Hello, I would like to emphasize about "unintentional climate intervention" in a particular way: some human activities (agriculture, forests management, electricity production, ...) have, through albedo, water cycle, flow of various nutrients to the oceans, turbine condensers heat sinks, etc, other side effects on the climate than only GHG emissions. If we are lucky enough as to massively develop renewable energies, all of them will have such side effects : massive wind energy could make some areas less windy or change the preferred routes of some winds, various solar energies have various heat sinks behaviours (quantity, pattern over 24 h, ...), marine technologies could modify some sea streams, biofuels will add up to the current agricultural constraints, etc.
As a consequence, there are probably a lot of options which have various effects on the climate, and assessing them could be of some interest to help us to choose the least harmful (or the most beneficial) of these options. But, previously, this requires that our scientific knowledge of these various effects be greatly increased, in a field which I view as not very far from geoengineering. Best regards, Denis Bonnelle [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> De : William Fulkerson [mailto:[email protected]] Envoyé : mercredi 25 novembre 2009 02:40 À : [email protected] Cc : Google Group Objet : Re: [geo] scale, scope, emphasis, and structure of research programs (or program) Dear Ken: Kudos for actually beginning an outline of a comprehensive R&D Program on intentional climate intervention. Your three different types of R&D activities are a good start in the thinking process. You might as well add in a fourth called emission control that combats what until recently might be called "unintentional climate intervention." I was very glad to see your part C. It includes the issue of confronting near term impacts such as the loss of Arctic summer sea ice. As you know my propensity is to put a great emphasis and priority on this problem. SRM, stratospheric or tropospheric,is likely the only strategy that has a chance of being deployed in time. Thus, there is an urgency to mount the R&D needed to determine the best approaches, to discover the extent of negative consequences, to determine costs and whether the SRM can be largely contained geographically, and to explore the problems of governance. From what I have learned from you and the others commenting on this Google Group site, I will bet a geographically and time (only in the summer) limited approach can be devised, tested and put to the international community for a deployment decision in time to reverse any catastrophic loss of summer sea ice. It seems to me the priority for this R&D is high. It will complement the other parts of the overall R&D efforts you outline. With best regards, Bill Bill Fulkerson Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment University of Tennessee 311 Conference Center Bldg. Knoxville, TN 37996-4138 [email protected] 865-974-9221, -1838 FAX Home 865-988-8084; 865-680-0937 CELL 2781 Wheat Road, Lenoir City, TN 37771- . On 11/24/09 1:24 PM, "Ken Caldeira" <[email protected]> wrote: Folks, I think we are coming to a point where there is near-consensus that we need research into climate intervention. However, I think there are very real differences over the scale, scope, emphasis, and structure of a proposed research program (or programs). Furthermore, there has been almost no discussion on the criteria by which program areas,or proposed activities within those program areas, would be prioritized. I would like to open this discussion: ============ With regard to structure, I would suggest that there are several independent or quasi-independent research programs: A. Approaches to remove carbon dioxide (and perhaps other radiatively active gases) from the atmosphere (i.e., Carbon Dioxide Removal methods) A.1. Approaches that involve biological organisms to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere A.2. Approaches that use chemical engineering methods to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere B. Approaches to directly intervene in Earth's energy flows or storage that do not work primarily through changing greenhouse gas concentrations (i.e., Solar Radiation Management methods) ------------ Program segments A and B are organized around tools that can be used to address problems. One could imagine another program element that is organized around assessing potential threats and possible responses: C. Threat and response assessment C.1. Ice sheet stability C.2. Permafrost methane degassing C.3. Changes in weather patterns that might disrupt agricultural productivity C.4. etc ------------ I see little reason to link A, B, and C closely together and think they should be independent (or largely independent) programs. It is not clear that A.1 needs to be closely linked to A.2. =============== Regarding criteria for funding proposals or program elements within A, B, and C, some initial comments: I think the criteria for funding under program element A (carbon dioxide removal and related approaches) should center on scalability, cost, and environmental consequences. I think the criteria for funding under program element B (solar radiation management and related approaches) should center on scalability, rapidity of possible deployment, affordability, and environmental consequences. I distinguish cost from affordability in that program elements A will, at least in the near term, compete with emissions avoidance, thus marginal cost is critical. However, program elements B might be used in an emergency situation where cost is secondary and, if it works, people might be in a bad enough situation that they might be willing to spend a large fraction of GDP on deployment. ============== Does anybody else want to weigh in on scale, scope, emphasis, and structure of climate intervention research programs (or program)? ============== Best, Ken ___________________________________________________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA [email protected]; [email protected] http://dge.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/labs/caldeiralab +1 650 704 7212; fax: +1 650 462 5968 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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