Climate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting

[Greg Rau]

Guess it's official: Plan A (= emissions reductions) has failed.  So we're jumping directly to Plan C ( = survival mode). Apparently the messaging about Plan B (= SRM and CDR) never got through, or someone's decided we're not going there(?) Best of luck to future generations. Some of us tried to change the outcome. So crank on that XL pipeline. Frack the heck out of those Bakken, Barnett, Montney, Haynesville, Marcellus,  Eagle Ford, Niobrara and Utica shales. And if gas supplants "king" coal in the US, then let's just ship the excess to China.  Let's hear it for Plan C, and let's party while we still can(?)

Greg

http://news.yahoo.com/climate-talk-shifts-curbing-co2-adapting-130423769.html

"Now officials are merging efforts by emergency managers to prepare for natural disasters with those of officials focused on climate change. That greatly lessens the political debate about human-caused global warming, said University of Colorado science and disaster policy professor Roger Pielke Jr.

It also makes the issue more local than national or international.

"If you keep the discussion focused on impacts ... I think it's pretty easy to get people from all political persuasions," said Pielke, who often has clashed with environmentalists over global warming. "It's insurance. The good news is that we know insurance is going to pay off again."

Describing these measures as resiliency and changing the way people talk about it make it more palatable than calling it climate change, said Hadi Dowlatabadi, a University of British Columbia climate scientist.

"It's called a no-regrets strategy," Dowlatabadi said. "It's all branding."

All that, experts say, is essentially taking some of the heat out of the global warming debate."

Climate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting

By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press – 8 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise.

The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It's becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet's wild weather.

It was Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement last week of an ambitious plan to stave off New York City's rising seas with

flood gates, levees and more that brought this transition into full focus.

After years of losing the fight against rising global emissions of heat-trapping gases, governments around the world are emphasizing what a U.N. Foundation scientific report calls "managing the unavoidable."

It's called adaptation and it's about as sexy but as necessary as insurance, experts say. It's also a message that once was taboo among climate activists such as former Vice President Al Gore.

In his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," Gore compared talk of adapting to climate change to laziness that would distract

from necessary efforts.

But in his 2013 book "The Future," Gore writes bluntly: "I was wrong." He talks about how coping with rising seas and temperatures is just as important as trying to prevent global warming by cutting emissions.

Like Gore, governmental officials across the globe aren't saying everyone should just give up on efforts to reduce pollution. They're saying that as they work on curbing carbon, they also have to deal with a reality that's already here.

In March, President Barack Obama's science advisers sent him a list of recommendations on climate change. No. 1 on the list:

"Focus on national preparedness for climate change." "Whether you believe climate change is real or not is beside the point," New York's Bloomberg said in announcing his $20

billion adaptation plans. "The bottom line is: We can't run the risk."

On Monday, more than three dozen other municipal officials from across the country will go public with a nationwide effort to make their cities more resilient to natural disasters and the effects of man-made global warming.

"It's an insurance policy, which is investing in the future," Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif., who is chairing the mayors' efforts, said in an interview Friday. "This is public safety. It's the long-term hazards that could impact a community."

Discussions about global warming are happening more often in mayors' offices than in Congress. The Obama administration and local governments are coming up with thousands of eye-glazing pages of climate change adaptation plans and talking

about zoning, elevation, water system infrastructure, and most of all, risk.

"They can sit up there and not make any policies or changes, but we know we have to," Broward County, Fla., Mayor Kristin Jacobs said. "We know that we're going to be that first line of defense."

University of Michigan professor Rosina Bierbaum is a presidential science adviser who headed the adaptation section of the administration's new National Climate Assessment. "It's quite striking how much is going on at the municipal level,"

Bierbaum said. "Communities have to operate in real time. Everybody is struggling with a climate that is no longer the climate of the past."

Still, Bierbaum said, "Many of the other developed countries have gone way ahead of us in preparing for climate change. In many ways, the U.S. may be playing catch-up."

Hurricanes, smaller storms and floods have been a harsh teacher for South Florida, said Jacobs.

"Each time you get walloped, you stop and scratch your head ... and learn from it and make change," she said. "It helps if you've been walloped once or twice. I think it's easier to take action when everybody sees" the effect of climate change and are willing to talk about being prepared.

What Bloomberg announced for New York is reasonable for a wealthy city with lots of people and lots of expensive property and infrastructure to protect, said S. Jeffress Williams, a University of Hawaii geophysicist who used to be the expert on sea level rise for the U.S. Geological Survey. But for other coasts in the United States and especially elsewhere in the poorer world, he said, "it's not so easy to adapt."

Rich nations have pledged, but not yet provided, $100 billion a year to help poor nations adapt to global warming and cut their emissions. But the $20 billion cost for New York City's efforts shows the money won't go far in helping poorer cities adapt, said Brandon Wu of the nonprofit ActionAid.

At U.N. climate talks in Germany this past week, Ronald Jumeau, a delegate from the Seychelles, said developing countries have noted the more than $50 billion in relief that U.S. states in the Northeast got for Superstorm Sandy.

That's a large amount "for one storm in three states. At the same time, the Philippines was hit by its 15th storm in the same year," Jumeau said. "It puts things in context."

For poorer cities in the U.S., what makes sense is to buy out property owners, relocate homes and businesses and convert vulnerable sea shores to parks so that when storms hit "it's not a big deal," Williams said. "I think we'll see more and more communities make that decision largely because of the cost involved in trying to adapt to what's coming."

Jacobs, the mayor from South Florida, says that either people will move "or they will rehab their homes so that they can have a higher elevation. Already, in the Keys, you see houses that are up on stilts. So is that where we're going? At some point, we're going to have to start looking at real changes."

It's not just rising seas.

Sacramento has to deal with devastating droughts as well as the threat of flooding. It has a levee system so delicate that only New Orleans has it worse, said Johnson, the California capital's mayor.

The temperature in Sacramento was 110 this past week. After previous heat waves, cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have come up with cooling centers and green roofs that reduce the urban heat island affect.

Jacobs said cities from Miami to Virginia Beach, Va., are coping with mundane efforts: changes in zoning and building codes, raising the elevation of roads and runways, moving and hardening infrastructure. None of it grabs headlines, but "the sexiness is ... in the results," she said.

For decades, scientists referenced average temperatures when they talked about global warming. Only recently have they

focused intensely on extreme and costly weather, encouraged by the insurance industry which has suffered high losses, Bierbaum said.

In 2012, weather disasters — not necessarily all tied to climate change — caused $110 billion in damage to the United States, which was the second highest total since 1980, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week.

Now officials are merging efforts by emergency managers to prepare for natural disasters with those of officials focused on climate change. That greatly lessens the political debate about human-caused global warming, said University of Colorado science and disaster policy professor Roger Pielke Jr.

It also makes the issue more local than national or international.

"If you keep the discussion focused on impacts ... I think it's pretty easy to get people from all political persuasions," said Pielke, who often has clashed with environmentalists over global warming. "It's insurance. The good news is that we know insurance is going to pay off again."

Describing these measures as resiliency and changing the way people talk about it make it more palatable than calling it climate change, said Hadi Dowlatabadi, a University of British Columbia climate scientist.

"It's called a no-regrets strategy," Dowlatabadi said. "It's all branding."

All that, experts say, is essentially taking some of the heat out of the global warming debate.

___

Associated Press writers Karl A. Ritter in Bonn, Germany, Jennifer Peltz in New York and Tony Winton in Miami contributed to this report.

___ Online: Federal government's National Climate Assessment chapter on adaptation: http://1.usa.gov/154qUGs The national mayors' efforts to promote adaptation: http://www.resilientamerica.org Georgetown University's Climate Center primer on adaptation: http://www.georgetownclimate.org/adaptation ___ Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears First of a two-part package on adapting to climate change. Tomorrow: Snapshots of what cities are doing around the world.

[Ken Caldeira]

Note that the President's science advisers have chosen to use the word "preparedness" rather than "adaptation".

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_energy_and_climate_3-22-13_final.pdf

You have no choice but to adapt, but you can choose to prepare.

While you're adapting to what's happening to you, you can try to prepare for what's going to happen to you.

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[Mike MacCracken]

Hi Greg—Back some years ago, F Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack-Up ( 1936), "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." One might think that we could be considering both mitigation and adaptation (preparedness) together instead of in an opposed manner.

Mike

[Lou Grinzo]

I strongly agree.

If we fall into the trap of a viewing this situation as a false dichotomy, then we're making it much worse and dramatically reducing our chances of dealing with it as optimally as is still possible, given the current carbon content of the atmosphere, our infrastructure, etc.

I can't estimate how many times I've heard the message that we will have no choice but to mitigate and adapt and (very likely; a full-on certainty, IMO) geoengineer.  The only questions are how soon we get serious about it, which mixtures of those three elements will still be viable, and how we'll implement it all.  Once our climate change challenge is seen as having immense economic, political, and psychological components and not "merely" the scientific one, it becomes quite clear what a broad range of outcomes is still possible.  You can argue, as I have repeatedly for years, that almost none of those paths forward is "good", but some are vastly preferable than others.

[Bill Stahl]

I wonder if this emerging preparedness/adaptation consensus is not an alternative to geoengineering but an incremental step toward it.  Governments are quantifying their expected costs, which they will eventually weigh against the costs of, for example, high-latitude SRM. Assuming (and I realize that's assuming a lot)  that high-latitude SRM more or less works as suggested by some on this list (slowing Greenland icemelt, stopping permafrost melting), How high would its pricetag have to be for it not to be about the highest ROI on money spent imaginable? The preparedness/adaptation pricetag will answer that question.  Of course framing it as an investment is odd- does a sailor on a sinking ship think of a lifejacket as an 'investment'? - but those are the terms in which governments must think.

[Greg Rau]

Thanks, all, for your words of wisdom re my original post.  However, my feelings of doom are not assuaged. 

If Bill's "emerging preparedness/adaptation consensus" is in fact an incremental step toward SRM/CDR then where is this mentioned in NYC's or especially PCAST's and IPCC's roadmaps stating the "concensus" view, and thus locking in policy, R&D, and modes of action for decades? Starting with the Stern Report, the costs and consequences of going down the preparedness/adaptation road are pretty clear and bleak. Yes, we need to consider this path just in case we fail otherwise. But to have this as item #1 in the PCAST report, and then to fail to mention anything about the possibility of post-emissions CO2 management or SRM is what I find very disturbing, especially considering what is at stake and the narrowing time window in which to act. 

Yes, Mike, we must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time; we must redouble our efforts to reduce emissions while also very actively soliciting and considering all other alternatives. What I find dangerously shortsighted and narrow-minded is the listing of preparedness/adaptation as the only alternative worth supporting, while intentionally ignoring all of the other possibilities that have been voluminously discussed on this list and in many other public, S&T and policy venues. 

I conclude that a decision has been made at very high levels that GE and related technologies are off the table, and we are stuck with failed policies and technologies to reduce CO2 emission (in time) and/or with preparing for the consequences. Any thinking, planning, and R&D on alternatives will continue to be relegated to the backwaters of S&T and policymaking, insuring that if Plan A and preparedness/adaptation don't go so well, we will be forced to take measures that are poorly tested and whose risks are therefore poorly understood. I welcome any evidence that would allay this concern. Meantime, why not party like it's 1750, because, thanks to PCAST, we are now going to be oh so prepared to live in the aftermath?

Greg

---

From: Bill Stahl <bsta...@gmail.com>
To: geoengi...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 8:41 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Climate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting

[Mike MacCracken]

Hi Greg—I share all your concerns.

I would just note that to fit into the three-option analysis of the problem (mitigation, adaptation, or suffering) used by John Holdren, I count CDR and the second (for reforestation, etc.) and third (for carbon scrubbing) stages of mitigation, and SRM as the second (for regional climate engineering—assuming it is possible) and (for global SRM) third stages of adaptation. I do this because it seems to me continually overlooked in the discussion of geoengineering that what is appropriate is not a risk-benefit analysis of geoengineering (of any type) on its own, but a risk-benefit analysis of global warming with or without geoengineering.

Mike

[John Latham]

Well said, Mike!

I dont know why yr critical point is so often overlooked.

Actually, I think I do know. But it's so hard to accept that
we can be so obtuse, and also fail to deliver clearly your
crucial message,.

All Best, John.



John Latham
Address: P.O. Box 3000,MMM,NCAR,Boulder,CO 80307-3000
Email: lat...@ucar.edu or john.l...@manchester.ac.uk
Tel: (US-Work) 303-497-8182 or (US-Home) 303-444-2429
or (US-Cell) 303-882-0724 or (UK) 01928-730-002
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/people/latham
________________________________________
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com [geoengi...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Mike MacCracken [mmac...@comcast.net]
Sent: 17 June 2013 19:27
To: gh...@sbcglobal.net; bsta...@gmail.com; Geoengineering

Subject: Re: [geo] Climate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting

Hi Greg—I share all your concerns.

I would just note that to fit into the three-option analysis of the problem (mitigation, adaptation, or suffering) used by John Holdren, I count CDR and the second (for reforestation, etc.) and third (for carbon scrubbing) stages of mitigation, and SRM as the second (for regional climate engineering—assuming it is possible) and (for global SRM) third stages of adaptation. I do this because it seems to me continually overlooked in the discussion of geoengineering that what is appropriate is not a risk-benefit analysis of geoengineering (of any type) on its own, but a risk-benefit analysis of global warming with or without geoengineering.

Mike


On 6/17/13 2:04 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Thanks, all, for your words of wisdom re my original post. However, my feelings of doom are not assuaged.

If Bill's "emerging preparedness/adaptation consensus" is in fact an incremental step toward SRM/CDR then where is this mentioned in NYC's or especially PCAST's and IPCC's roadmaps stating the "concensus" view, and thus locking in policy, R&D, and modes of action for decades? Starting with the Stern Report, the costs and consequences of going down the preparedness/adaptation road are pretty clear and bleak. Yes, we need to consider this path just in case we fail otherwise. But to have this as item #1 in the PCAST report, and then to fail to mention anything about the possibility of post-emissions CO2 management or SRM is what I find very disturbing, especially considering what is at stake and the narrowing time window in which to act.

Yes, Mike, we must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time; we must redouble our efforts to reduce emissions while also very actively soliciting and considering all other alternatives. What I find dangerously shortsighted and narrow-minded is the listing of preparedness/adaptation as the only alternative worth supporting, while intentionally ignoring all of the other possibilities that have been voluminously discussed on this list and in many other public, S&T and policy venues.

I conclude that a decision has been made at very high levels that GE and related technologies are off the table, and we are stuck with failed policies and technologies to reduce CO2 emission (in time) and/or with preparing for the consequences. Any thinking, planning, and R&D on alternatives will continue to be relegated to the backwaters of S&T and policymaking, insuring that if Plan A and preparedness/adaptation don't go so well, we will be forced to take measures that are poorly tested and whose risks are therefore poorly understood. I welcome any evidence that would allay this concern. Meantime, why not party like it's 1750, because, thanks to PCAST, we are now going to be oh so prepared to live in the aftermath?

Greg





________________________________
From: Bill Stahl <bsta...@gmail.com>
To: geoengi...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 8:41 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Climate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting



I wonder if this emerging preparedness/adaptation consensus is not an alternative to geoengineering but an incremental step toward it. Governments are quantifying their expected costs, which they will eventually weigh against the costs of, for example, high-latitude SRM. Assuming (and I realize that's assuming a lot) that high-latitude SRM more or less works as suggested by some on this list (slowing Greenland icemelt, stopping permafrost melting), How high would its pricetag have to be for it not to be about the highest ROI on money spent imaginable? The preparedness/adaptation pricetag will answer that question. Of course framing it as an investment is odd- does a sailor on a sinking ship think of a lifejacket as an 'investment'? - but those are the terms in which governments must think.

On Sunday, June 16, 2013 9:17:26 PM UTC-6, Lou Grinzo wrote:
I strongly agree.

If we fall into the trap of a viewing this situation as a false dichotomy, then we're making it much worse and dramatically reducing our chances of dealing with it as optimally as is still possible, given the current carbon content of the atmosphere, our infrastructure, etc.

I can't estimate how many times I've heard the message that we will have no choice but to mitigate and adapt and (very likely; a full-on certainty, IMO) geoengineer. The only questions are how soon we get serious about it, which mixtures of those three elements will still be viable, and how we'll implement it all. Once our climate change challenge is seen as having immense economic, political, and psychological components and not "merely" the scientific one, it becomes quite clear what a broad range of outcomes is still possible. You can argue, as I have repeatedly for years, that almost none of those paths forward is "good", but some are vastly preferable than others.

On Sunday, June 16, 2013 11:54:29 AM UTC-4, Mike MacCracken wrote:
Hi Greg—Back some years ago, F Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack-Up ( 1936), "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." One might think that we could be considering both mitigation and adaptation (preparedness) together instead of in an opposed manner.

Mike

[Bill Stahl]

I didn't mean to imply that policymakers have a hidden agenda to move towards GE by this route, only that it would be a necessary, clarifying step.

 I also think that these adaptation measure are at heart uncontroversial, though very dramatic, and so are well-suited to consensus policy-making. In contrast, SRM is very controversial but does not require the degree of consensus that emissions reductions negotiations have conditioned us to expect. In fact it would not require even a majority, just a coalition of sufficient desperate actors that has grown to include countries with the means to try it. I certainly don't see ANY signs of any such a coalition forming. But that's closer to how SRM would come to pass, not by the familiar policy-making process we see unfolding around adaptation/preparedness. (This should hold whether one is for or against it).

By saying that I don't want to make light of governance and transparency (let alone imply a yearning for Strong Leader Who Will Take Matters In Hand), just to note that the rules of this game are as different from the rules of the emissions-reduction "game" as that in turn was different from the CFC-reduction "game" that preceded it.

[Greg Rau]

From report below: .." for every $1 invested in “pre-disaster” mitigation, the cost of damage from extreme weather is reduced by $4."

(pre-disaster mitigation here means enhancing resilience -  "the ability to withstand the high winds, flood waters, scorching heat, searing wild fires, and parched earth from extreme weather.")

If this is true, then Stern's estimate of BAU climate damages of 20% of global GDP implies that these damages can be mitigated by investing 5% of GDP in "pre-disaster mitigation".  On the other hand Stern estimates that only a mean investment of 1% (later upped to 2%) of global GDP would be needed to avert GHG-fueled climate disaster in the first place. That means for every $1 invested in GHG mitigation, $10 in climate damages are avoided. Completely unmentioned is the cost effectiveness of post-GHG-emissions climate interventions.  So in light of cost/ benefit potential, just which approaches here are really "woefully underfunded"?

-Greg

Report: Building resilience to climate-fueled extreme weather is ‘woefully underfunded’

By Ben Geman - 06/19/13 09:58 AM ET

The federal government spends six times more on disaster recovery than helping communities become resilient to extreme weather that’s predicted to become more intense and frequent in a warming world, a new study shows.

The analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a prominent liberal think tank, labels the approach “pound foolish” and calls for a dedicated fund for “community resilience” fed by higher levies on fossil fuel production.

“We must help communities enhance their ability to withstand the high winds, flood waters, scorching heat, searing wild fires, and parched earth from extreme weather,” states the CAP analysis released Wednesday, which alleges the federal government “woefully underfunds” such efforts.

CAP, citing Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates, notes that for every $1 invested in “pre-disaster” mitigation, the cost of damage from extreme weather is reduced by $4. 

The report, which tallies programs across the government, finds that the federal government spent $22 billion on resilience efforts between fiscal 2011 and 2013, compared to $136 billion on disaster relief during the same period.

“Revenue that should be targeted to resilience is too often diverted to disaster recovery or falls victim to shortsighted austerity measures such as the budget sequester. The federal government could save additional lives and money by increasing assistance to communities to help them address their resilience needs,” states the report.

“To that end, we recommend the creation of a dedicated fund for community resilience with annual revenue equal to one-third of the total federal disaster relief and recovery spending from the previous three years,” it adds.

The report – which is titled “Pound Foolish: Federal Community-Resilience Investments Swamped by Disaster Damages” – estimates that applying that formula to fiscal 2013, the amount earmarked for a resilience fund would have been $7 billion.

Elsewhere, the report calls for an “annual and complete accounting of federal funds spent on every disaster-recovery program in the previous fiscal year.”

“Such an accounting would enable public officials and everyday citizens to better understand the true cost to taxpayers of unchecked extreme weather,” the report states.

It says that another key reform would be to “ensure that future rebuilding paid for with federal recovery funds increases community resilience to future extreme weather, even if the new structures are more costly.”

The report arrives as efforts to harden communities against extreme weather are attracting increased attention in the wake of last year’s Hurricane Sandy.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on June 11 proposed a $20 billion plan – paid in part with federal aid – to defend the city against future storms through floodwalls, reinforced dunes and other coastal protections, stronger building codes and many, many other steps.

The CAP report also notes that New Jersey is investing a significant portions of its federal aid in response to Sandy on resilience efforts. 

“Unlike New York City and New Jersey, many communities lack the financial resources to become more resilient to future extreme weather events, and the federal government woefully underfunds such resilience needs,” the report states.

This post was updated at 10:22 a.m.

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Bill Stahl <bsta...@gmail.com>
To: geoengi...@googlegroups.com

___ Online: Federal government's National Climate Assessment chapter on adaptation: http://1.usa.gov/154qUGs The national mayors' efforts to promote adaptation: http://www.resilientamerica. org Georgetown University's Climate Center primer on adaptation: http://www.georgetownclimate. org/adaptation ___ Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears First of a two-part package on adapting to climate change. Tomorrow: Snapshots of what cities are doing around the world.

[Bill Stahl]

For both governments and NGOs there is still a taboo on official discussion of post-GHG emissions climate intervention. There are many reasons for this- and not silly ones either!- but the net effect is unfortunate. It's as if the American Cancer Society dared not mentioned curing or treating cancer for fear of backhandedly encouraging kids to start smoking - and being accused of being in Big Tobacco's pocket to boot. But the public understands the connection between tobacco and cancer so well that they see the importance of doing both. A bigger and bigger chunk of the world now understands the connection between CO2 and climate trouble well enough to start hearing a more complicated message. Of course another chunk doesn't yet, which is another problem.

I suspect that many of the people proposing adaptation measures while studiously avoiding mention of even geoengineering research are aware of it nonetheless. But there will be a huge penalty for being the first mover. In the meantime, some may say one thing from the conference podium and another thing entirely after a couple of bourbons in an airport bar on the way home.

Just how the narrative changes, I've no idea

[Lou Grinzo]

Bill,

I think the CC/cancer analogy is particularly valuable (and it's one I've used many times).  I'm most struck by the timing of our changing awareness.  I'm just barely old enough to remember a time when a lot of adults smoked, the statements from the US Surgeon General were a new thing, and many people were just coming to grips with the reality that smoking wasn't just "not good for you" but had major impacts on one's health.  We're going through a similar process with CC, but we have far less time to climb that learning curve.

I also agree that the first actors to publicly talk about geoengineering as an explicit public policy will pay a huge price.  E.g. I can only imagine what the political firestorm would be like if President Obama mentioned geoengineering in a positive light in his Tuesday speech about CC and emissions reductions.  It would virtually hand the next election to his opponents, no matter what the Democratic nominee said on the subject.

I suspect that our squeamishness about geoengineering will be the last conceptual barrier to fall, and it could trail taking large-scale action on climate by a decade or more.  We won't embrace geoengineering until we've made (perceived) "painful" emissions cuts and circumstances still leave us no other choice.  As I say in presentations about the long atmospheric lifetime of co2, "love is fleeting, but co2 is (virtually) forever".