by Dru Jay On climate issues, California governor Jerry Brown has been “hailed as the ‘anti-Trump’” for his efforts to keep the United States government committed to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. So when California recently hosted the Global Climate Action Summit,...
Geoengineering Technologies
Atmospheric geoengineering: a technofix for the climate? (video)
Large-scale technological interventions to “fix” the climate crisis are moving up on the political agenda. Some climate scientists are now proposing geoengineering interventions in the atmosphere to suppress global warming - most prominently SAI (Stratospheric Aerosol...
Marine Geoengineering: a technofix for the climate? (video)
Large-scale technological interventions to “fix” the climate crisis are moving up on the political agenda. Some climate scientists are now proposing geoengineering interventions on land to halt global warming - most prominently BECCS (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture...
Land-based geoengineering: a technofix for the climate? (Video)
Large-scale technological interventions to “fix” the climate crisis are moving up on the political agenda. Some climate scientists are now proposing geoengineering interventions on land to halt global warming - most prominently BECCS (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture...
Negative CO2 emissions cannot replace rapid reductions
Conference report: An international conference on negative emissions highlights extent of trade-offs and reinforces urgency of near-term emission reductions. by Kate Dooley (this article was originally posted by HBF) From May 22nd to 24th, over 200 academics,...
Geoengineering and Justice: What does climate modelling tell us?
Duncan McLaren's blog post on climate justice and climate modelling (below) highlights important findings and shortcomings of existing research on geoengineering, particularly Solar Radiation Management (SRM – see our fact sheet here). However, the Geoengineering...
Pirates of the Pacific
by Silvia Ribeiro The pirates of marine geoengineering are not giving up easily. Although there is a UN moratorium on ocean fertilisation, the company Oceaneos wants to experiment with this risky technology in Chile and Peru, despite not having permission from the...
Marine Cloud Brightening Project: Geoengineering Experiment Briefing
» Download this briefing [pdf] Location: Moss Landing, California, USA (Between Monterey and Santa Cruz) Budget: $16.3 million Summary: The Marine Cloud Brightening Project (MCBP) aims to test the premise that spraying a fine mist of sea water into clouds can make...
The Ice 911 Project: Geoengineering Experiment Briefing
» Download this briefing [pdf] Locations: Near Barrow, Alaska; the Beaufort Gyre (an ocean current flowing past Nunavut and Alaska); and Fram Straight (between Greenland and Svalbard) Budget: $97,630 (based on 2015 crowdfunder1, which raised $3,103 from 24 donors, but...
The Big Bad Fix
ETC Group, BiofuelWatch and Heinrich Boell Foundation present a comprehensive argument against geoengineering in this report. Click here to download the full report (pdf) As a rapidly warming world manifests heat waves, floods, droughts and hurricanes, geoengineering...
Current Geoengineering Attempts Briefing: SCoPEx
Download PDF version: ETC-briefing-SCoPEx Location: World View Spaceport Tucson, Arizona, USA Key Players: Frank Keutsch, David Keith, John Dykema, and Lizzie Burns, all Harvard Professors. Burns and Keith head the Harvard Solar Geoengineering Research Program....
Hydroxyl and methane? SRM proponents fail to consider key aspect of atmospheric chemistry
By Dr. Rachel Smolker Hydroxyl (OH) is a simple, very short lived but “radical” marriage of one hydrogen and one oxygen molecule. Being “radical” means that it reacts very readily with other chemicals, being an important agent of change. Hydroxyl radicals are referred...
Mapping Geogengineering Projects
Interactive map from ETC Group and Heinrich Boell Foundation shows growth of climate control efforts This interactive geoengineering map, prepared by ETC Group and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, is an attempt to shed light on the worldwide state of geoengineering by...
Governance for a ban on geoengineering
[Originally posted by Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative.] by Lili Fuhr All geoengineering approaches are by definition large-scale, intentional, and high-risk. Some have well-known negative impacts, threatening the achievement of the Sustainable...
Risks of large-scale biosequestration as a form of CO2 removal
Source: Global Forest Coalition Click here to view the report. At the start of a major Climate Engineering Conference [1] in Berlin, the Global Forest Coalition [2] has launched a Working Paper that highlights the risks of different proposals for large-scale Carbon...
Riding the geostorm: Is it possible to govern geoengineering?
The prospect of controlling global temperatures raises serious questions of power and justice: Who gets to control the Earth’s thermostat and adjust the climate for their own interests? Who will make the decision to deploy if such drastic measures are considered...
Failure of Kemper County “clean coal” plant casts more doubts on BECCS
After years of embarrassing delays and $5.3 billion in cost overruns, Southern Company has finally pulled the plug on its pioneering “clean coal” plant in Kemper County, Mississippi. The $7.5 billion Kemper County project would have been the world’s first Integrated...
Climate Change, Smoke and Mirrors
For the past decade, a small but growing group of governments and scientists, the majority from the most powerful and most climate-polluting countries in the world, has been pushing for political consideration of geoengineering, the deliberate large-scale...
New briefing: Why are Solar Radiation Management Experiments a Bad Idea?
by ETC Group. A new briefing from ETC Group outlines the ethical, political and environmental arguments against solar radiation management (SRM), and explains why even SRM experiments are a bad idea. The backgrounder was released in late March 2017 after Harvard...
Pioneering coal plant with CCS isn’t viable, admits CEO
A new report by Greenpeace Energy Desk reveals that one of the US’s premier coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration plants, the Kemper County Energy Facility, is not economically viable. The project, located in Kemper County, Mississippi, received...
Pulling carbon out of the air: NETS, BECCS, and CDR
Geoengineering Monitor has long reported on the speculative concept of “negative emissions”, together with certain favored approaches such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) - a geoengineering technique which recent studies show would have...
UN to extend freeze on climate change geoengineering
Update to this article: The plenary of the COP 13 adopted the decision described below on Friday 9th December By Ed King (Climate Home) Draft documents suggest countries will agree to further ban on large-scale climate techno-fixes, warning risks of damage to...
Climate Change Policy and The Super-Hero Syndrome
by Roger Boyd (Resilience) There is a genre of Hollywood “feel-good” disaster movie, where everything seems nearly hopeless until the end, and then suddenly, many times against all hope, the super-hero (or super-heroes) saves the day. Whether it be human heroes that...
Responses to: The Trouble with Negative Emissions
Last month we reported on Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters' piece in Science describing how a reliance on negative emissions to draw carbon out of the atmosphere - rather than making necessary and drastic emissions cuts now - will only lock in carbon addiction and make...