"Twilight at Noon?: Paul Crutzen, Albedo Enhancement, and the Historical Foundations of Geoengineering"
Gerard Fitzgerald, Visiting Scholar, The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities, University of Stavanger, and Lecturer, Department of Engineering and Society, University of Virginia
In 2006, the atmospheric chemist Paul Jozef Crutzen (1933-2021) published a pathbreaking and controversial paper in the journal Climatic Change entitled “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?” Crutzen, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone," devoted his scientific life to studying the complex relationship that certain molecules play in shaping our planetary atmosphere. Any balanced historical study of the evolution of human efforts toward geoengineering must touch upon Crutzen’s work in general, and his 2006 paper. My paper examines Crutzen’s work leading up to the 2006 publication, and how his research career on topics such as planetary ozone levels, climate change, nuclear winter, and even his “introduction” of the term “Anthropocene” in 2000 played a role in shaping how he came to see the possibilities for stratospheric geoengineering to recalibrate the reflectivity of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Date
-