Magazine Engineers Interview with Centre Director

Professional Engineering magazine by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers caught up with Centre Director, Shaun Fitzgerald, on climate engineering and why he feels it is necessary.

Engineers will have an increasingly growing role as global temperatures continue to rise. The view of 'business as normal' when it comes to emitting carbon emissions is justified by the idea that 'science will save us'.

Unfortunately, it just might have to come down to that. 

Shaun runs the Centre for Climate Repair, based at the University of Cambridge, with the hope that the research being undertaken will never have to be used - that emissions reduction and greenhouse gas removal wins the day. But we need to be prepared in case all else fails.

 'Geo-engineering' is seen as a dirty word and so most research remains firmly in modelling and computer simulations. However, Shaun points out that "you can't just live in a modelling world, you've got to have real-world data to be able to test those models." Small scale testing helps scientists improve their models and to test the robustness of such methods. 

When we board a plane, we are doing so with the hope that the pilot has gone through every simulation possible and has done some test runs in an actual plane before flying across the world with a flight full of passengers. Geo-engineering is no different. 

"The reason we're doing research into climate engineering is we've got grave concerns about the timescales involved in scaling up emissions reductions and greenhouse gas removal to an extent that keeps you on track for a 1.5C target by 2100."