Re: [geo] A Critical Examination of Geoengineering. Economic and Technological Rationality in Social Context

[Peter Eisenberger]

For what it is worth here is my 2 cts 

History is clear that human organizations have evolved much like other living systems. That evolution has had a consistent direction -increased social organziations covering ever larger populations.(eg hunter gatherer groups, villages 

cities , city states , nation states ) . This occurred because it made us more fit - face the cahllenges of the time.   The climate change issue is amongst other things a recognition of the global impact of our collective impacts and that no nation state can provide on their own a solution to the challenges we face. Thus there will be over time an inevitable globalization of our human systems. Looking back a previous organizations with disdain rather than part of our evolutionary history makes no logical sense but ignoring the need to change and that change will provide a better future is equally misguided . 

In my view human knowledge will provide technology to address the challenges we face and we will reorganize ourselves over time to be able to implement them effectively just as we have in the past reorgnized ourselves to address the challenges we faced.

My view is that this evolutionary path is inevitable because it will make us more fit but what is not inevitable , as is the casse in the rest of nature , is how much destruction will occur before we change . That in my opinion in the challenge to all of us and I truly hope we are up to it. 

Finally to be clear whether that global organziation evolves into large global  bureaucracies or that stage is a transient organiztion giving way to a technology enabled cloud connected bottom up organizations is yet to be determined. 

On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 1:27 AM, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for the support, but I don't fully agree with the reasoning. I've encountered this thinking a great deal in the environmental movement, and it's not motivated by publication incentives.

There's a category of people, often found cosseted inside institutions of various kinds, for whom "more government" is the answer to absolutely everything. This approach is often mocked as "watermelon politics" - red through and through, with a thin layer of green on the outside.

Unfortunately, such people find it disproportionately easy to progress in institutions of great intellectual influence: academia, state media, public services, and government. This is despite the fact that their life experiences and values run counter to the undeniable realities lived by the vast majority of the population, who typically view the state as inefficient, bordering on Kafkaesque (hence the author's popularity).  

A 

On 21 Jan 2018 01:13, "Peter Flynn" <pcf...@ualberta.ca> wrote:

Andrew,

 

Thank you for saying this, and saying it very well. I think that the abstract is just nonsense: claptrap, as you say. I put this in the academic realm of “I need to publish”, and even better, “if I say stupid stuff I’ll get lots of citations from the refutation”.

 

I am reminded of the phrase that perfect is the enemy of the good. Linking dealing with the risk of climate change to reversing capitalism would doom any effective effort. Gunderson et al. can rest assured that any real action will take place within the various economies as they exist and evolve, slowly; thinking that climate change is the Trojan Horse that will overturn existing choices about economies is both tedious and damaging nonsense.

 

We have a serious problem to deal with, and distractions like this reduce rather than enhance the ability to deal with it. I think all will agree that perfection would be an instantaneous decarbonization that didn’t ruin economies. But perfect won’t happen; we search for the good, the practical. My personal guess is that a mix of decarbonization and geoengineering is the likely future scenario, given the difficulty of mounting the will to decarbonize quickly, in both capitalist and planned economies. I look at catalytic converters added to cars: society found the will to spend more for an existing technology to deal with an emission, but only in some regions of the world, and only when the problem was evident and severe.

 

There is a broad range of thinking on the challenge of climate change. Trying to end capitalism, or perhaps more accurately regulated market economies, is beyond the improbability of rapid decarbonization.

 

Thanks again for calling this out.

 

Peter

 

Peter Flynn, P. Eng., Ph. D.

Emeritus Professor and Poole Chair in Management for Engineers

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University of Alberta

peter...@ualberta.ca

cell: 928 451 4455

 

 

 

 

 

From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2018 5:07 PM
To: geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [geo] A Critical Examination of Geoengineering. Economic and Technological Rationality in Social Context

 

I'm probably putting myself at risk of getting shouted at, but...

 

This paper, from my brief skim, 

A) is a total straw man argument - at least as far as geoengineering research community's attitude towards the technology 

B) reads like parody of postmodern/neo-Marxist/critical theory academic writing (admittedly, lots of comparable papers also read like parody) 

C) Misrepresents or misunderstands the current state of scientific knowledge, especially vis-a-vis risk  

 

I'd welcome other views, but I personally think it's important to call out claptrap when we see it in the literature (even if that risks us getting shouted at). 

 

A

 

 

On 20 Jan 2018 18:17, "CE News" <in...@climate-engineering.eu> wrote:

http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/269

 

Gunderson, Ryan; Petersen, Brian; Stuart, Diana (2018): A Critical Examination of Geoengineering. Economic and Technological Rationality in Social Context (Sustainability, 10).

 

Abstract

Geoengineering—specifically stratospheric aerosol injection—is not only risky, but supports powerful economic interests, protects an inherently ecologically harmful social formation, relegates the fundamental social-structural changes needed to address climate change, and is rooted in a vision of a nature as a set of passive resources that can be fully controlled in line with the demands of capital. The case for geoengineering is incomprehensible without analyzing the social context that gave birth to it: capitalism’s inability to overcome a contradiction between the need to accumulate capital, on the one hand, and the need to maintain a stable climate system on the other. Substantial emissions reductions, unlike geoengineering, are costly, rely more on social-structural than technical changes, and are at odds with the current social order. Because of this, geoengineering will increasingly be considered a core response to climate change. In light of Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory, the promotion of geoengineering as a market-friendly and high-tech strategy is shown to reflect a society that cannot set substantive aims through reason and transforms what should be considered means (technology and economic production) into ends themselves. Such a condition echoes the first-generation Frankfurt School’s central thesis: instrumental rationality remains irrational. View Full-Text

Keywords: climate engineering; environmental sociology; critical theory; science and technology studies; solar radiation management; carbon dioxide removal; Marcuse; stratospheric sulfate injection; stratospheric aerosol injection; albedo modification

 

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[voglerlake]

List,

I found the paper more deconstructive than constructive. I would like to offer up a draft of a comment I'm preparing for the IPCC. Any and all comments are welcomed:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ntAt1HjGZk5L6bf-izctMkQEIuq4fux1xW4fV5yo1Y/edit?usp=drivesdk

Thanks,

[Christophe Jospe]

Michael,

I am sure it is a matter of time until the UN funds something like this. It could be catalyzed by getting other partners on board. An effort like this might pair well with groups like Lockheed Martin or other oil companies who know something about building offshore platforms. Do you know about Blue Frontiers?  This kind of project might line up with what they do support. I can make an introduction to people at the company if useful. You might be able to get money from Breakthrough Energy Ventures to fund it all. 

My hunch tells me that by talking about spraying things into the atmosphere to brighten clouds you limit the funders who would support the effort. 

Christophe 

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[voglerlake]

Thanks, Christoph.

I'm already pursuing Breakthrough Energy's recent opening to proposals.

Also, I heavily support Blue Frontiers and the Seasteading movements and I'm in contact with them through Facebook. I taught Joe Quirk about bacon flavored seaweed.

There are other organizations that are doing excellent work which are not promoting offshore cities as aggressively as Seasteading movement does. One of them is in Japan.

Shimizu is very impressive with what they have pull together over the years. Carbon negative technology is something they've been planning for probably close to 10 years.

Here is a media story:

http://www.energydigital.com/sustainability/green-float-floating-cities-2025

My intent in using Marine Cloud Brightening is actually to cool the surface of certain areas of the Ocean, in areas in which I intend to farm. The oceanic deserts are growing far faster than any desert on land and we are losing a great deal of primary production due to the expansion of these oceanic deserts.

Wide area ocean stratification is known as a Canfield ocean. It is not good for anyone, at any time, for any reason.

The scale of the farming system that is needed is truly vast and one of the best places to park them on this planet is in the oceanic deserts as there is no life in that surface water to disturb. Coastal operations will be popular yet the truly massive CDR work can work best in the marine deserts.

Regrettably the conversation around MCB has never focused upon the cooling effect it has on the water.

I can easily edited it out if that tech is too distractive from the offshore CDR message. I don't want this comment to get too far into the nuts and bolts. The comment is strategic in nature, not tactical.

I am happy to leave it up to the ocean governance scientific groups to decide on technology. That point may need to be stressed in the comment.

The overall farming operation has no emissions to speak of and thus would itself comply with the known rules, regulations, and expectations.

I believe one of the biggest realization that I have personally come to in considering everything involved, is that, we already have a way to scientifically manage the vast majority of this planet through the IMO, CBD, and the ISA it's just that they do not have a funding arm themselves nor the in-the-field tools to implement strategic changes, such as we're talking about.

This policy protocol, which would include institutional investors, philanthropic investors, as well as industry can give the scientific teams the funding and the tools that they can use to effect change.

Thank you for the feedback.

[Leon Di Marco]

Nick Stern, who is hardly hardly a marxist revolutionary, has described climate change from fossil fuel burning as a market failure, because the fossil fuel industry has failed to clean up the mess.  Thus the profits were privatised and it is the public sector that will have to deal with the consequences.  These 3 academics are pointing out that some of the advocates of geoengineering  are doing so to prolong the status quo and that is unlikely to be a sensible approach.    As they are from American Universities I doubt that they are revolutionaries either.

I am struck for example, in the CDR regime, by the approach taken by Carbon Engineering to massage the nature of their technology.  Their site says-

http://carbonengineering.com/

Our business is to provide the technology and facilities to synthesize global-scale quantities of clean fuels from air, water, and renewable power.

Air To fuels is our technology that uses atmospheric CO₂, captured using our DAC process, and combines it with renewably produced hydrogen, to directly synthesize clean liquid transportation fuels

We’re looking for motivated partners.

In fact the CE DAC technology uses Natural Gas to power the regeneration process and this description is misleading.  CE cannot possibly synthesise global scale quantities of liquid hydrocarbons from DAC without consuming global scale amounts of natural gas.    In fact their fuel tech was specifically developed to create pure oxygen (by electrolysis of water) with which to burn the natural gas in the CO2 regenerator ,so that the flue gas created contains concentrated CO2 for easy processing.  The hydrogen from electrolysis is fed to the fuel synthesiser.  But none of this is disclosed on the home page.

 CE is also advocating  Enhanced Oil Recovery using captured CO2, which cannot possibly be justified alongside their promotion of "clean fuel".

It is no wonder that social economists are examining the motives of those involved in SRM, and anyone involved in CDR should be careful not to be sucked into dubious claims otherwise the whole of CDR technology will be tainted.     Dieselgate is just one example of a failed attempt to massage the story which has had major consequences for society as a whole.   

LDM

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[Charles Greene]

Thank you for your insightful and thought-provoking comments Peter about the evolution of human organizations.

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[honegger.matthias]

Michael (if i may) and list

A brief feedback on your letter to the IPCC: I fear that - despite sending an important message - you won’t see the expected outcome in that your message won’t make it’s way into the SR 1.5 nor AR 6 unless you provide specific textual amendments to IPCC draft texts as part of the regular review rounds along with the corresponding peer-reviewed literature references.
Everything that goes beyond peer-reviewed sources (as important as it may be) can per the IPCC’s nature not make its way into any of its reports and would need to be assessed, collected and reported on by other trusted organizations.

Matthias Honegger

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[Jan Minx]

Dear all,

I can only echo Matthias here. Even though there is an explicit mandate
for the IPCC to go beyond peer-reviewed literature (i.e. inclusion of
grey literature - with particularly careful treatment), I would also
fear that a letter is not effective. A letter can simply be filed away -
there is no procedure what the organization has to do with it.

For influencing SR1.5 it is in my view most effective to register as an
expert reviewer. Note that IPCC authors are bound by procedure to answer
the comments they receive. Hence, my recommendation would be to read and
comment carefully through the current CDR sections of the report. If a
technology has been neglected you would be able to say that - and IPCC
authors would at least consider this comment - of course, no guarantee
that they will take it on board. You can also make sure that additional
key literature is considered by pointing them to specific sources. Here
is the link I sent earlier last week:

https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/comments/sr15/sod/register.php

All the best,

Jan

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