On February 10, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released two major new reports on climate engineering (or “geoengineering”). The reports set out to summarize the scientific basis for what the authors chose to call “climate intervention,” identify governance and ethical challenges, and chart a new research agenda. While the authors were careful to state that climate intervention is no substitute for reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, the reports indicate support for further investigation into large-scale technological responses.
The paired studies assess two specific groups of strategies: (1) carbon dioxide removal and (2) reflecting sunlight, or albedo modification. While the first group of options could, if perfected, reduce the radiative forcing caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it is unclear if new technologies are ready for large-scale deployment. Similarly, reflecting sunlight could rapidly cool the planet, but such an approach also poses numerous environmental and social risks that are not well understood.
In the wake of the NAS reports, climate engineering remains a controversial proposition. Proponents of climate engineering research and potential deployment suggest that there may be cost-effective ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere and hold it in long-term storage, or ways to reduce incoming solar radiation to curb atmospheric warming. Critics question who will control the new technology and if it will provide an excuse for policymakers to avoid unpopular measures that reduce carbon emissions. There are also possibilities of catastrophic failure of imagined technological systems and the emergence of new international security risks from the development of climate engineering capabilities.
As the NAS report suggests, climate engineering has the potential to reduce some of the impacts associated with carbon emissions; however, it also poses significant risks and uncertainty.
One of the things notably absent from the two voluminous reports was ANY advocacy of a public deliberative component in the discussion in the US as to whether we should… Read more »
The gist of the NRC reports is that more research is needed on climate engineering options to understand what may or may not be feasible and what the impacts and… Read more »
Ad hominems aside, Lewis, I’m not quite sure how you could construe my argument in that fashion. Nowhere in my posting did I indicate that we shouldn’t conduct research; what… Read more »
The National Academy of Sciences reports talk about the need for “open conversations” about climate engineering technologies. It’s one thing to call for an open conversation, however, and quite another… Read more »
Wil, I share some of your unease about technocratic policy making. Technocrats can be ideologues, and they often are. Nonetheless, efforts meant to involve and inform the public often produce… Read more »
Reflecting sunlight (or solar radiation management – SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are very different approaches. The reflecting sunlight approach does indeed require a millennial commitment (unless it is… Read more »
Good point about the albedo effect of smokestack emissions. Of course, volcanoes do the same, sometimes with quite profound impacts. The grounding of nearly all aircraft in the US right… Read more »
These are useful comments Dan. I wonder, though, about the notion that CDR options “just” lower CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The recently released National Academy of Sciences reports suggest, in… Read more »
Yes, the method matters but, in general, removing CO2 from the atmosphere does help remove the “cause” of climate change. While there are many possible approaches, I was talking about… Read more »
I need to correct what I posted above. It is true that you need to remove more than 1 ton of CO2 from the atmosphere in order to lower the… Read more »
There may be a third option we should consider. Rather than trying to remove carbon from the atmosphere to 2005 levels we should first seek some concentration level that causes… Read more »
Answers to questions: Climate Engineering: Solution or Problem? Probably both; all solutions have problems – you can’t do just one thing. The better question is: Do the benefits outweigh the… Read more »
Greg: I get the distinct sense that the term “climate intervention” was embraced by the NAS not as a more accurate description of the concept than because climate geoengineering has… Read more »
Thanks Wil. Certainly agree that we need to call it what it is. That is why I and many others side with the NAS that engineering is not an appropriate descriptor.… Read more »
Thanks for your response, Greg. It’s an interesting question in terms of terminology. As as an old rhetorician, it’s one that I think matters, and from your remarks, I think… Read more »
On this question, Greg and Wil, of how best to talk about “geoengineering” or “climate intervention,” it appears a live debate in policy-making circles. There has, apparently, been a move… Read more »
Reverse-Geo-Engineering is what is needed, 10K years of liberating Carbon from soils & forest just needs to be reversed. A host of Ag BMPs, (Best Management Practices), Forestry BMPs, Grazing… Read more »
It would be immensely helpful to hear from others about biochar’s potential. There is an active research community looking at options for scaling up biochar production and deployment. Can folks within… Read more »
I don’t have any insights into the genesis of this bill, but I suspect it’s not the last one we’ll see of this nature. Just as climate policy/energy policy (think… Read more »
I worked with the NAS Committee that authored the Climate Intervention reports and wanted to weigh in with a couple of comments in response to the thread on the proposed… Read more »
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Ed. As much as the NAS did talk about the need for a deliberative process, it focused on the potential role of “civil society,” which… Read more »
To paraphrase … it takes the whole community to create a sustainable society. Twenty years ago, as I worked on a Masters in Communication, I read a paper that compared… Read more »
[…] stage, the tentative conversation about SRM is taking place largely in scientific and insulated policy circles, beyond the reach of ready public scrutiny and […]
[…] stage, the tentative conversation about SRM is taking place largely in scientific and insulated policy circles, beyond the reach of ready public scrutiny and […]