Solar Radiation Management

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

Sign-on letter: No to 1.5°C with geoengineering!

Paris, 11 December 2015 Seemingly out of the blue (or rather, out of the black smog of the UNFCCC process), some of the largest historical culprits for climate change, countries including the United States, Canada and the European Union, have decided to back an...

The Paris Climate-Change Spectacular

by Neth Daño and Pat Mooney (Project Syndicate) OTTAWA – The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December will feature all the tightly choreographed production values of a Hollywood blockbuster. The cast will be huge: presidents and prime ministers at...

Recklessly playing God with the planet

A government-sponsored scientific panel called for more research on geoengineering — here’s why we shouldn’t even consider it by Shannon Hall (ScienceLine) Geoengineering — that wild and grandiose idea that suggests we could offset and even reverse the alarming...

Geoengineering Is Not a Solution to Climate Change

Using technofixes to tinker with global climate systems is an excuse to avoid unpopular but necessary measures to reduce carbon emissions by Clive Hamilton (Scientific American) The geoengineering juggernaut has shifted into higher gear with the release of a...

Should We Experiment With Climate Geoengineering?

by Rachel Smolker and Almuth Ernsting (Truthout) The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced its long-awaited reports on climate geoengineering in mid-February. The reports intelligently state at the outset that geoengineering is no substitute for reducing...

What If We Lost the Sky?

by Anna North (New York Times) What is the sky worth? This sounds like a philosophical question, but it might become a more concrete one. A report released last week by the National Research Council called for research into reversing climate changethrough a process...

Climate Hacking Is Barking Mad

You can’t fix the Earth with these geoengineering proposals, but you can sure make it worse. by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert (Slate) Some years ago, in the question-and-answer session after a lecture at the American Geophysical Union, I described certain geoengineering...

Plan B? What Happened to Plan A?

Why we shouldn’t fund geoengineering experimentation, and what we still need to learn about the climate by Pat Mooney (ETC Group) The US National Academy of Sciences has released two reports on geoengineering that recommend investments in solar radiation management...

Is geoengineering research going outdoors?

by Blaž Gasparini and Prof. Ulrike Lohmann Geoengineering research has so far been confined to modelling and laboratory studies. Serious research outside of these limits has been a taboo because of the serious risks this may pose for ecosystems and society. However,...