Monat: Mai 2018

Science-Policy Documents

Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (2018): The UK government’s view on geo-engineering. Geoengineering position update May 2018

Department for Business, Energy [&] Industrial Strategy (2018): The UK government’s view on geo-engineering. Geoengineering position update May 2018. With assistance of Cathy Johnson. UK Government.

„The Government has no current policies to deploy specific GGR technologies beyond existing commitments to plant 11 million trees in England, to increase the amount of UK timber used in construction, and to restore peatland. […][nbsp]The UK Government is not commissioning further research into SRM, but the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) Geoengineering Model Intercomparison[nbsp]Project (GeoMIP), is investigating the effects which SRM would have on the climate.“

LINK

#
Media

MR Online: Why Geoengineering is not a remedy for the climate crisis: an ecological point of view

„A recent article in Wired offered a cogent critique of the foremost technofix put on the table as a solution for the climate crisis 1. The article, “The Dirty Secret of the World’s Plan to Avert Climate Disaster,” by Abby Rabinowitz and Amanda Simson, reveals that the key technology at the heart of half of the IPCC’s models to hold global warming to 2°C, known as “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS), would burn cultivated crops for electricity, and then capture and store the resulting carbon dioxide underground.“

LINK

#
Science-Policy Documents

Kreuter, Judith (2018): Climate engineering & political decision-making. The polarity in academic debate

Kreuter, Judith (2018): Climate engineering [&] political decision-making. The polarity in academic debate. Innovations in Climate Governance (INOGROV Policy Brief, 4).

„This INOGOV policy brief analyses the importance of polarity in academic debate surrounding climate engineering. It discusses the fact that while climate engineering approaches cannot yet be considered ‘physically tangible technological objects’ because they have not been implemented on a large scale; there is currently a unique opportunity to actively and critically shape the way in which we consider these approaches in the political debate.“

LINK

#
Peer-reviewed Publications

Fuss, Sabine; et al. (2018): Negative emissions—Part 2. Costs, potentials and side effects

Fuss, Sabine; Lamb, William F.; Callaghan, Max W.; Hilaire, Jérôme; Creutzig, Felix; Amann, Thorben et al. (2018): Negative emissions—Part 2. Costs, potentials and side effects. In Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (6), p.[nbsp]63002. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9f.

„The most recent IPCC assessment has shown an important role for negative emissions technologies (NETs) in limiting global warming to 2 °C cost-effectively. However, a bottom-up, systematic, reproducible, and transparent literature assessment of the different options to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is currently missing. In part 1 of this three-part review on NETs, we assemble a comprehensive set of the relevant literature so far published, focusing on seven technologies: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), afforestation and reforestation, direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), enhanced weathering, ocean fertilisation, biochar, and soil carbon sequestration.“

LINK

#
Peer-reviewed Publications

Minx, Jan C.; et al. (2018): Negative emissions—Part 1. Research landscape and synthesis

Minx, Jan C.; Lamb, William F.; Callaghan, Max W.; Fuss, Sabine; Hilaire, Jérôme; Creutzig, Felix et al. (2018): Negative emissions—Part 1. Research landscape and synthesis. In Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (6), p.[nbsp]63001. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b.

„Here, we synthesize a comprehensive body of NETs literature, using scientometric tools and performing an in-depth assessment of the quantitative and qualitative evidence therein. We clarify the role of NETs in climate change mitigation scenarios, their ethical implications, as well as the challenges involved in bringing the various NETs to the market and scaling them up in time.“

LINK

#
Media

Forbes: Ask Ethan: Can We Build A Sun Screen To Combat Global Climate Change?

„Global climate change is one of the most pressing long-term issues facing humanity today. The science is abundantly clear on what’s happening and why: the Earth is getting warmer, human-caused emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is the reason, and the concentration of these gases only continues to rise, unabated, over time. While there are a great many calls to reduce emissions, capture carbon, and move away from fossil fuels, there’s little that’s effectively been done.“

LINK

#
Peer-reviewed Publications

Gannon, Kate Elizabeth; Hulme, Mike (2018): Geoengineering at the “Edge of the World”. Exploring perceptions of ocean fertilisation through the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation

Gannon, Kate Elizabeth; Hulme, Mike (2018): Geoengineering at the “Edge of the World”. Exploring perceptions of ocean fertilisation through the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation. In Geo: Geography and Environment 5 (1), e00054. DOI: 10.1002/geo2.54.

„More broadly, the controversy illustrated long‐standing arguments about the desirability and feasibility of ocean fertilisation as a geoengineering response to the threat of anthropogenic climate change. Using the HSRC case, this paper reports a novel situated study of public perceptions of geoengineering that combines ethnographic engagement with Q‐methodology.“

LINK

#
Media

Daily Guardian: Geoengineering and climate change

„As pointed out in the book of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Freidman, Hot, Flat and Crowded, our climate and energy crisis are interconnected – we can’t solve one without addressing the other. As ordinary citizens, we can do a big part in energy conservation and by changing our lifestyle that it is not energy expensive.“

LINK

#
Peer-reviewed Publications

Eastham, Sebastian D.; et al. (2018): Quantifying the impact of sulfate geoengineering on mortality from air quality and UV-B exposure

Eastham, Sebastian D.; Weisenstein, Debra K.; Keith, David W.; Barrett, Steven R.H. (2018): Quantifying the impact of sulfate geoengineering on mortality from air quality and UV-B exposure. In Atmospheric Environment. DOI: 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2018.05.047.

„Using a chemistry-transport model, we quantify the steady-state response of three public health risks to 1[nbsp]°C global mean surface cooling. We separate impacts into those which are “radiative forcing-driven”, associated with climate change “reversal” through modification of global radiative forcing, and those “direct impacts” associated uniquely with using sulfate geoengineering to achieve this. We find that the direct (non-radiative forcing driven) impact is a decrease in global mortality of ∼13,000 annually.“

LINK

#