With:
Director, ISEEE Energy and Environmental Systems Group, University of Calgary
For more information regarding David Keith's work on geoengineering and climate change, please see the selection of articles and videos below. Also included here is a brief bio and a link to Professor Keith's website.
Abstract: The combination of high inertia and high uncertainty makes the coupled climate-economic system dangerously hard to control. If the climate's sensitivity is at the high end of current estimates, it may be too late to avert dramatic consequences for human societies or natural ecosystems even if we could cut emissions to zero in a few decades. Emissions cuts are necessary but not sufficient to manage climate risks; prudence demands that we study methods that offer the hope of limiting the environmental risks posed by the accumulation of fossil carbon in the atmosphere. Geoengineering is the engineered alteration of the earth's radiation budget, and it offers a fast means of managing climate risk, but entails a host of new risks, and it cannot fully compensate for the risk posed by carbon in the air. I will argue that systematic management of climate risks requires the capability to geoengineer and discuss the technology and policy of a geoengineering research program needed to build such capability.
Video:
"David Keith's Unusual Climate Idea" TED talks
Royal Geographical Society Debates with David Keith
OP-EDs
Thomas Homer-Dixon, David Keith. (19 September 2008). Blocking the Sky to Save the Earth. The New York Times. PDF
Articles:
David W. Keith (2000). Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 25: 245-284. PDF
David W. Keith, Minh Ha-Duong and Joshuah K. Stolaroff (2005). Climate strategy with CO2 capture from the air. Climatic Change, published on line, DOI: 10.1007/s10584-005-9026-x. PDF
Professor Keith has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology and public policy for twenty years. His work in technology and policy assessment has centered on the capture and storage of CO2, the technology and implications of global climate engineering, the economics and climatic impacts of large-scale wind power and the prospects for hydrogen fuel.
As a technologist, David has built a high-accuracy infrared spectrometer for NASA's ER-2 and developed new methods for reservoir engineering increase the safety of stored CO2. He now leads a team of engineers developing technology to capture of CO2 from ambient air at an industrial scale.David took first prize in Canada's national physics prize exam, he won MIT's prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was named Environmental Scientist of the Year by Canadian Geographic in 2006. He spent most of his career in the United States at Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University before returning to Canada in 2004 to lead a research group in energy and environmental systems at the University of Calgary.
David has served on numerous high-profile advisory panels such as the UK Royal Society's geoengineering study, the IPCC, and Canadian 'blue ribbon' panels and boards. David has addressed technical audiences with articles in Science and Nature, he has consulted for national governments, global industry leaders and international environmental groups, and has reached the public through venues such as the BBC, NPR, CNN and the editorial page of the New York Times.
