predict what the outcomes of solar dimming (geoengineering) will be.
I think it is safe to say that we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are not going to meet our emission reduction targets in time even if the political will is starting to reach a point where the general public is concerned about climate change. We are going to need to be prepared to deploy solar dimming technology in order go prevent serious climate change.
By the time the public is ready to get behind serious emission reduction programmes the impact of climate change will be serious. Everyone will be convinced because the climate will have changed. At that point we will need to be in a position to engage in geoengineering to avert average global temperature increases of more than 3 degrees celsius. At this point we are on a trajectory that leads to as much as a 4 degree celsius increase in temperature by 2100.
November 18, 2014
A heroic attempt to comprehensively examine the implications of this field from science, to engineering (design, implementation), and impact it could have on the world, both natural and human. But he goes beyond that, looking at the social, policy, international relations, and what it would mean for human relations with the natural world. He does a great job of examining risks of using this technology, and common objections to it. Some of the arguments are a little muddled, however, but still thoughtful. A few of the things I did not like were generalizations of some of the arguments against geo-engineering. I also wish he had covered more than one specific technology and looked at some of the other techniques and their implications. The only one discussed was sulfide aerosol dispersion in the stratosphere. What about iron oxide in the ocean to remove carbon? (He puts solar geo-engineering and carbon removal in entirely separate categories). He left off with a disturbing thought though. If we can alter the climate to avert disaster, would we stop there, or would we alter the whole climate to suit our preferences?
November 13, 2022
A Case for Climate Engineering (2013) by David Keith is a very interesting short book that examines the use of solar geoengineering and it’s possible role in reducing the impact of climate change. David Keith is a professor of applied physics at Harvard who has studies climate engineering and was a co-author on a number of chapters in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report.
There is an excellent interview with Keith on the super Omega Tau Podcast.
The book has 6 chapters. The first is ‘Engineering the World’s Sunshine’ which describes what Keith is talking about, namely injecting particles to reduce the amount of sun hitting the earth and hence the warming due to climate change. The use of sulfur is discussed. This would be just like what a large volcano does which reduces the global average temperature. The cost of such an intervention, in the low billions annually, is also discussed. This contrasts to current spending on low carbon emitting energy sources, which is currently in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
In the second chapter ‘Climate Risk’ Keith discusses the risks of climate change and how they could be reduced with solar geoengineering. The third chapter ‘Science’ goes into more detail about solar geoengineering and the risks involved and how they could be carefully measured. The fourth chapter ‘Technology and Design’ goes into more detail about what would be required for a longer term geoengineering program. In the fifth chapter ‘Ethics and Politics’ the curious politics of solar geoengineering and the dislike of it by many people is described. The last chapter briefly summarises the book.
Solar geoengineering is a very interesting area to study. If, as many people believe, climate change is a very serious threat to humanities’ well being then studying a response that could be extraordinarily cost effective is surely highly desirable. The strong dislike of even the idea of studying it is curious. Tests and indeed actual full scale solar geoengineering would also appear to be easily reversible, meaning that should deleterious effects occur ceasing activity should cause a reversion to extant climate conditions.
Keith is global expert on the topic and has written a very readable and extremely thought provoking book about solar geoengineering. For anyone interested in climate change the book is definitely worth a read.
There is an excellent interview with Keith on the super Omega Tau Podcast.
The book has 6 chapters. The first is ‘Engineering the World’s Sunshine’ which describes what Keith is talking about, namely injecting particles to reduce the amount of sun hitting the earth and hence the warming due to climate change. The use of sulfur is discussed. This would be just like what a large volcano does which reduces the global average temperature. The cost of such an intervention, in the low billions annually, is also discussed. This contrasts to current spending on low carbon emitting energy sources, which is currently in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
In the second chapter ‘Climate Risk’ Keith discusses the risks of climate change and how they could be reduced with solar geoengineering. The third chapter ‘Science’ goes into more detail about solar geoengineering and the risks involved and how they could be carefully measured. The fourth chapter ‘Technology and Design’ goes into more detail about what would be required for a longer term geoengineering program. In the fifth chapter ‘Ethics and Politics’ the curious politics of solar geoengineering and the dislike of it by many people is described. The last chapter briefly summarises the book.
Solar geoengineering is a very interesting area to study. If, as many people believe, climate change is a very serious threat to humanities’ well being then studying a response that could be extraordinarily cost effective is surely highly desirable. The strong dislike of even the idea of studying it is curious. Tests and indeed actual full scale solar geoengineering would also appear to be easily reversible, meaning that should deleterious effects occur ceasing activity should cause a reversion to extant climate conditions.
Keith is global expert on the topic and has written a very readable and extremely thought provoking book about solar geoengineering. For anyone interested in climate change the book is definitely worth a read.
July 12, 2024
I love, love, LOVE this book. This is an absolute revisit for me. Despite being only 100 pages long, Keith provides many compelling arguments for and against geo-engineering. I was expecting hard and dry science, but the author delivered much more with discussions on the social and geo-political implications of the technology, which was thought-provoking for someone who has not interacted with this subject matter much in the past. Definitely will come back to this once I’m more prepared with the background knowledge on the topic.
July 4, 2024
I love the work and scholarship of David Keith. My qualm with this book is that it is very short and there are several spelling errors throughout the text. It feels rushed. There also is not a deep exploration of the science and although the socio-political/moral arguments are important, I wanted more of the concrete science. It is highly readable/accessible but this comes with a trade off of sophistication and complexity.
February 23, 2021
A bit repetitive at some points. I would also like more details on the chemistry of the different pathways of aerosols after their exposure to UV. But this book is a start pointing for further reading. I now know I want to learn more on the subject.
September 17, 2019
Recommended reading
If you are concerned about climate change and want to know what we can do to avoid the climate risks already locked in, you should read this book.
If you are concerned about climate change and want to know what we can do to avoid the climate risks already locked in, you should read this book.
December 28, 2019
A very important topic that should be the focus of more serious discussion and research.
December 25, 2013
In a recent interview with David Keith, the author of “The Case for Climate Engineering,” humorist Stephen Colbert jokingly referred to climate engineering as the “All Chocolate Dinner”- a proposal that would allow humans to deal with global warming while spraying sulfuric acid into the high atmosphere. Beneath the humor, Colbert was focusing on the essential problem of climate engineering- the countless moral issues and human passions that the topic raises.
To his credit, David Keith does not duck or minimize these issues in his short book (174 pages). Keith admits that a future Planet Earth in which climate engineering counteracts global warming is NOT the same as a world without global warming. Not only will rainfall patterns be different from our current world, but the World Ocean will eventually die from acidification- because climate engineering would address only the temperature rise of carbon dioxide emissions, NOT the chemical fallout of oceanic carbon absorption.
There is also a thing called “risk compensation.” This is a concept of economic psychology- that climate engineering would carry the risk of supplying the human race with a false sense of security on the topic of global warming. We imagine future generations of humans blandly dismissing global warming as a threat because an organized program of spreading sulfuric acid micro-droplets in the high atmosphere has reduced the temperature gain. Keith admits that this could become a reality, and admits that such tinkering with the high atmosphere's reflective qualities would in fact be only addressing the symptoms of global warming, not the disease itself- and could have some unpleasant unintended consequence. In fact, the amount of sulfuric acid injected into the sky would have to increase every year in order to counteract a constantly climbing amount of CO2 in the sky. Start out with spending a billion bucks per year, but the amount of money would climb. In order to resolve the “risk compensation” issue, Keith proposes only putting enough sulfuric into the sky to address HALF the temperature gain of global warming. This, he explains, would be a measure to maintain a sense of urgency- to prevent future humans from ignoring the actual pathway to success in climate balancing, that of reducing carbon emissions to a low enough amount. And we should start with some trial runs, taking careful observations of results, before jumping in whole hog, writes Keith.
Why then even raise the issue of climate engineering, if it is admittedly fraught with moral issues, and “unknown unknowns” as Donald Rumsfeld once said on a different topic? Well, Desperation is the main reason. Keith points out the the human race has talked about global warming quite a bit in recent decades, but been pretty unsuccessful in attempting to reduce CO2 emissions. Sure there are baby steps in the renewable energy industry, but we are decades away from replacing fossil fuels, notes Keith. In this assertion, he is quite correct. The Kyoto protocol is essentially dead, and it has not been replaced with anything meaningful. We live under a global warming framework that can be described as “every man for himself.”
As an environmentalist, I approached this book with a very doubtful attitude. In the end, Keith's admissions of vulnerability may not have turned me into a geo-engineering fan, but I did decide to give him 4 stars for writing a fairly honest basic primer on this complex and scary topic. One caveat- if you really do not know anything about global warming, this is not the book for you to start out with. Some of the science in the middle of the book may be over your head. But I would suggest that every voter should try to gain an understanding of this topic. So if you know nothing about GW, read up on it at the climate central website, then try this book to get up to speed on the topic of climate engineering. You are likely to hear more about this topic in future years, since as Keith noted, we are not currently devoting adequate resources to de-carbonize the world economy, and the longer we fail, the better climate engineering will start to look.
Note: climate denialists will hate this book, because Keith has no doubt whatsoever that global warming is a serious threat to the human future. Some environmentalists will like it, while others will not.
To his credit, David Keith does not duck or minimize these issues in his short book (174 pages). Keith admits that a future Planet Earth in which climate engineering counteracts global warming is NOT the same as a world without global warming. Not only will rainfall patterns be different from our current world, but the World Ocean will eventually die from acidification- because climate engineering would address only the temperature rise of carbon dioxide emissions, NOT the chemical fallout of oceanic carbon absorption.
There is also a thing called “risk compensation.” This is a concept of economic psychology- that climate engineering would carry the risk of supplying the human race with a false sense of security on the topic of global warming. We imagine future generations of humans blandly dismissing global warming as a threat because an organized program of spreading sulfuric acid micro-droplets in the high atmosphere has reduced the temperature gain. Keith admits that this could become a reality, and admits that such tinkering with the high atmosphere's reflective qualities would in fact be only addressing the symptoms of global warming, not the disease itself- and could have some unpleasant unintended consequence. In fact, the amount of sulfuric acid injected into the sky would have to increase every year in order to counteract a constantly climbing amount of CO2 in the sky. Start out with spending a billion bucks per year, but the amount of money would climb. In order to resolve the “risk compensation” issue, Keith proposes only putting enough sulfuric into the sky to address HALF the temperature gain of global warming. This, he explains, would be a measure to maintain a sense of urgency- to prevent future humans from ignoring the actual pathway to success in climate balancing, that of reducing carbon emissions to a low enough amount. And we should start with some trial runs, taking careful observations of results, before jumping in whole hog, writes Keith.
Why then even raise the issue of climate engineering, if it is admittedly fraught with moral issues, and “unknown unknowns” as Donald Rumsfeld once said on a different topic? Well, Desperation is the main reason. Keith points out the the human race has talked about global warming quite a bit in recent decades, but been pretty unsuccessful in attempting to reduce CO2 emissions. Sure there are baby steps in the renewable energy industry, but we are decades away from replacing fossil fuels, notes Keith. In this assertion, he is quite correct. The Kyoto protocol is essentially dead, and it has not been replaced with anything meaningful. We live under a global warming framework that can be described as “every man for himself.”
As an environmentalist, I approached this book with a very doubtful attitude. In the end, Keith's admissions of vulnerability may not have turned me into a geo-engineering fan, but I did decide to give him 4 stars for writing a fairly honest basic primer on this complex and scary topic. One caveat- if you really do not know anything about global warming, this is not the book for you to start out with. Some of the science in the middle of the book may be over your head. But I would suggest that every voter should try to gain an understanding of this topic. So if you know nothing about GW, read up on it at the climate central website, then try this book to get up to speed on the topic of climate engineering. You are likely to hear more about this topic in future years, since as Keith noted, we are not currently devoting adequate resources to de-carbonize the world economy, and the longer we fail, the better climate engineering will start to look.
Note: climate denialists will hate this book, because Keith has no doubt whatsoever that global warming is a serious threat to the human future. Some environmentalists will like it, while others will not.
March 10, 2014
Solar geoengineering is a serious, complex topic that intertwines science, technology, economics, (geo)politics, policy, and ethics. In only ~100 pages, Keith actually deals with all these perspectives, citing the strongest arguments made by geoengineering's strongest opponents and proponents, then showing why a more intensive research-focused middle path is preferable. Frankly, it's just about everything the educated layperson would want to know about geoengineering, and takes the balanced, nuanced (yet concise) approach totally lacking from other tomes on this topic (I'm looking at you, Superfreakonomics).
February 28, 2014
Keith lays out a case for research in order to be prepared in case we need to resort to climate engineering to control some of the worst aspects of climate change. He lays out some of the questions that need to be answered, and calls for a graduated program. While he posits that solar radiation control, and probably injecting sulphur particles into the stratosphere, looks like it might be one of the more feasible options, he is not wedded to and and suggests exploring various options.
September 23, 2016
A rather easy-to-read introduction to the concept of solar geo-engineering which has been vaguely heard before. This allows us to have a grasp of what has happened and the pros and cons of this concept to reduce the climate change, in addition to, but not abandoning, the need of CO2 emission cut!
January 21, 2014
Excellent: filled with good writing, well argued points, some harsh truths, and fact based suggestions.
January 8, 2014
Persuasive, fascinating, challenging. Well worth reading.
February 7, 2014
The book is not bad, but Keith's blindspots are huge and his wirting suffers from a lack of perspective. Lots of "we", "one" etc. that really does not make sense. But his case is interesting.
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