Let’s first go back to the origins of this posting. Emily put up
Hansen’s article and referred to its discussion of sea level. Ken said
that he didn’t like its mixing of policy prescription with scientific
observation. Clearly, Hansen has published hundreds of academic
articles over the decades which do not engage in any sort of “mixing”,
so it should be obvious that his approach is quite intentional.
So why’s he doing it? I would guess that Hansen, who has been around
the block a time or two within climate-politics, has been changing his
style lately out of a combination of frustration, anger, outrage,
feeling of urgency, his own creativity, etc. The introductory
sentence, calling climate
“the predominant scientific, economic, political and moral
issue of the 21st century.” (p1)
sets the tone and justification for his idiosyncratic departure from
academic discourse. And just his general use of language should have
made it quite explicit that he was intentionally trying to access a
mixed audience, embracing academics and non-academics all at once:
“Ice and snow increased the albedo (literally, the
'whiteness') of that continent.” (p2)
He is doing this in order to circumvent the ordinary chain of
communication, because of the fact that the conventional approaches
have not really worked. Ken is not dealing with the relationship
between the content of what Hansen is describing about sea level (for
example), and the non-objective tone of his discourse that he
disapproves of. Subsequent postings here have discussed the clear
divide, perhaps even antagonism, between “descriptive” science and
“prescriptive” policymaking. But what about the more subtle nature of
“proscriptive” metrics that creep into how scientists observe things,
which can then hide simple truths?
For example: why is it that discussing ‘climate commitment’ is
commonplace and part of the conventional rhetoric of climate
discourse, but discussing ‘sea level commitment’ – a phrase that I've
perhaps coined just now, to mean what Hansen names ‘eventual sea level
rise’ or ‘equilibrium sea level’ in this paper – is almost never
mentioned before the wider public? It is very clear, if the scientists
just do their “describing”, and let themselves get led around into
boxes of what to describe, that the right things will not get said or
understood. Did everyone here read the long article on page one of the
New York Times about sea level rise earlier this year? I’m sure the
Times’ editors saw it as a big risqué exposé, but really it was the
end result of poor scientific focus and its final translation into
inappropriate public messaging. The public is duped into forgetting
that 2100 is not the end of anything, and they are made to think that
sea level might rise 1-3 meters. “Really, wow, that would be
terrible!”, most readers think. But clearly, if you told people that
current climate policy unequivocally consigns all the world’s coastal
cities to go under water sometime a few centuries from now, I suspect
that almost all readers polled on it would say that was an utterly
unacceptable policy. And yet this metric, ‘sea level commitment,’
could probably be ascertained with far greater accuracy than 21st
century rise. So why isn’t it? You can’t blame the scientists, they’re
just “doing their jobs”, describing things, and being as accurate as
they can be! I hate to say that it reminds me of certain others, some
seven decades ago, just “doing their jobs,” and the implications of
all that. The thing with Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ idea applied to
the climate today is this: the more utterly banal something is, the
more widespread it can become, finally creating bigger and bigger evil
consequences. Thus, it’s surely no sin to “do one’s job” in science,
but our time urgently calls out for something new to escape the
creeping problems of science communication and miscommunication. “Aux
grands maux, les grands remedes,” say the French, and I’d say I agree
with what Hansen did in this paper, and other recent ones he’s
written, in that our situation calls out for new stylistic approaches,
and the need to break down some of the boundaries imposed by academic
conventions.
So, now let’s move to the issue of how much urgency there is (well,
the heat index was 126 in my part of Manhattan a couple of days ago!),
and thus how much need for geoengineering there is right now, which is
where this thread gradually drifted. In that area, another harmful
academic boundary – one that I feel urgently needs to get shot down,
which I try to do periodically with this group – underlies many of
the postings here, I feel. Let me attempt this yet again. Let me start
by saying that there is really no firm boundary, and rather just an
artificial construct coming from ‘group think’, between what
constitutes geoengineering and what doesn’t. Based on the NAS
definition of geoengineering, it entails –
options that would involve large-scale engineering of our
environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in
atmospheric chemistry
– and so we have been engaging in geoengineering for more than 30
years now: the catalytic converter in your exhaust system is one
example, the scrubber on your nearest coal plant another. These are
not climate geoengineering, of course, and the irony is that while all
three geoengineering programs thus far enacted (cars’ CO/NOx; coal
plants’ SO2; and the invention of replacements for CFCs) have been
successful, they have each slightly exacerbated warming, since they
were not designed to address it.
In this group, CCS is generally considered geoengineering, and
acknowledged to be one of the more likely forms to come into actual
practice, for better or for worse. Yet, what I’ve dubbed CCU – “carbon
capture and use” – is never considered geoengineering, although it is
no less so than CCS, much easier to do, doesn't cost much, and is 100%
safe. I mean the trapping of fugitive methane all over the world, some
of which can generate profit and potentially support the costs of the
rest, and has a line-up of thousands of shovel-ready projects all over
the world. The things preventing these projects from happening are
NOT the same as those impeding CO2 emissions controls. A business
model to deal with methane emissions has been developed recently by
GMI – but please study all its details. If they can leverage their
fund (which they don’t have yet) some 37 times, they can still only
achieve less than 1/2 of what is easily practical over the next
decade, which is simply not enough. So something else has to happen.
I certainly hope that everyone here read the recent UNEP/WMO
Assessment that Mike MacCracken posted a link to a few months back.
There is simply no way that CO2 emissions sources can bring any near-
term climate relief – none before 2040s, even with quite stringent
controls. ALL near-term climate relief through emissions controls can
only come from non-CO2 sources, something I’ve been trying to
emphasize for a while. Methane is by far the largest chunk where we
can claim any certainty about the effect of our actions. SO, if you
really believe that the arctic is spiraling away, the ONLY thing that
is surely ready to help right now is rapid methane controls. This I
take to be an absolute and unequivocal fact.
I’ve been greatly impressed with the creativity of people in this
group, as well as with their passionate intensity, and their
convictions regarding the urgency of our problem. Just as Hansen has
been trying to break down boundaries, mixing up his Ghandian NVDA and
getting arrested with giving Congressional testimony, mixing up his
policy directives in the middle of his climate papers, etc, I hope
that I can convince those of you most active in this group to mix it
all up a little bit yourselves – just because you’re in a
'geoengineering group' doesn’t mean that it’s only acceptable to keep
“doing your job” here, in this case coming up with fresh engineering
technologies. Consider putting your creativity and your passion more
globally towards what we have practically at hand at this time to
address the critical situation that you correctly observe.
As the UNEP paper suggests, some 2/3rds of increased arctic warming
until 2040s can be avoided through methane/BC measures, much like
those I’ve posted about here before. It would reduce arctic warming
by about 0.7˚C in 2040. That might well not be enough to keep the
arctic alive until the mid-century, and almost certainly won’t be
enough to solve the “arctic crisis” indefinitely, and thus I am quite
passionate about all geoengineering research. And of course, as Hansen
has aptly put it, if we’re not planning to get off of fossil fuels
quickly and before using the more “exotic” ones, we’re going to need
to look for another planet.
But just as Pacala called it “barbaric” here recently to engage in
direct air capture before point-source capture for stationary sources
(i.e. CCS), it would be equally barbaric to engage in potentially
dangerous and costly geoengineering before doing the 100% safe and
free geoengineering that we already have (i.e. methane programs, if
the right financial instruments were created, could pay for themselves
almost entirely over three decades, through the profit streams
generated from the energy-productive portions of the trapped
emissions). Clearly, ‘climate business-as-usual’ will not get the job
done. The literature of the EPA M2M, GMF and now the GMI strongly
suggest that we will need creativity – political, scientific,
technological, economic, communications – to get this job done right.
If we want to reverse or at least suspend arctic destruction, we need
to bring down methane emissions by ~1/3rd, as quickly as possible. It
is doable, the practical sources have been identified, etc. But we
need YOU to help think up creative ways of getting this done!
Cheers, Nathan
Nathan Currier
108 Ellwood Street, #43
New York, NY 10040
401-954-3402
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