CLIMATE CHANGE / GEO ENGINEERING

[nlightn]

Geo-Engineering the Climate:
Lessons from Purposeful Weather and Climate Modification
William R. Travis
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
and
Department of Geography
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0260
[e-mail]
Introduction

An important, though ad hoc, “technology assessment”1 of geo-engineering fixes to the global warming problem is underway. It is a critical effort because the history suggests that, rather early in their evolution, technologies develop path-dependent life cycles and structures and
tend to lock in broad sets of social consequences. Of course, the challenge is to assess the likely evolution of a technology and its social framework despite its novel and unique elements. Like
other emerging technology, climate geo-engineering takes us into uncharted techno-social territory. But it is also true that humans have attempted to change the weather and the climate for most of human history. Thus one way to cast some light on geo-engineering to mitigate global warming is to analyze the analog: purposeful efforts to modify at least local and regional weather and climate. Purposeful weather and climate modification is not a perfect analog in the sense that it has not sought global effects, but is useful on several counts: (1) past weather and climate modification efforts raised concerns similar to those about geo-engineering, so the analog injects evidence into the current discussion, which is heavy on speculation; (2) weather modification
evoked some limited effort among researchers and practitioners to develop standards and guidelines for experimentation and deployment; (3) some of the emerging geo-engineering schemes aimed at global warming (e.g., enhancing oceanic clouds) are versions of more conventional weather modification techniques; and (4) we are likely increasingly to employ
orthodox weather and climate modification in response to global warming, so a look back serves even if geo-engineering does not materialize. This paper focuses on lessons for geo-engineering governance from the research on social dimensions of weather modification.

EXTENSIVE .pdf here;

http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3402_s07/Travis_geoengineering.pdf