Let's say you ran a similar poll about administration of morphine. In terms of addressing threats posed by cancer, where would administration of morphine rank relative to removing carcinogens from the environment?
*Q: Would you rather avoid cancer by removing carcinogens from the environment, or would you rather take morphine to alleviate cancer pain?* Emissions reductions and solar geoengineering solve different problems. Emissions reductions try to prevent accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Solar geoengineering aims to provide symptomatic relief from that accumulation of greenhouse gases. ---- If we were in a climate crisis with widespread famines in the tropics due to heat-stress induced crop failures, at that point emissions reductions would be ineffective at addressing the near-term problem. At that point, the relative rankings of emissions reduction and solar geoengineering might be different. The cancer patient immersed in pain may be more focused on obtaining morphine than on reducing environmental carcinogens. _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected] http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab @kencaldeira Assistant: Sharyn Nantuna, [email protected] On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Rob Bellamy <[email protected]>wrote: > Dear all, > > We have a new paper out online in *Global Environmental Change* that may > be of interest to members of the group: > > *‘Opening up’ geoengineering appraisal: Multi-Criteria Mapping of options > for tackling climate > change<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378013001179> > * > > *Highlights* > • Geoengineering proposals are appraised against mitigation options and > adaptation. > • Broad range of criteria are identified spanning natural, applied and > social sciences. > • By ‘opening up’ inputs and outputs findings contrast with those of other > appraisals. > • Ranks of geoengineering proposals are most often lower than mitigation > options. > • Stratospheric aerosol injection performs poorly here compared with other > appraisals. > > *Abstract* > Concerted efforts have begun to appraise deliberate, large-scale > interventions in the Earth's climate system known as ‘geoengineering’ in > order to provide critical decision support to policy makers around the > world. To date geoengineering appraisals have employed narrowly framed > inputs (such as context, options, methods and criteria) and ‘closed’ output > reflexivity often amounting to unitary and prescriptive policy > recommendations. For the first time, in this paper we begin to address > these limitations by ‘opening up’ appraisal inputs and outputs to a wider > diversity of framings, knowledges and future pathways. We use a > Multi-Criteria Mapping methodology to appraise carbon and solar > geoengineering proposals alongside a range of other options for responding > to climate change with a select but diverse group of experts and > stakeholders. Overall option rankings are found to vary considerably > between participant perspectives and criteria. Despite these differences, > the ranks of geoengineering proposals are most often lower than options for > mitigating climate change (including voluntary behaviour change and low > carbon technologies). The performance of all options is beset by > uncertainty, albeit to differing degrees, and it can often be seen that > better performing options are outperformed under their pessimistic scores > by poorer performing options under their optimistic scores. Several > findings contrast with those of other published appraisals. In particular, > where stratospheric aerosol injection has previously outperformed other > geoengineering options, when assessed against a broader diversity of > criteria (spanning all the identified criteria groups) and other options > for responding to climate change it performs relatively poorly. We end by > briefly exploring the implications of our analysis for geoengineering > technologies, their governance, and appraisal. > > The work builds upon our earlier paper *A review of climate > geoengineering > appraisals*<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.197/abstract>, > published last year in *WIREs Climate Change*. > > Best wishes, > Rob Bellamy > > -- > 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. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
