INTRODUCTION

A

Climate
Repair Manual

Global warming is a reality. Innovation in energy technology and policy are sorely needed if we are to cope BY GARY STIX

Explorers attempted and

OVERVIEW
❊ New reports pile

up each month about the perils of climate change, including threats to marine life, increases in wildfires, even more virulent poison ivy.
❊ Implementing initiatives to stem global warming will prove more of a challenge than the
Manhattan Project.
❊ Leading thinkers detail their ideas in the articles that follow for deploying energy technologies to decarbonize the planet.

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mostly failed over the centuries to establish a pathway from the
Atlantic to the Pacific through the icebound North, a quest often punctuated by starvation and scurvy. Yet within just 40 years, and maybe many fewer, an ascending thermometer will likely mean that the maritime dream of
Sir Francis Drake and Captain
James Cook will turn into an actual route of commerce that competes with the Panama Canal.
The term “glacial change” has taken on a meaning opposite to its common usage. Yet in reality,
Arctic shipping lanes would count as one of the more benign effects of accelerated climate change. The repercussions of melting glaciers, disruptions in the Gulf Stream

SCIENTIFIC A MERIC A N

and record heat waves edge toward the apocalyptic: floods, pestilence, hurricanes, droughts— even itchier cases of poison ivy.
Month after month, reports mount of the deleterious effects of rising carbon levels. One recent study chronicled threats to coral and other marine organisms, another a big upswing in major wildfires in the western U.S. that have resulted because of warming.
The debate on global warming is over. Present levels of carbon dioxide — nearing 400 parts per million (ppm) in the earth’s atmosphere— are higher than they