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Geoengineering

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In a recent article The Economist covered developments in geoengineering, both scientific and political.

Countries look at ways to tinker with Earth’s thermostat

Selected excerpts:

Under the Paris Agreement, governments have pledged to keep average global warming to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to try to limit maximum warming to 1.5°C. Many see these targets as wishful thinking: the planet is already roughly 1°C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, global greenhouse gas emissions are still on the rise and national pledges to cut them fall short of what is needed to hit the 2°C target, let alone 1.5°C.

[...]

So far, most studies have modelled a “fully” geoengineered world in which CO2 concentrations are doubled compared with current or pre-industrial levels, and all the resulting warming is counterbalanced by a stratospheric sunshade. Instead, Peter Irvine of Harvard University and his colleagues simulated a partial sunshade. They were able to eliminate half the warming effect of doubled CO2 concentrations while stabilising the water cycle.

[...]

The researchers say their study is more relevant to real policy decisions because it shines some light on what could be done by, for instance, combining solar geoengineering with efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But all this would require international consensus, and obtaining that may be a fantasy.

The barriers to unity were on display in Nairobi. In 2010 the Convention on Biological Diversity advised against geoengineering activities “until there is an adequate scientific basis” to justify them, but America is not a party to that convention. It was represented at unea. However, several delegates told this newspaper that America and Saudi Arabia opposed the Swiss proposal to review geoengineering, preferring the issue to be assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), which is due to include something about the technologies in its next big report, expected in 2021.

[...]

The only reason the world may need geoengineering is that talks about cutting emissions have gone on so long but achieved so little. Yet in Nairobi delegates could not even commission a report. Geoengineering, the toolbox that a decade ago nobody wanted, could end up stuck in the same international procedures as efforts to tackle the root cause of global warming.​
 
November 21st, 2014

TO READ OR POST COMMENTS ON THIS VIDEO, PLEASE GO DIRECTLY TO THE ARTICLE http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/ge... On November 21st, 2014, a diverse panel of experts was assembled in Northern California to discuss the profound environmental and human health dangers posed by the ongoing global climate engineering programs. Northern California media completely blacklisted this important event and gave it no coverage whatsoever even though they were notified in advance. There were nearly 500 concerned citizens in attendance from locations throughout the state, and from locations as far away as Alaska. Some of those present in the audience also included city officials, county officials, and other public agency personnel. Why did mainstream media totally ignore this major gathering which presented hard science data on the dire issue of climate engineering? Because corporate media's job is to block credible data from reaching the public. All are needed to help sound the alarm on the lethal geoenginering programs. Mainstream media will not help us in this critical battle, it's up to us. Dane Wigington


Please resist comments until you watch all of these people talk. Thank You
 
The Economist
Reaching for the sunshade: July 2030
Efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions may fall short. Might some countries try to fix things a different way?

Excerpts:

[...] there is nothing to stop one or more countries launching a “rogue geoengineering” scheme on their own.

But that is exactly what some countries might start to consider, perhaps in 2030, after the UN debate fails to reach any agreement. Fed up with yet more inaction, a small group of developing countries might choose to engage in “minilateral” discussions over whether to “go it alone”[...]

An analysis published in 2018 by Wake Smith, at Yale University, and Gernot Wagner, at New York University, maps out how to do it. The planes need to fly at altitudes of 20km (66,000ft) or higher, ruling out the possibility of using existing commercial aircraft for the purpose. Instead, a custom fleet of several dozen aircraft would be needed, with four jet engines mounted on two huge, glider-like wings, which would allow them to stay aloft in the thin air of the stratosphere.

[...]

There is another possibility. America has the money to build a fleet, the research capacity to track its impact and military bases around the world from which to launch planes. As for motives, look no further than hurricanes. Modelling published earlier this year suggested that sunshades might reduce the intensity of hurricanes compared with a warmer world. And it is possible, if hard, to support solar geoengineering without taking a position on the causes of global warming. A sceptical American administration could still insist that climate change was not man-made; it need only concede that temperatures are rising.​

Here's the Smith & Wagner paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d
 
Oceans Need Geoengineering, Not The Atmosphere | CleanTechnica

We obviously have to stop emitting CO2. Solar geoengineering is a bandaid on the symptoms, not a cure for the causes. It’s like putting out the fires caused by an arsonist wandering around with a flamethrower instead of confiscating and shutting off the flamethrower itself. Global heating would slow and stabilize if we stopped forcing more CO2 into the system.

But it’s unclear if that’s as true for oceanic carbon uptake. Between the basic acidification and Rothman’s working on extinction-level events, more might be required there.
The arsonist analogy isn’t terrible. We have to put out the fire and stop the arsonist. Both, not either.
 
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