Monat: November 2016

Matzner, Nils; Herrenbrück, Robert (2016): Simulating a Climate Engineering Crisis. Climate Politics Simulated by Students in Model United Nations

Matzner, Nils; Herrenbrück, Robert (2016): Simulating a Climate Engineering Crisis. Climate Politics Simulated by Students in Model United Nations. In Simulation [&] Gaming. DOI 10.1177/1046878116680513.

„This article aims both at simulating a plausible international scenario of negotiation over solar climate engineering deployment, and at utilizing the rules of Model United Nations (MUN) for collaborative learning in a university class. Furthermore, the article intends to provide a framework for simulations about CE that could easily be reproduced.“

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van Hemer, Mieke (2016): Speculative promise as a driver in climate engineering research. The case of Paul Crutzen’s back-of-the-envelope calculation on solar dimming with sulfate aerosols

van Hemer, Mieke (2016): Speculative promise as a driver in climate engineering research. The case of Paul Crutzen’s back-of-the-envelope calculation on solar dimming with sulfate aerosols. In Futures. DOI 10.1016/j.futures.2016.11.006.

„In this paper, I study the generative role of speculative promise in climate engineering research. My analysis operationalizes Alfred Nordmann’s call for a ‘forensics of wishing’, a variety of technology assessment which scrutinizes the politics of anticipation in technoscience. Using scientific articles and reports as primary sources I trace the uptake and contestation of bold claims made by atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen a decade ago.“

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PNAS: Core Concept: Can bioenergy with carbon capture and storage make an impact?

„One approach gaining traction in recent years is generating bioenergy along with carbon capture and storage, known by the acronym “BECCS.” Some argue that BECCS occupies a key role in the global plan to fight climate change. Although regarded as one of the most viable, cost-effective negative emissions technologies, there are still multiple major challenges to its widespread implementation.“

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Jones, C. D.; et al. (2016): Simulating the Earth system response to negative emissions

Jones, C. D.; Ciais, P.; Davis, S. J.; Friedlingstein, P.; Gasser, T.; Peters, G. P. et al. (2016): Simulating the Earth system response to negative emissions. In Environ. Res. Lett. 11 (9), p. 95012–95012. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/095012.

„A key requirement for low carbon pathways is to quantify the effectiveness of negative emissions technologies which will be strongly affected by carbon cycle feedbacks. Here we find that Earth system models suggest significant weakening, even potential reversal, of the ocean and land sinks under future low emission scenarios.“

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Irvine, Peter J.; et al. (2016): Towards a comprehensive climate impacts assessment of solar geoengineering

Irvine, Peter J.; Kravitz, Ben; Lawrence, Mark G.; Gerten, Dieter; Caminade, Cyril; Gosling, Simon N. et al. (2016): Towards a comprehensive climate impacts assessment of solar geoengineering. In Earth’s Future. DOI 10.1002/2016EF000389.

„We suggest that a thorough assessment of the climate impacts of a range of scenarios of solar geoengineering deployment is needed and can build upon existing frameworks. However, solar geoengineering poses a novel challenge for climate impacts research as the manner of deployment could be tailored to pursue different objectives making possible a wide range of climate outcomes. We present a number of ideas for approaches to extend the survey of climate impacts beyond standard scenarios of solar geoengineering deployment to address this challenge.“

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InTeGrate: Ocean Sustainability and Geoengineering (material for teaching)

Teaching material. „Students are introduced to the concept of geoengineering, „the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming“ (The Royal Society). The goal is for them to leverage their acquired knowledge from previous units in physical oceanography, ocean chemistry, biodiversity, and ecosystem ecology to evaluate the validity and/or the risk of geoengineering (systems thinking). Current and future generations will be required to make informed decisions on whether they support strategies that result in irreversible changes in Earth’s carbon cycle.“

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