Alan and list. 1. Thanks for sending the brochure on IPCC-5. I see several places that Geoengineering could appear in each of the four reports, but the words "Geoengineering" and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) don't stand out anywhere - much less Biochar or even REDD. Which sections will the Lima Geoengineering Committee be focusing on (so we can compare to the last IPCC report). Or has that not yet been established?
2. My main concern is that your Lima group may not include any person working mainly in Biochar research. If that is the case, how can one ensure that Biochar literature is considered by the Lima group? 3. The IBI site (www.biochar-international.org) has a Bibliography of over 500 citations - most are refereed. By searching within that number I found only three (<1%) that refer to the term "Geoengineering". The Biochar research community is focused on soil augmentation, not CDR - even though the latter comes along with zero conflict and with out-year CDR advantages. I fear that a Geoengineering panel that includes no-one who has ever attended a Biochar conference will assume that the Biochar CDR literature is sparse. In fact there is a lot and rapidly growing - maybe with a doubling time of about a year. The IBI site for the first five months of 2011 added 10, 7, 10, 14, and 14 (mostly refereed) citations to this Bibliography. Does any other part of Geoengineering have this sort of publication growth? (In addition to the 3 in the bibliography, there were another 20 news items related to geoengineering - but I assume that none of those could be discussed in Lima.). 4. Can you assure me that this rapidly growing Biochar literature will be acknowledged in IPCC-5? And will not include that from the anti-Biochar community - which looks scientific, but I believe has never appeared in a refereed publication. The most recent with 150 supposed references doesn't even name any authors - and yet it will probably be available in Lima.. Of course, I would hope the same principles for finding applicable citations apply for all the other photosynthesis-related CDR approaches. I am guessing that most non-biomass CDR approaches will be represented at this Lima meeting. 5. As an example of my fears, the IPCC (WG III) has recently released a massive report on Renewable Energy. There is a fine chapter (#2) on Bioenergy, with hundreds of citations. See http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch02 . There is not one citation on Biochar. The word does not even appear in this chapter (although BECCS does - very briefly). The problem presumably is that none of the many knowledgeable authors of this chapter were soil scientists or working in CDR. Or (hopefully) the RE authors were passing all of the CDR aspects of Biomass on to the Geoengineering (or some other?) subgroup. Thanks in advance for more on any IPCC-5 or Lima meeting details. Ron ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Robock" <[email protected]> To: "Geoengineering" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 8:56:11 AM Subject: Re: [geo] HOME/ETC Group Targets IPCC Dear Everyone, This discussion seems to ignore the purpose of IPCC. The job of IPCC is to assess peer-reviewed literature on the subject of climate change and report the assessment to the governments of the world to that they can make informed policy choices. This assessment will include geoengineering in all three working group reports. I attach a brochure on IPCC so you can see the titles of the different chapters of each report. The purpose of IPCC is NOT to organize research, to conduct research, or to recommend policies. The purpose of the Experts' Meeting on Geoengineering to be held in Lima next week, which I will attend, is to bring IPCC authors from all three working groups together to inform each other of the work they have done so far, so that each working group report will be better informed by all the current work in geoengineering, and so that the reports will not be contradictory or ignorant of the other reports. The meeting will forge collaborations so that authors from different working groups will be able to know about each other and stay in touch over the next 2-3 years as the reports are finalized. Alan Alan Robock, Professor II (Distinguished Professor) Editor, Reviews of Geophysics Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-732-932-9800 x6222 Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644 14 College Farm Road E-mail: [email protected] New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock -- 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.
