Re: [geo] Advancing Interdisciplinary Discussions of Climate Engineering - Guest Post - Rachael Shwom, Rutgers University | WGC
The criteria of: *1) technical potential 2) cost-effectiveness 3) ecological risk 4) ethical concerns 5) institutional capacity and 6) public acceptance. *is in line with most efforts to develop GE concepts (TTBOMK). Additionally, the combination of points 13 should be considered as *ecological risk* is foundational to the *technical potential*. The *public acceptance* factor is, in the long run, a highly important factor and one which may make or break the international policy (institutional capacity) outcome. Yet, we have just seen that the White House has pointed to the use of SAI in the event of a climate emergency and the public did not riot in the streets using colorful words to describe the scientists who work on the SAI concept (and or the rest of the scientists). At this time, it appears that the public seems to be clueless and/or indifferent to the subject of GE (IMHO). *Where is Justin Beaver when you need the guy?* With that said, the public actually can not be expected to make up their minds until a robust menu of options have been worked through at the STEM level. Currently, not all possible physical/STEM options are 'on the table'. Rachel, may I have a non-pay-walled copy of the paper and related work. I may actually be the poorest person interested in this subject. Best, On Sunday, June 8, 2014 2:25:03 PM UTC-7, kcaldeira wrote: Who exactly is the 'we' of the first sentence of this abstract? *Too often we first assess climate solutions on the basis of technical capacity to reduce or avoid warming and the costs to do it and choose our preferred solution – leaving ethical implications, governance, and public support as afterthoughts to be ‘dealt with’ and worked around in attempts to implement the solution* If the authors are speaking about themselves, then fine... If they are not speaking about themselves, then they should name names and cite citations. Who exactly is it that treats ethics as an afterthought? ___ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 kcal...@carnegiescience.edu javascript: http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu javascript: On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Greg Rau gh...@sbcglobal.net javascript: wrote: Too often we first assess climate solutions on the basis of technical capacity to reduce or avoid warming and the costs to do it and choose our preferred solution – leaving ethical implications, governance, and public support as afterthoughts to be ‘dealt with’ and worked around in attempts to implement the solution. Perhaps the social scientists would like to be the ones to first propose technical/environmental solutions? It would seem that evaluating ethics and governance of solutions that first do not meet technical/environmental criteria is a waste of time. Once the technical/environmental merits of a solution pass muster, then by all means lets have that ethics and governance discussion and decide whether or not to proceed, not the other way around(?) I would say that the technical/environmental evaluations of many possible solutions are in their infancy. I would also say a larger challenge for the social scientists is to fix the disconnect between CO2/climate realities and social/political structures that have thus far failed to adequately value and support a broad and deep search for effective solutions (social, technical, or otherwise) and rapid implementation of those found effective and desirable. Greg -- *From:* Andrew Lockley andrew@gmail.com javascript: *To:* geoengineering geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript: *Sent:* Saturday, June 7, 2014 3:41 PM *Subject:* [geo] Advancing Interdisciplinary Discussions of Climate Engineering - Guest Post - Rachael Shwom, Rutgers University | WGC http://dcgeoconsortium.org/2014/06/04/advancing-interdisciplinary-discussions-of-climate-engineering-guest-post-rachael-shwom-rutgers-university/ Advancing Interdisciplinary Discussions of Climate Engineering – Guest Post – Rachael Shwom, Rutgers University Too often we first assess climate solutions on the basis of technical capacity to reduce or avoid warming and the costs to do it and choose our preferred solution – leaving ethical implications, governance, and public support as afterthoughts to be ‘dealt with’ and worked around in attempts to implement the solution. While interdisciplinarity is a common rallying cry to develop solutions for major pressing problems like climate change – it is often difficult to achieve. Though social scientists have productively engaged and published on this issue (as evident by the Washington Geoengineering Consortium’s existence), their contribution to the policy discourse and public
Re: [geo] Floodgates open for adaptation GE investment
On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Greg Rau gh...@sbcglobal.net wrote: One wonders if the money would be better spent on reducing the cause of the problem - CO2 emissions, or are we too late for that? It's more that there isn't a good idea of how to do it. More accurately, there isn't a widely accepted idea of how to replace the energy we get from fossil fuels, particularly from liquid hydrocarbons. You are probably sick of my harping on how I think it could be solved, but I don't know of any other solutions that scale large enough or generate energy at a low enough cost to avoid an economic collapse. Do you? Make a case for one. If it's better than the one I have been working on, I will switch. Though it's pointed in a slightly different direction, David MacKay's _Sustainable Energy - without the hot air_ is applicable and well worth reading. And what is the CO2 footprint and environmental impact of building a seawall? It's not exactly the same thing, but the cost from Sandy, the storm that is the reason for the project, was $65 B. If they can put in a seawall for $3.7 B and it prevents this magnitude of damage from only one similar storm in the next few decades, the payback will be on the order of 20 to one. Interesting how more costly climate change survival trumps less costly climate change avoidance. Good luck with that. Greg Make a case for less costly. Measure it in dollars or human lives or both. Keith CITIES: 'Big U' plan to protect Manhattan from storm surges begins with a sea wall -- 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 post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[geo] Re-Engineering the Earth's Climate: No Longer Science Fiction The Internationalist
Poster's note : fairly generic, but from a reasonably worthy source. http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2014/06/10/re-engineering-the-earths-climate-no-longer-science-fiction/ The Internationalist Re-Engineering the Earth’s Climate: No Longer Science Fiction Jun 10th, 2014 @ 05:16 pm Stewart M. Patrick By continuing to spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humanity is conducting the largest uncontrolled scientific experiment in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. The most recent assessment report from theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Changepaints a dire portrait. Under a “business as usual” scenario, average global temperatures are predicted to rise bybetween 4.5 degrees and 14 degrees Fahrenheit—and temperatures at the earth’s poles are predicted to rise by as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit over several decades. Even under the most optimistic scenario, which presumes unprecedented mitigation efforts, average global temperatures will almost certainly rise above the 2 degrees Celsius. The catastrophic implications will include melting polar icecaps, dramatic sea rise, mass extinction events, more extreme weather events, and the death of the world’s coral reefs from ocean acidification. Unfortunately for humanity, in the words of UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, “There is No Planet B.”There may, however, be a Plan B. (And no, it does not involved colonizing Mars.) It involves geoengineering, or the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract human-induced climate change. Once relegated to the realm of science fiction, geoengineering has recently gained greater plausibility and credibility as a last-ditch option to combat warming—thanks to technological advances and growing frustration with the failure of the world’s leaders to strike the diplomatic bargains and take the political risks required to address the greatest collective-action challenge the world has ever faced.Geoengineering can be divided into two basic approaches. The first, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), involves drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere through a variety of processes, ranging from fertilizing oceans (to promote plankton growth, which in turn convert CO2 to oxygen) to creating machines to capture greenhouse gases and store them underground. The second, is solar radiation management (SRM), which entails making the earth more reflective of the sun’s rays. By dispersing aerosols into the stratosphere, for instance, one could produce a cooling effect similar to the (temporary) effect provided by gases released in the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. Given current technologies, most scientists consider SRM to be more promising and less expensive than CDR.Until recently, geoengineering was a third rail for both governments and environmentalists. Governments worried about its unintended consequences; environmentalists worried that it would encourage surrender in global mitigation efforts. In 2010, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, meeting in Japan, endorsed a near total restriction on geoengineering activities.More recently, the tide has begun to turn. Scientists have led the way in calling for systematic research on potential geoengineering options. Their reasoning is compelling. To begin with, new technologies have made it possible to envision large-scale human interventions into the earth’s climate system at a relatively cheap price. Simultaneously, as grave consequences of global warming become more apparent, there is a growing risk that states and nonstate actors alike will be tempted to take matters into their own hands.Such freelancing is hardly far-fetched. Might not the Bangladeshi government, facing the prospect of “going under” given dramatically rising sea levels, decide to charter a few jumbo jets to disperse aerosols in the upper atmosphere? As for nonstate initiatives, they’ve already begun. Perhaps the most prominent example occurred in July 2012, when an American scientist, acting on behalf of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate off the coast of British Columbia, allegedly creating a massive phytoplankton bloom.Such uncoordinated national actions and freelancing by superempowered groups or individuals could have disastrous consequences, particularly if they have not been properly tested or if there is inadequate scientific understanding of their potential impact, both locally and globally.More concerning, there are no international or domestic rules of the road to govern geoengineering—or even geoengineering research. To be sure, a handful of international conventions touch on aspects of the problem, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), and theConvention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution. But neither national authorities nor the multilateral system has agreed on even basic issues, including: the
Re: [geo] Floodgates open for adaptation GE investment
OK, thanks. Survival/adaptation it is. That simplifies things; I'm investing in seawall construction and air conditioning companies so I might be able to afford to survive/adapt. Greg On 6/10/14 2:46 PM, Keith Henson hkeithhen...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Greg Rau gh...@sbcglobal.net wrote: One wonders if the money would be better spent on reducing the cause of the problem - CO2 emissions, or are we too late for that? It's more that there isn't a good idea of how to do it. More accurately, there isn't a widely accepted idea of how to replace the energy we get from fossil fuels, particularly from liquid hydrocarbons. You are probably sick of my harping on how I think it could be solved, but I don't know of any other solutions that scale large enough or generate energy at a low enough cost to avoid an economic collapse. Do you? Make a case for one. If it's better than the one I have been working on, I will switch. Though it's pointed in a slightly different direction, David MacKay's _Sustainable Energy - without the hot air_ is applicable and well worth reading. And what is the CO2 footprint and environmental impact of building a seawall? It's not exactly the same thing, but the cost from Sandy, the storm that is the reason for the project, was $65 B. If they can put in a seawall for $3.7 B and it prevents this magnitude of damage from only one similar storm in the next few decades, the payback will be on the order of 20 to one. Interesting how more costly climate change survival trumps less costly climate change avoidance. Good luck with that. Greg Make a case for less costly. Measure it in dollars or human lives or both. Keith CITIES: 'Big U' plan to protect Manhattan from storm surges begins with a sea wall -- 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 post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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 post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
