Should the governments of the world start looking into geoengineering the earth’s atmosphere, that is, applying technologies to stave off the effects of human-caused global warming?

Understand, this is only just in case — just in case voluntary efforts and public policy and global treaty initiatives aren’t successful at limiting greenhouse gas emissions. And just in case the atmosphere does continue to get warmer, ice caps keep melting, sea levels keep rising, and freakish weather goes on getting more and more freakish and dangerous. And just in case the most dire predictions start to come true, and the planet seems to be entering an unstoppable upward spiral of extreme temperature, catastrophic dying-off of animal and plant life, flooding of coastal areas, massive migrations of human populations to escape unlivable homelands, and the total collapse of the world economy.

Just in case, you understand, wouldn’t it be desirable to have some daring technological solutions worked out in advance so that heroic scientists could launch a last-ditch rescue effort to keep the earth from heating up into a blasted, sterile rock?

Members of the BPC geoengineering task force discuss the new report, Oct. 4, 2011. Left to right: Stephen Rademaker, Richard Elliot Benedick, David Goldston, Steven Hamburg, Daniel Sarewitz, Thomas Schelling. Courtesy of Bipartisan Policy Center.

Well, recently a blue ribbon task force sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) released a report calling for “a coordinated federal research program to explore the potential effectiveness, feasibility, and consequences of climate remediation technologies,” according to a press release from the BPC. (See “Geoengineering: A national strategic plan for research on the potential effectiveness, feasibility, and consequences of climate remediation technologies.”)

The task force has identified two broad classes of climate remediation solutions:

• Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) — technologies for removing CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere
• Solar radiation management (SRM) — technologies for reducing the planet’s absorption of solar energy

As we shall see, the SRM technologies are the most fun to write about, as they could conceivably involve sending Bruce Willis up in a top-secret space plane to scatter clouds of reflective particles throughout the stratosphere.

A Consensus Report: Really Such a Great Thing?

The Bipartisan Policy Center was formed in 2007 by a group of former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders, Republicans Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and Democrats George Mitchell and Tom Daschle. The center calls itself “the only Washington, DC-based think tank that actively promotes bipartisanship” and says that “While a healthy, civil debate among those with differing viewpoints is an essential component of our democracy, the current partisan tone in government is impeding progress.” The center seeks “principled solutions through rigorous analysis, reasoned negotiation, and respectful dialogue.” The organization’s current focus is on health care, energy, security, transportation, and the economy.

BPC convened the geoengineering panel in early 2010. According to the press release, the panel is a group of 18 leaders “from the natural science, social science, science policy, foreign policy, national security, and environmental communities.”

Although the group’s report doesn’t avoid the term “geoengineering,” the preferred term used in the report is “climate remediation.” This term “describes technologies that are intentionally designed to counteract the climate effects of past greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.”

Some proposed geoengineering methods. Courtesy of Bipartisan Policy Center.

Interestingly, Daniel Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, and a member of the BPC panel, highlights the preference for “climate remediation” as an example of the ambiguities involved in serving on a group charged with developing a consensus report. Writing for Nature, Sarewitz says that the committee went through an internal battle over the use of “geoengineering” to describe the technologies under consideration:

Some of the committee felt that “geoengineering” was too imprecise; some thought it too controversial; others argued that it was already commonly used, and that a new term would create confusion.

I didn’t have a problem with “geoengineering,” but for others it was a do-or-die issue. I yielded on that point (and several others) to gain political capital to secure issues that had a higher priority for me.

This, he believes, illustrates one of the downsides of operating under a mandate to generate “consensus” findings. The resulting report ultimately suffers from the lack of dissenting views:

…as anyone who has served on a consensus committee knows, much of what is most interesting about a subject gets left out of the final report. For months, our geoengineering group argued about almost every issue conceivably related to establishing a research programme. Many ideas failed to make the report — not because they were wrong or unimportant, but because they didn’t attract a political constituency in the group that was strong enough to keep them in…

Unlike a pallid consensus, a vigorous disagreement between experts would provide decision-makers with well-reasoned alternatives that inform and enrich discussions as a controversy evolves, keeping ideas in play and options open.

Because geoengineering technologies could become strategically crucial in the future but also present serious risks of adverse effects, the panel believes a U.S. research program is vital. The report says,

The United States needs to be able to judge whether particular climate remediation techniques could offer a meaningful response to the risks of climate change. But even if it decides not to deploy any climate remediation technology, the United States needs to evaluate steps that others might take and to be able to effectively participate in — and lead — the important international conversations that are likely to emerge around such issues and activities in the years ahead.

… The federal government is the only entity that has the incentive, responsibility, and capacity to run a broad, systematic and effective program; it can also play an important role in effectively establishing international research norms.

The task force stresses that “climate remediation technologies are no substitute for controlling risk through climate mitigation,” that is, “reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases” and through climate adaptation,” that is, enhancing the resilience of human-made and natural systems to climate changes.”

Climate remediation, the group believes, offers such risks that these kinds of measures should only be considered “as complementary or emergency measures — for example, if the climate system reaches a ‘tipping point’ and swift remedial action is required.” The research program they are recommending would inform decision making around deployment of remediation measures should they become necessary.

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Methods

The CDR technologies and techniques discussed in the BPC report include:

• Afforestation, that is, storing carbon by planting more trees
• Fertilizing the ocean to increase the growth of plankton, which would store carbon biologically
• Deploying machinery to scrub CO2 from the air and sequester it underground
• Storing CO2 in rock by “enhanc[ing] natural chemical processes, such as terrestrial and oceanic rock weathering”

A federal research program would help determine the risks, feasibility, and cost structures of deploying such measures at a large scale. Although something like afforestation might not be that risky, the plankton approach “would involve seeding large marine areas with iron or other nutrients to foster the growth of plankton blooms.” The concern with such a regime would naturally be its effect on ocean ecosystems. (Photo: Photoplankton bloom off the coast of Cornwall, Great Britain. Credit: eutrophication&hypoxia, CC BY 2.0.)

Solar Radiation Management (SRM) Methods

According to the task force, SRM options could include a very broad range of ideas. However, current research is focusing on two primary methods:

• Introducing aerosols (such as such as liquids droplets or fine particles) into the stratosphere to deflect solar radiation
• Making clouds more reflective by altering them with seawater

The report stresses that SRM concepts are based on natural processes. For example, volcanic eruptions in the past have injected aerosols into the stratosphere, resulting in greater reflection of solar energy and reduced temperatures. SRM could be a relatively quick and inexpensive solution. For that reason, says the report,

SRM options could be especially important if climate remediation were needed on an emergency basis — that is, if it looked as if climate change was going to cause imminent severe, or even catastrophic, impacts.

However, deployment of aerosols would need to be continuous. If it were halted, the cooling effect would decline rapidly:

Absent efforts to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through mitigation or CDR, SRM (assuming it was a safe and effective technique) would have to be used continuously for centuries to stave off further climate change.

Also, SRM wouldn’t do anything to reduce other effects of high GHG levels in the atmosphere, such as ocean acidification.

SRM would almost certainly have uneven effects and might harm some regions while helping others. If an SRM system were ever deployed, it could result in decreased precipitation and evaporation, altered monsoon rains and winds, and perhaps delayed recovery of the ozone hole. In addition to these anticipated risks, there may be further risks that scientists have not yet been able to identify.

Finally, there’s the risk of a reckless unilateral deployment of SRM by some country that could expose the U.S. and all other nations to undesired risks.

All of these uncertainties about SRM point to the value of a concerted research effort at the federal level, according to the report’s authors. The report makes recommendations about the organization of such a research program. The program should be coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) so it can have the political support of the President and so its larger goals can be kept in the forefront rather than getting lost among the narrower interests of individual agencies. The proposed research program would investigate technologies for SRM and CDR and would seek to close certain knowledge gaps about climate science overall. The U.S. should also seek out collaboration with other nations on its research efforts, the panel believes.

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