Climate emergencies do not justify engineering the climate

Sillmann, Jana; Lenton, Timothy M.; Levermann, Anders; Ott, Konrad; Hulme, Michael; Benduhn, François; Horton, Joshua

doi:10.1038/nclimate2539

Cited by 55 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Here, we show relative changes in the assessment of different CE ideas inferred from studies published as part of the Priority Program, acknowledging that other dimensions were also investigated. Studies on ethical aspects [Sillmann et al, 2015;Baatz et al, 2016] proposed that far-reaching mitigation is morally obligatory prior to any engagement into SRM [Baatz, 2016], and the examination of public perception and acceptance of CE revealed that knowledge about the possibility to lower global temperature through aerosol injection does not reduce individual mitigation efforts [Merk et al, 2016].…”

Section: Key Findings Of the First Phase Of The Priority Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research for assessment, not deployment, of Climate Engineering: The German Research Foundation's Priority Program SPP 1689

Oschlies

Klepper

2017

Earth's Future

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The historical developments are reviewed that have led from a bottom-up responsibility initiative of concerned scientists to the emergence of a nationwide interdisciplinary Priority Program on the assessment of Climate Engineering (CE) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Given the perceived lack of comprehensive and comparative appraisals of different CE methods, the Priority Program was designed to encompass both solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) ideas and to cover the atmospheric, terrestrial, and oceanic realm. First, key findings obtained by the ongoing Priority Program are summarized and reveal that, compared to earlier assessments such as the 2009 Royal Society report, more detailed investigations tend to indicate less efficiency, lower effectiveness, and often lower safety. Emerging research trends are discussed in the context of the recent Paris agreement to limit global warming to less than two degrees and the associated increasing reliance on negative emission technologies. Our results show then when deployed at scales large enough to have a significant impact on atmospheric CO 2 , even CDR methods such as afforestation-often perceived as "benign"-can have substantial side effects and may raise severe ethical, legal, and governance issues. We suppose that before being deployed at climatically relevant scales, any negative emission or CE method will require careful analysis of efficiency, effectiveness, and undesired side effects.

show abstract

Section: Key Findings Of the First Phase Of The Priority Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research for assessment, not deployment, of Climate Engineering: The German Research Foundation's Priority Program SPP 1689

Oschlies

Klepper

2017

Earth's Future

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Harnisch et al, 2015;Horton 2015;Huttunen et al 2014;Loukkanen et al 2014;Sillmann et al, 2015).2 According to Huttunen et al (2014), hopes connected to geoengineering as well as various major concerns and action proposals have recently been reflected in over 100 official policy documents globally. Several geoengineering options were also treated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Fifth Assessment Report, which surprised or even provoked some observers (e.g.…”

Section: Geoengineering In the Mass Media Before 2014mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This claim merits investigation because, as Horton (2015) maintains, that framing is possibly both unwise and unwarranted because it invokes authoritarian political tendencies and has a weak scientific basis (see also Sillmann et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Has the grand idea of geoengineering as Plan B run out of steam?

Anshelm

Hansson

2015

The Anthropocene Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Paul Crutzen's 2006 call for geoengineering research triggered public debate in the mass media of several countries. Since then, a common belief among numerous involved scientists has been that more geoengineering experimentation or research is needed and that geoengineering should be carefully considered in a precautionary way as an emergency option or 'Plan B'. Despite the controversial potential of geoengineering in terms of mega-risks, ethical dilemmas and governance challenges, public geoengineering debate in the daily press from 2006 to 2013 was heavily dominated by accounts of scientists' arguments for more geoengineering research or even deployment, only about 8% of mass media articles expressing criticism of geoengineering. However, based on a reading of 700 articles published worldwide in 2014 and 2015, we demonstrate a gradual shift in the coverage, and the daily press now primarily reports critical views of geoengineering technologies. The patterns outlined here point in the same direction: It seems as though the grand idea of geoengineering as Plan B is fading.

show abstract

“…However, numerous concerns arise when considering a possible implementation. RM is usually conceived to tackle climate change in a global context, in order to suppress the global mean surface temperature increase [Crutzen, 2006;Sillmann et al, 2015]. So far, research on RM has mostly focused on long time scales of (30 years), for which the climate system may essentially be considered as a deterministic, boundary-conditions problem.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The scope for a global regulation of regional RM measures depends on the possibility to attribute intended local outcomes to regional RM measures and to exclude damages outside the targeted area. For applying standard regulation approaches (e.g., based on liability law) to regional RM efforts, one needs to be able to reliably attribute the intended outcome to a RM measure in the targeted area [Sillmann et al, 2015], and to reliably reject the hypothesis that particular weather events somewhere else are caused by a RM measure. These possibilities could be studied, building on the available extensive experience with detection and attribution studies assessing (inadvertent) anthropogenic forcings, and making use of novel approaches exploiting ensemble climate forecasts at short time scales.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional climate engineering by radiation management: Prerequisites and prospects

Quaas

Boucher

et al. 2016

Earth's Future

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Radiation management (RM), as an option to engineer the climate, is highly controversial and suffers from a number of ethical and regulatory concerns, usually studied in the context of the objective to mitigate the global mean temperature. In this article, we discuss the idea that RM can be differentiated and scaled in several dimensions with potential objectives being to influence a certain climate parameter in a specific region. Some short-lived climate forcers (e.g., tropospheric aerosols) exhibit strong geographical and temporal variability, potentially leading to limited-area climate responses. Marine cloud brightening and thinning or dissolution of cirrus clouds could be operated at a rather local scale. It is therefore conceivable that such schemes could be applied with the objective to influence the climate at a regional scale. From a governance perspective, it is desirable to avoid any substantial climate effects of regional RM outside the target region. This, however, could prove impossible for a sustained, long-term RM. In turn, regional RM during limited time periods could prove more feasible without effects beyond the target area. It may be attractive as it potentially provides the opportunity to target the suppression of some extreme events such as heat waves. Research is needed on the traceability of regional RM, for example, using detection and attribution methods. Incentives and implications of regional RM need to be examined, and new governance options have to be conceived.

show abstract

Climate emergencies do not justify engineering the climate

Cited by 55 publications

References 23 publications

Research for assessment, not deployment, of Climate Engineering: The German Research Foundation's Priority Program SPP 1689

Research for assessment, not deployment, of Climate Engineering: The German Research Foundation's Priority Program SPP 1689

Has the grand idea of geoengineering as Plan B run out of steam?

Regional climate engineering by radiation management: Prerequisites and prospects

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About