Comments on Paul Wapner’s Reflectionson Teaching Geoengineering
Dr Wapner provides a clear summary of many popular assumptions
regardinggeoengineering. However, his ideasregarding the centrality of
mitigation and the need for a “post carbon world”are fundamentally flawed, in
my view. Here are my comments on some of his statements in this article
Paul Wapner said: “As far as I am concerned, the wisest response toclimate
change has always been mitigation. We need to stop the buildup ofgreenhouse
gases. Period.”
(My responses as bullet points)· New technology could enable conversion
of CO2 into useful bulk products,including plastics, construction material,
food, fertilizer and fuel. That would turn CO2 from waste to resource. ·
So Paul's term “period” is a statement of ideology, not a scientifically
groundedobservation, given that emission reduction is not the only way to stop
CO2 buildup.
PW “…fertilizing theoceans with iron…will not halt the buildup of carbon and
other greenhouse gasesbut simply turn away our gaze.”
· That is overly rhetorical. Ocean Iron Fertilization and other Carbon
Dioxide Removal (CDR) methodscould halt the buildup of Greenhouse Gasses.
· Eliding from a critique of SRM to an assertion that the same
critiqueapplies to CDR is fallacious.
PW: “…the biophysicalstraightjacket … climate change is already harming the
most vulnerable on theplanet and spells adversity for all life in the long run”
· Our real straitjacket is not biophysical but political. Climate
change only “spells adversity” if wefail to work out how to recycle the waste
carbon we add to the air andsea.
· Mining carbon from air and sea could open massive opportunities
forgrowth into an unimaginably higher level of planetary wealth.
PW: “…. states,companies, and ordinary citizens have failed to marshal
sufficient politicalwill to mitigate greenhouse gases”
· But that is because the political assumption behind the
mitigationmovement is that economic growth is bad and planetary salvation
requiresincreased poverty. That is a propositionthat will only be supported by
those who don’t understand it or who areinsulated from it.
· The political will for climate change response through mitigation
collapsedwhen people saw the underlying likelihood thatcarbon taxation means
bigger government and less economic activity.
· What is actually needed are methods to stabilise the climate in
waysthat also enable economic growth. Thatmeans Carbon Dioxide Removal.
· The whole concept of mitigation through reducing carbon emissions
isequivalent to advocating sanitation by reducing defecation. It won’t work.
CDR, by contrast, is about investing in R&Dfor profitable methods to use the
carbon we emit.
PW: “—we turn togeoengineering. All of a sudden, the classroom becomes
animated. Hands startgoing up asking about the details of shooting sulfates
into the atmosphere”
· I don’t believe that Solar Radiation Management is anything more than
anemergency tourniquet to buy time until we work out effective CDR methods.
The long term problem with SRM is that itdoes not address ocean acid, and that
is a potential biophysical time-bomb. I wish this animation also applied for
CDRmethods.
PW: “Hawthorne’s short story, “The Birthmark.” …Aylmer gives his wife a potion
thatis supposed to sap the blood from her cheek but, as it begins to take hold,
itworks at her entire body since, it turns out, the birthmark is connected
toGeorgiana’s heart. In the end, Georgiana dies at Aylmer’s hand.
DespiteAylmer’s assurances, his science fails. The story is a cautionary tale
about scientifichubris and our confidence in remaking the world and ourselves.”
· This caution is entirely appropriate. However, it applies most
profoundly to the vast experiment we areconducting by increasing the CO2 level
through business as usual.
· I think this risk of unforseen effects applies equally to SRM. I
can’tsee how it applies to CDR, which basically aims to achieve safe ways
ofregulating the global atmospheric balance.
· Unfortunately, mitigating emissions is a fundamentally flawed
conceptualframework for addressing climate change, given the political brick
wall ofeconomic interests.
· The real hubris in Hawthorne’s parable is climate denial, with
theirwait and see attitude to global warming.
PW: “Climate changeis about biophysical limits. It makes clear that we cannot
burn fossil fuelsand pump excessive amounts of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases intothe atmosphere without coming up against the earth’s
ability to absorb suchwaste. Faced with this limit, we also confront a choice.
Do we reformat theoceans, atmosphere, and soil so that we can continue living
lives unawake to the physical world we livein,”
· The term “unawake” I have bolded here is fallacious rhetoric. With
CDR, it is entirelypossible that human population and wealth could continue to
grow in ways thatenable increased biodiversity. A newparadigm is needed that
respects the need for global regulation of nature inorder to sustain stable
Holocene conditions. Such regulation is all about being even more awake to the
detailedreality of natural cycles.
PW: “or do we learnto live ‘in-place’—at a scale that takes seriously the
planet’s organicinfrastructure?””
· Meaning, do we institute an authoritarian global state apparatus
thatreduces energy use and increases poverty in the name of climate science.
The political likelihood of such a scenariois non-existent.
PW: “Hawthorneteaches us that this is an existential question as much as a
technological one.His story forces us to ask what it means to be human.”
· Yes, the philosophical questions around planetary civilization need
muchmore attention. Increasing the level ofcarbon in the air is not
sustainable. But considering the assumptions at play here, the obvious logical
nextquestion is what is a practical way to reduce the carbon level. Mitigation
is not practical, so we have toturn to CDR, which offers the potential of a
range of benefits and few risks.
PW: “My students havedecided that being human means running roughshod over
biophysical limits since,as they put it, what other choice do we have?”
· Ignoring nature is only possible in the short term. Medium term
responses require scientificsolutions that are physically possible. On that
score, CDR is a vastly better option than either SRM or emissionreduction.
PW: “Politicians areunwilling to seek meaningful emission targets,
· There is an authoritarian implication from this comment. The reality
is that governments are not goingto cut emissions, they will only deliver
vacuous spin like the Kyoto Protocoland the recent US-China agreement. Such
“targets”are worse than useless because they use the optics of progress to
conceal thereality of business as usual. Scientistswill never acquire the
military power or social licence to enforce “meaningfulemission targets”. The
emissionreduction paradigm is broken.
PW: “corporations arefundamentally committed to economic growth at all costs”
· Not true. As the reality of theMcKibben stock price problem sinks in,
with the basic truth that burning available reserves wouldcook the planet, the
need for CDR will become a business imperative.
· CDR holds the promise that the fossil fuel economy can continue, as
longas the burnt carbon is then recycled or stabilised in construction
materials.
· The phrase “growth at all costs” is an oxymoron, because if the cost
isthe destruction of the physical system, then the growth will stop.
PW: “ordinarycitizens refuse to sacrifice their consumer lives for the promise
of a stableclimate.”
· This theme of sacrifice illustrates the religious motivation behind
advocacyof emission reduction. We should aiminstead to develop technology to
remove the need for sacrifice. A billion people in China agree with DengXiao
Ping’s maxim that to get rich is glorious. They have no appetite for sacrifice.
PW: “Geoengineeringcuts through all that mess and offers a quick fix. The
‘fix,’ of course, ismore of a junkie’s lament than a technologist’s dream. It
speaks more to ouraddiction to coal, oil, and natural gas than to our desire to
live fully ashumans with meaningful limits.”
· Equating coal to heroin may be a nice debating image, but it is empty
ofcontent. In reality, the only thing thatwill stabilise the climate is
negative emissions, through technologicalcapacity to stabilise more carbon than
we emit. Even the IPCC has recognised this in its 2013 report.
· Once such CDR technology is developed, it may turn out that mining
fossilcarbon remains a valuable activity, as a source of infrastructure.
PW: “In theglobalizing liberal world, limits are evil. They hem us in; restrict
ourfreedom; and force us to pay attention to the world around us rather
thansimply our own desires. Geoengineering aligns well with the liberal world
bytelling us that we can keep going.”
· This religious talk of evil just plays into the Naomi Klein attack
oncapitalism.
· Apocalyptic dreams about limits to growth causing a big crunch
ignorethe capacity of human ingenuity to solve technical challenges.
· Pitching the problem in existential philosophical terms of
distortedcultural values actually picks up more on religious ethics than
scientificevidence.
PW: “I suffer from hardeningof the categories.”
· Nice pun, but sadly true, given the strong ideological
opinionsexpressed in this article. Thescientific spirit is the antithesis of
dogma. If we maintain emission reduction as a fixed faith, and endeavour
tosuppress debate and research on alternative solutions such as CDR, there
islittle basis for hope.
PW: “…our deepest,safest, and sanest orientation involves measured actions that
directly addressthe causes of our problems rather than masking them.
Distraction as strategyequals, in my book, immaturity.”
· That is a telling statement against SRM, but actually provides a
clearpath to support CDR. The cause of our climate problems is that there is
too much carbon in the air. Direct action requires reduction of theamount of
carbon in the air. Reducing theamount we add is only indirect, since it only
delays (if at all) the arrival ofhighly dangerous and destabilising tipping
points. So CDR is in fact the only direct action tostabilise the climate.
PW: “In the future, eyes will light up and handswill rise to discuss the
possibility of actually lowering carbon emissions,shifting to clean energy
systems, and building a post-carbon world.”
· This concept of a “post-carbon world”, and its related theme
ofdecarbonisation of the economy, is not only unrealistic, but is actually
harmful. Instead we should be focussing on innovativeways to use carbon as a
resource, and to recycle the excess carbon now in theair and sea. I feel that
advocates ofemission reduction don’t comprehend the Sisyphian nature of their
ideas, like pointlesslypushing a boulder up a mountain.
· Rather than optics-driven targets of emission reductions that
willinevitably fade like mirages as we approach them, the real target we
shouldhave is to remove twenty billion tonnes of carbon from the air each year.
Robert Tulip
(Personal views only)
From: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>
To: geoengineering <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, 2 December 2014, 12:09
Subject: [geo] REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING GEOENGINEERING – Guest Post – Paul
Wapner, American University | WGC
http://dcgeoconsortium.org/2014/11/30/teaching-climate-geoengineering/Extract
We slog through various literatures dejected by climate change’s magnitude and
the darkness of possible futures. After weeks of depressing news—having
examined why states, companies, and ordinary citizens have failed to marshal
sufficient political will to mitigate greenhouse gases—we turn to
geoengineering. All of a sudden, the classroom becomes animated. Hands start
going up asking about the details of shooting sulfates into the atmosphere, the
amount of sulfuric acid that would make a difference, the effects of such
action on the ozone layer, and so on. Finally, it seems, students see light at
the end of a climate tunnel, and awaken to the excitement of finding a way
out.As a professor, I love to see such lit-up eyes. Nothing is more gratifying
than engaging students in lively conversation about books that they’ve read and
ideas that they think stand as genuine possibilities for improving the world.
Teaching about geoengineering, it turns out, is really fun.Most students
supported further research on geoengineering and a little over half supported
piloting a small-scale test in some part of the world.After two weeks of
studying various geoengineering scenarios, I took a poll. Most students
supported further research on geoengineering and a little over half supported
piloting a small-scale test in some part of the world. Keith and others had
won. They got their cohort. At least my class, beaten down by the structural
and behavior impediments to meaningful mitigation, grabbed onto
geoengineering’s promise. They were ready if not willing advocates of altering
the biophysics of the planet in the service of climate protection.--
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