Tag: Solar Geoengineering

Sovacool et al. (2023): Beyond climate stabilization: Exploring the perceived sociotechnical co-impacts of carbon removal and solar geoengineering

Benjamin K. Sovacool, Chad M. Baum, Sean Low IN: Ecological Economics 204, Part A, 107648, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107648

The authors examined the prospective co-impacts of carbon removal (or negative emissions) and solar geoengineering. Based on (..) diverse expert interviews (N = 125), and using a sociotechnical approach, in this study the authors identify 107 perceived co-impacts related to the deployment of carbon removal and solar geoengineering technologies. Slightly less than half (52) were identified as positive co-impacts (38 for carbon removal, 14 for solar geoengineering), whereas slightly more than half (55) were identified as negative co-impacts (31 for carbon removal, 24 for solar geoengineering).

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Sovacool et al. (2022): Climate protection or privilege? A whole systems justice milieu of twenty negative emissions and solar geoengineering technologies

Benjamin K. Sovacool, Chad M. Baum, Sean Low IN: Political Geography 97, 102702, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102702.

In this study, the authors utilize an expert interview exercise (N = 125) to examine the whole systems justice issues associated with ten negative emissions and ten solar geoengineering technologies. They ask: What equity and justice concerns arise with these 20 options? What particular vulnerable groups could be affected? What risks do these options entail for communities or the climate?

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Podcast: David Keith says now is the time to explore solar geoengineering

PolicyCast on Apple Podcasts

“Despite dire predictions, there has been one potential weapon in humanity’s anti-warming arsenal that, in terms of practical research, has been a taboo subject: solar geoengineering. Now Professor David Keith says it’s time for that to change. Keith is an award-winning physicist who holds professorships at both Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.”

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University of York (2021): Geoengineering: A climate of uncertainty. Youth guide and policy brief on geoengineering

University of York (2021): Geoengineering: A climate of uncertainty. Youth guide and policy brief on geoengineering. Available online at https://www.york.ac.uk/media/educationalstudies/documents/research/uyseg/best/Geoengineering%20-%20a%20climate%20of%20uncertainty.pdf.

“The purpose of this guide is to introduce key ideas and questions about geoengineering in order to spark a conversation about intervention in the Earth’s climate system in the context of the range of possible responses to the climate crisis. It has been written by young people, for young people.”

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The New York Times: What’s the Least Bad Way to Cool the Planet?

“How to cool the planet? The energy infrastructure that powers our civilization must be rebuilt, replacing fossil fuels with carbon-free sources such as solar or nuclear. But even then, zeroing out emissions will not cool the planet. This is a direct consequence of the single most important fact about climate change: Warming is proportional to the cumulative emissions over the industrial era. […] To cool the planet in this century, humans must either remove carbon from the air or use solar geoengineering, a temporary measure that may reduce peak temperatures, extreme storms and other climatic changes. Humans might make the planet Earth more reflective by adding tiny sulfuric acid droplets to the stratosphere from aircraft, whitening low-level clouds over the ocean by spraying sea salt into the air or by other interventions.”

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Kuswanto, Heri; et al. (2021): Impact of Solar Geoengineering on Temperatures over the Indonesian Maritime Continent

Kuswanto, Heri; Kravitz, Ben; Miftahurrohmah, Brina; Fauzi, Fatkhurokhman; Sopahaluwaken, Ardhasena; Moore, John (2021): Impact of Solar Geoengineering on Temperatures over the Indonesian Maritime Continent. In Int J Climatol. DOI: 10.1002/joc.7391.

“Climate change has been projected to increase the intensity and magnitude of extreme temperature in Indonesia. Solar radiation management (SRM) has been proposed as a strategy to temporarily combat global warming, buying time for negative emissions. Though the global impacts of SRM have been extensively studied in recent years, regional impacts, especially in the tropics, have received much less attention. This paper investigates the potential stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection (SAI) to modify mean and extreme temperature, as well as the relative humidity and wet bulb temperature (WBT) change over Indonesian Maritime Continent (IMC) based on simulations from three different earth system models. We applied a simple downscaling method and corrected the bias of model output to reproduce historical temperatures and relative humidity over IMC. We evaluated changes in Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) experiment G4, an SAI experiment in 5 Tg of SO2 into the equatorial lower stratosphere between 2020 and 2069, concurrent with the RCP4.5 emissions scenario.”

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