#géoengineering

This startup claims it can stop lightning and prevent catastrophic wildfires | MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/03/1133848/this-startup-claims-it-can-stop-lightning-and-prevent-catastrophic

https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/GettyImages-144817694.jpg?resize=1200,600

Startup Skyward Wildfire says it can prevent catastrophic fires by stopping the lightning strikes that ignite them. So far, it hasn’t publicly revealed how it does so, but online documents suggest the company is relying on an approach the US government began evaluating in the early 1960s: seeding clouds with metallic chaff, or narrow fiberglass strands coated with aluminum.

It just raised millions of dollars to accelerate its product development and expand its operations. But researchers and environmental observers say uncertainties remain, including how well the seeding may work under varying conditions, how much material would need to be released, how frequently it would have to be done, and what sorts of secondary environmental impacts might result.

#Géoengineering #Orages #Ensemencement_nuages

Opinion | Turns Out Air Pollution Was Good for Something - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/opinion/geoengineering-planet-cooling-sulfur.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/09/21/opinion/21hausfather-keith/21hausfather-keith-facebookJumbo.jpg

C’est parfois utile d’avoir les arguments des ennemis.
Ici ce sont ceux des tenants de la géoengineerie. On trouve dans cette tribune tous les ingrédients.
D’abord l’excès (1/3 du réchauffement serait la conséquence du moindre usage du charbon !)
Puis le catastrophisme (le carbone de l’atmosphère est là pour longtemps, et ême si on arrêtait, cela ne refroidirait pas la terre)
Et enfin le bonbon de la « petite échelle » (non, on ne ditpas qu’il faut tout faire à l’échelle de la planète maintenant - d’ailleurs, on ne saurait pas faire - mais on fait petit, et on sait déjà quelle sera la conclusion de ces « études » - parce que cela fait vingt ans que les même arguments sont ressassés _ il faut faire encore plus de recherche sur une dimension supérieure...)

Condensé comme dans cette tribune, c’est pas mal, ça évite de lire les tas d’articles qui disent tous la même chose.

By Zeke Hausfather and David Keith

Dr. Hausfather is the climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist with Berkeley Earth. Dr. Keith is a professor and founding director of the Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago.

Since the Industrial Revolution, burning coal and oil has filled the air with sulfur, shortening the lives of billions of people. In response, countries passed stringent air pollution laws requiring coal plants to scrub out sulfur and ships to switch to cleaner fuels. Global sulfur emissions have fallen some 40 percent since 2006. China alone has slashed them by about 70 percent.

We should celebrate cleaner air, but we also have to reckon with an unintended consequence. It turns out that by reflecting sunlight back into space, tiny sulfur particles protected Earth from about a third of the warming caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide. Now more of the underlying greenhouse gas warming is showing through, accelerating climate change. As The Economist recently put it, “If India chokes less, it will fry more.”

For some of us in the world of climate science, this raises a thorny question: Should we explore replacing the inadvertent cooling effects of sulfur with a cleaner, deliberate version?

Geoengineering the climate in this way is not a new idea; it was in the first U.S. high-level climate report that reached President Lyndon Johnson’s desk in 1965. While several options have been proposed recently, the most plausible way to make Earth more reflective is to use a small fleet of high-altitude aircraft to increase the amount of sulfuric acid droplets in the upper atmosphere. We know this can work; when volcanic eruptions put large amounts of sulfur in the upper atmosphere, such as Pinatubo in 1991, Earth was noticeably cooler for a few years.

We should take such an idea seriously because the costs of losing accidental sulfur cooling were made painfully evident this year when heat waves pushed temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the Middle East and North Africa. If sunlight reflection could save lives and protect the environment, it is at least worth discussing.
A changing climate, a changing world
Card 1 of 4

Climate change around the world: In “Postcards From a World on Fire,” 193 stories from individual countries show how climate change is reshaping reality everywhere, from dying coral reefs in Fiji to disappearing oases in Morocco and far, far beyond.

The role of our leaders: Writing at the end of 2020, Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, found reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency, a feeling perhaps borne out by the passing of major climate legislation. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been criticisms. For example, Charles Harvey and Kurt House argue that subsidies for climate capture technology will ultimately be a waste.

The worst climate risks, mapped: In this feature, select a country, and we’ll break down the climate hazards it faces. In the case of America, our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths.

What people can do: Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey describe the types of local activism that might be needed, while Saul Griffith points to how Australia shows the way on rooftop solar. Meanwhile, small changes at the office might be one good way to cut significant emissions, writes Carlos Gamarra.

Because sulfur is much more effective at cooling the planet when put into the upper atmosphere compared with what’s released into the lower atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels, we’d have to add far less of it. And for the same amount of cooling produced from burning fossil fuels, sulfur in the upper atmosphere would cause at least 100 times smaller health impacts.

Sunlight reflection is no panacea. Putting sulfur in the upper atmosphere will damage the ozone layer, allowing more ultraviolet radiation through. Even if it reduces deaths from heat and extreme weather, large-scale deployment could exacerbate climate change in some locations, perhaps by shifting rainfall patterns.

There is also a more fundamental limitation to sunlight reflection. It is effectively a Band-Aid that treats the symptoms of climate change but not the underlying disease of greenhouse gases. And unlike a skinned knee, the Earth does not heal from climate change on any time scale that matters for human societies. Warming from carbon dioxide is astonishingly persistent; much of what we emit today will warm the planet for many thousands of years to come.

Even if the world drives emissions down to zero, the planet wouldn’t cool down for millenniums. The only durable way to return to cooler temperatures is to remove the excess carbon we have already added, and removing enough to reverse even 0.1 degree Celsius of warming would cost tens of trillions of dollars.
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This means that the real risk of geoengineering is not some Hollywood-style catastrophe, but complacency. A cheap way to delay the effects of warming risks undermining the need to rapidly reduce emissions, and going down that path would risk locking our children into a dependency where even stopping the process becomes too expensive to contemplate.

Given all this, we are not advocating deploying geoengineering today. But if policymakers decide that it is needed, a more modest approach would be to run a small, carefully scaled program that slightly increases the upper atmosphere’s reflectivity to compensate for the loss of cooling as sulfur pollution is eliminated.

The goal would not be to dial the Earth to some preferred temperature, nor to offset all greenhouse warming. It would be to keep the total cooling from sulfur roughly constant for a period of time, reducing near-term climate risk while decarbonization efforts continue.

As world leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly and Climate Week, any discussions of sunlight reflection should have a clear, enforceable commitment to never cool the Earth more than today’s current sulfur emissions do. And it should come with a clear off-ramp: As the world reaches net-zero emissions and scales up carbon removal technologies later this century, the program should end.

Pacing matters as much as limits. If society ever chooses to test this approach, it should start small and move slowly. Tying it to reductions in air pollution allows a slow ramp-up, resulting in increments that are imperceptible to most of us but visible to satellites and sensors. This should be coupled with regular checkpoints to assess side effects on regional rainfall, the atmosphere and ozone. The intent is to buy a modest, temporary buffer, not to start a new arm of climate control.

If we stay focused on the cure of reducing emissions and consider bounded and temporary sunlight reflection, we could preserve cleaner air, avoid a near-term temperature surge and not betray the generations to come, who will live with the consequences of our choices today.
More on geoengineering
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March 17, 2024
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Iron Dust Could Reverse the Course of Climate Change
Sept. 14, 2023

Zeke Hausfather is the climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist with Berkeley Earth. David Keith is a professor of geophysical sciences and founding director of the Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

#Geoengineering #Tribune_pro #Scientisme

The hard lessons of Harvard’s failed geoengineering experiment | MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/04/1090626/the-hard-lessons-of-harvards-failed-geoengineering-experiment/?truid=a497ecb44646822921c70e7e051f7f1a

https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Scopex-dark-cloud-X.jpg?resize=1200,600

In late March of 2017, at a small summit in Washington, DC, two Harvard professors, David Keith and Frank Keutsch, laid out plans to conduct what would have been the first solar geoengineering experiment in the stratosphere.

Instead, it became the focal point of a fierce public debate over whether it’s okay to research such a controversial topic at all.

The basic concept behind solar geoengineering is that by spraying certain particles high above the planet, humans could reflect some amount of sunlight back into space as a means of counteracting climate change.

The Harvard researchers hoped to launch a high-altitude balloon, tethered to a gondola equipped with propellers and sensors, from a site in Tucson, Arizona, as early as the following year. After initial equipment tests, the plan was to use the aircraft to spray a few kilograms of material about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) above Earth and then fly back through the plume to measure how reflective the particles were, how readily they dispersed, and other variables.

But the initial launch didn’t happen the following year, nor the next, the next, or the next—not in Tucson, nor at a subsequently announced site in Sweden. Complications with balloon vendors, the onset of the covid pandemic, and challenges in finalizing decisions between the team, its advisory committee, and other parties at Harvard kept delaying the project—and then fervent critiques from environmental groups, a Northern European Indigenous organization, and other opponents finally scuttled the team’s plans.

Critics, including some climate scientists, have argued that an intervention that could tweak the entire planet’s climate system is too dangerous to study in the real world, because it’s too dangerous to ever use. They fear that deploying such a powerful tool would inevitably cause unpredictable and dangerous side effects, and that the world’s countries could never work together to use it in a safe, equitable, and responsible way.

These opponents believe that even discussing and researching the possibility of such climate interventions eases pressures to rapidly cut greenhouse-gas emissions and increases the likelihood that a rogue actor or solitary nation will one day begin spraying materials into the stratosphere without any broader consensus. Unilateral use of the tool, with its potentially calamitous consequences for some regions, could set nations on a collision course toward violent conflicts.

Indeed, there are numerous indicators of growing interest in researching this field and providing funding for it. As noted, the US government is developing a research program. The Environmental Defense Fund is considering supporting scientists in the area and recently held a meeting to discuss guardrails that should govern such work. And a number of major philanthropies that haven’t supported the field in the past are in advanced discussions to provide funding to research groups, sources tell MIT Technology Review.

Meanwhile, under Keith, the University of Chicago is working to hire 10 faculty researchers in this area.

He says he wouldn’t look to lead an outdoor experiment himself at this point, but he does hope that people working with him at the Climate Systems Engineering Initiative would, if it could offer insights into the scientific questions they’re exploring.

“I absolutely want to see experiments happen from the University of Chicago,” he says.

#Geoengineering #Solar_engineering #Le_retour

Geoengineering is very controversial. How can you do experiments? Harvard has some ideas. - MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614025/geoengineering-experiment-harvard-creates-governance-committee-cli
▻https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/editedscopexedited.jpg?cx=0&cy=185&cw=3000&ch=1689&sw1200

A prestigious university forging ahead with an outdoor experiment is a major milestone for the field, known as geoengineering. But it’s fraught with controversy. Critics fear such a step will lend scientific legitimacy to the idea that we could turn the dial on Earth’s climate. And they fret that even doing experiments is starting down a slippery slope toward creating a tool of incredible power.

Despite the critics, Harvard will take a significant step forward on Monday, as the university announces the formation of a committee to ensure that researchers take appropriate steps to limit health and environmental risks, seek and incorporate outside input, and operate in a transparent manner.

It’s a move that could create a template for how geoengineering research is conducted going forward, and perhaps pave the way for more experiments to follow.

Mach said the committee may ultimately recommend that the proposal be altered, delayed, or canceled, and her understanding is that the research team will treat such guidance with the “utmost seriousness” and “respond in a public way.”

But some think that by creating the committee, the university is rushing ahead of the public and political debate on this issue.

“It’s an extremely high-profile institution that’s decided they don’t want to wait for the regulatory regimes to greenlight this,” says Wil Burns, co-director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University.

From an engineering standpoint, the team could be ready for an initial test flight within about six months. The current plan is to launch from a site somewhere in New Mexico. The scientists, however, have said they won’t pursue the experiment until the committee completes its review and will heed a determination that they should stop.

The basic idea behind what’s known as solar geoengineering is that we could use planes, balloons, or even very long hoses to disperse certain particles into the atmosphere, where they could reflect enough sunlight back into space to moderately cool the planet.

Most of the research to date has been conducted using software climate simulations or experiments in the lab. While the models show that the technique will lower temperatures, some have found it might unleash unintended environmental impacts, such as altering monsoon patterns and food production, depending on how it’s done.

Only two known experiments that could be seen as related to solar geoengineering have been carried out in the open air to date. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, sprayed smoke and salt particles off the coast of California in 2011, and scientists in Russia dispersed aerosols from a helicopter and car in 2009.

Plans for a proposed outdoor experiment in the United Kingdom, known as the SPICE project, were dropped in 2012, amid public criticism and conflict-of-interest accusations.

The Harvard experiment, first proposed in a 2014 paper, will launch a scientific balloon equipped with propellers and sensors around 20 kilometers (12 miles) above Earth. The aircraft would release between 100 grams and 2 kilograms of sub-micrometer-size particles of calcium carbonate, a substance naturally found in shells and limestone, in a roughly kilometer-long plume.

The balloon would then fly through the plume, enabling the sensors to measure things such as how broadly the particles disperse, how they interact with other compounds in the atmosphere, and how reflective they are.

The researchers hope these observations could help assess and refine climate simulations and otherwise inform the ongoing debate over the feasibility and risks of various approaches to geoengineering.

“If anything, I’m concerned that the current climate models make solar geoengineering look too good,” Frank Keutsch, a professor of chemistry and the project’s principal investigator, said in a statement. “If we want to be able to predict how large-scale geoengineering would disrupt the ozone layer, or the exchange of air between the troposphere and stratosphere, we need more real-world observations.”

The project is being funded through Harvard grants to the professors involved and the university’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, a multidisciplinary effort to study feasibility, risks, ethics, and governance issues. The organization has raised more than $16 million from Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, the Hewlett Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and other philanthropic groups and individuals.

But there are concerns with the way the Harvard team is moving ahead.

“It doesn’t pose a physical risk, but it does pose a considerable social and political risk in being the first step towards development of actual technology for deployment,” Raymond Pierrehumbert, a physics professor at the University of Oxford, has said of the experiment. “There would be some limited scientific payback from such a small-scale experiment, but it is mostly a stunt to break the ice and get people used to the idea of field trials.”

Another question is whether the new committee is adequately independent, given Harvard’s involvement in the first step of the selection process. The university’s dean of engineering and vice provost for research created an external search committee, made up of three individuals from outside the university, to select the chair of the advisory panel. Bedsworth, in turn, chose the rest of the members.

The counterargument is that the US political system is effectively broken on the topic of global warming. The inability to raise public funds for research—or pass strict legislation, for that matter—has little to do with the merits of the science, or the importance of the issue, and everything to do with the poisoned politics of climate change, says Jane Long, a former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who served on the search committee.

“We’re so dysfunctional from a political perspective,” says Long, who pushed early on for the researchers to create a governance board. “I don’t know how you can draw the conclusion that we’ve gotten a democratic signal that we shouldn’t do this research.”

The committee is made up of a mix of social scientists and legal and technical experts, including Michael Gerrard, a law professor at Columbia; Shuchi Talati, a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists; Robert Lempert, a principal researcher at RAND; and Raj Pandya, director of Thriving Earth Exchange.

But it doesn’t include any representatives of the public—say, from New Mexico, where the experiment is likely to occur—or, Burns notes, any outspoken geoengineering critics.

It’s also notable that everyone is based in the US. Flegal has previously criticized proponents of geoengineering research for failing to call on enough voices from developing nations, even as they argue that the tools could be especially important in helping to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on the global poor.

Harvard professor David Keith, one of the main figures behind the experiment, acknowledged that there are reasonable concerns about independence. But he said Harvard made a good-faith effort to create a committee several layers removed from the researchers. He adds that it’s not the only form of oversight, noting that the project will also have to pass muster with Harvard’s safety committee, Federal Aviation Administration regulations, and provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act.

#Climat #Géoengineering #Hubris

Manifeste contre la géo-ingénierie : bas les pattes ! - Attac France
▻https://france.attac.org/nos-publications/notes-et-rapports/article/manifeste-contre-la-geo-ingenierie-bas-les-pattes

https://france.attac.org/local/cache-vignettes/L1200xH500/arton6307-381a2.png?1539013246

Plus de 110 organisations du monde entier, provenant de 5 continents, dont Attac France, publient à l’occasion de la réunion du GIEC en Corée du Sud un manifeste exigeant l’arrêt immédiat des expériences de géo-ingéniérie actuelles et prévues dans les mois à venir et l’interdiction pure et simple de la géo-ingéniérie. Cet ensemble de solutions techniques à grande échelle visant à bloquer une partie des rayons du soleil, réfléchir la lumière du soleil ou capturer les émissions de gaz à effet de serre, avec des effets dévastateurs sur l’environnement, les écosystèmes et les communautés du monde entier. A l ’occasion de la publication du rapport du GIEC sur le 1.5°C, cette coalition d’organisation appelle à déployer les solutions déjà éprouvées et moins risquées, mais qui restent marginalisées dans les délibérations sur le changement climatique.

#Géoengineering #Hubris_scientifique

A Geoengineering Map
▻http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/1371403/fd01490b40/546730523/97f2c1c1c3

ETC Group and the Heinrich Böll Foundation have produced an interactive map of geoengineering projects around the world.

It’s an attempt to shed light on the worldwide state of geoengineering by showing the scope of research and experimentation.

This project builds on an earlier map of Earth Systems Experimentation published in 2012. That original map documented almost 300 projects and experiments related to geoengineering. Five years later, more than 800 such projects can be identified. These include projects in Carbon Capture, Solar Radiation Management, Weather Modification and other approaches. There is no complete record of weather and climate control projects, so this map is necessarily partial, but it will grow as we continue researching and as new experiments are launched.

Explore the map at ▻http://map.geoengineeringmonitor.org

#Geoengineering

UP Magazine - Ils sont fous ! Des scientifiques ont un plan pour stopper le changement climatique : diminuer le soleil
▻http://up-magazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7058:ils-sont-fous-des-sc

http://up-magazine.info/images/1017/geoingenierie.jpg

Les scientifiques commencent à envisager sérieusement un plan radical de géoingénierie de l’environnement afin de lutter contre le changement climatique et d’atténuer certains des effets néfastes qu’il a déjà sur nous et sur l’environnement. Plusieurs groupes de scientifiques étudient l’idée de projeter un nuage d’aérosols sulfatés dans la haute atmosphère. Cela disperserait une partie des rayons du soleil dans l’espace, réduisant ainsi la vitesse à laquelle la Terre se réchauffe.

Une telle mesure pourrait contribuer à mettre un terme aux effets néfastes du changement climatique, tels que le blanchiment des coraux et l’augmentation de la fréquence et de l’intensité des ouragans. James Crabbe, de l’Université du Bedfordshire au Royaume-Uni, mène une recherche pour déterminer le type d’effets que ce type de géoingénierie peut avoir sur la région des Caraïbes où l’étude est menée. Crabbe affirme au New Scientist : « Nous montrons de façon très convaincante qu’en injectant du dioxyde de soufre dans l’atmosphère, les températures à la surface de la mer diminueraient de façon significative vers 2069 ».

#Geoengineering #Hubris

Geoengineering: A Dangerous Tool or Climate Control of the Future?
▻https://psmag.com/geoengineering-a-dangerous-tool-or-climate-control-of-the-future-a255848fa21e

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/focal/1200/632/53/52/1*GiEpdg2T0odjNcCVvdiCIA.jpeg

While cloud-seeding geoengineering of local weather is common, developments in the technology have extended the possibility for geoengineering use on a larger scale for climate geoengineering, or global climate control.

To combat climate change, some geoengineering technologies can capture carbon emissions and store them in the ocean or underground. Other technologies could disperse sulfuric acid or aerosol particles into the stratosphere to deflect sunlight and cool the planet. Climate engineering has not yet been tested outside the laboratory or field research.

#geoengineering
Over 190 countries have agreed to a 2010 United Nations ban on using the climate engineering technology for large-scale climate engineering over concerns of its effect on biodiversity.

However, the U.S. was not part of the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Biological Diversity and has not ratified the 2010 modification. President Donald Trump has criticized the U.N. and has a draft of an executive order to defund the U.N. The American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2017 calls for full U.S. withdrawal from the U.N.

The Geopolitics of #Geoengineering | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/review/522676/the-geopolitics-of-geoengineering

We need a more open discussion about a seemingly outlandish but real geopolitical risk: war over #climate engineering.

Géo-ingénierie - Wikipédia
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9o-ing%C3%A9nierie

Je connaissais pas : plutôt que d’essayer de résoudre les causes du réchauffement climatique essayons d’en masquer les effets.(Permalink)

Fake plastic trees and a volcanic push to keep the globe cool
►http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/fake-plastic-trees-and-a-volcanic-push-to-keep-the-globe-cool-2012

#Geoengineering, with its #science_fiction overtones, is considered a risky last resort, because while it might be able to slow or deflect some warming, it wouldn’t deal with other effects of rising carbon dioxide levels, such as ocean acidification.
(...) Geoengineering can be divided into two types: reflecting more of the sun’s heat away from the Earth, and sucking more heat-trapping greenhouse gases out of the air.
The first type includes some wildly ambitious schemes, such as trying to ’’shade’’ part of Greenland from the sun’s heat with space-based mirrors, an idea with no credible backing among the world’s scientists.

#climat

#Geoengineering - Science fiction gets real : a special report | Lateline
►http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3639093.htm

who has the capacity to do this? Well, I mean, there’s really only one answer and that’s the #military.

So, whoever has their hand on the thermostat is going to have an enormous amount of power and is also going to attract an enormous amount of hostility. My best guess is that it will be #China that does it. This has not been revealed yet, but within the last few weeks the Chinese Government included for the very first time geo-engineering research in its top 12 scientific research priorities.

(...)

There’s no doubting the scarily epic nature of such interventions.

CLIVE HAMILTON, CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY: To seize control of the climatic system of the Earth as a whole. This is a massive proposal that humanity is starting to talk about. (...) When you consider the almost total failure of the global community to respond to the science of climate change with anything like the urgency that the science suggests ... I think geo-engineering is virtually inevitable.

(...)

Russ George remains unapologetic about his experiment. He says there’s no time to wait for an international treaty.

RUSS GEORGE: I don’t see that happening before the oceans die. Right? The Royal Society of England came out a few years ago and said that by the year 2050 there’d be no harvestable fish left in the ocean. So I don’t think we have time.

#climat

Si vous voulez faire vos débuts comme Génie du Mal, un excellent texte, la synthèse de toutes les techniques connues permettant de détruire la Terre. Je parle bien de détruire complètement la planète, pas juste de détruire la vie (objectif déjà très difficile), encore moins de se contenter de faire un génocide de masse (relativement facile et on y arrivera peut-être bientôt).

►http://qntm.org/destroy

Le problème est étonnement difficile (« The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you’ve had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. ») et il n’existe guère de solution réaliste aujourd’hui. Un texte qui passionnera physiciens, ingénieurs et savants fous.

#Geoengineering is the answer to climate change. Unless it isn’t. - The Washington Post
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/geoengineering-is-the-answer-to-climate-change-unless-it-isnt/2012/11/05/aef1c418-073d-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_story_2.html

#géoingénierie pour @hlc

World’s biggest #geoengineering experiment ’violates’ UN rules | the guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering

A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

Lawyers, environmentalists and civil society groups are calling it a “blatant violation” of two international moratoria and the news is likely to spark outrage at a United Nations environmental summit taking place in India this week.

#géoingénierie #climat #nations_unies

#Geoengineering with iron might work after all - New Scientist
►http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528744.100-geoengineering-with-iron-might-work-after-all.html

IF YOU want to help stop climate change, try tipping some iron into the sea. For years, this geoengineering idea has been considered a busted flush, but new results suggest it really can work.

Tiny floating algae called phytoplankton pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. When they die, the plankton sink to the seabed, taking the carbon with them.

Space mirrors will dry out US and Eurasia | New Scientist
►http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428695.700-space-mirrors-will-dry-out-us-and-eurasia.html

INSTALLING huge mirrors in space would help reverse global warming, but they would come at a price: less rain for the Americas and northern Eurasia.

Previous studies have shown that geoengineering cannot restore both temperature and rain to previous levels, but they could not specify what a geoengineered climate would look like.

Hauke Schmidt of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, and his colleagues played out the same simple scenario in four different climate models.

#geoengineering

#Geoengineering : Implicit promises | The Economist
►http://www.economist.com/node/21555545

As Clive Hamilton, a philosopher critical of much of the thinking behind geoengineering research, pointed out to the meeting, though the environmental effects of such experiments may be nugatory, their effects on the way people think could be more profound, and much less easily contained.

#géoingéniérie #climat #brevets

#Bill #Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale #geoengineering | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/06/bill-gates-climate-scientists-geoengineering

A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a “plan B” for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.
(...)
“We will need to protect ourselves from vested interests [and] be sure that choices are not influenced by parties who might make significant amounts of money through a choice to modify climate, especially using proprietary intellectual property,” said Jane Long, director at large for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, in a paper delivered to a recent geoengineering conference on ethics.
(...)
Pressure to find a quick technological fix to climate change is growing
(...)
As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology.
(...)
Analysis of the eight major national and international inquiries into geoengineering over the past three years shows that Keith and Caldeira, Rasch and Prof Granger Morgan the head of department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University where Keith works, have sat on seven panels, including one set up by the UN. Three other strong advocates of solar radiation geoengineering, including Rasch, have sat on national inquiries part-funded by Ficer.
(...)
“Regarding my own #patents, I have repeatedly stated that if any patent that I am on is ever used for the purposes of altering climate, then any proceeds that accrue to me for this use will be donated to nonprofit NGOs and charities. I have no expectation or interest in developing a personal revenue stream based upon the use of these patents for climate modification.”.

Complications of Hacking the Planet - NYTimes
►http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/complications-of-hacking-the-planet

As scientists, with some reluctance, begin to study the idea of “#geoengineering” the planet to slow or halt global warming, they are finding that any such program would quite likely have a complex array of effects, not all of them to humanity’s benefit.

to halt sea-level rise quickly, a program of managing sunlight would have to be so aggressive that it would produce a rapid cooling of the planet’s air temperature — perhaps too fast for organisms and agriculture to adjust well

#climat

Should geoengineering tests be governed by the principles of medical ethics? - By Eli Kintisch - Slate Magazine
►http://www.slate.com/id/2250462
#science #geoengineering #climate