G EOENGINEERING THE C LIMATE: History and Prospect
Abstract
▪ Abstract Geoengineering is the intentional large-scale manipulation of the environment, particularly manipulation that is intended to reduce undesired anthropogenic climate change. The post-war rise of climate and weather modification and the history of U.S. assessments of the CO 2-climate problem is reviewed. Proposals to engineer the climate are shown to be an integral element of this history. Climate engineering is reviewed with an emphasis on recent developments, including low-mass space-based scattering systems for altering the planetary albedo, simulation of the climate's response to albedo modification, and new findings on iron fertilization in oceanic ecosystems. There is a continuum of human responses to the climate problem that vary in resemblance to hard geoengineering schemes such as space-based mirrors. The distinction between geoengineering and mitigation is therefore fuzzy. A definition is advanced that clarifies the distinction between geoengineering and industrial carbon management. Assessment of geoengineering is reviewed under various framings including economics, risk, politics, and environmental ethics. Finally, arguments are presented for the importance of explicit debate about the implications of countervailing measures such as geoengineering.
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Solar geoengineering proposals are real proposals for solar radiation management.
“Airships floating through the sky, spraying aerosols; robotic boats crisscrossing the ocean, firing vertical jets of spray; arrays of mirrors carefully positioned in space, micro-adjusted by remote control; these images seem like science fiction, but they are actually real proposals for solar radiation management, commonly called solar geoengineering [375,418,419,728].”
From Tackling climate change with machine learning (2023) · cites this paper as [419]
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- Authors
- Keith, D. W.
- Affiliations
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Keith, David W.
- ORCID
- Keith, David W.
- Venue
- Annual Review of Energy and the Environment
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2000-11
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 245-284
- ISSN
- 1056-3466 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2048911136
- Cited by
- 567
- References
- 67
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 53 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 37 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 37 · 2013: 43 · 2012: 33
- FWCI
- 3.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Annual Review of Energy and the Environment (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Geoengineering
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric aerosols and clouds
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Keywords
- geoengineering, solar radiation management, planetary albedo, iron fertilization, ocean carbon sequestration, climate change mitigation, history of climate science, environmental ethics, risk assessment, climate policy
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