Hi folks,
I’m writing to correct an error made by Ray Pierrehumbert in a recent opinion piece on SRM, which has only just come to my attention. In an article published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Ray wrote: “*it is apparent that over time, the Environmental Defense Fund is gradually becoming, at the very least, a partner in a governance initiative that, in my view, has taken it as a foregone conclusion that outdoor experimentation at some scale will happen – and that the only question is how to govern it so it takes place in a so-called safe way (SRMGI 2019). The governance initiative fails to ask the deeper question of whether it is wise at this point to engage in research that could facilitate the deployment of a technology that may well prove ungovernable*”. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255 I direct the governance initiative in question (SRMGI) and I wanted to point out that we don’t have any position on outdoors experimentation and we do explicitly ask the "deeper question" of whether it is wise to engage in outdoors research. Earlier this week we ran a workshop in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, and I've attached the relevant slide from a group exercise. Translated it reads: *Scientists from Harvard are planning an SRM experiment in the next year. The experiment would involve releasing one kilogram of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere in order to better understand possible impacts on atmospheric chemistry, including the destruction of ozone. The experiment wouldn't have any negative environmental impacts and couldn't be done in a lab, but some people are concerned about the sociopolitical impacts.* *1. Is this research welcome or unwelcome, and why?* *2. If the decision to approve the experiment were down to you, what information would you want in order to make the decision?* In case of interest, and quite unsurprisingly, the question returned a wide range of views and a vigorous debate between the ~100 participants. Some people were concerned about decision-making processes and about who got to evaluate the experiment's physical risks, some people wondered what future research projects this might lead onto, some people were happy to see the research proceed as they thought that it might be useful and that the levels of risk were acceptable. Hope that this sets the record straight. Andy -- 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 geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/39225f48-6807-4d41-8038-0c3b2059036a%40googlegroups.com.
SRMGI Abidjan GE slide 3.pdf
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