Hedging Your Bets

No matter if you’re on the side of the climate change consensus or one of the skeptics, it makes sense not to restrict our options to emission-reducing cap-and-trade schemes alone. We should simultaneously study every possible weapon in the arsenal to deal with warming, including geo-engineering schemes like this one:

It should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, according to researchers in the US and UK. John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, US, and colleagues say that this can be done using a worldwide fleet of autonomous ships spraying salt water into the air.

One of the most common objections to these types of proposals I’ve heard is the “unintended consequences” canard. Sure, we ought to move cautiously before attempting the intentional manipulation of weather on a planetary scale, and do so with the benefit of much more scientific understanding than we have now. But that kind of precautionary principle cuts both ways: The unknown costs of inaction may in fact be just as high as the unknown costs of action.