Hack: The Planet: Radical Science And The Plans To Avert A Climate Change Catastrophe

Despite the efforts of those at the Copenhagen climate meeting and proposals in the U.S. Senate, cutting greenhouse pollution may not be enough to avert climate catastrophe. Last month nearly two hundred scientists from across the globe met at a historic five-day conference in California to begin to consider a once-heretical idea: deliberately controlling the climate to stave off global warming. This controversial and disturbing idea is called geoengineering.

In HACK THE PLANET: Science’s Best Hope – or Worst Nightmare – for Averting Climate Catastrophe (Wiley; April 2010; $25.95 / Cloth; ISBN: 978-0-470-52426-8), Science staff writer Eli Kintisch looks at the radical science behind geoengineering schemes. From brightening low-level sea clouds to spraying a fine mist over the entire middle east, the options are wild, the science big, and the challenges fascinating.

It’s the possibility of planetary emergency that drives the scientists in HACK THE PLANET, and Kintisch explains just what types of climate changes would constitute such a catastrophe and what dangers lie in trying to predict the outcome of extreme geoengineering measures. National Journal columnist Jonathan Rauch writes, “It’s hard to imagine a more thorough and accessible guide to the science, and the stakes, than Eli Kintisch has provided.”

Kintisch outlines four scenarios that keep these scientists up at night: an ice sheet collapse, megadroughts, a release of methane from the ocean or tundra, and the shutdown of the global ocean conveyor belt. Then he profiles the few promising – and frightening -- solutions. From growing algae blooms in the ocean (to capture carbon) to adding pollution to the atmosphere (to deflect the sun’s rays), Kintisch describes plans geoengineers are developing to combat global warming – and tags along with this phalanx of colorful characters as they work to make their dreams a reality.

The political ramifications of geoengineering could be as far-reaching as the environmental ones including: the entrance of for-profit businesses to the nascent field, how the opponents of greenhouse gas emissions have flocked to support geoengineering, and the potential for geopolitical strife as nations argue over the planetary thermostat.

Simply “going green” may one day be seen as a naïve solution of the past. HACK THE PLANET offers a lively yet reasoned look into the newest chapter in the climate crisis.