If You're Still Not Sick of Geoengineering: A Q&A With Jeff Goodell

DESCRIPTIONPhoto: Eric Etheridge



































Eartth scale experiments on the very climate that sustains us.

GREAT idea.



We do geoengineering all the time. Just one example: we straightened out rivers and decades later we've been spending large sums to try to reverse that because the environment degraded so much. On a small scale, we build jetties and other breakwaters that encourage rather than slow beach erosion.

So we do experiment. All the time. And the record shows that negative consequences become apparent after substantial time. There is thus no way to experiment with climate scale geoengineering because a) we wouldn't know for a very long time and then it might not be reversible and b) we couldn't know that a really small experiment would actually scale. That scale problem has been a big problem because we used experience with smaller streams and rivers to manipulate large ones and that caused a whole new set of problems.


Yes, geoengineering is as old as the first bridge..How about cloud seeding..it is not new..And it's disasters have been well documented.. The incomparable Geology Professor Giegengack, at the U. of Penn, LOVED to recount the tales of the Army Corps of Engineers' disasters - unaccounted for siltation at huge dams, the Salton Sea, the mud plume engulfing indonesia, the vortex created by drilling through a salt layer, that was lovely - how about GM crops - great experiment, we are now all part of..







David L

Amazed at how closed-minded people are, esp. on a Freakonomics blog, no less. I don't know the first thing about geoengineering. But I'm not going to reject out of hand the plausibility that a cracksquad of the most brilliant minds in environmental science could devise a series of low-risk experiments to glean more knowledge. And if you're against gleaning more knowledge, then honestly, you have no place in any conversation about anything.


Yes, nice work commenters. Do you ever get tired of saying 'no, that won't work'. Immediately before the Wright brothers no one had ever flown; before penicillin there was only the 'natural' way to cure infections. It's so easy to proclaim failure, and so hard to invent success.... so why not just stop trying?


Rudiger in Jersey

Idea to cure Global Warming:

For Global Cooling: Same process but use your Heaters instead.


Eric M. Jones

Prayer might work. And there's always soylent green.

David, St. Petersburg

Eh ... what sort of geoengineering is going to heal the Gulf of Mexico's damage from the dead zone below the Mississippi river and the newly created dead zone created by the oil volcano?

Humans have made a mess of the Earth and there is no technological solution to the problem. On a planet with 8 - 9 billion humans there is no room for error whatsoever. Geoengineering schemes cannot solve the global warming problem nor is it possible to know that they won't actually lead to catastrophic unintended consequences.

In addition, humankind's problems have grown much bigger in recent years. Peak Oil has occurred, capitalism is poised to collapse (narrowly avoiding a collapse last week and propped up today by Europe spending $1 trillion which it doesn't have), the world's bread baskets are being deprived of water and losing their top soil, global phosphate production is declining, and there's a huge oil catastrophe occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Needless to say, it is better to live healthy rather than rely upon desperate measures to keep yourself alive. Unfortunately for humankind the species has chosen to live foolishly, recklessly, destructively, and without any concern about the future consequences of these behaviors.

Humankind's future is bleak.



People say this topic is controversial?

I think these comments prove that there is a consensus on what needs to be done.


Rudiger in Jersey

The problem with experimenting with the planet, is it is the only one we got. If we screw this up, we could bring on the Biblical plagues we worked so hard to avoid. Better get a spare planet just in case.

In theory it would work. In theory so did Communism, the Titanic's Impenetrable Hull, and the Atkin's Diet. But before we risk nuclear winter, the death of every single photosynthetic organism, and blizzards on Miami Beach in August maybe we should listen to a TRUE EXPERT .ie not an Economist.

Complex problems like Global Warming have complex solutions. Offering a simplistic solution is just a phony Do-It -Yourself 4-year-old child solution. With problems, people look for a Pied Piper, Professor Harold Hill or Svengali. Clean it up, move to the NEXT problem.

But this ISN'T a PROBLEM, This is the entire planet. I would feel sorry for Mr Godell when an entire starving planet huddling over campfires in Parkas during Summer, channels its angry Karma at him.

By the way, does he peddle a one step DIY solution to Middle East Peace?



The Law of Unintended Consequences has bitten us virtually every time. If we simply could know all that might happen, we could weigh the pros and cons, but, alas, we cannot...and must always take our chances.

It seems to me that if we could exert our efforts to RETURN something to its former state, rather than create a new state, we might have a better chance. For instance, instead of cooling the atmosphere by launching something into space, say, what if we could find a way to re-freeze the Arctic Ocean? We kind of know what happens if it is frozen...but we aren't so sure what happens if we try some other method of cooling the atmosphere, etc.

We know that trees cool the atmosphere, eat carbon dioxide, etc....so plant, say, a 100 billion trees?

I have a feeling that The Butterfly Effect might come back to haunt us for something so small as the destruction of mosquitoes. You just never know.

Instead of seeking to create a new heaven and earth (let's leave that to God), how about us just seeking to return it to where it was before?



To David L and Kilpatrick, you are both fools..Your perspective ALWAYS wins, don't you get it, because people REFUSE to remember the past..or to learn from it..So humanity, people just like you two lovely openminded and narcissistic men, WILL do geoengineering, that WILL be the only recourse we as a species can manage..thanks for giving us the perspecitve of the dark ages, of the Easter Islanders, of the chinese engineers busy damming the yellow river....But we don't seem to be able to get PAST that perspective (yes, of YOU< David L and Kilpatrick) and to STOP ourselves..That is what has NEVER been done, you young innocents..Despite wonderful literature art history and science, humans cannot get beyond the need to be busy busy busy.. So sorry for you, David and Kilpatrick..So sorry for us..

Christopher Strom

Thank you, David L and Kilpatrick.

I'm pretty sure that "that won't work" has NEVER solved a single problem.

Sadly, "that won't work" seems to be heard most commonly from armchair engineers and policymakers who don't have to actually solve problems or get results in real life.

But that's the safe bet: one can argue against any proposal with the claim that "there will be unintended consequences" - of course there are, and one would learn this if one actually did new things. And it follows that such people will respond to unintended consequences with admonishments of "I told you so" - thus successfully avoiding making a decision, taking a stand, or performing any useful function whatsoever.

(Yes, Elkayef, jonathan, trace, Jose, and Rudiger, I'm talking to you.)

Is there really anyone out there who out there thinks that we've not been effectively geoengineering the Earth for well over a century now? Geoengineering doesn't have to be deliberate to have profound impacts on our quality of life - that and our survival at the margins, which is what we're really talking about.

It is precisely because we enjoy our lifestyles and have populated the entire globe that we will have to eventually learn how to deliberately manipulate conditions - possibly on a planet-wide scale - to try to offset the unintended consequences of our lifestyle. The sooner we begin experimenting, the more we can learn about some of the "unintended consequences" of geoengineering tactics.

We will do this eventually. And neither pretending there is no problem, nor dismissing proposals as being "too unknown" will change the fact that this is the only place we have to live.



I once came across a Victorian geoengineering suggestion. Someone had looked at a map of Africa, and pointed out that with only a few dams, a vast territory (several modern day countries) could be turned into a lake, and eventually water would flow out to irrigate the Sahara.

We now know that sufficiently large water reservoirs cause earthquakes as the land shifts to accommodate the new weight. This would have made it a Bad Idea, quite apart from the political problems of taking many countries' water supplies and using it to flood a few more countries.

Alas, I have not seen any further reference to this plan, so I have not got any details.


A panel of Noble prize winners ranked a specific Geoengineering technology (Research into Marine Cloud Whitening) first among several alternatives to Global Warming:


You will notice that carbon cuts solution (like the ones proposed by Kyoto) are ranked well lower.

Phil Z

I have been wondering for over 40 years when someone would make a serious attempt to control global weather.

Google "HAARP" and look into the future, thanks to those fun loving kids in the U.S. government.

Cindy Pikoulas

Mr. Goodell needs to come forward and admit that geoengineering has been occuring throughout the globe on a daily basis since the 90's. There have been patents in place since the 70's for the chemical aerosols which are released from airplanes high up in the atmosphere. Everyone needs to educate themselves regarding Solar Radiation Management as there is a bill in the Senate (601) to implement these programs. There has not been any public discussion or oversight and there will be none if the citizenry does get involved. Aluminum is the metal of choice for altering the planet. Aluminum is linked to autism (1:70 boys), alzheimers (epidemic proporations), allergies (epidemic proportions) and asthma (leading killer of children).


If humans are the cause of "global warming" then wouldn't it be safe to say we are already doing earth-scale geoengineering?

Considering the majority of greenhouse gasses comes from livestock and not from cars or industry suggests that these greenhouse gasses will not decrease as long as the human population increases.

Even though eating meat contributes to green house gasses I don't plan to stop eating meat and I doubt a significant percentage of humans would either.

So for all you arm-chair engineers who only know how to say "no that won't work," what is your solution to "global warming?"