If global warming causes all hell to break loose on our home planet, I'd feel better knowing humanity has a plan. A new geoengineering institute in the United Kingdom could help figure out one that doesn't give us all the willies.
The Oxford Geoengineering Institute recently launched with a board of eminent academia and industry folks, including knighted scientist David King. Director Tim Kruger founded Cquestrate, an open-source project looking at adding lime to the oceans to absorb carbon and reverse acidification. Shell is funding it, but this is no sinister plot. The project came out of an innovation competition and the company won't get any intellectual property. Kruger says scientists who studied the concept are preparing to publish in academic journals.
He's quick to clarify that the new institute will be looking at an array of ideas. "We need to start investigating whether we can produce an airbag for climate change," Kruger says. "You never really want to use an airbag, and if you do it’s a pretty uncomfortable experience, but it’s better than no airbag at all." And the institute isn't advocating geoengineering--just the need for a holistic, interdisciplinary evaluation that looks not just at the technical side but also ethics, social impact, governance, and economic feasibility.
"People are scared of geoengineering, and rightly so," Kruger told me, pointing out that this is why we need rigorous and clear-headed evaluations. As freaky as Earth-scale action sounds, I'll sleep better at night if we have an airbag.
Image: Compilation of Earth images. Credit: The Living Earth.
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Tags: Carbon Capture, Carbon Emissions, Engineering, Green Science, Green Tech
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