And if you did a risk assessment of geoengineering versus laissez faire (i.e. not geoengineering) and found that the risk (= probability x impact) of not geoengineering was several orders of magnitude greater than the risk of geoengineering, then wouldn't you support geoengineering?
And if you assessed the economic impact of the effects of climate change versus the economic cost of preventing such climate change by deploying geoengineering techniques, wouldn't you support geoengineering? If you thought that geoengineering would give better life chances to your children and grandchildren, wouldn't you support geoengineering? I suspect it all depends on what you believe are our commitments to climate change (in the most general sense, including things like ocean acidification and sea-level rise) and what you believe will be the impacts, particularly with Arctic meltdown liable to become irreversible. Can these threats really be life-threatening? Many people seem to have a false sense of security about the inherent stability of our planet's climate, as if Mother Nature is here to protect us indefinitely just because it has apparently done so hitherto. This is what I wrote to the UK Crisis Forum, in the context of a TUC debate on the question: "Can we ever build a green economy?" [Begin quote] It's a good question, but the answer is that we HAVE TO build a green economy, GLOBALLY. The IPCC is hiding the truth that we have already run out of carbon budget. We are already on course for extremely dangerous warming - we are already *committed* to extremely dangerous warming - there is already too much long-life CO2 in the atmosphere and, together with current methane emissions and Arctic albedo loss, we are committed to several degrees warming by mid century and many degrees by end century. No amount of emissions reduction will prevent catastrophe. There is nothing we can do about this simply by converting to green energy. We have to get at the root cause of the problems: an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere, too much methane escaping into the atmosphere, and an Arctic losing its albedo as it proceeds unchecked towards total meltdown. The answers to these three underlying problems all require interventions of one kind or other. We cannot simply hope and wait for Mother Nature to redress the balance and take us back to the comfortable world that we have been brought up to expect to last indefinitely. 1. We require interventions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, faster than we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere, aiming to bring the level down quickly to a safe level, e.g. below 360 ppm within two decades. 2. We require interventions to suppress methane: both fugitive methane from oil and gas production/distribution and natural methane released from wetlands, land permafrost and, most importantly, Arctic subsea permafrost. 3. We require interventions to cool the Arctic and restore albedo, principally by saving the sea ice, which otherwise will disappear for most of summer within a decade (almost certainly ensuring that intervention will be too late to prevent catastrophic sea level rise, climate chaos from disrupted jet stream behaviour, and possibly runaway global warming from methane feedback). *The good news*: All these interventions can be successful, if pursued with sufficient determination and international collaboration. *The bad news*: Nobody in the scientific community seems to be accepting the nature and scale of the underlying problems, let alone alerting governments, industry or environmentalists to the required interventions. While all attention is on emissions reductions, we are not tackling the three underlying problems. Could the TUC be the first body to acknowledge what's happening, and what needs to be done? To tackle the excess of CO2, we don't just need a green economy; we need a *super-green revolution*, world-wide, to employ agriculture practices that lock-down carbon into the soil while feeding growing populations. The TUC could concentrate on this aspect. The UK has a wealth of expertise on such practices, e.g. using biochar for soil improvement. [End quote] Cheers, John On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 10:26 PM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote: > Ok Jim, perhaps you could outline for us the level of proof that you'd > need to support SRM and CDR (separately) as precautionary deployments > against global warming? > > Using your own logic from your examples below, it would seem prudent that > we race helter skelter towards geoengineering technology development, in > order to make sure we test systems quickly and comprehensively, to identify > risks linked to the technology. (This parallels with developing a better > sun cream, or a safer smoke alarm) > > Then, having established the technology risks as you seem to be > advocating, we would likely then wish to take the precaution of deploying > at global scale near-term, as current science make plain that overall > climate risks and harms are significantly lowered by > A) a moderate level of SRM deployment, (analogous to and > B) rapid CDR to choke off future emissions to the atmosphere. > > Of course, any residual technology risks would have been controlled or > eradicated by the rapid technology development process you are seemingly > arguing for. > > Is that your policy, or am I missing something? > > A > On 11 Oct 2014 21:25, "jim thomas" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hey Andrew >> >> I wasn't the person twittering with you however since you are proceeding >> by analogy.. >> >> 1. actually yes, if there was some evidence that a smoke alarm might >> malfunction and start a fire then there would likely be howls of protest >> to pull that smoke alarm off the market (for precautionary reasons) - and >> rightfully so. we expect our precautions to be safe. >> >> 2. Consider a classic precautionary measure: sunscreen in the age of >> ozone depletion. >> >> If all the sunscreens available to a parent have the potential of causing >> other harms - eg because they contain chemicals where there is emerging >> toxicity evidence (such as oxybenzone or metallic organic nanoparticles) >> - then it seems reasonable for parents to rely instead on older, more >> trusted methods of sun protection (hats, long clothes, umbrellas and >> limiting exposure to the sun) until such a time as a better precautionary >> measure becomes available. >> >> 3. Recent history is littered with examples of 'precautionary' >> innovations taken with intent to limit environmental damage that only >> served to create new and deeper problems: >> >> > Switching fuel systems to biofuels as a move away to petroleum that >> inadvertently increased emissions from land use, fertiliser use and >> compromised food security >> > recycling waste plastic into fleece to avoid landfill leaching which >> instead led to mass release and bioaccumulation of tiny plastic fibres into >> ocean systems via lint in washing water. >> > switching away from ozone-destroying CFC's in refrigeration to HFC's >> whih turned out to have high greenhouse warming impact. >> >> There's nothing sacrosant about a measure taken for precautionary >> reasons - people screw up, learn new things, make mistakes and >> misjudgements all the time.. >> >> Jim >> >> On Oct 11, 2014, at 11:32 AM, Andrew Lockley wrote: >> >> Following a twitter discussion with ETC, I thought I'd throw this >> question to the list. >> >> "Does the precautionary principle apply to precautions" (or to damage >> limitation techniques). >> >> Personally, I don't think the risk that my smoke alarm might catch fire >> is an argument not to deploy it, or to delay doing so whilst I conduct a >> risk assessment. >> >> Likewise, I don't think the precautionary principle applies to >> geoengineering. >> >> A >> >> -- >> 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/d/optout. >> >> >> Jim Thomas >> ETC Group (Montreal) >> [email protected] >> +1 514 2739994 >> >> >> >> >> >> -- > 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/d/optout. > -- 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/d/optout.
