Next david keith and Clive Hamilton debate the idea of scientifically manipulating the merman to address the threat of Global Warming. This is about an hour. Many thanks scott for that introduction and for the invitation to come and debate climate engineering with david here today. I want to talk a little bit about some of the implication but more about the social and political meaning of what it would mean to have a geoengineered planet and i want to draw on a bit of historical experiencexperienc e to get some idea of what that means. Now david has become the foremost advocate of geoengineering in response to Global Warming and in his new look a case for climate engineering if you put forward an innovative approach to solar geoengineering, that is the use of a fleet of planes to inject sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere to create a layer of tiny particles between the sun and the earth and i should point out that today we are going to be talking about this form of aerosol spraying rather than other forms of geoengineering. Scott said the problem really is that geoengineering can be done quickly unilaterally and cheaply thinking of sulfate aerosols. By mimicking the effects of such a solar shield could need addressed his desire to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth surface and so cooling the planet. David in his new book proposes that we start slowly and subject increase the injections until there are enough sulfate articles in the stratosphere to slow by half the rate of human induced warming. Going only halfway davids ideas will sharpen your reduce the risk of disturbance to the global rainfall patterns. And i think when i was reading the book the fact that david keith who in my estimation is the worlds most influential geoengineering scientists, that david should be calling for a Research Program reading to deployment i think takes the debate to a new level. Now while david in his book and elsewhere in his discussions on sulfate aerosol spraying expresses a confidence in humanitys ability to regulate the earths climate. Other eminent atmospheric scientists have more doubts. Allen robot lists 20 reasons why geoengineering might be a bad idea and one of those reasons is crucial i think to davids proposal for what he calls sulfate injections in order to slow down the rate of warming. What is the crucial objection that i want to begin my talk with . It is this. This is the Allen Roebuck point. Once deployed the effects of solar radiation management on the climate with a difficult to isolate from the effects of natural variability and indeed from the effects of human induced Global Warming. It would take it is estimated or guessed at least a decade from full deployment of sulfate aerosol spraying before enough data became available to judge confidently whether these solar filters were working as planned. If Allen Roebuck is right in this objection i think this fact would drive the data into the heart of the scheme which ice i said it would take a decade to generate the data needed to assess the impact of full deployment of sulfate aerosol spray it would take much longer with davids proposal to start slowly and go halfway. With no desire for bull information coming in we will be flying blind for a very long time. So i think the scheme that david reposes is after initially setting the control variables the engineer must obtain feed that from the system before adjusting it to make it work optimally. The problem of course is that around the scientific literature for a while and giving the importance i expect and reading davids bookie would creep up this argument since it seems crucial to the effectiveness of the red ability of what he proposes. When he does mention this objection he claims that its doubly wrong. First he says that we can learn a lot from local tests, small atmospheric tests of sulfate aerosol spraying that have a large signal and environment with little noise. Its true that local tests can tell us important things about atmospheric chemistry that but they can tell us next to nothing about the effects of solar geoengineering on the climate system of the earth as a whole. Secondly david writes and i quote even if that werent tested on full scale we would still not resolved all necessities. I must say im a bit mystified by that statement. It seems he is saying the objection is smaller than the critics claim. So i think davids response to what is being called the killer objection to solar geoengineering is to not engage with it at all. Even if Allen Roebuck objection is not fatal to the planned for solar geoengineering there are of course deeper concerns. Any Deployment Program would rely heavily on in the rate of atmospheric measurements. Models would be used to aggregate and assess the streams of incoming data on land sea and air temperatures on petition around the world and unusual weather patterns and atmosphere and chemistry including changes in the ozone layer and the way that sulfate particles fall out of the stratosphere. Models would also still be used to make projections about combined sulfate injections and elevated Carbon Dioxide concentrations. Decisiondecision makers in government would be highly dependent on the technocratic elite who might look at the Global Climate regulation pages. Lets think about this world of technocrats and policymakers. First, in mike luck, earthmasters i explain the apparent contradiction of conservative thinktanks by the American Enterprise institute, the Cato Institute and extremist Heartland Foundation which for years have rejected the validity of Climate Science and thinktanks that express geoengineering. They are endorsing a solution to problem they have said does not exist. Why could this paradox emerged . For them the conservative thinktanks and other conservative politicians like newt gingrich, geoengineering promises to turn a drastic failure of the Free Enterprise system into a giant of human ingenuity. Instead of Climate Change being a vindication environmentalist warnings geoengineering exposes the lack of faith inhumanity. Instead of shrinking from hubris the call is for greater mastery. However conservatives backing solar geoengineering seem not to understand that in seeking to a void government regulation with fossil fuel use they are endorsing government regulation with climate. And doing so are a scientific era christie far more powerful. Such a bureaucracy would not regulate individual behavior but it would regulate the conditions in which individuals behave. Beyond the ideological contortions of conservatives what more can be said about the geoengineering world . In his book, david keith has argued for comprehensive Research Program to arguing for deployment subject to the absence of surprises. So i think it is at home in this world of technocratic technocratic control and although he claims otherwise i think its still true that David Cleaves to the idea that a separation can be maintained between a pure domain of science and the arena of politics which always threatens to he invites us to measure would call a World Without politics a world i must confess i find difficult to imagine but one in which science of the worlds climate. But what can history teach us about the relationship between scientific expertise and political power when decisions are being made . When future political leaders must make decisions on Climate Control which scientists will they turn to. History tells us they will choose the ones they most trust. Trust has a contingent relationsrelations hip with expertise. It was not only edward tellers reputation as the father of the hbomb that turned them into one of the foremost architects of the cold war but also his straightened anticommunism with unmatched access to the republican white house. He was even invited into the pentagon to help choose the russian cities and military facilities that would be a literacy it at first strike. In a world of Climate Control, not just the weather but the nature of politics would change. We have seen this before with world shifting technology. Steven shangkun the destroying of science recently wrote about once in churchills wartime ruminations and britains commitment to building the atom bomb. Britain had considerable scientific advantage over the United States in the world war. He wrote the distinction between an domains of science and politics has put pressure on when theres a prospect prospect that the nature of the politics diplomacy and the use of military force will be transformed by the existence of new science and technologies. Churchill rights shangkun suspected that scientists had a pernicious wish to pilot expertise into political influence. He took the view, this is churchill, took the view that science issue have been no more influence on government policy than dentists. But politicians often have no choice and churchill surrounded himself with a small group of men who had won his trust. His job then was to adjudicate adjudicate however as the historian graham has shown in his recent book churchill came to rely on one scientist in particular the oxford physicist frederick linderman. Lenderman was not a topranking scientist but he was of churchill social class and political convictions and was skilled in the art of flattery. When criticized for some help closeness to linderman churchill responded, love me, love my dog. Even so, churchill always retained a help a skepticism. The in the 1937 article published oddly enough in the news of the world, the article titled life in a world controlled by a scientist churchill wrote, there are secrets to mysterious for man and his present state to know, secrets which once penetrated may be fatal to Human Happiness and glory. But the busy hands of the scientist are already fumbling with the keys of all the chambers hitherto forbidden to mankind. I think the words have a very contemporary relevance. While perhaps not all would concur to churchills conviction were left locked i think most of us would agree with him that moral development, selfcontrol and Political Institutions led well behind our formidable scientific technological prowess. It would be much better churchill declared to call a hault and material progress in discovery rather than to be mastered by our own apparatus our own technology and the forces which it directs. The geoengineering world with the one in which the conditions of our daily life are set by experts far away where human knowability is churchill might put it is no longer possible not only because we would ian happening an artificial world but because we made it necessary to inhabit an artificial world. Given humans are proposing to engineering climate because of the cascade of institutional failures and self interested behaviors, any suggestion that the deployment of a solar shield would be done in a way that fulfill the strongest principles of justice and compassion would lack credibility to say the least. So we find ourselves in situations where geoengineering has been proposed because of our penchant for deceiving ourselves and inflating our virtues. If they just Global Warming solution cannot be found, who can believe in just geoengineering regime. David confirms that if the solar field for impact solar warming more effectively in some parts of the world than in others. In some areas it may exacerbate drought and anothers floods. The temptation of those to control the heat shield can manipulated in a way that sets their own interests first would be everpresent an almost irresistible. No wonder nations of the south are leading early moves through the commission of biological diversity on Geoengineering Research. So whatever the motives and professionalism of Geoengineering Research is and i certainly question davids, the idea is already attracting a range of actors with a diversity of purposes and standpoints not all of them admirable. So i think its naive of researchers to imagine that they can isolate themselves in a cocoon of scientific neutrality nor can they absorb themselves of responsibility for how their schemes might he used or misused in the future. We are, after all, talking about technologies designed to regulate the conditions of life. Once the political corporate and military players become involved the geoengineering experts will lose control of how its used. Actually, i think its a little more complicated than that. Those experts when it comes to the crunch will have a choice to go with the authorities plan or to get out. The exemplars here i think are rather complicated. Both of them play vital roles in the manhattan ratchet to build the first atomic weapons. Oppenheimer, often called the father of the atom bomb, spent much of the posthiroshima years trying to limit the spread of Nuclear Weapons. Oppenheimer worked to restrain the monster that he had help create and thereby earned the ire of the authorities. Teller worked to place himself at the very center of the Nuclear Arms Race and attain the kind of power undreamed of by other scientists. He would do so because he was the most aggressive advocate of Nuclear Weapons including the use of Nuclear Explosions for Civil Engineering projects creating new harbors with Nuclear Bombs for example. When controlling the worlds climate become central to the exercise for global strategic and military power is Nuclear Weapons did in the postwar era which side will they take oppenheimers are tellers . It persuades one or more governments to embark on it and Global Climate control becomes a strategic weapon or if it goes badly wrong but is pursued nevertheless where will it stand . Lets go a bit deeper on the politics of geoengineering. I think it goes to the very heart of anxieties that many people have about embarking on solar geoengineering. The failures of political structures and moral weaknesses have prevented us from reducing Carbon Emissions consistent with the scientific warnings. Yet these very same things provide the political and social landscape from which those full third sulfuric acid we launch. The first question must be whether geoengineering leaps over these moral and political obstacles or whether they will in fact corrupt or undermine attempts at installing this lowball solar shield. What were the obstacles to plan a that have led us to be talking about plan b . I think there are perhaps five of them. The first obstacle to Emission Reductions has been the power of the power the fossil fuel lobby. Geoengineering leaps over this hurdle or at least pushes it off into the future. But, it may also corrupt plan b because the fossil fuel companies are likely to back geoengineering as a substitute for carbon abatement rather than a means to buy some time until we have enough legal and economic incentives to introduce Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and so on. Exxon, conocophillips and shall our Oil Companies already dipping their toes into researching geoengineering. The Second Barrier has been the weakness of lytic leaders and institutions. With governments trading offsides against the best interests and electability. There is no reason to believe that geoengineering will escape that quagmire. Instead it will become mired in it taking out new device ones in which Clear Authority of Climate Science including geoengineering science will be lost again. The third difficulty has been the elusiveness of global agreement. For some, the capacity of geoengineering doesnt obviate the need for international consent if its defining virtue. Yet it may well take us from a situation of anguished indecision 21 of outright conflict. The fourth is the sway of Climate Science denial. As our suggested geoengineering has the mysterious power to bypass the ejection objections of the most fervent deniers but at what cost . They will not accept the strategy of using geoengineering to buy time which is effectively what they believe is the case. Buying time is merely buying time to do what they have fiercely resisted. They want a substitute for penalties on fossil fuels, one that insulates the prevailing system from change. More viscerally, they want to prove that its wrong. David slo rampart doesnt deny it but capitulate to it and he may soon find guess to give up his insistence that geoengineering is acceptable only if its accompanied by emission cuts. He has already gone halfway by adding that it caused us to ease the pressure to cut emissions. Finally, and i will finish on this point, what of Public Resistance to carbon taxes and the like which has surely been a major obstacle to political progress in responding to the science to my country as well as here. Solar geoengineering this obstruction. Economists including scott here have told us that it will be incredibly cheap. By buying is time david expects that the technologtechnolog ical progress will avert the need for price penalty on fossil fuels in order to achieve decarbonization. But what i gamble this is. In the United States without a carbon penalty we are seeing quite rapid investment but we are also seeing a massive and frightening expansion new oil and gas wells and around the world huge new coalmines. They may f