I posted this comment to Professor Wapner's blog: Professor Wapner, it doesn’t surprise me that your students latch on to the first glimmer of hope that you offer them. You say, “we need to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases. Period.” Well, I would suggest that “Period” excludes some other options. It excludes the possibility of repairing the damage we’ve done to the natural world by correcting the carbon cycle, which can be done by putting carbon back in soils where we humans have massively depleted it.
Wouldn’t your students perhaps also like the idea of carbon sinks such as ecorestorative agriculture, sequestering carbon in farmland, grasslands, and wetlands? There’s a lot of work to be done on the soil of our ailing earth before we need to resort to the more exotic methods of geoengineering. Brian On Monday, December 1, 2014 8:09:14 PM UTC-5, andrewjlockley wrote: > > http://dcgeoconsortium.org/2014/11/30/teaching-climate-geoengineering/ > > Extract > > We slog through various literatures dejected by climate change’s magnitude > and the darkness of possible futures. After weeks of depressing news—having > examined why states, companies, and ordinary citizens have failed to > marshal sufficient political will to mitigate greenhouse gases—we turn to > geoengineering. All of a sudden, the classroom becomes animated. Hands > start going up asking about the details of shooting sulfates into the > atmosphere, the amount of sulfuric acid that would make a difference, the > effects of such action on the ozone layer, and so on. Finally, it seems, > students see light at the end of a climate tunnel, and awaken to the > excitement of finding a way out.As a professor, I love to see such lit-up > eyes. Nothing is more gratifying than engaging students in lively > conversation about books that they’ve read and ideas that they think stand > as genuine possibilities for improving the world. Teaching about > geoengineering, it turns out, is really fun. > > Most students supported further research on geoengineering and a little > over half supported piloting a small-scale test in some part of the world. > > After two weeks of studying various geoengineering scenarios, I took a > poll. Most students supported further research on geoengineering and a > little over half supported piloting a small-scale test in some part of the > world. Keith and others had won. They got their cohort. At least my class, > beaten down by the structural and behavior impediments to meaningful > mitigation, grabbed onto geoengineering’s promise. They were ready if not > willing advocates of altering the biophysics of the planet in the service > of climate protection. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
