(re SATAN) Geoengineering experiments are essential - but must be regulated

[Andrew Lockley]

Poster's note: this is Google's back translation of an article I wrote in English for Le Temps, which I'm told is the Swiss-French paper of record. The back translation is as close as possible to what will be printed. I don't have a link at present; it's coming out Monday. There may be an English version available online. As list users are likely aware, as a matter of policy I don't offer public comment outside the published literature. However, this is my response to an article written about SATAN that I was given no opportunity to correct or otherwise discuss with the journalist, prior to publication. FYI I have done no proactive publicity on SATAN at all, as the associated paper isn't formally published. I hope the below article clarifies some widespread misunderstandings about the nature of this work. 

Geoengineering experiments are essential - but must be regulated

Andrew Lockley is former honorary research fellow at University College London

I probably don’t need to convince you of the challenges of climate change. We are on course to race past 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial, and will almost certainly pass 2 degrees. As the deadly floods in Pakistan have shown, even today’s modest changes are wreaking havoc with the global climate system. That disruption is doing real damage to people’s lives – often people who have done least to contribute to the problem. 

There is a technology that could make a difference: geoengineering. Specifically, solar radiation modification, which relies on a side effect of volcanic eruptions. By creating a bright haze in the upper atmosphere, we can reflect some of the sun’s energy, thereby limiting climate change. It’s not a solution, but it can give us time, to control emissions and perhaps clean up some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 

Recently, while I was an honorary research assistant at University College London, I collaborated with the European Astrotech company. Together, we launched a watermelon-sized balloon to an altitude of over 20 km, carried by a much larger balloon. The small balloon carried a payload of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere - the first time this has ever been proven. When this balloon burst, it released this gas which in principle formed a tiny amount of additional aerosols in the stratosphere. This experiment was not designed to significantly change the climate - that would have required about a billion such launches. Nor was it intended to influence the stratosphere in any detectable way. It was simply a technical test to determine whether our cheap little balloon could carry gas to the stratosphere, along with the instruments needed to monitor its transformation into a bright aerosol.

 

This project was called the stratospheric aerosol transport and nucleation experiment - with the provocative acronym SATAN. This striking name hopefully serves two purposes. Firstly, It highlights the need to regulate what could ultimately be harmful experiments - if they’re done at expanded scale and if they are not properly conducted. Secondly, I like to think that this provocation asks the question as to whether such a small experiment really is as bad as has sometimes been portrayed. The release of this amount of SO2 gas is comparable what happens in a normal airline flight - so the experiment is objectively benign. However, the launch broke an unwritten and unspoken de facto moratorium on open-air geoengineering experimentation. The backlash from testing this controversial technology was expected, but its source was not. Some of my closest colleagues shunned and denounced me for having the temerity to test this technology for the first time. 

This hullabaloo highlights some systemic problems. While it would be perfectly sensible to have a global scientific body to regulate such small-scale tests, no such body exists at present. This means that the scientists and engineers who choose to run small tests are criticised for a failure to seek permission - but none can be obtained, because there is nobody in a position to grant permission. This deadlock  has paralysed experimentation for a decade or more - in spite of the importance of advancing this technology. Meanwhile, careless and potentially dangerous tests can’t be stopped. 

Despite being responsible for many scientific advances, academia is a deeply conservative place. Those who are seen to have broken various labyrinthine and opaque rules are often chewed up and spat out by the system. My unusual position as an honorary scholar allows me to take more risks with my academic reputation than a career academic. I don’t rely on a university to feed me, and in fact my position lapsed just before the story of this launch hit the press. 

This test was intended to demonstrate a potentially useful piece of equipment. It was a small scientific and technical step, not a giant one. Perhaps its most important result is that it forces the academic community to confront the strange taboo that exists about these experiments: They are widely, if not universally, recognized as necessary, but there is no practical way for scientists and engineers to ensure that they have the proper permissions to perform them. Yet without early experimentation, the technology will not be developed properly, which may lead to late or chaotic deployment. 

 

I’m well aware that running this test means I may never hold an academic position again. If that prompts proper regulation of the sector in which I have worked unpaid for the past decade, that is a very small price to pay. Without proper regulation, we have the worst of both worlds: the most benign experiments are held back by the timidity of researchers, and yet there is nobody to stop the most egregiously dangerous ones. It is time for that to change. Geoengineering experiments must be urgently placed in the hands of an expert scientific regulatory board. Without this we empower fools and constrain the careful. 

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for this.  It is good to get  more of the details of your experiment which indeed appears to me to be a completely benign and potentially modestly useful research advance on a cooling method (SAI) that an increasing number of prominent scientific bodies, individual scientists, and climate policy experts and advocates, have been voicing support for.  Some of us,  as you know from our podcast; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/local-cooling-sai-cdr-baiman/id1529459393?i=1000598002442 , have in fact been calling for immediate deployment (if proven effective and without any significant risks  and in some cases with potential economic benefits in pilots) of other low-leverage direct climate cooling methods (see 19 potential methods here: https://pdfhost.io/v/kUvEpsGdb_Understanding_the_Urgent_Need_for_Direct_Climate_Cooling_0209233).

You also may know (from another thread) of the ongoing discussion over two or three possible approaches to research and implementation of (high leverage) cooling methods such as SAI (my comments here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DvAolo5DgK-QxhbXpFg0UzZNDTrJ7UQm/edit).

Per these comments, I fully support what you've done and also your statement on the inherent conservatism and reluctance of the scientific community to act with the required decisiveness and speed on issues like this that require (as I think all of us DCC advocates agree) an "all hands on deck" portfolio of both science, politics, and political advice (and sometimes a mix of all of these!) to urgently move the ball forward.

I say bravo to what you have done!  My only concern, that I and others have repeatedly expressed, and you have acknowledged was a mistake, is with the name.

Best,

Ron

 

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[Geoengineering News]

Poster's note: Andrew Lockley's paper is online. French and English versions in the same link. 

Please find attached document below:

https://www.letemps.ch/opinions/experiences-geoingenierie-essentielles-doivent-reglementees