From the Carnegie Institution comes a nutty consensus type idea, modeled in game-theory, implemented by an equally nutty future coalition. Law of unintended consequences anyone?
Geoengineering by coalition
Washington, D.C.—Solar geoengineering is a proposed approach to reduce the effects of climate change due to greenhouse gasses by deflecting some of the sun’s incoming radiation. This type of proposed solution carries with it a number of uncertainties, however, including geopolitical questions about who would be in charge of the activity and its goals.
New modeling work from Carnegie’s Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira shows that if a powerful coalition ever decided to deploy a geoengineering system, they would have incentive to exclude other countries from participating in the decision-making process. Their work is published by Environmental Research Letters and is available online.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter. Large volcanic eruptions cool the planet by creating lots of small particles in the stratosphere, but the particles fall out within a couple of years and the planet heats upagain. The idea behind solar geoengineering is to constantly replenish a layer of small particles in the stratosphere, mimicking this volcanic aftermath and scattering sunlight back to space.
“Attempts to form coalitions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have repeatedly hit the wall, because it’s difficult to get everybody to participate in a substantive and meaningful way,” Ricke said. “Members of coalitions to reduce emissions have incentives to include more countries, but countries have incentives not to participate, so as to avoid costs associated with emission reduction while benefiting from reductions made elsewhere.”
But a game-theoretic model developed by Ricke, Caldeira, and their colleague Juan Moreno-Cruz from the Georgia Institute of Technology showed that when it comes to geoengineering, the opposite is true.
Smaller coalitions would be more desirable to the participants, not less, because those members could set the target temperature to their liking without having to please as many parties. Likewise, countries that aren’t included in the coalition would actually want to join so that they could move the thermostat, so to speak, in the direction that better suits their interests. Since the costs of geoengineering are so much lower than mitigation, once a coalition has formed and has successfully implemented geoengineering, it would have an incentive to exclude permanently other willing participants.
“My view, aside from any technical result, is that it should remain a central goal to maintain openness and inclusiveness in geoengineering coalitions, so that all people who want a voice in the decision-making process are able to have that voice,” Caldeira said.
“……causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter.” Perhaps some one should tell them that the Earth has not warmed for 15 years.
And geopolitical questions of who would be responsible for failure, for unintended consequences, and for the unintended consequences of failure. Intentionally polluting the stratosphere seems to violate the progressive’s darling precautionary principle. IOW, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and pot-holed with what-ifs.
“New modeling work”. As I’m sure someone has said before…it’s models all the way down.
Do these people just sit there and play computer games all day and get paid for it?
Why did I bother to spend 40 years in industry when I could have sat at home with my playstation like these tossers and made statements of the bleeding obvious every six months to collect my pay. No wonder there is so much junk science around.
Ivor Ward
If the average household can’t agree on what temperature to set the thermostat, how do they expect a global system to end any way other than in bloodshed?
On a limited basis I agree with this on a planetary level, but Geo-Engineering is most harmful to human health, I copied and pasted this from the web;
“Chemtrails? lmao
Do you have any idea the amount of any substance you would need to seed the planet – leave alone the fact that its dispersal would not be even worldwide.
We have been pumping ‘greenhouse’ gases out for centuries – decades at very high rates – and given the alleged harm potential for it, the world IS still here.
Just think about that, for decades nearly everything we have manufactured has been producing these gases.
Do you conspiracy ‘enthusiasts’ really think that a few aircraft dumping a bit of chemical in the atmosphere has ANY comparison with decades of manufacturing emission?
‘Chemtrails’ would be an absolutely wasteful, inefficient and dangerous transmission system. One reason that chemical and biological warfare weapons have never been deployed in huge volume is because of unpredictability. When the soldiers were using poison gases in WWI they found that sometimes it killed your own troops in numbers too – with the wind blowing it back or local environmental conditions delaying the breakdown of the chemicals.
The condensation trail of an aircraft only looks big because we can see it against the ‘invisible’ medium of air – compared to the amount of atmosphere there is, it is insignificant.
Besides, air quality is monitored throughout the globe – how come none of these observations have ever found anything anomalous?”
But this statement does not answer the question I have; Why wasn’t I asked first if I would allow them to experiment on me?
Geopolitical questions….
Well, I have one: what if the particular coalition behind the geoengineering, decides to make use of the shitfs in climate it might cause, to wreak havoc on someone they don’t particularly like? Seems like this would be a great weapon. ‘Ooooops! We goofed (snicker)’
“New modeling work from Carnegie’s Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira shows that if a powerful coalition ever decided to deploy a geoengineering system, they would have incentive to exclude other countries from participating in the decision-making process.”
And if an individual could control the ‘thermostat’ they would have incentive to exclude everyone else on earth from the decision-making process, even small powerful coalitions. It’s called tyranny and there was no need to model anything at all, knowing that for as long as we’ve been walking upright (and longer than that I suppose) tyrants have been working to get their hands on the control knob.
Aside from the very questionable premise regarding CO2 and warming and the technical dangers/costs/practicality of implementing such a scheme, this is truly creepy – the sort of thinking that can only come from the minds of people who have little to do and who are paid a lot for it. This is the kind of thinking that leads to war, even global war.
Like soccer’s seasons, the silly season never ends.
There seem to be no comments to this report. Problems???
Institution? Mental Institution most likely. What absolute garbage……
There are two prerequisites for life on this planet that the powerful wish to control, Carbon Dioxide and sunlight. Control CO2 and sunlight and you control photosynthesis and the size of the food chain. We are ruled by a ruthless elite weaned on Darwinism, Malthusism and Nihilism who presume ill-gotten wealth implies “strongest”, therefore they should decide who shall live and who shall die. These elites have created a false science paradigm to support their elgatarian goals. Carbon Dioxide does not warm the planet. Green energy takes more primary fuel to create than can ever be recovered, and is therefore unsustainable. Hydrocarbons are the precursor to life, not the finite residue of past life. AGW, sustainable energy and peak oil form the triad of this false paradigm.
For more on the peak oil fiction read… http://FauxScienceSlayer.com/pdf/Fracturing_Fossil_Fuel_Fable.pdf
The Carnegie group has been cooking up green kool-aide for a century. It is sad that the editors of ERL are drinking the green meanie poison.
Another trough for the rent-seeking bureaucrats and NGOs to feed from.
Alarmism, the leech that keeps on leeching …
“so that all people who want a voice in the decision-making process are able to have that voice,”
Somehow I’m not getting a picture of democracy at work here.
“Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter.”
No need to read any further.
I think it quite likely that some nations would consider any geoengineering by another nation or nations, that reduced their crop yeild, etc from what it would otherwise be, as an act of war. Do we really want to open that can of worms?
Starting with a fake premise in the very first sentence, followed by reference to models and game-play… do I want people with this mindset to have any control over global climate? I think I would rather a coalition of Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler, the world would be a safer place!
Two thoughts:
First, if global warming ever actually becomes a problem, we have a fairly good idea that this is a possible solution. Global warming is not a problem. If you have you “convince” people that tiny changes in temperature that don’t even go outside the bounds of previous weather are “global warming”, then chances are it’s not happening.
Second, when the inevitable unintended consequences kick in and entire crops are failing, people are dying, and the world is thrown into chaos, expect the apparatus and all facilities and people and countries involved to be on the receiving end of some retaliatory nukes, or worse. Those would be coming from the countries that would have tried to stop said geoengineering experiment.
We barely had a summer the year that Pinatubo weather was happening. We had snow in August. This area produces a large amount of food. Get this geoengineering thing the tiniest bit wrong and there is no longer sufficient food, period. And don’t even think about the possibility of triggering an ice age, or little ice age.
Cold is worse than Warm. Anyone who has ever lived in a winter climate can tell you that. People die from cold, and they’re not computer modeled people, they’re real people with names and families. Nothing grows in the cold. Cold = death. Cooling is NOT a goal for civilization.
Filed under:
CC and Politics, The Horror Begins
This could lead to war.
God help us if these morons are seriously considering this.
This is getting serious!
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The responses to a non-existent problem are going to destroy the world, first economically then environmentally. (or whichever happens first)
TOTALLY CRAZY !!!!
But how to wake these idiots up to reality ! ???????
Actually, given the choice, I’d rather see a geoengineering approach over what’s going on now,
which is both very expensive and very ineffective. Almost anything would be an improvement..
and if it all goes wrong and we end up with an ice age? who do we blame!