Greg and Group,
Your selection of gems from the IISS Strategic Comments shows why GeoEngineering concepts are socially slow solutions to our excessive GHG emissions causing both warming and reduced ocean pH. We (many scientists and engineers) know GeoEngineering concepts can be technically quick. Technically quick means a couple decades to "full shield" and relative low cost allows unilateral action by developed countries. Socially slow means it is difficult to get permission (even for large experiments) from all those who will be affected.
Because humanity's emissions are already starting to trigger more GHG releases we need non-GeoEngineering solutions which can scale quickly. Solutions that can be socially quick and might be technically fast enough. The new class of solutions would be self-funding sustainable ecosystems. For example, an ecosystem like Ocean Macroalgal Afforestation (OMA) can simultaneously produce renewable energy, increase primary production and biodiversity, and remove greenhouse gases from the air. Unlike most GeoEngineering experiments OMA trials can be contained (unilateral) and welcomed by locals (those within 100 km of a forest) and not opposed by others (those beyond 100 km).
This is not to say OMA is all figured out. "Negative carbon via Ocean Afforestation" published in the PSEP Special Issue - Negative Emission Technology quantifies reversing atmospheric CO2 concentrations with OMA. Research to refine the understanding of OMA issues will also increase our understanding of the oceans and that will help with our understanding of the impacts and timing of GHG effects or potential GeoEngineering.
---------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [geo] Geoengineering: rules needed for climate-altering
science - International institute for Strategic Studies
From: RAU greg <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, January 04, 2013 8:39 pm
To: [email protected], geoengineering
<[email protected]>
--A few gems from below:"With mitigation efforts apparently failing to deliver, and the costs of adapting to climate change
growing disproportionately as global temperatures rise, 'remediation'
in the form of geoengineering is increasingly being considered as a
back-up plan.""Apparently failing"? - record increases in CO2 emissions occurred last year and there's no end in sight. How about geoengineering as the only plan? What is the viable option if nothing else is working??"With geoengineering for climate change still almost entirely at the speculative and theoretical stage, its potential effects – whether harmful or beneficial – are still largely unknown."Since when are the climate and ocean acidification effects of stabilizing or reducing air CO2 conc (CDR) speculative?"the American Meteorological Society (AMS), for example, defines it [geoengineering] simply
as 'deliberately manipulating physical, chemical or biological aspects
of the Earth system', without specifying the ultimate goal of such
manipulation."So given that we now know that BAU is deliberately manipulating physical, chemical and biological aspects of the Earth system, where are the ethics police when you need them?"The most promising geoengineering approach is stratospheric aerosol injection, but it is
also potentially the most dangerous, especially with regard to ozone depletion and acid rain."More dangerous than BAU? Impossible to engineer aerosol injection to avoid ozone depletion and acid rain?"The intent of the British Columbian project was specifically to enhance salmon fisheries rather than to develop a better understanding of climate modification."The stated intent of the BC project was both to get carbon credits and to enhance salmon. The problem here is not intent, the problem is that the project was conducted in a way that the efficacy and well as the negative impacts if the Fe addition will probably never be learned. Meanwhile, the transfer of wealth from indians to entrepeneurs seemed to work pretty well."Moreover, it may be just as hard to mobilise research and resources for large-scale
geoengineering as it is to limit or reduce emissions."Well, since we know that the current efforts to reduce emissions are failing, perhaps it's time to invest a fraction of this effort in other ideas just to test the preceding assumption. Again, what's the better alternative?etc.-Greg
From: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>
To: geoengineering <[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, January 4, 2013 2:18:12 AM
Subject: [geo] Geoengineering: rules needed for climate-altering science - International institute for Strategic Studies
http://www.iiss.org/EasySiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=71853&type=full&servicetype=Attachment
Link
http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/volume-18-2012/december/geoengineering-rules-needed-for-climate-altering-science/
Geoengineering: rules needed for climate-altering science
The dumping in July 2012 of 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the
Pacific Ocean by a private company, in an effort to stimulate
phytoplankton growth, has exposed the limitations of current
legislation on efforts to alter the Earth's systems, known as
'geoengineering'. Though such technologies could play an important
part in global efforts against climate change, the lack of a legal or
regulatory framework is hampering responsible scientific research into
geoengineering, while allowing 'rogue' research to proceed.
Described by journalists as 'the world's biggest geoengineering
experiment', the iron sulphate dump took place 200 nautical miles off
the coast of British Columbia, Canada. The company behind it was
founded by an indigenous community on the island of Haida Gwaii, whose
attempt at 'ocean fertilisation' was intended to revive salmon
fisheries. Satellite images suggested that the result was a 10,000
square kilometre plankton bloom. However, the experiment may have
violated at least two international agreements.
The project was proposed and carried out by Russ George, an American
businessman whose previous abortive attempts at ocean fertilisation
off the Galapagos and Canary islands had led to the formal extension
of the London Convention and Protocol on marine dumping and the
Convention on Biological Diversity to cover such activities. Parties
to the London Convention and Protocol condemned the project in a
formal statement in November.
Why geoengineering?
Ocean fertilisation is just one of a wide range of remedies involving
geoengineering that have been proposed to arrest the continuing rise
in global temperatures.
The United Nations Environment Programme's 2012 Emissions Report
concluded that even if all countries met their full reduction
commitments, in 2020 global emissions would still be 8–13 gigatonnes
equivalent of carbon dioxide above the level likely to prevent global
warming from climbing higher than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. (A
rise of more than this amount is considered dangerous.) This
'emissions gap' is larger than that reported in the 2011 report,
principally due to a greater than expected rise in emissions as a
result of economic growth.
It looks increasingly unlikely that the gap can be bridged. And if
this is the case, global warming is likely to exceed 3°C and perhaps
as much as 5°C by the end of the century – a rise that is widely seen
as having severe consequences. With mitigation efforts apparently
failing to deliver, and the costs of adapting to climate change
growing disproportionately as global temperatures rise, 'remediation'
in the form of geoengineering is increasingly being considered as a
back-up plan.
In Geoengineering the Climate, a seminal report published by Britain's
leading scientific body, the Royal Society, in 2009, geoengineering is
defined as 'deliberate large-scale interventions in the Earth's
climate system to diminish climate change or its impacts'. Scientists
have long imagined engineering the climate on a planetary scale,
although mostly in highly speculative contexts such as altering other
planets – Mars or Venus – to make them more like Earth.
In 1877 an American scientist suggested re-routing the warm Pacific
Ocean Kuroshio current through the Bering Strait to warm the Arctic by
over 15°C, and in 1912 a bill was introduced in the US Senate to study
a proposal to divert the Gulf Stream by means of a 200-mile jetty to
change the climate of America's eastern seaboard. Thus geoengineering
as a concept is not restricted to diminishing climate change, and the
American Meteorological Society (AMS), for example, defines it simply
as 'deliberately manipulating physical, chemical or biological aspects
of the Earth system', without specifying the ultimate goal of such
manipulation.
Unlike the Royal Society, the AMS definition does not specify that any
intervention should be 'large-scale'. This can be an important
distinction, both legally and in terms of policy approaches. Intent,
too, is important; some proposed geoengineering approaches overlap
with local or regional weather-modification techniques, such as cloud
seeding to increase rainfall, which have been in use for decades. The
intent of the British Columbian project was specifically to enhance
salmon fisheries rather than to develop a better understanding of
climate modification.
Possible approaches
Proposals for climate-change-focused geoengineering fall into two
broad categories: reducing levels of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon
dioxide, in the atmosphere; and managing solar radiation to induce
cooling by reflecting sunlight.
Possible techniques include large-scale land-use changes;
sequestration of carbon in the form of biomass; ocean fertilisation;
altering ocean circulation patterns; direct capture of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases from the ambient air; enhanced weathering
of rocks (which removes carbon dioxide from the air); spreading or
dispersing minerals in soil or oceans; brightening buildings and
painting roofs white to reflect sunlight; promoting cloud formation;
injecting particulates into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight; and
space-based lenses or mirrors for the same purpose.
The first field experiments in ocean fertilisation were performed in
1993, but few field trials of other proposed techniques have been
undertaken. Even the ocean-fertilisation studies were not specifically
designed to gather data or demonstrate proof of concept for altering
the climate. Rather, they represented basic scientific research into
ocean ecosystems.
With geoengineering for climate change still almost entirely at the
speculative and theoretical stage, its potential effects – whether
harmful or beneficial – are still largely unknown. The AMS noted that
'geoengineering must be viewed with caution because manipulating the
Earth system has considerable potential to trigger adverse and
unpredictable consequences' – as indeed has been demonstrated by
man-made climate change. But setting aside any potential negative
consequences, the Royal Society generally assesses using stratospheric
aerosols to scatter sunlight back to space as the most promising
technology in terms of cost, effectiveness and timing.
Other leading prospects are increasing forest cover, as well as carbon
capture and sequestration (CCS) at source. Both reforestation and
afforestation – the conversion of previously open land into forest –
are being actively promoted through the UN process intended to
mitigate climate change. CCS is considered by many to be a mitigation
rather than a remediation technique, and is explicitly excluded from
the list of geoengineering methods under a definition adopted by
parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Though perhaps the most advanced in terms of research, ocean
fertilisation is thought not to be particularly promising and to carry
a high risk of negative consequences such as disrupting marine
ecosystems and creating 'dead zones'. The most promising
geoengineering approach is stratospheric aerosol injection, but it is
also potentially the most dangerous, especially with regard to ozone
depletion and acid rain.
Stratospheric particle injection
It has long been known that large volcanic eruptions can have a
temporary global cooling effect. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the
Philippines in 1991, for example, injected nearly 20 million tonnes of
sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, creating sulphates that led to
a 0.5°C drop in global temperatures from 1991 to 1993, despite the
overall warming trend. Stratospheric particle injection seeks to
emulate this phenomenon, whereby some chemical compounds, notably
sulphates, block or reflect solar radiation when injected into the
stratosphere and thus have a global cooling effect. But since such
compounds have a limited lifespan, they would need to be continuously
injected at volumes equivalent to one Pinatubo eruption every four
years to counteract projected warming up to 2050.
Several possible injection mechanisms have been mooted, including
aircraft such as the F-15C fighter or KC-135 or KC-10 tankers;
modified artillery; or tethered high-altitude balloons. A
three-and-a-half-year feasibility study of a system of balloons was
funded by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
in 2010. The $2.6 million Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate
Engineering (SPICE) project is a collaboration between researchers at
the universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford, and a
private company, Marshall Aerospace. The system would involve keeping
balloons the size of football stadiums permanently tethered at an
altitude of 20km, supplied by hosepipes that would provide sulphate
particles or precursors from the ground. The project includes computer
modelling, laboratory work to determine the best compounds, and a test
of the delivery system by pumping 150 litres of water to a balloon at
an altitude of 1km and injecting it into the atmosphere.
The field test was originally set for mid-October 2011, but was
delayed after a campaign by environmental groups. The delay was not
due to any specific environmental concerns, but rather because the
consultation process was deemed inadequate. However, the rescheduled
test was cancelled in May 2012, mainly due to a controversy over
intellectual-property ownership and a conflict of interest that
triggered an investigation by the funding body. The principal
investigator, Matthew Watson, told Nature that the lack of an agreed
legal or regulatory architecture governing geoengineering experiments
was also a factor.
The theoretical and laboratory components of the project are
continuing. The cancelled experiment was to have been a test of the
technology for using balloons, not of modifying the climate system, as
only about a bathtub's worth of water was to be injected, at low
altitude. As Watson commented, 'it is hard to imagine a more
environmentally benign experiment'. It cannot, thus, really be
classified as a field test of geoengineering per se.
Rule of law
A report by the US Congressional Research Service notes that there are
no international treaties or institutions with a sufficient mandate to
regulate the full spectrum of geoengineering approaches. National,
regional and international mechanisms that may apply have yet to be
tested in the geoengineering context.
The 1978 Environmental Modification Convention, for example, only
prohibits the military or hostile use of environmental modification
techniques. Customary international law imposes a duty not to cause
significant harm to another country and to control marine pollution,
and both these duties are mirrored in the UN Convention on the Law of
the Sea and other treaties. The most important such treaties are the
three Rio Conventions that came out of the 1992 Earth Summit: the
Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on
Climate Change and the Convention to Combat Desertification.
Collectively, these treaties also impose a duty to cooperate in
mitigating cross-border risks through notification, consultation,
negotiation and impact assessment. The London Convention and Protocol
apply to ocean-fertilisation experiments and activities.
Enforcement, however, is a national responsibility, and existing
regulations and mechanisms that were not designed to cover
geoengineering challenges may not be up to the task. Several agencies
and departments of the Canadian government, for example, were
apparently aware of the British Columbia ocean-fertilisation project
in advance, but there was confusion over jurisdiction and authority.
The United States Government Accountability Office has identified
significant gaps in US laws and regulations. It was this sort of
ambiguity in UK law that may have contributed to the cancellation of
the SPICE test.
In the face of such ambiguity, there has been a strong push-back from
civil society. While public opinion, interest groups and civil-society
organisations are deeply divided over the necessity and scope of
efforts to mitigate climate change, a different dynamic is at play
with respect to possible remediation techniques. Those who deny the
threat of climate change entirely oppose research into both mitigation
and remediation as pointless and wasteful, while those who oppose
mitigation on cost grounds may support research into remediation as a
hedging strategy. Conversely, those who most strongly support
climate-change mitigation tend to oppose geoengineering proposals –
and even preliminary research – on two grounds: the moral hazard that
such research may lessen pressure to pursue mitigation efforts, and
the potential negative environmental consequences of remediation
efforts.
For its part, the scientific community is developing a set of
guidelines and principles for the self-governance of geoengineering
research. Explicitly recalling the 1975 Asilomar Conference that laid
down the guidelines for recombinant DNA technology that still shape
biological research today, around 175 scientists and scholars convened
at the Asilomar Conference Center in California in 2010. Five broad
principles on the purpose, conduct and governance of geoengineering
research emerged from their discussions, including the need for a
clarification of responsibilities and new mechanisms for the oversight
of research, and for public participation, consultation and consent.
No easy solution
While remediation holds some potential, it will by no means be a
panacea for climate problems. The AMS, the GAO and Royal Society all
concur that research to date on technology, effectiveness, cost and
potential consequences is insufficiently mature to make geoengineering
a realistic option for addressing climate change at the present time.
As the Royal Society puts it, 'the safest and most predictable method
of moderating climate change is to take early and effective action to
reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. No geoengineering method can
provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative solution.'
However, if international diplomatic inertia leads to a failure to
reduce emissions sufficiently to head off dangerous global warming,
geoengineering may be the only way of avoiding long-term catastrophe.
But a formal international regime to oversee geoengineering would
involve greater interference in national sovereignty even than that
required for enforcing binding emissions targets. Moreover, it may be
just as hard to mobilise research and resources for large-scale
geoengineering as it is to limit or reduce emissions.
Geoengineering could have uneven consequences for individual
countries, and this could make agreement on any approach difficult.
Compensation for damage could affect cost-benefit calculations.
Nevertheless, with the possibility that rogue states or even
individuals may attempt regional climate-modification experiments or
projects, a more robust international legal regime to govern
geoengineering may be warranted.
Geoengineering is likely to be only a small part of any solution to
the problem of climate change. But if climate change were to threaten
catastrophic effects, it could still be an important part. Research
may therefore be seen as essential – but this can only be done safely
and effectively with an appropriate and transparent international
legal and regulatory regime, beyond that embodied in the London
Convention and Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
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