„A new report has revised the ‘carbon budget’, apparently putting a 1.5C limit to warming within reach. But how useful is this measure? […] The carbon budget concept is less useful for emission pathways, particularly with tight carbon budgets and given that it is possible to exceed the carbon budget using negative emissions.“
Flegal, Jane A.; Gupta, Aarti (2017): Evoking equity as a rationale for solar geoengineering research? Scrutinizing emerging expert visions of equity. In Int Environ Agreements 7 (5), p.[nbsp]311. DOI: 10.1007/s10784-017-9377-6.
„This paper examines how notions of equity are being evoked by expert advocates of more research into solar geoengineering. We trace how specific understandings of equity figure centrally—although not always explicitly—in these expert visions. We find that understandings of equity in such ‘‘vanguard visions’’ are narrowly conceived as epistemic challenges, answerable by (more) scientific analysis.“
„We are convening an advisory group to help us find good parallels, design credible scenarios for deliberation, and generally advise on how best to make the project useful in practice. We have identified a range of people from various climate stakeholders (from researchers to campaigners), but we are also holding two seats for self-nominating members of the public. If you are interested in the future of the climate, maybe as a parent, or even an activist, and could spare 8-10 hours over the next two years to join a series of virtual, on-line advisory meetings, we’d like to hear from you.„
„Dear EarthTalk: Are there any realistic geoengineering solutions to our climate woes and why haven’t we started employing them yet?[nbsp]– A.M.
Geoengineering our way out of the climate crisis is something so drastic that no one really wants to admit it might be our only hope.“
German Science Blog article on CE in general.
German conference (23.-24.02.2018) on the history of images of artificial cooling.
Kemena, Tronje Peer; Matthes, Katja; Martin, Thomas; Wahl, Sebastian; Oschlies, Andreas (2017): Atmospheric feedbacks in North Africa from an irrigated, afforested Sahara. In Clim Dyn 66, p.[nbsp]57. DOI: 10.1007/s00382-017-3890-8.
„Here, we investigate changes in precipitation and circulation in response to Saharan large-scale afforestation and irrigation with NCAR’s CESM-WACCM Earth system model. Our model results show a Saharan temperature reduction by 6 K and weak precipitation enhancement by 267 mm/year over the Sahara.“
On Xu, Yangyang; Ramanathan, Veerabhadran (2017). „With these scenarios in mind, the researchers identified what measures can be taken to slow the rate of global warming to avoid the worst consequences, particularly the low-probability high-impact events. Aggressive measures to curtail the use of fossil fuels and emissions of so-called short-lived climate pollutants such as soot, methane and HFCs would need to be accompanied by active efforts to extract CO2 from the air and sequester it before it can be emitted. It would take all three efforts to meet the Paris Agreement goal to which countries agreed at a landmark United Nations climate conference in Nov 2015.“
Xu, Yangyang; Ramanathan, Veerabhadran (2017): Well below 2 °C: Mitigation strategies for avoiding dangerous to catastrophic climate changes. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618481114.
„We outline a three-lever strategy to limit the central warming below the dangerous level and the LPHI below the catastrophic level, both in the near term ([lt]2050) and in the long term (2100): the carbon neutral (CN) lever to achieve zero net emissions of CO2, the super pollutant (SP) lever to mitigate short-lived climate pollutants, and the carbon extraction and sequestration (CES) lever to thin the atmospheric CO2 blanket. Pulling on both CN and SP levers and bending the emissions curve by 2020 can keep the central warming below dangerous levels.“
Himmelsbach, Raffael (2017): How scientists advising the European Commission on research priorities view climate engineering proposals. In sci public policy. DOI: 10.1093/scipol/scx053.
„This study contributes to a growing body of research that studies how different societal actors view climate engineering (CE) in an effort to ‘open up’ received framings and make them amenable to deliberations. […] Drawing on fifteen interviews, the study explores how scientists who advise the European Commission on research funding priorities regarding climate change and sustainability view CE. They considered CE as treating the symptoms rather than the causes of climate change, as interfering in complex and unpredictable natural systems, and as engendering questions of distributive justice.“
