Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
It is now considered a pest by the Department of Agriculture but diffi cult
and expensive to eradicate.
A fi nal and well-known example is the invention and widespread use
of chlorofl uorocarbons, which escape into the atmosphere and have
severely damaged the ozone shield.
These unintended side effects can be more signifi cant than intended
effects. It is clear that trying to replace the way nature has operated for
hundreds of millions of years is both futile and harmful and should be
avoided whenever possible, which it usually is. “Nature knows best” is
usually a sound working philosophy.
The clearest examples of the refusal to accept the law of unintended
consequences are the repeated suggestions for geoengineering projects,
also called climate engineering.
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Rather than decreasing the use of fossil
fuels, a group of distinguished environmental scientists suggested in 1965
spreading very small refl ective particles over about 5 million square miles
of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back into space.
Within the past few years, another group has recommended fertilizing
the oceans with iron to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, which
absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Another idea is to inject
several million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to form sul-
furic acid, the component of tropospheric acid rain most environmental-
ists want to reduce (chapter 10). Clouds of sulfate particles would scatter
sunlight before it gets to the lower atmosphere (the troposphere), making
earth's surface cooler. A British physicist has suggested spraying micro-
scopic droplets of seawater into the sky from a fl eet of unmanned sailing
vessels. The addition of the tiny droplets into clouds would cause an
increased scattering of sunlight back into space.
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Many other geoengineering schemes to reduce climate change have
been proposed, and they all have rather obvious chemical and ecological
negative drawbacks, as well as effects we cannot foresee because of our
permanently inadequate understanding of how the atmosphere-ocean
dynamic and ecology will react to such unnatural interventions.
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Geo-
engineering cannot solve the carbon dioxide problem, and it is foolish
and dangerous in the extreme to even consider such schemes, akin to
using gambling as a way to get out of debt and with much higher stakes.
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But further research is inevitable because of human hubris. The idea of
trying to reengineer the planet to avoid the need to reduce and eventually
eliminate the use of fossil fuels would be laughable were it not so danger-
ous and impossible. It sometimes seems that humans are incurably stupid
when their place in nature is concerned, a possibility immortalized in the
