Comments on: Blogging the Eli Kintisch Point of Inquiry Show, I: A Quibble Concerning the Definition of Geoengineering

By: ChH

ChH — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:33:31 +0000

Marion Delgado, runaway capitalism is absolutely the problem. We should return to serfdom.

By: Brian Schmidt

Brian Schmidt — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 06:40:24 +0000

See Tobis:

“There are two main types of global strategy that don’t address emissions directly: radiative and geochemical. The word “Geoengineering” is often applied to both but should probably only be applied to the radiative class of strategy.”

http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/10/geoengineering-quandary.html

By: eli

eli — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:16:37 +0000

yep, pretty much when people talk about fraught issues related to “geoengineering” they mean the sunblocking methods. And since those techniques involve very different issues, i have written how i thought that the Asilomar meeting’s differentiation between “climate engineering” and “carbon remediation”. The catchall G word is useful because both flavors do raise larger questions about human’s role…

But the carbon ones are hardly without controversy. Iron fertilization? hugely controversial. Creating biomass/charcoal plantations? Massive scale reforestation? Big problem. (think about how a relatively small incentive for corn ethanol has played havoc with food prices…) Even research into carbon sucking machine has been given next to no govt money

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:06:30 +0000

Obviously thery are different types of geoengineering- some techniquesreduces insolation, some others change atmospheric chemistry and heat-trapping ability. But they are still both engineering. As the iron fertilization controvercy shows, both types can be controvercial. The degree of controvercy generally relates to the risk of unforseen side effects and questionable efficacy.

By: Marion Delgado

Marion Delgado — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:02:23 +0000

Actually, it’s all controversial to me – skip the geoengineering and prevent the problem.

90% of the reason people say we can’t is that our real problem right now is runaway capitalism, which produces the runaway warming as a side effect.

By: Nullius in Verba

Nullius in Verba — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:57:06 +0000

Depends what you mean by “wise”. Clearly, being controversial or not doesn’t have relevance to the categorisation as ‘geoengineering’. I presume you mean whether it is wise from a public perception point of view – by labelling them all the same, people could oppose the ‘uncontroversial’ options because of their perceptions of the controversial ones.

Although if you’re going to manipulate scientific language to try get favourable public support, you’ll probably face a few other PR problems, too.

By the way, your categorisation isn’t very clear cut along the lines you suggest. My favourite “get the carbon out of the air” proposal is to burn down all the forests. The charcoal gets incorporated into the soil as a long-term carbon sink – as opposed to being consumed by fungi/etc. and returned to the atmosphere over a few years. It reduces wildfires, encourages new growth (which absorbs carbon faster than older trees), fertilises the soil, gets rid of persistent pests, and has many other ecologically beneficial effects.

But the thought of going to a Greenpeace demo waving a “Burn down the forests” banner… I think it would be controversial.