Sunday, August 19, 2012

Warm This!

Climate change is occurring. It always has and always will. But is it happening at an inordinate pace? Perhaps. Is it caused by human action and if so, to what extent? Hard to tell precisely. If we choose to intervene, would our interventions be effective? We have only the vaguest notion, since global warming activists have opposed any semblance of geoengineering. Yet geoengineering is a much more logical response to “global warming” than efforts to curb CO2 emissions.

First, geoengineering does not require any assumption that man-made CO2 emissions are causing the problem. It would work regardless of what was “really” causing global temperatures to rise. Second, there are geoengineering approaches that could cool the earth at a cost of billions of dollars per-year, rather than trillions of dollars per-year. And, third, geoengineering does not require that the people of the world surrender their personal and economic freedom.