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Planet Hackers
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/planet-hackers[font face=Serif][font size=5]Planet Hackers[/font]
Written by Brian Merchant
January 8, 2015 // 09:00 AM EST
The SPICE project sought to investigate whether a balloon could be an affordable option for dispensing sunlight-reflecting particles into the sky. Illustrations by Dylan Glynn.
[font size=3] The scientists had whipped themselves into a frenzy. Gathered in a stuffy conference room in the bowels of a hotel in Berlin, scores of respected climate researchers, mostly middle-aged, mostly white, and mostly men, were arguing about a one-page document that had tentatively been christened the “Berlin Declaration.” It proposed ground rules for conducting experiments to explore how we might artificially cool the Earth—planet hacking, basically.
It’s most commonly called geoengineering. Think Bond-villain-caliber schemes but with better intentions. It’s a highly controversial field that studies ideas like launching high-flying jets to dust the skies with sulfur in order to block out a small fraction of the solar rays entering the atmosphere, or sending a fleet of drones across the ocean to spray seawater into clouds to make them brighter and thus reflect more sunlight.
Those are two of the most discussed proposals for using technology to chill the planet and combat climate change, and each would ostensibly cost a few billion dollars a year—peanuts in the scheme of the global economy. We’re about to see the dawn of the first real-world experiments designed to test ideas like these, but first, the scientists wanted to agree on a code of ethics—how to move forward without alarming the public or breaking any laws.
An engineer stepped up to the mic and said that there was no need to regulate any “climatically trivial” experiments in the field. Another disagreed. The only “trivial” real-world geoengineering experiment yet attempted, he said, had caused “very grave social considerations. So apologies, Andrew, but you’re talking nonsense.” The room buzzed with stifled laughter.
…[/font][/font]
Written by Brian Merchant
January 8, 2015 // 09:00 AM EST
The SPICE project sought to investigate whether a balloon could be an affordable option for dispensing sunlight-reflecting particles into the sky. Illustrations by Dylan Glynn.
[font size=3] The scientists had whipped themselves into a frenzy. Gathered in a stuffy conference room in the bowels of a hotel in Berlin, scores of respected climate researchers, mostly middle-aged, mostly white, and mostly men, were arguing about a one-page document that had tentatively been christened the “Berlin Declaration.” It proposed ground rules for conducting experiments to explore how we might artificially cool the Earth—planet hacking, basically.
It’s most commonly called geoengineering. Think Bond-villain-caliber schemes but with better intentions. It’s a highly controversial field that studies ideas like launching high-flying jets to dust the skies with sulfur in order to block out a small fraction of the solar rays entering the atmosphere, or sending a fleet of drones across the ocean to spray seawater into clouds to make them brighter and thus reflect more sunlight.
Those are two of the most discussed proposals for using technology to chill the planet and combat climate change, and each would ostensibly cost a few billion dollars a year—peanuts in the scheme of the global economy. We’re about to see the dawn of the first real-world experiments designed to test ideas like these, but first, the scientists wanted to agree on a code of ethics—how to move forward without alarming the public or breaking any laws.
An engineer stepped up to the mic and said that there was no need to regulate any “climatically trivial” experiments in the field. Another disagreed. The only “trivial” real-world geoengineering experiment yet attempted, he said, had caused “very grave social considerations. So apologies, Andrew, but you’re talking nonsense.” The room buzzed with stifled laughter.
…[/font][/font]
