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Towards Integrated Ethical and Scientific Analysis of Geoengineering: A Research Agenda

Author(s): Tuana N, Sriver RL, Svoboda T, Olson R, Irvine PJ, Haqq-Misra J, Keller K

Published: July, 2012

Publisher: Ethics, Policy & Environment

DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2012.685557

Tags: Ethics, Research

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2012.685557

Abstract: Concerns about the risks of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions are growing. At the same time, confidence that international policy agreements will succeed in considerably lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is declining. Perhaps as a result, various geoengineering solutions are gaining attention and credibility as a way to manage climate change. Serious consideration is currently being given to proposals to cool the planet through solar-radiation management. Here we analyze how the unique and nontrivial risks of geoengineering strategies pose fundamental questions at the interface between science and ethics. To illustrate the importance of integrated ethical and scientific analysis, we define key open questions and outline a coupled scientific-ethical research agenda to analyze solar-radiation management geoengineering proposals. We identify nine key fields of coupled research including whether solar-radiation management can be tested, how quickly learning could occur, normative decisions embedded in how different climate trajectories are valued, and justice issues regarding distribution of the harms and benefits of geoengineering. To ensure that ethical analyses are coupled with scientific analyses of this form of geoengineering, we advocate that funding agencies recognize the essential nature of this coupled research by establishing an Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications program for solar-radiation management.


Introduction to the Special Section, ‘The Ethics of Geoengineering: Investigating the Moral Challenges of Solar Radiation Management’

Author(s): Scott D

Published: July, 2012

Publisher: Ethics, Policy & Environment

DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2012.688287

Tags: Ethics

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2012.688287

Abstract: Serious high-level discussions are taking place over research into engineering the earth's climate by reducing incoming solar radiation – so called solar radiation management (SRM). Influential bodies such as the United States Congress, the Royal Society, and others, have taken hard looks into SRM and are encouraging research into this broad set of technological responses to unabated, anthropogenic climate change. Most significantly, for the first time, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will include assessments of SRM in its Fifth Assessment Report, due out in 2013 and 2014. This rapid expansion of high-level discussions and increased rates of research efforts will be accompanied by vigorous and contentious scientific, ethical and political debates.


Precaution and Solar Radiation Management

Author(s): Hartzell-Nichols L

Published: July, 2012

Publisher: Ethics, Policy & Environment

DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2012.685561

Tags: Ethics, Environmental Side-Effects, Research

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2012.685561

Abstract: Solar radiation management is a form of geoengineering that involves the intentional manipulation of solar radiation with the aim of reducing global average temperature. This paper explores what precaution implies about the status of solar radiation management. It is argued that any form of solar radiation management that poses threats of catastrophe cannot constitute an appropriate precautionary measure against another threat of catastrophe, namely climate change. Research of solar radiation management is appropriate on a precautionary view only insofar as such research aims to identify whether any forms of solar radiation management could be implemented without creating new or exacerbating existing threats of catastrophe.


Now This! Indigenous Sovereignty, Political Obliviousness and Governance Models for SRM Research

Author(s): Powys Whyte K

Published: July, 2012

Publisher: Ethics, Policy & Environment

DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2012.685570

Tags: Ethics, Politics, Governance, Research

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2012.685570

Abstract: Models are currently being outlined for governance of early research on Solar Radiation Management (SRM), a form of geoengineering. SRM includes techniques that decrease the earth's and its atmosphere's absorption of solar energy such as adding ‘light-scattering aerosols to the upper atmosphere’ and ‘increasing the lifetime and reflectivity of low-altitude clouds’ (Keith, Parson & Morgan, 2010, p. 426). If implemented, the global effects of such SRM solutions will in some fashion impact everyone. Indigenous peoples, among other populations, are right to be concerned about how governance plans unfold.


Beyond the End of Nature: SRM and Two Tales of Artificity for the Anthropocene

Author(s): Preston CJ

Published: July, 2012

Publisher: Ethics, Policy & Environment

DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2012.685571

Tags: Ethics, Environmental Side-Effects

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2012.685571

Abstract: In 1989, Bill McKibben wrote a now famous book declaring that anthropogenic climate change marked the ‘end of nature.’ Like threatened species, McKibben claimed, ideas can go extinct. The idea of nature untouched by human influence is one such idea, McKibben suggested, an idea now being extinguished by climate change. Until the advent of recent global warming, nature stood for ‘the separate and wild province, the world apart from man to which he adapted and under whose rules he was born and died’ (McKibben, 1989, p. 48). In today's warming world, ‘each cubic yard of air, each square foot of soil, is stamped indelibly with our crude imprint, our X’ (McKibben, 1989, p. 96). With anthropogenic climate change ‘the meaning of the wind, the sun, the rain – nature – has already changed’ (McKibben, 1989, p. 48). As a result, humans face an unprecedented and disorienting loss.


Will Geoengineering With Solar Radiation Management Ever Be Used?

Author(s): Robock A

Published: July, 2012

Publisher: Ethics, Policy & Environment

DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2012.685573

Tags: Environmental Side-Effects

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2012.685573

Abstract: As a meteorologist, I understand the limits of prediction of physical systems, let alone human ones, but here I will attempt to predict whether geoengineering will ever be used. While the term ‘geoengineering’ has come to encompass several different responses to global warming, here I will use the term to refer to solar radiation management, ideas about reducing incoming sunlight to cool the planet (Lenton & Vaughan, 2009; Shepherd et al., 2009).
The geoengineering ideas that have gotten the most attention are the creation of a stratospheric aerosol cloud, to mimic the effects of episodic volcanic eruptions, and the brightening of low clouds over the ocean, to mimic ship tracks. No cloud has ever been produced on purpose in the stratosphere, and no low cloud has ever been brightened on purpose, and there are serious issues with the practicality of either of these ideas, but for now I will assume that at some time in the future they will become technically possible and affordable. Still I do not think either will ever be implemented on a global basis, because of the inherent risks and uncertainties.


The Politics of Uncertainty and the Fate of Forecasters

Author(s): Taddei R

Published: July, 2012

Publisher: Ethics, Policy & Environment

DOI: 10.1080/21550085.2012.685603

Tags: Uncertainty, Politics

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2012.685603

Abstract: Using ethnographic data from rural Northeast Brazil, this article explores, firstly, how climate uncertainties are interconnected to processes of accountability and blame, and, secondly, how this connection affects the activity of climate forecasting. By framing climate events in ways that downplay the inherent uncertainties of the atmosphere, political discourses on various scales, as well as religious narratives, create a propitious context for the enactment of what I call accountability rituals. Forecasters seem to attract to themselves a great deal of the collective anxieties related to climate, and are very often blamed for the negative impact of climate events. This blaming may take place in a variety of ways, and has a range of practical results: from real physical violence to attacks on the authority and legitimacy of forecasters, by way of ridicule and jokes. I conclude by suggesting that, on the one hand, the study of the social uses of climate-related uncertainties offers special opportunities for understanding how human societies deal with uncertainty and blame; and that, on the other hand, a better understanding of these issues is necessary to improve relations between climate forecasting and the societies where it takes place – the latter being a key issue in the processes of understanding and adapting to climate change.


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