Project Syndicate: A Climate Silver Bullet?
Alan Robock
In this Big Picture, David Keith, a professor of applied physics at Harvard, argues that foregoing debate and research on climate geoengineering now could increase the risk of future misuse. But Karin Nansen of Friends of the Earth International contends that advocacy for carbon capture and related technologies has become a “charade” through which entrenched interests can keep profiting from an unsustainable status quo. And in so doing, warns François Martel of the Pacific Islands Development Forum, they are threatening the very survival of low-lying island countries.
Making matters worse, Silvia Ribeiro of the ETC Group points out that geoengineering technologies could actually pose additional risks, given that they are designed to alter climate conditions on a massive scale, yet remain largely untested. Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thus sees an urgent need for international standards governing the experimentation and use of such measures. And Barbara Unmüssig of the Heinrich Böll Foundation says that any global regulatory regime must include outright bans on the most politically and socially disruptive geoengineering methods.
-- Alan Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor Associate Editor, Reviews of Geophysics Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751 Rutgers University E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu 14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA ☮ http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
Stephen Salter
Hi All
There may be some confusion between long term sulphur in the stratosphere and short term sea salt in the troposphere.
None of the people in
Alan Robock's list have ever asked me for information about
marine cloud brightening. If they had I would have sent them a
paper with the page below showing the results from nine leading
climate models of increasing the concentration of condensation
nuclei in ocean regions with low cloud by 50%. This is much
more intelligent that other computer studies that I could
mention. They look beneficial and might even be further improved
with an informed choice of times and seasons for treatment. A
precipitation increase of a few percent of a very low amount may
not be a great help but temperature reductions of 2K in the
Arctic would be especially welcome.
The suggestion that
marine cloud brightening can affect precipitation patterns is
true in the sense that rotating a steering wheel can affect the
direction of travel of a road vehicle. This is usually desirable
if the rotations are chosen by a licensed driver.
The suggestion that
research into climate engineering could distract progress on
carbon reductions is on a par with the policy of not issuing
parachutes to the Royal Flying Corps in World War I because it
would 'impair their fighting spirit'. This was official policy
until America entered the war in 1917.
Stephen
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