Re: [geo] Geo. and the Anthropocene

[Greg Rau]

Pay walled.
But from the abstract "...we aim to raise doubts on the dominant perspective on 
the organisation of climate engineering, which assumes these approaches to be 
regulated through legalistic means. Drawing an analogy to the early development 
stages of nuclear weapons, we point out that, instead of following a legalistic 
rationale, climate engineering organisation might pursue a logic of technical 
feasibility, political acceptance and bureaucratic momentum."  
GR For us mere scientists, what are "legalistic means" (legal means?) , and why 
is it assumed that organization based on technical feasibility, political 
acceptance and bureaucratic momentum cannot also have a legalistic 
underpinning?  Why consider regulation by legalistic means if what is being 
regulated is not technically feasible, politically acceptable and having 
bureaucratic momentum?

Sent from the Rau's iPad

> On Jul 22, 2018, at 5:39 PM, Wil Burns  wrote:
> 
> FYI. Wil
> 
> Markus Lederer, et al., Organising the unthinkable in times of crises: Will 
> climate engineering become the weapon of last resort in the Anthropocene?
> 25(4) Organization (2018), 
> http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1350508418759186
> 
> wil
> 
> 
> [photo]
> 
> Dr. Wil Burns
> Co-Executive Director, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment, School of 
> International Service, American University & Professor of Research
> 
> 650.281.9126 | w...@feronia.org | 
> http://www.ceassessment.org | Skype: 
> wil.burns
>  |
> 2650 Haste St., Towle Hall #G07, Berkeley, CA 94720| View my research on my 
> SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=240348
> 
> [https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.wisestamp.com/icons_32/linkedin.png]
>  [https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.wisestamp.com/icons_32/twitter.png] 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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[geo] Geo. and the Anthropocene

[Wil Burns]

FYI. Wil

Markus Lederer, et al., Organising the unthinkable in times of crises: Will 
climate engineering become the weapon of last resort in the Anthropocene?
25(4) Organization (2018), 
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1350508418759186

wil


[photo]

Dr. Wil Burns
Co-Executive Director, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment, School of 
International Service, American University & Professor of Research

650.281.9126 | w...@feronia.org | 
http://www.ceassessment.org | Skype: 
wil.burns
 |
2650 Haste St., Towle Hall #G07, Berkeley, CA 94720| View my research on my 
SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=240348

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 [https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.wisestamp.com/icons_32/twitter.png] 





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Re: [geo] Geo-Engineering the Anthropocene

[Fred Zimmerman]

An interesting piece indeed that would be more useful if it offered
proposals as well as raising questions.  One gets the impression that the
author's idea of appropriate visuality would be a 24/7 loop of the
destruction of the global environment by fossil fuels.  But it's hard to
see how such a visuality against the Anthropocene could be created
without an elaborate global media industrial complex which presupposes that
which it it supposedly critiques.  One could argue that the visuality of
the Anthropocene began at Lescaux: indeed, that the essence of the
Anthropocene *is* this Lescauvian (?) ability to see nature as something
outside ourselves...

There are actually are a lot of useful conversations that this group could
have about visual communication strategies for SRM and CDR.  All of us of
who have written for popular or policy audiences have had the experience of
providing illustrations for reports.  Certain things work better as
illustrations than others, this tends to produces an implicit visual bias.
There is an extensive literature about how climate science findings are
communicated and (mis)understood.

Let me ask the group for some free thought: what are the 10 Commandments
for visual communication about geoengineering?  What are some images that
should never (again) be used? What are some best practices?

On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 5:22 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Poster's note : An unusual piece, notably discussing the visual depiction
 of geoengineering

 http://blog.fotomuseum.ch/2015/05/ii-geo-engineering-the-anthropocene/

 II. Geo-Engineering the Anthropocene

 By T.J. DEMOS
 Published: 13. MAY 2015

 “A daunting task lies ahead for scientists and engineers to guide society
 towards environmentally sustainable management during the era of the
 Anthropocene. This will require appropriate human behaviour at all scales,
 and may well involve internationally accepted, large-scale geo-engineering
 projects, for instance to ‘optimize’ climate.”[1]—Paul Crutzen, 2002

 The Anthropocene thesis, as presented in the increasingly expanding body
 of images and texts, appears generally split between optimists and
 pessimists, especially when it comes to geo-engineering, the deliberate
 intervention in the Earthʼs natural systems to counteract climate change.
 As the Anthropocene appears to imply the necessity of geo-engineering—as
 Crutzen, one of the inventors of the term makes clear—the battle lines have
 been drawn between those who think “we” humans confront an extraordinary
 opportunity to bio-technologically remake the world, and others who opt for
 hands-off caution and would rather modify human behavior instead of the
 environment in addressing the climate crisis.

 For instance, ethics philosopher Clive Hamilton, participating in “The
 Anthropocene—An Engineered Age?,” the 2014 panel discussion at Berlin’s
 Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), breaks the world down into
 techno-utopians and eco-Soterians. The former are today’s “new
 Prometheans,” intent on creating a new Eden on Earth, and the latter, named
 after Soteria, the ancient Greek personification of safety and
 preservation, remain pledged to the precautionary principle, respectful of
 Earth’s processes and critical of human hubris, the very same hubris, they
 argue, that got us into the environmental crisis in the first place.[2] For
 sociologist Bruno Latour, we must not disown the contemporary Frankenstein
 we’ve created—the contemporary Earth of the Anthropocene—but rather learn
 to love and care for the “monster” we’ve created. Meanwhile for activist
 Naomi Klein, arguments like Latour’s are dangerously misguided: “The earth
 is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It
 is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the
 world, it is to fix ourselves.”[3]

 In fact, the visual culture of the Anthropocene, whether delivered
 photographically or via remote-sensing technology, is riven by exactly this
 tension. Its iconography both portrays the remarkable extent of the
 human-driven alteration of Earth systems (with ample photographic and
 satellite-based imagery of large-scale mining, oil drilling, and
 deforestation projects), and documents the dangers of the unintended
 consequences of such ventures. Ultimately, however, imaging systems play
 more than an illustrative role here, as they tend to grant viewers a sense
 of control over the represented object of their gaze, even if that control
 is far from reality.

 In other words, Anthropocene imagery tends to reinforce the techno-utopian
 position that “we” have indeed mastered nature, just as we’ve mastered its
 imaging—and in fact the two, the dual colonization of nature and
 representation, seem inextricably intertwined. That is, even while these
 geo-engineering projects are generally done by corporations and heavy
 industry, certainly not identical to the “human” subject of the
 Anthropocene

[geo] Geo-Engineering the Anthropocene

[Andrew Lockley]

Poster's note : An unusual piece, notably discussing the visual depiction
of geoengineering

http://blog.fotomuseum.ch/2015/05/ii-geo-engineering-the-anthropocene/

II. Geo-Engineering the Anthropocene

By T.J. DEMOS
Published: 13. MAY 2015

“A daunting task lies ahead for scientists and engineers to guide society
towards environmentally sustainable management during the era of the
Anthropocene. This will require appropriate human behaviour at all scales,
and may well involve internationally accepted, large-scale geo-engineering
projects, for instance to ‘optimize’ climate.”[1]—Paul Crutzen, 2002

The Anthropocene thesis, as presented in the increasingly expanding body of
images and texts, appears generally split between optimists and pessimists,
especially when it comes to geo-engineering, the deliberate intervention in
the Earthʼs natural systems to counteract climate change. As the
Anthropocene appears to imply the necessity of geo-engineering—as Crutzen,
one of the inventors of the term makes clear—the battle lines have been
drawn between those who think “we” humans confront an extraordinary
opportunity to bio-technologically remake the world, and others who opt for
hands-off caution and would rather modify human behavior instead of the
environment in addressing the climate crisis.

For instance, ethics philosopher Clive Hamilton, participating in “The
Anthropocene—An Engineered Age?,” the 2014 panel discussion at Berlin’s
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), breaks the world down into
techno-utopians and eco-Soterians. The former are today’s “new
Prometheans,” intent on creating a new Eden on Earth, and the latter, named
after Soteria, the ancient Greek personification of safety and
preservation, remain pledged to the precautionary principle, respectful of
Earth’s processes and critical of human hubris, the very same hubris, they
argue, that got us into the environmental crisis in the first place.[2] For
sociologist Bruno Latour, we must not disown the contemporary Frankenstein
we’ve created—the contemporary Earth of the Anthropocene—but rather learn
to love and care for the “monster” we’ve created. Meanwhile for activist
Naomi Klein, arguments like Latour’s are dangerously misguided: “The earth
is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It
is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the
world, it is to fix ourselves.”[3]

In fact, the visual culture of the Anthropocene, whether delivered
photographically or via remote-sensing technology, is riven by exactly this
tension. Its iconography both portrays the remarkable extent of the
human-driven alteration of Earth systems (with ample photographic and
satellite-based imagery of large-scale mining, oil drilling, and
deforestation projects), and documents the dangers of the unintended
consequences of such ventures. Ultimately, however, imaging systems play
more than an illustrative role here, as they tend to grant viewers a sense
of control over the represented object of their gaze, even if that control
is far from reality.

In other words, Anthropocene imagery tends to reinforce the techno-utopian
position that “we” have indeed mastered nature, just as we’ve mastered its
imaging—and in fact the two, the dual colonization of nature and
representation, seem inextricably intertwined. That is, even while these
geo-engineering projects are generally done by corporations and heavy
industry, certainly not identical to the “human” subject of the
Anthropocene, a distinction that potentially pushes the neologism to its
breaking point

Following up on this latter point, critics and commentators (including
those taking part in the HWK discussion) have asked important questions
about the ethical implications of Anthropocene geo-engineering. For
instance, should humans undertake such projects when they acknowledge that
massive geologically interventionist processes will inevitably involve
unforeseen consequences and unanticipated effects? What system of ethics
governs the use of such technology? And who has the right—which
individuals, nations, or corporations—to conduct these experiments? If
rights generally derive from nation-states, then what legitimate body can
grant permission to geo-engineering projects operating on a global scale?

Consider the case of rogue American entrepreneur Russ George, who released
around 100 tons of iron sulfate into the Pacific Ocean off the west coast
of Canada in 2012 to catalyze an artificial plankton bloom as large as
10,000 square kilometers. The goal of this pet-geo-engineering project—the
largest of its kind worldwide to date—was to test the absorption of carbon
dioxide by plankton who will then sink to the ocean floor, a sequestration
procedure from which George, CEO of Planktos Inc., hopes to massively
profit. In the process, he has transgressed various international
agreements, including the UNʼs convention on biological diversity, and
violated the trust of the Haida First