Monat: Dezember 2015

Media

FCEA Blog: Why We Should Treat SRM and CDR Separately

By Josh Horton. „In his post “Why We Shouldn’t Be In a Hurry to Redefine ‘Climate Engineering,’” Duncan McLaren presents a thoughtful argument against the view that the two main families of potential climate engineering technologies—solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR)—should be treated as separate and distinct groups of climate response strategies.[nbsp] In this brief comment, I will argue that McLaren’s presentation of the case for disaggregation is lacking in significant respects, and that a more thorough consideration of the arguments leads to the conclusion that, as a general rule, SRM and CDR should indeed be treated as fundamentally different forms of potential climate intervention.“

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Media

FCEA Blog: Why we shouldn’t be in a hurry to redefine ‘climate engineering’

„Further, it is pointed out that the enhancement of carbon sinks is already included in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change agreements, and, moreover, that IPCC projections rely on unspecified negative emissions (often inappropriately assumed to be implausibly large deployments of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS)) to prevent high probabilities of temperature rises exceeding 2oC. In this context, it is suggested, we should get on with the important business of developing CDR, and avoid the distractions that arise from it being labelled as geoengineering.“

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Media

FCEA Blog: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Solar Geoengineering

By Juan Moreno-Cruz, and Soheil Shayegh. „Solar geoengineering (SGE) offers the possibility of offsetting greenhouse-gas-induced temperature increases by reducing incoming solar radiation. Its key advantages are 1) it is fast. Unlike emissions reductions, which can take decades to bear results, SGE can reduce global temperatures nearly instantaneously. 2) it is cheap. SGE can potentially reduce temperatures at costs that are several orders of magnitude lower compared to abatement – this has been called “the incredible economics of geoengineering”.“

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Media

Slate: Can We Achieve the Paris Climate Goals Without Unproven Technology?

„Significantly, the Paris accords already contain a nod to such interventions, encoding it in the awkwardly worded recognition of “removals by sinks of greenhouse gases.” Here, a “sink” is a system that pulls gasses out of the air and sequesters them. There are many ways of producing carbon sinks, including the time-honored tradition of growing forests. But this approach is a slow one, especially in relation to the timeline that the Paris accords establish. In effect, then, this phrase could be read as an acknowledgment[nbsp]of the need to try out other techniques—and to do so posthaste.“

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Science-Policy Documents

van Vuuren, Detlef P.; et al. (2015): Implications of long-term scenarios for medium-term targets (2050)

van Vuuren, Detlef P.; van Sluisveld, Mariësse; Hof, Andries F. (2015): Implications of long-term scenarios for medium-term targets (2050). PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Report with afforestation (3.5) and negative emissions (4). „If fast and substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is postponed further, there are fewer options available to stay below a 2 °C warming at the end of the century. Delayed action is likely to require measures that remove CO2 from the atmosphere by planting forests and/or using bioenergy in combination with carbon capture and storage in order to meet the 2 °C target. The latter technique still involves considerable challenges. Climate policy decisions in the next years are therefore likely to have long-term implications.“

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Tomei, Julia; Helliwell, Richard (2015): Food versus fuel? Going beyond biofuels

Tomei, Julia; Helliwell, Richard (2015): Food versus fuel? Going beyond biofuels. In Land Use Policy. DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.11.015[nbsp]

„In this paper, we use the debate on food versus fuel as a lens to examine the interdependencies between the multiple end-uses of feedstocks and the multifunctionality of land. Revealing a more nuanced understanding of the realities of agricultural networks, land use conflicts and the values of the people managing land, we argue that the simplification achieved by food versus fuel, although effective in generating public resonance that has filtered into political response, has failed to capture much that is at the heart of the issue.“

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