Diana,
It's good to see movement in the ETC position.
You and Jim will of course remember that issues of governance are
discussed here regularly, so your final entreaty that this forum "move
beyond the technical" is perhaps moot. Non-technical discussions
occur here frequently.
Governance is of course high on the priority list of many people in
this community. The LC meetings are a great example--which many on
this forum have attended and supported. That process moved from a
statement of concern to unanimous consent for scientific projects to
move forward last fall. This spring the OIF working group and the
Scientific Group each met separately to begin crafting the OIF Risk
Management Framework for what reporting would be required from those
projects, and just last month the regular LC meeting was held again
and spent considerable time reviewing progress on those activities. I
was at each of these meetings and I think it is quite inaccurate to
say that the LC process has tended to "caution against real world
experimentation". In fact, I would say that the LC has now shaped an
administrative process to support exactly that. And of course, this
is a UN body.
Also, while existing framework documents for the UNFCCC may not
mention geoengineering, I think this is an extraordinarily weak piece
of evidence to argue against a growing consensus for research into
geoengineering. If the Royal Society recommendations, the House
subcommittee hearings, the National Academies' forthcoming report, the
13 National Academies joint statement from last year, Bob Watson's
remarks in the UK Guardian yesterday, and the London Conventions
deliberations aren't enough to convince you, then I'm honestly not
sure what would. Clearly there is a strong call from the most
respected institutions, each of which had to engage in consensus-
finding processes in order to generate such statements that research
is appropriate. To fault Ken for referring informally to this group
that there is a consensus seems somewhat pointless.
Clearly you have mentioned many organizations-- some of them active
bodies, some of them treaty organizations-- which would have an
interest or remit to consider these questions. Many of the
individuals here in this same community have been quite active in
exploring the implications of these and the correct way to go about
engaging on these questions. Papers are forthcoming, talks will be
given in Copenhagen. In fact, there will be no less than three side
sessions specifically on the governance of geoengineering there, one
of them an official, UNFCCC event. Perhaps you will be able to
attend.
"And if we agree that some rules need to be determined before
experimentation gets any consideration, we must be clear that such
rules cannot be established only by scientists, only to be followed
if people sign up to them and only to be followed when it suits a
scientific programme to follow them."
Your point might be a good one, but clearly the one example of
governance that has already been established--the LC process for OIF--
avoids exactly that, right? So, could we say we're on the right
track?
Thanks for your considered remarks.
By the way-- the LOHAFEX project was forced to low silicate waters
largely as a result of the delays caused by some last minute
activism. Perhaps you have another technical interpretation?
Dan
On Nov 25, 5:00 pm, Ken Caldeira <
kcalde...@carnegie.stanford.edu>
wrote:
> >
geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com<
geoengineering%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> > .