IUSSC Transcript Day 1

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Alvia Gaskill

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Nov 21, 2008, 3:46:16 PM11/21/08
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I have not read this yet, so you will be seeing it for the first time along with me.  If I have any comments, I will post them later.  The transcript from the second day of hearings has not been posted to the Parliament website yet.
 
 
Transcript of Day One of the IUSSC Hearings.
 
 
 
The United Kingdom Parliament

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1064-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES, SCIENCE AND SKILLS COMMITTEE

 

 

GEO-ENGINEERING

 

 

Monday 10 November 2008

PROFESSOR BRIAN LAUNDER, DR DAN LUNT and DR DAVID SANTILLO

PROFESSOR STEPHEN SALTER, PROFESSOR KEN CALDEIRA,

PROFESSOR KLAUS LACKNER and DR VICKY POPE

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 105

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.

 

2.

Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

 

3.

Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.

 

4.

Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

5.

Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament:

W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, 45 Great Peter Street, London, SW1P 3LT

Telephone & Fax Number: 020 7233 1935

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee

on Monday 10 November 2008

Members present

Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair

Dr Ian Gibson

Dr Evan Harris

Dr Brian Iddon

Mr Gordon Marsden

Ian Stewart

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Professor Brian Launder, University of Manchester, Dr Dan Lunt, University of Bristol, and Dr David Santillo, Greenpeace, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. It is very nice to see you. Could I welcome our first panel of witnesses to this, the geo-engineering case study within the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee's investigation into geo-engineering, and to thank very much indeed, Dr Dan Lunt of the University of Bristol for joining us. Welcome to the Committee. And Professor Brian Launder from the University of Manchester, welcome to you, Brian, I hope you enjoy your experience with us. We have an empty chair for Dr David Santillo who is geo-engineering the Tube at the moment to try and make sure that it arrives on time! When he arrives he will join us on the platform. I wonder if I could start with you, Professor Launder. Could you tell the Committee, as briefly as you can, what is your understanding of geo-engineering? What is it?

Professor Launder: Geo-engineering is the beneficial intervention in order on a global scale to change the climate in directions that we wish in the context of severe global heating with which we are threatened. It amounts to looking at schemes that will either provide a shade against incoming solar radiation or ways of withdrawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Q2 Chairman: It is not sensible, is it, Dr Lunt? It is not a serious suggestion, is it?

Dr Lunt: It has certainly been suggested seriously within the scientific literature and also it is out there in the public conscience. There have been some articles in the popular press and the scientific press as well. It is certainly out there and is certainly being considered seriously within the scientific community.

Q3 Chairman: In terms of the scientific community, and we on this Committee take the science community very seriously most of the time, where is the consensus within the scientific community on geo-engineering?

Professor Launder: I would say that of those who have looked at the issue 90 per cent believe that we are in dire straits and the only way of escaping is to give time to move towards a genuinely almost carbon-free lifestyle globally, we must have a period two or three decades at least, but perhaps indefinitely, where we rely on the types of intervention that I have hinted at in order to give time.

Q4 Chairman: Are you actually saying that this is a technology, or a group of technologies, which will seriously buy us sufficient time in order for us to have the long-term solutions to the amount of carbon we are putting into our planet?

Professor Launder: They have the potential. Sceptics could say, "Well, this hasn't been tested" or "That hasn't been tested". What is very urgently needed now is to properly evaluate, to spend enough time developing schemes from the drawing board to at least an operational scale where their effectiveness can be evaluated so that one may discern barely workable schemes from those that really do work.

Q5 Chairman: Dr Lunt, do you buy into this, that this is a holding technology with the potential to be a long-term solution?

Dr Lunt: I guess this has to be a personal viewpoint really. For me, I would be very worried about seeing this as a long-term indefinite solution. Any sort of geo-engineering that is carried out should also be carried out at the same time as a concerted effort to reduce emissions, a move to more energy efficient lifestyles, new technologies, so that we do not have to rely on it indefinitely because there are certainly worries about some technology that you have to rely on indefinitely because of the problems of it failing or becoming too expensive. If we do aim for it, we should certainly aim for something that is temporary.

Q6 Dr Gibson: This is not scientists just making up the terminology to be unique and set up their own little enclave of conferences and so on? There have been examples of this in the past. Is it a serious concept that came out of conferences at the beginning or is it just a dream in somebody's head?

Dr Lunt: I do not know of any conferences that have been solely about geo-engineering, but certainly within the very major conferences in the geo-sciences, for example the AGU, which is the big American geo-science conference, and the EGU, which is the European one, for the last few years there have been dedicated sessions to geo-engineering and there has been a relatively large number of submissions. It is not just a thing that people discuss on internet news groups, it is actually out there in conferences, yes.

Professor Launder: The first scientific papers on what we have started to call geo-engineering emerged in the 1970s. By the beginning of this century there was a very well-developed feeling amongst a group of scientists that we would need to move towards that. In 2004 the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge held a two-day event on the topic and more recently there have been expert group meetings in Harvard. It is by no means a fanciful group of scientists looking for some easy way to get money.

Q7 Dr Gibson: Some of the effects of geo-engineering ideas may be irreversible, is that so? Professor Launder: In the short-term if, for example, we simply cut down the incident sunlight by two or three per cent in order to cool the planet but do nothing about the level of CO2 in the atmosphere that will increase the acidification of the oceans and those effects will be irreversible, yes.

Q8 Dr Gibson: Who are your big competitors in this field in terms of the way forward? Are you in the Coca-Cola Championship or are you in the Premier Division as against the other technologies? Give us a picture of it because we do not know where you sit as against other mitigating technologies.

Professor Launder: Personally, I would be delighted, and I think this probably goes for the majority of the experts you will be talking to, if somehow someone had a magic bullet that would discover how to make fusion work and we could use that for all of our power. I just do not see it happening fast enough.

Q9 Dr Gibson: The man on the Tube will speak for himself when he arrives, but how do you see the criticisms that Greenpeace have levelled at the issue in terms of morality, ethics and so on? You must have had this levelled at you many times, I am sure.

Professor Launder: I do not think I can answer that simply because I have not acquainted myself sufficiently. I just keep my head down like any eager-beaver scientist.

Q10 Dr Gibson: Does that mean that you do not care about the morality?

Professor Launder: Not at all.

Q11 Dr Gibson: You are opening up that point.

Professor Launder: Let me say more than anything else what alerts me is when I look across the Sunday lunch table and see my two granddaughters who are five years-old and think what will they inherit in 25/30 years' time.

Q12 Dr Gibson: Dan, what do you think about this area of morality and ethics?

Dr Lunt: I am not completely aware about the Greenpeace arguments, but my understanding from what I think David would say if he was here is if we go down this route of geo-engineering then there is the danger that in the public mind if there is a solution out there then they do not need to be energy efficient, reduce their energy use or whatever. Personally, I do have some sympathy with that, it is a fair argument, but it is very difficult to test whether that would be the case or not. These geo-engineering ideas are out there already and certainly a proportion of the public are aware of them. My impression from talking to friends is it is not affecting their decisions about energy use at the moment. In terms of the ethics and morality, it is a case of is it the lesser of two evils. The idea of geo-engineering per se to me is pretty grotesque really in some ways, but if it is the lesser of two evils then maybe that is the route we have to go down.

Q13 Dr Gibson: Where do you chaps get your funding from?

Dr Lunt: I have not been in the field of geo-engineering very long at all so I would not call myself a complete expert. The one study that we have done and carried out at Bristol that I led just arose out of a chat over coffee. I think it was an article in the New Scientist or something talking about geo-engineering and we thought that was something we could try and we did it in our spare time using free computer time on the university machines. No funding.

Q14 Dr Gibson: What did you work on before?

Dr Lunt: The geo-engineering stuff was and still is completely in my own time, if you like. My actual speciality is I am a paleoclimate modeller, a past climate modeller and future climate modeller.

Q15 Dr Gibson: You must get funded, Professor Launder?

Professor Launder: My field of research, I hasten to say, is not in geo-engineering. I will not bore you with how I got involved.

Q16 Dr Gibson: How did you get your chair?

Professor Launder: I am a mechanical engineer. Gosh, I have forgotten what I was going to say.

Q17 Dr Gibson: So what got you into this geo-engineering stuff? What was the light that suddenly shone? You said your granddaughters, but it does not happen just like that.

Professor Launder: Besides that, there was a geo-engineering conference held in Cambridge in 2004 and I went along to that and was persuaded that it was very important.

Dr Gibson: Has Prince Charles found out about this yet? He has not pronounced on this yet, but I bet he will.

Q18 Chairman: Before we get on to Prince Charles, you mentioned earlier about the issue of scaling up, Professor Launder, and so far there have been a number of laboratory experiments, and we have obviously got evidence about some of those, which seem to be incredibly interesting.

Professor Launder: Laboratory and field trials.

Q19 Chairman: If I can be frank with you, a few years ago this Committee did a piece of work on carbon sequestration long before that became a popular move, and we were looking forward to one large scale demonstrator plant at Peterhead, which never came off. That was a proven technology which we knew could be scaled up. Scaling up geo-engineering on a global scale seems to be the most incredulous challenge and yet you feel it is possible.

Professor Launder: Yes, I do, but on the point you raised there is still a huge gap between the PhD type of research that Dr Gibson was mentioning and actually putting it into practice. There is an awful lot of development and detailed design activity.

Q20 Chairman: But we have not time, have we, if what you are saying and, indeed, what I think Greenpeace would accept, is the current scientific consensus?

Professor Launder: We have not time not to, Chairman.

Q21 Chairman: That is a very good point. You think there is time to do this developmental work to get large-scale demonstrators up and running so that this is a serious technology which could be deployed?

Professor Launder: Indeed. I mentioned in my submission the Carbon Trust as a source of support for that. The Carbon Trust currently seems to be focused on carbon-free power generation. I think a proportion of its budget should be earmarked for the type of geo-engineering activities that we are discussing.

Chairman: We will come on to funding in a minute because I think that was behind Dr Gibson's comment, that you are not getting any funding, this is your own interest at the moment.

Q22 Ian Stewart: Good afternoon, both of you. Brian, the Chairman pressed you a little bit about scaling up and buying time. Will there come a point where buying time is no longer possible?

Professor Launder: This is a personal view. My feeling is that one can only rely on this to buy time if we are looking at decadal timescales of a few decades. If we continue to accumulate carbon dioxide in our atmosphere faster than we can take it out or it diffuses out into the sea or vegetation then we have the most gloomy prospects for the planet. I think some of the people you will be speaking to have a somewhat different view, but personally I would see geo-engineering as something that we might do for three decades, at most five, and we must ultimately get a way of living, perhaps a much reduced population on the globe, powered by nuclear fusion and direct solar power. We will have to look at routes like that.

Q23 Ian Stewart: Do you agree with that, Dan? Also, how do we guard against some of this stuff becoming almost like a global climate insurance policy?

Dr Lunt: First of all, I do agree that it is of the order of decades probably that we are looking at if we do want to use geo-engineering, it is probably along those timescales. In some ways what is necessarily wrong with having an insurance policy, a back-up, in case? At the moment geo-engineering is in a situation where it could not be used tomorrow, we could not turn it on tomorrow, there needs to be some sort of spin-off in terms of research and development before it could be used, but if that research and development does happen it does not necessarily mean that it has to be used at the end of that if it is deemed not necessary at the time. To have it as an insurance policy is maybe not a bad thing.

Q24 Ian Stewart: Do you agree with that as well, Brian?

Professor Launder: Indeed, yes.

Q25 Ian Stewart: The public money that is going to be spent on known mitigation technologies, would we not be better spending the money on the existing known technologies rather than risk it being put into supporting geo-engineering? In any case, has anybody got any idea of how much the geo-engineering stuff might cost?

Professor Launder: I am sure some of the speakers you will be coming to a bit later on for the particular technologies they are advocating will be able to give pretty precise sums for costs. When I say "pretty precise", within an order of magnitude.

Q26 Ian Stewart: A guestimate.

Professor Launder: I do not think I should trespass on areas where they are ---

Q27 Ian Stewart: Is it a good use of money then?

Professor Launder: Is it a good use of money? Undoubtedly, I believe it is.

Q28 Ian Stewart: Why?

Professor Launder: Because if the climate gets out of control all of the other ways of spending the money are worthless.

Q29 Ian Stewart: You believe it is that big, do you?

Professor Launder: I believe it is that big, yes.

Q30 Dr Harris: In some other technologies, controversial ones, they are often defended on the basis that there will be spin-out effects that will be beneficial even if the ultimate aim does not come to fruition and, secondly, the research and development, even short of implementation, will create jobs. Is this a job intensive field in the development even if it is never implemented? Can you argue that you are going to invent something and produce products useful out of it even if you do not get the ultimate end product?

Professor Launder: I am sure there will be beneficial spin-offs. I think we are too near the beginning in our attempt to get towards a point where we implement it to be able to see many of them. One as an example: for deploying cloud brightening techniques, Stephen Salter has developed a lot of interest in Flettner vessels, vessels that are powered by spinning cylinders. I am sure his work on that will stimulate a lot of interest in reverting - I say reverting because at the end of the 1920s such a vessel crossed the Atlantic - to a means of providing much cheaper power than normal ship propulsion.

Q31 Dr Harris: Professor Lunt, do you know of ay collateral benefits?

Dr Lunt: Apart from the one that Brian has mentioned I cannot really think of any. I guess the only thing that would come into my head is if maybe there was a natural climate disaster, something that meant temperatures raised, maybe some of these technologies could be used in that instance.

Q32 Dr Harris: So it is different from fusion because fusion is creating a lot of useful stuff anyway, albeit we are still some way away from practical use, but it is different, it is more of a binary decision. You are going to work on this in order to implement it really.

Dr Lunt: I think that would be the primary driver, yes.

Q33 Chairman: Can I just welcome Dr David Santillo. We are sorry you have had trouble getting here.

Dr Santillo: My apologies.

Chairman: Not at all. You have come in at an interesting time. I am going to ask Dr Gibson to return to one of his earlier questions on the moral maze in just a minute, but we will go back to Ian Stewart and follow his line of argument.

Q34 Ian Stewart: Hello, David. Basically, the drift of the questions I have asked is, is geo-engineering necessary? If it is necessary, is it only going to buy us time for a set period? Even if it buys us time for a set period, is it a good use of public money, and has anybody got any idea how much it is going to cost? Take your pick!

Dr Santillo: Or all four perhaps! The fact we are having this discussion as to whether it is necessary or not is a measure of the fact that we have done too little so far to address the problems at source. I would really caution against seeing this as being an option that has yet to be developed because we are at the stage where we have very little concept as to whether a lot of these geo-engineering techniques will actually contribute to mitigating climate change. There are circumstances in which they could actually exacerbate problems. It is vital that however research is carried forward in any of these fields, it is not a barrier to, a distraction from, dealing with the real problem. I have not had the benefit of being at the first part of this discussion and those points may well have been taken up and discussed. Those sorts of fundamentals are important before you even begin to consider what some of these things may cost. If we have very little evidence that they are actually going to do anything beneficial in the first place, that is the first point to try to address.

Q35 Ian Stewart: Let me ask you a final point. One of the definitions that we have had about this issue, what is geo-engineering, runs like this: global action intended to mitigate climate change. Do you agree with that?

Dr Santillo: That seems a very general definition.

Q36 Ian Stewart: The question that arises from it is if an action is not global, is it not worth doing?

Dr Santillo: No, not at all. A lot of the actions that we can and should be taking to address climate change are not in themselves global actions, they may be very local or regional actions to address the problem. In fact, they have to be if we are going to tackle emissions at source. To have a general definition of geo-engineering simply as being global action to address climate change, from my understanding geo-engineering is more those types of activities which attempt to manipulate planetary systems and to exert their global influence in that way. There is perhaps a need for a more specific definition of what is meant by geo-engineering.

Q37 Dr Gibson: Nice to see you. I do not know what Tube it was, do tell us.

Dr Santillo: It was Great Western Trains that held us up, I am afraid.

Q38 Dr Harris: We call that a predictable phenomenon.

Dr Santillo: Indeed.

Q39 Dr Gibson: David, you have brought the phrase "moral hazard" into this on the grounds that all the speculation may lead eventually to worsening the whole thing. Can you explain that in a little more detail? What is the moral hazard?

Dr Santillo: The concern that we have is that while a lot of the discussions that are taking place are now précised by the acknowledgement that geo-engineering should not be a distraction from tackling emissions and energy efficiency, the fear we have is that inevitably it will be a distraction. At the moment there seems to be a proliferation of different discussions, projects, bodies discussing this particular issue, and we are concerned that the promise of something in the future, however speculative it may be, however unproven it may even be in terms of its effectiveness, may seem to give some kind of hope that, in fact, we can tackle climate change without tackling the real problems of emissions and greenhouse gases at source. In the public's mind there is a danger perhaps that people will favour what they see to be a solution which does not involve them changing their way of life, does not involve them having to make difficult choices, if they can simply contribute to a scheme which somehow very distant from them will engineer the climate back to its normal state.

Q40 Dr Gibson: Is this the technological fix argument?

Dr Santillo: That is right. That is the danger, that however much we wish that it will not be a distraction inevitably it will be.

Q41 Dr Gibson: How do you make the decision which technologies are worth proceeding with? I know you do not believe in GM particularly, but stem cells you might. How do you make these decisions about the morality and involvement which should allow it to go ahead or not? Is there a cut-off point?

Dr Santillo: The approach that I have suggested in my evidence to this Committee is perhaps something that could be pursued for geo-engineering in general. Just a couple of weeks ago the London Convention, which is the convention which prevents pollution from the dumping of materials in the oceans and, therefore, has an interest in ocean fertilisation schemes, came to a resolution that there had to be a way of permitting what it called "legitimate scientific research" to continue while at this point closing off any more practical applications of geo-engineering. In that case, that was specific to attempts to fertilise the oceans but it could equally well apply to attempts to manipulate atmospheric conditions or other technologies that are included under geo-engineering. The elegance of it is that it does not say no to new scientific studies, it simply says that there should be a consistent and precautionary set of rules that need to be applied by all countries in order to determine what is legitimate scientific research into these techniques and what is not. A very key part of that has to be a consideration of the commercial involvement because if there is an element of commercial interest in those experiments having a particular outcome, I think that would counter that legitimacy in terms of research.

Q42 Dr Gibson: I suppose you have thought for a long time about these problems, always worried that in the developing countries they are going to get the brunt of it and yet they need to expand their economies and so on. How do you relate your moral dilemma to that?

Dr Santillo: I think there is a danger also that for the more time that we in the richer nations look to geo-engineering solutions, the less time we are putting to exporting the good technologies and the more sustainable technologies.

Q43 Dr Gibson: Such as?

Dr Santillo: Such as renewable energy, integrated transport solutions, measures to improve efficiency of energy units. All of these things the developing world is crying out for and if we take our eye off the ball and look to future speculative solutions there is a danger that we will take our eye off the ball from that as well.

Q44 Dr Iddon: Mathematical modelling is getting exceptionally better but it is still subject to the innumerable variables that you have to put in to get into predictive mode. Where climate change is concerned we know so little about certain of the variables that you need to plug in. For example, very little is known about the behaviour of the sea, which is a huge player in climate change, we all accept that. How sophisticated would modelling have to be to predict the effects of geo-engineering? Have we got to that stage at the moment?

Dr Lunt: We are at that stage. A number studies have been carried out in a mathematical modelling framework that have looked at this problem. In terms of are the models suitable, the models that can be used to predict the outcome of some of these geo-engineering schemes are exactly the same models that are used to predict unmitigated climate change. The predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are carried out by the same model. I would argue that these models are at a stage where they can be used in predictive mode. These models do a very good job of predicting, for example, the climate change that we have seen over the last hundred years. If you compare these model estimate of climate change from 1900-2000, they are actually very good and agree very well with the observations. I would argue that they are in a good state for being used for this purpose to look at the geo-engineering problem.

Q45 Dr Iddon: What I am saying is that I do not believe that the modelling that places like the Hadley Centre are doing at the moment are sophisticated enough to predict even climate change, although they are getting there but there are still lots of variables that I think they do not understand that need plugging into their systems. How on earth can you use something at that stage to predict something beyond predicting climate change?

Dr Lunt: To make a prediction about a geo-engineered world you do not have to change your model very much at all. Your mathematical model will be exactly the same as the one that is used to predict just normal future climate change.

Q46 Chairman: I think the point Colin is making is that that is imperfect.

Dr Lunt: Yes, it is certainly imperfect. The question is how good is good? How good do you need your model to be before you start interpreting the results? All I can say is that it does a good job compared to the observational record that we have had so far. There cannot really be any other test. We can go further back in time and look at how well these models predict, for example, the last ice-age and again they do a good job, but how good is good? How good do you want your model to be? The general consensus among the climate community is that the models are obviously getting better and they are including more and more parts of the earth's system. At the moment there is a lot of work going into putting a representation of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets within these models and a more complete representation of vegetation. We are getting to the point where we have earth system models now that represent every part of the earth's system. I think these models are of sufficient quality, they do a good job compared to observations and they could be used for this task.

Q47 Dr Iddon: One of the ideas is to put mirrors into space to reflect the sunlight. Do we know how many mirrors we would have to put up there and the extent of the coverage of those mirrors in terms of reflection to lower the earth's temperature by just one degree?

Dr Lunt: There is one study of which I am aware that looked into the engineering aspects of mirrors in space and the idea was a number of discs, each about 60cm in diameter, and there would be several trillions of these up in space placed in orbit between the earth and the sun about five times further out than where the moon is.

Q48 Dr Iddon: That is a huge cost. Can I put it to you that if I was making mirrors I would put them in the Sahara Desert and I would generate steam in the way that can already be done. There has been a development project that, so why bother to go to all the cost of putting the mirrors up there when we can generate our power down here without using fossil fuels.

Dr Lunt: I agree with you. Of all the geo-engineering solutions that have been proposed, I am sure it is not the most cost efficient. The person who did the study estimated the cost - it was quite a broad number he came up with - to be several trillion dollars which, according to some estimates, is not much more than the Iraq war.

Q49 Dr Iddon: We have to develop Africa yet. We cannot even feed the people in Africa. Let's put the geo-engineering ideas into some kind of priority. If you say that is not a priority, what is a priority in terms of geo-engineering?

Dr Lunt: If you were definitely going to go down the line of geo-engineering, if that had already been decided - a real costs benefit analysis has not been carried out yet so that is one thing that I think would have to be done first and I do not actually know what the answer is - some of the solutions that Stephen Salter has been suggesting about sea spray and cloud condensation might be more economically feasible. If that costs benefit analysis was carried out it should also be carried out in the framework of looking at other solutions to climate change and mitigation and adaptation, because to do geo-engineering on its own does not make any sense; it needs to be compared to other solutions.

Q50 Dr Iddon: You are interested in sunshades. Could you guide us through as to how you believe that sunshades would work?

Dr Lunt: We did one study on sunshades. I would not say that means that I necessarily advocate them, but in terms of how they would work, they would reduce the incoming radiation from the sun. We found that you could reduce the amount of solar radiation to offset a four times increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You would probably try and match the global average temperature to be what it was maybe in pre-industrial times. One of the things that we found, and Ken Caldeira found before us, was that you do not retrieve exactly this pre-industrial climate that you are searching for. You might get the global average correct, but what you find is that there were residuals in that the Arctic would be warmer than in pre-industrial times whereas the tropics would be colder.

Q51 Dr Iddon: What are these sunshades physically?

Dr Lunt: In this proposal they were thin discs 60cm in diameter made of some sort of silicon-based product, I expect. I am not sure about the engineering details.

Q52 Dr Iddon: If things went wrong could we retrieve them?

Dr Lunt: I do not know the answer to that question.

Q53 Mr Marsden: Professor Launder, your colleague, Dr Lunt, has just referred to the Iraq war and so perhaps I can be forgiven for referring to one of its architects, Donald Rumsfeld, who said that there were known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I would like your view as to which of those two categories geo-engineering fits into? We talked about how new geo-engineering is as a science. Is it a known unknown or is it an unknown unknown? Is it something that is completely off the wall or something that there are basic principles that we can understand?

Professor Launder: There are many basic principles that are known and there are many unknowns in the whole science. The previous questions related to how good is the theory. You may have looked at predictions of the way global temperatures will increase and from the present they fan out. There are many different models giving somewhat different results but they all go in one direction. The urgency is not entirely established.

Q54 Mr Marsden: It has been reported in a small scale that countries like China, even as recently as the Olympics, and the Soviet Union have experimented with all things that will actually change the climate temporarily. Do we know if there are any national governments that are currently pursuing an active programme of geo-engineering research?

Professor Launder: In the free world research sponsorship is done by agencies which are not closely tied to governments and certainly there are such projects in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

Q55 Mr Marsden: What about those countries which are not subject to the same sort of vigour and democratic scrutiny, like Russia and China? Surely they are going to be as affected by the issues of global warming as anybody else?

Professor Launder: Indeed, yes. I know that China is doing a lot of work on essentially trying to de-carbonise its society. It is investing a lot of money there but I do not know what it is doing in the area of geo-engineering.

Q56 Mr Marsden: Dr Lunt, our own government, both DIUS and Defra, have indicated in their submissions to us that geo-engineering technologies may play a role in future efforts. Are you aware of that being anything more than just a pious hope, or is anything going on in government that might give you and your colleagues some comfort?

Dr Lunt: I am not aware of any major projects that are planned in terms of geo-engineering. I noticed in one of the written submissions from the Research Council of the UK that one of the things they are considering, it said, was a geo-engineering IDEAS factory, but I do not know any more than having seen that.

Q57 Mr Marsden: I ask that question because the history science is, so far as I can see, never just a question of top down, and it is certainly never just a question of bottom up; it is a question of the interrelationship between those two things. Is it not the case that if you expect to get your ideas seriously on the public agenda that those people who are in support of geo-engineering research have got to put their head above the parapet a little more and have got to get things out more into the public arena and get a major debate going? Professor Launder, is there any evidence that you have got the critical mass to do that?

Professor Launder: I would say that the critical mass has been reached. The fact that this Committee is inquiring into it is some signal. The Royal Society took upon itself to publish a special issue of the philosophical transactions devoted to this subject. The Royal Society is currently developing independently of that a position on geo-engineering. I believe that it will be producing a paper next year on this.

Q58 Mr Marsden: How are people in this area communicating all of this with policy-makers? We had Professor John Beddington before us recently. What are you doing to get the ear of people like him in government?

Professor Launder: I have to say that I do not know.

Q59 Mr Marsden: You are coming along here today saying that this is in its infancy but we have some interesting ideas to be taken forward. Unless you are able to create that critical mass of involvement and to grab the policy-makers, then you are not going to get very far, are you?

Professor Launder: The policy influences on government tend to be made through scientific groups. The Royal Academy of Engineering is pressing in that direction through its president; the Royal Society is pressing for progress in that direction; I know the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, to which I belong, is very active in that.

Q60 Mr Marsden: You think that, relatively soon, we are going to have a critical mass of evidence of argument that government departments, like Defra and DIUS, will have to take notice of?

Professor Launder: Partly I would say we do not have all the evidence but we cannot afford to wait. We must get involved in field trials and experiments that will enable us to discriminate between the techniques that do not really work as effectively as others.

Q61 Mr Marsden: Dr Santillo, does not what Professor Launder has just said sound to you like a reasonable basis upon which to proceed? I have read the evidence submission you have made and I have heard what you have said today. Some might say that, 20 or 30 years ago, your ideas might have been regarded as fairly off the wall, so why today are you being so down on geo-engineers? Is it not perhaps because you are the new orthodoxy?

Dr Santillo: I think if any of our ideas were considered to be off the wall 20 or 30 years ago, they are certainly not now.

Q62 Mr Marsden: That is exactly the point that I am making.

Dr Santillo: Perhaps we shall need to see where some of this research goes. The critical mass that we have at the moment is simply a reflection of the fact that more people are talking about geo-engineering techniques. It is not in itself an indication that we have greater evidence that these techniques are actually going to do anything productive and I think that is a very important distinction to make to come back to your earlier question on known unknowns and unknown unknowns. We are dealing clearly with a spread here but I think there are rather a lot more unknown unknowns than there are known. When we talk about something as complex as planetary systems - my expertise is mainly in the area of ocean systems - I think the fact that we have better models of the way in which these things will happen is sometimes misinterpreted as being filling in all of the gaps. A model somehow fills in the gaps in our knowledge that we have. Of course, models will always be limited. We are dealing with systems where we are not simply going to answer all of the questions with further and further research. At some point it needs to be a policy decision as to whether this is an appropriate way to go or not.

Q63 Mr Marsden: You do not even think they should get started, do you?

Dr Santillo: What I have said is that if there are proposals that people wish to bring forward for research into geo-engineering techniques, what we need is a globally harmonised system for evaluating those to make sure that they are actually legitimate proposals and that they will not in themselves have a negative impact on the very planetary systems that they are studying.

Q64 Dr Harris: You have set that out in your evidence, which we have read. Do you think the British Government agrees with you or does it agree with the enthusiasts, or do you think its view is somewhere in the middle from what you know of government opinion from innovation or Defra or the new climate change department?

Dr Santillo: I think it is difficult to say. I suspect the view is somewhere in the middle. My feeling is that from policy-makers they can see a huge scepticism and understand that scepticism around geo-engineering techniques. I do not think there is a lot of appetite for them at the moment, but there is a danger that the more the commercial community, and to some extent the research community, talks up geo-engineering as a solution, some of those assumptions will begin to be set in policy that it is only a matter of time before these things will work.

Q65 Dr Harris: If one of these solutions looks viable, the logic of your position is that you will be even more opposed to it because it will look even more tempting for policy-makers to shelve the action that is needed to, for example, reduce emissions because one of these is looking viable. You have an interest in this not working.

Dr Santillo: Not at all. The position that we put forward is that at this point, given the huge uncertainties and unknowns regarding even the effectiveness of some of these proposals, that at this point none of them are a viable option and we should focus our efforts where we need to put them.

Q66 Dr Harris: You do not think people will start wrecking field trials of this technology like some people did for GM? I know with your formal backing you would never back illegal vandalism, but some people identified with your cause there. You are not envisaging that sort of reaction to this technology, are you?

Dr Santillo: I have no idea how people other than myself will respond to these issues, but I do not think we are in that same sort of debate. In this situation we are talking about something that could possibly happen 20 or 30 years from now that people are talking about researching at this stage. All I am saying in our evidence is that we need to not provide a barrier to that research but it has to be done in a legitimate, transparent way and in a way which follows a set of very clear and precautionary rules.

Chairman: I think Dr Harris would agree with that. Can I thank Professor Brian Launder, Dr Dan Lunt and Dr David Santillo for being our first set of witnesses on this particular inquiry; thank you all very much indeed.


 

Witnesses: Professor Stephen Salter, University of Edinburgh, Professor Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Institution, Professor Klaus Lackner, Columbia University (via video-link) and Dr Vicky Pope, Met Office, gave evidence.

 

Chairman: We have a video-link from the United States in this particular section where we have Professor Klaus Lackner from Columbia University who will be giving evidence as well. We welcome Professor Stephen Salter from the University of Edinburgh. We welcome Professor Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution and we would like to thank you for coming all the way from the United States. Welcome to the House of Commons and to the Select Committee Inquiry. Finally, I welcome Dr Vicky Pope from the Met Office. The Met Office has been a good friend to our Committee over many inquiries and we are very pleased to have you here.

Q67 Mr Marsden: If I may start by getting a quick summary from all three of our professors this afternoon on how you have actually funded your programme on geo-engineering research to date and what has been the biggest challenge in taking them forward.

Professor Caldeira: I have the good fortune of working for the Carnegie Institution which is funded by an endowment left by Andrew Carnegie in 1902. My funding is covered by that and I also get some philanthropic funding to support post-doctoral researchers in this area but I have no federal or public funding at all.

Q68 Mr Marsden: What has been the biggest challenge in taking your research forward?

Professor Caldeira: I am a big advocate of research. I do not really consider myself an advocate of geo-engineering. I think these schemes have the potential to diminish environmental risk. We do not really know whether they will or not. I think the politics around this makes it difficult to discuss these issues in a neutral and balanced way. What I would like to see is more research that focuses on this topic in a balanced way on empirically answerable questions.

Professor Lackner: Thank you for inviting me to be part of this. I am the director of the Lenfest Centre for Sustainable Energy here at Columbia University and so a good fraction of my funding is actually derived from the generosity of a single individual, Mr Lenfest, a trustee of the university, who has endowed and supported the Centre. At the same time we have small amounts of money from government funding to deal with what I would call the carbon cycle engineering. A few years back in 2003 we managed to get a small company started which got its money as a start-up from what is called Angel funding in order to demonstrate that the capture of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere is really possible.

Professor Salter: I have had no money at all. I have had a promise from Ken Caldeira that he will pay my travel for going to some conferences but that is all I have had.

Q69 Mr Marsden: What has been your biggest challenge? Clearly money is a challenge, but are there others?

Professor Salter: The biggest challenge is there are only seven days in the week.

Professor Caldeira: I have had advertisements posted for post-doctoral researchers in this area and I have been unable to find good qualified people who have the technical skills to work in this area.

Q70 Mr Marsden: What is interesting from the range of responses that the three of you have given are a couple of references to public funding in small amounts, but the majority of what we are talking about has been private entrepreneurial activity. Professor Salter, looking at it from the UK perspective, do you think that is the most appropriate mechanism to take this research forward?

Professor Salter: It would be sensible to have the normal grant-giving process allowed to cover geo-engineering. I have applied to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and they turned it down.

Q71 Mr Marsden: Do you know why?

Professor Salter: Yes. One of the referees said that we had not put enough effort into how we disseminate the results. You only need one tiny negative comment for it to be thrown out and it does not even get to the panel. I am trying again at the moment from the Environment Research Council and I have to put a proposal into them for early December.

Q72 Mr Marsden: From the US perspective, again the majority of your funding appears to have come from private sources. Is that realistic, given the huge scale of the potential that that should remain in the private sector?

Professor Caldeira: Because climate engineering has the potential to reduce climate risk cost-effectively, I think it is important to research it as a possible kind of emergency response approach and it will need public funding and it should be public funding because there should be no real commercial market for these technologies. It will be the public sector that should deploy it and policy-makers need unbiased and accurate information and I think public funding is the best way of achieving that.

Q73 Mr Marsden: Professor Lackner, the new President Elect of the United States appears to be far more positive and responsive in some of these areas of climate change than the existing one. Would it be your expectation that there might be a role for more public funding in this area under the new administration?

Professor Lackner: I would expect so and hope so, but let me make a distinction between climate change engineering, which is what first comes to mind when people talk about geo-engineering, and contrast it with what I would call carbon cycle engineering. I think climate change engineering is a last resort and should be treated like that. It is like if I had a fire and the house burns down you will accept the water damage and in many ways if carbon dioxide were smelly we would not solve the problem by giving out nose plugs; we would stop putting carbon dioxide out because it is actually the approach. I would emphasise that end capture, for example, has been considered. A geo-engineering method is quite different because it goes to the root of the problem so I do believe we need to have public researched support for all of these issues, but they have to be put in perspective for what the goals are. I do believe it is necessary to effectively reach a carbon neutral energy infrastructure.

Professor Caldeira: To support what Klaus said, these various climate engineering approaches might reduce risk in some ways and introduce new elements of risk, whereas I do not see the kind of thing that Klaus Lackner is working on removing CO2 from the atmosphere as introducing new elements of risk in the same way that climate engineering does. Personally I do not even consider what Klaus does to be in the realm of climate engineering. Basically removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere should be uncontroversial, whereas I think well-informed, intelligent people can differ on the wisdom of focusing on direct climate manipulation.

Q74 Dr Iddon: Professor Lackner, is there a national geo-engineering research programme established in the States?

Professor Lackner: No, there has not been. Are you asking me whether it should be?

Q75 Dr Iddon: Yes.

Professor Lackner: I would again treat it with caution. I would view this as the backstop. We need to consider what happens if climate change runs away much faster than we thought, but I think it is very important also in public discourse to make clear that, by itself, it does not solve the problem and only allows you to tie over until you have really solved the problem in a direct manner, namely dealing with the carbon dioxide.

Q76 Dr Iddon: I ask the same question of the people in the room here. Do you think a national geo-engineering programme should be established and how should it be structured, if you agree?

Professor Salter: Yes, you should certainly have it. I think you could probably build it onto the existing research councils with perhaps some ring-fenced money that the government decides on the amount.

Q77 Dr Iddon: Is that agreed by our other two guests or do you have different views?

Professor Caldeira: I am basically in agreement. Dan Lunt is an example of a scientist who is working primarily on other sorts of climate change problems but focuses some of his energy on climate engineering. I think that is a good model. We do not need to create a cadre of climate engineers. I think we need climate scientists and good engineers who can then apply their skills to this problem too. I do not think we are looking to develop people with a vested interest in specific outcomes.

Q78 Dr Iddon: Dr Pope, do you agree with those views or do you have a different view?

Dr Pope: Yes, I would agree with those views. The focus has to be on science to improve mitigation and obviously adaptation to unavoidable climate change. Many of the techniques that are available for looking at the impacts in mitigation can also be used to look at geo-engineering as well.

Q79 Dr Gibson: Is this kind of research better done in a university environment or should you have a kind of hub mentality where it is all concentrated in one place and little bits spew out now and again? It may be different in both countries because the university environment in Britain is kind of like that at the minute in terms of its funding. What do you think in the States and/or in this country, Professor Caldeira?

Professor Caldeira: I admit a vested interest since I am located at Stanford and have a new position at Stanford as well, but I am a big advocate of university competitive funding. I also think that the big research centres like NCAR and the Hadley Centre have made incredibly valuable contributions. On the climate science side I think there are existing institutions and it is a matter of increasing the scope of the research and the funding. On the engineering side it is very different because there is nobody trying to build deployment systems today and this might need to be treated in a different way.

Q80 Dr Gibson: You would support from your experience Tyndall Centres and Hadley Centres doing this kind of work?

Professor Caldeira: Yes.

Q81 Dr Gibson: In a competitive way?

Professor Caldeira: I am a big fan of the competitive peer review process. I think all of this research should be in open literature. There should be nothing classified or closed. I would like to see it as an open and competitive process as much as possible.

Professor Salter: I have had a great deal of help from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, with suggestions and numbers for the work I have been doing. I think you can mix big laboratories and universities. I think universities probably have a more rapid response and can come up with ideas a bit more flexibly than a laboratory where people are told what to do. I feel, and maybe I do not have any evidence here, that places like the Hadley Centre would be more effective if the individuals there could have a fraction of their time - say 25 per cent - to do exactly what they wanted to do rather than being told what the government department wants.

Q82 Dr Gibson: There is a challenge for you. I am sure you agree with that.

Dr Pope: Maybe I should just introduce the Hadley Centre and my role. I am Head of Climate Change Advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre. I am sure you all know that the Met Office provides the weather forecast everyday but it also hosts the institution that provides climate science to underpin government policy. We are commissioned in the Hadley Centre by DECC now, formerly Defra, and the MoD to provide independent climate research to underpin policy. A very large part of that work is to develop one of the world's leading climate models and these climate models, as was mentioned earlier, are now getting into the earth system realm so they can represent both biological and chemical processes as well as the main climate process in the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface. We do have the tools available to look at many of these sorts of issues. My role is to provide the interface between the science and the policy-makers. I am the person that tells the scientists what to do but, believe me, they are scientists and they do what they want as well. They will challenge that and say these are the important issues and come back to the government departments and say should we not be looking at this. It is very much a two-way process and I am very much in the middle of that. If we believe that something is important for climate change we will look at it. I wanted to give a couple of examples of two recent studies that have not been published yet. One has been accepted for publication and another one has just been submitted that look at some of the issues involved. One study showed that if you take short term intervention - the direct climate engineering that people were talking about that act in the short term - they could actually mask climate change and when those interventions stop you will actually end up with higher levels of climate change than you had before. Really you need to look very carefully at those things. Another example is if you make changes to the climate on a regional scale they can have adverse effects in other regions of the globe. The climate system is very interlinked, so changes in one place affect other places, and it is only by running climate models that we can assess those impacts. Even if you switch the engineering off, the impact could be irreversible, so you could have a long term detrimental effect that you perhaps had not anticipated.

Q83 Dr Iddon: Dr Pope, we believe that one of the things that your organisation has been looking at is the consequences of cloud albedo enhancement. Could you tell us what that is and how you have been going about it? Is it modelling, or real experiments, and what are the main lessons of that research?

Dr Pope: We took the proposal that Professor Salter came up with to alter the properties of the clouds and essentially we did not look at any of the engineering issues; we just assumed that it would work and make a large impact on the stratocumulus clouds. These are clouds off the coast of Africa and South America. We looked at what the consequences of that would be for the climate as a whole. What we found was that if you changed the cloud sufficiently to have an impact on climate to actually reduce the warming that will also have consequences right the way round, particularly in the tropics, so it could change the El Nino, for example, which is very important for climate variability. It could enhance the destruction of the rain forest. We already know that climate change is likely to cause die back of the rain forest and it could make that worse. If you then switch that engineering off and stop producing the aerosol and you stop brightening the cloud, the cooling goes away and you get enhanced warming, but the changes in the rain forest could effectively be permanent because it takes many thousands of years for it to recover.

Q84 Dr Iddon: Is this virtual work or actual work?

Dr Pope: It has to be virtual. What we are looking at is not a prediction of the future; it is a projection of what might happen, so it is about looking at the danger inherent in the change that you are making. When we look at predictions of climate change and we look at the worst case outcomes of an unmitigated world, we are looking at the dangers of that happening. We are not looking at something that will definitely happen. In this case we are saying if we made this intervention on climate what is the danger from that?

Professor Lackner: I would argue that we are not ready to do serious climate engineering in this day. I do hear people who say we should not even study it for that reason. I am opposed to that and the answer is, as you have just heard, there are all sorts of side-effects and I think it is therefore very important that we do basic research and most of this will, by its nature, be virtual. It is important to do that because if there is a crisis we will not have time to do it and we might go down a road which might be potentially far more dangerous because we refused to look at it earlier. It is better to know what the consequences would be so that when there is a crisis we know how to act because in a crisis we will take the easy way out of whatever it may be, even if it turns out to be a bad idea.

Professor Caldeira: If we take the risk of dangerous climate change seriously and the risk of a climate emergency seriously, if a climate emergency did occur there could be great pressure on politicians to do something right away. Transforming our energy system and reducing greenhouse gas emission takes a long time, whereas it is thought that we could put dust in the stratosphere within a few years and start changing climate right away. If it turns out that these proposals do not really reduce climate risk, but merely create new forms of risk, there could be political pressure to do something right away and then we do something that is a big mistake and so it is important to do the research now, even if it is just to show that these proposals do not really make sense. I would point out that while these simulations have shown that climate engineering is unlikely to reproduce the status quo ante, nearly every simulation has shown that there is the potential to reduce overall amounts of climate change.

Q85 Dr Gibson: There are still arguments, are there not, about the models to use for albedo enhancement and so on. You are not agreed on one model but on several and scientists are arguing about particular models. Is that the state of affairs?

Dr Pope: There are obviously uncertainties in the science and I think this was discussed earlier. All of the models show that climate is warming. They all share very many characteristics. What they differ in is the degree of the change and the details of the regional change. By using a number of different models that make different assumptions about the science, you can actually look at the range of possible outcomes and we are now able to start looking at the probabilities of different outcomes so that we can assess risk. It is really about risk assessment. No prediction of the future can give you an absolute prediction of any sort. What we are really doing is assessing risk.

Q86 Dr Gibson: So you need that variability.

Dr Pope: We do, yes.

Q87 Dr Gibson: What is your interaction with academic centres and commercial organisations?

Dr Pope: Our interaction with academic centres is very strong.

Q88 Dr Gibson: Which ones?

Dr Pope: Let me explain how a climate model works. No one centre anywhere in the world has all of the expertise that is required to develop an earth system model. We have to work very closely with people in the academic community. We work very closely with people in the UK, for example, experts on the biology of the oceans, experts on the land surface, and we have joint projects. We are formalising that much more mainly through the Natural Environmental Research Council and the universities in many parts of the UK get funding from there.

Q89 Dr Gibson: Am I right that the Tyndall Centres are ripe within university structures?

Dr Pope: The Tyndall Centre is a distributing centre of researchers across the university sector with its hub in the University of East Anglia. They are not really involved in climate modelling.

Q90 Dr Gibson: I never know the difference between you and the UEA. It is either you or the UEA in The Guardian first. You seem to be saying very similar things.

Dr Pope: We say very similar things because of the broad consensus. If you look at the IPCC report there is a consensus of all scientists but the structure of the work that we do is very different. It is very complementary.

Q91 Dr Gibson: What about commercial interests?

Dr Pope: The Met Office does a small amount of work for commercial organisations but certainly not in this area.

Q92 Dr Gibson: Is it insurance companies?

Dr Pope: That kind of thing.

Q93 Dr Gibson: Or really that kind of thing? The scope of the Environmental UEA was to work with Norwich Union in the beginning. I remember it well because they wondered what the weather was going to be like in Pakistan in 20 years' time. Do you have that kind of interaction?

Dr Pope: We have some interaction with the insurance industry and a lot of interaction with the energy industry, for example.

Q94 Dr Gibson: Do you feel that your work is independent from what they want?

Dr Pope: All of our scientific research is published and is independent.

Q95 Dr Gibson: Is it funded by them?

Dr Pope: Not work in climate change, no, or in this sort of area.

Q96 Dr Gibson: But in other areas?

Dr Pope: In other areas, yes.

Q97 Dr Gibson: How much?

Dr Pope: I am not sure of the exact figures but we can get that for you.

Professor Salter: I wanted to say something about the particular study that Dr Pope mentioned. What they did was to pick the three most sensitive areas in the world for doing the cloud albedo change and put a very large stimulus into those. This produced some interesting effects in other places as well as what you would expect to get locally. They were not quite the same as the predictions from another model that was done in America at Boulder. One of the differences was that they used what is called a "slab" ocean model whereas the Boulder one allowed the ocean to respond to what you had done to the air above it. The comparison with what we would like to do compared with what they have analysed is much more like somebody who says he thinks he can cure back pain with the right kind of massage and this is tested out by a terrible punch in the solar plexus. We would not want to do the distribution of the spray in that particular way. We are not surprised that it produced funny things in other places. I think what you do depends on where you do it and the time of year that you do it. I would love to see an experiment where I did one thing on one side of the pacific and then on the other and see how I could adjust this musical instrument to produce nice chords rather than the first rather nasty sound that we got when we just did that to it.

Q98 Chairman: I am getting quite depressed now. I am sorry, Professor Lackner, it is a feature of my personality, but I expected this afternoon there to be a great deal more enthusiasm for geo-engineering coming over. Professor Lackner, there has been a number of companies in the United States who actually have seen that they can make a profit out of putting iron filings into the sea. For instance, Climos, a company that is still trading in the United States, believes that they can actually make a profit there. Do you think that any of these commercial companies have a hope in hell of making a profit out of this particular geo-engineering technique if, in fact, carbon starts trading on the world markets?

Professor Lackner: If your goal is to put sulphate in the atmosphere I do not see how you are going to do that.

Q99 Chairman: Let's put iron into the oceans. Is that going to bring me a return on my investment?

Professor Lackner: In this particular case I doubt it because the environmental consequences are hard to understand but, if you start getting into carbon capture and storage more broadly, I think it is very likely that people can make money provided there is the political will to put a price on carbon. I do believe you have already started that in Europe successfully, so it is possible to build things around this model but you have to show the carbon and you have to put it somewhere and demonstrate that it is indeed put away. The particular issue you raised with the iron fertilisation is: is it really put away, or is it coming back in 20 years from now? What are the environmental consequences of doing it? I do believe there is a large spectrum of options. Maybe I am biased because I am involved in one of them, but capturing carbon dioxide in a power plant or from the air by biomass, or by chemical means, is feasible and does not have to have a big environmental impact. In that sense we can be enthusiastic that the world can move towards a zero carbon energy infrastructure which may still, to a large extent, be driven by fossil fuels. This is quite possible and quite real. Frankly, it has to be what we do because it cannot keep going up every year for the next 150 years. This is the trajectory we are on and even holding that rise constant requires drastic changes in our energy infrastructure, so it is absolutely necessary that we focus on carbon capture and storage in managing the carbon cycle. I think there is no way around that and it is feasible and possible.

Q100 Chairman: If we leave carbon sequestration to one side as a technology, because I think most of us would accept that that is a very sensible technology to use, are there any other geo-engineering solutions that you feel have a commercial potential, Professor Caldeira, which ultimately might drive this science?

Professor Caldeira: I think there are potential areas of research where there could be co-benefits. One example, and this might also sound as far out as climate engineering, but the number of people looking at the potential for extracting wind energy from high altitude winds where the wind is much stronger and blows more steadily, one of the big challenges of that is maintaining a tethered platform at altitude. This could not only affect high altitude wind power, but if you are going to disperse particles up high you would like a platform there; also to recharge electrically powered surveillance planes you might want a platform up there also. There might be research into maintaining high altitude platforms that could have co-benefits where climate engineering would be one of the benefits. I would like to take the opportunity to comment on your point about the lack of enthusiasm here. I think that thoughtful people are not enthusiastic about climate engineering. Thoughtful people would like us to see deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and see those reductions soon. It is really a certain sense of despair that we are not seeing those cuts quickly that is pushing us to consider these things. I really look at Klaus' proposals as a form of carbon capture and storage and personally I would not classify what Klaus Lackner is researching as geo-engineering.

Q101 Ian Stewart: There are bodies like the Tyndall Centre who argue that attention needs to be paid to the phasing in of schemes in relation to geo-engineering running alongside other abatement measures. As I understand it, Professor Salter, amongst others, has argued that it may even be too late to deploy geo-engineering technologies in line with this. Bearing that in mind, can you say whether we still should go ahead with the development of geo-engineering schemes? If so, do we have the skills in the undergraduates and graduates that would allow us to do that?

Professor Lackner: If your question is with respect to manipulating the climate, I do not think we have the skills to do this today. We should learn about it and we should have it ready in case we need it, but I would very much view that as an effort of last resort. We cannot solve the problem. We cannot stop the CO2 from accumulating by changing the climate and I would argue that this is such a complex system that you really do not want to do that unless you really have no choice left. If the glaciers in Iceland are falling into the ocean maybe you have no choice, but you should not think of this as the way you stabilise the system. That, in a way, answers your previous question. I do not expect people to make money out of the Fire Department so I really do not expect people to make money out of those kinds of geo-engineering efforts.

Professor Salter: The most urgent thing is to try to save the Arctic icecap because, if we lose that, we have now got another very large input of warming coming in from the sun. I think that is particularly urgent. The ice is vanishing much more quickly than the first studies of climate change predicted; it really is going frighteningly fast. It is also possible that if we get very large amounts of methane released from the seabed in the Arctic, and also from the permafrost, that they could take over from carbon dioxide as the main driver for global warming and then it would not matter how much carbon we reduced, we would still have a climate change problem. I would rather have it available too early than too late.

Professor Caldeira: To address the moral hazard issue from before, it is not clear what an ethical course of action would be. If we did find that the sea ice is melting and threatening polar bears and arctic ecosystems with extinction and Greenland is sliding into the sea, is it better to say let's have that ecosystem go extinct, let's lose Greenland and that will be a good motivator for people to reduce emissions, or do you say no, we actually care about these ecosystems, we care about Greenland and maybe we should put some dust in the stratosphere to prevent this from happening while we are working on reducing emissions. I do not think the ethical and moral high ground is necessarily to say let's allow environmental destruction to proceed unimpeded while we are trying to reduce emissions.

Q102 Ian Stewart: Professor Caldeira, let's take this example that Professor Salter has given and you have carried on with. If we were to address that issue, how long would it take us to develop the geo-engineering and how much would it cost? Does anybody have any idea?

Professor Caldeira: Nobody really knows but the estimates in terms of cost are in the order of, within a factor of ten, a billion dollars a year. It is the low cost - I am thinking now of dust in the stratosphere scheme - of this that makes it somewhat frightening because it might be so cheap that people might want to do it because it is cheap and easy. I think within a few years we could start getting the stuff up there using aeroplanes or artillery shots or something while lower cost strategies are developed. It is something that could be deployed at relatively low cost and relatively quickly. The question is are there unanticipated damage or even anticipated damage that doing that would create? It is important to do the research up front so that if you do find that there are environmental consequences of global warming that you would like to prevent using these approaches then you are not just creating bigger problems and that is why we need the research.

Q103 Ian Stewart: Is there a technology that seems to hold the most promise in relation to these matters?

Dr Pope: I wanted to come back to the point that Professor Caldeira made that what we need to be concentrating on is removing the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Whether that is by reducing emissions or removing them artificially, those are the key to solving the problem. On the point about climate engineering - trying to alter the climate to compensate and of course there is the question of unintended consequences - many of the changes that we are talking about are temporary. If we put aerosol into the troposphere, for example, to seek clouds it only stays in the atmosphere for a couple of weeks, so you have to keep putting more aerosol in. If you put aerosol into the stratosphere it stays much longer, perhaps for a couple of years, but you still have to keep putting the aerosol in. When you put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere it stays around for hundreds of years. If you are going to use geo-engineering as a solution you have got to keep doing it for hundreds of years because as soon as you stop doing it the warming goes up again, so either you have to decrease the emissions much more quickly or you have to put up with even higher warming. You have to bear that in mind in looking at the consequences.

Q104 Chairman: We are asking you to stargaze now in terms of which of the geo-engineering techniques that have been mooted so far if you were a government minister would you be urging resources to be put into? You have a new President, Ken. What would you ask him to do?

Professor Caldeira: First of all, if I was the new President I would be putting a small fraction of my total effort into climate engineering, but within that effort putting small dust particles into the stratosphere seems to be the most promising and cost-effective approach and I would also put some resources into looking at the sorts of things that Steve Salter has been talking about. I would also be hesitant to pick winners at an early stage. It is important to fund a broad diversity, a wide portfolio, of research options and not think that we have already thought of the best approach or even thought of the most important negative consequences that could occur.

Professor Salter: I would agree completely with that. I think we might need to have all of them. In particular, we might want to have the widespread effect that you can get from stratospheric aerosols where they are doing a very big area which you might, in hi-fi terms, describe as a woofer. You might also want to have a tweeter, which is the local effect we can get from treating clouds locally. We might have the Arctic ice to recover; we might have a particular coral reef, perhaps the Great Australian Barrier Reef where we focus particular amounts of cooling in one particular sea area so that the water that flows from there keeps the coral. At the moment, however, I would be very hesitant to attack any scheme that I did not know a great deal more about than I do now.

Professor Caldeira: May I amend my statement that I would also fund the kind of work that Klaus Lackner is doing but I would fund it out of a carbon capture and storage programme because I would not consider it climate engineering.

Q105 Chairman: The last word to you, Professor Lackner.

Professor Lackner: I would emphasise the carbon capture and storage and I would advise against large scale experiments until we really understand how it works. We are embarking on something mankind might do over the next 200 years but I doubt that we really understand what we are doing here.

Dr Pope: Of all the solutions that people might want to look at, it is very important to look at all of the consequences of any solution that people might come up with, so I would not advocate anything in particular. It is important to try and work out what those unintended consequences might be so that we are in the best position to make decisions.

Chairman: On that note of unanimity, could we thank you very much indeed Professor Klaus Lackner from Columbia University, it has been a pleasure to have you on the video-link; to thank Professor Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution, thank you for coming to see us this afternoon; to Professor Stephen Salter, the University of Edinburgh, thank you very much indeed, and last but by no means least, Dr Vicky Pope from the Met Office. We are in your debt for joining us today.

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Ken Caldeira

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Nov 21, 2008, 8:06:19 PM11/21/08
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I tried to get them to add the following footnote to my testimony, but it looks like I was not successful in this endeavor:

It should be noted that a climate emergency could occur far sooner than generally recognized. Arctic sea ice has been declining more rapidly than had been foreseen. Some scientists believe that we may already be committed to losing much of the Greenland ice sheet, committing us to several meters of sea level rise. There is also a risk that large amounts of methane could be emitted by thawing permafrost in Siberia, accelerating global warming. Thus, it might be that environmental risk reduction would require deployment of climate engineering sooner rather than later. Consequently, there is a high degree of urgency to do the research now to understand potential options for reducing these risks. Emissions reductions can reduce longer-term risks, but cannot significantly reduce climate risks we face over the next decade or two. We would be remiss if we did not address this near-term risk reduction with a high degree of urgency.
--
===============================
Ken Caldeira
Department of Global Ecology
Carnegie Institution
260 Panama Street
Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 7212; fax: +1 650 462 5968

kcal...@stanford.edu
kcal...@ciw.edu

http://dge.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/labs/caldeiralab/



*** Please don't read this line of text unless you really need to ***
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John Nissen

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Nov 25, 2008, 10:33:28 AM11/25/08
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Here is the uncorrected transcript for 17th November:
 
 
John
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Alvia Gaskill

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Nov 25, 2008, 11:18:26 AM11/25/08
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Here is the entire transcript.  Sometimes links go bad or cannot be accessed.  Now, someone with enough time and patience can go back and compare the transcript to the actual testimony.  As one who has been through lengthy depositions, I can tell you that generally the transcript mirrors the oral testimony about 85% of the time, with the most egregious errors being reversing what was said, e.g I said yes, transcript has me saying no and confusing who said what.  That is the reason that these are "uncorrected transcripts," to give the witnesses an opportunity to correct any errors in the transcript, but not to expand upon it or change it materially.  Based on my reading of the first half of the first day's proceedings, I think the transcript fairly reflects the views of the witnesses as I know them.
 

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1202-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES, SCIENCE AND SKILLS COMMITTEE

(INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES, SCIENCE AND SKILLS

SUB-COMMITTEE ON GEO-ENGINEERING)

 

GEO-ENGINEERING

 

Monday 17 November 2008

DR PHIL WILLIAMSON, PROFESSOR NICK JENKINS, DR TIM FOX

and PROFESSOR STEVE RAYNER

 

RT HON LORD DRAYSON, JOAN RUDDOCK MP

and PROFESSOR BOB WATSON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 74

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.

 

2.

Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

 

3.

Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.

 

4.

Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

5.

Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament:

W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, 45 Great Peter Street, London, SW1P 3LT

Telephone & Fax Number: 020 7233 1935

 


Oral Evidence

Taken before the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee

(Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Sub-Committee on Geo-engineering)

on Monday 17 November 2008

Members present

Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair

Dr Ian Gibson

Dr Brian Iddon

Mr Gordon Marsden

________________

Witnesses: Dr Phil Williamson, Research Councils UK; Professor Nick Jenkins, Royal Academy of Engineering, Dr Tim Fox, Institution of Mechanical Engineers; and Professor Steve Rayner, University of Oxford, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Could I welcome our first panel of witnesses to the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Sub-Committee looking at geo-engineering, two oral sessions looking at an emerging discipline of geo-engineering. Welcome, Dr Tim Fox, from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, welcome Tim, Professor Steve Rayner from the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, welcome to you again, Dr Phil Williamson from NERC, on behalf of RCUK, welcome to you, Phil, and last but by no means least an old friend of the Committee and a past adviser, Professor Nick Jenkins from the University of Cardiff, who is here on behalf of the Royal Academy of Engineering, but hopefully on his own account as well. This is a very interesting short inquiry, gentlemen, which the Sub-Committee is looking at in terms of geo-engineering. I wonder if I could start with you, Professor Rayner, to ask you if you could in a nutshell define geo-engineering for us and see if your colleagues agree?

Professor Rayner: I am not sure, actually, I am the best qualified to define the field since I am actually a social scientist rather than an engineer, but I take it basically to encompass a very wide range of technological options which could be brought in to being to counter either the processes or the effects of climate change, largely either by changing the radiated balance of the atmosphere or alternatively by extracting carbon from the atmosphere. That is a fairly conventional distinction, I think. I would like to lay across that a different distinction, which is between what I would describe as interventions which are designed to tune or tinker with eco-systems and interventions which are actually hard engineering interventions. If you actually lay that distinction across the former distinction, you actually end up with four quite distinctive types of geo-engineering options with very different characteristics, I think, and certainly very different implications for management and governance and public acceptability.

Q2 Chairman: Professor Jenkins, you are an engineer so perhaps you would either agree or disagree with that?

Professor Jenkins: I am happy to agree with that definition, which as I understand it accords with, if you like, the terms of reference of the Royal Society's inquiry.

Dr Williamson: Agreement there.

Dr Fox: Yes, I agree with that.

Q3 Chairman: All right. So we have now got a definition. Professor Jenkins, last week when we had two experts from the States giving evidence before us they made a very clear distinction between indirect carbon sequestration, which they did not regard as geo-engineering, and those aspects of other things which you are actually doing to manipulate, if you like, the earth's eco-system, or in fact been able to put in safeguarding elements. Do you agree with that sort of rough definition?

Professor Jenkins: No, I come back to Professor Rayner's view, if I interpret that correctly, of really these two dimensional matrix with both reducing solar radiation and indirect carbon sequestration but through these two routes, one of engineering and the other manipulating the eco-systems. I would have thought that where one is in the subject at the moment, to maintain that breadth would be helpful.

Q4 Chairman: Any disagreement with that on the panel?

Professor Rayner: Not in the least, and actually I would caution against narrowing it because I think we are quite accustomed to climate change being a field in which political battles get fought out in scientific surrogates, and I am afraid that there are very strong partisan views within various parts of the scientific and engineering community as to which of these kinds of options they favour and which they hold in disfavour. So I think it is actually very important to keep a broad view of the range.

Dr Fox: At the holistic overview level, I think I would certainly agree with that for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Carbon sequestration, in the sense of removing from power stations the source of emissions and finding a storage for those, could in some definitions be regarded as a mitigation approach and a mitigation strategy, but if you step back and look at the overall definition of geo-engineering then carbon sequestration from power stations could be regarded as a geo-engineering approach.

Professor Rayner: Although I think we are talking here about actual carbon removal and sequestration by air capture, are we not?

Q5 Chairman: Yes, indirectly in that sense. Dr Williamson?

Dr Williamson: The other area of potential sort of overlap or confusion is in re-forestation and the agricultural policy and whether or not that is global in its implications. I think the "geo" of geo-engineering has to be a global approach and to a certain extent it relates back to the governments and who takes the action, whether or not one is removing a pollution at source or trying to come afterwards and then trying to put things right afterwards. On the whole, the geo-engineering is something afterwards, saying, "Here is a problem. What are we going to do with it?" rather than stopping the problem in the first place.

Chairman: Okay, that is a fairly broad definition there. I will come on to Ian Gibson.

Q6 Dr Gibson: What about public finance? Is there much public finance going into this area, geo-engineering?

Dr Williamson: Very little directly from the research councils but, as from the submission, there is a lot of relevant research which is funded by EPSRC and ARC in terms of the fundamental knowledge which is necessary, and very, very roughly a figure of £50 million per annum is in the category if this is geo-engineering relevant, but in terms of absolutely directly saying, "This is money to support geo-engineering research," up until now I do not think we have actually funded any research grants or studentships, but the EPSRC has put aside £3 million for next year's spend on this geo-engineering ideas factory, which is an exercise to encourage proposals in the area initially of a disciplinary nature and so although it is EPSRC funded, other environmental and social science work would be considered, and that is for next year.

Q7 Dr Gibson: When is that meeting taking place?

Dr Williamson: I do not think the dates have been decided, but provisionally autumn 2009.

Q8 Dr Gibson: Do you think that is a long time in the future?

Dr Williamson: Not that long in the sense that then it could take the benefit of the Royal Society report, which will be reporting next summer, and also for these meetings they have a sift through of proposals of interest beforehand and at that meeting they then make the decisions of what is to be funded, so there is not another year before the results.

Q9 Dr Gibson: You are an old hand. Do you think the money is going to be around then, in 2009? Do you think you should be pressurising them now to get the money now? Research councils have got a kind of reputation for moving things about a bit.

Dr Williamson: I think this is pretty firm. It may be that there might be the possibility of more funding coming in from other sources to supplement that.

Q10 Dr Iddon: We have had some pretty whacky ideas like trillions of mirrors in the sky, sun shades to protect the polar caps, you name it, artificial trees - CO2 in, oxygen out - spraying salt into the atmosphere, and today more realistic things like carbon capture and storage. What are the top priorities for the researchers in this area? What are we concentrating on? If funding is going in, where will it go in?

Dr Fox: From an engineering perspective, we really do need to try to filter out these potential approaches and to look at those which have a real practical potential to be applied. What really needs to be done is to create a listing, a ranking if you like, of the risks associated with the projects and the possibilities of the project's benefits and for engineering teams to look at these and to assess the feasibility of these, the practicality of these, the costs and risks associated with implementation and deployment to enable us to make those initial assessments and recommendations as to which solutions might offer potential should geo-engineering be regarded as a route which we need to go down. There has been little, if none, engineering assessment of these solutions.

Q11 Chairman: When will that be done, Tim, do you think?

Dr Fox: We really need the scientific community initially to sort out an order of merit, if you like, for these solutions so that the engineering community and the engineering profession can pick those up and look at them. So a first step from the scientific community is to really come forward with the solutions which are really viable from a scientific potential point of view and with regard to an understanding of any unforeseen consequences or risks associated with those. We, within the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, are already beginning to try to make some initial assessments of the feasibility of some of these systems through our young membership by organising a competition and engaging our young membership in looking at these, but we really need some guidance from the scientific community as to which ones offer the most scientific potential for us to do a really detailed professional feasibility assessment.

Professor Rayner: Could I suggest that the assessment of feasibility needs to be extended to consider the socioeconomic, legal and institution implications as well. For example, ecosystem tinkering or tuning approaches such as iron fertilization and stratospheric sulphate aerosols are probably quite inexpensive, in fact it has been suggested that these are possibly within the price range of some well-intended individuals of great wealth. As somebody has described, the possibility of a Greenfinger rather than Goldfinger being behind such intervention.

Q12 Dr Gibson: You are not talking about Sir Richard Branson, are you?

Professor Rayner: On the other hand, they are ones which from the public's point of view would be likely to raise significant issues of concern about the unwanted environmental side-effects, and there is a point of view which says that tinkering with the ecosystem is the problem and further tinkering is not the solution. I am not saying that I agree with that, I am just trying to put forward what some of the considerations were. On the other hand, the space mirrors technologies that we have talked about will probably be very expensive and could probably only be implemented by nation states with access to the kind of heavy lift and launch technology. Mechanical air capture - there seems to be disagreement about the relative costs of that. We can also think about financing. To push Ian's question a bit further beyond the research stage, both iron fertilization of oceans and mechanical air capture, in other words going down the carbon removal dimension, things which could conceivably be funded within a carbon pricing framework, whether you favour a carbon tax or cap and trade to drive the price, it is very difficult to see how that mechanism could be used to fund measures to alter the radiated balance. There are all kinds of institutional, economic and potential legal implications. There are concerns that iron fertilization might violate things like the London Dunton Convention, the Convention on Biodiversity. So there is a lot of socioeconomic, legal, institutional factors which need to be considered right up front alongside the technical dimensions of feasibility.

Q13 Chairman: That is precisely the basis of my next question, Professor Rayner. These are global problems and I admit they require global solutions, but do we have the global legislation in place to prevent somebody causing a major economic disaster of the kind you have alluded to? Should the legislation come first, before we start tinkering with these?

Professor Rayner: It is very difficult to have the legislation come first because we still have so much indeterminacy about what the actual shape of the technologies will be. It is quite foreseeable that we could design legislation with one set of technologies in mind and find that we accidentally preclude ourselves from developing other alternatives which we might want to pursue.

Q14 Chairman: We are not putting any resources into this area. We have heard from Research Councils UK that they are going to have an ideas factory in 2009, which might in fact bring something forward. All our witnesses last week said it was only private finance that was actually funding their research. If we are not putting anything in and people like the UK Government are not putting anything in, we are not going to have anything on which to base decisions, are we?

Professor Rayner: I think certainly there needs to be a significant investment in the R&D necessary to characterise the technologies, both from their technical dimensions and also the social -

Q15 Chairman: Do you all support that view?

Dr Fox: Yes.

Professor Rayner: But I think we need to go forward with that characterisation in a way which does not put too many constraints on the R&D process. For example, it has been suggested in Europe already that there be a moratorium on fuel tests with iron fertilization outside of coastal waters. Unfortunately, as I understand it, iron fertilisation is not supposed to work in coastal waters and there is not a good legal definition of what constitutes coastal waters anyway. As David Victor, an American political scientist, has pointed out, a moratorium in this area is likely to penalise those nations, companies and individuals who proceed in a socially responsible manner whilst allowing those who are less inclined to be socially responsible to go ahead unrestricted. So a moratorium would not be the answer.

Chairman: Okay, I think you have rightly raised that incredibly important issue, which goes alongside the R&D. I will bring Ian back in specifically on the R&D.

Q16 Dr Gibson: Is this all joined up between different councils and different individuals? I know you as a man who is very concerned about the socioeconomics and they kind of bring you in too late I often think. Are you involved in it right at the beginning? Would it not be better to have a sort of general research grouping to handle all questions at once, including R&D?

Professor Rayner: I would certainly like to see a lot more engagement through the Economic and Social Research Council in funding for social science work in this area. It would be carried out in close collaboration with engineering -

Q17 Dr Gibson: Let us be clear, is there any or is there a lot?

Professor Rayner: At the moment, to my knowledge there is certainly no dedicated funding for geo-engineering from the social science standpoint.

Q18 Dr Gibson: So what is your biggest fear of what might happen? Nano technology, GM, it all comes in, the new technology, and there has been very little development of the socioeconomic ideals, the social settings, the moralities, the ethics, whatever these words all are. What have we learnt from those episodes?

Professor Rayner: Unfortunately, I think we are still in the mode of reinventing the wheel each time a novel technological field comes into view.

Q19 Dr Gibson: Why is that? I am going to probe you a bit. You are a bright guy. Why does that happen? Why do they ignore us?

Professor Rayner: I think there is a lot of reasons. One is that the actual technical fields shift and so there is no much social learning between, say, GM technology and nano technology, although from the social science standpoint you would say a lot of the issues are actually very similar in both cases. So we tend to define things by their technology rather than by the kinds of management and governance challenges which they present. So we need a different cut into the projects.

Q20 Dr Gibson: Why is that? Why does that happen? Is that because scientists are arrogant swine and they do not care about the social implications?

Professor Rayner: No, not in the least, and I would say engineers least of all, who would probably not necessarily be complimented by my saying I regard the best of engineers as being good social scientists, because they have to be, because they have to think of the whole system rather than a narrow technical framing. I think it is largely to do with institutional issues as to how we organise the funding of research, how we organise the scientific research enterprise, how we organise our professional and scientific organisations and professional associations. I think these ways of organising, which we have evolved for perfectly good reasons historically, do not necessarily serve us as well as they might do in confronting these new technologies.

Dr Fox: This is an interesting direction we are heading in with this. Engineering is very much involved today with sustainable approaches and looking at sustainability issues, which do have to bring in the ethics and the social sciences. I wonder, looking at the institutional model here, whether there is potentially a model there for bringing together the multi-disciplinary nature of the geo-engineering project through such an organisation similar to the Tyndall Centre, which has a number of strands of activity going on which are both social science orientated and hard science, if you like, using that term in its colloquial form, and technical and engineering issues. These are all brought together within the framework of the Tyndall Centre and from the Institution's point of view we wonder whether there is an opportunity to add geo-engineering onto the work which the Tyndall Centre is already doing on mitigation and adaptation, to ensure that we do not lose that learning which has already taken place with regard to the social science aspects of mitigation and adaptation.

Q21 Dr Gibson: Have you ever suggested this before to anybody?

Dr Fox: No, this is the first opportunity I have had to bring that forward as a possibility.

Q22 Chairman: Could we get some comments from you, Phil, on that?

Dr Williamson: As far as I am aware, the research councils are not exactly overwhelmed with proposals for geo-engineering, so to a certain extent they react and develop and test ideas which come forward and unless there is a very strong policy driver - and clearly the engineering principle has got to be sound, but the problem with the spread of ideas is that they go in all sorts of different directions and they have not satisfactorily yet passed the first hurdle of even the theoretical analysis, is this viable from an engineering point of view, is it viable from an environmental point of view, and then for the governance issues, and although one has got to consider those as a package you have got to have ticks in all those boxes.

Q23 Chairman: I thought you were involved with blue skies research at the Research Council. Should you not be promoting some of these things and actually saying, "These are the great challenges"?

Dr Williamson: The blue skies research is finding out how the system works and how clouds form, how the ocean works, how the system interacts and that then gives, from the ERSC side of things, the response to an engineering manipulation. The blue skies part on engineering is a little bit different because then it is sort of saying, "What could we do?" But the proposals have got to come into the system in the first place.

Q24 Dr Gibson: Suppose the Tyndall Centre idea caught fire. Who would implement it? Who would make it happen?

Dr Fox: I think government policy through the Research Council would have to drive the initial seed development of that. One thing I would like to bring to the table from the engineering industry's point of view is that if industry, the commercial sector of the engineering industry, sees that government policy is moving research spend and research initiatives into the geo-engineering area and looking at the feasibility of some of these geo-engineering systems, then commercial companies in their own research and development departments will start to invest sums of money in doing their own initial assessments and blue skies research activities to try and second-guess the market opportunities which might arise out of the policy which is being pursued. If I might offer an example of this, the aerospace industry has for many years been continuing studies on second generation supersonic aircraft on the basis that that might become a transport policy of government at some stage in the future. So companies do not want to fall behind in the development of their tools and capabilities and it really needs a small investment essentially on the part of government to engender some momentum into bringing geo-engineering into the policy framework as a potential direction, and that momentum will carry forward into industrial engineering activities at the commercial level to prepare for that potential market.

Q25 Dr Gibson: We are meeting two ministers and Bob Watson next after you guys. What would your question be to make this happen, because they are government in that sense? What would you say to them, "Pull your finger out"?

Dr Fox: Yes, speaking colloquially. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers supports investment in research and development at the feasibility level of geo-engineering approaches. There are two reasons for that, if I might bring those forward. The first reason is that we need to prepare our technical community to potentially deploy these systems, but secondly, as a country, as a nation we need to be technically informed to participate in any international discussions or bilateral national discussions, or indeed discussions with individual private entrepreneurs who want to bring geo-engineering solutions forward to shape the very legislative framework which Professor Rayner has been describing.

Q26 Dr Gibson: Have the venture capitalists talked to you yet?

Dr Fox: No, they have not, but of course there is great potential for some organisation such as Richard Branson's Virgin carbon challenge to potentially take a geo-engineering approach on board. The difficulty is that as a nation we potentially would be uninformed in the discussion and the debate around that solution or approach if we have not done some initial feasibility and research work at the engineering technical level.

Q27 Dr Gibson: Could you do this without venture capitalists? I say that because I have just had a meeting with them, and by God they know what they are doing - so they say!

Dr Fox: There are two different technical dimensions of geo-engineering, one which is indirect carbon sequestration and the other which is essentially tinkering with natural systems. The carbon-based approach has the potential to be of interest to venture capitalists because there is potentially a carbon market in which they can operate. The other approach, which is a little bit more globally esoteric in a sense, has less opportunity, I think, for a commercial venture capitalist intervention.

Professor Rayner: I just want to say that there are at least two firms which have been looking at iron fertilization, one of which has already gone bust, Planktos. The problem is that venture capitalists usually look for a return on round about a three year timeframe of investment. We are looking here at technologies that are not really going to be available to produce those kinds of returns, so there certainly is a very important role for government, public support, to look into the feasibility of the technologies.

Q28 Dr Iddon: Richard Branson, as we have just heard, has thrown down the gauntlet with the Virgin Earth Challenge, a prize of US$25 million there for the grabbing from some keen entrepreneur. What difference has throwing that gauntlet down made? That challenge was made in February 2007 and we are well over a year on, nearly two years on now.

Professor Rayner: The problem is, that does not fund research. That is the prize at the end, so you have got to have sufficient capital to invest up front before you are even in the running for the prize.

Q29 Dr Iddon: I understand that, but has just throwing the gauntlet down produced a set of ripples?

Professor Jenkins: It seems to me that the position we are in is still very opaque. We have a very wide range of technical options, which then have very far-reaching economic and social consequences and I think the challenge of, for example, the EPSRC sandpit which is coming up is with their limited funding to get an appropriate spread so that we can actually move towards - I will not use the word "ranking" but at least some form of assessment of these options. I personally am rather nervous of ranking technologies at this early stage. I think some are clearly in the potentially interesting area and some are in the longer term area, so that is fine, but to expect a ranking to come out I think is too optimistic.

Q30 Dr Iddon: But that is not an answer to the question. The question was, has Richard Branson made any difference to this field?

Professor Jenkins: No, I do not believe it has made any difference at the moment because of this uncertainty at the technological and other areas.

Q31 Dr Iddon: Can we generally agree that?

Dr Williamson: I think he has made a difference in that he has brought it into the public arena more and it has been reported in the press and there is generally more awareness of it. It is embedded in the consciousness a little bit more.

Dr Fox: I think the difficulty with the Branson challenge is that there is a need in there to show that the implementation will not have any unforeseen side-effects or consequences and that is a rather difficult challenge to meet with regard to the climate science involved in getting to that answer without that specialist knowledge.

Q32 Dr Iddon: Okay. This is one for you, Professor Jenkins. I am going to give you a quote from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. They, in their submission to us, said: "geo-engineering is an area of activity that has to date received little serious attention from the engineering profession". That was a quote in the submission made by Dr Fox's organisation. You seem to be a bit more open than that in your attitude to geo-engineering in that the Royal Academy of Engineering seems to think there should be funding in this area now?

Professor Jenkins: Yes, I think in terms of research funding and to try to get a better understanding of the area and its consequences there is little doubt that that would be very desirable. I do not think that conflicts particularly with the idea that commercial, industrial and engineering organisations have not been active in this area because it is such an early stage for them.

Q33 Dr Iddon: Yet, Dr Fox, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers chose this topic, geo-engineering, to try and excite young engineers in a competition. Will the young engineers who take part in that competition, if they have not already done so - and if they have, did they do this - consider the social and ethical issues surrounding these technologies as well as the "Can we do it?" attitude?

Dr Fox: Yes. Within the framework of the competition, which is indeed underway as we speak, we have a clause in the rules of the competition for the participants that they must consider some of the ethical and moral issues as part of their wider look at the sustainability issues associated with the particular technology they are bringing forward. The competition is very much geared around the engineering feasibility, that is the prime role of the competition, and it is looking to engage and excite young graduates in thinking about this potential field of mechanical engineering application which they may get involved in at some time in their professional careers, so to begin to take on board the thought processes associated with getting involved in delivering those solutions.

Q34 Dr Iddon: I am going to ask our other guests this afternoon whether young people in general are aware of geo-engineering. I am a scientist, but I must confess that when we began this inquiry I was not aware of all these potential new technologies. I was aware of carbon capture storage, of course, at the hard end of the thing but not the H.G. Wells stuff. I was not aware of that. Do you think your young engineers are aware in general of what is going on in this field?

Professor Jenkins: I think the short answer is, no.

Q35 Dr Iddon: How are you making them aware, Professor Jenkins? Is this one of your aims, to make them aware?

Professor Jenkins: Yes. If I understand the area well, the first initiative was the seminar in Cambridge in 2004. There have been two or three more seminars. This area in the general academic community has not received a high profile so far. I am absolutely open to the idea that it ought to. I think meshing, if you like, the hard engineering questions with these wider societal questions certainly for post-graduate students is entirely desirable and appropriate, so I would absolutely support that. I would absolutely support further seminars, further summer schools, as a way of disseminating these ideas.

Dr Fox: The competition has indeed engendered a lot of enthusiasm and excitement amongst our young members and they are engaging very actively with it. It is in line with our other activities in the educational outreach programmes, which use climate change and sustainability as a vehicle for engaging young people in thinking about engineering as a possible career and a possible professional option. Indeed, we have found that engaging schoolchildren as young as 12 or 13 in thinking about climate change related issues and how engineering can be used to solve those is very, very enthusiastically received by the young people. This year we have some 3,000 children involved in thinking about climate change adaptation in a competition we are running with secondary schools.

Q36 Chairman: Tim, it was interesting that you could not name a single university which actually has a geo-engineering curriculum. There is not one which actually put these things together.

Dr Fox: Yes, I can answer that. Geo-engineering, from an engineering perspective, will rely largely on the existing theories, existing concepts and existing skills which we teach within our mechanical engineering and civil and other engineering disciplines, chemical engineering disciplines. The geo-engineering is an application of the engineering knowledge in the same way that renewable energy systems are an application of mechanical engineering science and other engineering sciences. You do not have to study renewable energy per se to be an engineer in that sector. It is the same with geo-engineering. There will be some specialist areas that we will need to do work on, for example materials potentially that can cope with the chemistry involved, maybe some special development of mooring systems. There will be niche technologies in very much the same way as when the UK went into the North Sea, but fundamentally the underpinning engineering is something that all our undergraduates in all our engineering courses will learn as part of their existing curriculum.

Professor Rayner: Phil, I think with respect, though, your answer sheds some light on Ian Gibson's question earlier as to why we do not seem to get social learning going from these cases of the introduction of one new technology field to another.

Q37 Chairman: This is the point I was going to make to you, Phil, that one of the issues which has come through this inquiry and the main engineering inquiry time after time is that the engineering seems to be still stuck in silos and its ability to be able to connect those silos up and to move forward seems to be holding back engineering. Is that a fair comment?

Dr Williamson: There are courses in environmental engineering, and carbon capture and storage in its sort of technological sense has brought those fields together, and with environmental science courses then there are the applications being considered. It has not come fully together because the ideas are not that well developed.

Q38 Chairman: Going back to Dr Iddon's comment about whacky ideas, I do not know how we expose young engineers to these whacky ideas and let them engage with them, because that surely is something which would excite more people to come into engineering.

Dr Williamson: If they read Scientific American, New Scientist and Nature the ideas are there. They have just got to find out a little bit about them, but it is in the papers and it is pretty general public knowledge. For the last 20 years people have been talking about adding iron to the ocean.

Dr Fox: Two very quick answers. The ethics and the wider social context are very much embedded in a lot of university engineering courses now under the sustainability agenda, which is very much involved in the geo-engineering application agenda. In relation to exciting young people, I think it is very much the responsibility of the professional bodies, such as our learned society the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and indeed the Royal Academy of Engineering and the other institutions, to pursue outreach programmes such as the ones we have done on our Cooling the Planet competition into universities and we find that the undergraduates and postgraduates are very excited about getting involved.

Q39 Dr Gibson: Steve Rayner, what are the potential moral dilemmas in this area, just briefly?

Professor Rayner: I think first of all I would caution against reducing all of the institutional dimensions in relation to these technologies to moral dilemmas. Some of them are about economics, some are about politics, international relations, governance and management, and I am afraid there is a tendency towards what we in the social sciences call "ELS-ification", which is what we do is we take a scientific area, whether it is biotechnology or engineering, and we have the ethical, legal and social implications box and we stick everything in there and it tends to have a very strong ethical component and is not really looking so much at the practical governance issues and certain broader issues of public acceptability, which may not be ethically related but may relate to a whole range of other dimensions. I think, though, with respect to these particular sets of technologies there are at least three positions which one can discern. There is one which I call the utilitarian position, which sees the inexpensive options of iron fertilization, stratospheric sulphate aerosols, as being something which could be readily pursued in a practical way and if the world cannot get its act together to do coordinated mitigation through conventional means then countries could act alone. That is seen as an advantage from that position, but then there is another position which actually is scared witless about the prospect of countries acting alone because of the concerns about the unanticipated side-effects and also this issue I mentioned earlier, that some people view technology as the source of the problem and they are therefore very suspicious of the idea that technology should also be providing the solution. As I say, I do not happen to agree with that point of view, but it is well-known. Then I think there is a third position, which is the one I guess I am broadly sympathetic to, which is that the development of these kinds of technologies are an option which we cannot afford not to develop, although we may not want to necessarily move to implementation. There is a tendency to accept as a last resort. I do wonder, though, why we say "accept as a last resort" because, after all, if mechanical trees do turn out to be good at sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and can do so as cheaply as biological trees, why would we restrict ourselves to implementing them as a last resort unless we have some kind of ethical notion that somehow nature knows better than we do? So there are at least three different, what you might call ethical positions within which this debate is going to play out.

Q40 Dr Gibson: Suppose Paul Baker of the Daily Mail and Prince Charles get together and start talking about this arena of endeavour and just reflect it the way they want to because it is a new, dangerous technology, how will you persuade the public that it is a bona fide pursuit, an investment?

Professor Rayner: I think that is why one has to be developing the institutional apparatus for managing and governing these technologies alongside developing the technologies themselves, and I think it has to be done - and at this point I can only offer generalisations - in a way which engenders public trust, which demonstrates that there are appropriate mechanisms for dealing with liability, in other words for putting things right if they go wrong, and finally for ensuring that there is actually some notion of consent on the part of populations for the implementations of technologies, what I call the TLC factors.

Q41 Dr Gibson: Yes. So how are you going to stop these mad scientists just going ahead and throwing things up in space and ionization, et cetera? You are interested in public dialogue. You want to get the message over to people. You have not published this, have you?

Professor Rayner: With respect, I think that is, to a significant degree, your job. It is a question of what kind of a legislative framework, what kinds of rules under which you want to fund the research and development necessary to bring these technologies to a level of maturity where they can at least be sensibly characterised.

Q42 Dr Gibson: Yes, but we are waiting for you to give us the arguments. You, the bright chaps, have got time, you know.

Professor Rayner: The arguments are fairly simple, I think, which is that if we take the warning of scientists seriously and we are looking to stabilise the atmosphere, say at around 550 parts per million, by the middle of the century given current progress with conventional mitigations we are in grave danger of falling very far short of that goal. Therefore, we may at some point in the future find it necessary to avail ourselves of the option of geo-engineering solutions. There is also the danger, of course, that we might even meet the goals. We might even meet a more ambitious goal of 450 parts per million and then discover that the climate sensitivity is much greater than we have anticipated. Once again, if at that stage we start from scratch and say we are going to develop these technological options from point zero, we are going to miss the boat. So I think there is a very strong argument here which can be made across all three of the positions I outlined, that there is at least an option value in developing and characterising technologies.

Dr Gibson: That is the same argument as nuclear power stations in the eighties.

Q43 Dr Iddon: What do you say to Greenpeace, who say, "We are trying to get people to alter their societal behaviour and to stop producing carbon dioxide," and you guys are telling the general public out there that there is an escape route? Will that not stop people from altering their behaviour?

Professor Rayner: This is the concern that there is a moral hazard involved in developing alternatives, but I would say that we have heard that argument for the best part of two decades with respect to adaptation to climate change, but if we actually start to take adaptation seriously and look at it and analyse it seriously, that we are encouraging people to believe that it is okay to carry on emitting greenhouse gases - I used to live in the southern United States and it is a bit like talking to Southern Baptists about sex education in schools, you know, you do not want to do it because you will encourage the kids to behave badly. So it is the same moral argument. I would argue that we have now reached the stage where the taboo on discussing adaptation has been lifted, but we have lost 10 to 15 years' worth of progress, which is going to condemn tens of thousands at least, if not millions, of poor people in vulnerable situations in developing countries to a very uncomfortable time, to put it modestly. I think we have seen that that moral hazard argument really just is not one which we can afford to give in to with respect to adaptation and we should not give in to it in respect of developing geo-engineering options.

Chairman: I think on that sobering note we will finish this first session. Can I thank very much indeed Dr Tim Fox, Professor Steve Rayner, Dr Phil Williamson and Professor Nick Jenkins. We would have liked to have extended this considerably, but thank you all very, very much indeed.


 

Witnesses: Rt Hon Lord Drayson, a Member of the House of Lords, Minister of State, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills; Joan Ruddock, a Member of the House, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change; and Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave evidence.

 

Chairman: Welcome to our second panel for the afternoon in the IUSS Sub-Committee's work on geo-engineering. Welcome very much indeed, Joan Ruddock MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the new Department of DECC, Professor Bob Watson, the Chief Scientific Adviser at Defra, and Lord Grayson, the Minister of State for Science and Innovation. Welcome to all of you and thank you very much indeed for joining us today. I am going to immediately start by asking Ian Gibson to begin the session.

Q44 Dr Gibson: The Tyndall Centre, which I am sure you have heard often, has suggested that the Government has been in a state of, in their words, "blissful ignorance" when it comes to geo-engineering. Do you agree with that?

Professor Watson: No!

Q45 Dr Gibson: Why not?

Professor Watson: The issues of geo-engineering have been around for a long while. As the previous panel said, iron fertilization has been discussed on and off for at least 20 years. The volcanoes give us a natural experiment in putting aerosols into the stratosphere, so we know effectively what the implications of stratospheric aerosols can be. So I think on the issue of geo-engineering, certainly when I chaired IPCC for the 2001 report we were talking about it from 1997 through to 2001, so I am not at all convinced we are in a state of blissful ignorance.

Q46 Dr Gibson: Right, but what are you doing to fathom the geo-engineering research which comes along? How are you keeping in touch with it in your busy life?

Professor Watson: I think it is a question of whether that is the highest priority at the moment, given scarce resources versus actually putting investment into current technologies and pre-commercial technologies such as carbon capture and storage, IGCC, future generation biofuels. So I would argue at the moment that one of the key issues, which we are doing, is looking to see what the implications through theoretical modelling would be of adding tropospherical aerosols, stratospherical aerosols, particles in outer space, et cetera. So at the moment Defra is clearly not putting any funding into any of the engineering aspects but we have clearly been, as the paper we submitted to you shows, looking to see what the current thinking is of the academic community, what the potential implications are, positive and negative, of different approaches.

Q47 Dr Gibson: Have we got a hope in hell with geo-engineering, do you think, giving us something interesting? Do you believe that at this stage?

Professor Watson: I think it is still worth doing some exploratory theoretical thinking. I think the issue of the artificial trees has positive elements. I do not see that that has negative implications, although you still have to store the carbon dioxide afterwards, so there are some issues of storage. If we go to some of the other areas, on paper there are potential offsets, whether it is tropospherical or stratospherical aerosols, but I would argue the number one priority at the moment is to actually implement a low carbon economy in both the production and use of energy and that would be the number one priority. For example, carbon capture and storage is a crucial technology on which at the moment the rhetoric is way ahead in the world at large of actual implementation. While there is no single bullet technology to move to a low carbon economy, without carbon capture and storage we will never achieve a low carbon economy if the US, India and China continue to use their fossil fuels, given they are so cheap, to produce electricity.

Q48 Chairman: So why are we procrastinating? Why did we fail to deliver on the Peterhead project? This is probably to Lord Drayson rather than yourself, but you must have a view?

Professor Watson: The European Union is talking seriously about trying to do a dozen or so carbon capture and storage pilot studies, which I believe is what we need. I would argue we need somewhere between 10 and 20 pilot studies, both pre and post-commercial, pre and post-combustion, in different types of storage facilities. So I think now is the time to move aggressively forward. It needs international cooperation. I would argue it goes even beyond the EU, it should bring in the US and Japan, but clearly this is something which I think has to be moved quickly. I would call it an Apollo-type programme where you do not do one, learn from it, do a second, learn from it and do a third. We need to go in parallel and try multiple approaches simultaneously.

Lord Drayson: I think that is a very fair comparison and I think it nicely puts into context the real difference in the risk and benefit balance of something such as carbon captured storage against projects which we would consider under geo-engineering. I would say in the case of carbon capture and storage you have got an absolutely pressing need. You have got a certain amount of time for that technology to be delivered in concert with the changes which need to take place in term of the switch, coal-fired power stations. You have also got really quite a significant commercial opportunity. If the UK could convert successful research into this area into a commercially successful sector, it would have global export potential, particularly within China because of the number of coal and oil-fired power stations. If you compare that with geo-engineering, where some of the projects which are being postulated provide real questions of the downside risk, for example upsetting the radiation balance of the planet, incredible estimates of costs, for example, in terms of the reflective shields, as the Professor says, therefore the right thing to be doing is to be spending small to moderate amounts of money in the geo-engineering field, concentrating on the use of computer models, looking in a focused way at projects which have a sort of greater sense of feasibility, for example the artificial trees project, but at the same time really looking harder at how we can accelerate projects which have a real need now in addressing the challenge of climate change, and I think the example of carbon capture and storage is absolutely fair.

Q49 Dr Gibson: What is the role of DIUS in this then?

Lord Drayson: DIUS's role is to make sure that there is a clear link-up between the decisions which are taken under the Haldane Principle by the research councils identifying which projects are supported within research within a strategic focus set by the Government in terms of addressing key challenges which our society faces, an example of that being climate change, clearly, and to make sure that the link-up between the strategic objective at the top and the research input which is being taken at the very early stage gets pulled through into the creation, where we can, through the use of government procurement, through the use of the support for innovative new hi-tech industry, such that as we do the research to find solutions to these problems it does lead, we would hope, to the development of a strong sector around that. I think we really need to be, as we are, putting a lot of effort through the Technology Strategy Board to make sure there is think linkage between government policy, research input and the creation of next generation industry.

Joan Ruddock: Chairman, could I just add something to what has been said? First of all, in relation to Dr Gibson's first question about whether we were completely unaware - which is not his own criticism, I know, he was reporting a criticism, but of course there was an internal paper produced by what was then Defra, which was the result of a lot of discussions which had taken place between the chief scientist and UK experts on the very issue of geo-engineering and it was looking at options for mitigating climate change, so very obviously we have, as a department (Defra and now DECC), taken an interest in this subject and indeed Professor Watson has been a leading light in that. There is a difference between taking an interest in a subject and then concluding that this interest leads you into direct action within the Department. The interest is there, the understanding is there and we are not in any sense unaware, but we have concluded things which do not lead us to a great deal of direct activity, and you may want to come on to that.

Q50 Chairman: We just wanted to ask you that very specific question because we are a little confused now as to where your responsibilities and the new Department for Energy and Climate Change start and where Lord Grayson's responsibilities in DIUS finish, because he has quite rightly claimed in terms of climate change that there is a major responsibility for DIUS. What is it within this particular field of geo-engineering that you are going to deliver? Where do you see your responsibilities?

Joan Ruddock: The question is, are we going to deliver anything? We would have to be convinced that geo-engineering offered us a major lever to tackle and to mitigate greenhouse gases.

Q51 Chairman: Can I just start with the question which Professor Watson left us with, this vision of carbon sequestration? He made a very, very powerful case, I think, about European cooperation. He included Japan and the United States in that and I think we, as a Committee, particularly those of us who did an inquiry into this for a number of years, would totally agree with him. Do you regard carbon sequestration as geo-engineering, in which case why are you not fully supporting that?

Joan Ruddock: Let us make it absolutely clear that we believe carbon capture and storage is going to be a major way forward in terms of mitigating CO2 emissions, so that is very, very clear. That has been the position of Defra and BERR, DECC now, for a very considerable period of time.

Q52 Chairman: Is that geo-engineering?

Professor Watson: I would argue no.

Q53 Chairman: I want to know what the Minister feels within her Department. You are not the Chief Scientific Adviser for DECC yet, are you? Or are you?

Joan Ruddock: But he will do!

Q54 Chairman: He will do? I see. This is moonlighting!

Joan Ruddock: I think whether somebody such as Professor Watson would advise us to consider it geo-engineering or not is not a central issue. I think we are already committed to this concept. We believe that it is the way forward. We understand that China and India in particular, but many other countries as well, will continue burning fossil fuels for decades to come and if they are to do that we have to find some way of capturing those emissions and sequestrating those emissions. So that is absolutely clear, that we believe this is a way forward and we have cooperated in a project with China, we are cooperating with one of the leading lights within the EU and keeping it as part of the 2020 package, and we also of course have our own competition which we are still pursuing.

Q55 Chairman: Can we just put to one side carbon capture and storage? The rest of it you are actually disregarding? You say that that is not of any significance to your Department?

Joan Ruddock: No, I am not saying it is of no significance to the Department. I said it was not leading to immediate action.

Q56 Chairman: And you are not going to do anything about it?

Joan Ruddock: We will have, at the very least, a watching brief. Also, there is work which is going on with the Hadley Centre. There is work which is worth doing, we believe, which is at the level of desk studies, at the level of modelling, and we are more than happy to contribute to that and indeed if there were other partners who seek to go forward then we will be more than prepared to consider whether we should partner with them, but as for the Department, let us make it absolutely clear there are no plans for us to fund research in this field.

Chairman: That is absolutely clear.

Q57 Dr Gibson: Bob Watson, can I ask you, how would you get your advice, what is crap and what is good in this field and what is going somewhere and what is not? How does that come to you?

Professor Watson: Basically the same way as when I chaired the IPCC, and that is bringing together a broad range of experts to assess both theoretically what is possible as to experiments which have already been performed - and there has been a significant number of experiments on iron fertilization. As I have already said, nature itself almost does the experiment, in some respects, partially for us on stratospheric aerosols, so I would bring experts together, some of whom are very positive on some of these approaches, some who are sceptical, and actually access the evidence, just like we did at IPCC. What we did on our short desk study paper was that actually a couple of consultants put it together, but then we sent it probably to about 40 or 50 people to peer review it. As we know, the Royal Society is looking at this particular issue and it would not be surprising to me if the National Academy of Sciences in the US also looked at it, but what would be, in my opinion, quite worthwhile would indeed be a more in depth analysis by the IPCC or a combination of all the major academies of the world, the US with, I would say, the UK, also with China, India and Brazil. So it would indeed be an assessment which had a process which had buy-in from the international science community and the international policy community.

Q58 Dr Gibson: I would like to ask all of you a question about the initiatives which are going on in this field. Have you seen new initiatives that are necessary to drive it faster or get new ideas in there by combining people together, international cooperation, things like that, new ideas coming through, or are you just going to let it tick over?

Lord Drayson: I think the worldwide recognition of the accelerating effects of climate change are leading to a really quite significant development in the whole area of interest of development of the science in this field. I think it is important for us, therefore, in the role of DIUS, with responsibility for the prioritisation of research, to make sure that we continue to invest, although in a modest way, in blue skies research even for the most challenging areas of climate change. Some of the projects which are being postulated under geo-engineering do strike one as in the realms of science fiction with enormous budgets associated with them, the idea of massive shields to reflect the sun's light. However, with the development of computer models, modelling such projects, looking at the possible effects of aerosols, these are things which it is right for us to fund small amounts of money because groups, as you say, Dr Gibson, are developing an interest in this area and it may be that something comes out of this which may be of use. Also, scientists are postulating that there may be some really quite significantly nasty effects which come out of the effects of climate change which can create positive feedback, accelerating the rate of climate change, for example the release of methane from the melting ice, which would suggest that the value of an emergency-type solution in extremis and our views about the relative risk/benefit of such a technology may change in the future. Therefore, I think the balance we are striking at the moment is the right balance. We need to be moderate, keeping a careful eye on this area. It is an area which is developing and something may come out of this, but we must not allow the priority which needs to be taken on the urgent implementation of energy saving or action against climate change, apart from geo-engineering, to be detracted from.

Q59 Dr Gibson: International development. Bob Watson has mentioned the United States academies, and so on. Are there joint papers in this field from different countries? Is the work jointly funded, or is this very much a British effort?

Lord Drayson: This, in common with most areas of science, is an area of international collaboration.

Q60 Dr Gibson: Does that happen for the DECC too, your department, Joan? Does it interact with other departments across the world?

Joan Ruddock: Absolutely. We, as DECC, obviously are involved in major discussions with the IPCC on a sort of constant basis with the UNFCCC as well, because all our work on climate change is clearly currently aimed in the international sphere at getting an agreement at Copenhagen. So there are constant discussions and one of the concerns we have about geo-engineering is that those countries which are not so keen on getting a global agreement in which every country has to make its own efforts in relation to climate change, people who do not want to enter into agreements which mean they have to reduce their emissions, might see this as a means of doing nothing and being able to say, "Science will provide. There will be a way out. If we were just to look in this direction, then ultimately something will come up." Our concern is that although we do not want to dismiss this work, we do not want to be unaware of it, it could be used politically in that way, which would be extremely unfortunate because what we know about engineering is that engineering can provide us with well-tried and trusted solutions to reduce CO2 emissions from a huge range of activities and it is those existing engineering solutions that we seek to promote in the international arena and where we seek, of course, to get technology transfer to those countries which at the moment do not have that opportunity for themselves. So it could be a means of deflecting engineers from the very best work which can be done to help the world community to get such a deal.

Q61 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Could I just briefly ask you, Joan, before I bring in Gordon Marsden, whether in fact in your short time within the new ministry there has been or are plans to have meetings of your Department with DIUS and with Defra, because you all seem to play a key role within this space? Is that work going on?

Lord Drayson: Absolutely, Chairman.

Joan Ruddock: Yes.

Lord Drayson: In fact it is, in part, the purpose and role of the new Committee for Science Innovation, which I will be chairing, to make sure that departmental coordination for tackling these major challenges such as climate change are better coordinated.

Q62 Chairman: Is this issue of geo-engineering likely to be on your agenda?

Lord Drayson: Certainly the issue of climate change and energy is on the agenda. I would think within that carbon capture and storage is a very important theme, and within that I would say the one geo-engineering area which looks to have more relevance and does not cause the international treaty problems which we have mentioned is this area of artificial trees.

Q63 Mr Marsden: I would like to ask one or two questions about the implication of this particular branch of geo-engineering for potential future skills provision in universities and elsewhere. I wonder if I could start by asking you, Lord Drayson, because I know that in September DIUS contacted the Engineering Subject Centre to get a summary of the current and proposed provision of university courses relevant to geo-engineering and that was to look at issues such as delivering modules, research interests, demand for subject development. We understand that DIUS originally asked for that information to be provided by the beginning of October and I would be interested to know what the initial finding from that has been.

Lord Drayson: Our position is that we do not see that there is a need for us to specifically support the skills for geo-engineering because the feedback we have had and the conclusions we have come to are that the skills required for geo-engineering are common to many of the other areas of science related to climate change, for which those skills within all of the branches of engineering are going to be required. So our focus is really to concentrate on developing the skills base within engineering per se to make sure that the provision of courses for those branches of engineering relevant to the aspects of research and provision of solutions and infrastructure for addressing climate change are properly addressed. That is part of the wider government agenda in terms of encouraging an increase in the development of, firstly, pupils studying those subjects at school and the proportion of students going on to study those subjects at university. In all of those areas we are seeing an uptake, so our policies are working. We just need to see them working more quickly and with greater effect.

Q64 Mr Marsden: I understand the point you are making about the link between specific branches of engineering and general awareness and general provision, and of course that was an issue which we discussed previously in the inquiry in relation to nuclear engineering. Given this is a cutting edge area, and obviously you cannot be prescriptive and would not want to be, but do you have any concerns about the current status of what students in universities or schools may or may not be being taught about geo-engineering?

Lord Drayson: I would say that my concern is more that within this country we do not have enough scientists, we do not have enough engineers, period, and therefore what we need to be doing is addressing those issues with real vigour, which is what we are doing. Our analysis of this sub-field of climate change engineering and the particular focus which you are asking me about around geo-engineering is that we have not found that there are any particularly specialist skills for engineers and scientists which are not common to other areas more generally, for which we need to make specific provision. We clearly need to monitor that, but we have not concluded that as yet.

Q65 Mr Marsden: Professor Watson, if I can just turn to you, in your position as Chief Scientific Advisor at Defra you are, presumably, continually on the look out for areas of interesting promising research which may then have the sorts of broader implications we are talking about. What analysis or what reports have you given to Defra so far as to the potential implications of geo-engineering for university and school provision?

Professor Watson: I would actually agree with Lord Drayson. I do not see there are any special skills needed for the types of geo-engineering we are talking about, whether it is iron fertilization, adding tropospheric aerosols, stratospheric aerosols, et cetera. So as we noted earlier, Defra did indeed commission a paper which we then had peer reviewed on the various types of geo-engineering. We did not in that paper look at the skill set needed. We purely looked to see what were the approaches which could be taken, what were the potential benefits, what were the potential negative effects, basically, environmental, social. We did not do a good cost estimate either. So we raised the issue and in six months ago we actually sent our paper to the Royal Society suggesting they might want a more in-depth study, which they are now actually doing. We did not look at the skill set, but as Lord Drayson said, I actually do not see that there will be special skills needed at this moment for these types of projects.

Q66 Mr Marsden: Just a final question, if I may. I understand the way in which you have laid that out, but are you aware of how that approach which you have outlined and Lord Drayson has touched upon compares with the approaches in governments elsewhere - and I am thinking of particularly the evidence session we ad the other week from a couple of distinguished scientists from the United States - for a comparison between the way in which the US, Germany or France may be dealing with these issues?

Professor Watson: To be honest, I am not up to date with what the US is or is not doing on this. I know what they are doing in general on climate research. I used to be in the Whitehouse and I oversaw their programme of basically a couple of billion dollars a year. I have not stayed in touch with what the US is currently doing on geo-engineering though.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Q67 Dr Iddon: Lord Grayson I think I should address the first question to. The Tyndall Centre believes that we should be seriously looking at geo-engineering projects, admittedly as an emergency policy option, in other words plan B, and they come under criticism then from the green organisations, particularly Greenpeace, who believe that would be an admission by Government that they supported geo-engineering of this kind, that mitigation of and adaptation to climate change had actually failed, and Joan Ruddock referred to the political sensitivities. Is it these political sensitivities, under pressure from the green organisations, which are preventing us from investing in any, in this country, geo-engineering research?

Lord Drayson: No, I really do not believe so. I think it is right for people to raise concerns as to where the priorities lie and I think they are right to say that the priority needs to be in addressing those aspects of science which can most have the impact in terms of the risk/benefit equation and make the most sense, but I do not subscribe to the view that you should on purpose put all your eggs in one basket to make sure that you look after that one basket really carefully. I think that is not how sensible science policy should be implemented. I think it is right for us to have a watching brief, as we have described, on these areas of geo-engineering. I think they could rightly be described as an emergency plan B. That does not mean that we should not absolutely put full effort into focusing our investments on plan A. But one never knows. That is the value of pure research and that is why it is right for us to be putting a moderate amount of money into this area, to be focusing on aspects such as modelling where we can learn an awful lot without having to invest too much.

Joan Ruddock: I think there is another aspect to plan B and it is this: if we want the whole of the world community to come together, as we do, to both mitigate climate change and adapt to the climate change which is inevitable then we have to engage and get a huge political consensus behind this, and that is what all our efforts are going towards. We also have to in certain ways produce vast sums of money, which I will not even begin to go into. If plan A has failed, if all that has failed, then there is very little reason to imagine plan B could succeed because most of the sorts of geo-engineering solutions which are being proposed would require international agreement. They could not be done in one country without consequent effects in other countries. Perhaps the simple chemical trees might be in that category, but most of the others we require international agreement. The sums of money which would be required are colossal. So if we have entirely failed to bring the world community together to do the rather simpler things which we already understand very well and we could not get political consensus around them, then it seems to me rather unlikely that plan B offers you the "Get out of jail" card. I think that is a narrow dimension which has not been well explored, perhaps, on geo-engineering solutions, just what an international effort would be required to make the majority of these potential plans come into being.

Q68 Chairman: They are global issues and I suppose that leads me to my next question, which is, is geo-engineering high up on the agenda for world discussions or do we never discuss it at international conferences between politicians?

Joan Ruddock: I am not aware that I am so new in this job that my testimony should not be taken, perhaps, too seriously. I am not aware of politicians discussing these matters at length, although I do know that there have been many meetings at which there have been scientific discussions, working groups, groups of officials, and I, in my limited experience, have heard that such discussions have dealt with ocean seeding for example, for fertilization, which I know has certainly been on the international agenda, but the extent to which politicians have been involved I suspect is limited. I also think that given the absolute necessity to come to some global agreement on climate change, that is probably correct, that scientists should probably not be looking to what I regard as being somewhere down the list of priorities and potentially the plan B, because we need all our energies directed at the plan A, but perhaps Professor Watson will have more knowledge than I do and can tell you rather more.

Professor Watson: I have not taken part in the recent negotiations but when I was the chair of the IPCC, so until six years ago, most of the negotiators looked to the IPCC not only to say what was the state of knowledge with respect to climate change, what the impacts could be, but they would also look to the IPCC to talk about mitigation approaches and the economic cost. The IPCC, in the fourth assessment report, basically said that the geo-engineering options put forward to date remain largely speculative with little known about their effectiveness and cost, with the risk of unknown side-effects, and they looked at ocean fertilization, they looked at reflectors in outer space between the earth and the sun, they looked at reflecting aerosols in the atmosphere, changing the albedo of clouds, et cetera. So they did not, by the look of it, look at artificial trees, but they looked at most of it and clearly with that relatively negative report but with, at the same time, their statement that we do have cost-effective technologies in both production and use of energy to try to get on a pathway to 450, 500 parts per million and the need, which they analyse in great length, of what technologies could you bring to the marketplace within, say, the next decade (i.e. carbon capture and storage, future generation biofuels). With that sort of statement by the IPCC it is not likely it would have been a major discussion point by the politicians of the world. They will have put their effort, in my opinion where they should, on how to transform to a low carbon economy.

Joan Ruddock: I have been passed a note, so if you like I can tell you that apparently there have been no discussions in the UNFCCC on geo-engineering, for the record.

Q69 Chairman: That is very helpful. Thank you very much. There is little commercial activity in this area at the moment, but four companies the Committee is aware of Planktos, a Californian company, has actually gone under, but Climos is still in existence in California, Atmocean in Sante Fe, also in the United States, and a company in Australia called Ocean Nourishment Corporation appears to be active in this area, all operating in a marine sense. If there were companies like that about to spin out in Britain, I guess the question is, would we (i.e. the Government) support them because I know that Linda Gilroy, who is the Member of Parliament for Plymouth and is aware of the marine scientists efforts to use algae to accelerate the carbon cycle in the sea and they would very much, I think, like to break out as a spin-off company in the not too distant future. Would the Government support any companies which want to spin out in that way?

Lord Drayson: Yes, particularly because Plymouth in that region has shown a really excellent track record both in the area of marine research but also the way in which a cluster of marine research-related spin outs and commercial enterprises have been developed. We also recognise that there is overlap between different types of marine research with this area. So although we would not see at the moment that the commercial opportunity for geo-engineering projects is well-established, we do see that there would be a sound commercial business plan based around a general research area, which would include geo-engineering as part of a number of different areas within marine science. Providing that was done in an area where you had the benefits of the cluster effect, good intellectual property and a sound infrastructure to support it, then we would be supportive of such a development.

Q70 Chairman: Thank you very much. Could I stay with you, Lord Drayson? In terms of the research community, we did have a very interesting session last week. I think my colleague, Brian Iddon, made the point earlier this afternoon that I think for all of us this was an area we had not really engaged with before. I think we say that quite openly and honestly, but we were quite excited last week on hearing particularly from the United States but also from our own scientists here in the UK, very, very committed scientists who were looking at geo-engineering not as a bridging technology but also as a genuine technology aimed to deal with this whole issue of climate change. I wonder what relationship you have as the Science Minister with this emerging scientific community, who do feel a little beleaguered and not listened to. What is your pathway to be able to discuss with them some of these ideas so that they do not feel they are just banging their heads against a brick wall or an artificial tree?

Lord Drayson: I would encourage them to make full use of the Government's existing programmes in the area of climate change.

Q71 Chairman: But how do they do that?

Lord Drayson: They can firstly make themselves known to the Technology Strategy Board, which is a key mechanism the Government has implemented to allow an independent assessment to be made of the technology investment priorities. Within that, climate change is a key challenge which the Government has identified. I would encourage them to not see their area defined as geo-engineering but to define themselves more broadly within that space and I would recommend that the Technology Strategy Board will be the first port of call for them.

Q72 Chairman: Okay. In its submission DIUS report that sulphate aerosols have a residence in the atmosphere for around about five years and yet Defra had a similar report based on Nobel Laureate Professor Crutzen's work, which says that they stay in the atmosphere for one to two years. Why do we get such differences of opinion?

Professor Watson: It simply depends at what altitude and at what latitude you actually inject the aerosols. When Mount Pinatubo exploded it put the sulphate aerosols into the lower stratosphere and it had what we call a half residence time of about one and a half to two years. If you could inject them much higher, they would indeed stay in the atmosphere longer. So it really depends where you inject them, both in altitude and in latitude because there is only a few parts of the world where you get an exchange of air across what we call a tropopause.

Q73 Chairman: If I can come back again then particularly to you, Lord Drayson, and also to you, Joan, how do your departments intend to really spread this message about geo-engineering, albeit that it is on the periphery of your main policy areas? How do we get particularly young people, young scientists, to engage with research groups? We heard last week that there is not a single grant which is coming directly from the research councils for a particular project in terms of geo-engineering. How do we get tomorrow's scientists, tomorrow's young engineers to actually engage with this if in fact there is no research funding coming through at all either from the Department or indeed from the research councils?

Lord Drayson: Chairman, I think this speaks really directly to the point I made just a moment ago about the importance of the way in which scientists in this field and people looking to commercial the science define the field they are in, because within the area of climate change we are currently spending within the NERC £66 million on research, so it would very much depend upon the specifics of the type of research, so that is research into the effects of climate change. In terms of total research investment by the research councils in the area of energy it is approximately £300 million. So there is investment at the moment going into the areas of which you could possibly argue that some of these geo-engineering projects would fall. I think that decision relating to the balance of investment within the particular areas of science is rightly not a decision which is made by politicians under the Haldane Principle. We see that these decisions about which projects are supported is left through the peer review process into the research councils and that is, of course, the way it should be.

Q74 Chairman: Do you share that view, Joan?

Joan Ruddock: Yes. I have nothing to add directly to that. I do not think it would be the job of my Department to be trying to enthuse young people about a particular branch of science or engineering. What I do think is the job of my Department is to engage our population at large in working with us, working with industry, working right across the piece to tackle climate change because we know that 40 per cent of the emissions that concern us come from the individual actions of human beings directly in their own lives. We can influence them and so we want young people to understand that that is the case and that there are things they can do. It is my belief - and I hope this will prove to be right - that the great challenge of climate change and the degree of interest young people have shown in climate change and the fact that it is their lives which will be constantly threatened by climate change will actually, I hope, lead to all of young people to want to be scientists, to want to be engineers and to see that they can not only change things in their own lives but they could actually do something which could make a very big difference. So I think it can be a source of inspiration for young people. We certainly have climate change champions who are drawn from young people in competition around the whole country and in the work they do and the work which is done in the eco schools, for example, people become very innovative, they become very interested in science as a result of joining this popular movement of people who want to address climate change. So I think tangentially we come at this, but of course we would not be promoting a particular branch of science to young people as a department.

Chairman: Okay. On that note could we thank you very much indeed, Joan Ruddock, Professor Bob Watson and Lord Drayson. Thank you very much indeed for your evidence this afternoon.

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