The Engineers of Gaia: Treating the Earth as a System forGeoengineering Solutions
Nils Roenner and Dr Guillermo ReinMechanical Engineering DepartmentImperial College London
Abstract
With global concerns about the possible dangers resulting from climate change people arelooking for a better understanding of the phenomena and ways to ward off a catastrophe. Amongthese, engineers are called to have a leading role in tackling the problem and are proposing a newdiscipline: geoengineering. The term has only recently gained traction in the public debate, andits definition still varies according to the source. We think this can be defined as the large-scaleanthropogenic intervention into the system Earth in order to adjust planetary mass and heattransfer processes, such that global catastrophes can be mitigated.The realisation that man has an impact on Earth led to the idea of the Anthropocene whichsignifies the current geological epoch, ‘the recent age of man’. Now humans are viewed asa factor and intricate part of nature. This is in agreement with Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis,introduced in 1979, a revolutionary view of the Earth not as a simple accumulation of systemsbut as one self-regulating system encompassing everything, including life.In this article, using the concept of Gaia and the anthropocene as starting points, we arguethat the control system view of Earth is a vital part of geoengineering. It is not about onemechanism. It is about the system as a whole. But if geoengineering was to apply a forcingtoo large or at the wrong place, such that positive feedback loops overtake, the results could bedrastic and unpredictable. Careful and robust control is required when engineering something asvital as the system Earth, and this argument is often invoked to stop geoengineering proposals.Paraphrasing Henry Petroski, for us, the premise would be that geoengineers welcome all therelevant science they can muster, but cannot wait for complete scientific understanding beforeacting to save life or create a new planet-saving technology. The article also maintains thatup until the moment when adequate understanding and models of the system are found onlyreversible and well controlled geoengineering interventions should be applied on a large scale, inorder to prevent uncontrollable feedbacks being set off or reaching tipping points by accident.Geoengineering opens up a broad range of measures with which global climate change canbe tackled. This article briefly evaluates some promising applications of geoengineering (carboncapture and storage, algae iron fertilisation and cool roofs) using a set of criteria by whichgeoengineering proposals can be evaluated in term of feasibility, effectiveness, safety, geointer-vention, and costs.i
1 Gaia and Earth as a System
In the more recent time there has been widespread concern about ongoing climate change.In their most recent 2013 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1]estimated that without reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions temperatures are set torise between 2
◦
C and 5.7
◦
C by the year 2100. This would be enough to cause problems such asrising sea levels, increased ocean acidity, drought, severe storms and loss of habitat.The idea of man made climate change isn’t new. However the first major assessment [2]of the problems resulting from CO
2
emissions was the report ‘Restoring the Quality of ourEnviroment’ in 1965 by the US President’s Advisory Committee [3]. The report analysed CO
2
concentrations and anticipated the future development. From this it estimated temperaturechanges and effects due to the atmospheric composition change on nature and compared themto the recorded data. It concluded human intervention into the climate system as the onlysolution to the problem, disregarding a reduction in fossil fuel use.The realisation that man can have an impact on the climate and by extension earth as awhole lead to the idea of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a concept introduced in theyear 2000 by Dr Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer to signify a new geological epoch, ‘therecent age of man’ [4]. Deforestation, mining, damming of rivers, irrigation of farms, largecities and most importantly man-made climate change are altering the face and workings of earth so significantly that this intervention can no longer be ignored in a geological sense. Therecognition, that man shaped Earth so significantly that an entire epoch should be named afterit, signifies a very important step in thinking. It marks a shift in how we see the world. Inconventional observation, nature was being analysed whilst trying to ignore the effects of humanintervention. Now humans are viewed as a factor and intricate part of nature.Applying this new idea to our thinking is crucial when discussing the concept of
geoengineer-ing
. As our influence can’t be ignored, the consequences of our actions can’t be ignored either.The way humans have altered the carbon cycle is having a big impact on the climate. Therefore,appropriate measures must be taken. A few possible measures in the form of geoengineeringare evaluated in this article.In his book ‘Gaia’, James Lovelock offered in 1979 a new and revolutionary view of the World.He proposed to view Earth not as an accumulation of many systems but as one self-regulatingsystem encompassing everything. He described the atmosphere as a
“dynamic extension of the biosphere itself”
[5].A simplified schematic is shown in figure 1. There, the main subsystems, atmosphere, inlandice, terrestrial vegetation, ocean are linked through the Soil Vegetation Atmosphere TransferScheme (SVAT). The interaction occurs through fluxes of energy, momentum (e.g. wind) , water(e.g. evaporation and precipitation) and carbon [6]. This interconnectivity is the reason fora lot of earth’s feedbacks and needs to be taken into account when trying to understand theclimate.Through these dependencies, nonlinearity effects such as abrupt changes and multiple equilibriacan exist [8]. These are based on feedback and threshold points present. Feedbacks, bothpositive and negative, are central to our climate system. Feedback is also the main cause of non-linearities in our climate. Negative feedbacks being larger than positive feedbacks is thereason for the very stable climate experienced on earth. However when positive feedbacks areon the verge of become dominant critical threshold points exist after which rapid amplificationsoccur [7]. Runaway global warming is one of those rapid amplifications which cause greatconcern.A good example of this tendency to unpredictability and a feedback driven system is thedesertification of the Sahara. The abrupt process was summarised by Rial et al. [7]. Only1
Figure 1: Simplistic model of earth as s system with interdependencies and feedbacks outlined.Adopted from J. Rial et al. [7].6000-9000 years ago the Sahara was much smaller and North Africa experienced much wetterclimate. However, a slight change in earth’s spin led to a dry phase through which vegetationdecreased. This caused an increase in surface albedo, which in turn reduced rainfall. By this alarge positive desert-expanding positive biogeophysical feedback loop was started, leading to thecurrent state. A further example of changes due to threshold points being crossed is Greenland,where sudden climate changes happened repeatedly [7]. This shows how easily a big impact canresult from small changes due to tipping points caused by positive feedback loops taking over.Feedbacks and threshold points mean that when implementing and discussing geoengineeringproposals great care needs to be taken as to not set off the feedbacks loops whose effects wedon’t yet fully understand.An intellectual as well as physical framework for geoengineering is now set but definitionsstill vary between sources as it has only recently gained traction in the public debate. Howeverrecurring concepts can be found and these can be summarised in a concise definition, which willbe the one used in this article to classify any proposed actions in this domain.
An anthropogenic intervention into the earth’s system in order to adjust energy levels and composition of the atmosphere such that climate change can be mitigated.
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