... speaking of clear communication: we plainly should admit that climate sensitivity (how much warming per doubling CO2) is still uncertain, so the "2.7º", probably calculated with a best estimate value, could be considerably higher if we are unlucky with climate sensitivity. In my view it would be better to say something like "expected 2.7 degree but 5% chance of exceeding 4.5º" (or similar, I didn't double-check the numbers).
Best Claudia Op ma 22 nov. 2021 om 08:33 schreef Dr. Maiken Winter < cont...@maikenwinter.de>: > Thanks for this very interesting interview that finally convinces me that > we truly really need to accept climate intervention as a very important > method to avoid catastrpohe. > > One question: Everywhere I read about 2,4 or 2,7 Degree celsius of warming > by 2100. Would it not be important to talk about warming past 2100? > > We will have way more than "jus" 2,7 degrees warming, right? > > I think it´s time to communicate that clearly. > > Best, > > Maiken > > > Am 21.11.2021 um 20:46 schrieb Geoeng Info: > > https://spectrum.ieee.org/geoengineering-climate-change > > Climate Expert: Stop Talking About "Geoengineering" > <https://spectrum.ieee.org/geoengineering-climate-change> > > Term is a distraction from crucial research on climate interventions > > The leaders of the world have just returned from the UN's latest climate > change summit, COP26 <https://ukcop26.org/>, in which the countries that > have signed on to the Paris Agreement upped their commitments to fight > climate change. Everyone solemnly agreed, again, to follow the science, > which has shown in exhaustive detail that humanity will suffer from heat, > fire, floods, and droughts > <https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf> > if > the world warms beyond 1.5° C > <https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_Full_Report_High_Res.pdf> > above > pre-industrial levels. > > Yet if countries continue on their present course, the world will likely > have warmed by 2.7° C by the year 2100 > <https://climateactiontracker.org/press/Glasgows-one-degree-2030-credibility-gap-net-zeros-lip-service-to-climate-action/>, > according to Climate Action Tracker <https://climateactiontracker.org/>. > If they meet all the pledges they've made for emission reductions by 2030, > global temperature rise will be at 2.4° C by then. Hardly the breakthroughs > we need to stave off disaster. > > In light of this situation, there's increasing talk > <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/geoengineering-sunlight.html> of > actions that governments can take beyond reducing greenhouse gas > emissions—actions that could either remove existing greenhouse gases from > the atmosphere or reduce the amount of sunlight > <https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25762/reflecting-sunlight-recommendations-for-solar-geoengineering-research-and-research-governance> > coming > into the atmosphere. Nobody's proposing relying solely on such tactics, but > they could potentially help the planet in the short-term. > > Such approaches are usually called geoengineering > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering>, and they're > controversial: Many people worry about the unintended consequences of > interfering with nature on a global scale. But Kelly Wanser > <https://www.silverlining.ngo/executive-director>, the executive director > of the non-profit Silver Lining <https://www.silverlining.ngo/>, argues > that humanity is already interfering with nature on a global scale; that's > what climate change is all about. She spoke with *IEEE Spectrum* about > her work in encouraging basic scientific research on climate interventions. > > *IEEE Spectrum: What role does Silver Lining play in climate research or > advocacy?* > > *Kelly Wanser: *Silver Lining's focus is on near-term climate risk: the > exposure that we have to climate change between now and the middle of the > century. The IPCC report <https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/> released > this past August said that in all of the realistic scenarios that they look > at for climate change, warming continues to increase between now and 2050. > And right now, we don't have enough ways to significantly reduce that > warming. > > > * Wanser:* It's partly a play on words. One approach to reducing warming > has to do with brightening clouds with salt from seawater. But it's also a > way of indicating that there is hope and possibility in navigating the > dangerous part of the climate change situation.*Spectrum: Where does the > name of the organization come from?* > > *Spectrum: I've been reporting on this topic recently, and I think I > irritated a few researchers by using the term "geoengineering." Do you > object to that term, and if so, what term do you prefer?* > > *Wanser: *We do object to it, because we don't think it's a good > reflection of what is being proposed in these rapid responses to climate > change. In 2015, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report > on these types of technological approaches to reducing warming or reducing > greenhouse gases, and the term that they arrived at was "climate > intervention > <https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2015/02/climate-intervention-is-not-a-replacement-for-reducing-carbon-emissions-proposed-intervention-techniques-not-ready-for-wide-scale-deployment>." > It's a useful term because it speaks to the problem it's aimed at, climate, > and expresses the uncertainty involved—we're trying to influence a system, > but we don't have a high degree of control, like we would in an engineering > context. > > We actually conducted a public poll on the terms "geoengineering" and > "climate intervention" and found that people were better able to comprehend > what was meant by climate intervention, and also were less fearful. > > *Spectrum: When you talk about climate interventions, are you including > carbon removal and sequestration in that category?* > > *Wanser: *We do include that in the broad category. But we focus on it > less, because we've opted to focus on approaches that are likely to be most > rapid and most likely to help address near-term risks. We've also focused > on the parts of the portfolio where there are fewer people and fewer > investments that are moving things forward. So, we focus significant energy > on solar climate intervention, or sunlight reflection. We do some work on > carbon removal, but that's pretty big space with a lot of investment. Which > is good. > > *Spectrum: When you talk about the rationale for research on climate > interventions, do you start with moral arguments or economic arguments?* > > *Wanser: *We start from the point of view of public safety, which is a > concept in international environmental law and environmental law in the > United States. We're really focused on the fact that we have quite a > serious safety problem—potentially a catastrophic safety problem—in terms > of human life, displacement and suffering, and the natural systems that we > rely on. > > The projections are that up to a billion people > <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/09/climate-crisis-could-displace-12bn-people-by-2050-report-warns> > could > be displaced between now and 2050, meaning that many parts of the world > will become uninhabitable by then. What do we have to offer these billion > people? We see it as similar to the ozone hole problem, where we really > needed a tight, science-based focus on the limits to human inputs to the > system--and howthose inputs affected the ozone layer's ability to keep > people safe. > > *Spectrum: You've spoken before about tipping points > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system>: the > idea that we may exceed thresholds in natural systems and thus cause > drastic and irreversible changes. Which ones do you worry about?* > > *Wanser: *I'll focus on the one for which there is the most robust > information. The Amazon rainforest is called the lungs of the planet > because it gives oxygen back to the system and takes in a lot of CO2. But > a combination of deforestation and warming pressure have caused the Amazon > to now release more greenhouse gas than it absorbs > <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs>, > which is considered to be a big accelerant of climate change. > > We are working with climate modelers to try to figure out how that changes > the projections. But the IPCC report > <https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/> that came out in August does > not include this newly discovered state of the rain forest. And, therefore, > the curves in that report's [warming] pathways may not reflect the real > amplification this might create. In almost all previous projections for > climate, tipping events like these were far in the future. For the Amazon > rain forest, the climate modelers that we talked to said there were almost > no climate simulations where the rain forest tips in this century. > > *Spectrum: You're saying the situation is even more dire than we thought. > And yet there's a lot of resistance to research on climate interventions > that you say could help with near-term risks. I typically hear two > critiques. The first is the moral hazard > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard> argument: If we embark on this > research, it will undermine attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. > People will think it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. How do you guys respond > to that?* > > *Wanser: *Well, I usually respond with some sympathy for it. If we had > started ratcheting back greenhouse gas emissions in the 1980s, that would > have been the wisest and the safest thing to do. I like to use the analogy > of medicine. It's not very smart to not take simple precautions and to let > the patient get sick. But when the patient is very sick, then preventative > measures like healthy diet and exercise don't help effectively enough or > quickly enough. The treatment options aren't the same when a patient is > sicker, and it appears we have quite a sick patient now. > > *Spectrum: The second critique I usually hear is that we will never > understand enough about our complex climate systems to be able to intervene > safely, and that we're guaranteed to mess things up and create massive side > effects. How do respond to people who say the precautionary principle > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle> applies here?* > > *Wanser: *This is one of the reasons that we don't like term > geoengineering. If you think of it as something wholly new and different, > then there's this understandable thought: Why would we do something totally > new and different than we don't understand? But a dirty, unmanaged > variation of this is happening already. > [image: Two graphs labelled Contributions to warming based on two > complementary approaches showing red and blue bars based on contributions > to warming] > Humanity is already reducing global warming... by spewing pollution into > the air. IPCC REPORT: CLIMATE CHANGE 2021 > > The 2021 IPCC report > <https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf> > includes > a chart where they show the human influences on the climate system, with > pink bars for warming effects and blue bars for cooling. The largest blue > bar is the effect of pollution particles on clouds. [[The particles attract > water to increase the number of droplets in clouds, and those clouds > reflect more sunlight away from the Earth.]] It's a cooling effect and it's > happening all over the world as a result of pollution from factories, > ships, and cars. We're planning to remove that pollution, so it would be > wise for us to understand that effect. And it would be interesting for us > to think about whether there's a clean variation that we might want to > replace it with. For example, some scientists are proposing to use a salt > particles from seawater to brighten clouds over the ocean and send more > sunlight back to space. > > If you think about it that way, then this isn't a question of should we do > something totally new or not, but how do we manage this situation that we > already have, which includes these existing dynamics, these variations of > things that are happening now. > > *Spectrum: In September, Spectrum published an article > <https://spectrum.ieee.org/climate-change> by the researchers working on > that marine cloud brightening project. But do you want to sum up what > they're doing?* > > *Wanser: *It's one of the few research efforts in the world that is > looking at the process-level science around these climate intervention > techniques for reflecting sunlight from the atmosphere: How would it > actually work? How would you disperse the particles? How would they move in > the atmosphere and affect the reflection of sunlight? For years, they have > been developing technology for local dispersal and figuring out how to make > the size and quantity of particles they think will work best. Now they have > a large scientific collaboration to do [atmospheric and climate] modeling > from very local to regional to global scales and to maybe step out and > spray at very small scales to study those dynamics and inform the models. > > It's exciting because they have the potential to do really important > science about how pollution is impacting clouds and climate and also > because they can likely determine, in a fairly reasonable amount of time, > whether or not marine cloud brightening might be an option to significantly > reduce warming. > > *Spectrum: Imagine that the researchers find that marine cloud brightening > is effective at reflecting sunlight and doesn't have negative impacts. How > would it be implemented?* > > *Wanser: *There are three parts of the world that have large banks of > marine stratocumulus <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratocumulus_cloud> > clouds > that are very susceptible to this effect. Scientists propose having ships > or autonomous vessels that would cruise around and spray particles in these > regions, maybe be in the low-digit thousands of ships. Their goal would be > to brighten these clouds by something like five to seven percent, so > probably not in a way that's visible from the ground, and maybe not even > visible from space. > > *Spectrum: Where are these three parts of the world?* > > *Wanser:* One of them is in the Pacific off the west coast of North > America, another is off the west coast of South America, the third is off > the coast of southern Africa. > > *Spectrum: The marine cloud project deals with adding particles to > low-level clouds, but I also wanted to get your perspective on the SCoPEx > project <https://www.keutschgroup.com/scopex> from Harvard, which wants to > test the effect of stratospheric particles. They'd hoped this past year to > simply test the technology platform, not to actually do any kind of > experiments with spraying reflective particles. And yet the research > group's advisory board stopped them and said they had to postpone it and > think it through more. What's your perspective on both that project and > that decision?* > > *Wanser:* We think that this early science is really important to inform > decision-making. This was meant to be a test of a research apparatus, it > wasn't even a test of something that would release any material. This was a > balloon for research—like the balloons that go up every day to do > atmospheric science. > > The problem is, this valuable early science was positioned as a moment for > a societal decision about research in this category. The testing they > proposed wouldn't have had any environmental impact or impact on people. So > the basis for the decision was not scientific; it was really about a small > set of people's opinions about whether or not this kind of research should > go forward. While the intentions were good, they inadvertently set up an > undemocratic situation where a very tiny group of people are deciding > whether scientific information would be available for everybody else. > > We think that scientific independence and integrity is really important, > especially in this research. We need scientists doing independent science, > and when they have generated a lot of information for people around the > world to review, we then need the societal moment where everybody can weigh > in. > -- > 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/CAKSzgpaAhV8h3iAusgv%2BEetBCGDss-FEkMCK%2B1WNxgnfpGC7aw%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAKSzgpaAhV8h3iAusgv%2BEetBCGDss-FEkMCK%2B1WNxgnfpGC7aw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > -- > ****** > Dr. Maiken Winter > Bahnhofstr. 12 > 82399 Raisting > 08807 9280544 > > -- > 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/ae49a1e9-f27f-1678-e908-bd0473707886%40maikenwinter.de > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/ae49a1e9-f27f-1678-e908-bd0473707886%40maikenwinter.de?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- 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/CAJUUK5d5bvOSkeAiF_euhJ8v6YLNZP9%2BUSRs3r8211zFrmB9gQ%40mail.gmail.com.
