The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World

This is a yet another good book on climate change and geo engineering. There are really good topics to learn like carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, veil making, crop pattern, rising ocean level, climate policy and effects and debates on climate change. Writing is very impressive and and have some content tone of fiction writing..I guess so. I am feeling honoured and greatful to author for such a wonderful book.Here is one ending quote I would like to share from book..........quote' Up above and far away, too far for any eye but the mind’s, a future lifted on long, strong wings starts a graceful, cautious turn. It seems almost beyond the bonds of Earth, but it does not fly in freedom; there are things it cannot do and must not do – many ways for it to slip and fall. The future is hemmed in on one hand by its design, on the other by the unforgiving laws of nature. But its heading and height can, with skill, be changed. Above it is emptiness, below it the bright and brightening world....unquote

Aburrido. Innecesariamente largo, con muy poco detalle sobre los procesos de geoingeniería, más preocupado por justificarla como opción. Solo unos pocos capítulos tienen interés.

Thoughtful and beautifully written. As philosophical as technical. Imaginatively hopeful.

Avec le réchauffement climatique, un livre passionnant et fondamental . L'auteur fait un travail remarquable de documentation, de recherche et de réflexion sur le Geoengineering et son histoire. L'ensemble est très complet, mesuré et très argumenté. La bibliographie est une mine.

I have not finished the book yet, but so far, it is fascinating. Lots of insights into the politics and propaganda of climate. Also a discussion of the "Nitrogen Cycle" which is a new way of looking at it for me.

If you go to a library and peruse the shelves of what writers from past decades thought future technologies might be like, you're liable to find some funny stuff. I expect that many of the existing books on geoengineering will be quaintly amusing to library-goers of 2050 or 2100.This book, however, I expect to have a long shelf-life: it's written not just for the present moment or the next climate conference, but for posterity; it will help future generations understand the deliberations & decisions of this time.Firstly, it's not plain "science writing"— this "book about the boundaries between physical planets and imagined worlds" is rich with history, & the best passages are literary or philosophical. The earthsystem is evoked as lived dynamic experience: "like wind on the skin, or the tremor in the ground from rushing water nearby, or lightning sensed through shut eyelids..."That said, there is a lot of accessibly-explained science. I've seen the Mt. Pinatubo powerpoint slide projected more times than I can count, but never fully grasped where climate modeling was at the time of Pinatubo, or understood the contribution of the eruption to climate science, before reading this book. I learned more about the stratosphere here than in 50 lectures on geoengineering; that is, I learned about it in a whole manner— not just stratosphere-as-object or place, but about the human conception of it and how that evolved.One of the book's gifts is its ability to easily place geoengineering into alignment with history; to tell the broader story — about both the earthsystem, and "men of human empire; the sort of men who can attract the interest and admiration of wealthier and more powerful men." You'll read about imperialism & the opening and closing of the frontier; about the jaded, gilded fin de siecle (lack of) spirit. In a media ecology that doesn't lend itself to seeing events within the broad context of history, this is quite refreshing — this subject really did need a book-length treatment that was more than just reportage. Speaking of grand narratives of history, I appreciate that this book doesn't hang its hat on "the Anthropocene"; it reckons with the term without making it central or a key tag. Smart move.There's a lot here I sympathize with — for example, the critique that natural and social scientists make the mistake of talking "as though what geoengineering is has already been decided, rather than treating it as something still up for grabs"; the argument that broadening the debate is not just about bringing more and different expertise in, but reimagining it. The comparison to human intervention in the nitrogen cycle was well-argued and compelling.I do wish the book had discussed gender in relation to its topic, and I'm curious to hear how the scenario near the end is received. The text suffers a bit from the syndrome of nearly all "environmental" books these days: you spend all your chapters tracing the roots and contours of a present phenomenon, and then there's only a chapter left for the future (Morton has made it explicit that the problem / solution framing is not useful here, so I won't use those terms, but it seems like a variation on the classic problem / solution book). Perhaps a companion volume is needed.Yet my favorite thing about this book is how nestles its utopian dream comfortably in small passages scattered throughout the text — there's no program, no bullet points, no grand utopian design, no grandstanding or ego-driven polemic: just a humble, powerful seed-planting type of strategy to encourage the reader to think & imagine. The basic idea: that exploring geoengineering "could spurt and shape the development of a new way of making planetary decisions", not just to develop a new thermostat, but to develop "a new hand to use it". The basic question: how can the challenge of remaking the planet "be used to bring about a world that could be trusted with the power to meet that challenge"? The simple-machines metaphor of levers and fulcrums used throughout actually works for me — no more spoilers here, though, you'll have to read it, and then, perhaps, be compelled to work with it.