http://www.cspr.se/forskning/luce?l=en
Linköping University Climate Engineering Programme (LUCE) Climate engineering (CE) is one of the newest arrivals on the agenda for international policy making and research on sustainable development. CE refers to technologies for large-scale, deliberate manipulation of the Earth’s climate by either removing green house gases from the air or by applying solar reflective approaches in order to avoid an escalating global warming. It includes a wide range of proposed methods such as simulation of volcanic eruptions, cloud whitening or direct engineered capture of carbon dioxide from the air. These methods vary greatly in their technical aspects, scope in time and space, potential environmental impacts, timescales of operation and the legal, ethical and governance issues that they pose. Some climate engineering technologies, e.g. ocean fertilization, could be implemented within a few years time at relatively low costs, but with large environmental risks, while other technologies would need decades of research, have large costs, but small risks (e.g. mirrors in space). GE constitutes an additional and potentially complementary category of options to address global warming, besides strategies to mitigate greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change. As domestic and international policies fail to deliver substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, GE is increasingly called for by researchers and opinion-makers. Hence, it is very likely that the near future will see a vivid debate on GE as a dual high-stake technology, i.e. a technology where proponents may argue that if it is not implemented this will have disastrous consequences, while opponents may argue that if it is implemented this will have disastrous consequences. In both cases catastrophic effects are foreseen for our planet and used in the argumentation for or against the technology. Another dilemma is related to the fact that CE technologies are presently available only as ideas, prototypes or models. Despite the large knowledge gaps, these technologies are approaching the political agenda, and thus many societal actors need to form opinions and standpoints with regard to CE. How CE is understood will influence the range of legitimate options for decision-making, both domestically and internationally. Considering the need for international coordination of most CE options, it is from a EU perspective pertinent to compare views of a more CE prone country, such as the UK, with a more CE dormant country, such as Sweden. The projects included in LUCE aim to examine how GE is made sense of in media, scientific texts and focus groups among laypersons in Sweden and the UK. The projects will also investigate implications for the governance of GE. More specifically, the projects will address questions such as: How is climate engineering framed in the media and by scientific communities? How are the framings formed through communication among lay people? What are the differences in how climate engineering is understood in the UK, where the societal debate has already started, and Sweden, where very little debate has taken place? What are the implications of different sense makings of the technologies for the governance of climate engineering? The projects will also contribute to development of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of sense-making processes. The projects build on collaboration between researchers at Linköping University, University of Nottingham, Oxford University and De Montfort University. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
