Geoengineering report: Scientists urge more research on climate intervention

A press release from the University of Michigan: Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, while necessary, may not happen soon enough to stave off climate catastrophe. So, in addition, the world may need to resort to so-called geoengineering approaches that aim to deliberately control the planet's climate. That's according to a National Research Council committee that today released a pair of sweeping reports on climate intervention techniques. The University of Michigan's Joyce Penner, who is the Ralph J. Cicerone Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric Science, served on the committee. Penner studies how clouds affect climate.

The reports consider the two main ways humans could attempt to steer the Earth's system: We could try to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Or we could try to reflect more sunlight back into space. The committee examined the socioeconomic and environmental impacts as well as the costs and technological readiness of approaches in each category.

The researchers said that certain CO2-removal tactics could have a place in a broader climate change response plan. But the sunlight reflecting technologies, on the other hand, are too risky at this point. They underscored how important it is for humans to limit the levels of CO2 they put into the atmosphere in the first place, and they called for more research into all climate intervention approaches.

"I, for one, am concerned with the continuing rise in CO2 concentrations without clear efforts to reduce emissions," Penner said. "The widespread impacts from these increases are readily apparent, and the cost of climate change impacts is likely to be high.

...While the committee said that some of the CO2 removal strategies including "carbon capture and sequestration" have potential to be part of a viable plan to curb climate change, it noted that only prototype sequestration systems exist today. Much development would have to occur before it could be ready for broad use....

A detail of a wall of the Temple of the Moon in Yeha, Ethiopia, shot by A. Davey A. Davey, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Atribution 2.0 Generic license

Geoengineering our climate is not a ‘quick fix

A press release from the University of Leeds: The deliberate, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system is not a “quick fix” for global warming, according to the findings of the UK’s first publicly funded studies on geoengineering. The results of three projects – IAGP, led by the University of Leeds; SPICE, led by the University of Bristol; and CGG, led by the University of Oxford – are announced at an event held at The Royal Society, London, on 26 November 2014.

Professor Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change at the University of Leeds, and the principal investigator of the Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP) project, said: “Our research shows that the devil is in the detail. Geoengineering will be much more expensive and challenging than previous estimates suggest and any benefits would be limited.

“For example, when simulating the spraying of sea salt particles into clouds to try to brighten them, we found that only a few clouds were susceptible and that the particles would tend to coagulate and fall out before reaching the cloud base.”

In September 2009, The Royal Society published a report, Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty. It influenced research worldwide, identified important gaps and called for a major UK funding programme into geoengineering. The IAGP and SPICE projects were funded the next year, and the CGG project followed in 2012.

IAGP is the UK’s first interdisciplinary research study into the controversial issue of geoengineering. It has brought together a range of expertise – climate modelling, philosophy and engineering – in addition to understanding public perceptions, to assess geoengineering within wider societal values.

“Cleverly designed simulations create less necessity for real-world testing. My favourite part of the research involved creating  a virtual reality in which we tried to rescue Arctic sea ice by dumping sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere from Stratotanker aircraft flying out of Svalbard in Norway,” said Professor Forster. “Issues around monitoring and predicting the effects of our actions led to huge indecision and highlighted how challenging it would be to ever try and deploy these techniques in the real world.”...

Image from the University of Leeds

Will geoengineering make people give up cutting their carbon footprint?

Adam Corner in the Guardian (UK): If you thought there was a machine that could magically remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and bury it underground, would you be less likely to worry about reducing your own carbon footprint?

The question is not entirely hypothetical. Geoengineering is the catch-all term for a suite of technologies that could one day be used to alter the Earth’s climate and combat global warming. Most of them are unlikely to ever see the light of day: they are considered too risky, too unpredictable, or too reckless to be taken seriously by the scientific community.

...As geoengineering has gradually moved on to the policy agenda, debates about the ethics of meddling with the global thermostat have become more prominent. Central among these is whether geoengineering might undermine fragile public and political support for the more pressing business of reducing carbon emissions.

This is what is known by economists and philosophers as a ‘moral hazard’ argument: the phenomenon whereby people who feel insured against a particular risk are more likely to exhibit risky behaviour. Will the prospect of geoengineering make people feel ‘insured’ against the risks of climate change, and indulge in ‘riskier’ environmental behaviour themselves?

In a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on Monday, my colleague Nick Pidgeon and I attempted to answer that question. Using a nationally representative online survey, we provided 610 people with a ‘factsheet’ about geoengineering, and then asked them a series of questions. One striking finding was that some people seem more susceptible to the ‘trap’ of the moral hazard than others.

People who were wealthier, and who identified with self-focused values such as power and status, were more likely to agree with the statement “Knowing geoengineering is a possibility makes me feel less inclined to make changes in my own behaviour to tackle climate change.”...

A smoggy sky in Taiwan, shot by Carrie Kellenberger, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Climate engineering can’t erase climate change

A press release from Simon Fraser University: Tinkering with climate change through climate engineering isn’t going to solve our climate problems, says a new report authored by researchers at six universities, including Simon Fraser University.

After evaluating a range of possible climate-altering approaches to dissipating greenhouse gases and reducing warming, the interdisciplinary team concluded there’s no away around it. We have to reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.

"Some climate engineering strategies look very cheap on paper. But when you consider other criteria, like ecological risk, public perceptions and the abilities of governments to control the technology, some options look very bad," says Jonn Axsen.

The assistant professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management is a co-author on this study, which appears in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. It is the first scholarly attempt to rank a wide range of approaches to minimizing climate change in terms of their feasibility, cost-effectiveness, risk, public acceptance, governability and ethics.

According to the study, reducing emissions—through some combination of switching away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and changing human behavior—is still the most effective way of confronting climate change....

Nude man turning a crank handle. This is plate 395, captioned "Turning a crank handle"; "Eadweard Muybridge. Animal locomotion: an electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements. 1872-1885 / published under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. Plates. The plates printed by the Photo-Gravure Company. Philadelphia, 1887.

If you start sulfate geoengineering to mitigate climate change, don't stop. Seriously

Science 2.0: Policy makers are in constant discussion about a range of climate change mitigation possibilities and among the least understood are geoengineering methods. The injection of sulfate particles into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and curb the effects of global warming could pose a severe threat if not maintained indefinitely and also supported by strict reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, write  University of Washington researchers in Environmental Research Letters.

They highlight the risks of large and spatially expansive temperature increases if solar radiation management (SRM) - whereby tiny sulfate-based aerosols are released into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the planet - is abruptly stopped once it has been implemented.

The technique has been shown to be economically and technically feasible; however, its efficacy depends on its continued maintenance, without interruption from technical faults, global cooperation breakdown or funding running dry.  And whether or not it will actually work or do more harm than good.

According to the study, global temperature increases could more than double if SRM is implemented for a multi-decadal period of time and then suddenly stopped, in relation to the temperature increases expected if SRM was not implemented at all.

The researchers used a global climate model to show that if an extreme emissions pathway—RCP8.5—is followed up until 2035, allowing temperatures to rise 1°C above the 1970–1999 mean, and then SRM is implemented for 25 years and suddenly stopped, global temperatures could increase by 4°C in the following decades...

The Chatsworth, Illinois train wreck of 1887, from Harper's Weekly

Geoengineering isn’t worth the risk

Roger Williamson in SciDev.net: ...It’s easy to see why geoengineering is attractive to scientists. Finding a technological fix for climate change is a nice, big, juicy project, with lots of scope for lucrative research applications and the chance of a place in the pantheon of scientific greats or even a Nobel Prize. And from the point of view of diplomats too, at a time when climate talks are in trouble, it is tempting to hope for a solution that avoids excessive negotiations.

But the implications of such grandiose engineering projects are far from clear. So, as well as considering the statutory regulation of geoengineering research, policymakers should think over the ethics of investing in such strategies — given their uncertainty, would the money be better spent elsewhere?

As an illustration, a study published last week by researchers from the University of Reading, UK, suggests that large geoengineering efforts could have side effects that would disproportionately harm the globe’s poorest people. [1] It argues that a massive injection of sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere may well lower average global temperatures by reflecting sunlight, but this could also cause huge changes to rainfall patterns around the equator — with potentially devastating impacts for poor people.

Andrew Charlton-Perez, the lead author of the study, said in a statement: “We have shown that one of the leading candidates for geoengineering could cause a new, unintended side effect over a large part of the planet. A reduction in tropical rainfall of 30 per cent would, for example, quickly dry out Indonesia so much that even the wettest years after a man-made intervention would be equal to drought conditions now.”

Here is an example of where society should employ the precautionary principle, the basis of European legislation regarding environmental protection...

The sorcerer's hat, worn by Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, shot by Fabi1994, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

The public is against geoengineering the climate

Science 2.0: Members of the public generally have a negative view of climate engineering, the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change, according to a new paper. This makes some sense. If we can't predict the weather a week from now, it's very difficult to say we can predict the far more complicated climate after physical changes are made to the inputs.

Climate engineering is one idea to combat the rise in atmospheric CO2 due to the burning of fossil fuels. While emissions in the US and some other nations have dropped, places like China, India and Mexico are all exempt from climate treaties and have continued to rise. Climate engineering could involve techniques that reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere or approaches that slow temperature rise by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.

The authors did representative to undertake what they say is the first systematic large-scale evaluation of the public reaction to climate engineering. Co-author Professor Damon Teagle of the University of Southampton said: "Because even the concept of climate engineering is highly controversial, there is pressing need to consult the public and understand their concerns before policy decisions are made."

Lead author, Professor Malcolm Wright of Massey University, said: "Previous attempts to engage the public with climate engineering have been exploratory and small scale. In our study, we have drawn on commercial methods used to evaluate brands and new product concepts to develop a comparative approach for evaluating the public reaction to a variety of climate engineering concepts."

The results show that the public has strong negative views towards climate engineering. Where there are positive reactions, they favor approaches that reduce carbon dioxide over those that reflected sunlight....

Drawing of actor T.P. Cooke as Frankenstein's monster in an 1823 theatrical production

Artificially cooling planet would cause climate chaos, scientists say

A press release from the University of Reading: Plans to reverse the effects of global warming by mimicking big volcanic eruptions would have a catastrophic impact on some of the most fragile ecosystems on earth, according to new research from the University of Reading.

Geo-engineering - the intentional manipulation of the climate to counter the effect of global warming - is being proposed as a last-ditch way to deal with the problems of climate change. However, University of Reading research suggests geo-engineering could cause massive changes to rainfall patterns around the equator, drying the tropical rainforests in South America and Asia and intensifying periods of drought in Africa.

• Pumping sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere would cut tropical rainfall by 30%
• Reversing a 4 deg C temperature rise could benefit northern Europe but lead to drought in parts of South America, Asia and Africa

The research also highlights how global geo-engineering could provide solutions for some regions while causing more problems in others, opening up the possibility of conflict between countries if they were to act unilaterally to alter the climate. In general, countries in northern Europe and parts of Asia would be most likely to benefit, at the expense of parts of Africa, North and South America and South-East Asia.

Geo-engineering is a hot topic. Governments and the world's leading climate scientists on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) discussed the prospect of artificially cooling the climate at its meeting in Stockholm in September 2013.

Aerosols in the stratosphere reflect sunlight, reducing the amount of solar energy reaching the surface. This occurs naturally after big volcanic eruptions, such as that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, which led to a large short-term dip in global temperatures. Aerosols could potentially be artificially sprayed into the upper atmosphere to counteract the effects of climate change.

But the researchers suggest that such stratospheric aerosol injection, probably the leading candidate for a workable geo-engineering scheme, would create significant, harmful side effects by weakening weather systems in the tropics....

Map from the University of Reading website

Hack the planet? Geoengineering research, ethics, governance explored

Hannah Hickey at UW Today: Hacking the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming – a subject that elicits strong reactions from both sides – is the topic of a December special issue of the journal Climatic Change. A dozen research papers include the most detailed description yet of the proposed Oxford Principles to govern geoengineering research, as well as surveys on the technical hurdles, ethics and regulatory issues related to deliberately manipulating the planet’s climate.

University of Washington researchers led the three-year project to gather leading thinkers and publish a snapshot of a field that they say is rapidly gaining credibility in the scientific community. “In the past five years or so, geoengineering has moved from the realm of quackery to being the subject of scientific research,” said co-editor Rob Wood, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “We wanted to contribute to a serious intellectual discourse.”

Creating clouds over the ocean that would reflect back sunlight is the subject of a chapter by Wood, whose research is on the interaction among air pollution, clouds and climate. He and co-author Tom Ackerman, a UW atmospheric sciences professor, look at what it would take to test the idea with a field experiment.

 “I don’t want to prove it right, I just want to know if it’s feasible,” Wood said. “If you look at the projections for how much the Earth’s air temperature is supposed to warm over the next century, it is frightening. We should at least know the options. Is geoengineering feasible if there were to be what people call a ‘climate emergency’?”....

Image by Beckyq6937, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Geoengineering approaches to reduce climate change unlikely to succeed

A press release from the European Geosciences Union: Reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface by geoengineering may not undo climate change after all. Two German researchers used a simple energy balance analysis to explain how the Earth’s water cycle responds differently to heating by sunlight than it does to warming due to a stronger atmospheric greenhouse effect. Further, they show that this difference implies that reflecting sunlight to reduce temperatures may have unwanted effects on the Earth’s rainfall patterns. The results are now published in Earth System Dynamics, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Global warming alters the Earth’s water cycle since more water evaporates to the air as temperatures increase. Increased evaporation can dry out some regions while, at the same time, result in more rain falling in other areas due to the excess moisture in the atmosphere. The more water evaporates per degree of warming, the stronger the influence of increasing temperature on the water cycle. But the new study shows the water cycle does not react the same way to different types of warming.

Axel Kleidon and Maik Renner of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, used a simple energy balance model to determine how sensitive the water cycle is to an increase in surface temperature due to a stronger greenhouse effect and to an increase in solar radiation. They predicted the response of the water cycle for the two cases and found that, in the former, evaporation increases by 2% per degree of warming while in the latter this number reaches 3%. This prediction confirmed results of much more complex climate models.

...In the new Earth System Dynamics study the authors also show how these findings can have profound consequences for geoengineering. Many geoengineering approaches aim to reduce global warming by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface (or, in the pot analogy, reduce the heat from the stove). But when Kleidon and Renner applied their results to such a geoengineering scenario, they found out that simultaneous changes in the water cycle and the atmosphere cannot be compensated for at the same time. Therefore, reflecting sunlight by geoengineering is unlikely to restore the planet’s original climate....

Image by Jon Sullivan

Why has geoengineering been legitimised by the IPCC?

Jack Stilgoe in the Guardian (UK): Today marked an important punctuation mark in the story of humanity's attempts to get to grips with climate change as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its summary for policymakers (pdf here). Climate sceptic journalists and interest groups will be making the most of the tiniest surprises and variations in the climate scientists' new representation of the state of their art. But the evidence is largely unsurprising. For all the talk of a "hiatus" in warming, the IPCC continues to fly its one major fact: more greenhouse gases means more warming.

The big surprise comes in the final paragraph, with a mention of geoengineering. In the scientific world, a final paragraph is often the place to put caveats and suggestions for further research. In the political world, a final paragraph is a coda, a big finish, the place for a triumphant, standing-ovation-inducing summary. The IPCC tries to straddle both worlds. The addition of the word "geoengineering" to the most important report on climate change for six years counts as a big surprise.

There are many reasons to be worried about geoengineering. The idea is old. Countless inventions have been proposed as a technological fix to climate change, but scientists have only recently taken it seriously. Their previous reticence was largely due to a concern that talking about easy solutions would wobble the consensus on the need for a cut in emissions that had been painstakingly built over decades. Geoengineering was taboo – too seductive, too dangerous and too uncertain. It is now moving towards the mainstream of climate science. As the number of geoengineering studies published shoots up, it is now acceptable to discuss it in polite scientific company.

There is an argument that the taboo has already been broken and that, like sex education, it therefore has to be discussed. Those of us interested in geoengineering were expecting it to appear in one or two of the main reports when they are published in the coming months. To bring it up front is to give it premature legitimacy....

Could planting trees in the desert mitigate climate change?

A press release from the European Geosciences Union: As the world starts feeling the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and consequent global temperature rise, researchers are looking for a Plan B to mitigate climate change. A group of German scientists has now come up with an environmentally friendly method that they say could do just that. The technique, dubbed carbon farming, consists in planting trees in arid regions on a large scale to capture CO2. They publish their study today in Earth System Dynamics, a journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

“Carbon farming addresses the root source of climate change: the emission of carbon dioxide by human activities,” says first-author Klaus Becker of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. “Nature does it better,” adds Becker’s colleague Volker Wulfmeyer, “if we understand and can make use of it in a sustainable manner.”

When it comes to sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, the team shows that Jatropha curcas does it better. This small tree is very resistant to aridity so it can be planted in hot and dry land in soil unsuitable for food production. The plant does need water to grow though, so coastal areas where desalinated seawater can be made available are ideal.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time experts in irrigation, desalination, carbon sequestration, economics and atmospheric sciences have come together to analyse the feasibility of a large-scale plantation to capture carbon dioxide in a comprehensive manner. We did this by applying a series of computer models and using data from Jatropha curcas plantations in Egypt, India and Madagascar,” says Wulfmeyer.

...“From our point of view, afforestation as a geoengineering option for carbon sequestration is the most efficient and environmentally safe approach for climate change mitigation. Vegetation has played a key role in the global carbon cycle for millions of years, in contrast to many technical and very expensive geoengineering techniques,” explains Becker...

Processes involved in carbon farming (Credit: Becker et al. 2013)

CIA spooks investigate geoengineering to fix climate

Peter Aldhous in New Scientist reports that the CIA is not interested in offensive uses for geoengineering. How comforting: You could say the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is late to the geoengineering party – at least compared to its British counterpart. But it has now arrived, with an influential friend in tow: the CIA.

This week in Washington DC, a panel of experts convened by the NAS met for the first time to embark on a study that will consider the risks and benefits of engineering solutions to dangerous climate change by sequestering away carbon dioxide or reflecting solar radiation back out into space.

The Royal Society delivered a similar report in 2009, so it should come as no great surprise that the NAS is considering the pros and cons of geoengineering. But the fact that the study's funders include the CIA has caused a media buzz. "Conspiracy theorists, rejoice!" noted Mother Jones, invoking memories of the Vietnam war when the US military seeded clouds in an attempt to turn the Vietcong's supply lines into a quagmire.

In fact, the CIA's main interest in geoengineering does not lie in any offensive use. Rather, the US intelligence community sees climate change as a potential threat to global geopolitical stability, and so wants a thorough analysis of the mitigation options. "On a subject like climate change, the agency works with scientists to better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security," says Ned Price, a CIA spokesperson...

Legally binding ban proposed on ocean fertilisation

Dyna Rochmyaningsih in SciDev.net: Australia has joined with Nigeria and South Korea to propose a legally binding ban on commercial ocean fertilisation. But the move would not prevent legitimate scientific research, according to Tony Burke, Australian Minister of the Environment.

The proposal was sent to the London Convention and Protocol, which governs marine pollution and dumping at sea, on 16 May, and it will be considered when signatory nations meet in October.

Ocean fertilisation is a controversial geoengineering technique in which nutrient particles like iron, phosphorous and nitrogen are poured into the sea to induce growth of photosynthetic microorganisms — known as phytoplankton — that can fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

When phytoplankton die and sink they transfer carbon into the deep ocean, but their growth is usually limited in nutrient-poor water. The technique has attracted scientific and commercial interest as a way to generate carbon credits, and as a potential climate change mitigation mechanism. Some also proposed it as a way to boost fish populations.

Last year, American businessman Russ George, then a director of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, dumped 100 tonnes of iron near the Haida Gwaii Islands, off the coast of Western Canada. The aim was to increase phytoplankton populations, thereby boosting marine productivity — and eventually the salmon population. The act enraged scientists and environmentalists, many of whom say iron fertilisation is unscientific and unproven, especially on a large-scale....

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (Feb. 10, 2012) Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Shane Tuck films diving operations off the coast of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Expeditionary Combat Camera's Underwater Photo Team conducts semi-annual training to hone its divers' specialized skill set and ensure valuable support of Department of Defense activities worldwide. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jayme Pastoric/Released) 120210-N-XD935-048 

Questions rise about seeding for ocean C02 sequestration

DOE Argonne National Laboratory: A new study on the feeding habits of ocean microbes calls into question the potential use of algal blooms to trap carbon dioxide and offset rising global levels. These blooms contain iron-eating microscopic phytoplankton that absorb C02 from the air through the process of photosynthesis and provide nutrients for marine life. But one type of phytoplankton, a diatom, is using more iron that it needs for photosynthesis and storing the extra in its silica skeletons and shells, according to an X-ray analysis of phytoplankton conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. This reduces the amount of iron left over to support the carbon-eating plankton.

“Just like someone walking through a buffet line who takes the last two pieces of cake, even though they know they’ll only eat one, they’re hogging the food,” said Ellery Ingall, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-lead author on this result.  “Everyone else in line gets nothing; the person’s decision affects these other people.”

Because of this iron-hogging behavior, the process of adding iron to surface water – called iron fertilization or iron seeding – may have only a short-lived environmental benefit. And, the process may actually reduce over the long-term how much C02 the ocean can trap.

Rather than feed the growth of extra plankton, triggering algal blooms, the iron fertilization may instead stimulate the gluttonous diatoms to take up even more iron to build larger shells. When the shells get large enough, they sink to the ocean floor, sequestering the iron and starving off the diatom’s plankton peers.

Over time, this reduction in the amount of iron in surface waters could trigger the growth of microbial populations that require less iron for nutrients, reducing the amount of phytoplankton blooms available to take in C02 and to feed marine life....

A phytoplankton bloom in Shark Bay off the West coast of Australia, NASA image

Guiding responsible research in geoengineering

Space Daily via SPX: Geoengineering, the use of human technologies to alter the Earth's climate system - such as injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to scatter incoming sunlight back to space - has emerged as a potentially promising way to mitigate the impacts of climate change. But such efforts could present unforeseen new risks. That inherent tension, argue two professors from UCLA and Harvard, has thwarted both scientific advances and the development of an international framework for regulating and guiding geoengineering research.

In an article published in the journal Science, Edward Parson of UCLA and David Keith of Harvard University outline how the current deadlock on governance of geoengineering research poses real threats to the sound management of climate risk. Their article advances concrete and actionable proposals for allowing further research - but not deployment - and for creating scientific and legal guidance, as well as addressing public concerns.

"We're trying to avoid a policy train wreck," said Keith, a professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. "Informed policy judgments in the future require research now into geoengineering methods' efficacy and risks. If research remains blocked, in some stark future situation, only untested approaches will be available."

"Our proposals address the lack of international legal coordination that has contributed to the current deadlock," said Parson, a professor of law and faculty co-director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law. "Coordinated international governance of research will both provide the guidance and confidence to allow needed, low-risk research to proceed and address legitimate public concerns about irresponsible interventions or a thoughtless slide into deployment."…

No mad scientists, created by Pierre-Alain Gouanvic, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Scientists dismiss geo-engineering as a global warming quick fix

Claire Martin in the "Surprising Science" blog at the Smithsonian: Installing a giant mirror in space to block sunlight, dispersing mass quantities of minerals into the oceans to suck carbon dioxide from the air and infusing the Earth’s upper atmosphere with sun-reflecting chemicals might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but they’re actual techniques that have been contemplated by scientists as possible quick solutions to climate change. More specifically, they’re examples of geo-engineering, a hotly contested subset of climate science whereby the Earth’s environment is intentionally manipulated in order to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Since cutting greenhouse gas emissions has been something of an exercise in futility, the idea behind geo-engineering is to put systems in place that manage the carbon dioxide that’s already emitted into the atmosphere. The two basic methods are solar radiation management—whereby a small amount of the sun’s heat and light is reflected back into space—and carbon dioxide removal, which involves the capture of CO2 or its uptake by the oceans.

A new study published yesterday in the journal Environmental Research Letters poked holes in one proposed approach to carbon dioxide removal. The research, conducted by scientists from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, showed that dissolving the mineral olivine into the oceans would be an inefficient way of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide...

Photo of an eclipse by asmoth, released into the public domain

How to regulate geo-engineering efforts to fight climate change?

Tom Snee in Iowa Now: With policymakers and political leaders increasingly unable to combat global climate change, more scientists are considering the use of manual manipulation of the environment to slow warming’s damage to the planet. But a University of Iowa law professor believes the legal ramifications of this kind of geo-engineering need to be thought through in advance and a global governance structure put in place soon to oversee these efforts.

“Geo-engineering is a global concern that will have climate and weather impacts in all countries, and it is virtually inevitable that some group of people will be harmed in the process,” says Jon Carlson, professor of law at the UI College of Law. “The international community must act now to take charge of this activity to ensure that it is studied and deployed with full attention to the rights and interests of everyone on the planet.”

Carlson is an expert in environmental law and international law who believes geo-engineering is inevitable and will likely happen sooner than later. He considers the issue in a new paper, “Reining in Phaethon’s Chariot: Principles for the Governance of Geoengineering,” published in the current issue of the journal Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems. His co-author, Adam D.K. Abelkop, is a UI law graduate now in the doctoral program at the Indiana University School of Public Health and Environmental Affairs.

...Carlson says geo-engineering comes with obvious international legal implications because no one country can implement its own geo-engineering plan without causing weather or climate changes in other countries. There’s also the law of unintended consequences, because while many geo-engineering concepts have proved hopeful in the lab, nobody knows what will happen when actually put into practice. For instance, Carlson says that while manually cooling the ocean may be seen as a generally good idea, what impact will that have on farmers in India whose crops depend on rain from heat-induced tropical monsoons?

To address these issues, Carlson urges the creation of an international governing body separate from any existing organization that approves or rejects geo-engineering plans, taking into consideration the best interests of people and countries around the world. He says any legal regimen involving geo-engineering activities should require they be publicly announced in the planning stage, and all countries are notified so they have a voice in deliberations....

Shot by Willow20*12, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Scientists suggest raising coastline something to consider in era of global warming

Bruce Smith in Go Upstate via the Associated Press: People along the coast have a few options in an era of global warming expected to bring more frequent, intense storms and the kind of devastation recently seen with Superstorm Sandy: They can move back from the shore, elevate buildings or build levees to keep the floods at bay. But a pair of scientists at Georgia Tech and Clemson suggest another alternative, although it sounds a bit like science fiction. Their research shows it is possible to raise the coastline itself.

Leonid Germanovich of Georgia Tech and Lawrence Murdoch of Clemson, both environmental engineers, have worked out the math and are proposing a method of flood protection they call SIRGE, or solid injection for raising ground elevation.

The idea is relatively straightforward. They envision injecting sediment-laden slurry into hydraulic fractures in the ground. If repeated in adjacent areas and over a wide area, it works to push up the surface of the earth. They suggest a series of pumps and wells to force the material underground.

The proposal, and the extensive scientific equations that accompany it, were published in 2010 in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society. The Society, dating to the 1660s, is the national academy of science in the United Kingdom and has 1,400 fellows worldwide.

After a 1900 hurricane devastated Galveston, Texas, killing an estimated 8,000 people, the city rebuilt after the ground level was raised as much as 17 feet. "It's been shown with the Galveston example, if you can increase elevations, that is your best bet in safeguarding areas against flood," Murdoch said....

Damage in 2008 from Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas, via FEMA

Considering desperate measures, like geoengineering

EurActiv.com: A leading British academic has called for accelerated research into futuristic geo-engineering and a worldwide nuclear power station "binge" to avoid runaway global warming. Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, said both potential solutions had inherent dangers but were now vital as time was running out.

"It is very, very depressing that politicians and the public are attuned to the threat of climate change even less than they were 20 years ago when Margaret Thatcher sounded the alarm. Co2 levels are rising at a faster than exponential rate, and yet politicians only want to take utterly trivial steps such as banning plastic bags and building a few windfarms," he said.

"I am very suspicious of using technology to solve problems created by technology, given that we have messed up so much in the past but having done almost nothing for two decades we need to adopt more desperate measures such as considering geo-engineering techniques as well as conducting a major nuclear programme."

Geo-engineering techniques such as whitening clouds by adding fine sprays of water vapour, or adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere have been ridiculed in some quarters but welcomed elsewhere. Wadhams proposes the use of thorium-fuelled reactors, being tested in India, which are said to be safer because they do not result in a proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium, experts say. Also, under certain circumstances, the waste from thorium reactors is less dangerous and remains radioactive for hundreds rather than thousands of years.

Wadhams, who is also head of the polar ocean physics group at Cambridge and has just returned from a field trip to Greenland, was reacting to evidence that Arctic sea ice cover had reached a record low this summer.

This latest rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by other polar scientists and coincide with alarming new reports about a "vast reservoir" of the potent greenhouse gas, methane, that could be released in Antarctica if the ice melts equally quickly there. Greenpeace said last night that it agreed with the academic's concerns but not with his solutions....

Isfjord, Ilulissat, Diskobay, West Greenland. Edge of the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier, one of largest Glacier Streams of the Greenland ice cap. Shot by Michael Haferkamp, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license