Andrew:
Your comments are precisely why having the Arctic Council manage it
will help deflect such UN-level chaos.
No nation is going to try to muscle the Council: they're too powerful.
Let them own the issue, because they have the most at stake. Worry not
about farmers who, in my experience on farms, will blame everything on
the weather (or the government of their own nation).
Meanwhile, take the high road of rational risk analysis, as John says.
Gregory
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; geoengineering
<[email protected]>; Mark Serreze
<[email protected]>
Sent: Sun, Feb 21, 2010 2:56 pm
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: SRM geoengineering: how to deal with the losers?
I don't agree with John's reasoning. Whilst a rational and
all-powerful government might use such an approach, this is not likely
to be the case in practice. Realpolitik suggests that people will look
at only the downside of geoengineering when it affects them personally.
If you're a farmer with a failed crop, the benefit of constraining
methane releases won't seem a worthwhile trade off. Your government
may well agree.
It's the fine detail of the handling of these matters, and proper
governance surrounding them, that will prevent governments 'sinking the
cloud ships', either literally or metaphorically. If these concerns
aren't handled properly, I could even imagine countries deliberately
worsening the greenhouse effect to counteract geoengineering schemes.
Releasing HFCs/CFCs would be a very simple way to do this.
A
On 21 February 2010 14:50, John Nissen <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hello Peter,
To answer your question on cost/benefit, we need to analyse the
balanceof the risks of geoengineering to cool the Arctic against the
risks ofnot geoengineering. This balancing of risks needs to take into
accountthe timescale of processes in the Arctic which give rise to the
risksof not geoengineering. For example, if these processes were
veryunlikely to build up significant positive climate forcing or sea
levelrise over the next few decades, one could be relaxed
aboutgeoengineering. But there is data about the Arctic sea ice
retreat,shown in a single graph, that gives much cause for concern.
The graphhas been reproduced in the Copenhagen diagnosis report [1].
The graph is derived from one in this 2007 paper [2], by
Stroeve,Serreze et al, with additions for 2007 and 2008. Note that
this paperwas submitted before the abrupt retreat of sea ice to achieve
a recordlow September 2007.
In the light of such developments in the Arctic, and revised
timingestimates, we should prepare a risk analysis, but it will be in
aseparate thread.
Note that, in terms of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) [3], we
haverisk defined thus:
In a PRA, risk is characterized by two quantities: the magnitude
(severity) of the possible adverseconsequence(s), and
the likelihood (probability) of occurrence of each consequence.
Conventional cost-benefit analysis [4] is not quite what we are
lookingfor, because it assumes the status quo is acceptable:
Cost–benefit analysis is typically used by governments to
evaluatethedesirability of a given intervention. It is heavily used in
today'sgovernment. It is an analysis of the cost effectiveness of
differentalternatives in order to see whether the benefits outweigh the
costs.The aim is to gauge the efficiency of the intervention relative
tothestatus quo. The costs and benefits of the impacts of
aninterventionare evaluated in terms of the public's willingness to pay
for them(benefits) or willingness to pay to avoid them (costs).
However we can try to "gauge the efficiency of the intervention"
relativeto no intervention in our analysis. We also need to
takeprobabilities and timescale into account, in order to compare
immediateintervention with delayed intervention. Of course, the
"costs" ofintervention must include the risks of adverse consequences.
Cheers from Chiswick,
John
[1] See fig 13 page 30:
http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf
[2] Published in Geophysical Research Letters and reproduced here:
http://www.smithpa.demon.co.uk/GRL%20Arctic%20Ice.pdf
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_risk_assessment
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-benefit_analysis
---
p.j.irvine wrote: dear Gregory Benford,It seems that there is an
assumption that cooling the arctic isessential and trumps any potential
impacts in other parts of theworld.I'm not sure how it would be
achieved but I believe that an in-depthcost-benefit assesment of any
proposed geoengineering scheme isessential. For example, If the
suspected impact of an arcticintervention was a cooling of the arctic
but also a change inhydrology in another part of the world; surely to
justify theintervention it would have to be proved that the overall
effect waspositive?I can imagine their are a lot of tricky things to
quantify, theimpacts of runaway climate change for tundra melt, the
subjectivevalue of any predicted change in the climate, etc. (and a lot
ofunquantifiable things besides) but I believe the principle
shouldremain.Do you agree that this principle of a calculated or
expected positiveglobal impact should be satisfied before any
geoengineeringintervention s undertaken? The alternative seems to
justify regions orcountries modifying regional climate for their
benefit regardless ofdetrimental impacts elsewhere.regards,Pete
IrvineOn Feb 20, 4:44 pm, [email protected] wrote: All:Stephen,
this transfer function is for tropospheric spraying, yes? Thestrato
cases are not nearly so predictable. I'd expect the tropo spraysdon't
propagate far, anyway.National legislation to protect geo experiments
from lawsuits iscrucial. As David says, international treaties will
help, but I'destimate they will take far longer, and delay is our
enemy. I'd behappy with the Arctic Council defending their experiments,
as they haveclout and standing.Gregory Benford-----Original
Message-----From: David Schnare <[email protected]>Cc:
geoengineering <[email protected]>Sent: Sat, Feb
20, 2010 7:56 amSubject: Re: [geo] SRM geoengineering: how to deal with
the losers?Pete: My sense is that who will be a winner or loser is an
unknowableunknown. While I agree with Professor Salter that we could
take a stabat it, and indeed others on this list have made some
preliminaryattempts to look at precipitation issues, the sad reality is
thatmodels are dreadfully inadequate for regional analyses and
greatercomputing power will not be enough to make them much more
useful. In the absence of quality information, humankind has used a
best guess,iterative approach, achieved through international treaty.
Mysuspicion is that will be what will have to happen here to
addresswinners and losers. I am concerned, however, that such an
approachwill not work if potential "losers" demand stipulated
reparations. SchnareOn Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 9:38 AM,
p.j.irvine<[email protected]> wrote:It is likely that any
SRM geoengineering intervention will createwinners and losers and some
nations may always be against anyintervention whatsoever.Gregory
Benford raised the issue of reaching agreement on the globalscale and
how problematic it would be. If for example the arcticcouncil of
nations agreed to initiate a decade-long field trial tocool the arctic
by 1 C, how could they deal with complaints fromnations who felt that
this experiment had induced a negative change intheir climate?In any
given year there are floods, droughts, heatwaves, etc. butduring this
field trial a fraction of these events would be attributed(rightly or
wrongly, partially or fully) to the intervention. Twoquestions
arise:Could it be determined if any changes in the climate (outside of
thetarget area) had occurred as a result of the intervention during a
10year trial?How would aggrieved nations or peoples seek reparations
for perceivednegative impacts (scientifically proven or otherwise)?best
regards,Pete IrvinePhD studentSchool of Geographical SciencesUniversity
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