{"id":48827,"date":"2019-10-04T16:10:26","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T21:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48827"},"modified":"2019-10-04T16:10:32","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T21:10:32","slug":"questions-as-big-as-the-atmosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48827","title":{"rendered":"Questions as big as the atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Questions as big as the atmosphere<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A review of\u00a0<\/strong>After Geoengineering<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After Geoengineering<\/em> is published by Verso Books<\/a>, Oct 1 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the best-case scenario for solar geoengineering? For author Holly Jean Buck and the scientists she interviews, the best-case scenario is that we manage to keep global warming below catastrophic levels, and the idea of geoengineering quietly fades away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before that can happen, Buck explains, we will need heroic global efforts both to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions and<\/em> to remove much of the excess carbon we have already loosed into the skies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She devotes most of her new book After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration<\/em><\/a> to proposed methods for drawing down carbon dioxide levels from the atmosphere. Only after showing the immense difficulties in the multi-generational task of carbon drawdown does she directly discuss techniques and implications of solar geoengineering (defined here as an intentional modification of the upper atmosphere, meant to block a small percentage of sunlight from reaching the earth, thereby counteracting part of global heating).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is well-researched, eminently readable, and just as thought-provoking on a second reading as on the first. Unfortunately there is little examination of the way future energy supply constraints will affect either carbon drawdown or solar engineering efforts. That significant qualification aside, After Geoengineering<\/em> is a superb effort to grapple with some of the biggest questions for our collective future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overshoot<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fossil fuel frenzy in the world\u2019s richest countries has already put us in greenhouse gas overshoot, so some degree of global heating will continue even if, miraculously, there were an instant political and economic revolution which ended all carbon dioxide emissions tomorrow. Can we limit the resulting global heating to 1.5\u00b0C? At this late date our chances aren\u2019t good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Greta Thunberg explained in her crystal clear fashion to the United Nations Climate Action Summit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Questions as big as the atmosphere A review of\u00a0After Geoengineering After Geoengineering is published by Verso Books, Oct 1 2019. What is the best-case scenario for solar geoengineering? For author Holly Jean Buck and the scientists she interviews, the best-case scenario is that we manage to keep global warming below catastrophic levels, and the idea of geoengineering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27303,11879,11876,3193,141,369,3197],"class_list":["post-48827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-after-geoengineering","tag-an-outside-chance","tag-bart-hawkins-kreps","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-climate-change","tag-global-warming","tag-overshoot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48828,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48827\/revisions\/48828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}