Geoengineering
April 7, 2008 by Frances , NEIL MILLER and GREGORY HILTON | Filed under: The EM as an Industrial Ecologist [1]
Braden Allenby, worked at AT&T at the time, is kind of the “father” of industrial ecology. He and T.E. Graedel wrote the first textbook on the topic. Over time though, Allenby’s ideas of what an environmental manager should do evolved into a concept that moved beyond management systems or pollution prevention technologies and almost into the realm of science fiction– Earth Systems Engineering and Management. The idea was when there was no remaining option, we should be working to engineer the planet to protect the environment. Since humans already are affecting natural systems, we might as well be working to affect them in a “good” way …So instead of worrying about cutting the amount of carbon dioxide we emit we should be worrying about ways to get our oceans to absorb more CO2 (things like that).
I’m including an article that Allenby wrote on ESEM: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Earth_systems_engineering_and_management#
And some newspaper articles from the Wall Street Journal: http://ezproxy.rit.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/pqdweb?did=1292814331&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=3589&RQT=309&VName=PQD
And from the Seattle Post: http://ezproxy.rit.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/pqdweb?did=1360064051&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=3589&RQT=309&VName=PQD
What are your opinions on whether or how geoengineering fits in with Hollins arguments for resilience? Does it fit with this new paradigm or is it still too close to the traditional engineering paradigm of resilience?
Frances,
The article on ESEM, gave a good overview on the need for such a field. I liked the list of developed ESEM principles that were included. The two I liked specifically, and thought were crucial, were:
Only intervene in complex earth systems when necessary, and then only to the extent required.
and
Whenever possible, interventions should be incremental and reversible, rather than fundamental and irreversible.
Those two, along with the rest, are great points that are, I feel, distant from the traditional engineering paradigm to fix problems quick for profit.
Frances,
Good articles, I interpreted the interesting points of the ESEM article to be.
- understand resilience of affected natural systems prior to making changes.
- Once changes are made, monitor results continuously wiht long term commitment.
I believe geongineering ideas fit well within the ecological resilience paradigm. I would believe there to be significant challenges in developing and sustain large scale ecosystems that simulate natural systems.
But do you think that we will ever have the sufficient knowledge to understand the multiple equilibrium points that make natural systems so resilient? We are really good at understanding engineering, linear resilience, but as the original articles in this post pointed out, we are very bad at understanding the multiple interconnections of a natural ecosystem. We end up with monodiversity that ends up being very vulnerable. Maybe it’s just me but I think the articles above all else are preaching the precautionary principle. I don’t think we’ll ever do intense “geoengineering” correctly. It will always lead to unintended consequences.
Comming from an undergraduate program in Physics and Mathematics we did alot of modeling. To a point I can tell, right off the bat, that there could be models for how something will inpact an area. But when it comes down to it, there are too many variables to account for, that might nto necesarrily change anything that we can see.
I say this becuase when someone wants to model a pitcher throwing a baseball, there’s obviously a force due to gravity, and there is resistance in the air. But you could add wind into that equation, also the coriolis force of the ball spinning and so on… eventually you are nit picking and trying to add everything into it’s movement. I believe it is similar with “geoengineering”, except we don’t know how the biological relationships are affected. I’ve even taken a biological modeling course and even dealing with how populations of different specices (or same species, different sex) interact with eachother isn’t easy to forcast.