Pilot emergency geoengineering solutions for catastrophic climate change
Research That Can Help Us Improve
Toby Ord puts the risk of runaway climate change causing the extinction of humanity by 2100 at 1/1000, a staggering expected loss. Emergency solutions, such as seeding oceans with carbon-absorbing algae or creating more reflective clouds, may be our last chance to prevent catastrophic warming but are extraordinarily operationally complex and may have unforeseen negative side-effects. Governments are highly unlikely to invest in massive geoengineering solutions until the last minute, at which point they may be rushed in execution and cause significant collateral damage. We’d like to fund people who can:
Identify and pilot at large scale top geoengineering initiatives over the next 5-10 years to develop operational lessons. E.g. promote algae growth in a large, private lake, launch a small cluster of mirrors into space
Develop advanced supercomputer models, potentially with input from the above pilots, of the potential negative side-effects of geoengineering solutions
Identify and pilot harm-mitigation responses for geoengineering solutions
Epistemic status: there seems to be reasonable expert agreement on the kinds of geoengineering solutions that might work. I have no idea how much funding geoengineering pilots might need.
Conflict of interest: I work for a small, new nonprofit focused on $B giving. We are generally focused on projects that already have large implementers so have not pursued geoengineering beyond initial light research
My initial sense is that China’s method is focused on controlling rainfall, which might mitigate some of the effects of climate change (e.g. reduce drought in some areas, reduce hurricane strength) but not actually prevent it. The ideas I had in mind were more emergency approaches to actually stopping climate change either by rapidly removing carbon (e.g. algae in oceans) or reducing solar radiation absorbs on the Earth’s surface (making clouds/oceans more reflective, space mirrors).
Pilot emergency geoengineering solutions for catastrophic climate change
Research That Can Help Us Improve
Toby Ord puts the risk of runaway climate change causing the extinction of humanity by 2100 at 1/1000, a staggering expected loss. Emergency solutions, such as seeding oceans with carbon-absorbing algae or creating more reflective clouds, may be our last chance to prevent catastrophic warming but are extraordinarily operationally complex and may have unforeseen negative side-effects. Governments are highly unlikely to invest in massive geoengineering solutions until the last minute, at which point they may be rushed in execution and cause significant collateral damage. We’d like to fund people who can:
Identify and pilot at large scale top geoengineering initiatives over the next 5-10 years to develop operational lessons. E.g. promote algae growth in a large, private lake, launch a small cluster of mirrors into space
Develop advanced supercomputer models, potentially with input from the above pilots, of the potential negative side-effects of geoengineering solutions
Identify and pilot harm-mitigation responses for geoengineering solutions
Epistemic status: there seems to be reasonable expert agreement on the kinds of geoengineering solutions that might work. I have no idea how much funding geoengineering pilots might need.
Conflict of interest: I work for a small, new nonprofit focused on $B giving. We are generally focused on projects that already have large implementers so have not pursued geoengineering beyond initial light research
I thought China has already done some low-key geoengineering?
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/kelly-wanser-climate-interventions/
Thanks for sharing!
My initial sense is that China’s method is focused on controlling rainfall, which might mitigate some of the effects of climate change (e.g. reduce drought in some areas, reduce hurricane strength) but not actually prevent it. The ideas I had in mind were more emergency approaches to actually stopping climate change either by rapidly removing carbon (e.g. algae in oceans) or reducing solar radiation absorbs on the Earth’s surface (making clouds/oceans more reflective, space mirrors).