Cheap But Imperfect: Can Geoengineering Slow Climate Change?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/scientist-david-keith-on-slowing-global-warming-with-geoengineering-a-934359.html
Canadian environmental scientist David Keith wants to change the world's climate by creating a type of sun filter in the sky to halt global warming. In an interview, he argues the technology is effective and inexpensive, but critics liken it to a nuclear bomb.
Cheap But Imperfect: Can Geoengineering Slow Climate Change?
Interview by Johann Grolle
November 20, 2013 03:40 PM
While delegates meeting in Warsaw at the United Nations climate talks push for targets for reducing greenhouse gases, a small splinter group of scientists is promoting an entirely different approach to fighting climate change: They want to artficially manipulate the planet's climate to help stop global warming.
The name most commonly associated with this "geoengineering" is David Keith, a 50-year-old environmental scientist from Canada. Keith is arguably the best-known advocate of geoengineering. When he first devoted himself to the idea more than 20 years ago, it was considered dangerous nonsense. It enraged climate activists, and even Keith received death threats on his answering machine.
Since then, the concept of geoengineering has increasingly won over supporters, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even grappled with the issue in its most recent report.
Keith runs a company called Carbon Engineering in Calgary, which is developing technology to capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. He currently travels back and forth between Calgary and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard University.