Andrew, cc Clare and list:
Per your request, I respond for one part (the biochar part) of the CDR
part of Geo - as I think you have raised several important topics.
> On Sep 20, 2018, at 5:15 PM, Clare James <cl...@kingssquare.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Agreed that commercial perspectives are vital for any useful assessment of
> geoengineering possibilities alongside the physical science/legal/ethical
> considerations. The interaction between commerce and research seems haphazard
> - happy to be proved wrong on that front.
[RWL: For biochar, I'd say that the interaction is pretty good. I
see dozens of commercial biochar companies (almost all with websites)
referencing scientific research. But could always be improved.
More responding to Andrew below.
> On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 at 23:48, Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com
> <mailto:andrew.lock...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Various commentators have criticised the lack of diversity in geoengineering.
> Is anyone collecting metrics on this, especially compared to other
> disciplines?
[RWL1: Not sure if you are referencing both CDR and SRM - but can you
cite some "diversity-commentators" examples for each side?
The following is in response to your next:
>
> I'm keen to see a bit of discussion of the subject on the list, so I've added
> some personal thoughts and observations on the matter below.
>
> CE seems to benefit from diversity. It's a global subject that touches
> everyone, and a lack of diversity risks missing crucial perspectives. Even
> hard-sci work tends to be laden with implicit assumptions and values (eg
> placement of BECCS in model experiments). Furthermore, it's difficult to
> market the discipline's output to the world, if it looks like a bunch of rich
> white men with a neo-colonial project (whether or not that's true may be less
> important than the optics). This is arguably less important in other fields -
> eg the Higgs boson doesn't have to be discovered by a diverse group, for
> knowledge of its mass to be globally beneficial.
[RWL2: Definitely agree diversity has benefits - and believe biochar
analysis does now already benefit from diversity.
Re "model experiments", biochar would welcome greater inclusion on
computer models. But that is probably too difficult to include realistically
- being a much more complicated modeling topic than BECCS (biochar has enormous
out-year effects that differ by soil, species, climate, etc).
Re "rich, white, men" - pretty much lacking in the biochar world
>
> CE diversity appears to be a nested problem, and I'll try to break it out,
> below. I've ordered this sections broadly by order of geographic scale, not
> the degree or importance of resulting bias (but, coincidentally, the largest
> scale is potentially also the largest bias).
[RWL3: Thanks for suggesting the following ordering.
>
> Developed world bias: There's a strong geoengineering cluster in the US &
> Western EU, and lesser clusters in Asia (especially China) - but these don't
> interact too much, and the other 60pc-ish of the world's population has
> little or no representation. Populous countries lacking obvious
> representation in CE academia include Pakistan and Indonesia - plus virtually
> the whole African continent. MENA, Central Asia and S. America are also
> severely under-represented.
[RWL4: Biochar does have such a bias - but I am also amazed at the
breadth of global work - especially in Asia and even more so in China. Nigeria
had their fourth annual biochar conference this past week
(https://biochar-international.org/event/biochar-2018-biochar-initiative-of-nigeria-bin/).
China seems to have several biochar conferences every year and the IBI
headquarters are there now; China is way ahead of everybody else on anything
related to biochar.
There are now (11 years after the name biochar" first became official)
about 50 regional groups (including ones in both Pakistan and Indonesia) - see
https://biochar-international.org/regional/)
Definitely an unfortunate shortage in most of Africa and South America
- but both have a long history of charcoal use in soils (see especially the
many publications on "Terra Preta" historical use in the Amazon).
>
> Pro-Christian bias: most research community members are in
> traditionally-Christian countries. While religion isn't an obvious direct
> influence in western academia, it affects perspectives and societal
> structures on everything from family types, through legal systems and ethics
> frameworks. EG polygamous and cousin-marriage social systems (not commonly
> found in most modern Christian cultures) are widespread in a huge belt of
> land from the Sahara to SE Asia - and I can't recall any representation from
> this culture in the CE community at all. There's likely a lot of other
> important life ways that don't touch CE adequately: large families,
> subsistence farmers, military careers, etc.
[RWL5: Again - agreed that the dominance for biochar progress is as
you indicate, but statistics on visits to the IBI website show a huge
geographic range - every week. Many technical biochar reports are on the value
of biochar especially where soils are poor and wages low - typical of Africa
and South Africa
>
> Urban centric: the geoengineering community is overwhelmingly based in larger
> cities and their satellites. These urban communities tend to lack the culture
> of strong extended families/clans and ancestral lands that are foundational
> in much of the world. They are overwhelmingly more "progressive" than their
> rural hinterlands, leading to very strong political bias - eg with coastal
> cities being strongly Democrat in the US.
[RWL6: I have no statistics on this - and guess you are largely
correct. The US Biochar conference last month featured one of the most
encouraging biochar stories - in Stockholm. Still the only city with a
municipal (breakeven) biochar operation.
But biochar will certainly be of most financial benefit to ag and
forestry (Red) states in the US. The main US federal support for biochar
activities is through USDA - and those rarely mention climate benefits (though
they still exist).
But California's Governor Brown last week announced a/his goal of
carbon negativity occurring after 2045. This is a wonderful statement that I
personally think can be met by biochar alone (at an incremental rate in
California - the worlds 5th largest economy) of about 1 Mt biochar/year that
year. The California urban population will/must also be involved.
>
> That's the large-scale stuff done - but academia itself has additional,
> non-geographic biases:
>
> Political bias - there is a pronounced political bias between departments,
> with geoengineering depending for much of its ethics/politics on averagely
> left-leaning humanities departments. This tends to bias discussions towards
> collectivism/statism
[RWL7: Possibly true also for biochar - but biochar covers so many
disciplines (and especially ag/forestry/biology) that I doubt politics enters
very much. My perception is that few ethicists worry very much about biochar
- based mostly on its long (thousands of years) of successful use in apparently
peaceful Amazonian societies.
>
> Racial bias - ethnic minorities in the West are under-represented in the
> field, which is notable when there's less of a bias in other STEM courses (eg
> medicine and related fields, if you include that in STEM)
[RWL8: Not sure of the statistics for biochar - but I see a lot of
non-western names in the 100 or so biochar papers each month.
>
> Gender - CE seems to suffer from leaky pipe. From informal observation, I
> notice a decent proportion of female postgraduate students get steadily
> whittled down to a smaller number of seniors. I've been in the field long
> enough to think that this isn't just a matter of diversity working its way
> through the generations. There's an apparent bloodbath of female talent
> between postgraduate and professor. Whether it's worse than other
> disciplines, I can't say without data. It's hard to determine what causes
> this, but there are several possible factors: family founding, potentially
> worsened by inflexible working conditions; aggressively-competitive culture,
> based on a flat pyramid of appealing professorships with too many grads and
> postdocs chasing them; recruitment processes that favour a style of
> self-promotion that comes more naturally to men; or even outright
> discrimination. The humanities side of geoengineering seems to have somewhat
> less of a gender balance problem; that differential may be down to school
> choices following their way through to later career choices (UK physics is
> only about 20pc female).
[RWL9: I have little expertise here; my experience is that biochar is
probably little different from other CE areas. I have high regard for my
female biochar colleagues (maybe 1/3 female?). Not yet in equal numbers. I
am sensitive to gender issues as I have 5 grand-daughters and 0 grand-sons.
(As I have previously) I will send this on to the "biochar" list and
will report on any pertinent gender (and other) comments.
>
> Public sector bias - most of the academic work is done by people who are paid
> by the state, or state-like institutions. Very little work is done by people
> in the commercial sector, still less by those outside major corporations.
> Personally, I'm an outlier - and much of my work is in non-state economic
> models, which are otherwise a neglected instrument.
[RWL10: Probably true also for biochar for research funding - but
there is a surprising number of non-public-sector representatives at the
biochar conferences I attend - and especially on the "biochar' list discussions
(with a minority academic presence).
>
> Academic bias - the academic community has a habit of discarding material and
> views that originate externally. Few non-academic sources are cited; few
> collaborators are from outside formal academia; and resources (computers,
> conferences) aren't made available to non-academics. There's a lot of
> expertise in finance and industry, which isn't necessarily being tapped.
[RWL11: Possibly true for biochar published papers. But a majority
of the published papers use commercially-produced biochar - and I often see
such co-authors.
Strongly agree with the lack of "tapping" of "finance and industry".
>
>
> Hope people feel that's a good summary.
[RWL: I have to think a bit more about "good". Biochar covers so many
topics not normally considered as part of "Geo/CE", that I can guess that some
Geo/CE items are missing from a biochar perspective. My biggest excitement
recently is about Gov. Edmund Brown and a possible new CDR push from a
(fifth-ranking) major economy.
> Constructive comments welcome.
[RWL: Thanks again for bringing up these non-technical topics.
>
> A
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