[geo] Re: Crop yields in a geoengineered climate (notes from the blogosphere ...)
I am traveling and have not had a chance to read the Pongratz article closely yet, but it looks like the comparison is between a control scenario, a 2xCO2 world, and a 2xCO2 + stratospheric aerosols world. This is common practice, and the analytical logic is clear, however presenting model runs this way plays into the hands of critics who mischaracterize the policy choice as between mitigation and geoengineering. Opponents point to these results and portray researchers as supporting geoengineering as an alternative to mitigation - or else why wouldn't emissions cuts be represented in the models? Couldn't modelers include mixed mitigation/ geoengineering scenarios as a routine feature of such studies, to make it harder for critics to misrepresent things? After all, almost no one is arguing for intervention without emissions cuts. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com http://geoengineeringpolitics.blogspot.com/ On Jan 24, 4:09 pm, rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Ken and list: 1. I have enjoyed the Pongratz article sent recently which is the subject of this NPR interview given below. In it, Dr. Pongratz, you and your co-authors did a pretty good job of separating SRM from Geoengineering. (I don't think the phrase CDR appeared, however) This is to again hope that all authors doing fine work like yours at Carnegie go out of their way to say that Geoengineering has both SRM and CDR parts. like 2. The NPR interview below does not do that at all. Fortunately the other two (bitsof science and smartplanet) do at least use the terms SRM and sunshade. All of them fail to mention that CDR is a second (and much less controversial) part of Geoengineering. 3. I mention this mainly because your Carnegie team is (I think correctly) not arguing for any SRM at this time. However, there are many on this list who think we are ready now for an accelerated push on CDR. 4. I also have hopes that your modeling work can be extended into the CDR world. We need such modeling - urgently. As previously, thanks for alerting us - and (especially) making your Carnegie papers available - to the list. Ron - Original Message - From: Ken Caldeira kcalde...@carnegie.stanford.edu To: geoengineering geoengineering@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 9:59:00 AM Subject: [geo] Crop yields in a geoengineered climate (notes from the blogosphere ...) Some coverage in the blogosphere of our recent paper from Nature Climate Change (attached): http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/01/20/145535536/geoengineered-f... Geoengineered Food? Climate Fix Could Boost Crop Yields, But With Risks For a few years now, a handful of scientists have been proposing grandiose technological fixes for the world's climate to combat the effects of global warming — schemes called geoengineering . Climate change has the potential to wreak all kinds of havoc on the planet, including the food system. Scientists predict that two variables farmers depend on heavily — temperature and precipitation — are already changing and affecting food production in some arid parts of the world where there isn't a lot of room for error. And if the problem worsens on a larger scale, it could do a lot of damage to agricultural yields and food security. At some point, governments may decide to do something desperate to protect our food and our people, Ken Caldeira , an environmental scientist at Stanford University, tells The Salt. And that something desperate could be geoengineering. One proposal scientists are batting around is to fill the upper atmosphere with tiny particles that could scatter sunlight before it reaches, and warms, the Earth's surface. Sulfate droplets inside volcanic ash clouds already do this naturally. So the idea is that a few million tons of sulfates, sprayed into the stratosphere by airplanes, could produce the same effect artificially. Scientists have been messing with local weather for decades. China does it all the time, most infamously during the 2008 Olympics . But around 2006, the notion of doing it on a global scale got more traction, especially when Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen got behind it . A backlash ensued, as many pointed out that tampering with such a complex system was far too risky. Caldeira began studying geoengineering with the intent of proving that it's a bad idea. But his new research suggests that manipulating the climate could actually produce benefits, at least for food production. For instance: a study from his lab, published Sunday in Nature Climate Change , compares the effect on the global food supply of unmitigated global warming versus geoengineering. The result? Crop yields of wheat, rice and corn would actually get a boost from geoengineering. Julia Pongratz , a post-doc researcher, led the study. She used computer climate models to simulate a doubling of carbon dioxide levels in the
Re: [geo] Re: Crop yields in a geoengineered climate (notes from the blogosphere ...)
Josh: After all, almost no one is arguing for intervention without emissions cuts. No, but I and others have been *predicting* it for years...because emissions cuts may well take decades. Even the panic I expect in the 2020s won't change matters swiftly. Gregory Benford On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.comwrote: I am traveling and have not had a chance to read the Pongratz article closely yet, but it looks like the comparison is between a control scenario, a 2xCO2 world, and a 2xCO2 + stratospheric aerosols world. This is common practice, and the analytical logic is clear, however presenting model runs this way plays into the hands of critics who mischaracterize the policy choice as between mitigation and geoengineering. Opponents point to these results and portray researchers as supporting geoengineering as an alternative to mitigation - or else why wouldn't emissions cuts be represented in the models? Couldn't modelers include mixed mitigation/ geoengineering scenarios as a routine feature of such studies, to make it harder for critics to misrepresent things? After all, almost no one is arguing for intervention without emissions cuts. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com http://geoengineeringpolitics.blogspot.com/ On Jan 24, 4:09 pm, rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Ken and list: 1. I have enjoyed the Pongratz article sent recently which is the subject of this NPR interview given below. In it, Dr. Pongratz, you and your co-authors did a pretty good job of separating SRM from Geoengineering. (I don't think the phrase CDR appeared, however) This is to again hope that all authors doing fine work like yours at Carnegie go out of their way to say that Geoengineering has both SRM and CDR parts. like 2. The NPR interview below does not do that at all. Fortunately the other two (bitsof science and smartplanet) do at least use the terms SRM and sunshade. All of them fail to mention that CDR is a second (and much less controversial) part of Geoengineering. 3. I mention this mainly because your Carnegie team is (I think correctly) not arguing for any SRM at this time. However, there are many on this list who think we are ready now for an accelerated push on CDR. 4. I also have hopes that your modeling work can be extended into the CDR world. We need such modeling - urgently. As previously, thanks for alerting us - and (especially) making your Carnegie papers available - to the list. Ron - Original Message - From: Ken Caldeira kcalde...@carnegie.stanford.edu To: geoengineering geoengineering@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 9:59:00 AM Subject: [geo] Crop yields in a geoengineered climate (notes from the blogosphere ...) Some coverage in the blogosphere of our recent paper from Nature Climate Change (attached): http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/01/20/145535536/geoengineered-f... Geoengineered Food? Climate Fix Could Boost Crop Yields, But With Risks For a few years now, a handful of scientists have been proposing grandiose technological fixes for the world's climate to combat the effects of global warming — schemes called geoengineering . Climate change has the potential to wreak all kinds of havoc on the planet, including the food system. Scientists predict that two variables farmers depend on heavily — temperature and precipitation — are already changing and affecting food production in some arid parts of the world where there isn't a lot of room for error. And if the problem worsens on a larger scale, it could do a lot of damage to agricultural yields and food security. At some point, governments may decide to do something desperate to protect our food and our people, Ken Caldeira , an environmental scientist at Stanford University, tells The Salt. And that something desperate could be geoengineering. One proposal scientists are batting around is to fill the upper atmosphere with tiny particles that could scatter sunlight before it reaches, and warms, the Earth's surface. Sulfate droplets inside volcanic ash clouds already do this naturally. So the idea is that a few million tons of sulfates, sprayed into the stratosphere by airplanes, could produce the same effect artificially. Scientists have been messing with local weather for decades. China does it all the time, most infamously during the 2008 Olympics . But around 2006, the notion of doing it on a global scale got more traction, especially when Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen got behind it . A backlash ensued, as many pointed out that tampering with such a complex system was far too risky. Caldeira began studying geoengineering with the intent of proving that it's a bad idea. But his new research suggests that manipulating the climate could actually produce benefits, at least for food production. For instance: a study from his lab, published Sunday in Nature
Re: [geo] Re: Crop yields in a geoengineered climate (notes from the blogosphere ...)
That may be, but few of us want it (okay, maybe Newt Gingrich). On 1/24/12, Gregory Benford xbenf...@gmail.com wrote: Josh: After all, almost no one is arguing for intervention without emissions cuts. No, but I and others have been *predicting* it for years...because emissions cuts may well take decades. Even the panic I expect in the 2020s won't change matters swiftly. Gregory Benford On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.comwrote: I am traveling and have not had a chance to read the Pongratz article closely yet, but it looks like the comparison is between a control scenario, a 2xCO2 world, and a 2xCO2 + stratospheric aerosols world. This is common practice, and the analytical logic is clear, however presenting model runs this way plays into the hands of critics who mischaracterize the policy choice as between mitigation and geoengineering. Opponents point to these results and portray researchers as supporting geoengineering as an alternative to mitigation - or else why wouldn't emissions cuts be represented in the models? Couldn't modelers include mixed mitigation/ geoengineering scenarios as a routine feature of such studies, to make it harder for critics to misrepresent things? After all, almost no one is arguing for intervention without emissions cuts. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com http://geoengineeringpolitics.blogspot.com/ On Jan 24, 4:09 pm, rongretlar...@comcast.net wrote: Ken and list: 1. I have enjoyed the Pongratz article sent recently which is the subject of this NPR interview given below. In it, Dr. Pongratz, you and your co-authors did a pretty good job of separating SRM from Geoengineering. (I don't think the phrase CDR appeared, however) This is to again hope that all authors doing fine work like yours at Carnegie go out of their way to say that Geoengineering has both SRM and CDR parts. like 2. The NPR interview below does not do that at all. Fortunately the other two (bitsof science and smartplanet) do at least use the terms SRM and sunshade. All of them fail to mention that CDR is a second (and much less controversial) part of Geoengineering. 3. I mention this mainly because your Carnegie team is (I think correctly) not arguing for any SRM at this time. However, there are many on this list who think we are ready now for an accelerated push on CDR. 4. I also have hopes that your modeling work can be extended into the CDR world. We need such modeling - urgently. As previously, thanks for alerting us - and (especially) making your Carnegie papers available - to the list. Ron - Original Message - From: Ken Caldeira kcalde...@carnegie.stanford.edu To: geoengineering geoengineering@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 9:59:00 AM Subject: [geo] Crop yields in a geoengineered climate (notes from the blogosphere ...) Some coverage in the blogosphere of our recent paper from Nature Climate Change (attached): http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/01/20/145535536/geoengineered-f... Geoengineered Food? Climate Fix Could Boost Crop Yields, But With Risks For a few years now, a handful of scientists have been proposing grandiose technological fixes for the world's climate to combat the effects of global warming — schemes called geoengineering . Climate change has the potential to wreak all kinds of havoc on the planet, including the food system. Scientists predict that two variables farmers depend on heavily — temperature and precipitation — are already changing and affecting food production in some arid parts of the world where there isn't a lot of room for error. And if the problem worsens on a larger scale, it could do a lot of damage to agricultural yields and food security. At some point, governments may decide to do something desperate to protect our food and our people, Ken Caldeira , an environmental scientist at Stanford University, tells The Salt. And that something desperate could be geoengineering. One proposal scientists are batting around is to fill the upper atmosphere with tiny particles that could scatter sunlight before it reaches, and warms, the Earth's surface. Sulfate droplets inside volcanic ash clouds already do this naturally. So the idea is that a few million tons of sulfates, sprayed into the stratosphere by airplanes, could produce the same effect artificially. Scientists have been messing with local weather for decades. China does it all the time, most infamously during the 2008 Olympics . But around 2006, the notion of doing it on a global scale got more traction, especially when Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen got behind it . A backlash ensued, as many pointed out that tampering with such a complex system was far too risky. Caldeira began studying geoengineering with the intent of proving that it's a bad idea. But his new research suggests that manipulating the
