Solar Geoengineering as a Tool to Manage Climate Risks

The combination of inertia and uncertainty makes the coupled climate-economic system dangerously hard to control. If the climate's sensitivity is at the high end of current estimates it may be too late to avert dramatic consequences for human societies and natural ecosystems even if we could quickly cut emissions to zero. Emissions cuts are necessary to manage climate risks, but they are not necessarily sufficient. Prudence demands that we study methods that offer the hope of limiting the environmental risks posed by the accumulation of fossil carbon in the atmosphere. The engineered alteration of the earth's radiation budget-geoengineering-offers a fast means of managing climate risk, but it entails a host of new risks and it cannot fully compensate for the risk posed by carbon in the air. I will review the science and technology and of solar geoengineering and then argue that systematic management of climate risks may require the capability to implement these technologies. Finally, I will speculate about the elements of a geoengineering research program needed to build and regulate such capability.

Speaker: David Keith, Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary

NVIDIA Auditorium