"Accidental" Geoengineering?

[Greg Rau]

>
> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35109198

""If you look up the definition of geoengineering, it includes large-scale manipulation of parts of the climate system or the environment, and I believe this ice haze from jet traffic does satisfy that requirement," he (Chuck Long, NOAA) told reporters."

[Brian Cady]

1) Wouldn't our fossil carbon release into air classify as 'accidental' geoengineering? Couldn't one then argue that, since we're already doing geoengineering 'accidentally' or unintentionally, cleaning up that mess with intentional geoengineering is not committing an act that is of a different moral type, since we now know our culpability? Isn't it no longer truly an 'accident' when we know beforehand that changing the climate is an inevitable consequence of our fossil fuel use, industrial agriculture,and  etc.?

2) I think it would be easy to be mislead by the quote from the  the linked article:
"...Prof Martin Wild, from of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, ... commented on the work.

Plants preferred diffuse light, he explained: "If you have a canopy structure, the direct light is absorbed by the uppermost leaves. Everything below is shaded and so misses out on that energy. But diffuse light can travel deeper into the canopy and can be absorbed by the plants lower down. So in that sense, if you have more diffuse light those lower plants will profit"

a) I agree plants 'prefer' (grow faster under) diffuse light. I think this is due to direct light exposing some leaf parts to 'too much' sunlight, leading to photorespiration, while leaving other leaf parts in shadow, in sub-optimal levels of light.
b) I concede that direct light is absorbed by uppermost leaves but so is diffuse light coming from the sky.
c) I expect Prof. Wild speaks of diffuse light that is diffusing from the upper leaves, not from the sky.
d) This upper-canopy-source is the reason that the diffuse light Prof. Wild speaks of "can travel deeper into the canopy..."
e) The light diffusing from the sky has no special ability to bypass the upper canopy; just like direct sunlight, it will be stopped (or maybe diffused) by the first leaf it hits.

Hope that helps,

Brian

[em...@lewis-brown.net]

Hi

This made me wonder, do we have a list of current geo-engineering of the climate? It might include for eg:1) a wide range of ways we release of ghg to air (including water, all the ones under unfccc and those not)
2) Release of black carbon, eg from LUC,
3) Inputs of soil and sewage carbon to sea,
4) Inputs of CO2 to ocean by air,
5) Changes o albedo through ice, snow and forect cover change,
6) Contrails and other particulates that cause global dimming
7) Changes to the capacity of carbon sinks (via warming) eg menthane and ocean,
8) Changes in clouds through chnagin temperature affecting how much moisture the air can hold?
Others?

Happy for people to correct and contribute others,
I think it might make an interesting (mag or news, rather than science publication?) article if anyone is interested in working with me on it.

Thanks, Emily.

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Subject: [geo] Re: "Accidental" Geoengineering?

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[Jim Fleming]

What used to be called "inadvertent climate change" in the 1970s is not engineering, geo- or otherwise.  

Engineering requires precision, a plan, a product, and a permit. 

NAS 2015 refers to "Climate intervention," which may be purposeful, but not precise or predictable.

- - - - -

James R. Fleming

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[em...@lewis-brown.net]

Hi, I am not really fussy about the name, it is a list of types or categories of processes that we do that knowingly change the climate through deliberate actions, knowing the effect. Thanks for not disrupting my effort to collate info. Bw Emily

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From: Jim Fleming <jfle...@colby.edu>

Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2015 05:19:28 -0500

To: Emily Lewis-Brown<em...@lewis-brown.net>

Cc: <brianc...@gmail.com>; geoengineering<geoengi...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [geo] List of current Geoengineering?

[Douglas MacMartin]

As an engineer I agree that engineering is purposeful. The other three words I disagree with, as would any other engineer. (Wikipedia's definition of engineering is reasonable)

Precision is clearly a subjective construct, as is predictability. I am quite confident for example that adding strat aerosols will cool the planet, and if you wanted to (hypothetically) maintain global mean temperature then with various caveats not qualitatively different from any other engineering project you could. So you might find it useful to not use the word in order to advance some argument, but it would clearly be engineering if we were to do it. 

(And, of course, relative to the original thread, anything inadvertent even if understood isn't engineered, though again someone might try and use that label simply to make a point)

Doug

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[Alan Robock]

None of those are geoengineering. Geoengineering is deliberate. That is its definition. 

There is no such thing as accidental geoengineering. Certainly we do those things, but please discuss them elsewhere. 

Alan Robock

Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor

Department of Environmental Sciences

Rutgers University

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New Brunswick, NJ  08901

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[Jonathan Marshall]

 

For what it is worth, I find it deeply frustrating when people use the common argument that because we have accidently broken 'earth systems' and can call this 'geoengineering', we should *therefore* use intentional geoengineering to fix things. (Just to be clear, i'm not saying anyone is doing that here, but it is common)

 

Because i can smash a car, does not mean i know how to fix it, especially by driving it into a different wall.

 

However, it may be possible to learn something from what we have been doing to bring us into the current situations - for example these deeds (and others) listed by Emily may give us most of the data we currently have about modifying the planetary systems and the side effects of such action...  

 

Furthermore, it is probably necessary to include the social politics of why things have gone wrong and produced these deeds, in order to have some idea of how the politics of our attempts to fix it, will likely play out.

 

In other words geoengineering is a social and political 'science' as much as a geophysical one.

 

jon

 

 

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[em...@lewis-brown.net]

Hi All,

Thanks for the emails on this. My thinking stems from a place where some of the things we currently do look a lot like some proposals for geo-eng, and we don't bat an eye, yet when these same activities are proposed for good purpose, they are slammed. I struggle with this, and feel it needs exploring to help deepen our understanding of the gut reactions against technologies which may have potential to help. Maybe we need or already have a list which covers this elsewhere? Please advise.

As an encologist and conservationist, to me it is clear cut: we mess up, we clean up. Environmental restoration and rehabilitation is normal, desirable, and a legal (and moral) duty, enshrined in uk, eu and other law.

One thing that strikes me from the methane release - geo-eng - Food security angle below, is reversibility. Am I right in thinking that many geo-eng approaches are reversible, whereas methane hydrates reaching a point of thawing and releasing ch4 is irreversible for a given lens of hydrates? Or is methane destabilisation reversible once it is warmed to the point of off-gassing? Understanding and considering the reversibility of the processes and also of the impacts of technologies seems important in relation to the reversibility/irreversibility of CC process and impacts (including feedbacks).

On intention and the definition of geo-eng, in the ecological field, animals and plants are said to have engineered their environment, such as beavers changing whole landscapes (inadvertently) by making one dam. This is perhaps a lose use of the word which engineers might not like. No insult intended. English isn't a very precise language and a melting pot of expertise from different disciplines, such as this list, will find we use words in different ways.

I am reminded that when we crash an environment into a wall, we are legally bound to mend the car and the wall. Simply reducing ghg will not mend the CC environmental and humanitarian car crash, even IPCC rely on net negative emissions in their scenarios, even without full inclusion of feedbacks. Which is challenging, but just another uncomfortable fact we face through our own folly.

It has been useful for me at least to observe and learn from this debate and others on this list, and thank you for the opportunity to engage and learn from your inputs and expertise.

Good wishes to all and please do understand how much I appreciate everyone's efforts to understand, respectfully debate and develop solutions to our collective crises, regardless of our sometimes differing views.

Best,

Emily.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2

---

From: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>

Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2015 22:48:27 +0000

To: <rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu>

Cc: Emily Lewis-Brown<em...@lewis-brown.net>; <brianc...@gmail.com>; geoengineering<geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; Michael MacCracken<mmac...@comcast.net>

Subject: Re: [geo] List of current Geoengineering?

Dear Alan,

I've watched your TED talk, and I think I understand why you are so passionately against geoengineering: you fear the inadvertent production of a nuclear winter; you fear the terrible famine which would follow, with 2 billion people dying of starvation.  But this is exactly what some of us fear from climate change if the Arctic continues warming apace and there is further disruption of the jet stream producing an escalation in extreme weather events. 

Sir David King produced a report on food security and the effects of multiple breadbasket failure from extreme weather [1].  We must fight to keep the sea ice and cool the Arctic, otherwise famine will follow.  How can we do this?  There is nothing that the individual can do except support the politicians in doing what hitherto has been thought unthinkable and you say is a "bad idea" in your talk.  They have to deploy geoengineering techniques to cool the Arctic and save the sea ice.  This is their moral duty.  It is the only chance to prevent widespread famine and other dreadful consequences of continued Arctic warming: methane feedback and metres of sea level rise this century. 

I've said enough.  Please think about it.

Regards, John

[1] http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/assets/pdfs/extreme-weather-resilience-of-global-food-system.pdf

[NORTHCOTT Michael]

I appreciate your reasoned argument Emily but I don't think the repeated use of this list by a few individuals to advocate for geoengineering is helpful. Such contributions killed another useful list and are not in the spirit of academic listserves. I agree with Alan. This list is for scientific information (and occasionally discussion by scientists and other academics with relevant informed expert opinions) on geoengineering, which is intentional manipulation of the climate system. As an environmental ethicist I value it for that reason. Its use to advocate for geoengineering is unhelpful and will eventually kill it if contributors continue to use it in this way.  

Regards

Michael

Professor Michael Northcott

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[Andrew Lockley]

Alan,

I actually feel this is a legitimate line of discussion for the GE
group. Let's look, for example, at the issue of marine bunker fuels.
They're currently being desulfurized, and this will have climate
impacts.

I think it's legitimate to describe this as 'geoengineering' - to the
extent that radiative forcing issue has *any* potential effect on the
outcome of political or scientific debate on desulfurization.

Whilst it's perfectly legitimate that you hold a differing view, I
think it's very important that we allow people with a range of
opinions to debate on the group. As such, (as a general point) it's
perhaps best if any concerns about discussion content are addressed
impersonally (or directly to the moderators), as otherwise that could
deter people joining in discussions.

Thanks

A

[NORTHCOTT Michael]

If desulfurizing marine fuels is geoengineering then any activity instigated to contribute to mitigation of anthropogenic climate change becomes geoengineering (rendering the term almost meaningless) including becoming a vegetarian (because of the significant climate impacts of meat rearing) or cycling instead of driving.

Climate change mitigation refers to a range of behaviours and practices that infinitesimally, tiny fraction by tiny fraction, reduce unintentional human interference with the climate system.

Geoengineering is intentional redesign of the climate system to reduce the climatic consequences of ongoing human atmospheric pollution.

I am reading Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade (Christmas gift). It is very well written and he gets the distinction between engineering the atmosphere intentionally and reducing atmospheric pollution which has unintended (and unforeseen) consequences.

Michael Northcott
University of Edinburgh

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[Andrew Lockley]

For clarity, it's *preventing* the desulfurization of marine fuels that would be geoengineering. There's a strong case for cleaning them up, as they're very polluting and kill many people near ports.

A

[Hawkins, Dave]

Calling prevention of desulfurization an example of geo-engineering seems excessively broad. That would mean "geo-engineering" includes any policy respecting emissions adopted with the intent to influence forcing due to emissions. And that would include policies to reduce GHG emissions.
As others have observed, the best course may be to stop trying to come up with a definition of a broad "geo-engineering" concept and instead focus on the subsidiary actions, as the National Research Council has done.

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 26, 2015, at 9:58 AM, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com<mailto:andrew....@gmail.com>> wrote:


For clarity, it's *preventing* the desulfurization of marine fuels that would be geoengineering. There's a strong case for cleaning them up, as they're very polluting and kill many people near ports.

A

On 26 Dec 2015 14:14, "NORTHCOTT Michael" <M.Nor...@ed.ac.uk<mailto:M.Nor...@ed.ac.uk>> wrote:
If desulfurizing marine fuels is geoengineering then any activity instigated to contribute to mitigation of anthropogenic climate change becomes geoengineering (rendering the term almost meaningless) including becoming a vegetarian (because of the significant climate impacts of meat rearing) or cycling instead of driving.

Climate change mitigation refers to a range of behaviours and practices that infinitesimally, tiny fraction by tiny fraction, reduce unintentional human interference with the climate system.

Geoengineering is intentional redesign of the climate system to reduce the climatic consequences of ongoing human atmospheric pollution.

I am reading Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade (Christmas gift). It is very well written and he gets the distinction between engineering the atmosphere intentionally and reducing atmospheric pollution which has unintended (and unforeseen) consequences.

Michael Northcott
University of Edinburgh

> On 26 Dec 2015, at 12:56, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com<mailto:andrew....@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Alan,
>
> I actually feel this is a legitimate line of discussion for the GE
> group. Let's look, for example, at the issue of marine bunker fuels.
> They're currently being desulfurized, and this will have climate
> impacts.
>
> I think it's legitimate to describe this as 'geoengineering' - to the
> extent that radiative forcing issue has *any* potential effect on the
> outcome of political or scientific debate on desulfurization.
>
> Whilst it's perfectly legitimate that you hold a differing view, I
> think it's very important that we allow people with a range of
> opinions to debate on the group. As such, (as a general point) it's
> perhaps best if any concerns about discussion content are addressed
> impersonally (or directly to the moderators), as otherwise that could
> deter people joining in discussions.
>
> Thanks
>
> A
>

>> On 20 December 2015 at 15:29, Alan Robock <rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu<mailto:rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu>> wrote:
>> None of those are geoengineering. Geoengineering is deliberate. That is its
>> definition.
>>
>> There is no such thing as accidental geoengineering. Certainly we do those
>> things, but please discuss them elsewhere.
>>
>> Alan Robock
>>
>> Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
>> Department of Environmental Sciences
>> Rutgers University
>> 14 College Farm Road
>> New Brunswick, NJ 08901
>>

>> rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu<mailto:rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu>

>> http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
>> http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
>> ☮☮☮☮☮☮☮☮☮☮
>> Watch my 18 min TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54

>> Sent from my iPhone. +1-732-881-1610<tel:%2B1-732-881-1610>

>>
>> On Dec 20, 2015, at 3:44 AM, em...@lewis-brown.net<mailto:em...@lewis-brown.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> This made me wonder, do we have a list of current geo-engineering of the
>> climate? It might include for eg:1) a wide range of ways we release of ghg
>> to air (including water, all the ones under unfccc and those not)
>> 2) Release of black carbon, eg from LUC,
>> 3) Inputs of soil and sewage carbon to sea,
>> 4) Inputs of CO2 to ocean by air,
>> 5) Changes o albedo through ice, snow and forect cover change,
>> 6) Contrails and other particulates that cause global dimming
>> 7) Changes to the capacity of carbon sinks (via warming) eg menthane and
>> ocean,
>> 8) Changes in clouds through chnagin temperature affecting how much moisture
>> the air can hold?
>> Others?
>>
>> Happy for people to correct and contribute others,
>> I think it might make an interesting (mag or news, rather than science
>> publication?) article if anyone is interested in working with me on it.
>>
>> Thanks, Emily.
>> Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2
>> ________________________________

>> From: Brian Cady <brianc...@gmail.com<mailto:brianc...@gmail.com>>
>> Sender: geoengi...@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com>

>> Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 09:36:46 -0800 (PST)

>> To: geoengineering<geoengi...@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com>>
>> ReplyTo: brianc...@gmail.com<mailto:brianc...@gmail.com>

>> email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.
>> To post to this group, send email to geoengi...@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com>.

>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
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[Motoko]

Here a to be updated list of media responses on Cuck Long et al.'s paper.
http://www.climate-engineering.eu/single/items/press-review-media-responses-to-charles-long-on-unintentional-geoengineering.html

Best
Nils

[Oliver Morton]

Dear Michael

Thank you very much -- I'm glad you're enjoying the book.

For what it's worth, though, I agree with Andrew on this -- IMO desulphurization is not geoengineering sensu stricto, but the way in which it brings about a quasi global change in radiative forcing as a result of considered international policy makes it so geoengineeering-like, and so relevant to true geoengineering, that it needs to be looked at i this context

o

[NORTHCOTT Michael]

Hi Oliver. Just read your chapter (in part 3) which includes the marine desulfurizing issue. I saw there  blurring of the lines that I had not seen earlier in the book, and your email underwrites this. 

I still think it makes sense to designate as geoengineering activities which are designed, and hence intended, to influence the climate system. My preference from a philosophical (and legal) viewpoint is to distinguish actions and foreseen effects that are intentional from those which are not. This is crucial in eg medical ethics as well as criminal law. So a doctor may perform a procedure such as administering morphine for pain relief to a terminally ill patient, which has the secondary (or double) effect of hastening that patient's death. This is not in law intentional killing because of the principle of double effect. But this principle is not without complexity and requires contextual nuance. So someone who drives a car down a residential street at 70 mph in order to get from a to b faster and kills a pedestrian as a consequence may reasonably be charged with causing death by dangerous driving because it is reasonable to expect that a person might be killed by such behaviour.   

Language is malleable and especially English. If enough people start to use the term geoengineering more broadly that stretching of the term will eventually become normal. We will then have to find a new phrase to distinguish activities that are designed to intervene in the climate system from those which have climate system consequences as a double effect rather than from intentional design. 

Congrats on the book. It is very readable, and genuinely interdisciplinary as well as scholarly, which is not an easy combination. 

M

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[Russell Seitz]

The detectable change in diurnal temperature swings during the post 9-11  halt in US civil aviation suggests the effect is real enough.

On Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 12:16:10 PM UTC-5, Greg Rau wrote:

[Alan Robock]

Dear Russell,

This is incorrect.  Although a paper was written attributing this to lack of contrails, it was later shown to be weather variability, which was forecast.

I repeat, terminology is important.  We need to stick to a definition of geoengineering that includes deliberate actions to cause climate to change over a large scale.  Otherwise, we will be discussing everything.  Chuck's definition leaves out "deliberate."

Alan 

Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
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[Nathan Currier]

If I were a termite reading this thread, I would be most upset! I mean, you mean to tell me that my beautiful macrotermitine -  so excellently designed that it accurately controls its internal CO2 levels, temperature, and oxygen levels, and thus keeps all of us brilliant termites so comfortable -  is either just an "accident", or had to be designed by one of you thinking human beings consciously!? Give me a break! 

I think this is an embarrassment - and that some of you grown adult human professors need a good end-of-the-year dose of Daisyworld thrown in your tea! Especially comical was someone suggesting that a viewpoint regarding human agency and what constitutes "engineering" - and after all, the boundaries of "geoengineering" are in any case inherently porous in the extreme - would be inappropriate for the geoengineering list if it seemed to be advocacy for geoengineering! Only a world in which psychology had been largely replaced by pharmacology, Freud be damned, or in which your human science - (which is also "accidental" too, in the degree to which it is the growth of whatever so happens to get observed in its uniquely disciplined, human way, if my engineering is to be considered "just accidental") - can exist in a vacuum devoid of a philosophy, could the power of "unconscious" drives of organisms, be they humans or termite like me, be so totally obscured, and such silly notions of the nature of Nature get passed around as "rational." 

I think what this thread exposes is also a lack of how deeply such questions were part of the human conversation more than a century ago, and I don't think that I would personally consider someone a "historian" of "geoengineering" if they were unaware of that rich history. The very opening sentence of Nietzsche's "Gaya Scienza" (The Happy Science) was about how humans inadvertently act to further the survival of human beings, and that this was the essence of their species. If you know Zarathustra, and the huge, immortal laugh that comes at the center of it - wow, what a laugh Nietzsche would get today if could come back to see this! In a sense, what Nietzsche means in that opening sentence is akin to Smith's "Invisible Hand," but looked at from outside of economics itself. 

I think that Emily was being the most scientific in the conversation - but that a translation of what Robock and the others were trying to say, transposed into the more reflective terms of Nietzsche and others on human agency back in the 19th C, would be that humans, being the "rational species," tend to do things incredibly badly when they do not do them consciously and rationally, thus geoengineering should be a term reserved for such conscious engineering. I think that by this definition, btw, there is still currently non-climate geoE already in operation that matches the National Academy of Science's definition, and that the reduction of NOx, CO, etc, in catalytic conversion would be an example of it, and it has worked quite well (with the ironic caveat that it has - unintentionally! - marginally exacerbated global warming, as the US EPA noted in a report in 1996.......).  

Hansen put it exceedingly well long ago when he called it a "Faustian bargain" for humans to add warming CO2 and cooling SO2 together, unwittingly, with their coal plants. Jim is a climate genius, not a literary critic, but in that case he really hit gold,  "accidentally", because he almost certainly didn't know in writing this that while Goethe's Faust I was all about getting into "Faustian bargains", Faust II was all about getting out of them, a compendium of all of his thoughts on earth science (remember, Goethe was really the first climatologist, in the sense that broad-based knowledge of "the" Ice Age preceding Agassiz was mostly Goethe's, as Agassiz duly noted in the preface to his book....), and quite specifically about geoengineering. If you think I'm making this up, you have a great pleasure ahead of you: this greatest poem in German begins in Part I with a pact in which the hero will only die when he sees something so beautiful that he wishes to have time stop, and this eventually happens in Faust II when as an old man Faust has an idea -  sometimes called the "land reclamation project" by literary critics, and typically viewed as just an oddity in an already hyper-complex text -  to consciously manipulate the sea, such as to allow more people to live by the shore. It isn't seen as just "good" or "evil", as in the all-too-common modern disputes -  Clive Hamilton, blah, blah - rather it's all quite nuanced, goes to the root of human agency, and is all about just how it is done, whose will it expresses, etc.......eventually he dies when he falls in love with this engineering idea, once it has been properly construed in his mind.....read it for yourself.......

Die Welt is Tief!

Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht! - Nietzsche

Happy New Year.........Nathan