In watching an action fantasy world apocalypse movie like Geostorm, a temptation for the cynical can be to just see the surface appearance. First a village mysteriously freezes solid in an instant in Afghanistan, then the streets of Hong Kong erupt in flaming explosions sending skyscrapers collapsing like dominoes while a driver miraculously escapes through the rippling volcanic chasms opening around him. And next the bikini babes on Copacabana turn to blocks of ice as a super cold front somehow pushes a tsunami onto the Rio beachfront.

The cause of the disasters is problems with geoengineering satellites deployed in 2019. But is this just a programming malfunction? If not, who are the baddies who have sabotaged the world weather management system run by the USA? Why and how did they do it, and how can they be stopped? Who is the rogue on board the geoengineering space station? Will the clock that he started tick down to zero, causing a geostorm, a fiery end to life on earth? Will the US President die in the robot car chase through massive lightning bolts hitting every second? Will the hero return from exile, and will he survive on the space station? Will his brother get the girl? Which city is next?

Such plot details are classic Hollywood formula. This movie combines amazing disaster scenes, excellent visuals and production, a strong simple plot, a vivid range of characters and great acting into a gripping thriller. Geostorm is full of tension and drama and surprise and new ideas down to the wire. It is a worthy popular successor to Independence Day and Godzilla, which were both also produced by the Geostorm producer/director Dean Devlin.

Geostorm deserves to be a smash hit for a serious reason though. This movie makes an important and well considered contribution to advancing policy debate on response to climate change. The question raised at the start is how to address the threat that global warming could destroy the world economy. This explicitly raises the need for urgent concerted technological response to avert catastrophe, since previous methods focused on emission reduction have failed.

The movie deliberately chooses an impossible geoengineering technology, aiming to blend the topical ideas of weather management and space travel to create a science fiction fantasy. But the risk parable is equally applicable to realistic geoengineering proposals, ranging from solar radiation management to large scale ocean based algae production for carbon mining. Any large scale climate intervention needs proper risk management if it is to help forestall the impending climate impacts.

In a nod to human corruption, the plot raises the risk of weaponizing a peaceful technology, evoking the failed military Star Wars Initiative idea of death from the skies. And recognising human fallibility, Geostorm asks if this magical system installed by technological geniuses at the last minute will become like Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, producing uncontrollable and unforeseen damage.

The movie explores the real risk of whether a technological fix to mitigate extreme weather could be built too quickly under political imperatives. The need to respond to weather events that destroy whole cities could mean decisions will be made by politicians who will not take on board the best information. The rapid deployment then opens the unsettling policy risks of how such a system could be corrupted and misused for political motives, how it could sideline the high ideals of global scientific cooperation in favour of national or commercial interests. And then, with the process already compromised, could the resulting security gaps, political appointments and weak governance systems risk manipulation by criminals who don’t have a clue about the science of what they are doing, and who lack concern about the scale of damage they might cause?

The need for geoengineering means these issues should already be big questions in world politics today. Unfortunately they are not, because the dominant attitude is that if we ignore or deny climate change or only accept unworkable responses the problem will go away. With CO2 level continuing to grow apace, the risk is that far from going away, the problems will go awry.
Emission reduction alone cannot hold temperature rise this century below four degrees Celsius, so technological fixes are essential. Putting on an alarmist hat, it seems possible that failure to deploy geoengineering could even make the current sixth world extinction event rival the mass death that ended the Permian Age 252 million years ago. That seems to be the partly unconscious apocalyptic worry driving popular interest in movies like Geostorm.

Geoengineering is absolutely necessary and urgent for climate stability. We need world leaders to take up the ideas implied by this movie, through large scale funding of lab and field trials looking to select and deploy systems that will stabilise and repair the climate as a primary global security concern.

A bunch of reviews are at https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/geostorm/, but as you might expect from the usual foolish cynics writing in popular media, they have no eye for the meaning of this movie. They wrongly see it only through a surface movie industry lens without caring about its meaning and purpose for core ethical problems facing humanity. Geostorm raises major existential concerns of our age in an accessible popular way. It should be celebrated and debated as a major event. Geostorm could help achieve the political tipping point we need to deploy geoengineering systems with sound governance, reversing the current path towards mass extinction and economic and social displacement and collapse in favour of practical methods to stabilise the global climate.

Robert Tulip
http://rtulip.net/blog/2017/10/25/geost ... ie-review/

Very nice summary, Robert. The flavor of this film comes through well, and I think I'll skip watching it. I don't watch that many movies anyway.

Yes, of all the subjects that Hollywood might treat in cautionary fashion, geoengineering would be high on the list. There would be no mileage from a rosy view of climate engineering, for one thing. No work for the special effects people. From your review it sounds to me that the average viewer would come away thinking, "Hell no!" about geoengineering. We've already seen the internet become a wonderful tool for criminals and terrorists. It's not crazy to suppose that bad guys could exploit weak points or that rogue countries could try to weaponize the technology.

The fact remains for me that we know how to reduce emissions through several effective means. Germany produced 35% of its power from renewables in the first half of 2017, according to Reuters. You may be right that such a level of reduction would not be enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change, even in the unlikely event that the world could be like Germany. But no geoengineering method has been proven to work, not to mention that the risks are very great due to our imperfect understanding of the complex weather systems. We are likely to remain tribal far into the future as well, which casts grave doubt on the world's ability to come together. I expect Bannon-type nationalism/isolationism to be a flash in the pan, but nationalism itself may be a permanent reality, despite utopian visions such as Star Trek's.

Here is a response I just sent to the google geoengineering group.

"Dear Robert--Personally, I'd rather there were a movie focusing on the how the world could accomplish aggressive mitigation and necessary adaptation... then showing how modest climate engineering could be used to shave the peak warming and impacts down further"

Thanks Mike McCracken for your thoughtful response to my review.

Climate documentaries are important but don’t engage a mass audience, and can struggle to engage on the strategic issues around geoengineering. Geostorm earned $16m in its first week, released in over 3000 cinemas. Amid all the entertaining nonsense, it poses the simple serious strategic question of whether climate intervention will be needed soon.

I like that message because mitigation of climate change through emission reduction is a pointless failure. The world is best off just abandoning emission reduction as a goal and instead looking to how to use technology to remove more carbon from the air than total emissions, with solar radiation management as a stopgap. Field trials of methods like the Iron Salt Aerosol dispersion that Frank Dietrich Oeste just mentioned should be championed by world political and business leaders. The system needs the type of shock that this fantasy movie helps to send.

We live in a Huxleyan Brave New World where the majority are made complacent and ignorant by the consumer society. Most people do not engage well with scientific information at the level needed to influence politics. Debating adaptation and mitigation can help to refine messages, but does not change many people’s opinion about the need for action, especially when the advocacy message oversells the prospect for emission reduction to solve climate problems.

Before The Flood, a free climate documentary made last year by National Geographic and Leonardo DiCaprio, had more than sixty million viewers in 2016, but contains the false messages that net zero emissions through decarbonisation of the economy should be a goal (we need massive negative emissions alongside continued fossil fuel use), and that individual footprint actions matter (they don’t). Such documentaries attract people who already have interest and sympathy for the existing failed political messages of the climate lobby, and do little to address the blockages of social polarisation or the business drivers for increased emissions.

Aggressive mitigation through steep emission cuts faces immense political obstacles demonstrated by the US Paris withdrawal and business resistance. And even if somehow emission reduction was achieved at large scale, it would do little to stop warming, since it only slows CO2 growth rather than removing carbon. Germany is spending nearly a trillion euros on emission reduction but only expects to achieve 80% of its 2020 target. Those subsidies should shift to technological R&D as Lomborg advocates.

To stop global warming we need geoengineering, primarily oceanic carbon mining. As well as addressing the cause of global warming and acid at the source rather than just patching symptoms, carbon removal has the advantage over SRM that it is likely to prove safer and more politically palatable, especially as commercially profitable methods are developed under sound governance regimes.

My rough estimate is that emission mitigation can remove about 1% as much carbon as carbon mining could over the next decade. So to put most of our eggs in the tiny basket of emission reduction and almost none in the big basket of carbon reduction is stupid.

Geostorm helps prepare for a more serious political debate on the need for SRM trials as a climate band-aid. Its real value could then be in helping shift popular attitudes on the primary need for the only long-term escape route, finding profitable ways to remove excess carbon from the air.

Noting your comments about the failure and spin of the IPCC makes me feel that Trump’s withdrawal from Paris could perversely have the good effect of shaking up the debate to make it more realistic, perhaps even lifting the appalling UN informal ‘fatwa’ on geoengineering.

I think you misread the politics of Geostorm. The big takeaway is that the world community in the very near future will decide that climate change is so bad and dangerous that drastic steps are needed, with real practical change rather than the failed political spin agreed at Paris. And the next message from this movie is that we should start now, since waiting to respond to a crisis carries too many risks.

Robert Tulip

Robert Tulip wrote:
I think you misread the politics of Geostorm. The big takeaway is that the world community in the very near future will decide that climate change is so bad and dangerous that drastic steps are needed, with real practical change rather than the failed political spin agreed at Paris. And the next message from this movie is that we should start now, since waiting to respond to a crisis carries too many risks.

Robert Tulip

If we wait until the world forms a consensus that geoengineering needs to begin in earnest, we're likely to wait for an extremely long time, even as effects become more severe. How in "the world" is such concerted action to be taken? It won't be. This only indicates that the political barriers are as formidable as the technical ones.(Are you in favor of a world government?) On the mitigation front, we have much practical action going on right now. It seems wrongheaded to deny that eventually we'll need to get off a carbon-based economy, so why not continue with these efforts? The climate change deniers such as Mr. Trump cite damage to the economy if we pursue expensive mitigation. Other, more perceptive leaders have grasped the economic benefit of switching to other energy bases.

We're going to take our lumps for what we've already done to load the atmosphere with carbon, no matter how seriously we pursue emissions reduction or other forms of mitigation. We need to accept that. Geoengineering, even if it could be proven effective, will only enable us to continue the illusion that we can manipulate nature to our benefit in order to increase material standards of living for one species.

Deciding to allow drastic steps is different from taking concerted action. The need is to remove the barriers to investment in field trials led by scientists and businesses, with governments only having a regulatory role. Shifting funds from renewable subsidy to new technology development would remove far more carbon for the same investment. My view is that large scale ocean based algae production will prove the most economic carbon removal method, by converting CO2 into valuable food, hydrocarbons and related products as a profitable industry that also has biodiversity benefits. Carbon removal can remove the need for emission reduction.

Is there not a similar movie that addresses the same issues already?