Can Science Fix Climate Change?

Geoengineering, or climate engineering, is the umbrella term for large-scale technological interventions into the climate system that seek to counter some of the effects of global warming. Due to limited progress in reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions thus far, geoengineering has been increasingly investigated as a potential addition to the portfolio of climate responses. At this point, however, the shape and role that geoengineering will take in the future remain highly uncertain. In this report, we look 10 years ahead, at the year 2025, and present two scenarios of geoengineering’s possible evolution, with the goal of providing policy recommendations for its effective governance. Geoengineering technologies are generally divided into approaches that aim to reflect sunlight away from the earth (solar radiation management, SRM), and approaches that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon dioxide removal, CDR). This report focuses on SRM interventions, and particularly on those methods that aim to reflect sunlight by injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere. Such interventions raise important governance issues that are different from those raised by CDR techniques. This is because SRM would have a quick, global effect, could be deployed by a single actor or a small group of actors at a relatively low cost, and would have different impacts on different regions of the world. SRM is also likely to be perceived as a more fundamental intervention than CDR into the workings of the planet, with the potential for significant societal conflict to result from different worldviews and value systems. Most CDR technologies, on the other hand, would act only over long time scales, are prohibitively expensive at the moment and would require collaboration between many actors in order to have a significant effect on the climate. SRM has also generated various concerns. First, it has been argued that SRM would create a “moral hazard” by reducing the incentive for states to engage in mitigation and adaptation efforts, for SRM may prove to be faster, cheaper and less difficult to agree upon in international negotiations. Second, its potential impacts are highly uncertain. Factors that will be particularly difficult to predict and understand include regional and local impacts on agricultural production, water resources and biodiversity. Third, it has been questioned whether it is ethically permissible to interfere with Earth-system processes at such a fundamental level. The global governance of SRM will have to take these concerns into account. Although SRM is still in its infancy and may take decades to research, develop and deploy, it is precisely this early stage of development that offers a critical window of opportunity for developing collaborative and inclusive approaches to effective global governance of the potential SRM life cycle, or parts thereof.

This article was originally published in PS: Political Science & Politics, volume 46, issue 01, pp. 23-27.

Geoengineering is often seen as being able to fix the problem of global warming and for a rather small price tag, at least when compared to the deeply expensive alternative of investing in clean energy, or so the frame goes. However, this type of framing is representative of a problematically short-sighted and narrowly defined analysis of the problem, whereby consideration is only given to the short-term costs of reducing global surface temperatures. What such a framing fails to include is the broader context of the various strategies and all of the costs benefits and risks associated with them. In response to the problematic framing I argue that clean energy and rapid emission reductions is a deeply preferable strategy to stratospheric sulfate injection on multiple grounds including saved fuel costs, reduced climate impacts, and reduced costs from expensive and risky forms of geoengineering.

Environmental Development, 2012

The deliberate large-scale manipulation of the climate is increasingly being discussed as a potential tool to ensure the basic condition for a sustainable future: a habitable climate. While far from the ideal solution, the rate of climate change continues to outpace our attempts at a response, prompting some scientists and politicians to call for the consideration of climate engineering or geoengineering to avoid catastrophic climate change, while political processes to reduce greenhouse gases catch up. A November 2010 expert meeting was held at UNESCO to raise awareness of geoengineering, its potential to counteract climate change and its risks, and to broaden the discussion within the international community. Potential geoengineering methods include solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal techniques that are largely theoretical and remain untested, despite a long history. Responsible research can only proceed, and informed decisions be made, once governance structures have been developed beyond mere principles insufficient to guide researchers and policy makers. At the same time, realistic communication on these activities must increase and improve so that civil society can play a role in determining acceptable levels and types of human intervention. Appropriate geoengineering research should be considered for solar geoengineering methods that promise to quickly and affordably decrease global mean temperature, and for carbon geoengineering methods that target the core problem of climate change by directly removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A small cadre of scientists and policy makers has advanced the discussion of geoengineering and its likely impacts, but the path to a sustainable future cannot Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Geoengineering, specifically Solar Radiation Management (SRM), has been proposed to effect rapid influence over the Earth’s climate system in order to counteract Anthropogenic Global Warming. This poses near-term to long-term governance challenges, some of which are within the planning horizon of current political administrations. Previous discussions of governance of SRM (in both academic and general literature) have focused primarily on two scenarios: an isolated “Greenfinger” individual, or state, acting independently (perhaps in defiance of international opinion); versus more consensual, internationalist approaches. I argue that these models represent a very limited sub-set of plausible deployment scenarios. To generate a range of alternative models, I offer a short, relatively unstructured discussion of a range of different types of warfare – each with an analogous SRM deployment regime.

Global Environmental Change, 2014

Environmental Research Letters, 2009

With significant reductions in emissions likely to require decades and the impacts of projected climate change likely to become more and more severe, proposals for taking deliberate action to counterbalance global warming have been proposed as an important complement to reducing emissions. While a number of geoengineering approaches have been proposed, each introduces uncertainties, complications and unintended consequences that have only begun to be explored. For limiting and reversing global climate change over periods of years to decades, solar radiation management, particularly injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, has emerged as the leading approach, with mesospheric reflectors and satellite deflectors also receiving attention. For a number of reasons, tropospheric approaches to solar radiation management present greater challenges if the objective is to reduce the increase in global average temperature. However, such approaches have a number of advantages if the objective is to alleviate specific consequences of climate change expected to cause significant impacts for the environment and society. Among the most damaging aspects of the climate that might be countered are: the warming of low-latitude oceans that observations suggest contribute to more intense tropical cyclones and coral bleaching; the amplified warming of high latitudes and the associated melting of ice that has been accelerating sea level rise and altering mid-latitude weather; and the projected reduction in the loading and cooling influence of sulfate aerosols, which has the potential to augment warming sufficient to trigger methane and carbon feedbacks. For each of these impacts, suitable scientific, technological, socioeconomic, and governance research has the potential to lead to tropospheric geoengineering approaches that, with a well-funded research program, could begin playing a moderating role for some aspects of climate change within a decade.

This paper examines both sides of the debate regarding proposed engineering techniques to combat global warming, which fall under two categories, namely Carbon dioxide withdrawal/removal (CDR) and Solar Radiation Management/Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering (SRM/SAG). It critically presents both the proposed solutions and the likely environmental cost of each method based on the opinions of proponents and critics. At the end, it concludes that while most CDR techniques may be ineffective and inefficient, they may have limited environmental consequences. SRM/SAG on the other-hand has been found to be not only inappropriate under the current narrative of anthropogenic global warming, but also has the potential for large-scale global environmental disruption and human health consequences, coupled with these ideas of large climate engineering being largely and especially socially unpopular. Despite these, and coupled with the limited debate on the subject, SRM/SAG however enjoys the support of International Organizations and mainstream scientific bodies, with some evidence that large-scale experimentation is under-way covertly. Amidst this crippling uncertainties, the fact that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is itself not a settled science and characterized by intense debate as well is viewed here as a red flag which requires extreme caution and thus discredit any attempts to artificially interfere in the Earth's Climate system by based largely on linear thinking in complete disregard for the logical complex Earth System perspective.

Choice Reviews Online, 2013

After publishing two very different books on the same topic, Clive Hamilton and David Keith engaged in a public debate at Columbia University. The central question in their debate-and the question at the heart of each book-was whether humans should try to engineer the global climate to counteract climate change (C-SPAN, 2013). Each writer's book aims to introduce readers to a range of scientific, political and ethical issues surrounding climate engineering (also known as geoengineering). Each author aims to tilt readers toward a particular stance on climate engineering-against climate engineering in Hamilton's case, and cautiously for it in Keith's. Hamilton's book, being much longer, explores more issues in more detail; Keith's gives just enough of a taste to motivate the idea that climate engineering deserves serious consideration. Hamilton's first chapter explains how 20 years of failed climate policy motivated key scientists to push climate engineering into the limelight. In Chapter 2, Hamilton offers a technical explanation of the first of two kinds of climate engineering: carbon dioxide removal (CDR). He presents the scientific and practical issues surrounding a range of prominent proposals for capturing carbon from the atmosphere and squirreling it away somewhere, e.g., in trees, in the deep oceans or underground. Chapter 3 does the same thing for the other kind of climate engineering: solar radiation management (SRM). Here, Hamilton explains various proposals for reflecting a fraction of incoming sunlight back into space before it can warm the Earth. For example, one prominent proposal involves injecting tiny particles into the stratosphere. Both chapters offer clear, detailed explanations of the relevant technologies, enabling even readers without a scientific background to understand how each proposal might work and what it entails. The substance of each chapter is accurate, but the tone betrays skepticism and sometimes hostility toward the technologies. In Chapters 4 and 5, Hamilton turns to various 'players' who are or might become involved in the climate engineering debate, ranging from specific scientists to oil companies to right-wing American think tanks. These are the strangest chapters of the book. They paint supporters of climate engineering as some sort of hubristic cabal of sinister characters, bent on deploying climate engineering despite the objections of civil