Mississippi's Kemper County coal gasification plant, under construction in 2013, was supposed to capture and sequester carbon emissions. XTUV0010 / CC BY-SA 3.0
By Steve Horn
The huge bipartisan energy bill currently stalled in the Senate would fast-track exports of fracked gas, offer over a billion dollars in subsidies to "clean coal" efforts and make available hundreds of millions in tax dollars for a geoengineering pilot project.
<p>Called the the <a href="https://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=files.serve&File_id=CC6C33C4-33DD-4FBA-89C3-686C996AA408" target="_blank">American Energy Innovation Act</a>, the 600-page bill is a <a href="https://www.axios.com/senate-bipartisan-energy-innovation-bill-89a859a8-4129-4465-b7b9-c7807123c441.html" target="_blank">compilation of 50 bills</a> previously introduced by members of Congress. It appeared destined for quick passage <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/a-few-republicans-threaten-to-derail-a-giant-senate-ene-1842245865" target="_blank">until hitting a roadblock</a> on amendment language calling for regulations on the globe-warming hydrofluorocarbons used in refrigerators and air conditioners. The legislation failed to gather the majority support needed to close debate on the bill in a March 9 <a href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=116&session=2&vote=00067" target="_blank">vote</a>. <em></em></p>
<p>The debate continues, then, on the legislation. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the bill's co-sponsor, expressed irritation over the bill's status. </p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">"</span>It is beyond frustrating to have our bill, which contains priorities from more than 70 Senators, held up by an unrelated dispute that was never part of our discussions in the lead-up to this floor process," <a href="https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/press/release/murkowskis-statement-on-aeia-cloture-vote" target="_blank">she said in a press release</a>. "We will regroup and look for a path forward, but finding one will require members to be more reasonable and accommodating than they have been in the last week, and certainly more so than they were today."</p>
Bipartisan Uptake, Industry Praise
<p>The legislation has thus far received bipartisan support because it contains subsidies for renewable energy sources including <a href="https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/whats-in-the-senate-energy-bill-for-clean-energy-smart-grid-and-energy-storage" target="_blank">wind, solar</a>, and geothermal. It also creates federal financial incentives for creating energy-efficient buildings and boosts funding for energy storage. For that, it has garnered lobbying support from the likes of the <a href="https://acore.org/acore-statement-on-the-american-energy-innovation-act/" target="_blank">American Council on Renewable Energy</a>, the <a href="https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/statement-supporting-senate-energy-bill/" target="_blank">Nature Conservancy</a>, and the <a href="https://www.edf.org/media/bipartisan-senate-innovation-package-takes-useful-steps-towards-smart-climate-policy" target="_blank">Environmental Defense Fund</a>.</p><p>Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for support of the bill during March 2 remarks on the Senate floor.</p><iframe width=512 height=330 src='https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c4859340/user-clip-schumer-supports-2020-energy-bill' allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' frameborder=0></iframe><p>"This bill provides a real test for Senate Republicans," said Schumer. "Will they join Senate Democrats in fighting for and passing bipartisan legislation that will address climate change in a significant way, or will our Republican friends continue to do what they have done for the last several years — do the bidding of corporate polluters and Big Oil?"</p><p>Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) praised the legislation, too, while deriding the Green New Deal. </p><p>"The Green New Deal sought to have Washington, D.C. micromanage everyday life in this country to a degree that the 20th-century socialists would have drooled over," he said in a March 3 speech made on the Senate floor. "Instead, this bipartisan legislation will create better policy and regulatory conditions for American workers, American innovators, and American job creators to thrive."</p><p>The act has garnered widespread fossil fuel industry approval from organizations such as the <a href="https://www.aga.org/news/news-releases/aga-praises-bipartisan-american-energy-innovation-act/" target="_blank">American Gas Association</a>, <a href="https://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/3/murkowski-and-manchin-add-18-amendments-to" target="_blank">American Petroleum Institute</a>, industry front group the <a href="https://consumerenergyalliance.org/2020/02/consumer-group-applauds-bipartisan-energy-bill-needed-for-our-future/" target="_blank">Consumer Energy Alliance</a>, the petrochemical trade association the <a href="https://chpalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2019-Coalition-Letter-Endorsing-CHP-Support-Act_11_5_19.pdf" target="_blank">American Chemistry Council</a>, the <a href="https://nma.org/2020/02/27/senate-energy-package-recognizes-american-mining-is-essential-to-all-aspects-of-american-energy/" target="_blank">National Mining Association</a>, the <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/200302_coalition_americanenergyinnovationact_senate.pdf" target="_blank">U.S. Chamber of Commerce</a>, and a slew of others.</p>
Dirty Details
<p>Outside of the renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage clauses, the energy bill contains provisions aiming to ease the way for exports of so-called<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/09/07/trump-small-scale-lng-exports-without-environmental-review" target="_blank"> "small scale" LNG export terminals</a>, which rely on slightly smaller tankers and keep the <span style="background-color: initial;">LNG</span> in liquid form instead of re-gasifying it.</p><p>The Senate bill also offers over $367.8 million in federal funding through 2024 to test out a geoengineering pilot project for a technique called <a href="http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2018/05/direct-air-capture/" target="_blank">direct air capture</a>, which involves vacuuming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Geoengineering is a proposal to use various technologies with goals of either removing greenhouse gases already emitted or reversing global warming. </p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg3MzMxNi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDgzMTg1N30.NMuRIzbjPG9EXr47-IG4LNikITP-fbQDWYyu-FyIhcg/img.png?width=980" id="4dd54" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="33a1e21085445d150d346c0a1cf963aa" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>The <span style="background-color: initial;">LNG</span> exports provision in the bill, originally introduced as the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s816/BILLS-116s816is.pdf" target="_blank">Small Scale LNG Access Act</a> in March 2019, has received <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/bills/summary?id=s816-116" target="_blank">lobbying support</a> from the Independent Petroleum Association of America, Siemens, and the gas production company <span style="background-color: initial;">EOG</span> Resources, according to disclosure forms. Siemens is a producer of small-scale <span style="background-color: initial;">LNG</span> equipment through its subsidiary, <a href="https://www.worldoil.com/news/2017/1/18/dresser-rand-commissions-its-first-small-scale-lng-production-solution" target="_blank">Dresser Rand</a>, with much of the small scale <span style="background-color: initial;">LNG</span> exports <a href="https://www.power-eng.com/2019/04/10/doe-thinks-natural-gas-is-best-for-puerto-rico-grid-despite-renewables-pledge/" target="_blank">currently destined</a> for Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico <a href="http://energia.pr.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/PREPA-Ex.-1.0-IRP-2019-PREPA-IRP-Report.pdf" target="_blank">contracted out</a> its post-Hurricane Maria electricity sector assessment completed in early 2019 to none other than Siemens.</p><p>The legislation contains another provision calling for $1.472 billion in subsidies for a "large scale" carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project for a coal-fired power plant. Originally dubbed the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/s2803/BILLS-115s2803is.pdf" target="_blank">Fossil Energy Utilization, Enhancement, and Leadership Act</a>, the bill <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/bills/summary?id=s1201-116" target="_blank">received lobbying support</a> from the Coal Utilization Research Council. The <a href="http://www.curc.net/curc-members" target="_blank">group's members</a> include coal giant Peabody Energy; utility giants <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/edison-electric-institute" target="_blank">Edison Electric Institute</a>, Southern Company, and Duke Energy; the American Coal Council, and others.</p><p>Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is an <a href="https://www.powermag.com/doe-sank-billions-of-fossil-energy-rd-dollars-in-ccs-projects-most-failed/" target="_blank">expensive endeavor</a> linking power plants to the capture and burial of carbon emissions underground, known in industry lingo as sequestration. Despite <a href="https://www.powermag.com/doe-sank-billions-of-fossil-energy-rd-dollars-in-ccs-projects-most-failed/" target="_blank">numerous attempts</a> at development and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/02/clean-coal-america-kemper-power-plant" target="_blank">billions of dollars poured into research</a>, most CCS projects have failed. One of them, owned by Coal Utilization Research Council member Southern Company, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/02/clean-coal-america-kemper-power-plant" target="_blank">went out of business</a> in 2017 after receiving more than $700 million in federal subsidies. Existing CCS projects, which are energy-intensive, primarily use captured carbon dioxide to <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/27/renewables-offset-35-times-co2-carbon-capture-storage" target="_blank">pump more oil out of old wells</a>. A <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-carbon-storage-analysis/u-s-utilities-balk-at-expanded-carbon-capture-subsidy-idUSKBN1KN1HM" target="_blank">2018 Reuters poll of the top 10 U.S. utilities</a> found little interest in investing in CCS projects, even with federal incentives.</p><p>Beyond CCS, the bill also has a provision calling for the U.S. Department of Energy to study the potential creation of a petrochemical storage hub near the Marcellus Shale basin in Appalachia. The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1064" target="_blank">Appalachian Energy for National Security Act</a> provision calls on the "Secretary of Energy to conduct a study on the national security implications of building ethane and other natural-gas-liquids-related petrochemical infrastructure" in the Appalachian region. The bill, which received<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/bills/summary?id=s1064-116" target="_blank"> lobbying support</a> from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was first introduced by West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/02/06/fracking-appalachian-storage-hub-china" target="_blank">long-time promoter</a> of such a project and co-sponsor of the larger Senate energy bill. </p>
Bakken Petrochemical Hub
<p>Senators have also introduced <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2657/amendments?searchResultViewType=expanded&KWICView=false&pageSize=250" target="_blank">220 different amendments</a> to the bill, which include the one calling for a phase-out of hydrofluorocarbons from cooling and refrigeration devices. Three of the amendments, if passed, would greatly expand drilling in North Dakota's Bakken Shale basin.</p><p>Two of them received an introduction by U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who <a href="http://v/" target="_blank">served as an energy policy aide</a> for President <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/donald-trump" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a>'s 2016 presidential campaign. One of these amendments, <a href="https://www.kirkland.com/publications/kirkland-alert/2020/03/senate-energy-legislation" target="_blank">successfully inserted</a> into the bill, calls for the U.S. Department of Energy to do a "Bakken and Three Forks Natural Gas Liquids Report" to study the potential for a petrochemical storage hub in the Bakken. The other, titled "Bakken Energy for National Security," calls for the Energy Department to do a similar study with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Treasury Department to "assess … the potential national and economic security impacts of building ethane and other natural-gas-liquids-related petrochemical infrastructure in the geographical vicinity of the Bakken."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg3MzMxOS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTUxMTgwOH0.xcoM7mA3SIMor7fYYB6qdfMGyCypC0kfX1j9AgpVjw8/img.png?width=980" id="9a997" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="082bfec5fe815e72c6a87994f25bb671" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Energy.Senate.Gov
<p>The third amendment, introduced by <span style="background-color: initial;">U.S.</span> Sen. John Hoeven (R-<span style="background-color: initial;">ND</span>), calls for expedited permitting for drilling on <span style="background-color: initial;">U.S.</span> public lands located within the Bakken. The provision is known as the Bureau of Land Management (<span style="background-color: initial;">BLM</span>) Spacing Act.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg3MzMyMi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1Njc2MTI4MH0.QTcXc7DqF4vKVKi7Lfi9SVfHtqfLaJuMrUaXCEAr9QM/img.png?width=980" id="84d8d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d07b905c8300775f1afd0dede4a5f379" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/03/11/senate-energy-bill-boost-lng-exports-clean-coal-geoengineering" target="_blank">DeSmog</a>.</em></p>Congress.gov
<p>The North Dakota Pipeline Authority is <a href="https://news.prairiepublic.org/post/study-bakken-and-three-forks-natural-gas-liquids-approved" target="_blank">currently teaming up</a> with the University of North Dakota's Energy and Environmental Research Center to study the potential for a petrochemical hub in the region, as well. That study is set for release on May 1, the publication Prairie Public Broadcasting reported.</p><p>"The petrochemical industry is the number one consumer of those natural gas liquids," Justin Kringstad, Executive Director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority, <a href="https://news.prairiepublic.org/post/pipeline-authority-director-wants-study-chemical-make-natural-gas-liquids-over-time" target="_blank">told Prairie Public Broadcasting in October</a>. "As investors and companies look at North Dakota for opportunities, we need to have good, solid scientific data we can point to, and have a good understanding of this resource potential."</p><p>The oil and gas industry sees the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-plastics" target="_blank">growth of plastics manufacturing</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/sites/default/files/rpt_1905_fracking-2019-web_2.pdf" target="_blank">exporting LNG and building gas power plants</a> in the U.S., as a profitable lifeline to continue fracking in places like the Bakken Shale and the Marcellus. For climate advocates, pointing to the threat of potent methane emissions from the supply chain, this presents a major problem. </p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">"</span>From petrochemical facilities to gas-fired power plants and liquefied natural gas export terminals, these new projects would commit America to another generation of dependence on fossil fuels," the advocacy group Food and Water Watch wrote in a <a href="https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/sites/default/files/rpt_1905_fracking-2019-web_2.pdf" target="_blank">March 2019 report</a>. "These projects aren't just associated with health and safety risks: if even a fraction of them come to fruition, they will condemn the planet to a future of climate chaos."</p>From Your Site Articles
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EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
An Indonesian man pumps water up to the second floor of a house to wash away the mud in a flooded neighborhood on Jan. 3 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Ed Wray / Getty Images
After nearly 15 inches of rain fell in one day and caused flash floods and landslides in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, that destroyed 60,000 homes and killed at least 43 people, the Indonesian Air Force sent two planes to drop salt on approaching rain clouds to break them up before they reached the city, according to Reuters.
<p>The slowly sinking capital that is crumbling into the Java Sea has started the new year with a humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands of people were displaced and over 190,000 were evacuated by the sudden deluge on Dec. 31, 2019. </p>
<p>To stave off further damage, Indonesia's technology agency BPPT teamed up with the air force to carry out three rounds of cloud seeding earlier today, with more expected when needed, a BPPT official said, as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-weather-floods/indonesia-plans-cloud-seeding-to-halt-rain-floods-death-toll-rises-to-43-idUSKBN1Z203J" target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported.</p>
<p>"All clouds moving towards the Greater Jakarta area, which are estimated to lead to precipitation there, will be shot with NaCl (sodium chloride) material," Indonesia's technology agency BPPT explained in a statement, as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50981453" target="_blank">BBC</a> reported.</p>
<p>The two small planes dropped salt on rain clouds above the Sundra Strait. A larger plane was loaded and on standby if more rain clouds approached the city, according to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/03/jakarta-floods-cloud-seeding-planes-will-try-to-break-up-heavy-rain" target="_blank">Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>Indonesian authorities often use cloud seeding or salt flares into clouds to try to catalyze rainfall to help put out forest fires during the dry season, according to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/03/jakarta-floods-cloud-seeding-planes-will-try-to-break-up-heavy-rain" target="_blank">Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>"We will do cloud seeding every day as needed," said BPPT chief Hammam Riza to reporters, as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-weather-floods/indonesia-plans-cloud-seeding-to-halt-rain-floods-death-toll-rises-to-43-idUSKBN1Z203J" target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported.</p><p>Indonesia's president, Joko Widodo, who last year announced that the capital would move to East Kalimantan on Borneo to help relieve Jakarta's overcrowding, blamed stalled flood control infrastructure projects for the disaster. Meanwhile, authorities are using hundreds of pumps to try to suck water out of residential areas and from public infrastructure like roads and railways, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/03/jakarta-floods-cloud-seeding-planes-will-try-to-break-up-heavy-rain" target="_blank">the Guardian</a> reported.</p><p><em>[<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/indonesia-to-move-capital-jakarta-2636197365.html">Read why Indonesia will move its capital from fast-sinking Jakarta.</a>]</em></p><p>However, even in areas where the water has receded, mud and debris have prevented people from returning to their homes, according to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50981453" target="_blank">BBC</a>.</p><p>Jakarta regularly experiences flooding during the rainy season, which started in November. This week's flood was "one of the most extreme rainfall" events since records began in 1866, the Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said on Friday, as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-weather-floods/indonesia-plans-cloud-seeding-to-halt-rain-floods-death-toll-rises-to-43-idUSKBN1Z203J" target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported.</p>
<p>The agency said the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis">climate crisis</a> had increased the risk of extreme weather and warned that heavy rainfall could last until mid-February, with Jan 11-15 an expected peak, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-weather-floods/indonesia-plans-cloud-seeding-to-halt-rain-floods-death-toll-rises-to-43-idUSKBN1Z203J" target="_blank">Reuters</a>.<br></p>
<p>This week's flooding is the worst since 2013 when dozens were killed by overflowing canals when monsoons struck the city. More than 50 people died in floods in the capital in 2007, as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-weather-floods/indonesia-plans-cloud-seeding-to-halt-rain-floods-death-toll-rises-to-43-idUSKBN1Z203J" target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported. </p>
<p>"This year's flooding was phenomenally bad because of the extremely high rainfall," said Yayat Supriatna, a Jakarta-based urban planning expert, as the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jakarta-flood-2020-indonesia-capital-inundated-record-rainfall-dozens-deaths-missing-today-2020-01-03/" target="_blank">AFP</a> reported.</p>
<div id="912eb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="478GLK1578073127"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1213086357188276226" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">VIDEO: 🇮🇩 Hundreds of people displaced because of severe flooding in the Indonesian capital #Jakarta hold Friday pr… https://t.co/mPrp4C87qr</div> — AFP news agency (@AFP news agency)<a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/statuses/1213086357188276226">1578057300.0</a></blockquote></div><p>He added that Jakarta's many infrastructure problems, including poor drainage and rampant overdevelopment, worsened the situation.</p><p>"Yes, the weather conditions were terrible, but this was exacerbated by awful urban planning," said Supriatna.</p><p>Authorities said 17 died in floodwaters, while 12 were killed in landslides. Several people died after coming into contact with downed live electrical lines and from hypothermia. As a precaution, officials turned off the electricity in many districts in Jakarta as a precaution, according to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/01/03/43-die-in-Jakarta-flooding/4011578060106/" target="_blank">UPI</a>.</p>
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NASA
By Shuchi Talati
Solar geoengineering describes a set of approaches that would reflect sunlight to cool the planet. The most prevalent of these approaches entails mimicking volcanic eruptions by releasing aerosols (tiny particles) into the upper atmosphere to reduce global temperatures — a method that comes with immense uncertainty and risk. We don't yet know how it will affect regional weather patterns, and in turn its geopolitical consequences. One way we can attempt to understand potential outcomes is through models.
<p>Models are representations of complex phenomena that are used to approximate outcomes. While they have limitations, they are an important tool to help scientists and decision makers understand potential futures based on scientific, technological and policy changes. With both potential and profound risks and uncertainties, we need more expansive modeling research on solar <a href="http://ecowatch.com/tag/geoengineering">geoengineering</a> techniques — not only to understand possible environmental impacts and risks, but political and social consequences as well.</p>
<p>Without looking at this broader range of outcomes, the messaging behind solar geoengineering can then lead to simplifications and mischaracterizations of its potential in the media. In spaces where public familiarity is low and risks are high, scientists and journalists should both be responsible for capturing the nuance and complexities around geoengineering — only a full picture will enable an informed public debate.</p><h3>How We Use Modeling Must Evolve</h3><p>In the case of solar geoengineering, models offer the opportunity to examine questions on a global scale — a scale at which real world experiments aren't yet feasible or ethical. A small set of researchers have been examining the potential outcomes of solar geoengineering through modeling impacts for several years. This research has been valuable in gaining a deeper understanding of the possible consequences of deploying solar geoengineering. However, many of the scenarios analyzed have been under idealized, or "best case" conditions — in other words, we're not comprehensively looking at what could go wrong.</p><p>And as we all know too well, the real world rarely imitates the best-case scenario. An example that comes to mind is that of DDT. Developed as an insecticide, DDT was extremely effective at reducing mosquito populations for a number of years during and after World War II. However, widespread use of the chemical led to massive environmental harm due to a failure to thoroughly investigate its impacts before widespread use — impacts that were not accounted for.</p><p>With more attention being paid to solar geoengineering, researchers need to explore a more meaningful range of deployment scenarios to understand risks and tradeoffs under a much broader set of conditions. Modeling is most helpful when used not just to predict a particular outcome under the best-case conditions, but rather to learn about many possible futures. With <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="_self">climate change</a>, researchers have studied technical, economic and political narratives to capture a more realistic set of outcomes, and a similar strategy needs to happen for geoengineering. Only when research is done to know what can go wrong — in addition to what can go right — can we have a clearer idea of what the use of solar geoengineering could potentially entail.</p><p>In other high-risk fields, we require a high level of investigation about what could go wrong. Military war gaming exercises are a prime example: simulations of best- and worst-case scenarios are conducted by the government to see how politics, military strategy, and potential outcomes could interact in a myriad of ways — all before real combat takes place. Just as it's the responsibility of a carpenter to "measure twice and cut once," generals and admirals investigate war scenarios in order to save lives and minimize collateral damage. Solar geoengineering merits the same level of analysis.</p>
<h3>Messaging and Media Portrayals Can Be Dangerously Misleading</h3><p>Despite the risks of oversimplification, a new optimistic <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0398-8" target="_blank">study</a> titled, "Halving warming with idealized solar geoengineering moderates key climate hazards" was recently published in <em>Nature Climate Change</em>. Written by scientists at Harvard, Princeton, MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology, these researchers modeled a simplified proxy of solar geoengineering to counter half of future climate change (estimated as a doubling of carbon dioxide).</p><p>They found that under these specific conditions there could potentially be a decrease in some climate impacts (such as temperature, water availability and tropical storm intensity) across regions. However, in addition to other limitations, the study used an idealized solar geoengineering system in the model — in other words, simply turning down the sun without the use of a particular approach, like aerosols. This can be helpful to understand aspects of solar geoengineering, but without a technology in place, it's not realistic to make assertions about who might be worse off since use of that technology would come with its own set of risks.</p><p>With a lack of realistic exploration of solar geoengineering, the messaging behind the technology led to overstated conclusions and mischaracterizations of its impacts in the media. While the authors were upfront about their use of an idealized scenario in the title of the journal article, some media stories focused on the benefits of solar geoengineering with limited discussion of the modeling constraints. Researchers must be responsible for putting their results in the context of its overall significance. The lack of doing so led to many article headlines framing the study as having much broader implications than merited. Some of these include:</p><p><em>"The Side Effects of Solar Geoengineering Could Be Minimal" - </em><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-side-effects-of-solar-geoengineering/" target="_blank"><em>WIRED</em></a></p><p><em>"The case for spraying (just enough) chemicals into the sky to fight climate change: A new study says geoengineering could cut global warming in half — with no bad side effects." - </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/13/18263953/geoengineering-study-solar-dose-climate-global-warming" target="_blank"><em>Vox</em></a></p><p><em>"Upon reflection, solar geoengineering might not be a bad idea" - </em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/climate/plastic-free-grocery-shopping.html" target="_blank"><em>The New York Times</em></a><em> (subscription required)</em></p><p><em>"Radical plan to artificially cool Earth's climate could be safe, study finds" - </em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/11/solar-geoengineering-climate-change-new-study" target="_blank"><em>The Guardian</em></a></p><p><em>"Solar geoengineering could offset global warming without causing harm" - </em><em><a href="https://www.axios.com/solar-geoengineering-benefits-outweigh-costs-fa60406e-abc7-4da2-88b4-56f4f00e2ed4.html" target="_blank">Axios</a></em></p><p>In an era characterized by 280-character tweets, headlines matter. These oversimplifications from reputable news organizations do a disservice to geoengineering discussions. If readers moved past the headlines, they'd find that while journalists and authors often qualified the findings, there were extremely mixed messages about the real meaning of these results. Just as importantly, we need studies that would characterize a more realistic range of scenarios. As a newly emerging topic for public debate, it is crucial that solar geoengineering is presented in an accurate way. False impressions will only harm us when society needs to make critical decisions on how to approach it.</p>
<div id="296dd" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="LLCCQX1576663634"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1073397276675063808" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">3 Key Dangers of Solar #Geoengineering and Why Some Critics Urge a Global Ban https://t.co/LyaOtKe4D6 @thetroublemag @DeSmogBlog</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/1073397276675063808">1544752828.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p><em>Shuchi Talati is a UCS Fellow on solar geoengineering research governance and public engagement with the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.</em><br/></p>From Your Site Articles
- Geoengineering Carries 'Large Risks' for the Natural World, Studies ... ›
- Solar Geoengineering May Not Cool the Oceans, Study Says ... ›
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By Daisy Dunne
Spraying aerosols high in the stratosphere could dampen global warming over land, but may not prevent the oceans from heating up, new research says.
<p>The findings suggest that this type of "<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-six-ideas-to-limit-global-warming-with-solar-geoengineering" target="_blank">solar geoengineering</a>"—a set of techniques that aim to tackle global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space—may not necessarily stem sea level rise or prevent damage to the world's marine ecosystems.<br></p><p>The research indicates that solar geoengineering could carry "major uncertainties and risks," the lead author told <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/" target="_blank">Carbon Brief</a>.</p><p>The study also raises the issue of whether global average temperature "is the best metric to control" when addressing the impacts of climate change, another scientist told Carbon Brief.</p><h4>Harnessing a Volcano</h4>
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<p>Scientists have suggested that releasing aerosols into the atmosphere—a technique known as "<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-six-ideas-to-limit-global-warming-with-solar-geoengineering" target="_blank">stratospheric aerosol injection</a>"—could cool the planet in a similar way to a <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-could-agung-volcano-bali-affect-global-temperature" target="_blank">large volcanic eruption</a>.<br></p><p>When a volcano erupts, it sends an ash cloud high into the atmosphere. The <a href="https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/gas_climate.html" target="_blank">sulphur dioxide</a> released in the plume combines with water to form <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-volcanoes-affect-w/" target="_blank">sulfuric acid aerosols</a>, which reflect away incoming sunlight, temporarily cooling the Earth.</p><p>Artificially introducing aerosols into the atmosphere—via a plane or a high-altitude balloon—could have a similar cooling effect, researchers say.</p><p>The idea has never been tested, but <a href="http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/376/2119/20160454" target="_blank">previous research</a> using computer simulations suggests that releasing aerosols could help limit global temperature rise to 1.5C—the aspirational target of the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/interactive-the-paris-agreement-on-climate-change" target="_blank">Paris agreement</a>—and keep rainfall from <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-what-climate-models-tell-us-about-future-rainfall" target="_blank">becoming irregular</a>.</p><p>However, an aerosol sunshade would not protect the planet from rising CO2 emissions—which is causing <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/ocean-acidifiction-decline-of-great-barrier-reef-likely-to-be-worse-than-feared" target="_blank">oceans to become more acidic</a> and <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/rising-co2-levels-could-push-hundreds-of-millions-into-malnutrition-by-2050" target="_blank">crops to become less nutritious</a>, among other problems.</p><p>The new study, published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0249-7" target="_blank">Nature Geoscience</a>, identifies, for the first time, another potential downfall of the proposed technique: it may not be able to limit warming in the deep ocean.</p><p>This is because aerosol release could cause rainfall to decrease in some regions, which could influence ocean circulation patterns, says lead author <a href="http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/fasullo/" target="_blank">Dr. John Fasullo</a>, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (<a href="https://ncar.ucar.edu/" target="_blank">NCAR</a>), Boulder. He told Carbon Brief:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The explanation involves two key stages. In the first, the aerosols reduce the amount of rainfall that occurs globally. This change in rainfall is not uniform, rather, reductions are larger in some key regions—namely, the northern Atlantic Ocean—and this increases the salinity of those ocean areas, making the water more dense."</p><p>This increase in water density could cause the "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation" (<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">AMOC</a>) to speed up, he said. The AMOC is a perpetual conveyor belt that transports heat from the equator up to the North Atlantic. It is part of a wider network of <a href="http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_currents/05conveyor2.html" target="_blank">global ocean circulations patterns</a> that transports heat all around the world. Fasullo said:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The North Atlantic is a key region of deep-water formation and higher density therefore leads to an acceleration of this circulation. The speed up in deep-water formation buries more heat in the deep ocean that would have otherwise occurred."</p><h4>Other Worlds</h4><p>To explore the impact of aerosol release on oceans, the researchers used a set of 20 computer simulations looking at what would happen if aerosols were released between 2020 and 2099. This set of simulations is known as the "geoengineering large ensemble" (<a href="http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/experiments/cesm1.2/GLE/" target="_blank">GLENS</a>).</p><p>The simulations assume that aerosols are released at uniform points across the globe. (<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/unregulated-solar-geoengineering-could-spark-droughts-and-hurricanes-study-warns" target="_blank">Previous research</a> shows doing this would prevent large regional changes in temperature and weather.)</p><p>The researchers compared their geoengineering simulations to another set of simulations where no geoengineering takes place and little action is taken to tackle climate change, leading to high emissions in the coming decades (a scenario known as "<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y" target="_blank">RCP8.5</a>").</p><p><span></span>The chart below shows how global average temperature (full lines, left-hand y-axis) and global rainfall levels (dashed lines, right-hand y-axis) are expected to differ between the high-emissions scenario (RCP8.5) simulations and GLENS.</p>
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<p><em>Above: Changes to global mean temperature (full lines, left-hand y-axis) and global rainfall levels (dashed lines, right-hand y-axis) under a scenario with solar geoengineering (GLENS; blue) and a scenario with no geoengineering and high greenhouse gas emissions (RCP8.5; red). Source: Fasullo et al. (2018)</em></p><p><span></span>The chart shows how, in the geoengineered world, the global average temperature is kept constant while global rainfall levels fall. In comparison, temperatures and rainfall levels continue to rise under the high-emissions scenario.<br></p><p><span></span>The maps below show expected changes to ocean heat content (<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-new-record-ocean-heat-content-and-growing-a-el-nino" target="_blank">OHC</a>) between 2010-30 and 2075-95 in the upper ocean (0-300m; left) and in the full-depth of the ocean (right) under the geoengineering scenario. On the maps, red shows increases in OHC, while blue shows decreases.</p>
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<p><em>Above: Expected changes to ocean heat content (<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-new-record-ocean-heat-content-and-growing-a-el-nino" target="_blank">OHC</a>) between 2010-30 and 2075-95 in the upper ocean (0-300m; left) and in the full-depth of the ocean (right) under a solar geoengineering scenario. Red shows increases in OCH, while blue shows decreases. Source: Fasullo et al. (2018)</em></p><p>The charts show how, in the geoengineering scenario, some shallower parts of the ocean are expected to heat up. This includes the Arctic Sea and waters off the western coast of North America.<br></p><p>When the full depth of the ocean is considered, however, many more regions are expected to see OHC increases—with warming likely to be most severe in the Arctic Sea and in the Southern Ocean.</p><h4>Rising Tides</h4><p>The findings suggest that—contrary to <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/107/36/15699" target="_blank">previous research</a>—solar geoengineering could fail to prevent sea level rise.</p><p><a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html" target="_blank">Sea level rise</a> is chiefly driven by the expansion of seawater as a result of warming and by the melting of land ice at the world's poles. In some parts, including in <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/sea-level-rise-due-antarctic-ice-melt-has-tripled-over-past-five-years" target="_blank">Western Antarctica</a>, melting occurs where land ice comes into contact with warm ocean water. Fasullo said:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Relative to present day, it is extremely likely that sea level will continue to rise under our geoengineering approach, but it is also likely that the rate of this rise will be less than under a business-as-usual climate trajectory [RCP8.5].</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We cannot say with confidence what that rate of rise might be as we don't have models of the ice sheets fully coupled to our climate simulations, nor have we sufficiently vetted such models to have confidence in their projections at this point."</p><p>The results could also mean that solar geoengineering would fail to prevent <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/restricting-global-warming-to-1-5c-would-halve-risk-of-marine-heatwaves" target="_blank">marine heatwaves</a>, which pose a major threat to undersea wildlife, and the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/record-2017-hurricane-season-driven-by-warm-atlantic-ocean-study-says" target="_blank">expected increases</a> in hurricane intensity. (Although no research has looked at these issues, specifically, so it is still too soon to draw conclusions, Fasullo said.)</p><p>The study raises the issue of whether global average temperature "is the best metric to control" when addressing the impacts of climate change, said <a href="http://dccc.iisc.ac.in/web/balag_home.html" target="_blank">Prof. Govindasamy Bala</a>, a physical scientist from the <a href="http://dccc.iisc.ac.in/web/index.html" target="_blank">Divecha Centre for Climate Change</a> at the <a href="https://www.iisc.ac.in/" target="_blank">Indian Institute of Science</a>, who was not involved in the study. He told Carbon Brief:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"However, as this is a single modeling study, it is not clear to me if the results of this paper are robust. A multi-model based approach would be needed to verify the robustness."</p><p>The findings imply that solar geoengineering could have "large potential downsides," said Fasullo:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"There have been various high-profile policymakers in the U.S. that have framed climate change as an engineering challenge. I think the key takeaway from our work is that geoengineering itself carries major uncertainties and risks."</p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-may-not-cool-the-oceans-study-says" target="_blank">Carbon Brief</a>.</em><em></em></p>
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By Jeff Turrentine
Science fiction doesn't always stay fictional. Space exploration, robots and self-driving cars are just a few of the modern-day wonders that once existed only as plot devices or fantastical theories. Our capacity for turning science-fictional notions into the stuff of everyday life has grown with each new generation of scientists and microchips, such that more and more ideas previously deemed too far "out there" are now actually here, or at least technologically plausible.
<p>To this list we can now add <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/lets-talk-geoengineering/" target="_blank">geoengineering</a>—whether we want to or not. As broadly defined by the science-fiction author and environmentalist <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-geoengineering-kim-stanley-robinson_us_5b4e54bde4b0de86f487b0b9" target="_blank">Kim Stanley Robinson</a>, geoengineering is the "deliberate planned attempt by human beings to mitigate the damages of climate change, of carbon dioxide and methane buildup in the atmosphere, and of ecological damage generally, by way of some action that is large-scale." In theory, geoengineering might look like any number of things: engaging in mass, worldwide <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/the-best-technology-for-fighting-climate-change-trees/385304/" target="_blank">reforestation</a>; dumping <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/11/how_dumping_iron_in_the_ocean_can_help_fight_climate_change.html" target="_blank">iron dust</a> into the oceans to encourage the growth of carbon-eating plankton; <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2017/07/25/could-spraying-particles-into-marine-clouds-help-cool-the-planet/" target="_blank">"brightening" clouds</a> to make them more reflective; dotting the planet with millions of <a href="https://asunow.asu.edu/20171122-carbon-catcher-qa-asus-klaus-lackner" target="_blank">industrial-strength carbon scrubbers</a>.</p><p>Geoengineering ideas are as numerous and varied as the scientific imaginations that spawn them. What usually ties them together is the goal of dramatically reducing global temperatures and/or carbon emissions over a short period of time. Scale and speed are what separate most geoengineering schemes from other, less risky, more tried-and-true attempts at climate mitigation, such as building seawalls or boosting energy efficiency. But increasingly, many who once disparaged geoengineering are now citing its scale and speed as the two main reasons why it may be our best hope for fighting climate change—the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/global-climate-change-what-you-need-know" target="_blank">biggest and most immediate threat</a> to life on earth as we currently know it.</p><p>The latest geoengineering conversation has been sparked in part by a study <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0417-3" target="_blank">published last week</a> in the journal <em>Nature</em> that acknowledges the potential benefits of solar radiation management (SRM)—as well as the very real risks that would come along with it. One much-discussed iteration of SRM would involve saturating Earth's atmosphere with sulfur-laden aerosols to reflect solar light back into space, cooling the planet in the process. Support for the theory began to swell among geoengineering proponents after the discovery that global temperatures fell by as much as 0.6 degrees Celsius following <a href="https://www.arl.noaa.gov/documents/JournalPDFs/Free&LanzanteJournalofClimate.pdf" target="_blank">giant volcanic eruptions</a> in Mexico and the Philippines that spewed millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.</p>
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODMyMzg5NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNjQwMDMxN30.vRYXKZ3YZn5G_6jWZefpoYGJmEDYt6dOgEq6uLVEuQw/img.jpg?width=980" id="697e3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cef8e0267100c644d0be72c2c7b2c4b7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">The summit of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines, 15 days after its eruption in 1991. Global temperatures fell slightly after the volcano's eruption sent vast quantities of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">United States Geological Survey</small></p>
<p>If we could mimic the effects of these volcanoes (so the theory goes) by strategically injecting sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere, the researchers propose that we might be able to effectively "shade" the entire planet and save vulnerable crops from frying under the sun. The problem with that scenario, though? While crops might not wither and die from heat, the ever-cloudy conditions under sulfur-laden skies would also severely stunt the crops' growth, causing them to yield far less food. Whatever gains realized from the lower temperatures, in other words, would be more than <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/how-engineering-the-climate-could-mess-with-our-food/" target="_blank">offset by losses</a> resulting from the dearth of direct sunlight.<br></p><p>Though they do not state it explicitly in the "Conclusions" section of their study, the researchers confirm a hypothesis that nearly everyone who has looked at geoengineering already accepts: There are no risk-free scenarios. At its core, geoengineering is really just a globally scaled hack, a work-around born of exigency as much as industriousness. And like any hack, it's less than ideal.</p><p>Every geoengineering proposal that's been put forth so far, in fact, has come with its own bold-print caveat that we ignore at our peril. Adding iron ore to the oceans, for instance, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-first-geo-vigilante#ixzz29g8tF7wf" target="_blank">carries the risk</a> of over-oxygenating water and destroying bacteria crucial to the marine food chain, or of generating dangerous amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. As for cloud brightening, even <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/07/11/cloud-brightening-experiment-tests-tool-to-slow-climate-change/" target="_blank">those who support more research</a> into this approach admit that it could alter precipitation patterns in unexpected and quite possibly harmful ways.</p><p>But what's telling is the evolution of the scientific community's response to geoengineering over the past few decades—from outright alarm to qualified alarm to extreme hesitation. This response tracks our understanding of just how much trouble our carbon pollution has gotten us into. Ask any climate scientist, and she'll tell you that the only surefire way to save ourselves is to immediately cut carbon emissions and <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/resources/americas-clean-energy-frontier-pathway-safer-climate-future" target="_blank">transition to a clean-energy economy</a>. But she may also be more willing today than she was five or ten years ago to entertain the idea of further research into solar radiation management, cloud brightening, and the like.</p><p>Geoengineering is extraordinarily risky. In a perfect world—or even in an imperfect but climatologically hospitable one—we would never even consider it, for fear that our actions could usher in the dystopia we've seen in countless science-fiction movies. But we need to be honest about where we are in the story of humanity and climate change. It's the third act. And while we'd have to be desperate to try to geoengineer our way to a happy ending, there's just not that much time left to argue over the definition of the word desperate.</p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/blotting-out-sun-save-earth-seriously" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em><em></em></p>
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Downtowngal / CC BY-SA 3.0
By Jan Minx, Dr. Sabine Fuss and Gregory Nemet
Despite the ambitious long-term climate goals of the Paris agreement, there remains a distinct lack of success at ushering in immediate and sustained reductions in global CO2 emissions.
This cognitive dissonance has seen the topic of "negative emissions"—also known as "carbon dioxide removal"—move into the limelight in climate science and policy discussions.
<p style="">Increasingly, the only way to bridge the growing gap between short and long-term climate policy ambition appears to be developing the ability to remove billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere and store it on land, underground, or in the oceans.</p><p style="">Yet, the current knowledge on negative emissions technologies (NETs) is diffuse and incomplete. This makes it hard for assessment bodies, such as the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/" target="_blank">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> (IPCC), to evaluate the state of knowledge.</p><p style="">In a <a href="http://www.co2removal.org/" target="_blank">three-part literature review</a>, published in Environmental Research Letters, we did some of the leg work and systematically assessed what we know and do not know about NETs. We presented our findings at last week's <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/negative-emissions-scientists-meet-sweden-first-international-conference" target="_blank">international conference on negative emissions</a>.</p><p style="">Here are seven central insights from our three papers.</p><p style=""><strong>1. Carbon dioxide removal should not be framed as geoengineering.</strong></p><p style="">NETs are fundamentally different from <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-six-ideas-to-limit-global-warming-with-solar-geoengineering" target="_blank">solar radiation management</a> (SRM), the other set of technologies typically considered <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/geoengineering">geoengineering</a>.</p><p style="">While NETs address the root cause of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> by reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, SRM approaches do not. Instead, they aim to reduce some of the worst impacts of climate change temporarily by reflecting incoming solar radiation.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzg3MzExNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDUwODY1MX0.uYfPZ77uO9rbGexWQgHXsUfsQzd2CS_AlsuHgeqKIEY/img.jpg?width=980" id="5aab0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a8d12ddd7a9112c4e22660aa7a1f2234" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Minx et al. (<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b" target="_blank">2018</a>)</small></p><p> <em></em></p><p style=""><em>Schematic illustrating the causal chain of climate change (upper panel) and response options (lower panel). Response options can be divided into mitigation of anthropogenic emissions and direct removal of CO2, which would reduce the heat trapping greenhouse gases, modification of solar radiation, which directly interferes with Earth system reflectivity, and adaptation to climate impacts.</em></p><p style="">Other important differences include the novel global <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/unregulated-solar-geoengineering-could-spark-droughts-and-hurricanes-study-warns" target="_blank">risks associated with SRM</a>, the different time scales at which NETs and SRM operate, and distinct governance challenges.</p><p style="">It is more appropriate to consider the way human society responds to climate change in four ways: mitigation, adaptation, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and SRM, as laid out in the schematic above. The last two need to be strictly distinguished from each other and not combined together under the label geoengineering.</p><p style=""><strong>2. The literature on NETs is growing rapidly and diversifying.</strong></p><p>Overall, the core literature on NETs covers more than 2,000 studies, but is growing exponentially. You can see this in the upper chart below, which shows the accelerating body of work on NETs and the mix of literature on different technologies.</p><p style="">In line with the broad definition of "mitigation" by the IPCC, research initially focused mainly on enhancing natural sinks—such as afforestation and reforestation, soil carbon sequestration, as well as ocean fertilization.</p><p style="">Explicit discussions about NETs only started during the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/" target="_blank">fourth assessment cycle</a> of the IPCC, from 2001 to 2007, with the emergence of literature on NETs driven by the integrated assessment modeling community. In the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/" target="_blank">fifth assessment report</a>, completed in 2014, NETs were discussed individually and we now have a distinct body of literature for each NET. The lower chart below shows how the literature on NETs in the IPCC reports has diversified with time.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzg3MzE1NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDQ3MzMxNH0.ctUTy74RaMXiVkhrd4K6DhTF-u4A-FDA4iBBiyg-Eo4/img.jpg?width=980" id="b6870" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a954dbee0d524e9d95abb8d74f2c300a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Minx et al. (<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b" target="_blank">2018</a>)</small></p><p style=""><em>Bar charts display the coverage of NETs in the different assessment cycles of the IPCC. Over time more and more NETs are treated both in the literature as well as in IPCC assessments.</em></p><p style=""><strong>3. Modeling scenarios depend on negative emissions for 1.5 C goal, but not for 2 C.</strong></p><p style="">Of all the different de-carbonization scenarios considered in our review that succeed in keeping global warming to no more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, not one achieves the goal <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-scenarios-world-limit-warming-one-point-five-celsius-2100" target="_blank">without some form of NETs</a>. Total deployment until 2100 is associated with a cumulative removal from 150 gigatonnes of CO2 (Gt CO2) to be beyond 1,000.</p><p style="">There are <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/world-can-limit-global-warming-to-onepointfive-without-beccs" target="_blank">some recent scenarios</a> that limit the deployment of NETs to the range of 150-200Gt CO2 over the course of the 21st century. For example, a <a href="http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/376/2119/20160457.article-info" target="_blank">study</a> published earlier this year showed that NETs can only be avoided theoretically for carbon budgets of 60Gt CO2 and larger.</p><p style="">Yet, such a low deployment can only be achieved in these models at the expense of radical assumptions regarding the timing and pace of global decarbonization. This does not reflect the current status of international climate diplomacy and existing national commitments to cutting emissions, known as "<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/paris-2015-tracking-country-climate-pledges" target="_blank">nationally determined contributions</a>" (NDCs).</p><p style="">The figure below shows that with a larger <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-is-left-to-limit-global-warming-to-1-5c" target="_blank">carbon budget</a> for 2 C, the deployment on NETs can still be avoided while meeting this goal, but the door is closing rapidly. It shows how many models can meet the 2C and 1.5C limits with varying amounts of <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/beccs-the-story-of-climate-changes-saviour-technology" target="_blank">bioenergy with carbon capture and storage</a> (BECCS). For example, no models can meet the 1.5C limit (right-hand section of figure) if there are any constraints on the use of BECCS.</p><p style="">Unless NDCs are made <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/unep-six-crucial-actions-help-close-worlds-emissions-gap" target="_blank">substantially more stringent</a>, the pathways to 2 C by 2030 will be similar to current pathways for 1.5 C in that they will depend on very large deployments of NETs.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzg3MzE2NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMTAzNjMzMn0.ts4a0kajUpWjfMj9dXeUDlRX6hB9esBFQKid1jb5UXI/img.jpg?width=980" id="a9563" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4517d7fcf142e8c804b17d6756818869" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Fuss et al. (<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9f" target="_blank">2018</a>).</small></p><p style=""><em>Model feasibility for different climate targets with immediate or delayed start of global climate action and different degrees of constraining BECCS. (Note: based on REMIND model runs by Luderer et al (<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034033" target="_blank">2013</a>).</em></p><p style=""><strong>4. How society develops is crucial for the amount of NETs needed.</strong></p><p>The extent of the challenge to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change is determined, to a large degree, by socioeconomic conditions in the future.</p><p style="">Yet, how such variations affect the prospects for meeting climate goals has been explored systematically only very recently through comparisons of the "<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-shared-socioeconomic-pathways-explore-future-climate-change" target="_blank">shared socioeconomic pathways</a>" (SSPs)—a set of alternative futures that examine how global society, demographics and economics might change over the next century.</p><p style="">The figure below shows that the prevailing conditions have a major effect on NETs dependence. For example, we see much less NETs deployment in scenarios that unfold along a sustainability narrative (SSP1— shaded green)—with higher levels of education and urbanization, lower population levels and less inequality within and between countries.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzg3MzE3My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMjMwMzA3MX0.lTWJNEBS8xW_aRhvWF1Dq2oF73XoW5ItkcACPkZXOHw/img.png?width=980" id="b25ab" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="36a422023842635eaa537205547556d2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Data in the left panel is taken from Rogelj et al. (<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0091-3" target="_blank">2018</a>)</small></p><p> <em></em></p><p style=""><em>Left panel shows the amount of CO2 removed in different Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). Right panel gives an overview of the SSPs and where they are located along the dimensions of challenges to mitigation and adaptation.</em></p><p>There is an important implication. We rightly think a lot about how climate policies can reduce emissions within a given socioeconomic pathway. But future social and economic conditions are not set in stone.</p><p>We therefore need to think much more about how we can transition between alternative future worlds, for example, from a fossil-fuel intensive world (e.g. "SSP5") towards one characterised by sustainable development (e.g. "SSP1"). The required non-climate policies to develop sustainably would greatly ease the burden on mitigation and, crucially, would limit dependence on large-scale use of NETs.</p><p style=""><strong>5. Most NETs show potential for large-scale deployment, but all have limits.</strong></p><p style="">In principle, NETs are feasible at a range of costs and with at least partially proven technology, but not at unlimited scale and not quickly. Many NETs also have high uncertainties regarding <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/geoengineering-carries-large-risks-for-natural-world-studies-show" target="_blank">their wider impacts</a>.</p><p style="">However, to ascertain the total potential of all NETs, it is not as simple as adding them together. Some NETs compete with one another—for land, water, bioenergy or safe geological storage, for example.</p><p style="">The graphic below summarizes the maturity, potential, cost, side-effects and permanence of seven different NETs. The central panel shows how much CO2 each NET could potentially remove from the atmosphere (x axis) and at what cost (y axis).</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzg3MzE5NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MTg3NjU5OH0.lQ0L1nWjUGj9X6zZUwFpEoqNegNvYztGOds1tlhbIxc/img.jpg?width=980" id="b06f7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d8a078a6f51978895ad41018c04b6018" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Minx et al. (<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b" target="_blank">2018</a>)</small></p><p> <em></em></p><p style=""><em>NETs and their major features including costs, deployment potentials, side-effects, permanence of storage as well as development status. Deployment potentials in the central panel are not additive. List of side-effects is not exhaustive. </em></p><p style="">In addition, realizing the potential of each NET will require reliable institutions that incentivise good governance and practice across the globe.</p><p style="">This may constrain the ability to reach the higher end of deployment ranges—particularly for afforestation and soil carbon sequestration, where the cheapest options and largest potentials are often especially prominent in regions with weak institutions.</p><p>At the more expensive end, BECCS and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) may have larger overall potentials and provide more reliable long-term storage, but show substantially higher costs and are currently in an earlier stage of the innovation process.</p><p style="">Our review also suggests that it would be difficult—and unwise—to try to meet the need to remove CO2 with one NET alone. It is, therefore, prudent to think about a NETs portfolio, with each deployed at more modest scales and, consequently, with more manageable risks.</p><p>In fact, there may be a "natural order" of NETs deployment that arises from considerations of costs, potentials, effectiveness, availability as well as safe and permanent storage.</p><p style="">For example, an initial phase-in could use some of the land-based options, such as afforestation or soil carbon sequestration, which are readily available, comparatively cheap and more easily reversible, but suffer from saturation in the long-run and are harder to manage on a large scale. Technological options, such as BECCS and DACCS, could be phased in later and provide the required additional potentials once they are ready.</p><p style=""><strong>6. Adverse side effects of BECCS relate specifically to bioenergy.</strong></p><p>BECCS has come under scrutiny for its need for large land areas on which the biomass would be cultivated. <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/emissions-reduction-scrutinize-co2-removal-methods-1.19318" target="_blank">There is concern</a> that it could interfere with food security or safeguarding terrestrial ecosystems. But are these concerns really related to BECCS?</p><p>To answer this question, we need to compare bioenergy uptake in model scenarios with and without BECCS.</p><p>The chart below shows what this reveals: that overall bioenergy deployment is as high with BECCS (blue line and shading) as it is without (red line and shading). In some non-BECCS scenarios, bioenergy upscaling is even more rapid. This is because bioenergy is a versatile technology that has applications across a whole range of sectoral mitigation options.</p><p>In the scenarios without BECCS, bioenergy is applied in difficult-to-decarbonise sectors, such as transport, which otherwise could be compensated for via negative emissions.</p><p style="">Hence, limiting BECCS deployment may not be effective in terms of securing sustainable levels of bioenergy use. Instead, once sustainable bioenergy policies are in place, the particular bioenergy pathways are less of a concern including BECCS.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzg3MzIxMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MDI3NzU4M30.q13w-UE2ocZ9Og69wLDbkM2ULZ0XS0AeTZ4BrTKIjbk/img.jpg?width=980" id="14e52" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="566de28496eaca595452550ad603a86b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Minx et al. (<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b" target="_blank">2018</a>)</small></p><p> <em></em></p><p style=""><em>Figure shows baseline scenarios (grey), scenarios with all mitigation options including BECCS (blue) and scenarios excluding BECCS (red), which have higher biomass consumption than the blue and grey ones.</em></p><p style=""><strong>7. A big gap exists between R&D of NETs and actual deployment.</strong></p><p style="">While we are seeing a burst of new literature on NETs, the overwhelming majority focuses on early-stage research. But bringing new technologies to widespread adoption typically requires a sequence of activities beyond research and development, including demonstration projects and serving niche markets, followed by a gradual process of scaling up to a larger market.</p><p>Along the way, new technologies face an array of issues, including convincing sceptical "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle" target="_blank">early adopters</a>" and challenges in public acceptance. There is little NETs literature on these later stages and the entire process has typically taken decades to play out for other technologies.</p><p>Compared with other low-carbon technologies, for example, it is clear that NETs still have the bulk of their development pathways in front of them.</p><p style="">The graphic below shows solar photovoltaics (PV) as an analogue. The first commercial application was in 1957 and it took 60 years to get to low cost PV. Yet, we are still a couple of decades away from widespread adoption—say 10-30 percent—of the global energy supply.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzg3MzIyNi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzMxNzI1NX0.q82SLjyYgGvDUkOwZRa4FQLLOcjmoFjQAar1Fr6DfmY/img.png?width=980" id="3fb99" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="538f4d82721931c24370132236e17fd6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."><a href="https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/institute/team/lamb-william.html" target="_blank">William Lamb</a> based on Nemet et al.</small></p><p style=""><em>Schematic illustrating the analogue of solar PV upscaling applied to Direct Air Carbon Capture, revealing a huge time gap in deployment for 1.5C relevance. </em></p><p style="">Applying this timeline to DACCS would suggest that we will not provide the technology at scale in time to be relevant for climate change. We, therefore, need to think more actively about speeding up innovation for NETs.</p><p style="">A prerequisite is, thus, a more open discussion of accelerating innovation in NETs—both in the literature and in climate policy debates.</p><p style=""><em><a href="https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/about/team/minx-jan.html" target="_blank">Prof. Jan Minx</a> is head of the applied sustainability science working group at the <a href="https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en.html" target="_blank">Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change</a> and Priestley Chair of climate change and public policy at the University of Leeds; <a href="https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/about/team/fuss-sabine.html" target="_blank">Dr. Sabine Fuss</a> is head of the sustainable resource management and global change working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change; and <a href="https://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/faculty-staff/faculty/gregory-f-nemet" target="_blank">Prof. Gregory Nemet</a> is associate professor of public affairs and environmental studies at the <a href="https://www.wisc.edu/" target="_blank">University of Wisconsin at Madison</a>.</em></p><p style=""><em><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-seven-key-things-to-know-about-negative-emissions" target="_blank">Carbon Brief</a>.</em></em></p>
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Clouds over Llanymynech, Wales, UK. Dave McGlinchey / Flickr
By Robert McSweeney
Solar geoengineering, or "solar radiation management" (SRM), is perhaps the most controversial of the different ways of limiting human-caused climate change.
A commonly voiced objection to the technique is the risk of "termination shock"—the rapid rebounding of global temperatures if SRM is deployed and then suddenly stopped.
<p>But a new research article, published in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000735/abstract" target="_blank">Earth's Future</a>, argues that this risk has been "significantly overestimated." There are numerous ways to prevent termination shock from occurring, the researchers say, and also to ensure that an SRM program is resilient to physical, political or economic interruptions in the first place.</p><p>However, despite their findings, the best way to protect against termination shock is "to cut CO2 emissions rapidly so that SRM is not needed for managing climate risk," the lead author told <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org" target="_blank">Carbon Brief</a>.</p><p><strong>Preventing a Shock</strong></p><p>SRM describes an array of methods—all of which remain hypothetical—for artificially reducing how much sunlight reaches the earth's surface in order to dampen global warming. These include "seeding" clouds, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere, or blocking sunlight with mirrors in space.</p><p>Implementing SRM would require overcoming a series of technical, political and ethical challenges, which have been the subject of robust debate for some time. Just last year, SRM was one of the main topics under discussion at a four-day <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/geoengineering-scientists-berlin-debate-radicaly-ways-reverse-global-warming" target="_blank">conference in Berlin</a>.</p><p>One of the potential risks of implementing SRM is "termination shock." This could happen because SRM masks the warming caused by greenhouse gases rather than reducing the concentration of gases in the atmosphere. In effect, it is treating the symptoms of climate change rather than curing the underlying condition.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/unregulated-solar-geoengineering-could-spark-droughts-and-hurricanes-study-warns" target="_blank">study</a> from earlier this year found that the rate of change in temperature after terminating SRM could be as much as four times larger than those caused by climate change itself. This would likely leave many species unable to cope with the sharp change in conditions.</p><p>But the researchers behind the new paper feel that termination shock is often given as a reason not to try SRM without giving proper consideration to what the term actually means. <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/earthsciences/people/andrew-r-parker/overview.html" target="_blank">Andrew Parker</a>, lead author and honorary senior research fellow at the <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/" target="_blank">University of Bristol</a>, explained to Carbon Brief:</p><p>"It's common for commentators to say that once you start SRM you can't stop it. Some then conclude that you should never start. But it's just not accurate to say that once you start SRM you can't stop it."</p><p>There are several ways in which termination shock could be avoided, the researchers argue in their paper.</p><p>First, SRM could be employed to offset just a portion of human-caused warming. The paper suggests that a cooling impact of around "a few tenths of a degree" could be stopped suddenly without risking termination shock. Considering the difference in potential impacts <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-compare-climate-change-impacts-at-1-5c-and-2c" target="_blank">between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming</a>, using SRM for a relatively small reduction in temperatures would still have clear benefits, the paper notes.</p><p>Second, SRM could be phased out gradually. For example, using SRM to limit 0.2C of warming per decade could be phased out gradually over 50 years without a shock, the paper says.</p><p>And third, if SRM was interrupted, there would be a window of "a few months" to restart it before an appreciable rise in temperatures would occur. For example, aerosols already released into the stratosphere would continue to have an effect, the researchers say, and it would take the earth system a while to readjust to any change.</p><p>Co-author <a href="https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/people/pete-irvine" target="_blank">Dr. Peter Irvine</a>, a postdoctoral research fellow at the <a href="http://www.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences</a>, explains more in the video below:</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-vimeo">
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/253864686" width="100%" height="480" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a9b0c52d55bbaf39135f3e9297c5936f"></iframe>
</p><p><strong>Potential Causes of Shocks</strong></p><p>The risk of termination shock is also affected by what causes an SRM program to end suddenly, the authors say.</p><p>The study focuses on one proposed type of SRM, known as a "stratospheric aerosol injection," which involves sending up substances to the stratosphere that are known to have a cooling effect on the climate.</p><p>Using high-flying jets has been judged a "feasible" way of doing this, the researchers say. And based on estimates from other studies, the researchers assume implementing SRM on a large scale would cost an initial outlay of $50 billion and then $12.5 billion a year to deploy.</p><p>Aerosols have a limited lifetime in the stratosphere and would need to be released at regular time intervals in order to be effective. The researchers looked at what might cause an SRM program to be interrupted.</p><p>There are two main reasons why an SRM program would be terminated early, the paper suggests: because something forced it to stop, or because people made a decision to stop it.</p><p>The former might include a terrorist attack (either physical or cyber) or some sort of catastrophe (either natural, economic or political). The latter could be caused by a change of political will, or if SRM was causing unintended impacts that resulted in calls for it to be stopped.</p><p>The researchers ran through all these scenarios, plotting out how they might result in termination of an SRM program. Their results suggest that "people had been underestimating how robust an SRM system could be and, thus, overestimating the risks that it could suddenly be terminated," said Parker.</p><p>"Some things that people had been assuming could disable an SRM system—such as terrorist attacks or political demands—would probably not be able to do so unless the system was terribly designed. In fact, a well-designed system should be able to withstand most suggested events that might cause termination shock."</p><p>A well-designed system would include, for example, maintaining backup infrastructure—such as additional airfields and jets for releasing aerosols into the stratosphere, said Parker. This should be "easy" to do, the paper argues. Similarly, if multiple countries around the world were capable of deploying SRM, the system would be "resilient against all but the most disastrous of global calamities."</p><p>Making sure that deployment of SRM is legitimately and widely agreed would also help prevent political grievances, Parker added.</p><p><strong>Wider Debate</strong></p><p>The new paper identifies an important gap in the SRM discussion, said <a href="https://www.pnnl.gov/science/staff/staff_info.asp?staff_num=7886" target="_blank">Dr. Ben Kravitz</a>, a climate scientist focusing on climate feedbacks and geoengineering at the <a href="https://www.pnnl.gov/" target="_blank">Pacific Northwest National Laboratory</a> in Washington, who was not involved. He told Carbon Brief:</p><p>"One extreme [of termination shock] is a lot of geoengineering, abruptly ceased, permanently. But what does that middle ground look like? At what point does phasing out geoengineering look like a 'shock'? I think this is an important thing to look at and quantify, and I'm glad the authors took the first steps toward doing that."</p><p>The paper is a "welcome input into the overall debate" on SRM, added <a href="https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/people/janos-pasztor" target="_blank">Janos Pasztor</a>, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (<a href="https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/" target="_blank">C2G2</a>) and former assistant UN secretary-general.</p><p>But while it might be "easy" to build the physical systems needed to backup an SRM programme, organizing how it might be governed is not so straightforward, said Pasztor:</p><p>"Some say stratospheric aerosol injection systems are ungovernable. I don't believe that is the case, but it will be challenging. So many different voices will need to be heard. Creating global consensus for deciding whether or not to use and then, if yes, how to make it happen—including how to minimize termination risks—will be a massive undertaking."</p><p>For example, one gap in the paper is what happens if one group goes ahead with SRM without international agreement, noted <a href="https://twitter.com/antcjones" target="_blank">Dr. Anthony Jones</a>, an associate research fellow at the <a href="http://www.exeter.ac.uk/" target="_blank">University of Exeter</a>, who led a recent <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/unregulated-solar-geoengineering-could-spark-droughts-and-hurricanes-study-warns" target="_blank">study</a> on the regional impacts of SRM. He told Carbon Brief:</p><p>"One issue the paper doesn't cover is the consequences of a group of countries or a single country deciding to implement solar geoengineering without global consent and participation, which would increase the risk of early termination. Although international opposition would make unilateral deployment unlikely, it is still a scenario worth discussing."</p><p>The policy options put forward in the paper do not require decision-makers to "behave with perfect rationality," the authors note, but that they "must just avoid wanton irrationality<em>.</em>"</p><p>Although this may seem reasonable, said <a href="http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock/" target="_blank">professor Alan Robock</a> of <a href="https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank">Rutgers University</a>, "unreasonable policy decisions are made all the time." He asked: "Can we count on future political actors to be reasonable?"</p><p>It is also worth remembering that the potential for termination shock is just one of many other potential risks and concerns with SRM, he told Carbon Brief:</p><p>"Even if termination shock were less likely, there are still many reasons why SRM would not be a robust policy option."</p><p>That said, Robock "completely agrees" with the last paragraph of the paper, which argues that the solution to global warming is mitigation and adaptation so that SRM is not necessary in the first place:</p><p>"Our final conclusion is the most obvious and important. The best way to avoid termination would be to avoid a situation where a large amount of SRM would be needed to reduce committed climate risks. Strong action on mitigation would reduce the amount of SRM necessary to maintain a stable global temperature.</p><p>The development of safe and scalable CO2 removal techniques could reduce the cooling needed from SRM after deployment, and strong adaptation investment would reduce the suffering from the residual climate impacts to which Earth is already committed."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="057d0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="D6WRZC1576663018"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="955560842870906880" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Geoengineering Carries ‘Large Risks’ for the Natural World, Studies Show https://t.co/9qRf9bmSTp @ClimateDesk @worldresources @OneWorld_News</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/955560842870906880">1516658433.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-risk-termination-shock-overplayed-study" target="_blank">Carbon Brief</a>.</em></p>
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Aerial view of eucalyptus grandis or saligna trees in a commercial forestry plantation in South Africa. Alamy Stock Photo
By Daisy Dunne
Reducing the impacts of human-caused climate change through the use of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage—better known as BECCS—could have major consequences for wildlife, forests and water resources, a new study shows.
The large-scale conversion of existing land to BECCS plantations could cause global forest cover to fall by as much as 10 percent and biodiversity "intactness" to decline by up to 7 percent, the lead author told Carbon Brief.
<p style="">And the introduction of <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/unregulated-solar-geoengineering-could-spark-droughts-and-hurricanes-study-warns" target="_blank">solar geoengineering</a> could also threaten wildlife, a second study shows. The new research finds that implementing—and then not sustaining—such a technology could cause global temperatures to rebound rapidly, leaving many species unable to cope with the sharp change in conditions.</p><p style="">The two studies reiterate the need to fully consider the possible consequences of implementing <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/geoengineering-scientists-berlin-debate-radicaly-ways-reverse-global-warming" target="_blank">geoengineering</a> technologies if they are used to lessen the effects of global warming, the authors of both studies tell Carbon Brief.</p><p style="">The findings also highlight "the solution to global warming is mitigation," one author concludes. "In order to achieve climate goals, it is now essential to immediately reduce CO2 emissions, instead of using harmful technologies to compensate for a more leisurely pace," another author said.</p><p style=""><strong>Bargaining with BECCS</strong></p><p style="">The first study, <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41558-017-0064-y" target="_blank">published</a> in Nature Climate Change, assesses how using BECCS could affect different aspects of the natural world, including forest cover, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity">biodiversity</a> and freshwater resources.</p><p style="">BECCS has been labelled by many as a promising "<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-10-ways-negative-emissions-could-slow-climate-change" target="_blank">negative emissions technology</a>," meaning it could be used to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Put simply, BECCS involves burning biomass—such as trees and crops—to generate energy and then capturing the resulting CO2 emissions before they are released into the air.</p><p style="">Though yet to be demonstrated on a commercial basis, large-scale BECCS is already included by scientists in many of the modeled "<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-do-we-need-beccs-to-avoid-dangerous-climate-change" target="_blank">pathways</a>" showing how global warming can be limited to 2C above pre-industrial levels.</p><p style="">Some scientists hope that BECCS could be used to soak up some of the CO2 that is released by human activity, which could, in turn, help the world to achieve "net zero" emissions.</p><p style="">The new study explores whether this could be achieved without causing too much damage to many aspects of the natural world.</p><p style="">BECCS could cause problems for the natural world by taking up a large amount of land, water and other resources, explained lead author <a href="https://www.pik-potsdam.de/members/veraheck/vera-heck" target="_blank">Dr. Vera Heck</a>, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research (<a href="https://www.pik-potsdam.de/pik-frontpage" target="_blank">PIK</a>).</p><p style="">Her research finds that using BECCS on a wide scale could come with "large risks" for the natural world. She told Carbon Brief:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Using large-scale biomass plantations to extract CO2 from the atmosphere might contribute to climate protection, but can lead to transgressing many other environmental limits, implying large risks for biodiversity, nutrient and water cycles and land use. Therefore, biomass as a means of CO2 removal can only be a limited contribution to sustainable climate mitigation pathways."</p><p style=""><strong>Pushed to the Limit</strong></p><p style="">For the study, the researchers estimated how BECCS could impact the nine "<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-issue-stark-warning-as-earth-passes-into-danger-zone" target="_blank">planetary boundaries</a>."</p><p style="">The idea of planetary boundaries is to identify how much humans can develop and use the Earth's resources while staying safely within limits of what the planet can take. Four out of the nine planetary boundaries, including climate change, have already been breached as a result of human activity.</p><p style="">You can see the nine boundaries in the graphic below, which also shows the status of each one, according to a <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/01/14/science.1259855" target="_blank">2015 Science study</a>.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzExMDAxNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNDc0MTA1OH0.srBNyGcN4VERqyRqmohWJ11dVVo9CHDbRPV4spR_XkE/img.jpg?width=980" id="ae6bb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a0d14aa73b830dfdbfea9574662bd362" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Rosamund Pearce</small></p>
<p style="">To understand how BECCS may affect the planetary boundaries, the researchers ran a series of models that considered both future climate change and how agricultural land use patterns may differ in the future.<br></p><p style="">For each scenario, the researchers worked out how many BECCS plantations could be created while staying within the "safe" zone of the planetary boundaries. The researchers considered "safe" to mean the implementation of BECCS with no additional damage to the planetary boundaries.</p><p style="">They find that implementing BECCS within safe boundaries could allow for negative emissions of up to 60m tonnes of carbon a year. This corresponds to less than 1 percent of current global CO2 emissions, Heck said.</p><p style=""><strong>Taking Risks</strong></p><p style="">The researchers also estimated how much carbon could be captured if BECCS was implemented within "risky" boundaries. This definition allowed further damage to the planetary boundaries, while still preventing a move into the "high risk" zone (see earlier graphic).</p><p style="">This would allow for negative emissions of around 1.2bn to 6.3bn tonnes of carbon, depending on the type of bioenergy that is used, the researchers found.</p><p style="">Achieving the highest amount of negative emissions would require the use of the conversion of biomass to hydrogen with carbon capture and storage. But the technology needed to facilitate the conversion of biomass to hydrogen is still far from being viable, Heck said.</p><p style="">However, implementing BECCS within risky boundaries could have major consequences for the environment, she added:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The risky scenarios imply substantial risk of triggering negative Earth system feedback and might undermine the stability and resilience of the Earth system."</p><p style="">Among impacts, the introduction of BECCS within risky limits could cause global forest cover to fall by 10 percent and biodiversity "intactness" to fall by 7 percent. This is because a large amount of land would need to be converted to biofuel plantations, Heck said.</p><p style="">On top of this, the additional water demand derived from all of the newly created BECCS plantations could be more than double that required by global agriculture, Heck added.</p><p style="">The new research confirms earlier findings that BECCS may have a "significant adverse impact on land and freshwater," said <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/ibes/profiles/pete.smith" target="_blank">Prof. Pete Smith</a>, chair in plant and soil science at the <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/" target="_blank">University of Aberdeen</a>, who was not involved in the research. He told Carbon Brief:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The authors find that relying on widespread BECCS is risky, but there are regions where the risk is low. This study is robust and helps to move the currently debate away from the currently polarized positions of 'BECCS is always bad' or 'BECCS is always good'. More integrated assessments such as these are required to bolster the evidence base upon which decisions on negative emissions will be taken."</p><p style=""><strong>Simulating Solar Geoengineering</strong></p><p>The second study, published in <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0431-0" target="_blank">Nature Ecology & Evolution</a>, explores how the introduction of <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/geoengineering-is-no-substitute-for-cutting-emissions-new-studies-show" target="_blank">solar geoengineering</a> could affect biodiversity.</p><p style="">Solar geoengineering or "solar radiation management" (SRM), describes an array of methods—all of which remain hypothetical—for artificially reducing sunlight at the Earth's surface in order to dampen global warming.</p><p style="">The new study focuses on the impacts of one type of SRM, which involves injecting aerosols into the stratosphere. Once in the atmosphere, <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/unregulated-solar-geoengineering-could-spark-droughts-and-hurricanes-study-warns" target="_blank">it has been suggested</a> that the aerosols could form a protective veil around the Earth that is able to reflect sunlight and, therefore, cool the planet.</p><p style="">Aerosols have a limited lifetime in the stratosphere and would need to be released at regular time intervals in order to be effective. If the release of aerosols were suddenly stopped, global temperatures could rapidly rise again.</p><p style="">The new study finds that this sudden termination of SRM would leave many species unable to cope with the rapid change in environmental conditions, said study author <a href="http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock/" target="_blank">Prof. Alan Robock</a> of <a href="https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank">Rutgers University</a>. He told Carbon Brief:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The main findings are that any implementation of stratospheric geoengineering could end catastrophically for many species. Although if geoengineering were ever done, it would not make sense to abruptly end it, there are credible scenarios where this might happen. Should society ever take that risk?"</p><p style=""><strong>Modeling a Global Shift</strong></p><p style="">To understand how the rapid termination of solar generation could affect wildlife, the researchers used models to compare changes in temperature and rainfall under a scenario in which SRM runs from 2020 until 2070 to a scenario with no geoengineering and an intermediate level of greenhouse gas emissions (RCP4.5).</p><p style="">The researchers then calculated the "climate velocities" of each scenario, which quantifies the speed and direction of shifting climates.</p><p>The results are shown on the charts below, which show the change in temperature velocity for (a) a modelled scenario showing the introduction of SRM, (b) the termination of SRM, (c) the current climate between 1960 and 2014 and (d) an unengineered world with moderate emissions.</p><p style="">In the chart, deep red signifies a rapid increase in the rate of temperature rise, while blue shows rapidly decreasing temperature.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzExMDAzMC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNDUyODc4M30.Z3R9uYRo5NxIuAA72OxKPBSEqAL5IbtYP7hMzeaG_KY/img.png?width=980" id="082f1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="66950caddeeb430465eefb2c4f335d5b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Trisos et al. (2018)</small></p>
<em></em><p style=""><em><strong>Above: </strong>The change in temperature velocity under (a) a modeled scenario including the introduction of solar geoengineering, (b) the termination of solar geoengineering, (c ) the current climate between 1960 and 2014 and (d) a world without solar geoengineering with moderate emissions (RCP4.5). Red shading shows increasing temperatures, while blue shows decreases; the darker the shading, the faster the rate of change. </em></p><p style=""><span></span>The results show that while the implementation of solar geoengineering could cause temperatures to fall fairly quickly, sudden termination could cause rapid increases as temperatures rebound.<br></p><p style="">The rate of change in temperature under the termination of SRM could be two to four times larger than those caused by climate change itself, the researchers conclude. The study also finds similar—though not as drastic—changes on rainfall.</p><p>This large change in environmental conditions could leave many species unable to adapt and at a high risk of extinction, the researchers say.</p><p style="">Animals that do not find it easy to adapt to new environments, such as species found in tropical rainforests and small island habitats, will be the least able to adapt to these changes, they add. The risk could be highest for slow-moving amphibians, the researchers note in their paper:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"While differences in climate velocity between terrestrial hotspots for some taxa [animal groups] are small, that amphibian biodiversity hotspots have the highest temperature velocities from sudden termination suggests that increased extinction risks would be especially severe for this group."</p><p style="">In other words, a large number of amphibians are found in areas that are expected to be most affected by a sudden SRM termination.</p><p style="">The new research makes an important contribution to the "broader conversation" surrounding the risks of solar geoengineering, said <a href="https://www.pnnl.gov/science/staff/staff_info.asp?staff_num=7886" target="_blank">Dr. Ben Kravitz</a>, a climate scientist from the <a href="https://www.pnnl.gov/" target="_blank">Pacific Northwest National Laboratory</a>, who was not involved in the new research. He told Carbon Brief:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Although there are many issues that arise when one talks about ecosystems, to the best of my knowledge, this study the first quantitative look at what might happen to biodiversity under different scenarios of geoengineering. And, importantly, the study was done using multiple climate models, meaning we have estimates of how robust the model responses are."</p><p style="">The research highlights the need for developing a governing framework for geoengineering, said <a href="https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/people/janos-pasztor" target="_blank">Janos Pasztor</a>, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"This paper is precisely the kind of research we need to help us better understand the risks and potential benefits of stratospheric aerosol injection [SAI]. For this reason, part of the initial governance frameworks addressing SAI has to cover research, including encouraging more research that results in clarifying the risks and potential benefits of SAI."</p><p style=""><strong>Finding "The Solution"</strong></p><p style="">The findings show that dampening global warming through the use of solar engineering could come with "many possible risks," said Robock. This suggests that cutting global emissions would be the best way of limiting future climate change, he said:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The solution to global warming is mitigation. It is not too late to rapidly switch to wind and solar power and rapidly reduce our emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere."</p><p style="">Mitigating climate change through the use of BECCS also comes with "substantial" risks, said Heck:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It would be risky to rely on BECCS as a strategy to achieve the Paris Agreement. Notable negative emissions from biomass plantations come at the expense of enormous pressures on the global environment as a whole.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"In order to achieve climate goals, it is now essential to immediately reduce CO2 emissions, instead of using harmful technologies to compensate for a more leisurely pace."</p><p style=""> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/geoengineering-carries-large-risks-for-natural-world-studies-show" target="_blank">Carbon Brief</a></em><em>.</em></p>
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By Tim Radford
Geoengineering—the untested technofix that would permit the continued use of fossil fuels—could create more problems than it could solve.
By masking sunlight with injections of sulphate aerosols in the stratosphere, nations could perhaps suppress some of the devastating hurricanes and typhoons that in a rapidly warming world threaten northern hemisphere cities. But they could also scorch the Sahel region of Africa, to threaten millions of lives and livelihoods, according to new research.
<p style="">Geoengineering is sometimes played as humanity's have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too option: humans have already unthinkingly engineered <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change">climate change</a> over the last 200 years by profligate combustion of coal, oil and gas that releases ever-growing concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.</p><p style="">Since ferocious volcanic eruptions have been known to cool the global climate by pumping soot and sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, some reason that scientists and technologists could play the same card, in a calculated fashion.</p><p style="">But shortly after one research team showed that, in theory at least, geoengineering <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/23366-2/" target="_blank">could be made to work</a>, a second group has demonstrated that there would be a huge price to pay. And they call on policymakers to think carefully before testing any unilateral action.</p><p style="">"Our results confirm that regional solar geoengineering is a highly risky strategy which could simultaneously benefit one region to the detriment of another," said <a href="http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/mathematics/staff/aj369" target="_blank">Anthony Jones</a>, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter, UK, who led the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01606-0" target="_blank">study</a>. </p><p style="">"It is vital that policymakers take solar geoengineering seriously and act swiftly to install effective regulation."</p><p style="">This is an argument that has continued for more than a decade: in 2006, the Nobel laureate and chemist <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-006-9101-y" target="_blank">Paul Crutzen</a> pointed out that, while burning hydrocarbon fuels, humans also released sulphate aerosols that represented a health hazard, linked to half a million deaths a year.</p><p><strong>Multiple Effects</strong></p><p style="">If a proportion of this pollution reached the upper atmosphere, it would not only save lives, it would change the reflectivity of the planet, dim solar radiation and contain global warming.</p><p style="">Since then, researchers the world over have <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/reducing-sunlight-will-not-cool-earth/" target="_blank">repeatedly looked at the geo-engineering option</a>, and repeatedly conceded that the ideal answer would be to stop burning fossil fuels.</p><p style="">And since greenhouse gas emissions have failed to fall, other groups have repeatedly returned to the study, to find that <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-technofixes-will-not-work/" target="_blank">such solutions may not work, or that they could create more problems than they solve</a>.</p><p style="">Dr. Jones and his colleagues report in the journal <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01606-0" target="_blank">Nature Communications</a> that they tested the sulphate solution in simulation to find what others have suggested: that in addition to damping global temperature rise, a <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/dark-skies-herald-hope-of-taming-hurricanes/" target="_blank">deliberate darkening of the skies would also suppress hurricane activity</a> in the north Atlantic.</p><p style=""><strong>Drought Risk</strong></p><p style="">But, <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/geo-engineering-could-imperil-sahel/" target="_blank">as others have argued</a>, it would also heighten the likelihood of sustained drought in the Sahel, a region which extends across 14 nations in Africa, from Senegal to Ethiopia.</p><p style="">"It is obvious from first principles that stratospheric aerosol geoengineering deployed in only one hemisphere would lead to huge shifts in tropical climate patterns," said <a href="https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/people/pete-irvine" target="_blank">Peter Irvine</a>, a researcher at Harvard University in the U.S., commenting on the study.</p><p style="">"Deploying stratospheric aerosol geoengineering in only one hemisphere is pretty certainly a bad idea, and this work helps reinforce that view."</p><p style="">And <a href="https://www.southampton.ac.uk/oes/research/staff/jgs1.page" target="_blank">John Shepherd, an Earth system scientist</a> at the University of Southampton in the UK, said: "This is not a technique that is ready to use in the near future: reducing CO2 emissions and planning our adaptation must remain top priorities for climate policy."<em></em></p><p style=""><em> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate </em><a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/23484-2/" target="_blank">Climate News Network</a>.</em></p>
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Climate Denier Lamar Smith: Geoengineering Can Curb Impacts of Climate Change
10 November 2017
Climate
By Steve Horn
Geoengineering, hailed in some circles as a potential techno-fix to the climate change crisis, has taken a step closer to going mainstream.
The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a rare joint subcommittee hearing on Nov. 8, only the second ever congressional hearing of its kind on the topic (the first was held in 2009). The committee invited expert witnesses to discuss the status of geoengineering research and development. Geoengineering is a broad term encompassing sophisticated scientific techniques meant to reverse the impacts of climate change or pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
<p style="">Ironically, the Committee on Science, Space and Technology is chaired by <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/lamar-smith" target="_blank">U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith</a>—a <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier">climate science denier</a> who has <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/06/21/exxon-koch-lamar-smith-exxon-knew" target="_blank">received tens of thousands of dollars</a> in campaign contributions from <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon">ExxonMobil</a> throughout his political career. In fact, Smith actually mentioned "climate change" in his opening remarks for the hearing, in discussing his interest in geoengineering.</p><p style="">"As the climate continues to change, geoengineering could become a tool to curb resulting impacts," <a href="https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-115-SY18-WState-S000583-20171108_0.pdf" target="_blank">said Smith</a>, who recently announced <a href="https://grist.org/briefly/climate-science-opponent-lamar-smith-will-retire-from-congress/" target="_blank">he will not run for relection in 2018</a>. "Instead of forcing unworkable and costly government mandates on the American people, we should look to technology and innovation to lead the way to address climate change. Geoengineering should be considered when discussing technological advances to protect the environment."</p><p>In the past, Smith has denied climate change in stark terms, referring to those who believe in climate science as "<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-change-religion-1429832149" target="_blank">alarmists</a>" in a 2015 op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal.</p><p style="">"Climate alarmists have failed to explain the lack of global warming over the past 15 years," Smith said at the time. "They simply keep adjusting their malfunctioning climate models to push the supposedly looming disaster further into the future." </p><p>Smith has since pivoted to less skepticism about the science, saying at a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170401081011/democrats.science.house.gov/hearing/climate-science-assumptions-policy-implications-and-scientific-method" target="_blank">March 2017 congressional hearing</a> that "climate is changing and humans play a role" and that it's now just a question of the "extent" to which human activity is the culprit (<a href="https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm" target="_blank">it is</a>). </p><p style="">So perhaps geoengineering, labeled by its critics for years now as a false solution to the climate crisis, will be a "pivot" of sorts for converted deniers and their bankrollers?</p><p style=""><strong>Climate Change Talk Off the Table</strong></p><p>U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment for the House Science Committee, explicitly took climate change debate off the table at the November 8 hearing, stating that conversation should only center around the future of geoengineering research.</p><p>"The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the viability of geoengineering and any early-stage research associated with this approach," <a href="https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-115-SY18-WState-B001302-20171108.pdf" target="_blank">said Biggs</a>. "The hearing is not a platform to further the debate about climate change. Instead, its aim is to explore approaches and technologies that have been discussed in the scientific community and to assess the basic research needed to better understand the merits of these ideas."</p><p style="">Those testifying followed suit, with a consensus reached that a governance framework must be created to regulate geoengineering research and potential future deployment. The presenters all pushed the idea of geoengineering techniques such as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1528" target="_blank">solar radiation management</a>, <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we-may-never-know-how-well-cloud-seeding-works/" target="_blank">cloud seeding</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405666/" target="_blank">marine cloud brightening</a>. </p><p>Geoengineering, according to its critics, is a distraction from the actual challenge of halting dangerous levels of greenhouse gas emissions and subsequent runaway climate change. Critics also say the approach is a potential danger in and of itself because its techniques are a literal re-engineering of the atmospheric system, with unpredictable side effects. </p><p style=""><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/Naomi-Klein">Naomi Klein</a>, author of the book <a href="https://thischangeseverything.org/book/" target="_blank"><em>This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The </em></a><em><a href="https://thischangeseverything.org/book/" target="_blank">Climate</a></em>, has been among the more outspoken critics of geoengineering.</p><p style="">"Geoengineering offers the tantalizing promise of a climate change fix that would allow us to continue our resource-exhausting way of life, indefinitely," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/geoengineering-testing-the-waters.html" target="_blank">wrote Klein in 2012 in The New York Times</a>. "And then there is the fear. Every week seems to bring more terrifying climate news, from reports of ice sheets melting ahead of schedule to oceans acidifying far faster than expected."</p><p style=""><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/community/desmogblog">DeSmog</a> has also covered a proposed version of geoengineering called <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/biochar-climate-change-solution-or-false-hope" target="_blank">biochar in a multi-part investigative series</a>, noting that much of the research on the topic so far has been funded by companies such as ConocoPhillips, Cenovus, ExxonMobil and others. Exxon, in fact, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/036054429500035F#!" target="_blank">studied geoengineering</a> at its research campus in Annandale, New Jersey, in the 1990s while also <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-denial" target="_blank">funding climate change denial</a>.</p><p style=""><strong>"Not a Silver Bullet"</strong></p><p>For now, even geoengineering proponents have become spooked over the interest climate science deniers have started showing in geoengineering. On the same day as the House Science Committee hearing, 24 researchers <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/House-Geoengineering-Geoengineering-Hearing-1.pdf" target="_blank">delivered a letter</a> expressing concern about the premise of the congressional hearing and what could arise from it moving forward.</p><p style="">"Geoengineering is not a silver bullet, and treating it as one could greatly increase already severe climate change risks," they wrote to the committee. "While further research could help address questions about the proposed technologies' efficacy, risks and cost-effectiveness, we already know that geoengineering, including solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal approaches, can at best be a supplement to reducing sources of greenhouse gas emissions and increasing our ability to cope with the effects of climate change."</p><p style="">Included among the 24 scientists is Harvard's pioneering geoengineering researcher <a href="https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">David Keith</a>, who has been <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/09/27/is-david-keiths-climate-solution-genius-or-madness.html" target="_blank">among the most enthusiastic supporters</a> of geoengineering within academia. Speaking as an individual, Keith also recently communicated his apprehension about the Trump administration potentially taking an unscrupulous interest in pushing geoengineering.</p><p style="">"In some ways the thing we fear the most is a tweet from Trump saying 'Solar geoengineering solves everything—it's great! We don't need to bother to cut emissions,'" <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609379/why-this-geoengineering-pioneers-worst-nightmare-is-a-trump-tweet/?set=609356" target="_blank">Keith said at a Nov. 7 forum</a>. "That would just really make it hard to proceed in a sensible way."</p><p style="">In fact, those close to the Trump administration, which is rife with climate science deniers, have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/mar/27/trump-presidency-opens-door-to-planet-hacking-geoengineer-experiments" target="_blank">shown some interest in geoengineering</a> to a degree not seen in the Obama administration. Yet whether <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/donald-trump" target="_blank">President Donald Trump</a> is willing to finance geoengineering research to the tune of $5-10 million per year, as <a href="https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-115-SY18-WState-KWanser-20171108.pdf" target="_blank">proposed by one hearing witness</a>, remains to be seen.</p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/11/09/lamar-smith-climate-denier-geoengineering-hearing" target="_blank">DeSmogBlog</a>.</em></p>
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By Jane A. Flegal and Andrew Maynard
Hollywood's latest disaster flick, "Geostorm," is premised on the idea that humans have figured out how to control the earth's climate. A powerful satellite-based technology allows users to fine-tune the weather, overcoming the ravages of climate change. Everyone, everywhere can quite literally "have a nice day," until—spoiler alert!—things do not go as planned.
Admittedly, the movie is a fantasy set in a deeply unrealistic near-future. But coming on the heels of one of the most extreme hurricane seasons in recent history, it's tempting to imagine a world where we could regulate the weather.
<p style="">Despite a <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/fixing-the-sky/9780231144131" target="_blank">long history of interest in weather modification</a>, controlling the climate is, to be frank, unattainable with current technology. But underneath the frippery of "Geostorm," is there a valid message about the promises and perils of planetary management?</p>
<p style=""><strong>Fiddling with our global climate</strong></p><p style="">The technology in the movie "Geostorm" is laughably fantastical. But the idea of technologies that might be used to "geoengineer" the climate is not.</p><p style="">Geoengineering, also called <a href="https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2009/geoengineering-climate/" target="_blank">climate engineering</a>, is a set of emerging technologies that could potentially offset some of the consequences of climate change. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/latest-ipcc-climate-report-puts-geoengineering-in-the-spotlight/" target="_blank">Some scientists are taking it seriously</a>, considering geoengineering among the range of approaches for managing the risks of climate change—although always as a complement to, and not a substitute for, reducing emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change.</p><p style="">These innovations are often lumped into two categories. <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/18805/chapter/1" target="_blank">Carbon dioxide removal</a> (or negative emissions) technologies set out to actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. In contrast, <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/18988/chapter/1" target="_blank">solar radiation management</a> (or <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/solar">solar</a> geoengineering) aims to reduce how much sunlight reaches Earth.</p><p style="">Because <a href="http://fore.yale.edu/climate-change/science/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-bathtub-effect/" target="_blank">it takes time for the climate to respond to changes</a>, even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, some level of climate change—and its associated risks—is unavoidable. Advocates of solar geoengineering argue that, if done well, these technologies <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000465/epdf" target="_blank">might help limit some effects</a>, including <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea level rise</a> and changes in weather patterns, and do so quickly.</p><p style="">But as might be expected, the idea of intentionally tinkering with the earth's atmosphere to curb the impacts of climate change is controversial. Even <a href="http://www.etcgroup.org/fr/node/5282" target="_blank">conducting research into climate engineering</a> raises some hackles.</p><p style=""><strong>Global stakes are high</strong></p><p style="">Geoengineering could reshape our world in fundamental ways. Because of the global impacts that will inevitably accompany attempts to engineer the planet, this isn't a technology where some people can selectively opt in or opt out out of it: Geoengineering has the potential to affect everyone. Moreover, it raises profound questions about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/jul/29/messing-nature-geoengineering-green-thought" target="_blank">humans' relationship to nonhuman nature</a>. The conversations that matter are ultimately less about the technology itself and more about what we collectively stand to gain or lose politically, culturally and socially.</p><p style="">Much of the debate around how advisable geoengineering research is has focused on solar geoengineering, not carbon dioxide removal. One of the worries here is that figuring out aspects of solar geoengineering could lead us down a <a href="https://thebulletin.org/trouble-geoengineers-%E2%80%9Chacking-planet%E2%80%9D10858" target="_blank">slippery slope to actually doing it</a>. Just doing research could make deploying solar geoengineering more likely, even if it proves to be a really bad idea. And it comes with the risk that the techniques might be bad for some and good for others, potentially exacerbating existing inequalities, or creating new ones.</p><p>For example, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008JD010050/abstract" target="_blank">early studies using computer models</a> indicated that injecting particles into the stratosphere to cool parts of Earth might disrupt the Asian and African summer monsoons, threatening the food supply for billions of people. Even if deployment <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000416/full" target="_blank">wouldn't necessarily result in regional inequalities</a>, the prospect of solar geoengineering raises questions about <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10784-017-9377-6" target="_blank">who has the power to shape our climate futures</a>, and who and what gets left out.</p><p style="">Other concerns focus on possible unintended consequences of large-scale open-air experimentation—especially when our whole planet becomes the lab. There's a fear that the consequences would be irreversible, and that <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5965/530.full" target="_blank">the line between research and deployment is inherently fuzzy</a>.</p><p style="">And then there's the distraction problem, often known as the "<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/01/geoengineering_might_give_people_an_excuse_to_ignore_climate_change_s_causes.html" target="_blank">moral hazard</a>." Even researching geoengineering as one potential response to climate change may distract from the necessary and difficult work of reducing greenhouse gas levels and adapting to a changing climate—not to mention the challenges of encouraging more sustainable lifestyles and practices.</p><p style="">To be fair, many scientists in the small geoengineering community take these concerns very seriously. This was evident in the robust <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/geoengineering-scientists-berlin-debate-radicaly-ways-reverse-global-warming" target="_blank">conversations around the ethics and politics of geoengineering</a> at a <a href="http://www.ce-conference.org/cec17-program" target="_blank">recent meeting in Berlin</a>. But there's still no consensus on whether and how to engage in responsible geoengineering research.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style=""><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMjM1MDk3OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNzc1ODMyOX0.AhF8QRpdmLRk8Pv3rrqG5c9pO1-99yAKTpzyoHR--1M/img.jpg?width=980" id="3f20b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="881eb0db3bd68d1230fd2f751e3ba85c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add caption..." class="image-media media-caption">Climate outcomes are not good for humanity in the Hollywood version of geoengineering.</small><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Still image from 'Geostorm'</small></p>
<p style=""><strong>A geostorm in a teacup?</strong></p><p style="">So how close are we to the dystopian future of "Geostorm"? The truth is that geoengineering is still little more than a twinkle in the eyes of a small group of scientists. In the words of Jack Stilgoe, author of the book "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=jack+stilgoe" target="_blank">Experiment Earth: Responsible innovation in geoengineering</a>":</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We shouldn't be scared of geoengineering, at least not yet. It is neither as exciting nor as terrifying as we have been led to believe, for the simple reason that it doesn't exist."</p><p style="">Compared to other emerging technologies, solar geoengineering has no industrial demand and no strong economic driver as yet, and simply doesn't appeal to national interests in global competitiveness. Because of this, it's an idea that's struggled to translate from the pages of academic papers and newsprint into reality.<br></p><p style="">Even government agencies appear <a href="http://issues.org/33-3/toward-a-responsible-solar-geoengineering-research-program/" target="_blank">wary of funding outdoor research</a> into solar geoengineering—possibly because it's an ethically fraught area, but also because it's an academically interesting idea with no clear economic or political return for those who invest in it.</p><p>Yet some supporters make a strong case for knowing more about the potential benefits, risks and efficacy of these ideas. So scientists are beginning to turn to private funding. Harvard University, for instance, recently launched the <a href="https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Solar Geoengineering Research Program</a>, funded by Bill Gates, the Hewlett Foundation and others.</p><p style="">As part of this program, researchers David Keith and Frank Keutsch <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603974/harvard-scientists-moving-ahead-on-plans-for-atmospheric-geoengineering-experiments/" target="_blank">are already planning small-scale experiments</a> to inject fine sunlight-reflecting particles into the stratosphere above Tucson, Arizona. It's a very small experiment, and <a href="http://www.spice.ac.uk/" target="_blank">wouldn't be the first</a>, but it aims to generate new information about whether and how such particles might one day be used to control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth.</p><p style="">And importantly, it suggests that, where governments fear to tread, wealthy individuals and philanthropy may end up pushing the boundaries of geoengineering research—with or without the rest of society's consent.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style=""><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMjM1MDk4MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMDA4MjY1M30.5hFy-uqma-xxb7lbAXjhgv0Yb7jbKruOh0aB_OzQaQ8/img.jpg?width=980" id="817f1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d04317f964872a14700dbf33862a850c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add caption..." class="image-media media-caption">Hollywood's version of the technology is one thing, but it's time to talk about what a real future could be. </small><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Still image from 'Geostorm'</small></p>
<p style=""><strong>The case for public dialogue</strong></p><p style="">The upshot is there's a growing need for public debate around whether and how to move forward.</p><p style="">Ultimately, no amount of scientific evidence is likely to single-handedly resolve wider debates about the benefits and risks—we've learned this much from the persistent debates about <a href="http://issues.org/32-1/crispr-democracy-gene-editing-and-the-need-for-inclusive-deliberation/" target="_blank">genetically modified organisms</a>, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01682418%20or%20%20http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1987.tb00963.x/abstract" target="_blank">nuclear power</a> and other high-impact technologies.</p><p style="">Leaving these discussions to experts is not only counter to democratic principles but likely to be self-defeating, as more research in complex domains <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901104000620" target="_blank">can often make controversies worse</a>. The bad news here is that <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000461/full" target="_blank">research on public views about geoengineering</a> (admittedly limited to Europe and the U.S.) suggests that most people are unfamiliar with the idea. The good news, though, is that social <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/science/">science</a> research and practical experience have shown that people have the capacity to <a href="https://ecastnetwork.org/" target="_blank">learn and deliberate on complex technologies</a>, if given the opportunity.</p><p>As researchers in the responsible development and use of emerging technologies, we suggest less speculation about the ethics of imagined geoengineered futures, which can sometimes close down, rather than open up, decision-making about these technologies. Instead, we need more rigor in how we think about near-term choices around researching these ideas in ways that respond to social norms and contexts. This includes thinking hard about whether and how to govern privately funded research in this domain. And uncomfortable as it may feel, it means that scientists and political leaders need to remain open to the possibility that societies will not want to develop these ideas at all.</p><p style="">All of this is a far cry from the Hollywood hysteria of "Geostorm." Yet decisions about geoengineering research are already being made in real life. We probably won't have satellite-based weather control any time soon. But if scientists intend to research technologies to deliberately intervene in our climate system, we need to start talking seriously about whether and how to collectively, and responsibly, move forward.</p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://theconversation.com/geostorm-movie-shows-dangers-of-hacking-the-climate-we-need-to-talk-about-real-world-geoengineering-now-85866" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em></p>
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Cirrus clouds over Golden Gate Bridge. Brocken Inaglory / Wikimedia Commons
By Tim Radford
Geoengineering, the deliberate alteration of the planet to undo its inadvertent alteration by humans over the past 200 years, is back on the scientific agenda, with a climate compromise suggested as a possible solution.
One group wants to turn down the global thermostat and reverse the global warming trend set in train by greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel combustion, by thinning the almost invisible cirrus clouds that trap radiation and keep the planet warm.
<p>Another group proposes to inject sulphur particles into the stratosphere, and keep on doing so for 160 years, to block enough sunlight and lower the planetary temperature.</p><p>And a third group wants to see <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-07/cifs-cg072417.php" target="_blank">a cocktail of both approaches</a>: thin the high cirrus clouds that stop heat from escaping, and at the same pump particles into the stratosphere to scatter the incoming sunlight and limit the disadvantages of each approach by mixing them.</p><p>The verb "wants" in all three studies is neither fair nor appropriate: all three groups concede that the healthy answer is for humans to fulfill the <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php" target="_blank">pledge made in 2015</a>, and start to reduce fossil fuel emissions so drastically that global average temperatures stay well below the 2°C maximum rise agreed by 197 nations at <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement">the Paris climate conference</a>.</p><p><strong>Change inevitable</strong></p><p>But while most nations have yet to deliver on the plans they have made, and some nations have yet to even devise a plan, and one nation—the U.S.—has <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/22312-2/" target="_blank">announced its withdrawal from the agreement</a>, scientists have been looking for ways to reverse the potentially catastrophic warming and climate change that is now inevitable if the world continues with its "business as usual scenario."<br></p><p>And so, tentatively, and with unpromising conclusions, researchers have looked at ways to alter the planet to protect it from rising temperatures.</p><p>They have played with the idea of <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/17721-2/" target="_blank">pumping sea water onto the Antarctic mainland ice</a> to increase the mass of ice and slow <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea level rise</a>.</p><p>They have looked at the northern icepack and wondered if <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/no-green-light-for-whitening-arctics-melting-ice/" target="_blank">making it whiter would increase solar reflection</a> and slow global warming.</p><p>They have repeatedly investigated <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/reducing-sunlight-will-not-cool-earth/" target="_blank">ways of reducing the incoming sunlight</a>, usually by pumping sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere, and they have even investigated the possibility of making the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans">ocean</a> more thirsty for carbon dioxide, the most problematic greenhouse gas, by <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/seeds-of-doubt-over-iron-boost-for-oceans/" target="_blank">pumping iron into the sea</a> to nourish the photosynthesising algae.</p><p><strong>Bad answer</strong></p><p>And other groups—and sometimes the same groups—have stressed the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/geoengineering-climate-change-2074216808.html">hazards</a>: while <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/dark-skies-herald-hope-of-taming-hurricanes/" target="_blank">darker skies might reduce hurricane ferocity</a>, such approaches <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/geo-engineering-could-upset-rainfall/" target="_blank">could drastically interfere with rainfall patterns</a>, make life <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/geo-engineering-could-imperil-sahel/" target="_blank">worse for some of the poorest people on Earth</a> and anyway, in the long run, <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/geo-engineering-could-mean-more-heat/" target="_blank">make things hotter</a>.<br></p><p>All in all, the technofix has been pronounced <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-technofixes-will-not-work/" target="_blank">a bad answer to a good question</a>.</p><p>But by the end of the century, as sea levels rise by a meter and global average temperatures by 4°C or more, even a bad answer could be the only one on offer. So <a href="http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people-iac/person-detail.html?persid=121007" target="_blank">Ulrike Lohmann</a> and Blaz Gasparini, two scientists from the Swiss Technical Institute known as <a href="https://www.ethz.ch/en.html" target="_blank">ETH Zurich</a>, write in <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aan3325" target="_blank">the journal Science</a> that the answer might lie in the clouds.</p><p>Cirrus clouds in particular don't reflect much sunlight back into space, but because of the altitude and the temperature they do emit less long-wave radiation: they behave, in effect, rather like greenhouse gases.</p><p>So if cirrus clouds were carefully created by artificial means at lower altitudes, then perhaps they would trap less heat.</p><p>Such an experiment, the scientists concede, could go badly wrong, would not solve problems linked to rainfall patterns and might even make the world warmer. For the moment, they say: "cirrus cloud thinning should be viewed as a thought experiment."</p><p>And <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aan3317" target="_blank">in the same journal</a> two scientists from the <a href="https://www.mpimet.mpg.de/en/mpimet-homepage/" target="_blank">Max Planck Institute for Meteorology</a> in Hamburg, Germany, and the <a href="https://ncar.ucar.edu/" target="_blank">U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research</a> in Boulder, Colorado, look once again at the stratosphere solution: what sulphur particles could do to cool the planet.</p><p>This is an idea already tested naturally. <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/small-volcanic-eruptions-are-key-to-warming-hiatus/" target="_blank">Volcanic eruptions have been linked to planetary cooling</a>, and other groups have even warned that <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/nuclear-war-would-set-off-climate-catastrophe/" target="_blank">a modest nuclear war could darken the skies and lower global temperatures</a> to potentially lethal levels.</p><p>So <a href="https://www.mpimet.mpg.de/en/staff/ulrike-niemeier/" target="_blank">Ulrike Niemeier</a> and her colleague <a href="https://acomstaff.acom.ucar.edu/tilmes/" target="_blank">Simone Tilmes</a> consider what would be necessary if humans wait until 2040 to reduce fossil fuel use and look for effective ways to <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/22709-2/" target="_blank">suck impossible volumes of carbon dioxide</a> out of the atmosphere.</p><p>To limit the temperature increase to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, humans would have to pump sulphur into the stratosphere at a cost of $20 billion a year for 160 years, to darken the skies and reduce incoming sunlight.</p><p><strong>Side effects</strong></p><p>Such a step, which could slow the water cycle and suppress the Asian monsoons, would not reduce the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/ocean-acidification">acidification of the oceans</a>, and could trigger other unwelcome side effects that could lead to global conflicts. So, the scientists say, any such plan would need international agreement and supervision.<br></p><p>And, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074281/abstract" target="_blank">in the journal Geophysical Research Letters</a>, Chinese, Indian and U.S. researchers arrive at the compromise solution. The dark skies approach could reduce rain too much, thinner cirrus could reduce rain too little.</p><p>But computer models suggest that if both methods were deployed carefully and in concert, geoengineers could cool the world but keep the rainfall steady overall.</p><p>"The same amount of rain fell around the globe in our models, but it fell in different places, which could create a big mismatch between what our economic infrastructure expects and what it will get," said <a href="https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/labs/caldeiralab/" target="_blank">Ken Caldeira</a> of the <a href="https://carnegiescience.edu/" target="_blank">Carnegie Institution for Science </a>in the U.S., and one of the authors.</p><p>"More complicated geoengineering solutions would likely do a bit better, but the best solution is simply to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere." </p><p><em><span></span>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-compromise-proposed-by-geo-engineers/" target="_blank">Climate News Network</a>.</em></p>
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We Still Have Time to Restore Our Climate. But the Climate Time Bomb Is Ticking
19 July 2017
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By Alex Carlin
A recent New York Magazine article about the climate ruin we are facing, by David Wallace Wells, has caused a furor for describing the catastrophes that could happen to our planet by the end of the century if we do not mitigate the harms to our climate and reverse course. This op-ed by guest contributor Alex Carlin contends that those crises could happen much sooner, and he details steps he believes could help forestall disaster.
Yes, Virginia, we still have time to restore our climate. But the Climate Time Bomb is undeniably ticking–and Trump has pulled out of the Paris agreement.
What should we do?
Trump climate policy is blind and deaf to the fact that the Climate Bomb can cause millions—or even potentially billions—of deaths by mid-century. I believe Trump's rogue refusal to defuse the Bomb is an unfathomably heinous crime against humanity.
<p>While the Paris agreement focuses on lowering CO2 emissions, there is a second indispensable task we must also perform to defuse The Bomb: restoring the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic">Arctic</a> ice.</p><p>For thousands of years, the frozen Arctic has been keeping our climate hospitable—until now. The Arctic is a critical part of the earth's mechanism for controlling the planet's temperature and climate.</p><p>But ominously, the Arctic Ocean has nearly finished changing from a state of "perennial ice"–covered with sea ice in the winter and never substantially ice free in the summer–to a state of "seasonal ice"–substantially ice free in the summer.</p><p>Completing this switchover would herald the biggest change in the global ecosystem since before the start of human civilization, and it would have a devastating impact.</p><p>Billions of people will face the risk of death in this century from adverse climate change outcomes such as starvation, heat stress, resource wars and disease if we don't restore the perennial ice.</p><p><strong>Mass Starvation</strong></p><p>The UK's Special Representative for Climate Change, Sir David King, warns us that with current climate policies we risk simultaneous collapses of basic crop production in the major breadbaskets of the Northern Hemisphere.<br></p><p>Dr. Peter Carter, an expert reviewer of the IPCC 5th assessment, says that "the entire world depends on the high food productivity of the Northern Hemisphere. The IPCC 5th assessment and recent research shows that the world's best food producing regions in the northern hemisphere are vulnerable to a high probability of multi-breadbasket failure from already committed (locked in) global climate change." Carter expects that, in this context, the effects of the Arctic sea ice switchover would "end the great food production of the Northern Hemisphere, world food output would plummet and with that the world population, losing billions of lives by mid-century."</p><p>Here are three reasons why restoring sea ice in the Arctic is mandatory for preventing mass starvation.</p><p>First, an agriculture that provides enough food requires a predictable and favorable Earth Climate System.</p><p>A relatively unsung factor is surprisingly vital in this system: high-altitude atmospheric jet streams which circulate the planet in paths whose routes and speeds are critically important for the type of weather and climate that farms require to produce food.</p><p>The behavior of the jet streams depends on a particular "temperature gradient"–the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the Tropics.</p><p>For millennia, the perennial ice of the Arctic has been an important factor in keeping these jet streams consistent and stable. But since the mid-80s the Arctic has been heating significantly faster than the Tropics–a phenomenon called "Arctic amplification." Diminishing sea ice has been playing a leading role in this, and the resulting smaller gradient has already caused the streams to change their speeds and typical paths.</p><p>This kind of jet stream disruption leads to unpredictable, unfavorable and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather">extreme weather</a>, with massive swings to heat or cold, devastating droughts, lingering blizzards and mighty floods.</p><p>When, perhaps within only a few years, the Arctic Ocean switches fully to seasonal ice conditions, the jet streams will almost inevitably take up new patterns of behavior, leading to weather that is quite different from what our farmers need to feed the population. By mid-century, much of our agricultural land will be toasted or flooded–or both at different times.</p><p>A second threat to agriculture is <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/methane">methane</a>, a greenhouse gas that heats the planet like CO2 on steroids. Gigatons galore of methane and other carbon products reside under the Arctic ice and in the thawing tundra and "permafrost" nearby.</p><p>For thousands of years we benefited from a perennial state of Arctic sea ice that acted as a cap that kept this methane out of the atmosphere. As we lose the cap, calamitous methane releases become ever more likely. Large releases of methane would accelerate global warming, and the Arctic amplification would further reduce the Arctic to Tropic temperature gradient, causing more jet stream disruption, worsen weather extremes and batter our farms.</p><p>Sev Clarke, a prominent inventor of green and climate restoration technologies described the methane threat this way: "If we don't restore the ice, within 15 years methane and CO2 emissions from land and sea are likely to become so intense as to interfere substantially with normal cropping, to push land cultivation and population polewards, and to render much of the tropics unbearably hot during summer. My belief, reinforced by recent, and as yet unpublished, research by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists, is that we have just entered the phase of super-exponentially increasing methane releases from the Arctic."</p><p>A third threat to agriculture is <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea level rise</a>. Losing the perennial Arctic sea ice is speeding up the melting and partial disintegration of the great <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/greenland">Greenland</a> Ice Sheet, and is also having an effect in <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/antarctica">Antarctica</a>, partly through disruption of the "great ocean conveyor" which sends Arctic-cooled water all the way to the Antarctic. Warming of this water has caused some Antarctic sheets to become unstable. These effects could lead to a devastating half meter of sea level rise by 2050, plus much more by 2100, which would wipe out huge areas of low-lying farmland.</p><p>So, as it turns out, if we want to feed our population, allowing the Arctic to lose its perennial sea ice is not an option.</p><p>It's very bad, but there are solutions.</p><p>The Arctic can be refrozen, and the sea ice restored.</p><p>Actions to restore the Arctic sea ice–combined with reduced greenhouse gas emissions and removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere–do give us a chance to survive.</p><p>Given the stakes, why are there not scientists, engineers, planners and all sorts of able-bodied citizens calling for a restoration of the Arctic ice?</p><p>Well, actually, there are.</p><p><strong>Climate Restoration—One Answer to 'What Should We Do?'</strong></p><p>The above-mentioned inventor, Sev Clarke, is working with <a href="https://www.climate-restoration-foundation.com/" target="_blank">The Climate Restoration Foundation</a> (CRF), spearheaded by the mathematician Kevin Lister. This group is working on what actually needs to happen to avoid Climate Ruin.<br></p><p>Do we really need to design techniques for restoring the Arctic sea ice? Why not just bring CO2 emissions down to near zero? Wouldn't that cause the sea ice to naturally restore itself, without any additional human action to restore it?</p><p>CRF says the answer is "no." That's because CO2 concentrations are so high already, and CO2 lingers in the atmosphere so long, that if we <em>only</em> reduce our CO2 emissions, the Arctic Ocean will not recover its lost ice anytime soon.</p><p>CRF emphasizes that we really must hurry: if the Arctic Ocean does switch its "state" from perennial ice to seasonal ice, it will "stick" there and, to a large extent, get "locked" into its new state, via a phenomenon known as "hysteresis."</p><p>They say we are on a track to cross that line in a handful of years, and once we cross that line, going back to where we need to be to feed our population becomes a Herculean task.</p><p>The CRF <a href="https://www.climate-restoration-foundation.com/strategy" target="_blank">website describes three major actions</a> to keep us from getting caught in this death trap: Marine Cloud Brightening, Buoyant Nutrient Flakes, and Ice Cap Thickening. Lister explained, "They are designed to keep us from getting stuck in a high temperature state. It will need all three technologies working together and on scale, and if this is done then the mutual reinforcement will be such that the sum of the effects will be greater than the individual parts."</p><p>CRF is also <a href="https://www.climate-restoration-foundation.com/the-role-of-the-insurance-industry" target="_blank">designing an ingenious way</a> to pay for the task of restoring the ice via the insurance industry, where fossil fuel industries would pay an extra premium that fairly reflects the climate change liability they cause. If they refuse to pay then they would lose their ability to do business because they would be denied insurance coverage. </p><p>Keeping them firmly grounded, CRF includes the foremost authority in the polar field, professor Peter Wadhams, who for decades has been doing a magnificent job of exploring the Arctic sea ice, on top of the surface and under it by submarine, to get to the truth of what we face in this crisis. Recently he has come out with a "must read" book on this subject, "A Farewell To Ice."</p><p>Also providing support to CRF is professor Paul Beckwith who has expertise on high-altitude atmospheric jet stream issues. His focus is on addressing the aspects of <a href="http://paulbeckwith.net/" target="_blank">Abrupt Climate Change</a>.</p><p><strong>The Point of No Return?</strong></p><p>Lister identifies the most important moment in this emergency.<br></p><p>It's not when the Greenland Ice Sheet melting becomes unstoppable, or other such ecosystem events, but rather it's when "it is no longer possible to develop and deploy an effective climate intervention strategy in time."</p><p>That point of no return has now arrived, and it is staring us in the face. If people fully understood how and why their families face a ruined world by mid-century, they would be demanding, with "hair on fire" urgency, If people really understood this truly existential crisis and the need for urgent action, they would be demanding that our political leaders scramble at full speed to restore the ice and, of course, to reduce our net CO2 emissions to zero.</p><p><strong>Geoengineering</strong>?</p><p>Restoring sea ice will certainly require some local engineering intervention, but does the situation constitute enough of an emergency to justify risking the unexplored outcomes of intervention on a global scale, of geoengineering?<br></p><p>As far back as 2009, The Scotsman reported that scientists feared that the lack of action in the preceding 17 years, in which "emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide soared, has set the world on a path towards potential 4°C (7.2°F) rises as early as 2060, and 6°C (10.8°F) rises by the end of the century."</p><p>The article quoted professor Kevin Anderson, who advises the UK government on climate change, and is the deputy director of the highly respected <a href="http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research</a>.</p><p>Anderson said, "The consequences are terrifying. For humanity it's a matter of life or death. We will not make all human beings extinct, as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it's extremely unlikely that we wouldn't have mass death at 4°C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4°C, 5°C or 6°C, you might have half a billion people surviving."</p><p>Anderson, no alarmist, is testifying that plausibly with "business as usual" we could have billions of deaths by 2050.</p><p>Can we avoid this catastrophe without geoengineering?</p><p>This is a question we all must consider with great care.</p><p><strong>The Bright Side</strong></p><p>John Nissen, founder and chair of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ArcticMethaneEmergencyGroup/" target="_blank">Arctic Methane Emergency Group</a>, cooperates with CRF.<br></p><p>He summed it up this way: </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The climate science establishment is so focused on the fight to reduce CO2 emissions that it has ignored the bigger picture: that the Earth System is hurtling towards a new climate regime for the planet, led by abrupt changes in the Arctic as it becomes seasonally free of sea ice. The loss of ice cover means that the Arctic will warm even more rapidly than before, threatening</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>a reversal of air circulation at high latitude, disrupting climate at lower latitudes;</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li>further escalation of methane emissions from land and undersea permafrost;</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li>further escalation of melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet; and</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li>a huge contribution to climate forcing and the warming of the whole planet.</li></ul><p style="margin-left: 20px;">These dreadful consequences add up to a new climate regime for the planet. They can only be avoided by cooling the Arctic and saving the sea ice."</p><p>While he said categorically that the prospect of geoengineering should never provide polluters or governments a "get out of jail free card" to avoid their absolute duty to drastically cut CO2 emissions, he maintains that "climate change could actually be reversed with the help of geoengineering, and it would be far simpler, safer and cheaper than trying to adapt to ever worsening climate change, and sea level rise to boot."</p><p>He emphasized the bright side:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Let's be positive and appreciate the huge benefits that climate restoration would bring. Moreover, this could be the greatest collaborative venture ever undertaken, employing our best scientific and engineering talent. It could even be an opportunity for peace, as everyone works for the same goal. And by getting together to solve the greatest challenge ever faced by human civilization, we could demonstrate togetherness and counter the divisive politics of self-interest which is sweeping the world."</p><p>Nissen even wants oil companies to get involved. He pointed out that "it is in their best interests to collaborate on climate restoration, since they would suffer the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change just as much as everyone else. Moreover, they have valuable skills and resources to help in the restoration effort."</p><p><strong>Let's Get Ready to Rumble</strong></p><p>We still have a golden opportunity to restore our climate, and Trump has paradoxically brought Climate Ruin back onto the international agenda in the nick of time.<br></p><p>But now we need specific plans that diagram, step by step, how to motivate our entire society to fully acknowledge the climate problem, including what is happening in the Arctic, and then adamantly demand that the solutions be implemented immediately.</p><p>I believe that unconditionally, we must reach net zero CO2 emissions very fast, but <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/science/">science</a> is now giving us a second required task: we must also save the Arctic ice.</p><p>As Winston Churchill once said, "It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required."</p><p>If you know how we can survive the threat of Climate Ruin without geoengineering, then, by all means, please share your ideas.</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/07/18/save-ice-lose-rice/" target="_blank">Center for Media and Democracy</a>.</em></p>
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