[geo] Re: Intention matters in Climate Engineering

[Leon Di Marco]

   EASAC has, in its recent report on NETs , ignored the fact that NETs are 
simply another form of mitigation and instead  incorrectly placed 
mitigation as a priority over NETs .   This is a fundamental error caused 
by the notion that it is better to prevent pollution at its source than 
trying to clean up the whole pool of pollution itself.   A similar 
discussion is going on in the ocean plastic pollution space.Clearly, 
as  a society, we are aware that our actions add up and we can all as 
individuals do something to mitigate pollution of a given type, but that 
doesnt mean that we dont have to clear up the mess that we have already 
created.
And as has been posted separately, the Chinese are attempting to clean up 
the particulate pollution in the air in their cities caused by coal power 
plants using huge filtration towers - the mitigation approach would have 
been to switch off the power plants.
Clearly this year is of special importance for the debate as the IPCC 
process is going to put these issues before policymakers in various forms.  
  There is already some sign that new US policy instruments for carbon 
dioxide removal will influence that discussion.


This is from Peter in another thread. 

*One of the distinctive properties of CO2 is that it distributes itself 
uniformly and so removing a CO2 molecular by flue gas capture and by Direct 
Air Capture have identical impacts - and are thus both pure mitigation 
approaches . The only distinction is that DAC can remove CO2 that was 
previouslly emitted by flue gas so it has the additional capability to deal 
with overshoot. In  this frame DAC is clearly not geoengineering any more 
than any human activity is geoengineering because as all know too well 
small emissions by individuals when there are billions of us is 
geoengineering our plant by changing its climate . *

Plus an extract from an early piece from Steve Rayner who was involved in 
framing the Oxford Geoengineering Princliples-

http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/rsis/nts/HTML-Newsletter/Insight/NTS-Insight-jun-1102.html

NTS Insight June 2011

Click here for the PDF version. 


Climate Change and Geoengineering Governance

By Steve Rayner.

How Might We Geoengineer the Climate?

The first thing to emphasise is that geoengineering technologies do not yet 
exist, although some of the components that might go into them are already 
available or are under development for other purposes. For example, carbon 
sequestration in geological formations, which is already being explored for 
conventional carbon capture and storage (CCS) from power stations,3 

 would 
be an integral part of a geoengineering programme to capture CO2 from 
ambient air by artificial means. However the front end of the system – the 
removal of CO2 from ambient air – is currently only available on a very 
small scale for use in submarines, where the very high cost of the current 
technology is justified. In discussing geoengineering, therefore, it is 
important not to fall victim to Whitehead’s (1919) fallacy of misplaced 
concreteness, and talk about the comparative merits and drawbacks of 
geoengineering technologies as if they were already well developed and 
known.

Second, it is essential to recognise that the term ‘geoengineering’ 
currently encompasses a wide variety of concepts exhibiting diverse 
technical characteristics with very different implications for their 
governance. There is a tendency in some circles to seek to exempt favoured 
technological concepts from the category of geoengineering, leaving the 
term to apply only to big, scary or impractical options. This paper resists 
that impulse precisely because, as has just been argued, the technologies 
are really just ideas at this stage, and it is important not to close in 
prematurely on which technologies require specific levels of governance.

However, the very variety of technologies suggests the need for a 
preliminary taxonomy of technology concepts that identifies salient 
characteristics for both research and governance considerations.
Developing a taxonomy of technology concepts

*Solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR)*

The Royal Society (2009) identifies two principal mechanisms for moderating 
the climate by geoengineering. One involves reflecting some of the sun’s 
energy back into space to reduce the warming effect of increasing levels of 
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is described as solar radiation 
management (SRM). The other approach is to find ways to remove some of the 
CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it in the ground or in the oceans. 
This is called carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

*Ecosystems enhancement and black-box engineering*

The Royal Society (2009) also recognises, but gives less prominence to, 
another way of 

[geo] Solar geoengineering must take temperature debt into account - Andreas Oschlies

[Andrew Lockley]

Poster's note: others challenge these arguments. Parker and Irvine dispute
the vulnerability of solar geoengineering to anything less than eg a
nuclear war. Keith et al. suggest it can be temporarily deployed

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02203-x

Solar engineering must take temperature debt into account
Andreas Oschlies

   -
   


   -
   


   -
   


 PDF version


Solar geoengineering is a proposed method of climate engineering that aims
to reduce global warming using an artificial ‘sunscreen’ of aerosols in
Earth’s high atmosphere. As planning of the first field experiments gets
under way, any potential risks associated with the technology must be
transparently assessed and not downplayed or dismissed. One such risk of
solar geoengineering is its ‘temperature debt’ — the planetary heating that
would arise if maintenance of the artificial sunscreen was discontinued.

Modelling suggests that most of the world’s population could benefit from
this temporary sunscreen, compared with the adverse effects of unabated
climate change (a questionable reference state, in my view). However,
models also reveal the alarming rise in temperatures that could occur if
the screen of short-lived aerosols should suddenly cease to function for
any reason in the presence of high concentrations of long-lived greenhouse
gases (see H. D. Matthews and K. Caldeira *Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.
USA*104, 9949–9954;
2007 ). This rapid warming would
pose a severe risk to ecosystems and society.

Even with the best planning to ensure steady operation of the technology,
its continuous safe functioning and maintenance cannot be guaranteed. Yet
it could take hundreds of years to safely phase out solar geoengineering
and achieve the same degree of cooling by reducing greenhouse-gas
concentrations. It is therefore imperative that, in the absence of a
fail-safe mode for solar geoengineering, the temperature debt is fully
accounted for in any assessments of this technology.

Nature 554, 423 (2018)
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02203-x

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Re: [geo] How do we categorise carbon removal? (C2G2)

[Peter Eisenberger]

Mark

It is as you say unfortunately true that we do not focus only on what a
paticular approach does but unfortunately  also how it is characterized. In
human affairs such approaches result in discriminations of all kinds. It is
truly a sad day to see the science community and the climate policy
apparratus legitimize, in fact practice such discrimination in their
dialoques and decision making. I personally find those that introduce
concepts like moral hazards are particularly agregious in distorting our
efforts to make informed decisions matched only by climate deniers. I for
one think we should all hold the line on focusing on what are the cost and
benefits of diffferent decisions.  Use our rapidly growing understanding
and knowledge where we have them and acknowledging uncerrtainty where it
exists.

Now I do realize that the best we can likley do is to resist the
generalizations that labels bring . On the issue of  carbon removal there
is one perspective missing in your analysis .
One of the distinctive properties of CO2 is that it distributes itself
uniformly and so removing a CO2 molecular by flue gas capture and by Direct
Air Capture have identical impacts - and are thus both pure mitigation
approaches . The only distinction is that DAC can remove CO2 that was
previouslly emitted by flue gas so it has the additional capability to deal
with overshoot. In  this frame DAC is clearly not geoengineering any more
than any human activity is geoengineering because as allknow too well small
emissions by individuals when there are billions of us is geoengineering
our plant by changing its climate .

So I encourage us all to fight generalizing this complicated challenge we
face by not practicing it ourselves. Instead lets all focus on the
specifics -eg why does SRM have a greater risk of unintended consequences
than for example DAC and why does SRM deal with the sympto of climate
change while DAC deals with the core problem. Those are the real reasons to
favor DAC over SRM and not because one is geoengineering and the other is
not.

Thanks for your effort to promote this important dialoque

Peter

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 7:59 AM, Mark Turner 
wrote:

> A thought piece raising the questions we are asking ourselves in C2G2.
>
> Geoengineering? Mitigation? Something else altogether?
>
> https://www.c2g2.net/categorise-carbon-removal/
>
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Re: [geo] Intention matters in Climate Engineering

[Christopher Preston]

Agreed on two fronts, Klaus.

Attempts at addressing a problem through CDR hardly fit the standard 
definitions of geoengineering.  Maybe it is time to think of CDR as 
belonging in a completely different category.

Also agreed that 'geo-trashing' is a fine term for the global scale havoc 
we have caused :-) The term makes it clear that such accidental 
activities are quite different from any intentional ones undertaken at that 
scale.

best, Christopher 

On Thursday, February 22, 2018 at 12:57:55 PM UTC-7, klaus.lackner wrote:
>
> This definition then raises the question why the removal of CO2 that has 
> been put into the atmosphere as an unintended side effect of some other 
> activity is the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary 
> environment.  Indeed, it could be seen as a deliberate effort to avoid the 
> (albeit unintentional) large-scale manipulation of the environment.  The 
> net result would be no change in the environment.
>
>  
>
> I think limiting geo-engineering to counteracting climate change is a bit 
> too limiting, and I am sure if you were to ask John, you would find that 
> this definition of the term geo-engineering was in the context of a 
> particular study on fixing anthropogenic climate change.   Would it not be 
> geo-engineering, if we foolishely decided to warm the planet?
>
>  
>
> By the way the definition of geo-engineering as deliberate activity goes 
> back quite a bit further.  David Keith for example used in his Annual 
> Review article many years earlier. 
>
>  
>
> Since we now – for better or for worse –  have defined geo-engineering as 
> a deliberate activity, we need to find a term for large scale human 
> activities that unintentially, but substantively change Earth systems.  
> Geo-trashing?
>
>  
>
> Klaus
>
>  
>
> *From: *Alan Robock 
> *Date: *Thursday, February 22, 2018 at 11:26 AM
> *To: *"dhaw...@nrdc.org " , 
> Klaus Lackner , Peter Eisenberger <
> peter.ei...@gmail.com >
> *Cc: *"christopher...@gmail.com "  >, geoengineering 
> *Subject: *Re: [geo] Intention matters in Climate Engineering
>
>  
>
> I agree.  The definition of geoengineering is “*deliberate *large-scale 
> manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic 
> climate change.”  This comes from: Shepherd, J. G. S. et al., 2009: 
> Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty, RS Policy 
> Document 10/09, (London: The Royal Society).
>
> I completely agree that global warming is the problem we have to deal 
> with, but calling it "geoengineering" confuses issues.  Clearly humans are 
> causing global warming.  The latest survey shows 70% of Americans now 
> accept this.  The question we are researching is to determine the potential 
> benefits and risks of proposed geoengineering schemes so that policymakers 
> can make informed decisions in the future if we they are tempted to 
> implement different schemes.  If it soon seems to be more dangerous than 
> not doing it, that will put more pressure on mitigation.
>
> Alan
>
>  
>
> Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
>
>   Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
>
> Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
>
> Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644
>
> 14 College Farm Road  E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu 
> 
>
> New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock 
> 
>
> ☮ http://twitter.com/AlanRobock 
> 
>  2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN!
>
> Watch my 18 min TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54 
> 
>
> On 2/22/2018 2:13 PM, Hawkins, David wrote:
>
> It is well said but I will observe that putting a geo-engineering label on 
> what we are doing to ecosystems and the climate through human use of energy 
> and agriculture is not in my opinion an effective communication technique 
> to get people to have less visceral reactions to the topic of 
> intentional geo-engineering.  We need to recognize that there are big 
> differences in context in the two 

[geo] How do we categorise carbon removal? (C2G2)

[Mark Turner]

A thought piece raising the questions we are asking ourselves in C2G2.

Geoengineering? Mitigation? Something else altogether?

https://www.c2g2.net/categorise-carbon-removal/

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[geo] Scientists verify theory of the role of the South Pacific in natural atmospheric CO2 fluctuations

[Andrew Lockley]

Poster's note : obliquely relevant to OIF and open ocean storage of
supercritical CO2

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-scientists-theory-role-south-pacific.html

Scientists verify theory of the role of the South Pacific in natural
atmospheric CO2 fluctuationsFebruary 22, 2018
Alfred Wegener Institute
[image: Scientists verify theory of the role of the South Pacific in
natural atmospheric CO2 fluctuations]

View from RV Polarstern while collecting sediment samples used in the study
by Basak et al. Credit: Dr. Katharina Pahnke

A team led by geochemist Dr. Katharina Pahnke from Oldenburg has discovered
important evidence that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at
the end of the last ice age was triggered by changes in the Antarctic
Ocean. The researchers from the University of Oldenburg's Institute for
Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), the Max Planck
Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and the Alfred Wegener
Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) were able
to demonstrate that the deep South Pacific was strongly stratified during
the last ice age, and could thus have facilitated long-term, deep-sea
storage of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). The study, which has
now been published in the academic journal *Science*, also indicates that
in the course of the warming following the end of the last ice age the
mixing of the deep water masses increased, releasing stored CO2 and
enhancing global warming.

The Southern Ocean plays an important role in climate events because CO2
can be absorbed from the atmosphere into the ocean
. When increased amounts of dust are
deposited in the seawater, microscopic algae multiply because the iron
contained in the dust acts as a fertilizer. When these single celled algae
die, they sink to the ocean floor, taking the sequestered carbon dioxide
with them. To ensure long-term removal of the CO2 from the atmosphere,
however, it must be stored in stable conditions in deep water
 over long periods of time.

In order to find out how water masses in the deep South Pacific have
developed over the last 30,000 years, the team recovered sediment cores
from water depths of between 3,000 and more than 4,000 metres during an
expedition of the research vessel "Polarstern" to the South Pacific. The
geochemists Dr. Chandranath Basak and Dr. Henning Fröllje of the ICBM, the
two main authors of the study, extracted tiny teeth and other skeletal
debris of fossil fish from the sediment to analyse their content of
isotopes of the rare earth metal neodymium.

"Neodymium is particularly useful for identifying water masses of different
origin," said Pahnke, the head of the Max Planck Research Group for Marine
Isotope Geochemistry based at the ICBM and the Max Planck Institute for
Marine Microbiology in Bremen, explaining that each layer of water has its
own characteristic neodymium signature. The isotope ratios of this element
vary depending on which ocean basin the water comes from. For instance, the
coldest and therefore deepest water mass in the Southern Pacific forms on
the continental shelf of Antarctica and carries a distinct neodymium
signature. Overlying this mass is a layer that combines water from the
North Atlantic, the South Pacific and the North Pacific and hence is marked
by a different signature.

Using fish debris in deep-sea sediments, the researchers were able to trace
the variations in neodymium concentrations at different depths over the
course of time. The result: at the peak of the last ice age approximately
20,000 years ago, the neodymium signature of samples taken from depths
below 4,000 metres was significantly lower than at lower depths. "The only
explanation for such a pronounced difference is that there was no mixing of
the water masses at that time," said Fröllje, who currently works at the
University of Bremen. He and his colleagues concluded from this that the
deep waters were strongly stratified during the glacial period.

As the climate in the southern hemisphere
 grew warmer towards the end of
the last ice age around 18,000 years ago, the stratification of the water
masses  was broken up and neodymium
values at different depths converged. "There was probably more mixing
because the density of the water decreased as a result of the warming,"
Pahnke explained. This then led to the release of the carbon dioxide stored
in deep waters.

For some time now climate researchers have been speculating on why
fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 levels followed the same pattern as
temperature in the southern hemisphere whereas the temperature in the north
at times ran counter to these fluctuations. One theory is that certain
processes in the Southern Ocean played an important role.

"With our analyses