Geoengineering/Climate Engineering

Recent assessments of the international community’s
ability to hold the increase of global average temperature
to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit
that increase to 1.5°C, indicate that this goal is unlikely
to be achieved without large-scale implementation of
climate engineering (CE) technologies. In light of the
prominent, albeit contested, role that CE is likely to
play in international climate policy, this Article analyzes
the specific provisions of the Paris Agreement
with a view to assessing the extent to which the Agreement
can provide an institutional framework to effectively
govern CE internationally, and how it may shape
the development and implementation of CE options.
In particular, the Article examines a number of critical
interpretive questions that will need to be addressed as
states begin to develop CE technologies at large scales,
including the need to provide guidance respecting
the acceptability of exceeding the Paris targets before
drawing down atmospheric CO2 levels, the challenges
for equity, human rights, and sustainability objectives
that CE poses, and the need to incorporate CE technologies into accounting and incentive structures.

This report offers a detailed examination,
by a team of global governance experts,
of governance needs and options for Solar
Radiation Management (SRM) technologies.
The report focuses on near-term governance,
outlining feasible and needed actions that
can be taken by approximately 2025, at the
national, regional, and international levels
and by non-state actors.
The fourteen experts who contributed to
this report were convened as the Academic
Working Group on Climate Engineering
Governance (the Working Group). Starting in
March 2016, we gathered for five meetings
to consider and define the challenges
and opportunities associated with SRM
technologies and to craft a set of specific,
actionable governance recommendations.
During these meetings, the group heard
from established experts on SRM as well as
experts in the governance of other emerging
technologies. Between meetings, group
members delved into and contributed to the
academic literature on SRM and into related
policy conversations.
The report focuses on SRM as a subset
of speculative climate engineering or
geoengineering responses to climate
change. SRM refers to technologies that
might reflect a small percentage of incoming
solar radiation back into space before it can
warm the planet. Although the term “climate
engineering” is often used to encompass
both SRM and technologies that would
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
in large quantities, the Working Group
decided to focus solely on SRM in order to
provide clear, sharp, and implementable
recommendations pertaining to the specific
governance challenges surrounding SRM.

In recent years, the idea of geoengineering, understood as large-scale interventions in the planet's climate to counteract anthropogenic climate change, has steadily increased its visibility. Presented explicitly as an approach to climate change, geoengineering is positioned as a response, a reactive fix. Geoengineering, however, has a longer and broader history than the current climate crisis. It has long been an umbrella term for large-scale projects in which various Earth sciences meet dreams about human ecosphere interventions, especially regarding lithosphere and climate and weather modifications. In this paper, we review the history of geoengineering, focusing specifically on climate geoengineering and lithosphere geoengineering. We draw attention to the difference between “proactive” (“high-modernist”), aimed at mastery over nature, and “reactive” forms of geoengineering, hoping to address anthropogenic environmental degradation technologically. Additionally, we trace historical (dis)continuities between the older, proactive, form of geoengineering and their recent reframing as a technological fix—specifically around the question to what extent nature's complex systems can be known and controlled. Finally, we argue for the need to further research the intersections and shared histories between various forms of geoengineering.

"A catastrophic draught event was reported across much of the north of South America during August - December 2005. This resulted in extensive and irreversible damage in parts of the
Amazon river network. The 2005 Amazon draught followed very unusual changes in the Atlantic Ocean’s circulatory system that altered typical wind and rain patterns. Many climatic models predict the future desiccation of the Amazon region. This paper discusses dangers of sudden swings in the Amazon’s climate and how these risks can be reduced and securing the future of the river system.

The Amazon river systems’ inability to adapt to the new seasonal climate patterns in 2005, which led to a complete destruction of some river ecosystems, suggested us to look at water engineering solutions to prevent the risks of more tributaries of such dying. We made a case study to oxygenate the Amazon river to raise its draught-stress threshold during the likely future draughts that may be even worse than today if the Atlantic weather system generates more storms as the world’s temperature rises.

We studied a 100 kilometre wide section near the Amazon’s mouth. We assumed temperature +30C (when 100% oxygenated water contains 7,6 mg O2 / litre). The addition of 2,5 mg O2 / l represents 1/3 of the total, i.e. raising from 70% to 100%. This large water body oxygenation project requires 4 million kg O2 / day. 2,000 MIXOX units consume 80 MW / 100 km of river. 1,000 km demand is at 800 MW (1 power station), costing ~500 million euros p.a." http://www.vesieko.fi/yhteystiedot

The IPCC tries to imagine scenarios to meet the objective of limiting global warming to +1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period. One scenario places importance on negative emission technologies (NETs). NETs involve taking GHGs and storing them underground or in the oceans. CCS is complex in many ways: there are differing views on the feasibility of the technology, its sequestration capacity, its deployability, and its long-term safety and stability. It was therefore interesting to know if they are a miraculous solution or an aberrant blindness. This study aims to study the representations of NETs among academics and to see how representations of the economy and the environment are determinant in the representations of NETs. The research is based on semi-directive interviews with seven academics. The results show, through discourse analysis, that academics neither support nor totally reject NETs. These social representations vary on the place that academics give to NETs among solutions to address global warming. Support for NETs and CCS is conditional on the implementation of a range of other decarbonization solutions, particularly renewable energy and energy efficiency. Interviewees are quite critical of the environmental impacts of CCS, the economic cost and the carbon sequestration capacity.

Les rapports du GIEC pointent l’urgence du réchauffement climatique. Conjointement, le GIEC essaie d’imaginer des scénarios, certains plus pessimistes que d’autres, et de proposer des solutions selon les tendances économiques mondiales, le progrès technologique et les politiques climatiques, pour respecter l’objectif de limiter ce réchauffement climatique à +1,5°C ou 2°C par rapport à la période préindustrielle. Un scénario parmi d’autres accorde une importance aux technologies d’émissions négatives (TEN) dans un avenir dans lequel les émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) ne pourront baisser de manière importante. Les TEN consistent à prélever des GES et à les stocker dans le sous-sol ou dans les océans. Les TEN et les technologies de capture et séquestration de carbone (CSC) gagnent de plus en plus de place dans les débats académiques et dans les discours des plus grands hommes d’affaires du monde tels qu’Elon Musk. Les TEN sont complexes sur plusieurs points : les avis divergent sur la faisabilité de la technologie, sur sa capacité de séquestration, sur la possibilité de son déploiement, sur sa sécurité et sa stabilité sur le long terme. Il était donc intéressant de savoir si elles sont une solution miraculeuse ou un aveuglement aberrant.
S’appuyant sur la théorie des représentations sociales, ce mémoire a comme objectif d’étudier les représentations des TEN chez les universitaires et de voir en quoi les représentations de l’économie et de l’environnement sont déterminantes dans les représentations des TEN. Les représentations sociales peuvent éclairer la dynamique entre les personnes et l’environnement, le climat et la technologie. La méthodologie de recherche est essentiellement qualitative de type exploratoire. Elle s’appuie sur des entretiens semi-directifs avec des experts, ingénieurs, physiciens pour recueillir leurs représentations sur le thème étudié : les TEN. Six universitaires belges et français et un universitaire turc ont été choisis pour leur connaissance au sujet de la capture et séquestration du carbone. Les entretiens ont eu lieu par des réunions ZOOM. Divers aspects des TEN ont été abordés lors de ces entretiens comme leurs impacts environnementaux, la capacité technologique, leur place parmi les solutions pour faire face au réchauffement climatique.
Les résultats montrent, à travers l’analyse du discours, que les universitaires ne soutiennent ni ne rejettent totalement les TEN. Ces représentations sociales varient sur la place que les universitaires accordent aux TEN parmi les solutions pour faire face au réchauffement climatique. Le soutien aux TEN et CSC est conditionné par la mise en œuvre d’une série d’autres solutions de décarbonisation, en particulier les énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique. Les interviewés se montrent assez critiques quant aux impacts environnementaux des TEN, le coût économique et la capacité de séquestration du carbone.
Mots clés : TEN, représentations sociales, environnement, économie, réchauffement climatique, discours, perception, discours, capture et stockage du carbone.

After more than two decades of UN negotiations,
global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue
to rise, with current projections indicating the
planet is on a pathway to a temperature increase of
approximately 3.2°C by 2100, well beyond what is
considered a safe level. This has spurred scientific and
policy interest in the possible role of solar radiation
management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal
(CDR) geoengineering activities to help avert passing
critical climatic thresholds, or to help societies recover
if global temperatures overshoot expectations of
safe levels. There are various proposals for SRM and
CDR marine geoengineering, but aside from ocean
iron fertilization (OIF) and marine cloud brightening
(MCB), none of these options have moved beyond
conceptual development and laboratory testing.
Marine geoengineering proposals show significant
diversity in terms of their purpose, scale of application,
likely effectiveness, requisite levels of international
cooperation and intensity of environmental risks. This
diversity of marine geoengineering activities will likely
place significant new demands upon the international
law system to govern potential risks and opportunities.
International ocean law governance is comprised
of a patchwork of global framework agreements,
sectoral agreements and customary international
law rules that have developed over time in response
to disparate issues. These include maritime access,
fisheries management, shipping pollution, ocean
dumping and marine scientific research (MSR). This
patchwork of oceans governance contains several
bodies of rules that might apply in governing marine
geoengineering activities. However, these bodies
of rules were negotiated for different purposes,
and not specifically for the governance of marine
Executive Summary
vii
geoengineering. The extent to which this patchwork
of rules might contribute to marine geoengineering
governance will vary, depending on the purpose
of an activity, where it is conducted, which state is
responsible for it and the types of impacts it is likely
to have. Applying this patchwork to a specific marine
geoengineering activity is complex, and existing
rules may provide only limited concrete guidance as
to how an activity ought to be conducted. The 2013
amendment to the London Protocol on ocean dumping
provides the most developed and specific framework
for marine geoengineering governance to date. But the
capacity of this amendment to bolster the capacity of
international law to govern marine geoengineering
activities is limited by some significant shortcomings.
Negotiations are under way to establish a new global
treaty on conservation of marine biodiversity in areas
beyond national jurisdiction, including new rules
for area-based management, environmental impact
assessments (EIAs) and capacity building/technology
transfer. The potential provisions of this agreement
could be pertinent to marine geoengineering options.
This negotiation is both an opportunity and a risk
for marine geoengineering governance. A new
agreement has the potential to fill key gaps in the
existing patchwork of international law for marine
geoengineering activities in high-seas areas. However,
it is also important that this new treaty be structured
in a way that is not overly restrictive, which might
hinder responsible research and development
of marine geoengineering in high-seas areas.

Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a means to cool the Earth by increasing the reflection of sunlight back to space, for example, by injecting reflective aerosol particles (or their precursors) into the lower stratosphere. Such proposed techniques would not be able to substitute for mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a response to the risks of climate change, as they would only mask some of the effects of global warming. They might, however, eventually be applied as a complementary approach to reduce climate risks. Thus, the Earth system consequences of solar geoengineering are central to understanding its potentials and risks. Here we review the state-of-the-art knowledge about strato-spheric sulfate aerosol injection and an idealized proxy for this, 'sunshade geoengineering,' in which the intensity of incoming sunlight is directly reduced in models. Studies are consistent in suggesting that sunshade geoengineering and stratospheric aerosol injection would generally offset the climate effects of elevated GHG concentrations. However, it is clear that a solar geoengineered climate would be novel in some respects, one example being a notably reduced hydrological cycle intensity. Moreover, we provide an overview of nonclimatic aspects of the response to stratospheric aerosol injection, for example, its effect on ozone, and the uncertainties around its consequences. We also consider the issues raised by the partial control over the climate that solar geoengineering would allow. Finally, this overview highlights some key research gaps in need of being resolved to provide sound basis for guidance of future decisions around solar geoengineering.

Warnings about climate change often come wrapped in apocalyptic language and scenarios, often as a rhetorical strategy to convey the sense of urgency with which action is required. Similarly, technologies that promise to deliver us from the impending climate apocalypse often come shrouded as savior-technologies. Once such example are carbon capture and storage solutions. Language and imagery on websites and in marketing material presents these technologies as transformative technologies: they promise to transform something harmful in the atmosphere (CO2) into paradisiacal plentitude: carbon as infinite energy resource. This paper will discuss and explore the underlying ideas behind carbon capture and storage technologies and discuss how language used to talk about the climate opportunities they offer transcends the everyday and the ordinary. Based on David Chidester’s understanding of religion, this paper argues that the power of carbon capture narratives is grounded in religious tropes and ideas.

Recently NATURE published a discussion on construction of sills in attempt to prevent or slow melting glaciers that are discharging ice into the ice fjords. Several further papers promptly followed publication of this essentially erroneous article in a respected NATURE magazine. Here it is pointed out that there is a discrepancy of several magnitudes thus excluding a long-term viability to manage the edges of ice fjords or continental ice shelves/sheets due to a phenomenon known as the mega-erratics. These are blocks of hard rocks that are several kilometres in size that have been dislocated by a warmed and wet edges of glacier/ice sheet/ice shelf. This Parliament evidence points out the error that was not apparent to the peer-reviewers at the time and in subsequent papers that followed. The Parliament was shown evidence that large enough obstacles cannot be possibly made to prevent ice discharges due to a progression of melting, that softens and lubricates glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets. The forces unleashed by the ice front exceeds several magnitudes from the conceived objects that sills were proposed. The only, and very only effect is temporary and limited to prevention of warm water incursion where these methods will work for a while in a cold, dry, and relatively stable ice formations. A long-term projections suggested to prevent warmed and water-infested glaciers from discharging ice into the ocean cannot be made as the forces of ice exceed many magnitudes of the sills and levies that can be made of concrete blocks, aggregates or other materials. Thus the prevention of sea level rise by this method for centuries or millennia is not functional one and thus the mitigation and prevention of rubbish gyros in ocean, the supply of housing, nuclear and food production security must be looked at as solution by the ocean littoral states. Several examples of various types of risk to the sustainability of oceans have been presented in addition to the above exposed misconception. This comes with much regret as it appears that one 'hoped-for-solution' to manage the future climate change impacts has largely foundered on the issue that the sills cannot be made strong enough to contain most important, warmed glaciers or edges of unstable ice shelves. However, for a short-term this may offer small-scale solutions provided that costs remain sufficiently small. Aggressively melting ice formations with darkened surfaces, wide spread melt water ponds, or water filled crevasses it does not offer much, if any, prolonged ice stability. (The document is best viewed as a .pdf file due to the lay-out of graph and legends.)

Despite a growing literature on the climate response to solar geoengineering—proposals to cool the planet by increasing the planetary albedo—there has been little published on the impacts of solar geoengineering on natural and human systems such as agriculture, health, water resources, and ecosystems. An understanding of the impacts of different scenarios of solar geoengineering deployment will be crucial for informing decisions on whether and how to deploy it. Here we review the current state of knowledge about impacts of a solar-geoengineered climate and identify the major research gaps. We suggest that a thorough assessment of the climate impacts of a range of scenarios of solar geoengineer-ing deployment is needed and can be built upon existing frameworks. However, solar geoengineering poses a novel challenge for climate impacts research as the manner of deployment could be tailored to pursue different objectives making possible a wide range of climate outcomes. We present a number of ideas for approaches to extend the survey of climate impacts beyond standard scenarios of solar geoengineering deployment to address this challenge. Reducing the impacts of climate change is the fundamental motivator for emissions reductions and for considering whether and how to deploy solar geoengineering. This means that the active engagement of the climate impacts research community will be important for improving the overall understanding of the opportunities, challenges, and risks presented by solar geoengineering.

Many feel a sense of aversion and tragedy about proposals for engineering the climate. Precautionary concerns only partly explain these feelings. For a fuller understanding, we need a thicker conception of the values and ends of political society than “neutralitarian” political theories offer. To this end, I examine how Buddhist and Greek notions of temperance, justice, and freedom bear on the question of geo-engineering. My intention is not to pronounce on whether geo-engineering is morally “right” or “wrong,” but to highlight reasons for thinking it unattractive in a broader sense, thereby strengthening the case for exhausting conventional emissions reductions options.

The climatic effects of climate engineering - or geoengineering - via cirrus cloud thinning are examined. Thinner cirrus clouds can allow more outgoing longwave radiation to escape to space, potentially cooling the climate. The cloud properties and climatic effects due to perturbing the ice crystal fall speed are investigated in a set of hemispheric-scale sensitivity experiments with the Community Earth System Model. It is found that increasing the ice crystal fall speed, as an analogue to cirrus cloud seeding, depletes high level clouds and reduces the longwave cloud forcing. Deliberate depletion of cirrus clouds increases outgoing longwave radiation, reduces the upper tropospheric water vapor and cools the climate. Global cirrus cloud thinning gave a net cloud forcing change of -1.55 Wm -2 and a global annual mean temperature change of -0.94 K. Though there is negligible change in the global annual mean precipitation (-0.001 mm/day), the spatially non-homogeneous forcing induces circulation changes, and hence remote climate changes. Climate engineering the Southern Hemisphere only results in a northwards shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone and possible Sahelian drought alleviation, whilst targeting the Northern Hemisphere alone causes a greater cooling. It was found that targeting cirrus clouds everywhere outside of the tropics results in changes to the circulation and precipitation even in the non - climate engineered regions, underscoring the risks of remote side effects and indeed the complexity of the climate system.

‘From Pleistocene to Anthropocene: When Rain Dancing and Fire of Agni are Just Not Enough’ The Exhaustive Research Proposal Draft for the 2020 Grant Application for  the VU Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Ethics of the Anthropocene; Religion, Ethics, and Global Environmental Change –‘Geoengineering of Human Death in Asia’: Explorations from the Ancient Human Desire for the Control of Nature to the Present Threat of a Monsoon Breakdown in Asia and the Risk of a Near Future Nuclear Apocalypse No One had Wanted but May Now Have to Face. Includes the Cover Letter Submission from Veli Albert Kallio to Detail Research Interests and Plans for the Fellowship. (The detailed draft of my research proposal [Section 2] has finally uploaded to the Academia.edu web site. Further sections for the proposed research will follow in due course. Overall, the research is still largely a work in progress -  seeking for grants to its various elements - but there are already some important insights that may offer valuable avenues for further investigations from the sections available on this study of Ethnoclimatology, ethics from the past to the present.)

Faced with the urgency of climate change, Climate Engineering has been framed as a fast and feasible technological solution. At the same time, however, critique against it is getting increasingly louder. This paper articulates a critical analysis of Climate Engineering technologies from a point of view situated within the degrowth discourse. In the first part two approaches discussed within the degrowth debate are presented: the concept of viability based on a biophysical perspective and the concept of conviviality based on a socio-cultural approach. In a second step formalized arguments from the point of view of applied ethics are articulated and applied to three Climate Engineering Technologies: Sulfate Aerosol Injection, Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage, and Afforestation. In a third step, an extended version of the trade-off argument about mitigation versus Climate Engineering solution is discussed from a degrowth perspective: accordingly, within the current dominant growth paradigm, climate engineering technologies might lead to reduced mitigation efforts. The paper follows the argumentative turn in applied ethics and displays a formalization of arguments that can help clarify decision-making and identify the different dimensions at stake. The paper articulates arguments against the deployment of CE technologies and advances a new version of the trade-off-argument based on a degrowth perspective. From the point of view of a degrowth-based critique of technology, the only type of Climate Engineering Technology ethically acceptable would be afforestation under specific conditions. Highlights: • Critique of technology based on degrowth is applied to Climate Engineering • Biophysical (viability) and socio-cultural (conviviality) criteria are presented • Via formalized arguments a critique of Climate Engineering Technologies is discussed • Sulfate Aerosol Inj., Bio-energy w. Carbon Capture & Storage, Afforestation analyzed Acknowledgments We would like to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their very interesting comments that greatly helped improve this paper.

Proposals to block the ice fjords of Greenland with reinforced high-tension cables to prevent icebergs from moving into the sea is impractical, because the force of the ice would ultimately snap the cables and rapidly release a large quantity of frozen ice into the sea.

However, the sort of cables used in suspension bridges could potentially be used to divert, rather than halt, the southward movement of sea ice through the Svalbard Archipelago. It would be possible to block the ice moving south, and only allow sea ice to float northwards.

A number of geoengineering ideas are currently being examined and even employed in the Russian Arctic (the Far Eastern Shipping Company uses a 'sea ice demolition' technique called "ice chipping" to facilitate earlier loss of sea ice on the Amurskaya Bay area in the Russian Far East in the spring seasons). 

The opposite of 'sea ice demolition' is 'sea ice creation' by using ice-breaking vessels to deliberately break up and scatter coastal sea ice in both Arctic and Antarctic waters in their respective autumns, and redirecting Russian rivers to south to the Central Asia to prevent warm riparian water discharges to the ice-forming areas of the Arctic Ocean. These geoengineering techniques could be used to slow down sea ice losses in the Arctic Ocean when employed under the right temperature and wind conditions.

Another possible effort to try to prolong spring time snow cover includes planting millions of birch trees as their white bark enhances the albedo effect, and the loss of their leaves in winter enables the snow to reflect radiation. In contrast, native evergreen pines, fir and spruce tend to shade the snow and absorb sun's radiation to speed up the spring time melting.

This article by Geographical was also republished by the Cambridge University Press as a sample text in their student exercise book in the following year.

The development of climate engineering research has historically depended on mostly western, holistic perceptions of climate and climate change. Determinations of climate and climate change as a global system have played a defining role in the development of climate engineering. As a result, climate engineering research in general, and solar radiation management (SRM) in particular, is primarily engaged in research of quantified, whole-Earth solutions. I argue that in the potential act of solar radiation management, a view of climate change that relies on the holistic western science of the climatic system is enshrined. This view, dependent on a deliberative intentionality that seems connected to anthropocenic notions of responsibility and control, profoundly influences the assumptions and research methods connected to climate engineering. While this may not necessarily be to the detriment of climate engineering proposals-in fact, it may be the only workable conception of SRM-it is a conceptual limit to the enterprise that has to be acknowledged. Additionally, in terms of governance, reliability, and cultural acceptance, this limit could be a fundamental objection to future experimentation (or implementation).

Chapter 5 (“Governing BECCS: “Slippery Slope” or “Uphill Struggle”?”) highlights how BECCS and other large-scale interventions in the Earth’s climate system, proposed to moderate anthropogenic global warming, are commonly portrayed as threatening to initiate a “slippery slope” from research to deployment. The argument suggests that governance should constrain or even proscribe research into BECCS on the grounds that allowing it to proceed unchecked could lead to a chain of events resulting in deployment and the undesirable consequences that this might bring. This chapter begins by critically examining the slippery slope argument as articulated in relation to BECCS. It then draws on the empirical findings of an expert scenario method designed to explore how far BECCS might develop in the future and under what governance arrangements. Rather than a slippery slope, the scenarios instead illustrate what might best be described as an “uphill struggle,” in which BECCS innovators confront manifold technical, political, and societal challenges to deployment. The chapter concludes by seeking to reframe the governance task as one of responsible incentivization, rather than one of constraint or proscription.

Geoengineering is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system in an attempt to mitigate the adverse effects of global warming. Now that climate emergency is upon us, claims that geoengineering is inevitable are rapidly proliferating. How did we get into this situation where the most extreme path now seems a plausible development? Is it an accurate representation of where we are at? Who is this “we” who is talking? What options make it onto the table? Which are left out? Whom does geoengineering serve? Why is the ensemble of projects that goes by that name so salient, even though the community of researchers and advocates is remarkably small? These are some of the questions that the thinkers contributing to this volume are exploring from perspectives ranging from sociology and geography to ethics and Indigenous studies. The editors set out this diverse collection of voices not as a monolithic, unified take on geoengineering, but as a place where creative thinkers, students, and interested environmental and social justice advocates can explore nuanced ideas in more than 240 characters.

Many modelling studies suggest that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), in interaction with the tropical Pacific background climate, will change under rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Solar geoengineering (reducing the solar flux from outer space) has been proposed as a means to counteract anthropogenic greenhouse-induced changes in climate. Effectiveness of solar geoengineering is uncertain. Robust results are particularly difficult to obtain for ENSO because existing geoengineering simulations are too short (typically ~50 years) to detect statistically significant changes in the highly variable tropical Pacific background climate. We here present results from a 1000-year sunshade geoengineering simulation, G1, carried out with the coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model HadCM3L. In agreement with previous studies, reducing the shortwave solar flux  more than compensates the warming in the tropical Pacific that develops in the 4×CO2 scenario: we observe an overcooling of 0.3oC (5 %) and 0.23-mm day-1 (5 %) reduction in mean rainfall relative to preindustrial conditions in the G1 simulation. This is due to the different latitudinal distributions of the shortwave (solar) and longwave (CO2) forcings.The location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) located north of equator in the tropical Pacific, which moved 7.5o southwards under 4×CO2, is also restored to its preindustrial location. However, other aspects of the tropical Pacific mean climate are not reset as effectively. Relative to preindustrial conditions, in G1 the zonal wind stress, zonal sea surface temperature (SST) gradient, and meridional SST gradient are reduced by 10 %, 11 %, and 9 %, respectively, and the Pacific Walker Circulation (PWC) is consistently weakened. The overall amplitude of ENSO strengthens by 5-8 %, but there is a 65 % reduction in the asymmetry between cold and warm events: cold events intensify more than warm events. Importantly, the frequency of extreme El Niño and La Niña events increases by 44 % and 32 %, respectively, while the total number of El Niño events increases by 12 %. Paradoxically, while the number of total and extreme events increase, the most extreme El Niño events also become weaker relative to preindustrial state while the La Niña events become stronger. That is, extreme El Niño events in G1 become less extreme than in preindustrial conditions, but extreme El Niño events become more frequent. In contrast, extreme La Niña events become stronger in G1. This is in agreement with the general overcooling of the tropical Pacific in G1 relative to preindustrial conditions, which depict a shift towards generally more La Niña-like conditions.

Chapter 6 (“Multilevel Policy Incentives for BECCS in Sweden”) builds on the high potential for BECCS in Sweden identified in chapter 4, summarizing the current policy incentives for BECCS research, development, demonstration, and diffusion (RDD&D). It examines the given policy drivers and obstacles at multiple scales (e.g., international, supranational, and national) and in terms of various forms of instruments (e.g., economic, regulatory, and informational). The chapter concludes that current policy instruments mostly fail to incentivize BECCS RDD&D in Sweden. The instruments partly favor R&D yet fail to provide incentives covering operational costs. Under current circumstances, BECCS is unlikely to reach demonstration scale in Sweden.

We present a suite of new climate model experiment designs for the Geoengineering Model Intercompari-son Project (GeoMIP). This set of experiments, named Ge-oMIP6 (to be consistent with the Coupled Model Intercom-parison Project Phase 6), builds on the previous GeoMIP project simulations, and has been expanded to address several further important topics, including key uncertainties in extreme events, the use of geoengineering as part of a portfolio of responses to climate change, and the relatively new idea of cirrus cloud thinning to allow more longwave radiation to escape to space. We discuss experiment designs, as well as the rationale for those designs, showing preliminary results from individual models when available. We also introduce a new feature, called the GeoMIP Testbed, which provides a platform for simulations that will be performed with a few models and subsequently assessed to determine whether the proposed experiment designs will be adopted as core (Tier 1) GeoMIP experiments. This is meant to encourage various stakeholders to propose new targeted experiments that address their key open science questions, with the goal of making GeoMIP more relevant to a broader set of communities. Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 3380 B. Kravitz et al.: GeoMIP6: simulation design and preliminary results

The online video-sharing website YouTube is extremely popular globally, also as a tool for information on science and environmental topics. However, only little is known about what kind of information users find when they are searching for information about climate science, climate change, and climate engineering on YouTube. This contribution presents results from an exploratory research project that investigates whether videos found on YouTube adhere to or challenge scientific consensus views. Ten search terms were employed to search for and analyze 200 videos about climate and climate modification topics, which are contested topics in online media. The online anonymization tool Tor has been used for the randomization of the sample and to avoid personalization of the results. A heuristic qualitative classification tool was set up to categorize the videos in the sample. Eighty-nine videos of the 200 videos in the sample are supporting scientific consensus views about anthropogenic climate change, and climate scientists are discussing climate topics with deniers of climate change in four videos in the sample. Unexpectedly, the majority of the videos in the sample (107 videos) supports worldviews that are opposing scientific consensus views: 16 videos deny anthropogenic climate change and 91 videos in the sample propagate straightforward conspiracy theories about climate engineering and climate change. Videos supporting the scientific mainstream view received only slightly more views (16,941,949 views in total) than those opposing the mainstream scientific position (16,939,655 views in total). Consequences for the public communication of climate change and climate engineering are discussed in the second part of the article. The research presented in this contribution is particularly interested in finding out more about strategically distorted communications about climate change and climate engineering in online environments and in critically analyzing them.

A number of commentators have expressed concern about the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in climate engineering (CE) research and governance. However, these concerns have often been couched in general terms, and diverge in the relative importance that they attach to the issue. Whether, how, and why IPRs might matter for the governance of CE activities has
yet to receive a comprehensive treatment; thus the policy and governance implications remain completely unclear.

To untangle the issue, this paper focuses on patents and trade secrets as the most relevant categories of intellectual property, and develops a framework within which to situate IP-related
concerns, specifically as related to direct air capture, ocean iron fertilization, and stratospheric aerosol spraying. The paper shows that there is no a priori “yes or no” answer to the question of whether IPRs are desirable and appropriate for “geoengineering.” Rather, the question of whether they ought to be encouraged or discouraged is highly conditional. We must first ask “What are the specific challenges that IP claims might pose for the technological domain in question?” Next, we must explicitly foreground normative concerns by asking, “Given the scale and distribution of
potential risks and benefits, what is the appropriateness of introducing private property rights?” Only after we have answered these first two questions can we reasonably ask “What is the best
way to incentivize research,” and determine whether IPRs should be recommended or discouraged. The paper concludes by calling for an enhanced research program among CE and IP scholars on the relationships between IPRs and CE research, development, and governance.

The article addresses the problem of monitoring of technology. It presents the analysis of the inherent limits of the very idea of possible control. These inevitable limits are of philosophical, theoretical and practical nature. We refer to selected critical arguments that are formulated on this subject within the area of the philosophy of technology, Technology Assessment and Science and Technology Studies. The paper demonstrates that the project of geoengineering exemplifies dangerous standpoints of arogant scientism, the so-called technological imperative and instrumentalism, the tendency to underestimate future risks, and finally, the dilemma of control.

Simulations from a multi-model ensemble for the RCP4.5 climate change scenario for the 21st century, and for two solar radiation management (SRM) schemes (stratospheric sulfate injection (G3), SULF and marine cloud brightening by sea salt emission SALT) have been analysed in terms of changes in the mean and extremes of surface air temperature and precipitation. The climate engineering and termination periods are investigated. During the climate engineering period, both schemes, as intended, offset temperature increases by about 60 % globally, but are more effective in the low latitudes and exhibit some residual warming in the Arctic (especially in the case of SALT which is only applied in the low latitudes). In both climate engineering scenarios, extreme temperature changes are similar to the mean temperature changes over much of the globe. The exceptions are the mid-and high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, where high temperatures (90th percentile of the distribution) of the climate engineering period compared to RCP4.5 control period rise less than the mean, and cold temperatures (10th per-centile), much more than the mean. This aspect of the SRM schemes is also reflected in simulated reduction in the frost day frequency of occurrence for both schemes. However, summer day frequency of occurrence increases less in the SALT experiment than the SULF experiment, especially over the tropics. Precipitation extremes in the two SRM scenarios act differently – the SULF experiment more effectively mitigates extreme precipitation increases over land compared to the SALT experiment. A reduction in dry spell occurrence over land is observed in the SALT experiment. The SULF experiment has a slight increase in the length of dry spells. A strong termination effect is found for the two climate engineering schemes, with large temperature increases especially in the Arctic. Globally, SULF is more effective in reducing extreme temperature increases over land than SALT. Extreme precipitation increases over land is also more reduced in SULF than the SALT experiment. However, globally SALT decreases the frequency of dry spell length and reduces the occurrence of hot days compared to SULF.

Geoengineering is the deliberate modification of the climate system. It has been discussed as a technique to counteract changes expected as a result of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).1 Speculation has occurred that the possibility of geoengineering will reduce or delay efforts to mitigate AGW. This possible delay or reduction in mitigation has been described as ‘moral hazard’ by various authors. We investigate the definitions and use of the term ‘moral hazard’, and the related (but significantly different) concept of ‘morale hazard’, in relevant law, economic and insurance literatures. We find that ‘moral hazard’ has been generally misapplied in discussions of geoengineering, which perhaps explains unexpected difficulties in detecting expected effects experimentally.2 We clarify relevant usage of the terms, identifying scenarios that can properly be described as moral hazard (malfeasance), and morale hazard (lack of caution or recklessness). We note generally the importance of correctly applying this distinction when discussing geoengineering. In conclusion, we note that a proper consideration of the risks of both moral and morale hazards allows us to easily segment framings for both geoengineering advocacy and the advocate groups who rely on these framings. We suggest mnemonics for groups vulnerable to moral hazard (Business as Usuals) and morale hazard (Chicken Littles) and suggest the development of an experimental methodology for validating the distinction thus drawn.

Poster's note : discusses the potential for hostile use of geoengineering technologies in interplanetary warfare. Preview available, showing most of the article text.

http://www.jbis.org.uk/paper.php?p=2015.68.150
Deliberate Destruction of Planets and Biospheres
Science fiction offers scenarios in which a planet is destroyed in combat. However, these are often impractical. Instead of supplying all the energy required, more plausible attacks may use leverage in order to damage or destroy the planet or its biosphere. In order to study the conduct, observation, or defence associated with such attacks, a range of potentially practical weapon and defence technologies are discussed. These are: altering the radiation budget of a planet so as to substantially change its temperature; introducing invasive species to transform the biogeochemistry; and using orbital perturbations of comets and asteroids to cause collisions, or to move the planet to an unstable or uninhabitable orbit. Weapon transit and effect times associated with these technologies render them suitable only for extreme slow-motion warfare, assuming near-term technologies.