Concluding post.

There are uncertainties, but it appears that we may need to be prepared to use geo-engineering. However, before we give geo-engineering the go ahead, there are several areas that I have come across over the past few months that first need to be addressed:

Public: More effort needs to be made to bring the debate into the public sphere - after all, the choices made in this area are likely to effect everyone in someway.  This means that people need to be informed objectively regarding both climate projections and geo-engineering.  It is right that the public is presented with both sides of the coin, the good and the bad, the potential and the uncertainty.

More research: This needs to be done safely, and incrementally.  In particular, more needs to be known about the regional and localised impacts of geo-engineering (particularly if SRM is on the cards!).  The least this will do is inform adaptation strategies for those regions that are likely to experience the most adverse environmental impacts under a geo-engineering regime.

How geo-engineering would be used:  What specific role will it play in the battle against global warming? A short term helping hand or a long term commitment?  An insurance measure to keep temperature below critical levels or a means to completely balance anthropogenic forcing (if even feasible)? I think that for geo-engineering to be justified, we need to minimise the extent of interventions to only what is absolutely necessary.

Politics: The amendment and creation of new international policies and laws will be necessary to prepare our global political system to meet the demands of such large-scale trans-boundary interventions.  These need to address requirements, restrictions and accountability measures.

CO2 mitigation: this stone should not go unturned! Ultimately every effort should still be made to reduce global carbon emissions.  Geo-engineering should be used to achieve what mitigation alone cannot, it should not be considered an alternative.

The methods: There needs to be careful consideration of each method and their intrinsic qualities.  The types of methods I've been able to cover have spanned a spectrum of effectiveness, feasibility, affordability and risk.  My conclusion is that the greatest potential lies in CDR methods, such as reforestation, and more specifically bio-char production.  In comparison with other methods they provide the best combination of effectiveness, feasibility, affordability and risk.  Unlike SRM methods, they don't commit us to long term geo-engineering and the high risks of stopping. They may be limited in how much CO2 they can draw down from the atmosphere, but I honestly believe this can only be a good thing; if they are only able to ease global warming and not completely solve it then there would still be a need to address the crux of the problem: emissions!  If we are heading towards a climate emergency lets prevent it before we have to implement any high-impact, high-risk strategies.

And finally, even if political agendas render my conclusions invalid, thank you geo-engineering for an interesting introduction into the world of blogging!

Geo-engineering in context

I’m going to get straight to the point.  Doing this blog has not convinced me that geo-engineering is good.  Far from it, I actually feel that if the prospect of global warming and climate change wasn’t an incentive to reduce CO2 emissions, then geo-engineering certainly should be! And here is why"

• ·      SRM: some high impact solutions but ignore the cause of the problem (CO2), poses what could be global-scale environmental and social risks.
• ·    CDR: addresses the part of the problem (CO2, but not emissions), but has limited capacity for CO2 draw down, requires large scale coverage and has the potential for high regional environmental and socio-economic impact.
• ·      None of the effective methods could be implemented (safely) tomorrow; most require more thorough research and design.
• ·      This poses another problem: for many techniques, accurate global climate research cannot be confined to a lab.  Adequate research requires that we actively experiment on our planets climate; to full understand the risks we would need to live them.
• ·      All techniques require significant investment, some exceeding the value of the global CO2 emitting economy.  This investment not only includes the cost of implementation, but there are also the research and development costs to consider.
• ·      Global climate manipulation renders this a topic open for international debate, and we all know that consensus is highly unlikely short of exercising geopolitical power inequalities and manipulation.  Political interest is likely to be particularly high, as there are winners and losers in climate change, geo-engineering (the type and the extent) will change who wins and who loses (as frequently stated by David Keith).
• ·      Knowing that we have a back up plan takes the emphasis off of CO2 mitigation and climate change adaptation. We need more political leverage for reducing CO2 emissions, not less.            

           … the list goes on.

So, the question is: are all these factors enough to justify putting geo-engineering to bed and focusing on the bigger issue?

The answer is yes, BUT (and this is a massive elephant-in-the-room type but) perhaps global warming has already reached a point whereby simply curbing our emissions will not prevent a runaway global climate, a point at which we need geo-engineering.

A recent piece in New Scientist suggests that we are.  Focusing on the Arctic, it details reports that suggest 2015 will see ice retreat that exposes climate to accelerated warming, not only due to a reduced albedo, but due to methane release from the increasingly exposed Siberian Arctic seabed (obviously, as with everything related to climate change, this is highly debated.  Right or wrong, this article raises the crucial point about whether it is within our capacity to truly mitigate runaway climate warming.  Drawing from palaeo-records of the Pleistocene and Cenozoic eras, Hansen et al. (2008) discusses inertia in the earths system.   The paper tends towards the argument that the complete temperature increase that can occur in response to our current level of anthropogenic CO2 forcing has yet to be fully realised.  They suggest that inertia, particularly in delayed ocean warming, compounded by the high atmospheric residency time of CO2, means that even if we stopped emissions, thus stabilising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, it is possible that temperatures would continue to rise to ‘dangerous’ levels.  They conclude that a reduction in atmospheric CO2 of approximately 45ppm is required to stabilise these slow positive feedbacks – is geo-engineering therefore the answer?

On principle, I would warn against geo-engineering, however, on reflection I think it would be naïve to be so dismissive.  As reluctant as I am to say it, within the current context of both climate (and political) inertia, it seems that in the not so distant future geo-engineering may prove to be extremely useful.

Geo-engineering, Sir David Attenborough, politics and ethics

A few days ago, in my attempts to keep up with geo-engineering in the public sphere, I found an article detailing David Attenborough's stance on geo-engineering.  If the legend that is Sir David has something to say on the matter you can be sure I was keen to find out more.  I tracked down the original interview on the Andrew Marr show, you can take a look below (my feeble attempt to embed BBC videos has failed so it's a link I'm afraid):

CLICK HERE!

It is interesting that he focuses not on the intricacies or reliability of the technologies, but on the political implications of geo-engineering.  After yet more climate talks it is clear that we are  incapable of coming to satisfactory agreements regarding C02 mitigation, so the future looks bleak for such discussions of geo-engineering! Humphreys (2011) discusses the political difficulties posed by a global climate intervention: Where? When? How? To what extent? Who decides? who pays? - a recipe for political tension and perhaps even conflict. The ethical considerations of climate are blurred and uncertain, open to manipulation and compromise - a global case of the tragedy of the commons.  Geo-engineering is popularly stated to be the 'lesser of two evils', deemed by many a preferable option to a climate catastrophe. In light of the political complexities, Gardiner (2010) suggests that there is an alternative two evils scenario that should be considered, that of a climate catastrophe or a geopolitical catastrophe. In addition, implementation is likely to confuse CO2 mitigation discussions further, as geo-engineering maybe perceived as an alternative, rather than an additional measure. 

I think we'd all benefit from CO2 mitigation rather than sending the world into further geopolitical turmoil....

Illustration by Stephanie McMillan @ Code green