Geoengineering Technologies

Using forests to curb climate change threatens human rights

by Fred Pearce (Thomson Reuters Foundation News) Trees offer ways to help achieve "negative emissions", but what does that mean for forest communities? The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was a landmark the world rightly applauded. Its pledge to limit global...

Radical Realism About Climate Change

by Lili Fuhr (Project Syndicate) BERLIN – Mainstream politics, by definition, is ill equipped to imagine fundamental change. But last December in Paris, 196 governments agreed on the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – an objective that...

The trouble with negative emissions

By Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters (Science) Reliance on negative-emission concepts locks in humankind’s carbon addiction In December 2015, member states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement, which aims to...

No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously

by David Roberts (Vox) If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere. One of the morbidly fascinating aspects of climate change is how much cognitive dissonance it generates, in individuals and nations alike. The more you understand the brutal logic of...

More funding being made available for negative emissions nonsense

A UK research fund has recently announced that £8.3m is being made available to fund up to 10 different research projects for a programme on Greenhouse Gas Removal from the Atmosphere. Examples given as potential topics for research proposals are: Soil carbon,...

The 2-degree goal and the question of geoengineering

Disclaimer: This article is broadly pro-geoengineering, but alarmingly the authors say it would take 160 years of sulphate injections to keep global temperature increases to under 2 degrees! by Atmos News How much geoengineering would be necessary to hit temperature...

Climate scientists are now relying on a terrifying assumption

by Ryan Cooper (THE WEEK) How can we solve climate change? One option is obvious, if a bit strange: If dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the problem, then we could always suck it back out. If you think that sounds tricky, congratulations, you're correct....

Will Developing Nations Hack the Climate?

How likely is it that geoengineering will actually be used on a global scale? Perhaps it's more likely that hype around its effectiveness (eg "Negative Emissions", CCS and BioCCS) will just be used as a tactic to delay serious emissions cuts, plunging us further into...

Norway shows how “net zero” rhetoric is utterly meaningless

Norway's parliament has just agreed to bring forward the goal of achieving "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions from 2050 to 2030, making it "a very ambitious goal". This means that in 14 years Norway will not be a net producer of climate-changing emissions. Why has...

Firing lasers at clouds to change the Earth’s albedo

A recent paper in the "Science Advances" journal describes research that has been conducted into the possibility of firing lasers at clouds to change their albedo, and hence reflect more light away from the Earth. Here's an explanation of the science behind it, from...

In the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, nature and humanity lose

by Mary Louise Malig (Global Forest Coalition) The Paris Agreement has been signed in New York with much fanfare, a lot of shaking hands and patting each other on the back, and claims that “we did it” – that is, agreed a historic climate agreement that would save the...

Small-scale geoengineering? UAE’s rain-making mountain

Plans are currently being modeled by the UAE to build a mountain and seed clouds above it in order to tackle an acute water shortage. This isn't necessarily geoengineering (extreme weather modification maybe), but the thinking behind it mirrors the wrong approach...

Response to: Do we need BECCS to avoid dangerous climate change?

This comment by Biofuelwatch's Almuth Ernsting was posted in reply to a guest article by Prof Jason Lowe (Head of Knowledge Integration and Mitigation Advice at the UK’s Met Office and lead scientist for the government-funded AVOID2 research programme) which was...

Sulphur sunshade is a stupid pollution solution

by Greg Foyster (Eureka Street) It's a credo of consumer capitalism: never address the cause when you can create an industry treating the symptoms. This is the logic behind many profitable businesses, from cholesterol-lowering pills that compensate for poor diet and...

Climate change needs real solutions not more hot air

by Almuth Ernsting (New Internationalist) Are certain proposals to reduce carbon emissions based on technological hype? At a COP21 side event last December, proponents of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) hosted Mike Marsh, the CEO of publicly-owned Canadian energy...