[7] He emphasizes that their scientific, environmental, geopolitical, social, psychological and ethical implications all need to be carefully examined and understood, before there can be a meaningful consideration of their possible use.
[9] Keith's interest in physics was strengthened by spending several summers working in the National Research Council laser lab of experimental physicist Paul Corkum, beginning around the end of high school.
[11] He developed a love of the Arctic when he spent part of a gap year between undergraduate and graduate studies as a wildlife biologist's research assistant[10] on Devon Island in Nunavut.
[12] Keith was a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University from 1991 to 1992, working with Granger Morgan to better understand uncertainty and expert judgments relating to climate change.
[15] Keith spent the final year of his NOAA postdoc as a research scientist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University where he remained from 1993 to 1999.
[14][3][10] Keith was the lead scientist in developing a Fourier-transform spectrometer with high radiometric accuracy which was used by NASA's high-altitude ER-2 research aircraft and by the Arrhenius satellite.
[4][19] In 2004, Keith was recruited to join the University of Calgary, where he became a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and economics, and held the Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment.
[24] Keith was a coauthor of the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report[25] (chapters AR3-WG1, 8 Model Evaluation;[26] AR3-WG3, 4 Technological and Economic Potential of Options to Enhance, Maintain, and Manage Biological Carbon Reservoirs and Geo-engineering[27]).
Keith was a member of the Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty working group of the UK Royal Society, which produced a 2009 report.
"[35] As of 2021, the National Academies issued a report on the same subject, supporting a robust research plan and substantial oversight, risk assessment, and public outreach efforts and describing a framework for governance of possible experiments.
In 2003, he and Alexander Farrell published a commentary in Science, questioning government initiatives for the development of fuel cell vehicles using compressed hydrogen.
[37] In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences published a controversial paper in which his computer models suggested that massive wind farms turbines might have unexpected local and global impacts on climate.
[9] As of 2005, Keith's team at the University of Calgary built a five-metre tower to test the feasibility of removing "scrubbing" CO2 from the air and storing it underground.
The company hopes to use the carbon dioxide extracted from the air to produce an energy-dense synthetic carbon-based fuel, suitable for semis, buses and aircraft.
[44] Financial backers of Carbon Engineering include Bill Gates, N. Murray Edwards,[45] Peter J. Thomson, Chevron Corporation, Occidental Petroleum, and mining conglomerate BHP.
[24] Keith has worked on solar geoengineering since 1992, when he and Hadi Dowlatabadi published one of the first assessments of the technology and its policy implications, introducing a structured comparison of cost and risk.
[49][34][50] Related publications include: In 2013, Keith published A Case for Climate Engineering, providing "a clear and accessible overview" to a "controversial technology".
[62][63] Keith described the possibility of deploying planes to release tons of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, which he freely admitted "would be a totally imperfect technical fix ..
[65] Keith has worked initially with atmospheric chemist James G. Anderson[41] and later with principal investigator Frank Keutsch in the "sun-dimming" project SCoPEx, to examine the potential of seeding the stratosphere with reflective particles that would direct sunlight away from the earth.
The idea was inspired by natural events such as the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which released sulfur and other particles into the air and caused a decrease in temperatures worldwide.
[66][49] Major concerns for such an approach include the questions of how long particles would remain in the stratosphere, how they might interact with other components of the atmosphere, and whether they would increase pollution, cause health risks for humans, or have other negative ecological effects.
"[68] On 31 March 2021, the SSC "said it had decided not to conduct the technical test" in the face of opposition from the local Sami reindeer herders and other environmental groups such as the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, who thought the techniques "too dangerous to ever be used".
Among others, he has shared his thoughts in the TED forum in 2007,[76] was featured on the Discovery Channel in 2008,[77] participated in a panel on 21st-century challenges at the Royal Geographical Society in 2009,[78] did an interview on BBC News HARDTalk in 2011,[79][80] and appeared in a Nova documentary on geoengineering which aired 28 October 2020.