Fwd: [CDR] Geoengineering Course
Andrew Lockley
From: david emerson <deme...@bigelow.org>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2021, 21:49
Subject: [CDR] Geoengineering Course
To: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Hi All,
I’m not a regular contributor to this group, but thought I would share some reflections on a course I recently finished teaching on Geoengineering to undergraduates (freshmen/sophomores) at Colby College. I am a microbiologist interested in ocean fertilization, and taught the course with my Bigelow Laboratory colleague, Ben Twining (an Oceanographer). This was a 4 week intensive course, in person. It was a small class, but students were very engaged with a combination of lecture and class presentations. We were able to bring in, via Zoom, both local (within Maine) experts, as well as national experts, in different aspects of Geoengineering, including Wil Burns. With such a diverse subject area, these guests really added a lot to the class. Interestingly, we began the class asking what’s in the name, Geoengineering, and ended the class asking what we should call future classes. We went back and forth with Climate Intervention and Climate Management, as well as Geoengineering, but couldn’t come up with a definitive recommendation.
I came into the class with knowledge of iron fertilization, but only general familiarity with other CDR methods. Needless to say, both Ben and I learned a lot. The primary lesson this course brought home to me was that there’s not going to any panacea regarding NET’s or SRM -- no penicillin just waiting to be accidentally discovered. It’s going to be hard work involving natural scientists, social scientists, engineers, business and marketing sectors combined with political will. Once there’s enough acceptance that maintenance of the Earth System itself has value, I expect human ingenuity will find a way to curb the excesses of the Anthropocene. The encouraging thing about teaching a course like this is that the youth are getting message, and that’s going to make a big difference. I highly recommend getting involved in teaching about Geoengineering (or whatever you wish to call it) if you get the chance.
I’ve attached our syllabus in case anyone is interested, and a fun class exercise we did in attempting to assign costs to different Geo-engineering approaches. We spent over an hour on this, and got a third way through, lots to debate.
Best, David
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