Ken with few ccs
1. Thanks for reporting this $10 M news (and probably for scouting it up) 2. Oliver's note (below) comes closest to my own of the ideas so far put forth. It may be presumptive to assume multi year funding (and anything over $10 million in the first year), but why not assume a continuing effort? I endorse the idea of three parallel SRM efforts. I hope one would be "Bright Water" - as it has been more on this list recently ((and positively) than any other - and it seems to have special relevance to the Arctic. Oliver's call for some independent efforts is also worthy. 3. Oliver didn't mention the Arctic. I put in my vote for limiting activities to the Alaskan portion of the Arctic. Rationale - Alaska is way ahead of the rest of the country in recognizing something is happening. We can probably do almost nothing soon in Canada, Russia, Greenland, Iceland and Norway - but we should try immediately to get parallel efforts going in all. Some funds should be reserved to encourage their attendance at events. 4. Oliver calls out CDR in the context of some possibilities that are neither CDR or SRM. I would lump these possibilities with CDR and reserve perhaps 15-20% for those. Rationale - need for low cost and speed, but also need buy-in from CDR-folk. Any big activity will suffer politically .if CDR is not coupled with SRM, and if there is not a darn good reason for leaving something out. One option alone would be a disaster, especially if theri effects can be shown to be additive and not duplicative. 5. Oliver mentions DARPA. I think it would (stronger than "might") be wise to ask them to lead. Rationale - politics. Few AGW critics (eg Watts) are going to say anything negative about DARPA. In this regard, I see that DARPA met at Stanford in 2009 on this topic - so you should be in a position to know if they would be interested (as a favor to the actual agency with funds). [ http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/03/exclusive-milit.html ] 6. Carrying politics further, I hope you or someone can soon alert Alaska's 2 R's and 1 D in the Congress. This whole package should not be sold as having anything to do with AGW. All three of the elected representatives seem to agree that temperaures are rising rapidly. in Alaska and they must have some appreciation of pending methane release. None want to talk about causality - and we don't need to either. I believe they would not object strongly to money being spent primarily in Alaska. Your project (everything discussed on this list) needs political cover. If you can get the idea attributed to Rush or Glenn, all the better. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich might even find it politically expedient to weigh in; we are not talking taxes here. 7. Native Americans may/could/should have a role in this - especially as regards CDR use of dead/fallen trees and re-vegetation with high reflectivity biomass. They make up the population most impacted. More political cover. 8. Last is the issue of speed. I hope you are talking about this fiscal year's funding - and it would be great if you/DARPA could have some experimental results by the end of FY11. This will only be possible with something autocratic - and DARPA seems to know how to do that. But they will certainly listen to informal proposals - presumably from teams. One month to do that should be enough - being informal. 9. Re speed and expertise I urge giving the modeling task (mentioned by several) to Prof. Wieslaw Maslowski. I think he is the only modeler (and he has a big team) who has been correctly predicting the timing of an ice-free Arctic (now apparently at 2016 +/- 3 years). See http://www.oc.nps.edu/NAME/Maslowski_CV.htm and http://www.oc.nps.edu/NAME/name.html Having a connection with the US Navy has some other advantages - but those are not the reason for pushing his involvement. He knows the Arctic intimately. Again, thanks for very welcome news (and your behind the scenes searching?). Ron ----- Original Message ----- From: "Oliver Morton" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: "geoengineering" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 5:36:33 PM Subject: Re: [geo] How would you allocate US$10 million per year to most reduce climate risk? Broad RFPs for multi-year consortia -- maybe four three-year $5million grants to begin with. Define the goals that the research should support -- eg development and assessment of a 1W/m^2 (global average) SRM technology -- not the technologies that should be used. Provide a way for the scoring process to reward breadth of approach and ambition as well as (but not in place of) technical excellence. Appoint a program manager with a proven track and leadership record. (This is a bit Darpa-like -- not such a bad thing) In parallel, some two year single investigator grants, given on the basis that can roll them into a consortium if you think that's wise. Some focus here on generics eg modelling of scenarios. Include social sciences and humanities here. Budget for an intensive workshop stage for all grantees 18 months in. Issue a new RFP at the two-year mark for two new consortia. Extension for two best performing of the original consortia at three years, perhaps forcing some refugees form the salon des refuses onto the winning teams. (Program managers earn their keep that way) A specific protected budget for single investigators or small collaborations working on technologies and approaches with a so-far non-existent or at least minimal publication record. Favourite example -- systems for stopping glaciers. Cirrus management of outgoing IR might also fit. There are various geoengineering technologies that don't fit into CDR/SRM, such as those that seek to reallocate energy flows within the system. At the moment they are largely ignored. Expanding the universe of discourse this way should be a priority. Always, in general, define the questions, not the technologies you already see as the answers. o On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 4:08 PM, Ken Caldeira < [email protected] > wrote: Folks, There is some discussion in DC about making some small amount of public funds available to support SRM and CDR research. In today's funding climate, it is much more likely that someone might be given authority to re-allocate existing budgets than that they would actually be given significantly more money for this effort. Thus, the modest scale. If you were doing strategic planning for a US federal agency, and you were told that you had a budget of $10 million per year and that you should maximize the amount of climate risk reduction obtainable with that $10 million, what would you allocate it to and why? Best, Ken ___________________________________________________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected] http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab @kencaldeira -- 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] . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en . -- O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O Oliver Morton Energy and Environment Editor The Economist +44 7971 064 059 O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O -- 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]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- 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]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
