Folks,
There is a set of papers on geoengineering on line at Environmental Research Letters. Ken Caldeira and I served as editors of this special issue. More papers and a editorial will be added later.
Cheers,
David
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045101
2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 045101 doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/045101
Geoengineering techniques for countering climate change have been receiving much press recently as a `Plan B' if a global deal to tackle climate change is not agreed at the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen this December. However, the field is controversial as the methods may have unforeseen consequences, potentially making temperatures rise in some regions or reducing rainfall, and many aspects remain under-researched.
This focus issue of Environmental Research Letters is a collection of research articles, invited by David Keith, University of Calgary, and Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Institution, that present and evaluate different methods for engineering the Earth's climate. Not only do the letters in this issue highlight various methods of climate engineering but they also detail the arguments for and against climate engineering as a concept.
Further reading
Focus on Geoengineering at http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/subject/tag=geoengineering
IOP Conference Series: Earth and
Environmental Science is an open-access proceedings service
available at www.iop.org/EJ/journal/ees
Focus on Climate Engineering: Intentional Intervention in the Climate System Contents
Modification
of cirrus clouds to reduce global warming
David L Mitchell and William Finnegan
Climate
engineering and the risk of rapid climate change
Andrew Ross and H Damon Matthews
Researching
geoengineering: should not or could not?
Martin Bunzl
Of
mongooses and mitigation: ecological analogues to geoengineering
H Damon Matthews and Sarah E Turner
Toward
ethical norms and institutions for climate engineering research
David R Morrow, Robert E Kopp and Michael
Oppenheimer
On the
possible use of geoengineering to moderate specific climate change impacts
Michael C MacCracken
Thanks for the reference to the Environmental Research Letters, David.
Only Mike MacCracken's paper considers the context for geoengineering. If we are going to have to use geoengineering to tackle certain problems, how should we approach it. He considers three problem areas:
1) the warming of low-latitude oceans which contribute to more intense tropical cyclones and coral bleaching;
2) the amplified warming of high latitudes and the associated melting of ice that has been accelerating sea level rise and altering mid-latitude weather;
3) the projected reduction in the loading and cooling influence of sulphate aerosols, which has the potential to augment warming sufficient to trigger methane and carbon feedbacks.
I would suggest that the amplified warming of (2) has the potential to trigger massive methane discharge (and associated positive feedback on global warming) of (3) as well as the potential to trigger rapid sea level rise. The retreat of Arctic sea ice is part of the warming amplification process, so it is crucial to prevent its summer disappearance. Do you agree, Mike?
If you agree, then the importance of this (i.e. preventing Arctic sea ice summer disappearance) makes the arguments against geoengineering in the other papers seem rather irrelevant!
Note that Mike has only considered the problems that could be addressed with SRM geoengineering. If we consider problems such as ocean acidification, and addressing them with techniques such biochar, then the arguments in the other papers against geoengineering seem irrelevant to the point of absurdity - but then perhaps the arguments were directed at SRM geoengineering alone.
Cheers from Chiswick,
John
---
David Keith wrote:
Folks,
There is a set of papers on geoengineering on line at Environmental Research Letters. Ken Caldeira and I served as editors of this special issue. More papers and a editorial will be added later.
Cheers,
David
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045101
Focus on Climate Engineering: Intentional Intervention in the Climate System
2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 045101 doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/045101 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/045101> <http://www.iop.org/EJ/help/-topic=abstract/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045101>
Geoengineering techniques for countering climate change have been receiving much press recently as a `Plan B' if a global deal to tackle climate change is not agreed at the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen this December. However, the field is controversial as the methods may have unforeseen consequences, potentially making temperatures rise in some regions or reducing rainfall, and many aspects remain under-researched.
This focus issue of Environmental Research Letters is a collection of research articles, invited by David Keith, University of Calgary, and Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Institution, that present and evaluate different methods for engineering the Earth's climate. Not only do the letters in this issue highlight various methods of climate engineering but they also detail the arguments for and against climate engineering as a concept.
Further reading
Focus on Geoengineering at http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/subject/tag=geoengineering
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science is an open-access proceedings service available at www.iop.org/EJ/journal/ees <http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/ees>
Focus on Climate Engineering: Intentional Intervention in the Climate System Contents
Modification of cirrus clouds to reduce global warming <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045102>
David L Mitchell and William Finnegan
Climate engineering and the risk of rapid climate change <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045103>
Andrew Ross and H Damon Matthews
Researching geoengineering: should not or could not? <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045104>
Martin Bunzl
Of mongooses and mitigation: ecological analogues to geoengineering <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045105>
H Damon Matthews and Sarah E Turner
Toward ethical norms and institutions for climate engineering research <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045106>
David R Morrow, Robert E Kopp and Michael Oppenheimer
On the possible use of geoengineering to moderate specific climate change impacts <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045107>
Michael C MacCracken
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A couple of points on sea ice:
1. There have been a bunch of hype-rich data-poor announcements recently that confidently predict very early dates for disappearance of summer sea ice. There is some good evidence that people are overinterpreting interannual variability as signal. The following is quite painful: it was the July 2009 compilation of forecasts every single one of which overestimated the actual sea ice loss in 2009. (I enclose a figure with the 2009 data added as an annotation. See the following for the original report:
I am deeply concerned about the rapidity of change in the Arctic, indeed unlike most people who talk about this I spent a fair amount of time traveling on skis high Arctic, but I'm a skeptical scientist and I know that uncertainty cuts both ways. I also am keenly aware that people tend to interpret noise as signal when it goes the way they expect.
2. Several folks on this list talk about the ice-albedo feedback as if it is not included in models. In fact this feedback is one of the central reasons for the polar amplification of predicted global warming and has been in models in various forms since the early 70s. In recent years the big focus has been improving dynamic (including ocean currents) sea ice models. Among the things typically not included are the (very uncertain) effect of warming permafrost on methane emissions, this is likely not a large omission as it's very hard to have methane emissions large enough to significantly change radiative forcing over half-century timescales.
3. It does appear that the IPCC underestimated the possibility of large-scale loss of the big ice sheets, I have run an expert elicitation (www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/elicitation.html) on the topic and our compilation of expert judgments (almost all of whom were in IPCC) shows that IPCC dramatically underestimated the risk.
4. One can make an argument that albedo geoengineering would be particularly appropriate for the Arctic both for the obvious reason that climate change impacts and responses are largest there, and because by increasing reflectivity geoengineering would be nicely countering the albedo feedback that decreases reflectivity.
-David
It's not so blindingly obvious to me. Pretending that we can't cut emissions is a way to hide from the moral implications of the choice we have made to ignore the welfare of our grandchildren and keep pumping CO2 into the air.
I agree with Alan Robock (among others) that we could begin making substantial reductions in CO2 emissions with existing technology today.
Electricity is the easiest place to start, it's 40% of global emissions and you can mix and match solutions in a way you cannot with transportation where we probably have to make a single choice about fuel substitution. Large-scale wind power + gas backup, nuclear power, coal with CO2 capture, and (in the right locations) central-station solar thermal could all be built today at costs that we in the rich world could easily afford. (see enclosed).
Here's a blunt way to say it: there are at credible estimates (New England Journal of Medicine) that more than 300 $bn/yr are wasted in transaction costs in the US healthcare system. If you gave me that much money, and if I was free to avoid political correctness (no solar PV on roofs), I think it's reasonable that one could completely decarbonized the US electric power system in a few decades.
I am still optimistic that we will see real commitment to emissions cuts in the rich world, and soon. I may be wrong, but in any case I don't claim any special ability to judge political outcomes.
It is very destructive when people from the technical community confuse technical facts with judgments about values and politics.
When someone like Peter Read (see below) says “there is no way increasing CO2 emissions can be significantly slowed any time soon” I think he really means is that his political judgment is that the commitment to doing so will not be made.
However when people and the political community hear technical people say can't be done they assume we mean that technically can't be done and that is untrue and destructive.
It's destructive because it hides the central moral choice: we could cut emissions if we want to, we could have started decades ago when the scientific warnings about climate change were first raised, but we decided not to. It was a choice, implicit or not. A choice that, in effect, we cared more about current consumption than we did about preserving our grandchildren's chances to enjoy a climate like the one in which our civilization developed.
I think we need to develop the capability to geoengineer to manage the risk of dangerous climate change posed by CO2 already in the air. That risk grows with every added kilogram of carbon, and it cannot be eliminated by emissions cuts even if we cut emissions to zero today.
-David
Re "One paper that compares the two is Frank S. Zeman and David W. Keith (2008). Carbon Neutral Hydrocarbons. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (A), 366: 3901-3918, see #103 on the link above." I have now read this with interest and not a little admiration.
However, in reaching its conclusion that the costs of carbon neutral fuels are little different whether the CO2 is captured biologically or mechanically I feel that certain factors were left out of account
1 The Econ 101 principle of comparative advantage is overlooked, with the assumption that biomass would be produced in North America where labour and land are both costly and climatic conditions worse than in low latitude regions. I would cut biomass costs by 75 per cent
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John
We are generally in good agreement.
The one point where we disagree is about how climate sensitivity is introduced into models. There is no "knob" for climate sensitivity in a GCM. There are many processes which are strongly nonlinear from the initiation of convection to parameterizations of sea ice and snow reflectivity. Climate sensitivity is the way we talk about (and measure) the overall response of the model to perturbations such as changes in CO2 or insolation. This is not a claim that models get it all right or that they have the sensitivity right. But it's wrong to say that models don't have the nonlinearities you described. They do, and they have for decades. It may be that they don't have them in the right way or the overall sensitivity is too high, on the other hand it may be the over all sensitivity is too low.
While it's clear that there are many relatively sharp "tipping points" when it comes to particular climate impacts (e.g., the temperature and precipitation regime at which a particular species of tree does or does not thrive, or the conditions that make and I sheet grow or shrink), but there is substantial evidence that the climate system as a whole both in reality and in models response relatively linearly to perturbations and that it may be that very strong nonlinearities "tipping points" are not particularly important in understanding the risks of climate change at large-scale. Obviously this is a point on which people have different views, but there many people in the core the climate modeling community who would share the view I just gave despite the hype about "tipping points".
The most important tipping point seems to involve the North Atlantic overturning circulation, and that may have had something to do with mediating the instabilities between glacial interglacial states, however it is less reason to believe that this instability will operate between the current climate and warmer climates. We had this conversation the MIT meeting and Dave Battisti expressed exactly this view.
This is not in any way to minimize climate risks, the simple fact of very large uncertainty in the overall climate sensitivity combined with the uncertainties in nonlinearities in many of the impacts means that there is a significant chance of dramatic even for some of us "catastrophic" climate impacts with the current CO2 trajectory. It's just a statement that you don't need to overdo the idea of tipping points to see this.
Yours,
David
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----- Original Message -----
From: Mike MacCracken <mailto:mmac...@comcast.net>
To: John Nissen <mailto:j...@cloudworld.co.uk> ; David Keith <mailto:ke...@ucalgary.ca>
Cc: Climate Intervention <mailto:climatein...@googlegroups.com> ; Geoengineering <mailto:Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> ; Ken Caldeira <mailto:kcal...@stanford.edu> ; Julian Norman <mailto:Julian...@iop.org>
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science is an open-access proceedings service available at www.iop.org/EJ/journal/ees <http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/ees> <http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/ees>
Focus on Climate Engineering: Intentional Intervention in the Climate System Contents
Modification of cirrus clouds to reduce global warming <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045102>
David L Mitchell and William Finnegan
Climate engineering and the risk of rapid climate change <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045103>
Andrew Ross and H Damon Matthews
Researching geoengineering: should not or could not? <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045104>
Martin Bunzl
Of mongooses and mitigation: ecological analogues to geoengineering <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045105>
H Damon Matthews and Sarah E Turner
Toward ethical norms and institutions for climate engineering research <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045106>
David R Morrow, Robert E Kopp and Michael Oppenheimer
On the possible use of geoengineering to moderate specific climate change impacts <http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/4/045107>
Michael C MacCracken
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Very insightful and this is all very interesting; but there are a few minor issues; who is WE, who decides and approves, and where does the funding to do these necessary things come from? -gene
There's
no way that increasing CO2 emissions can be significantly slowed any time soon.
There's 5 billion people out there that want the lifestyle they see2 billion
Westerners enjoying on TV
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