Dr. Guy McPherson is a scientific advocate for the Near Term Human Extinction movement (NTHE), a group of people who believe that global warming will soon result in the extinction of humanity. Part of the belief system of this group is that humans are incapable of taking steps to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to mitigate global climate change. The NTHE movement utterly rejects the idea that Geoengineering can help mitigate future climate change because it is inconsistent with their belief that human extinction is imminent.
Dr. Guy McPherson's website includes an interesting document about climate change entitled the Climate Change Summary and Update. As the name implies, Dr. McPherson frequently updates his document to reflect current scientific research on climate change. However, as an advocate for the NTHE movement, Dr. McPherson sometimes spins the data and even misrepresents facts about climate change in ways that promote his belief in NTHE.
For instance, in his discussion of Geoengineering in the "Climate Change Summary", Dr. McPherson cites a paper a paper by Kleider and Renner that uses a simple energy balance model to show that one geoengineering proposal that calls for loading the upper atmosphere with aerosols to reduce sunlight and cool the planet would not precisely counterbalance the warming effects of the extra CO2 added to the atmosphere by human combustion of fossil fuels. So far so good. But then Dr. McPherson goes on to conclude that
"geoengineering may succeed in cooling the earth, it would also disrupt precipitation patterns around the world."
Dr. McPherson here engages in the classic "tar them all with the same brush" ploy. Yes, problems exist with the proposal to cool the planet by adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere. But Dr. McPherson wants to pretend that a problem with one geoengineering proposal means that ALL geoengineering proposals share the same flaw. By lumping all geoengineering proposals together, Dr. McPherson does a disservice to his readers by not accurately reflecting the wide variety of different geoengineering approaches that have been proposed. In particular, Dr. McPherson hides from his readers the existence of geoengineering methods that would remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Dr. McPherson's claim that "geoengineering ...... would disrupt precipitation patterns around the world" is nonsense. It is the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming that is disrupting precipitation patterns around the world. Major droughts are occurring right now in the western US, Australia, the Middle East and South America, mostly likely BECAUSE of global warming. Geoengineering concepts that are designed to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere* would REDUCE the current disruption of precipitation patterns around the globe, exactly the opposite of what Dr. McPherson suggests.
*My CO2 Antarctic Pumpdown Geoengineering Concept is one several the geoengineering concepts designed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
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