„There is a risk that the 1.5 C temperature threshold is a distraction,“ said Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research in England. „The danger is that it will push us to look at geo-engineering solutions rather than how to achieve deep decarbonisation.“
Radio broadcast with Oliver Morton. „So what is the real potential of geoengineering to address climate change? How much would it cost? How risky is it, and what justification might there be for taking that risk? And what sorts of attitudinal shifts might be needed within the climate and environmental communities to embrace geoengineering as one of a portfolio of strategies? We attempt to answer all of those questions and more in this interview with a veteran science journalist and author of a recent book on geoengineering.“
Hubert, Anna-Maria; Kruger, Tim; Rayner, Steve (2016): Geoengineering. Code of conduct for geoengineering. In Nature 537 (7621), p. 488–488. DOI 10.1038/537488a.
„Geoengineering is central to scenarios that limit global warming to 2 °C — for example, by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or increasing the planet’s albedo (see Nature 527, 436–438; 2015). However, the environmental and social implications of such technology are holding back research. Developing an international code of conduct could resolve this conundrum by ensuring that geoengineering proposals are subject to societal scrutiny and oversight.“
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„Co-author BAS Biological Oceanographer Dr Sophie Fielding says: „This finding is essential for understanding the ocean’s capacity for carbon capture. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase, it’s essential for us to understand both the physical and biological mechanisms for fertilising the ocean with iron.“
„The SUCCESS project is investigating the capacity[nbsp]of previously developed vacant urban land (known as ‘urban brownfield’ land) to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in the soil in mineral form as calcium carbonate.[nbsp] This carbon capture process is one of many potential benefits (or ‘ecosystem services’) that could be provided by urban brownfield soils and this survey is designed to help us understand how people from different sectors value these different benefits. For more information about SUCCESS please see our project website.“
Jami, Tarun; Rawtani, Deepak; Agrawal, Y. K. (2016): Hemp Concrete. Carbon Negative Construction. In Emerging Materials Research 5 (2). DOI 10.1680/jemmr.16.00122.
„The onset of heavy greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from conventional construction practices has led to research on several plausible low-carbon dioxide footprint construction materials that are either carbon dioxide neutral or carbon dioxide negative. One such ‘green’ construction material is lime hemp concrete (LHC), hemp concrete or hempcrete, which are some of the many names of this novel construction material.“
„Governments have been urged to ratify the London Protocol treaty which regulates the dumping of wastes at sea in order to ensure the universal application of its precautionary approach towards protection of the marine environment. […] These include the issuing of permits for carbon dioxide sequestration in stable geological formations in the seabed to ensure permanent isolation of carbon dioxide and strong controls to regulate marine geoengineering activities – which can involve the introduction of substances or organisms into the sea in order to stimulate carbon dioxide uptake and reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.“
„Because time travel is not an option, we will need to develop what are known as „carbon removal“ solutions that can clean up large volumes of CO2 from the atmosphere. A wide variety of carbon removal solutions have been proposed, ranging from basic tree planting and ecosystem restoration to high-tech devices that hoover up CO2 directly from the atmosphere, as shown in the figure below. While carbon removal solutions face many commercialization hurdles, estimates show a very large technical scale potential for a portfolio of solutions[nbsp]if these challenges are tackled successfully.“
The news review of calendar week 39 in 2016 is now available here.
