Geoengineers get the fear - Researchers fail to come up with clear guidelines ...

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http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100330/full/464656a.html

Published online 30 March 2010 | Nature 464, 656 (2010) | doi:10.1038/464656a

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Geoengineers get the fear

Researchers fail to come up with clear guidelines for experiments that change the planet's climate.

Jeff Tollefson

"Be very careful." The warning, from Robert Socolow, a climate researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey, came at the end of a meeting last week that aimed to thrash out guidelines for the nascent field of geoengineering. The discipline aims to use global-scale efforts to control the climate and mitigate the worst effects of anthropogenic warming — but the techniques used could also have far-reaching, unintended consequences.

Socolow presented more than 175 experts from a range of disciplines with a list of their own nightmares, collected over meals and cocktails during the course of an often contentious week. As he rattled through the scenarios, he highlighted the legal, moral and ethical quandaries of geoengineering.

In one, a single country unilaterally pumps aerosols into the stratosphere to block the Sun's rays and preserve — or perhaps create — a climate of its own liking. In another, climate policies result in a world full of forest plantations that are created solely to store the greatest possible amount of carbon, with no regard for preserving biodiversity. Or what if the very possibility of using geoengineering to mitigate climate change gives political leaders cover to say that greenhouse gases aren't a problem?

The morning after Socolow's sobering talk, the conference's scientific organizing committee released a summary statement, based on attendees' comments, that endorsed geoengineering research as a viable way of avoiding possibly catastrophic global warming. But participants came up short on their stated goal of formulating a set of guidelines and principles for scientists working in the field, and conference organizers promised further work on these in the coming weeks. Instead, it was Socolow's cautionary note that resonated as participants departed the beachside Asilomar Conference Center near Monterey, California. "We're scared, and nothing brings people together like fear," says Jane Long, associate director for energy and environment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

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