The idea that climate engineering can’t really do anything is well founded, the idea that we MUST do something, not so much. This looks like another press release timed to fit discussion of Obama’s war on energy. – Anthony
Tinkering with climate change through climate engineering isn’t going to help us get around what we have to do says a new report authored by researchers at six universities, including Simon Fraser University.
After evaluating a range of possible climate-altering approaches to dissipating greenhouse gases and reducing warming, the interdisciplinary team concluded there’s no way around it. We have to reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.
“Some climate engineering strategies look very cheap on paper. But when you consider other criteria, like ecological risk, public perceptions and the abilities of governments to control the technology, some options look very bad,” says Jonn Axsen.
The assistant professor in SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management is a co-author on this study, which appears in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. It is the first scholarly attempt to rank a wide range of approaches to minimizing climate change in terms of their feasibility, cost-effectiveness, risk, public acceptance, governability and ethics.
It states reducing emissions, through some combination of switching away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and changing human behaviour, is still the most effective way of confronting climate change.
The authors note though that some approaches to climate engineering are more promising than others, and they should be used to augment efforts to reduce the climate-change effects resulting from human activity. For example, strategies such as forest management and geological storage of carbon dioxide may be useful complements.
Other climate engineering strategies are less appealing, such as fertilizing the ocean with iron to absorb carbon dioxide or reducing global warming by injecting particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight.
“Take the example of solar radiation management, which is the idea of putting aerosols into the stratosphere, kind of like what happens when a large volcano erupts,” Axsen explains.
“This is a surprisingly cheap way to reduce global temperatures, and we have the technology to do it. But our study asked other important questions. What are the environmental risks? Will global citizens accept this? What country would manage this? Is that fair? Suddenly, this strategy does not look so attractive.”
Working under the auspices of the National Science Foundation, the authors spent two years evaluating more than 100 studies that addressed the various implications of climate engineering and their anticipated effects on greenhouse gases.
The authors hope their study will help the public and decision-makers invest in the approaches with the largest payoffs and the fewest disadvantages. At stake, they emphasize, are the futures of our food production, climate and water security.
Background: Axsen’s collaborators were Daniela Cusack, an assistant professor of geography in the University of California, Los Angeles’ College of Letters and Science; Lauren Hartzell-Nichols, acting assistant professor in The Program on Values in Society and The Program on Environment at the University of Washington; Katherine Mackey, a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Marine Biological Laboratory; Rachael Shwom, assistant professor in human ecology at Rutgers University; and Sam White, assistant professor of environmental history at Ohio State University.
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Ozero hates America – it’s that obvious.
Could we please have an indication of which of these “assistant professors” are dependent on taxpayer funding, and to what extent they are influenced by national politics? Have they considered the obvious alternative course of action – doing precisely nothing? As an engineer, I am upset that they should be polluting the name of engineering to associate it with “climate engineering”!
Change exactly WHAT to exactly WHAT exactly? And what will be the cost to the American taxpayer, you know, the poor slob that will have to foot the bill for your socialist utopia? Any bleeding heart out there care to answer those questions?
Anyone surprised? The answer is always to limit the “carbon emissions”, as that will allow raising even more nigh-unlimited funds for further squandering through the power of taxation with faux representation. Of course there is always the allure of benefiting friends and punishing enemies by mandating with emission controls which industries to benefit or punish. Let them build their natural gas burning generation facilities, if they pay off the solar and wind generation companies by buying their emission allowances.
But allowing things to happen and see what it really costs based on what really ends up happening, rather than jumping in and stealing the few remaining dregs of imagined idealized freedom? Where do you think you are, in America?
The solution to global warming is the same as it was for global cooling in the ’70s. Wait.
It’s worth asking, could they possibly come to any other conclusion? Would we ever see a paper published in this journal that says, “eh, wait, we can fix it later?” That would blow up their entire industry.
This was my favorite:“Take the example of solar radiation management, which is the idea of putting aerosols into the stratosphere, kind of like what happens when a large volcano erupts,” Axsen explains.
“This is a surprisingly cheap way to reduce global temperatures, and we have the technology to do it. But our study asked other important questions. What are the environmental risks? Will global citizens accept this? What country would manage this? Is that fair? Suddenly, this strategy does not look so attractive.”
So we have a cheap, low cost solution, but we think investing trillions of dollars in unreliable forms of energy is better because we can’t figure out who would manage this and whether it’s “fair”?
“… and changing human behaviour.” Coercion in other words. Let me guess who will be the coercer and who will be the coerced.
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
At June 3, 2014 at 1:56 pm you say and ask
Oh, yes! And that is why those such as Jonn Axsen decry the ‘aerosol option’ which they admit
By asserting
But those “other criteria” also apply to the emission constraints which they advocate.
In reality, the cheap and effective ‘aerosol option’ means that NOTHING needs to be done unless and until anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is observed to be a real and present danger. And there has been no global warming from any and all causes for at least 17 years. The ‘aerosol option’ provides politicians with the appearance of their doing something about AGW while they do the right thing (which is nothing) about AGW.
In the improbable event that a real need to respond to AGW were to become a reality then the ‘aerosol option’ would provide an instant remedy while emission reductions were introduced.
I explained this on WUWT several years ago here. Sadly, several people failed (refused?) to understand my argument and pretended I was advocating adoption of the climate engineering.
Richard
Not a scientist or an engineer among these very junior faculty (what the heck is an acting assistant professor anyway?) who with any luck will never get tenure. It is really disheartening to see what is thought of as scholarship these days, especially in the Department of High Falutin’ Made Up Subjects. Sigh.
Always my favorite geoengineering scam = feed the copepods!!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/27/ocean-iron-fertilization-experiment-a-blooming-failure/
Heck, Chindia is already doing climate engineering. With all their new coal fired electricity generation plants creating all that cooling air pollution. And they will buy all the US coal the EPA won’t let us burn here, in order to make all the things we won’t be able to make here, in order to sell us those things, in order to get the dollars to buy our coal to burn there . God bless em.
/sarc off. Except it isn’t really sarcasm, it’s a true description of global economics and ‘free’ trade.
Having graduated from the “old” University across town (in water resources and pollution control), we had lots of fun making up sayings to go with the acronym “SFU”. I am sure a few will quickly come to mind.
Of course, this fits right in with the Pacific Coast Collaborative: http://www.pacificcoastcollaborative.org/Pages/Welcome.aspx
A Kool-Aid policy making group. (check their sidebar articles). Have to stop before I say something dumb as I don’t know whether to be sick at the waste of taxpayers money or angry. So glad I moved east across the Rockies out of LotusLand.
It looks to me like the EPA may be already preparing the ground for a strategic retreat – this from Bloomberg:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCgQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2F2014-06-03%2Fepa-head-says-significant-changes-possible-in-carbon-plan.html&ei=DkmOU8jtNMW2O8PUgdAN&usg=AFQjCNEqnWAWu3ADS3rMV3WdRz5OZp9TRA
Tinkering with climate change through climate engineering isn’t going to help us get around what we have to do…….nonsense….I’ve been swinging a white chicken over my head for the past 15 years
…it worked
chicken will never be the same though
This a war with only negative consequences; an crippling tax, scientific minds employed on fruitless tasks, beneficial research suspended and the economy rendered impotent.
The CAGW movement favors geoengineering by reduction of carbon dioxide, a form of geoengineering with extreme negative biological side effects (greatly reduced plant growth and water usage efficiency), because the astronomical cost of it in crippling industrial consumption (production) is the actual goal and objective.
Once in a while, someone naive enough to believe their global warming doom predictions starts to favor more mathematically literate geoengineering, such as stratospheric reflective dust (micron-sized to stay suspended for months) added to airline exhaust to reflect some sunlight (a tiny tiny fraction of sunlight but more than the effect of CO2 emissions), vastly more efficient, several orders of magnitude more radiative forcing change per unit mass, to cause as much radiative forcing change for on the order of 1% the cost and with lesser harm to the biosphere.
That, however, is merely an unintended consequence of the movement, missing its actual objective which has jack to do with temperature in itself. Or another method of geoengineering is talked about briefly as a PR spin to pretend “we are considering this because the problem is so serious,” to try to reinforce in the public a perception that global warming is serious, albeit with no intent or desire for actual implementation. The last thing desired by alarmists is for the whole pretend problem to be quickly solved and thus inconveniently go away.
In reality, such geoengineering is not desirable due to the facts that colder is not better and that the world is headed for global cooling rather than warming anyway (as in the context of my usual http://www.webcitation.org/6PsOoxWKN illustration, enlarging on further click, illustrating why global warming, the “pause,” etc. happened in the first place). However, if cooling was desirable, that would be far less costly than the CO2-reduction geoengineering method.
… evaluating a range of possible climate-altering approaches to dissipating greenhouse gases and reducing warming …
Would anyone like another winter like the last one with a further 5°F taken off courtesy of ‘climate engineering’?
Remember, folks , the only thing you need to know about climate change is that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Was that P.J.O’Rourke’s quote?
Say Jonn Axsen take your self and like minded buds and head down to wreck beach and chill out.
The following should be un-indented. It’s my comment.
—————–
So we must tackle climate change by reducing our co2 output? So what would the results be??? What has happened in recent decades.?
GET READY FOR A SHOCKER! We must act against climate change and the causes of climate change. What a load of shi!t.
Act against THIS.
Act for THIS. Cold is better for homo sapiens from tropical Africa than heat. You know it’s true. We must act now!!!
As an environmentalist I am totally against any crazy manipulation of NATURAL phenomena. I think even crazy Mann agreed with this. There is no AGW all the data is telling us this. People who attempt to fiddle with natural gases in the atmosphere are completely anti-environment LOL
Useless eggheads. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the ivory towers of academia are a magical world where common sense is slowly sucked out of you.
Shouldn’t someone at least demonstrate that climate can be “engineered” before we start talking about doing it? The term “engineering” implies a preciseness in the outcome you desire. Dropping a bomb on a building isn’t an engineering achievement; a controlled demolition is. Until someone demonstrates, for example, the amount of CO2 absorbed per unit iron deposited in the ocean, the amount of actual (as opposed to theoretical) temperature decrease for which that is associated, and the quantified actual downstream effects of that actual temperature decrease, this nonsense about “climate engineering” is nothing more that the musings of fools living in the vaporware of their own imaginations.
Even though I live in Australia, I get to see the synoptic charts for the US.
I have come to the conclusion that Texas will be ideal for “green” power. When it is not blowing a gale, the sun is shining profusely. The Texans could probably export their excess “green” power to the rest of the world!!!!
mikelowe2013 says:
June 3, 2014 at 1:53 pm
“……..As an engineer, I am upset that they should be polluting the name of engineering to associate it with “climate engineering”!
Amen to that brother. Being an engineer myself, I’ve also bristled at calling garbage men ‘Sanitation Engineers’