George Your recent post about the summer school mentioned that "...it was still difficult to escape being struck by the perception that at this juncture North/Western elites are proceeding ahead with very little input from the global South".
Two comments. First and most important: it's true. It's a serious problem. A debate about managing the planet's climate must be more inclusive if it's to have any legitimacy. Second, it's also true that the organizing committee of this school worked very hard to expand the dialog. A few examples: * 27% of students were from outside Europe and north America, and about a quarter of the total of the total budget was spend on supporting travel for students from developing countries (travel for students from Europe and North America was generally not supported). * By many measures this was the most diverse of the four geoengineering summer school's held so far; and, it may have been the most diverse large meeting on geoengineering ever held anywhere. * Beyond disciplinary and geographical diversity the school also aimed to shift the dialog away from the norm in which the old and powerful dispense "wisdom" to the young. The first day's lectures which was the only complete and comprehensive set of lectures during the school was entirely presented and largely managed by early career researchers-no tenured faculty. None of these facts contradict your basic point which is correct and relevant. They do however shed a different light on the actions and intentions of the organizers. Thanks for raising the topic. David From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Fred Zimmerman Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 10:49 AM To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] reflections on summer school at Harvard There have been quite a few messages posted this week from attendees at the Fourth Interdisciplinary Summer School on Geoengineering held at Harvard last week August 5-9, but I haven't seen an overview, so I thought I would take a stab at it. Atmospheric overview: There were about 65 people present; about 2/3 were graduate students and postdocs in their 20s and 30s with a variety of outliers (like me) of different (i.e. older) ages and roles. The gender split appeared to be about 70/30 and about 75% of attendees were from the Northern and Western (i.e., Kardashian) hemispheres. Despite the best intentions of all concerned, it was still difficult to escape being struck by the perception that at this juncture North/Western elites are proceeding ahead with very little input from the global South. Meetings were held in Pierce Hall (old red brick, comfy leather chairs) and Maxwell Dworkin (newer, named after the mothers of donors Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer). The agenda was jam-packed: 10-15 speakers the first day with 300+ powerpoints, 170 the next day, an all-star debate Wed. night--and it was, frankly, quite tiring! The dorm accommodations at Tufts were slightly inferior to a minimum-security Federal prison (no TVs in the rooms, linoleum floors) so it was a relief to set off every day on the morning hike to campus which passed through Davis and Porter Squares. Overall, the student organizers did a great job. Substance: Here are a few of the points that seemed most interesting *to me* -- others surely have different perspectives. * There is still considerable controversy about whether SRM sulfate injection can deliver sufficient negative radiative forcing to offset anthropogenic component to warming. From reading enthusiastic articles I had formed the impression that this was settled. In fact, there is considerable debate over whether there is a saturation point that limits the RF from stratospheric sulfate injections. * A relatively lightweight SRM plan described by David Keith could cut the rate of climate change in half. I think of this as the "mini-Me" plan since the resources required are within the reach of the average mini-mogul, i.e. 2 Gulfstreams a year ultimately ramping up to 40. Because the sulfate injections in this plan are much less than required to set off 2xCO2 doubling, the costs and potential side effects are also much less. Crucially the lower level of injections reduces the risk from "termination shock" of discontinued SRM causing rapid warming. Keith was arguing that the mini-me plan should be included in assessments of geoengineering impact and feasibility and he convinced me. * A presentation by Eva Ahbe et al. showed what the sky would look like after an injection of sulfates sufficient to offset 2xCO2: a halo around the sun and no more blue sky -- anywhere on earth. (!!!!) * Everyone still wants to talk about governance. David Keith made a persuasive argument that NSF and other funding agencies can and should get involved in laying out guidelines in the very near future. In all likelihood these guidelines would set de facto standards going forward which can stand in while the global community struggles to agree upon a 192-country framework. * There was relatively little discussion of climate science. Most of the discussion was within the framework of "we may find that we have to deliver an emergency negative radiative forcing, here are some of the issues." I found this rather jarring as I am more accustomed to reading and writing about the climate system as an integrated system-of-systems, terrestrial, atmospheric, oceanic, land use, water use, energy metabolism, etc., etc. SRM would be a new subsystem that would plug in to the existing system of systems and have interactions and feedbacks with all of them. In terms of geo*engineering* this systems perspective is also important: systems integration is often a major source of technical and project risk. * There was relatively little discussion of natural variability in climate and climate history. I thought this was a problem as it seems to me that there will be a lot of challenges in untangling SRM contributions from an already extremely tangled web of physical signals that we are already struggling to understand (the error bars in many RFs are still quite high). I would think that with the commencement of SRM everyone who is measuring forcings would have to revisit their methods to account for the new influence. That is a huge ripple effect on all of climate science and would add uncertainty throughout the system precisely when the major research focus of the IPCC is to reduce it. * Oliver Morton of the Economist gave a reading from his work in progress on geoengineering entitled "The Deliberate Planet". Morton is a very talented writer - he reminds me (in an inverse way) of those studies of Alzheimer's patients where they show that thought density of journals at age 20 is a good predictor of susceptibility to Alzheimer's in later age. Morton's writing style has a very high thought density or level of useful brain convolutions! In this title he puts his fingers on something I find fascinating about geoengineering, which is the question whether this would be a brutal and hopefully one-time emergency intervention, or whether it is instead a natural evolution in the progress of the species towards conscious ongoing management of Earth's habitability (e.g. the work by Rockstrom, Hansen et al. to identify safe planetary boundaries for climate change). Enough for the moment; too short on time to expound further and probably at the useful limit for email anyway. Please no one be offended by my paraphrase of your thoughts or words! Cordially, Fred Z. Fred Zimmerman Geoengineering IT! Bringing together the worlds of geoengineering and information technology GE NewsFilter: http://geoengineeringIT.net:8080 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. 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