September 26, 2007

experts respond to Lovelock and Rapley letter in Nature on using ocean pumps to slow global warming

James Lovelock and Chris Rapley (Director of the Science Museum) proposed using a series of giant pipes to circulate ocean waters and restore their ecological balance.

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Professor of Meteorology at University of Reading, said:

“This is the latest in a line of geoengineering “solutions” or rather “buying time”. As with some of the others, there is certainly a strong scientific basis for the proposal. Also I agree that the current global political inaction on the climate issue is very serious.

“In my opinion our uncertainties over the likely regional impact of what our greenhouse gas emissions may do is high. The uncertainties over what these “solutions” may do is an order of magnitude higher. However we must make sure that our understanding of the climate system and our ability to model it increase as fast as possible so that we can be very confident about the former, the GHG emissions, and confident about the latter, the “solutions”.

“As a different isssue the shear practicality of doing the proposed “solutions” on the required scale to combat GHG emissions also has to be considered. One of the nightmares is that commercial companies may offer to off-set people’s carbon emissions by doing them on a smaller scale, with no real knowledge of the wider implications.”