Interview, Fireside Chat
Should we deliberately intervene in the climate? | Kelly Wanser (2021)
- Silver Lining anticipates a 30-to-40-year horizon of escalating climate instability that will likely drive society toward increased weather modification for precipitation and flood prevention, with rapid shifts potentially requiring immediate reactive measures due to observed tracking of AMOC currents against worst-case projections from 40 to 50 years ago.
- Local weather modification efforts in regions including Colorado, California, China, and the United Arab Emirates are expected to expand in scale as impacts grow, with the UAE specifically projected to continue funding a $400 million R&D fund for precipitation enhancement, though success rates remain unknown.
- Future climate intervention approaches are predicted to favor less invasive methods such as reflecting 1% to 2% of incoming sunlight, though stratospheric particle injection carries risks of unknown changes to atmospheric circulation and marine cloud brightening creates cool zones that dissipate in days to a week, necessitating continuous operation.
- Large-scale climate interventions are projected to incur annual operating costs in the tens of billions due to data, security, and continuity requirements, while technical barriers involving specific aircraft, global climate models, and supercomputers make it unlikely for a single billionaire or rogue nation to execute stratospheric intervention independently.
- Divergent timelines for deployment are outlined, with some researchers predicting interventions may not be desired for 30 to 40 years until warming reaches three or four degrees, while conservative scenarios suggest pressure to intervene sooner due to expected displacement of at least one billion people and Cape Town's projected water scarcity issues by 2030.
- Significant risks include a potential catastrophic "termination shock" if interventions stop suddenly due to a pandemic or global disaster, alongside the expectation that temperatures could skyrocket under such conditions.
- Current US federal research investment in climate change and weather modeling is assessed at approximately $2.6 billion, which is viewed as irrational and in need of immediate increase to address data and security needs.
- Upcoming information releases include a National Academy of Sciences follow-on report to their 2015 assessment, Silver Lining's second edition of "Ensuring a Safe Climate," and the 2022 Gordon Conference, with young people identified as playing a critical role in future decision-making.