If the documented history of the Earth's climate for the past 450 million years (see www.scotese.com) has any relevance, the global average temperature is headed for 25 C, up almost 10 degrees C from current values, even without the benefit of anthropogenic CO2. Needless to say, but worth emphasizing, even if we stopped producing CO2 tomorrow and could remove current excess atmospheric values we are headed for serious climate warming problems. The social implications are enormous and there is little doubt that techniques for minimizing the temperature rise will become essential if they are not now extremely important. Hence I argue for formalizing the study of geoengineering techniques/technology before leaping in to do something about current concerns with a particular approach. Having a formal geoengineering society would have immense value. Plant some of the seed. Don't simply eat it all now.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike MacCracken Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 12:00 AM To: Geoengineering Subject: [geo] On what research I would suggest Ken et al.--Note that I am going to focus on SRM approaches here. A word, however, on CDR, which, it seems to me, is just not at all likely to make an important contribution to limiting climate change until global emissions are brought down a good bit through efficiency, essentially giving up coal, etc. With global C emissions nearing 10 GtC/yr and rising, working on approaches that at maximum might make it up to sequestering 1-2 GtC/yr is just premature--we need to take other steps first. The one exception here, it seems to me, is to see if we can figure out how to deal with ocean acidification such as through Greg Rau's approach--I'm not sure if that is more mitigation or not. On SRM approaches, as I have been saying for a couple of years, it seems to me that the highest priority for early research should be on determining if it is possible to use various of the proposed SRM techniques in very focused ways to limit worsening impacts in the near-term (in places like the Arctic, the loss of sea ice, ice sheet mass, and permafrost is an emergency now, or nearly so, and so waiting to move toward implementation seems too hesitant to me. With this perspective, I would set up a very mission-focused program goal of coming up with a tested approach for dealing with one or more of the most severe impacts, aiming for making a decision to move forward with implementation starting in of order of five years (so a 5-year research program to get to the implementation stage, and then ongoing research as implementation is in progress). The types of impacts that I would choose to focus on would include some combination of the following (and there are of course interlinkages): generally reducing Arctic warming (which would also lead to some likely beneficial cooling in mid-latitudes); slowing the loss of ice from the major ice sheets; keeping permafrost frozen; redirecting or intensifying seasonal storm tracks into increasingly arid regions like southwestern North America and/or Australia; cooling the waters where hurricanes/tropical cyclones intensify; and similar steps. There are those who argue that nothing can be done primarily regionally--that everything leads to global responses; determining whether such global connections are statistically significant or not (and whether varying details of the implementation could be done to reduce them) would be a clear issue to research--including whether what long-distant linkages there are are beneficial or harmful. With focused objectives such as these, I would think that there could be much more focused environmental and social science research as well--much more clearly presenting the issue as a risk-risk evaluation than arises in discussions of future global geoengineering. On the benefit side there would at least be a clear beneficial change being sought, which can get much more confused in the global case. I should also note that I think focusing on moderating regional-scale impacts, there would hopefully be less of a tendency to reduce effort on mitigation (if that really is a problem), because, of course, there are a whole host of impacts not being addressed. Not only would success in coming up with an approach for dealing with severe impacts such as mentioned above, but it would also help to build understanding about the various approaches and the basis for ongoing, but lower priority research on potential global implementation, which I think should also be considering what I think would be more realistic implementation scenarios (e.g., implementing incrementally to stop and slowly reduce radiative forcing starting in the near-term) than imagining we'd figure out and agree on when some threshold has been passed and do a large and sudden emergency implementation (not even being clear that when so far along everything can be reversed). I've written up some of these ideas over the past year or too for various studies, but had not passed them around, so will attach to this message. The first memo offers some thoughts on how I would organize a US program, and an accompanying table suggest some specific research efforts. Note that this memo envisions not just the very focused applied effort, but also an independent research and evaluation effort to keep make sure questions get raised and considered--again relating to moving toward the specific proposed objective, but in this effort on real and potential shortcomings, and not just a general research effort (we need more money for that). The second memo was prepared as a more detailed example of how one might structure the component of the program aimed at moving rapidly to limit Arctic warming. It is posed as a letter dated a few years hence seeking approval for moving ahead with a major field program to test approaches that have already been tested in computer simulations, etc. Clearly an optimistic timetable, but really the type of one that is needed given what seem to be irreversible changes (like loss of mass from Greenland, loss of biodiversity, etc.) that we seem headed toward. Note that the ideas written up are over a year old, so a bit dated. And these are just ideas--they would greatly benefit from some intense discussion about how to do even better, etc. I just think we are moving far too slowly right now. Best, Mike MacCracken -- 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.
