"you gals are full of it"
Full of what exactly Alvia?
As a defense of a conference that is 80% men, in a field that is
dominated by men and macho metaphors - this is pretty telling
language. Seems to me that the gender politics of geoengineering is
still stuck in playground namecalling..
best
Jim
ps. And how did this get through the 'no ad hominem attacks' rule?
On Mar 23, 2010, at 5:24 PM, Alvia Gaskill wrote:
Since the conspirators at Asilomar are under some kind of self-
imposed news blackout, I will speak for them regarding this
article. You gals are full of it. And it's the Government
Accountability Office, not the Government Accounting Office. They
gave up on that one a long time ago.
----- Original Message -----
From: Diana Bronson
To: [email protected] ; [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 11:21 AM
Subject: [clim] Article on Asilomar by Rachel Smolker
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/23-4
Published on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
We Cannot 'Techno-Fix' Our Way to a Sustainable Future
by Rachel Smolker
This week, California will host the Asilomar International
Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies. The conference
follows hearings last week in the US House of Representatives and a
report from the UK Committee on Science and Technology, as well as a
recent report from the Government Accounting Office, all following
on the heels of earlier reports from the Royal Society. In short,
there is a lot of high level interest in the topic.
Given the failure of Copenhagen, the sellout of US Congress to
special interests and the stalemated international negotiations, the
"last resort" of geoengineering is gaining support. This is
especially true as many are either in a state of panic or paralysis
following recent announcements of methane seeping from the East
Siberian Arctic Shelf, on top of the ongoing reports of emissions
rising, ice melting, and temperatures reaching all time highs.
There are good reasons to be quite worried. But there may be good
reasons to be even MORE worried by the climate geoengineering
proponents and what is going on at Asilomar this week.
The conference holds as its intent to develop "voluntary guidelines"
for further research on climate geoengineering technologies.
Voluntary guidelines are most often designed to fend off
"involuntary" regulation. The conference is organized by Margaret
Leinen, who happens to be the mother of Dan Whaley, founder and CEO
of Climos, a company with patents currently pending for methods to
profit by selling carbon offsets from ocean fertilization, one
proposed geoengineering technology. Other major players in
geoengineering, some of whom will be at Asilomar, similarly have
vested interests in ensuring cash flows for funding, experimentation
and commercialization of their pet technologies.
We can pretty well guess that whatever "voluntary guidelines" they
come up with for themselves will be designed with "don't take no for
an answer" as their underlying mantra.
A letter signed by dozens of civil society groups was submitted to
the conference organizers, challenging the entire premise of the
conference in stating: "The priority at this time is not to sort
out the conditions under which this experimentation might take place
but, rather, whether or not the community of nations and peoples
believes that geoengineering is technically, legally, socially,
environmentally and economically acceptable."
Asilomar seeks to step right on past any process for determination
of acceptability, assume it as a given, and carry on with business.
This is deeply troubling on many fronts given the technofixes being
put on the table, the scale of their impacts, and the track record
so far.
The technologies for "climate intervention"(aka, geoengineering)
fall into two broad categories: Carbon sequestration and solar
radiation management. Ocean fertilization falls into the former. The
idea is to dump iron particles into ocean waters to stimulate
plankton blooms. The plankton absorb CO2, and when they die,
(hopefully) carry their carbon to the ocean floor to remain
sequestered. There are many known risk factors, including one newly
discovered and described just last week in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. This study revealed that the kinds of
plankton that are stimulated by iron fertilization include those
that produce domoic acid, cause of shellfish poisoning in humans and
lethal to marine animals. Oops.
Ocean fertilization has already been tested numerous times. The
controversial "Lohafex" test last year failed to illustrate any
carbon sequestration after dumping more than 6 tons of iron into the
Southern Ocean. To make matters worse, these tests were undertaken
in spite of a moratorium agreed to by close to 200 nations under the
Convention on Biological Diversity, also defying the London
Convention on Ocean Dumping. Such treaties and agreements are,
apparently, just pieces of paper. Biochar is another carbon
sequestration technology proposed. Advocates claim that by growing
hundreds of millions of hectares of tree plantations, burning the
trees to make charcoal and then tilling the charcoal into soils, we
can sequester carbon under ground. The scale that would be entailed
here is monumental, especially given that only 12-40% of the carbon
from the trees is retained in the charcoal. The impacts, on forests,
soils, and from small particles (soot) becoming airborne, could very
well outweigh any supposed gain.
Another broad category of climate intervention technologies involve
"solar radiation management" (SRM), i.e. blocking or reflecting
sunlight. Examples include using jets or rockets to blast small
reflective sulphate particles into the stratosphere, "cloud
whitening" to increase reflectivity by injecting saltwater mist into
clouds, vast plantations of plants engineered to have shiny,
reflective leaves, or covering large areas of the desert with a
white/reflective coating or deplying huge arrays of mirrors into
space.
These technologies are virtually all extremely risky, expensive and/
or downright nuts. But, frighteningly, they are gaining mainstream
acceptability! Among the advocates are some, like Bjorn Lomberg the
"Skeptical Envrionmentalist", who have denied global warming is even
real. Some claim that these approaches are prefereable to reducing
emissions. Julian Morris, of the International Policy Network, for
example stated: "Diverting money into controlling carbon emissions
and away from geoengineering is probably morally irresponsible."
The potential for "weaponization" of climate geoengineering
technologies adds fuel to the fires for those who find this issue
troubling. Who will control and have access to the power to control
rainfall or deflect (or not) sunlight in a drought, flood, famine
and water deprived future world?
Perhaps it is time for a collective pause and some deep reflection?
First of all, our faith in science and technology seems to be
teetering precipitously. On the one hand, we appear shocked when
scientists err, as if we somehow expect the scientific method and
its practitioners to be godlike in their ability to predict the
future of global systems and dynamics. On the other hand, many are
prepared to deny the validity of literally thousand of studies all
converging towards the conclusion that global warming is in fact a
reality. Further, we fail to recognize that science is merely a
tool, and it's ability to uncover "truths" depends utterly on the
skill and integrity of its' users. Scientific rigor demands a lag
time between asking a question and offering "proof" for an answer.
That time delay is inconveniently long under the current
circumstances.
How do we reconcile? The decision to resort to technofixes to
geoengineer our only planet is not up to the handful of profit-
seeking businessmen donning lab coats at Asilomar this week. The
planet is our collective responsibility. The world views held by
many earth inhabitants, including most if not all indigenous
peoples, is that we are not Mother Earth's "mechanics", but rather
integral parts of her. This view is part of the conciousness of
"Pachamama" which will be visibly present at the "negotiating
tables" in the upcoming World Peoples Conference on Climate Change
and the Rights of Mother Earth, being held in Bolivia next month.
I, for one, will feel far more hopeful about my children's future if
decisions about climate geoengineering come not from Asilomar and
the "profitable technofix" mindset, but rather out of Bolivia, with
the Rights of Mother Earth as their basis.
Rachel Smolker is codirector of Biofuelwatch, and an organizer with
Climate SOS. She has a Ph.D. in behavioral ecology from the
University of Michigan and worked as a field biologist before
turning to activism. She is the daughter of Environmental Defense
Fund cofounder, Robert Smolker, and she engaged in direct action at
EDF offices to oppose their advocacy for carbon trade. She has
written on the topic of bioenergy, carbon trade and climate justice.
She was arrested protesting outside the Chicago Climate Exchange in
November as part of theMobilization for Climate Justice day of
actions, which she wrote about for CommonDreams.org.
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Jim Thomas
ETC Group (Montreal)
[email protected]
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