Re: [geo] Re: 2. What are some potentially false 'memes' related to solar geoengineering?
Hi Ken, I hope I am not too late to bring this up. There are two fundamental memes about geoengineering which worry me because the leading scientific evidence suggests they are false: 1. That you can reduce CO2 to a safe level in the atmosphere (as regards its global warming and ocean acidification effects) without CDR geoengineering. 2. That you can prevent catastrophic meltdown of the Arctic ice cap without SRM geoengineering to cool the Arctic. The first meme is widely promoted in the media, who have the mistaken assumption that the CO2 level will drop quickly if you stop emissions, ignoring that the lifetime of CO2 is over a hundred years (and a proportion over 10k years). One often sees statements that a strategy of drastic emissions reduction will reduce the effects of global warming to the extent that adaptation to the worst effects of climate change will be affordable. This strategy is encapsulated by IPCC AR5 in a carbon budget for keeping below 2 degrees C; however this budget is almost certainly bust already because of underestimations of climate sensitivity, warming from methane over 20 years, and albedo loss in the Arctic. Dangers from continued ocean acidification over decades are ignored in AR5. The second meme is promoted by IPCC, Met Office and others, who base their projections of sea ice longevity on models rather than observations. There is an assumption that natural negative feedback will mysteriously appear to offset the forcing from albedo loss, which (between 1979 and 2008) amounted to 0.45 W/m2 averaged globally according to Mark Flanner [1]. The scientists claim that the observed exponential trend of PIOMAS sea ice volume decline [2] cannot and will not continue, hence the summer sea ice will last for many decades. The media seem to believe that emissions reductions can halt Arctic warming and save the sea ice. Even if these two memes cannot be *proved* to be false, the evidence that they might be false is *plausible*, so, on the *precautionary* principle, we should be immediately *preparing* for geoengineering deployment on the necessary scale, whilst seeking more evidence one way or the other. Cheers, John [1] http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n3/abs/ngeo1062.html [2] http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/tag/sea-ice-melt-by-2016/ On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 4:18 PM, Nathan Currier natcurr...@gmail.com wrote: Oh! Could you point me towards those discussions, papers, etc, describing the mechanism of this? The volcanic H2O paper I just attached discusses lower stratospheric warming's role in it, but if true, what you mention would seem very likely to be involved.and provide an example of the kind of thing I was wondering about.Nathan On Monday, August 11, 2014 3:24:47 AM UTC-4, andrewjlockley wrote: There's an intrinsic connection as SRM warms the tropopause A On 11 Aug 2014 04:24, Nathan Currier natcu...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Andrew - I fully agree, and really enjoyed your post SRM interaction with atmospheric anomalies (plus water) of several days ago, which had mentioned the importance of folding events. In this case, I was particularly trying to bring up whether there might be evidence sitting right in front of us coming from Pinatubo itself, but perhaps somewhat obscured from our thoughts by the questionable meme of Pinatubo as a primary demonstration of cooling the planet, that stratospheric SRM might inherently contain forcings of opposing signs - such that its radiative effects would always be the net effects of both negative and positive forcings from its various dynamics. Folding events could potentially get messy with geoE, but I don't think one could say there's any intrinsic connection (at least I haven't heard of one). If it were true that both + and - forcings are always there with this kind of SRM, it might of course still work, but this should lower our confidence level in the concept's ultimate viability considerably, because as I say, you'd really have to keep track of all slight but longer-term positive radiative signals it is putting into the climate system (i.e., cooling the stratosphere, warming us), since you certainly need some degree of prolongation for the technique to have much value..and of course, these are just the kinds of things where we currently seem to know quite little. Cheers, Nathan On Sunday, August 10, 2014 5:17:04 AM UTC-4, andrewjlockley wrote: Great point, Nathan. However, you're ignoring an additional issue. Warming of the tropopause means it's easier for water to convect or fold in to the stratosphere. This is a potentially serious problem, and one I put on the list of unknowns already. Bulk air movements also bring more methane into the stratosphere, which ultimately end up as water. My view is that we need urgent improvements in our ability to monitor and model the tropopause, if we are to have a hope of making SRM predictable and
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen *Speakers* - *Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice* by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) - *An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns* by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) - *Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R?* by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) - *Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? *by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) *Session Description* Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that there has been only discussion of a portion of Geoengineering - only about SRM. Not just in the current exchange, but in virtually every geoengineering/ethics article I have read. This is true for most of the papers mentioned in this thread. 3. One exception: Dr. Wong briefly mentions CDR and does a good job of using the term Geoengineering to mean both SRM and CDR. His emphasis on post implementation certainly can apply to CDR - so I am applauding his small contribution. However, I disagree strongly with the word only in this sentence quoting Vaughan and Lenton at about his p 2.4/6 (my emphasis added): *For example, Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy M. Lenton note that the 'effect [of any Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques] will decay over time [ . . . ], and it will also decay if carbon storage is not permanent. In the long-term, the only way to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to permanently store [ . . . ] an equivalent amount of CO2 to the total emitted to the atmosphere' (Vaughan Lenton, 2011, p. 750).* That is, I believe there is general agreement that afforestation/reforestation can be a valuable CDR approach, even though it is certainly not permanent. I claim the same about biochar, with a major portion likely to last for millennia. My concern might extend to Dr. Wong, but certainly to Drs. Vaughan and Lenton. Permanence should never be a requirement for any form of either SRM or CDR. So this is to urge list members to read the Wong paper for the (limited) way that CDR stays in his discussion. 4. Dr. Svoboda yesterday directed our attention in his last sentence to a 2012 (behind pay-wall) article, whose abstract reads (emphasis added): *As a strategy for responding to climate change, aerosol geoengineering (AG) carries various risks, thus raising ethical concerns regarding its potential deployment. I examine three ethical arguments that AG ought not to be deployed, given that it (1) risks harming persons, (2) would harm persons, and (3) would be more harmful to persons than some other available strategy. I show that these arguments are not successful. Instead, I defend a fourth argument: in scenarios in which all available climate change strategies would result in net harm, we ought to adopt the strategy that would result in the least net harm. Barring substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, we can reasonably expect future scenarios in which all available strategies would result in net harm. In such cases, there is good reason to suspect that AG would result in less net harm than emissions mitigation, adaptation, or other geoengineering strategies.* with this key words in the middle (emphasis added): *scenarios ... all ... strategies ...net harm* I strongly believe that afforestation/reforestation, biochar and probably several other CDR approaches will result in net good, not net harm. I hope someone can show me why this is not true. If true, then it should follow that Dr. Svoboda's final sentence is not logically valid. I hope
RE: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Toby, I regret I will not be at the meeting to learn more about the ethics of CDR. Presumably this refers to enhancement of existing, natural CDR which is already removing about 55% of our emissions, but which is immune from ethical considerations(?) Regardless of our actions, this natural CDR will eventually consume all of our CO2 and return air CO2 (and climate?) to pre-industrial levels, so what are the ethics here? In any case, I assume the ethics of CDR referred to really means the ethics of accelerated CDR. Good to see that such activity and its ethics will be put in context of alternative actions as stated in the session description. Greg From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [geoengineering@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Toby Svoboda [tobysvob...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2014 7:26 AM To: Ronal W. Larson Cc: Geoengineering Subject: Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen Speakers * Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) * An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) * Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R? by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) * Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) Session Description Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.netmailto:rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that there has been only discussion of a portion of Geoengineering - only about SRM. Not just in the current exchange, but in virtually every geoengineering/ethics article I have read. This is true for most of the papers mentioned in this thread. 3. One exception: Dr. Wong briefly mentions CDR and does a good job of using the term Geoengineering to mean both SRM and CDR. His emphasis on post implementation certainly can apply to CDR - so I am applauding his small contribution. However, I disagree strongly with the word only in this sentence quoting Vaughan and Lenton at about his p 2.4/6 (my emphasis added): For example, Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy M. Lenton note that the 'effect [of any Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques] will decay over time [ . . . ], and it will also decay if carbon storage is not permanent. In the long-term, the only way to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to permanently store [ . . . ] an equivalent amount of CO2 to the total emitted to the atmosphere' (Vaughan Lenton, 2011, p. 750). That is, I believe there is general agreement that afforestation/reforestation can be a valuable CDR approach, even though it is certainly not permanent. I claim the same about biochar, with a major portion likely to last for millennia. My concern might extend to Dr. Wong, but certainly to Drs. Vaughan and Lenton. Permanence should never be a requirement for any form of either SRM or CDR. So this is to urge list members to read the Wong paper for the (limited) way that CDR stays in his discussion. 4. Dr. Svoboda yesterday directed our attention in his last sentence to a 2012 (behind pay-wall) article, whose abstract reads (emphasis added): As a strategy for responding to climate change, aerosol geoengineering (AG) carries various risks, thus raising ethical concerns regarding its potential deployment. I examine three ethical arguments that AG ought not to be deployed, given that it (1) risks harming persons, (2) would harm persons, and (3) would be more harmful to persons than some other available strategy. I show that these arguments are
Re: [geo] A Win-Win research program proposal on SRM (sunlight reflection methods)
The research proposed can also be improved if we also take into account the very important health cost savings: According to Shindell (*) dramatically cutting polluting emissions (BC and CH4) with existing technology would avoid 0.7–4.7 million annual premature deaths every year, from outdoor air pollution. Shindell calculated that by 2030, his pollution reduction methods would bring about* $6.5 trillion in annual benefits from fewer people dying from air pollution, less global warming and, increased annual crop yields production by from 30 to 135 million tons* due to ozone reductions... Remember, what is proposed is a 80% reduction of current SO2 emissions in the troposphere, but keeping its current cooling effects. It will also reduce acid rain... The research proposed is not intended as an offset to the CO2, so not at all an alternative to mitigation — it would be intended to sustain the cooling offset of existing sulfate layer, so as* not to create a penalty for cutting emissions from coal-fired power plants*. Right now, if one cuts emissions from coal-fired power plants, the simultaneous cutback in SO2 emissions actually leads to the net warming effect... (*) D. Shindell, J.C.I. Kuylenstierna, ... *et al. **Simultaneously mitigating near-term climate change and improving human health and food security, *Science, 2012, 335, 183–189. Le mercredi 6 août 2014 11:46:46 UTC+2, Renaud de_Richter a écrit : Dear David, You are right! To increase the height of smokestack exit, you either need: 1/ very tall stacks, 2/ hotter plumes... ... 3/ or you can increase the exit velocity by boosting the speed with a fan, 4/ or by taking advantage of the wind, as the horizontal air flow can be used to induce a secondary vertical air flow (there exist commercially available modifications of conventional stacks into a high plume stacks see figure attached. Those systems generally apply Bernoulli's principle and by venturi effect boost the speed of the exhaust from the smokestack)... 5/... *or also make profit of natural (or artificial) atmospheric convection processes*... 6/ or a combination of several of the foregoing! *Convective processes over Asia frequently transport boundary layer air into the upper troposphere (UT) where long range transport associated with movement in the jet stream rapidly redistributes Asian emissions globally* within timescales of days to weeks (Liu et al., 2003 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib26 and Turquety et al., 2008 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib47). Maximum convective activity occurs during summer, when the Asian summer monsoon dictates tropospheric circulation over South Asia (Qian and Lee, 2000 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib35). During this period frequent and persistent deep convection over the continent efficiently lofts polluted air masses from the boundary layer to the UT on a large scale, with uplifted pollutants being transported to the west where they contribute to elevated levels of tropospheric ozone over the Mediterranean (Baker et al., 2011 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib3, Lelieveld et al., 2002 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib24 , Park et al., 2009 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib34 , Randel et al., 2010 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib36 , Scheeren et al., 2003 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib39 and Schuck et al., 2010 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib40). In winter, convective activity is at a minimum and uplifting of boundary layer air is further suppressed by the Siberian High (Liu et al., 2003 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib26). Warm conveyor belts (WCBs) act to lift air from the Asian boundary layer into the free troposphere where it is then transported across the Pacific, with maximum activity in winter and spring (Cooper et al., 2004 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib11 and Eckhardt et al., 2004 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib13). Similarly, WCBs also bring air from North America to the European UT, with maximum activity in winter (Auvray and Bey, 2005 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib2 and Eckhardt et al., 2004 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231014004567#bib13 ). *Extracted from:* Baker, A. K., Traud, S., Brenninkmeijer, C. A., Hoor, P., Neumaier, M., Oram, D. E., ... Ziereis, H. (2014). Pollution Patterns in the Upper Troposphere over Europe and Asia observed by CARIBIC. *Atmospheric Environment*, Volume
Re: [AMEG 8562] Re: [geo] Re: 2. What are some potentially false 'memes' related to solar geoengineering?
Dear John - Had you a technique that worked securely, quite a few people might sleep better at night. But Ken once accused you, if I remember correctly, of making reckless statements, and since you don't have such a technique, trying to speak in ways that intentionally builds a feeling of dependency on non-existent technologies to be deployed 9 months from now would seem to count as such. I find it somewhat frustrating, because what you seem unwilling to do is the 2,000 year old political strategy of divide and conquer as applied to climate strategy (you're not alone in this, I might add), since whenever you want to create this feeling of complete dependency upon geoengineering for the near-term, you tend to revert to speaking of emissions as a single lump phenomenon, and therefore hopeless, when in fact it is virtually unquestionable that if your concerns are really so immediate, there are 100s of shovel-ready, very practical projects involving SLCF emissions, that no one in the world is opposed to in principal, that are vastly under-appreciated by so many people, and that you could be helping to accelerate enactment of, which could take out some forcing from the Arctic more quickly than anything else. We don't really know just how much cooling power would be needed to significantly improve Arctic conditions for the near-term. There's virtually a 100% chance that what I mention would help, though, and might even work better than has been projected already in the literature (i.e., in the UNEP BC/O3 study, etc.). That's because, I believe, the implications of the recent Cowtan Way material is very significant to the concerns of your group AMEG, but you've paid little attention to it. What I mean is, there's a very close correspondence of timing between the so-called warming pause and an increased acceleration of Arctic amplification - so poorly recorded in the primary data sets as to virtually get rid of the pause entirely once it is corrected (see discussion at Real Climate), which to my mind has all sorts of potential implications about the causes of what we see happening in the Arctic - how much is internal feedbacks, how much comes from rather rapid changes in oceanic/atmospheric circulation, etc, and this in turn has implications for the Flanner papers that you have so often depended upon to estimate how much cooling power would be needed to help the Arctic. In short, Jim Hansen has often said that one of hardest things is to tell a forcing from a feedback, and I think you would need to get that straightened out first before making such an estimate correctly But in the meantime, I'd just suggest concentrating a lot more on the things that we already are certain will work, even if they clearly can't solve the problem (which, needless to say, geoengineering alone couldn't either, even if you had that technique all ready to go) Best, Nathan On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 2:46 PM, John Nissen johnnissen2...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for your response, Nathan, with your concern that SRM techniques are unready and unproven. I didn't say anything about which techniques might be used for cooling the Arctic, or how well they might work, or the probability of success. If we have no option but geoengineering to cool the Arctic - if that is the only way to provide enough cooling power (which we can estimate as in the order of a few hundreds of terawatts) - then *we have to find a way of doing it*, or face the risk of complete Arctic meltdown. To deny the need for geoengineering to cool the Arctic is to risk self-destruct - like pressing the trigger in Russian roulette where every chamber may contain a bullet. Are we to rely on IPCC global climate models which predict that sea ice will last for decades, when the models have abjectly failed to anticipate minimum sea ice in 2007 and 2012? Are we to believe that these minima were just one in a million year events, arising from freak conditions in the Arctic? Are we to believe that there is no vicious cycle of warming and melting from albedo loss, when the sea ice volume is following an exponential trend? On the other hand, there are two techniques which have a good chance of working because they are based on well-known natural phenomena: the cooling from stratospheric haze and the cooling from cloud brightening. Re stratospheric aerosol, we know that this can have a dramatic cooling effect from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. We know that the thickness of the stratospheric haze has recently increased due to man-made emissions of SO2 puncturing the tropopause and entering the stratosphere at low latitude. If the SO2 were injected at suitably high latitude, in the lower stratosphere, then Brewer-Dobson circulation would take the resultant haze of fine droplets towards the pole where they would fall back into the troposphere within a few months. We just need to determine the optimum latitude and time of year
Re: [geo] 2. What are some potentially false 'memes' related to solar geoengineering?
Dr Calvin: Not sure if your response below was to my proposed false (repeat false) meme, directed to Ken, which read (see more below): SRM can be analyzed adequately and correctly without comparing to CDR/NET. See next in response to your rejoinder: Compared to what? On Aug 17, 2014, at 4:53 PM, William Calvin wcal...@uw.edu wrote: The appropriate rejoinder is often Compared to what? [RWL: Still assuming you mean my above (false) meme in italics, and because we have both used the term compared, my answer is mainly biochar, but there are of course many others desiring a comparison. See next also. For example, What if the application is not spatially uniform? Uneven application results in uneven cooling, therefore pressure differences, therefore new winds are generated. Assuming spatially homogenous effects glosses over all that potential for redirecting winds and moisture delivery. But it would show up as increased variability atop what climate change is already providing--so the question is how much, compared to the variance we have inadvertently generated for the last sixty years. [RWL: I believe all, but certainly biochar, will supply inherently sufficiently uniform CO2. CO2 seems to already vary about 2% annually anywhere around the world, and I would guess that man-made CDR would have a smaller variation (especially because biochar can be expected to be introduced at all but the poleward latitudes). Therefore, I think there is little concern for CDR to create the inhomogeneity you are correctly concerned about. So perhaps your response was not addressed to myself or those on the list mostly interested in CDR? Ron Cheers, -Bill On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 8:25 PM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Ken cc list This is to support your request for ideas for a #2 list (though I wonder what is on the #1 list). I recognize that you asked for only in the SRM category, but Andrew added two (his 7th and 8th) on CDR (which probably sound to a few CDR-folk as not so myth like) so I thought I should add one that attempts to tie CDR/NET to SRM: See below, so I can expand (very briefly, since you are urging a new thread) into the #2b and 2c categories which is where the interesting information is . See below On Aug 5, 2014, at 12:37 PM, Ken Caldeira kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu wrote: Folks, I am supposed to give a keynote talk at CEC14 in two weeks. For this talk, I would like to try to develop a list of oft-cited memes that many assume are established facts, but which may not in fact be true. I am thinking of things like: With solar geoengineering, there will be winners and losers. Termination risk is an important reason not to engage in solar geoengineering. Solar geoengineering will cause widespread drying. [RWL: I hope your keynote will be televised to hear your discussion on these. I like the slant you are taking. I don't want to discuss all of these things here but simply to develop a list. You could help me by sending an email answering the questions: 2a. What memes are out there which many experts regard as well-established facts but which in fact might not be correct? [RWL: 2b. Why do you suspect the correctness of that meme? [RWL: Because of a failure to develop a useful agreed-upon methodology for comparing these two parts of Geoengineering (Climate Engineering at CEC14). 2c. (optional) Can you provide a citation or a link to where someone is assuming the meme is true? [RWL: a) The high percentage of technical articles which use the terms geoengineering (climate engineering) to mean only SRM. b) The high percentage of articles (and AR5/IPCC) making no effort to compare and contrast the two. c) The high percentage of articles that assume/assert CDR/NET will take too long and cost too much. d) The failure of ethicists to look seriously at the CDR/NET arena; to only look at SRM. Ron, with an apology for not starting a separate thread as requested. Thoughtful responses would be most appreciated. If you want to start discussion about a meme, please do so in a separate thread so that this thread can be easily used to develop a list. Thanks, Ken ___ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross dr...@carnegiescience.edu -- 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
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Dr. Svoboda, list, and panelists 1. Thanks for the alert on this 1.5 hour panel. I hope that you and/or others can report back on any comparisons found for the ethics of CDR and SRM. 2. Curiously, a major news item relative to biochar just came to my attention yesterday - a report (dated 30 July) by a market research firm on the nascent biochar industry. See http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/biochar-market.html . I mention it only because the report is unlikely to have been on the radar of this panel. 3. My guess is that this is the only market projection for any geoengineering approach. I can't comment on its validity since its cost (about as much as 5 tonnes of char) exceeds my interest level. Without the benefit of reading any but the brief summary, I personally think it is on the conservative side. I am not recommending this report - only reporting on its existence. 4. However, I hope the panelists will factor in the report's rationale (a bit given at the above site), for the sales growth predicted for biochar, into how they compare the ethics of biochar (and competing CDR approaches) in comparison with the SRM approaches. I am not saying that projected future sales should greatly influence discussion of biochar (and other CDR) ethics, but I do believe that the reasons for that projected growth (NOT involving CDR) should have importance in this panel's discussions. 5. The websites of the six companies listed (Agri-Tech Producers, LLC, Biochar Products, Inc., Cool Planet Energy Systems Inc, Blackcarbon, Diacarbon Energy Inc and Genesis Industries) may also be of interest (and two others I know are selling quite a bit are in the 175 companies they say are now considered part of the biochar industry). Again - Prof. Svoboda - thanks for this alert. Best of luck with your panel. Ron On Aug 17, 2014, at 8:26 AM, Toby Svoboda tobysvob...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen Speakers Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R? by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) Session Description Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that there has been only discussion of a portion of Geoengineering - only about SRM. Not just in the current exchange, but in virtually every geoengineering/ethics article I have read. This is true for most of the papers mentioned in this thread. 3. One exception: Dr. Wong briefly mentions CDR and does a good job of using the term Geoengineering to mean both SRM and CDR. His emphasis on post implementation certainly can apply to CDR - so I am applauding his small contribution. However, I disagree strongly with the word only in this sentence quoting Vaughan and Lenton at about his p 2.4/6 (my emphasis added): For example, Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy M. Lenton note that the 'effect [of any Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques] will decay over time [ . . . ], and it will also decay if carbon storage is not permanent. In the long-term, the only way to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels is to permanently store [ . . . ] an equivalent amount of CO2 to the total emitted to the atmosphere' (Vaughan Lenton, 2011, p. 750). That is, I
Re: [geo] Response to Svoboda and Irvine, J Reynolds
Dr. Svoboda etal (adding Dr. Joseph) Re this just identified Transparency report, whose title was Global Biochar Market is Expected to Reach 300 Kilo Tons and USD 572.3 Million by 2020 Just in tonight, on the Yahoo biochar list, from Dr. Stephen Joseph (a leading biochar researcher in Australia, with recent contacts in China), repeated to support my belief the report was conservative: Well the market in China/Japan has nearly reached that Many believe that the Chinese will do for biochar what they have already done for wind, and solar (both PV and heating) - topics that seem to pass ethical muster rather easily for most analysts. Again, because the Chinese are doing this of course doesn't make biochar (or any CDR approach) ethically correct - but I suggest that the speed of what is happening for one CDR approach (without carbon credits) should factor into ethical (and financial) comparisons between SRM and CDR. Ron On Aug 17, 2014, at 11:11 PM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, list, and panelists 1. Thanks for the alert on this 1.5 hour panel. I hope that you and/or others can report back on any comparisons found for the ethics of CDR and SRM. 2. Curiously, a major news item relative to biochar just came to my attention yesterday - a report (dated 30 July) by a market research firm on the nascent biochar industry. See http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/biochar-market.html . I mention it only because the report is unlikely to have been on the radar of this panel. 3. My guess is that this is the only market projection for any geoengineering approach. I can't comment on its validity since its cost (about as much as 5 tonnes of char) exceeds my interest level. Without the benefit of reading any but the brief summary, I personally think it is on the conservative side. I am not recommending this report - only reporting on its existence. 4. However, I hope the panelists will factor in the report's rationale (a bit given at the above site), for the sales growth predicted for biochar, into how they compare the ethics of biochar (and competing CDR approaches) in comparison with the SRM approaches. I am not saying that projected future sales should greatly influence discussion of biochar (and other CDR) ethics, but I do believe that the reasons for that projected growth (NOT involving CDR) should have importance in this panel's discussions. 5. The websites of the six companies listed (Agri-Tech Producers, LLC, Biochar Products, Inc., Cool Planet Energy Systems Inc, Blackcarbon, Diacarbon Energy Inc and Genesis Industries) may also be of interest (and two others I know are selling quite a bit are in the 175 companies they say are now considered part of the biochar industry). Again - Prof. Svoboda - thanks for this alert. Best of luck with your panel. Ron On Aug 17, 2014, at 8:26 AM, Toby Svoboda tobysvob...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Ron, I agree that CDR warrants attention from ethicists (and others). For those attending the Berlin Climate Engineering Conference this week, there is a session on the ethics of CDR that might be of interest: http://www.ce-conference.org/ethics-carbon-dioxide-removal. Best, Toby The Ethics of Carbon Dioxide Removal Date: Thursday, 21. August 2014 - 11:00 to 12:30 Location: Copenhagen Speakers Geoengineering and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice by David Morrow (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Toby Svoboda (Fairfield University) An Overview of CDR Techniques - Adverse Impacts and Ethical Concerns by Haomiao Du (University of Amsterdam) Public Participation and Stakeholder Inclusion for Geoengineering: What Do We Know from CDM A/R? by Erik Thorstensen (Oslo and Akershus University College) Would the Development of a Safe, Robust and Scalable Technique to Sequester Carbon Dioxide from the Air Create an Obligation to 'Clean up the Mess'? by Tim Kruger (University of Oxford) Session Description Most of the current literature on ethical aspects of climate engineering (CE) has concentrated on solar radiation management. CDR has not gained wide addition up to now, even though it also seems to raise major normative challenges. In the session we will outline major issues regarding the ethics of CDR, summarize the main properties that distinguish CDR form SRM from a normative perspective, take a look at some case studies on different CDR techniques and put them in the context of mitigation and adaptation efforts. On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Ronal W. Larson rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Dr. Svoboda, cc list and others in this dialog: 1. I thank you and the others writing about a portion of the ethics of Geoengieering. Your work is valuable. 2. But I am concerned that
