The Planet Remade

How Geoengineering will Change the World

Oliver Morton 2015 Beaverton Library 363.7387 MOR

I stumbled across this while looking for a different book ... another reason why indexed libraries are useful.

Morton is a British science writer with a 1987 Cambridge BA in the history and philosophy of science.

Morton is rightly concerned with rising CO₂, and this book is about mitigations involving planetary geoengineering. He points out that (besides CO₂) we have already massively modified the biosphere with Haber-Bosch nitrogen fertilizer. We are planetary engineers, and there's no going back (James Lovelock makes the same point), but going forwards we must be more thoughtful and caring about the process. Making the wisest choices, not just the easiest choices, and not pretending that the planet can take care of itself without active human management.

This book was mostly written almost a decade ago, and molecular biotechnology was mostly off the radar then, and certainly wasn't part of the Cambridge curriculum 35 years ago, so his toolset may be out of date.

Morton mentions early experiments with iron seeding of ocean plankton, and some surprises and negative consequences of that. Iron seeding was suggested in the 1930s by Norwegian oceanographer Haaken Hasberg Gran. In the 1980s American oceanographer John Martin showed that plankton in ocean deserts couldn't get enough iron. Martin suggested that a ton of iron could lead to 100,000 tonnes of carbon sequestered in plankton biomass. Experiments were 100x less productive, and fed plankton grazers that made more CO₂, and created anoxic zones and nitrous oxide. Mention of Russ George and the Canadian ETC group.

P266, mention's Clarke's 1979 Fountains of Paradise, and a future ice age that orbit-dwelling humans choose to not to prevent.

Clouds as "soggy mirrors" (8yo Mike, son of John Latham in the early 1970s) - reflecting sunlight back to space. Sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere could deflect sunlight for years or decades. Armand Neukermans, retired HP inkjet engineer, designed nozzles to spray salt water into the air.

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