Climate engineering, sometimes also referred to as geoengineering or climate intervention, is intentional, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system.[1] One reason to engage in climate engineering would be to counter anthropogenic climate change. The main techniques that could be used for climate engineering are carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management.
Further reading
Conn, Ariel (2019) Not Cool episode 6: Alan Robock on geoengineering, Future of Life Institute, September 17.
Open Philanthropy (2013) Geoengineering research, Open Philanthropy, July.
Open Philanthropy (2015) Governance of solar radiation management, Open Philanthropy, October.
Perry, Lucas (2020) Kelly Wanser on climate change as a possible existential threat, Future of Life Institute, September 30.
Wiblin, Robert (2021) Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate, 80,000 Hours, March 26.
Related entries
climate change | engineering | global catastrophic risk
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Union of Concerned Scientists (2017) What is climate engineering?, Union of Concerned Scientists, November 6.
This isn’t my area of expertise, so I initially chose what I think is the most common name for this broad topic (geoengineering).
I then saw that Wikipedia uses the term climate engineering, so I switched to that.
One contender name of is climate interventions, which it seems to me like Kelly Wanser prefers because geoengineering now has negative connotations for some people (see her 80k appearance). But I think “climate interventions” is a less common term for this, and I imagine some readers would think it just means “interventions aimed at mitigating climate change” (which would then also include things reducing carbon emissions).
Another contender is solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal (which I think together cover all types of geoengineering, or at least the main ones?). But then that’s fairly long.
Feel free (dear reader/editor) to change the name if you think climate engineering wasn’t the best choice.