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Title details for The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton - Available

The Planet Remade

How Geoengineering Could Change the World

by Oliver Morton
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A fascinating look at the perils and promise of geoengineering and our potential future on a warming planet
The risks of global warming are pressing and potentially vast. The difficulty of doing without fossil fuels is daunting, possibly even insurmountable. So there is an urgent need to rethink our responses to the crisis. To meet that need, a small but increasingly influential group of scientists is exploring proposals for planned human intervention in the climate system: a stratospheric veil against the sun, the cultivation of photosynthetic plankton, fleets of unmanned ships seeding the clouds. These are the technologies of geoengineering—and as Oliver Morton argues in this visionary book, it would be as irresponsible to ignore them as it would be foolish to see them as a simple solution to the problem.
The Planet Remade explores the history, politics, and cutting-edge science of geoengineering. Morton weighs both the promise and perils of these controversial strategies and puts them in the broadest possible context. The past century's changes to the planet—to the clouds and the soils, to the winds and the seas, to the great cycles of nitrogen and carbon—have been far more profound than most of us realize. Appreciating those changes clarifies not just the scale of what needs to be done about global warming, but also our relationship to nature.
Climate change is not just one of the twenty-first century's defining political challenges. Morton untangles the implications of our failure to meet the challenge of climate change and reintroduces the hope that we might. He addresses the deep fear that comes with seeing humans as a force of nature, and asks what it might mean—and what it might require of us—to try and use that force for good.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 3, 2015

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

      • ISBN: 9781400874453

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781400874453
      • File size: 2447 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781400874453
      • File size: 2447 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from September 15, 2015
      Economist briefings editor Morton (Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet, 2008, etc.) offers a calm, rational discussion of deliberate technological interventions to cool the planet's climate system. Once dismissed as the province of cranks, geoengineering approaches to climate change have gained new respectability. The first international academic conference on research in the field was held in Berlin in 2014, and both British and American science academies have issued reports. Even so, as the author writes, the notion of global climate interventions "still strikes many as truly wild." Despite skepticism, a small coterie of top scientists, including Harvard physicist David Keith (A Case for Climate Engineering, 2013), continues to explore different strategies to offset warming, from cultivating photosynthetic plankton to spraying sulfates into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight. In a thoughtful, complex, and sometimes-technical overview of "the promise and attendant perils of deliberately modifying climate," the author argues that this field "should be taken considerably more seriously." Though it may not necessarily offer a solution, it can provide a way to reduce harm from climate change. For instance, technology could be used to slow warming while better methods are developed to mitigate carbon emissions. Mindful that the risks are not well-understood, Morton describes the science behind the various climate interventions now being studied, including one physicist's work on machines capable of sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. He covers the history of climate interventions-notably, volcanic eruptions spewing ash and dust into the atmosphere-concerns over possible harms (such as human engineering replacing "the authentic world with a fake one"), and the danger that even talking about technological interventions will lead to less climate mitigation. An important account of cutting-edge research that will fascinate serious readers and demand the attention of policymakers.

      COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
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Languages

  • English

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