Wil, there were a number of inaccuracies in your post so we have
responded to them point by point – see below.
Andy
1.It should be emphasized at the outset that that the potentially
catastrophic implications of the termination/rebound effect (which I
think were actually underplayed in the EF article) places an extremely
high burden of proof on anyone who supports deployment of SAI if the
precautionary principle/approach is to mean anything in the context of
international environmental law, and it should. I don’t think this
piece comes near to meeting that burden;
This point is made as if it contradicts our analysis, but in the paper
we explicitly state that management of the risks of termination shock
should be a central concern of anyone who is seriously considering SRM
deployment.
Also I’ve not heard a convincing explanation of how the precautionary
principle is a guide in a risk/risk scenario. It’s a useful concept
when there are no costs to inaction, but not so useful when inaction
would result in harms, as is the case with committed climate change.
2.Parker, et al. argue that peak shaving, i.e. limited deployment of
SRM technologies, might obviate the threats associated with the
termination effect.
"al" is Pete Irvine, in this case. We come to the same conclusions as
Kosugi et al, that if SRM cooling were restricted to less than a few
tenths of a degree Celsius, the impacts of termination would be very
limited.We do this as we think it’s useful to define a lower boundary
of SRM cooling below which termination shock would not be a concern.
We don’t say anything about a peak shaving strategy.
Beyond the fact that this assertion is based on what remains extremely
speculative modeling,
I don’t understand – why do you trust model output when it tells you
that turning off a large amount of SRM cooling would result in
damaging warming, but find it an ‘extremely speculative assertion’
when models tell you that turning off a low amount of SRM cooling
would not result in damaging warming?This seems a curious asymmetry,
to borrow from the language of Heyward and Rayner
it presumes two things: 1. The world community as a whole, without
unilateral dissent, agrees as to what the “optimal” temperature should
be over the course of the next 50-100 years, which is not likely to be
true (Russia and Canada, for example, in less guarded moments, will
admit that they believe that substantial increases in temperature may
produce net benefits for them in terms of increases in agricultural
productivity);
We assume nothing about global climate policy. We, like Kosugi et al
before us, think it’s useful to have a rough idea of how much SRM
cooling would need to be done before termination shock became a risk.
and b. Given this reality, there’s a central authority with their hand
on the thermostat (and this argument is also germane to the assertion
that we could agree to a scheduled phase-out of SAI deployment).
We make no assumptions about there being a ‘central authority with
their hand on the thermostat’. In fact the opposite – our paper
describes how for SRM to be maintained you only need capable states
acting in self-interest.
On the difficulties of agreeing a phase out, we explicitly point out
that once SRM is exerting a termination shock-causing level of
cooling, it might be difficult to get out of it, and that humanity
might therefore find itself ‘locked in’ to continued SRM use. /We even
cite your work in support of this point. /
While folks e.g. Parker advocate SRM largely because of the feckless
response of the world community to climate change,
Sigh - this is an ad hominem attack. I don’t advocate SRM. I have
never advocated SRM.You know well that I don’t advocate SRM.
they indulge the fiction that this same community will now come
together to agree to binding limits on the deployment of SAI, and that
individual countries will cede sovereignty. That does not reflect my
35 years of experience in international negotiations associated with
climate change;
At no point do we say that the climate community will come together
and agree binding limits to SAI.In fact one of the central points of
our paper is that countries don’t need to work together to avoid
termination shock because it only takes one capable country to keep a
cool head, even if all around are losing theirs.
3.Parker et al. also argue that a “belt and suspenders” approach to
SAI deployment, i.e. having backup systems in place, would ensure that
the termination effect did not occur.
We do not say that this approach would ensure termination would not
occur. We concluded that the presence of backup SRM systems would
greatly reduce the risk of termination shock because it would reduce
the risks from events that could force termination even where people
wanted it to continue.
Again, this assumes a high level of coordination at the international
level that is belied by climate politics to date.
Again, at no point are we assuming this. Our point is the opposite:
that maintaining spare infrastructure, or redeploying SRM itself,
doesn’t need coordination. All it takes is one capable country, acting
out of pure self-interest, that decides that it would sooner not
suffer termination shock. Pete and I found it hard to believe that the
world's major powers would know that termination were possible, and
would know how damaging it would be, and know that they could insure
against it by spending a few billion on spare deployment hardware, and
still decide not to do it. I could imagine one country overlooking
this, but not all capable powers. If SRM ever got up above 1C+ of
cooling, then India, China, France, Britain, the USA, Germany,
Australia, Brazil, Japan etc would all know that the sword of Damocles
was hanging above their heads. If SRM stopped for a year or two they’d
be in real environmental trouble. Noting how states build spare
capacity for critical infrastructure, and noting that in general the
larger the threat to security and stability the more countries will
pay to manage it, I find it hard to believe that all these states
would all voluntarily place their national security in the capricious
hands of fortune or the decisions of other states. Reasonable people
could disagree about this, but I don’t find it likely.
It also ignores a broader question, which is whether “termination”
might occur as a consequence of the actual failure of SAI in the
longer term. While we have some empirical evidence from volcanic
events, e.g. Pinatubo, injection of sulfur into the stratosphere in
the short term would exert a cooling effect, we do not know what
happens with ongoing injections, and there’s some research that
indicates that long-term bio-geochemical feedbacks might severely
denude the effectiveness of said approach, creating a “natural”
termination effect;
We have never heard any discussion of long-term bio-geochemical
feedbacks that could lead to a natural termination effect. Can you
please give some citations? We have not heard a reason why a
stratospheric aerosol layer would “stop working” at some point. There
are weak non-linearities such that doubling injection rate doesn’t
double the forcing but nothing we can think of would radically change
the efficacy of a given stratospheric aerosol injection scenario.
4.And, finally, it needs to be emphasized that large-scale deployment
of an SAI approach would require governance (including the Rube
Goldberg approach advocated here by Parker, et al, i.e. peak shaving,
back-up systems, etc.) for CENTURIES or perhaps a MILLENNIUM. As
Marcia McNutt suggested a few years ago, such governance architecture
would be unprecedented in the history of mankind.
Again, with waning patience, we do not ‘advocate’ any particular
approach. We conclude that if multiple countries were capable of
maintaining SRM then the system should be quite robust and resilient
against potential drivers of termination shock.
As for whether SRM would have to be maintained for centuries, I co-opt
a subtle and important point that Oliver Morton made in an essay
<https://medium.com/@revkin/geoengineering-proponents-challenge-the-inevitability-of-multi-millennial-global-warming-cef6e54b365c>on
Medium, which deserves a lot more prominence that it has received to
date. You argue that humanity should ignore SRM and focus instead on a
combination of mitigation and CDR activities. You thus imply that
there are real ways, both physically and socio-politically, that CDR
and mitigation could prevent global temperatures passing dangerous
levels. But there’s a contradiction – how can you be so confident in
the potential of mitigation and CDR that you think we can afford to
ignore SRM, and so certain that termination shock would be an
unconscionable threat, but also convinced that humanity would deploy
SRM and then sit around for centuries not bothering to decarbonise or
remove the CO2 that would eliminate the risk of termination shock,
even though they could? Taken together these views seem contradictory.
On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 at 21:11, Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org
<mailto:w...@feronia.org>> wrote:
Thanks for this, Oliver. I must say that your second point only
increases my trepidation. We are now asked to indulge the fiction
that we'll, almost by magic or sheer luck at this point, attain an
optimal level of SAI through the efforts of a multiplicity of
actors, presumably not working in concert, since you seem to
concede that different actors would likely have greatly different
temperature objectives. I always thought that our current state of
climatic woes were frightening, but that is, indeed, an even more
frightening scenario.
As for what I consider to be a niggle between the concept of
"continuous" and "preserved" governance, if your vision is a
series of unconnected efforts to govern a system for which the
very future of the climate's equilibrium could hang on getting it
right, that is also an extremely frightening vision.
Finally, in terms of the precautionary principle, the termination
effect could result in temperature increases of 6-10x that of a
business as usual scenario for a number of decades; it strikes me
that status quote climate response measures are thus more
precautionary, even without additional interventions to address
climate change. Moreover, again, there's an extremely binary
framing of our policy options implied by this argument, i.e. that
we're weighing the impacts of a business as usual scenario's risks
against deployment of SRM. However, if we can indulge the fiction
that we can cobble together hundreds, or a thousand years' worth
of governance of an SAI enterprise, and coordinate the efforts of
a multiplicity of actors to ensure that we don't deploy at a level
that poses a serious threat of termination, then I think we can
indulge the fiction of working more mightily on mitigation, as
well as an emphasis on reducing short-lived radiative forcers to
buy us time for decarbonization. If we're going to "dream big,"
let's dream big, and focus, on what I would suggest is a more
positive vision of the future, and one which is likely to engender
far less international resistance. wil
Dr. Wil Burns
Co-Executive Director, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment,
School of International Service, American University
650.281.9126 | w...@feronia.org <mailto:w...@feronia.org> |
http://www.ceassessment.org | Skype: wil.burns |
2650 Haste St., Towle Hall #G07, Berkeley, CA 94720| View my
research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=240348
-----Original Message-----
From: 'Oliver Morton' via Carbon Dioxide Removal
[mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>]
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2018 12:34 PM
To: Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org <mailto:w...@feronia.org>>
Cc: Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu
<mailto:dgm...@cornell.edu>>; Leon Di Marco <len2...@gmail.com
<mailto:len2...@gmail.com>>; Carbon Dioxide Removal
<carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>>;
geoengineering@googlegroups.com
<mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com>; Andy Parker
<apark...@gmail.com <mailto:apark...@gmail.com>>; Peter Irvine
<p.j.irv...@gmail.com <mailto:p.j.irv...@gmail.com>>
Subject: Re: [CDR] SRM and CDR - The risk of termination shock
from solar geoengineering
Cross posting to the geoengineering list, since as Wil pointed out
this might well sit better there.
At which point, Wil, I'm afraid my agreement sort of runs out. The
paper by Andy and Pete just doesn't have the flaws you claim.
You say it presumes that "The world community as a whole, without
unilateral dissent, agrees as to what the “optimal” temperature
should be over the course of the next 50-100 years"
It doesn't. While it suggests that risks might be lower if the
decision to implement were taken in such a way as to win the
widest possible support, it says nothing about an optimising
decision by the world community as whole. It devotes significant
time to what the options open to political opponents of SRM --
unilateral, or indeed multilateral, dissenters -- might be, and
what other conditions need to be in place for that dissent to lead
to a termination shock.
Specifically, that a unanimity of actors capable of SRM has to be
convinced -- or have the belief imposed on them by force majeure
-- that a termination shock is preferable to either continuing SRM
or phasing SRM out over a relatively small number of decades.
You also say it presumes that "there’s a central authority with
their hand on the thermostat".
Again, it doesn't. Indeed it lays welcome weight -- welcome in the
sense that I think it has been underplayed in previous discussions
-- on the high likelihood that a world with SRM would be highly
likely to have various independent or quasi-independent players
capable of shouldering the SRM burden. In such a world there will
be a number of different parties that can choose to increase
levels of SRM, or to slow down any decrease. No one party can
unilaterally choose to lower them. This clearly has its problems,
as Gernot and Marty's "free driver" analysis shows. But they are
not the problem of a single hand on the thermostat, nor do they
stem from the unlikelihood of "binding limits" and all countries
"ceding sovereignty". And they are not problems that lead to a
termination shock.
Is a world with multiple SRM capabilities likely? Consider another
thing which might be considered a global good: satellite
positioning services. For such systems to work they needs must be
global, and so in some narrow economic sense there needs to be
only one. But in terms of geopolitical strategy that's a non
starter -- no major power is going to rely on another for
something so strategically important. So China and Russia have
satellite navigation systems which China, at least, is in a
position to develop further, and Europe is starting to deploy
another. This sort of redundancy is not, as your post suggests, a
"belt and braces" approach that requires "a high level of
coordination at the international level that is belied by climate
politics to date" -- more or less the reverse; it grows out of
strategic uncertainty and the perceived need for an ability to
keep acting in a self-interested and un-coordinated way. Climate
politics suggest that that which is self-interested and
un-coordinated is not unlikely.
This leads to another point where I think your logic lets you down.
You say that large scale SRM would "require...governance for
CENTURIES or perhaps a MILLENNIUM." There are quite plausible
scenarios where this is not true -- you allude to one yourself,
when you talk of "peak shaving", but there are others. You seem to
think such scenarios unlikely and their discussion dangerous
(indeed your critique seems founded on the idea that this article
is in some way an argument in favour peak shaving scenarios, which
I think is a stretch, since the term is never used). But they are
an example of relatively short-term SRM. However, continuing on
the point about a commitment of centuries or even a millennium,
you say that that would require "a governance architecture
unprecedented in the history of mankind." That is an unwarranted
leap. Continuous governance does not imply a preserved governance
architecture; it just implies that, at a given time, something is
governed.
There is also a reference I don't understand. You say that there
is "research that indicates that long-term bio-geochemical
feedbacks might severely denude the effectiveness of said
approach, creating a 'natural' termination effect" Could you say
what you are referring to here? Such feedbacks would have to not
just impose diminishing returns on SRM, but also to have a
threshold beyond which the effects of SRM vanish completely and
rapidly. I am at a loss as to what such feedbacks might be.
I also agree with Doug McMartin on the precautionary principle; it
is not remotely obvious which way it should point in this discussion.
Best wishes
Oliver
On 12 March 2018 at 14:52, Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org
<mailto:w...@feronia.org>> wrote:
> Since I already committed the cardinal sin of responding to an
article
> focus on SRM, and further taking us off the focus on CDR that this
> list was created for, my response to you (and Mike) will be brief: I
> find that some researchers (not you) are engaged in a bit of a Monty
> Pythonesque “wink and nod” when it comes to SRM deployment, i.e.
while
> they piously intone that they only support research, they: a. Frame
> the issue in an ultra-Manichean manner, i.e. our options are
climatic
> catastrophe under a business as usual scenario, or
“consideration” of
> SRM, which is then often gussied up as ensuring that “all
regions” of
> the world are “better off” if we ultimately proceed with said
> deployment. Dare I say that I’ve seen such language in SRM research
> pieces recently?; b. Rather blithely suggest that potentially
> catastrophic consequences of deployment, the termination effect
being
> front and center, can be minimized by measures such as those
outlined
> in the Parker piece. In all such cases, and nothing I’ve seen in
> response here suggests otherwise, I think that those
prescriptions are
> internally illogical, i.e. they all assume that the world has
reached
> a momentous state of climatic crisis because of disparate
interests in
> terms of climate policymaking, but now assumes that we can finely
> craft a regime that rather precisely “peaks” deployment of SRM
at some
> “optimal” level that avoids the termination effect, is resilient for
> hundreds or thousands of years, and can ensure that
biogeochemical feedbacks won’t ultimately terminate its
effectiveness even if geopolitical forces do not.
>
>
>
> When I read pieces such as this, I see a clear strain of
advocacy, i.e.
> extremely serious risks associated with SRM deployment are being
given
> short shrift. I’ve also seen public presentations of this research
> that essentially mocks those who raise the concerns about
termination.
> As one African minister at one of these presentations remarked
to me,
> it’s essentially if they are telling us to shut up and trust
them. For
> me, the threat of the termination effect is one that can’t be wished
> away, and this risk is so momentous that it leads me to argue
that we
> should be concentrating our efforts on short-term measures to avoid
> passing critical thresholds, e.g. addressing black carbon and
further
> accelerating the phase-out of HFCs, as well as a longer-term
strategy
> of exploring the prospects for CDR options and far more aggressive
> measures for de-carbonizing the economy and picking the low-hanging
> fruit of energy efficiency. I’ll stop there, and promise not to
darken
> the doorway of the CDR list with any further discussion of SRM. wil
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dr. Wil Burns
> Co-Executive Director, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment,
> School of International Service, American University
>
> 650.281.9126 | w...@feronia.org <mailto:w...@feronia.org> |
http://www.ceassessment.org | Skype:
> wil.burns |
> 2650 Haste St., Towle Hall #G07, Berkeley, CA 94720| View my
research
> on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=240348
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Douglas MacMartin [mailto:dgm...@cornell.edu
<mailto:dgm...@cornell.edu>]
> Sent: Monday, March 12, 2018 5:08 AM
> To: Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org <mailto:w...@feronia.org>>; Leon
Di Marco <len2...@gmail.com <mailto:len2...@gmail.com>>;
> Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>>
> Subject: RE: [CDR] SRM and CDR - The risk of termination shock from
> solar geoengineering
>
>
>
> Wil,
>
>
>
> No offense, but I’m more gobsmacked by your response than
anything in this!
>
>
>
> Two things:
>
> Nowhere in the article, nor in any of my conversations, is there any
> suggestion consistent with “While folks e.g. Parker advocate SRM” .
> You’ve been involved in this debate long enough, you know perfectly
> well that Andy doesn’t advocate SRM, and indeed I’ve never heard a
> single person advocate doing it (though I know a couple of
people who
> have at least said something of the form “if X was true then we
> should” where we all know that X isn’t true, typically “X” being
> “ignoring the sociopolitical concerns”; that’s as close to
“advocate”
> as I’ve ever heard anyone get to, other than the Dalai Lama and
> Gingrich who were both woefully uninformed). Lots of us advocate
> doing research and thinking carefully about it, including Andy.
(Nor
> do I think he used language like “obviate”, which to me suggests
that
> you think he thinks the risk is zero, rather than what he actually
> wrote that there are ways to reduce the risk. Agree that
judging how
> effectively one can reduce the risk is a challenge about which
> reasonable people will disagree, though arguing that it is
possible to
> reduce the risk seems rather obvious to me.) Directly related; the
> reason many of us advocate research and thinking carefully about
it is
> because the future is scary no matter what. If you think
implementing
> some limited amount of SRM, and having multiple nations capable of
> deploying is a “Rube Goldberg”, do you really think that it will be
> trivial to adjust to a 3 or 4 degree world with associated
> millennial-scale commitments to sea level rise etc? Yes, governance
> of SRM would be unprecedented, but so would governance of a future
> world without SRM. I think humility on both sides would be
warranted;
> yes there are serious risks to consider for doing SRM, yes there are
> serious risks to consider for not doing SRM, we certainly don’t know
> the balance of risks today to say what “should” be chosen in the
> future because we don’t know either risk well enough, but regardless
> we aren’t the ones choosing anyway (for which I’m certainly
glad). I
> will object to anyone on either side who thinks we already know
> everything we need to know to make a decision, and that includes
both
> physical risks and societal risks. So I could equally well
accuse you of insouciance when it comes to the risks associated
with climate change.
>
> And specifically, I don’t agree that “risk of termination” is a
> show-stopper sufficient to argue that there are no circumstances
under
> which we would ever deploy SRM, and I don’t agree that “risk of
> termination” is so trivially manageable that we can forget about it.
> Substitute any other risk, or “governance” or whatever you want, and
> my sentence would be roughly the same.
> I don’t even know how to assign the sign of applying the
precautionary
> principle to SRM. Nor do I think anyone knows enough to know
that yet.
>
>
>
> Bottom line is, I think we’re all in total agreement (you, me, and
> Andy, though I can’t speak for either of you) – we really need to
> mitigate and develop/deploy CDR at scale, and then if we work hard
> enough and we’re also lucky then we won’t be faced with having to
> decide about this. Just that folks like Andy or me aren’t
> sufficiently confident, and think we need to think carefully
about it.
>
>
>
> doug
>
>
>
> From: carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>
> [mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Wil Burns
> Sent: Monday, March 12, 2018 12:43 AM
> To: Leon Di Marco <len2...@gmail.com
<mailto:len2...@gmail.com>>; Carbon Dioxide Removal
> <carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>>
> Subject: RE: [CDR] SRM and CDR - The risk of termination shock from
> solar geoengineering
>
>
>
> I am not sure why I’m still gobsmacked by Andy Parker’s insouciance
> when it comes to the risks associated with SRM approaches such
as SAI,
> but I still am. A couple of thoughts about this piece:
>
>
>
> It should be emphasized at the outset that that the potentially
> catastrophic implications of the termination/rebound effect (which I
> think were actually underplayed in the EF article) places an
extremely
> high burden of proof on anyone who supports deployment of SAI if the
> precautionary principle/approach is to mean anything in the
context of
> international environmental law, and it should. I don’t think this
> piece comes near to meeting that burden; Parker, et al. argue that
> peak shaving, i.e. limited deployment of SRM technologies, might
> obviate the threats associated with the termination effect.
Beyond the
> fact that this assertion is based on what remains extremely
> speculative modeling, it presumes two things: 1. The world community
> as a whole, without unilateral dissent, agrees as to what the
> “optimal” temperature should be over the course of the next 50-100
> years, which is not likely to be true (Russia and Canada, for
example,
> in less guarded moments, will admit that they believe that
substantial
> increases in temperature may produce net benefits for them in
terms of
> increases in agricultural productivity); and b. Given this reality,
> there’s a central authority with their hand on the thermostat (and
> this argument is also germane to the assertion that we could
agree to
> a scheduled phase-out of SAI deployment). While folks e.g. Parker
> advocate SRM largely because of the feckless response of the world
> community to climate change, they indulge the fiction that this same
> community will now come together to agree to binding limits on the
> deployment of SAI, and that individual countries will cede
> sovereignty. That does not reflect my 35 years of experience in
> international negotiations associated with climate change; Parker et
> al. also argue that a “belt and suspenders” approach to SAI
> deployment, i.e. having backup systems in place, would ensure
that the
> termination effect did not occur. Again, this assumes a high
level of
> coordination at the international level that is belied by
climate politics to date. It also ignores a broader question,
which is whether “termination”
> might occur as a consequence of the actual failure of SAI in the
> longer term. While we have some empirical evidence from volcanic
events, e.g.
> Pinatubo, injection of sulfur into the stratosphere in the short
term
> would exert a cooling effect, we do not know what happens with
ongoing
> injections, and there’s some research that indicates that long-term
> bio-geochemical feedbacks might severely denude the
effectiveness of
> said approach, creating a “natural” termination effect; And,
finally,
> it needs to be emphasized that large-scale deployment of an SAI
> approach would require governance (including the Rube Goldberg
> approach advocated here by Parker, et al, i.e. peak shaving, back-up
> systems, etc.) for CENTURIES or perhaps a MILLENNIUM. As Marcia
McNutt
> suggested a few years ago, such governance architecture would be
> unprecedented in the history of mankind.
>
>
>
> wil
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dr. Wil Burns
> Co-Executive Director, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment,
> School of International Service, American University
>
> 650.281.9126 | w...@feronia.org <mailto:w...@feronia.org> |
http://www.ceassessment.org | Skype:
> wil.burns |
> 2650 Haste St., Towle Hall #G07, Berkeley, CA 94720| View my
research
> on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=240348
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>
> [mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Leon Di
> Marco
> Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2018 6:10 PM
> To: Carbon Dioxide Removal
<carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:carbondioxideremo...@googlegroups.com>>
> Subject: [CDR] SRM and CDR - The risk of termination shock from
solar
> geoengineering
>
>
>
>
https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-risk-termination-shoc
> k-overplayed-study
>
>
>
> GEOENGINEERING
>
> 12 March 2018 0:01
>
> Solar geoengineering: Risk of ‘termination shock’ overplayed, study
> says
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The policy options put forward in the paper do not require
> decision-makers to “behave with perfect rationality”, the authors
> note, but that they “must just avoid wanton irrationality”.
>
> Although this may seem reasonable, says Prof Alan Robock of Rutgers
> University, “unreasonable policy decisions are made all the
time”. He asks:
> “Can we count on future political actors to be reasonable?”
>
> It is also worth remembering that the potential for termination
shock
> is just one of many other potential risks and concerns with SRM, he
> tells Carbon Brief:
>
> “Even if termination shock were less likely, there are still many
> reasons why SRM would not be a robust policy option.”
>
> That said, Robock “completely agrees” with the last paragraph of the
> paper, which argues that the solution to global warming is
mitigation
> and adaptation so that SRM is not necessary in the first place:
>
> “Our final conclusion is the most obvious and important. The
best way
> to avoid termination would be to avoid a situation where a large
> amount of SRM would be needed to reduce committed climate risks.
> Strong action on mitigation would reduce the amount of SRM necessary
> to maintain a stable global temperature.
>
> The development of safe and scalable CO2 removal techniques could
> reduce the cooling needed from SRM after deployment, and strong
> adaptation investment would reduce the suffering from the residual
> climate impacts to which Earth is already committed.”
>
>
>
> Parker, A. and Irvine, P. J. (2018) The risk of termination
shock from
> solar geoengineering, Earth’s Future, doi:10.1002/2017EF000735
>
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O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O
Oliver Morton
Senior Editor, Essays and Briefings
The Economist
+44 20 7830 7041
My book "The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change The World"
can be bought at Amazon (UK|US), among other places. It was
longlisted for the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize and shortlisted for
the 2016 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.
"Ambitious, enthralling and slightly strange" -- Bryan Appleyard,
The Sunday Times
"A necessary book, and so well done. Essential reading" -- Jon Turney
"An excellently reasoned book with whose conclusions we
disagree...clear, data-filled and still wonderfully descriptive."
-- ETC Group
O=C=O O=C=O O=C=O
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