Public understanding...

Since global warming and geo-engineering are such contentious issues, it is important that the debate is opened up to a more public forum for discussion.  This is a particularly pressing necessity at present as geo-engineering is increasingly progressing towards testing these ideas (if a last minute hesitation regarding social implications hadn't emerged, SPICE project testing would have begun earlier this month), and as it stands are going ahead without much appreciation for how the wider public feels about such initiatives. 

In my last brief blog I highlighted the article in the Guardian, which claimed that there was  public support for geo-engineering.  I have since looked at the research paper it was referencing (Mercer et al., 2011), and largely what I took from the paper, is not so much support, but the lack of public understanding of geo-engineering.  At the onset the survey identified that less than 24% of the 2893 participants had actually heard of either geo- or climate-engineering, and that only 8% were able to adequately describe geo-engineering.  As the authors state, this is higher than previously anticipated, but it still strikes me as an unacceptable level of understanding if these large-scale global climate manipulations are to be given the go-ahead.

This also poses another problem regarding the nature of this survey; lack of prior knowledge begged the need to provide a brief explanation of the climate system, SRM, its benefits and risks.  The paper acknowledges the potential for bias (as the three academics concerned are certainly pro geo-engineering), and states that every effort was made to provide neutral information.  However, 38% of the participants felt the questions and information were biased in favour of SRM, with only 2% feeling as though it were biased against.  The need for inclusion of public opinion requires such surveys; on the other hand, whilst public understanding remains so limited, the value of such studies will be compromised.  It would be interesting to see the result of a survey undertaken by academics opposing SRM, whether the subtle biases inevitable in their study would produce vastly different results. 

Here is a brief summary of some key results:

• 72%, to varying degrees, support furthering understanding of geo-engineering
• This support nearly halved when considering actual deployment, coupled with an increase in uncertainty amongst participants.
• 64% of participants agreed that humans should not be manipulating climate.

I’d like to highlight the third and final statistic; nearly two thirds of participants agreed that humans should not manipulate climate, which in light of the support for research and implementation suggests that a proportion of participants therefore feel that circumstances dictate it necessary that this agreement be waivered.  This highlights one of the key points raised by Gardiner (2010), that the ‘perfect moral storm’ posed by climate change, provides ‘morally exceptional circumstances’ perfectly suited for moral corruption, thus something deemed unacceptable (climate manipulation), can become acceptable (geo-engineering).