Writing on wildlife, technology, and nature
Everybody wants a white Christmas. In Erie, Pennsylvania they certainly got it. On Christmas Day they received 34 inches of snow and by midweek they had received over 65 inches of the white stuff. In the central and northeastern parts of the U.S., bitter air from Canada reduced temperatures to record lows in the period …
Continue reading "Some Excellent Non-Scientific Reasons to Reject Climate Change Denial"
Dramatic visual changes are afoot off the Sussex coast. In a stretch of coastline that sits more or less directly offshore from Brighton, work is underway raising more than one hundred metal towers above waves that until now have seen only passing fishing boats, freighters, and the occasional whale. When completed in 2018, the Rampion …
For a few scant years, the challenges of climate change lay only in the future. The prospect of transformed landscapes and disrupted ecologies was a threat that could be – and was – easily ignored. Although atmospheric scientists assured anyone who would listen that real problems lay ahead, interest in doing anything serious about it …
An image in the online Encyclopaedia Britannica illustrating the various strategies for climate engineering has always bothered me. Alongside the highly technical and speculative proposal of placing orbiting mirrors in space to intercept the sun’s rays sits the highly unsophisticated and low-tech proposal of wrapping melting glaciers with huge sheets of white fabric. The juxtaposition …
Continue reading "Wrapping Glaciers, Making Clouds, and Reflecting Sunlight"
Earlier this month, a major international conference on climate engineering* (also known as ‘geoengineering’) wrapped up in Berlin attracting headlines around the world. Next week, I’m travelling to a smaller academic meeting on the ethics and governance of climate engineering research. Next year, two outdoor tests of climate modification technologies are scheduled to begin. The …
Last week an article appeared in Forbes magazine bearing the title “As Humans Fumble Climate Challenge, Interest Grows in Geoengineering.” The article reports that during an appearance at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. David Keith, one of North America’s foremost advocates for research into geoengineering, observed that in recent months serious discussion of geoengineering “really is …
Christopher J. Preston 