Comments on: Geoengineering: More Political and Moral Than Scientific?

By: Losing Control of Geoengineering | TNTlog

Losing Control of Geoengineering | TNTlog — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:04:53 +0000

[...] the worries that the eco lobby have over engineering solutions for climate change, and I recently heard the same line from Greenpeace. Francelino Grando, a senior government official from Brazil, worried that geoengineering might be [...]

By: Geoengineering: More Political and Moral Than Scientific? « plausible futures

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:45:22 +0000

[...] Tim Harper (Cientifica), a long time commentator on ethics and nanotechnology recently blogged about geoengineering: I recently suggested that we need a New Green Agenda, one based on solving problems not just mitigating them, and drawing on everything that science and technology can offer to create a more sustainable future. Greenpeace, rather surprisingly from a scientific viewpoint but obviously from a political one refused to countenance any funding for geoengineering or any trials, even small scale local ones and put up the rather weak argument that it would take funding away from other areas of environmental science. One of the attractions of geoengineering is that it is cheap and uses mainly existing technologies, so a few tens of millions of dollars spent evaluating options is hardly going to handicap the the rest of the research community. I tend to agree with David Keith and growing number of others that if we are serious about climate change then we should be trying to do something about it rather than delaying research. [...]

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:41:58 +0000

I always found Greenpeace to be a bit more rational than the other groups when it came to nanotech – at least they seemed to think about it and were aware of the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps that was just in private though?

By: djh

djh — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:35:51 +0000

I believe there is a serious problem here. I had a similar epiphany about Greenpeace (of which I was a member) a few years ago when I asked Doug Parr about nanotechnology and his answers were very similar in spirit to those you quote about geoengineering. I’m a bit surprised you haven’t come across that.

I think these issues are very much like creationism/intelligent design. There’s a need for people who do believe in technological progress as part of the solution to form groups and lobby hard. We need to make sure that the facts and our opinions are both heard.