Doug
What you say may depend on what kind of SRM you do. Tropospheric
seeding can affect precipitation in either direction a long way from the
spray source depending on where, and perhaps when relative to the
monsoon you do it. We hope to be able to make dry places a bit wetter
and wet places a bit drier.
Stephen
On 31/10/2012 15:48, Doug MacMartin wrote:
Hi Pete -- that doesn't actually contradict what I was suggesting. My
point, as Tom also suggested, is that SRM doesn't need to be a binary
choice of either we try to restore global mean temperature back to
pre-industrial, or we don't do any SRM. The former will certainly
cause some regions to be too dry. But halfway between these might be
"better" everywhere.
(To be concrete, suppose you look at a 2xCO2 scenario, and decrease
solar radiation by 1%, enough to offset roughly half of the warming.
Is there anywhere "harmed" by this, in terms of their temperature and
precipitation being even worse than it would be with no SRM? Of
course, the answer depends on how you measure climate damage, which is
a big, and unanswered question. But the answer is certainly not
obvious. Kate pointed out that there are regions that get drier with
CO2, and drier still with SRM, but the precipitation changes are
relatively small compared to temperature changes, so that in their
damage function, everywhere would still benefit from this half-way
scenario. Really, to answer this need to be much more careful with
defining benefit and harm, I'm being loose with just associating it
with temperature and precipitation changes, and even there need to ask
how to normalize relative changes.)
And of course, whether people judge that they have been harmed by
geoengineering is different from whether they have been; it is certain
that many people will feel that they have been.
And thanks!
doug
*From:*geoengineering@googlegroups.com
[mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *p.j.irvine
*Sent:* Wednesday, October 31, 2012 12:38 AM
*To:* geoengineering@googlegroups.com
*Cc:* andrew.lock...@gmail.com; 'Ken Caldeira'; macma...@cds.caltech.edu
*Subject:* Re: [geo] Re: NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters-
Naomi Klein
doug,
I think you might be a little hasty in arguing that in model
simulations no region has shown any signs of that there will be a
shift of their climate further from the baseline. Your paper and the
Moreno-cruz paper both use a similar approach that may miss out on
some perfectly anticipatable objections to the climate shifts that you
simulate. I believe that a robust signal across the geoMIP ensemble
and other model simulations is a reduction of precipitation across
North America and Eurasia to a level below the pre-industrial,
reversing, and then some, the anticipated global warming shift to
greater precipitation. A reduction in precipitation is not equal to an
increase in precipitation, and in the extreme case, a doubling of
precip is very different from precip dropping to zero (not that this
has been seen). There are going to be regions where people judge that
they have been harmed by SRM geoengineering, Although whether Monsoon
affected India and Africa are in that class is uncertain.
nice paper by the way,
Pete
On Monday, October 29, 2012 4:03:58 AM UTC+1, Doug MacMartin wrote:
Andrew, others,
Are there any modeling results that support the hypothesis that there
exists some region on the planet for whom the slightest amount of
solar geoengineering will shift their climate even further away from
whatever baseline you pick (current or pre-industrial) than it will be
under greenhouse gases?
It is unequivocally true that one could choose to introduce a large
enough reduction in insolation so that some regions would indeed be
worse off, and there's no question there's a concern here about who
gets to decide (that was one motivation for our latest paper on
optimizing the distribution of radiative forcing, posted last week).
But in the models I've seen, some amount of geoengineering appears to
improve the climate everywhere. (Yes, solar geoengineering is likely
to reduce rainfall in India, but part of that is just offsetting the
increased rainfall due to greenhouse gases, right?)
See, for example, paper last year by Juan Moreno-Cruz, Kate Ricke, and
David Keith, in Climatic Change
*A simple model to account for regional inequalities in the
effectiveness of solar radiation management*
They looked at the Pareto-optimal strategies and found that the region
that "wanted" the least solar geoengineering still wanted 78% as much
as what the global optimum would say. Of course, that depends on what
damage function you define, it depends on how much spatial averaging
you do (they looked at Giorgi regions), and it depends on the model
you use. So I certainly agree that this is an issue that we need to
be on the lookout for, I just haven't seen any evidence implying that
there is any region where things actually get worse.
(If there is, I'm assuming that someone will correct me and point to
the paper that shows this.)
doug
*From:*geoengi...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>
[mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>] *On Behalf Of
*Andrew Lockley
*Sent:* Sunday, October 28, 2012 6:09 PM
*To:* Ken Caldeira; geoengineering
*Subject:* Re: [geo] Re: NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters-
Naomi Klein
Ken
I accept partly the logic of your argument, but not its conclusions.
You may sensibly argue that the average impact is reduced, or that
global food production is not unfavorably impacted.
However, that asssumes efficient allocation of resources. As there's
already evidence that endemic corruption in India is causing
malnutrition on a grand scale, is it reasonable to assume any
compensatory allocation of resources to address monsoon failure will
a) actually happen and b) reach the people who need it?
I'm far more worried about a small number of People starving a lot
than a large number of people starving a little - especially when the
small group has nuclear weapons.
We need to look at the realpolitik, not just the models, when
addressing risks.
A
On Oct 29, 2012 12:38 AM, "Ken Caldeira" <kcal...@carnegiescience.edu
<javascript:>> wrote:
>
> Of course, this statement of Naomi Klein's is false (unless you are
willing to stretch the meaning of the word 'could' to encompass
everything that is not a logical impossibility):
>
> The scariest thing about this proposition is that models suggest
that many of the people who could well be most harmed by these
technologies are already disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts
of climate change.
>
> Surely, models suggest the contrary, that solar goengineering may
allow those who are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of
climate change to avoid some of the harm.
>
> A robust result of solar geoengineering simulations is that these
methods, at least in the models, reduce the amount of climate change
for most people in most places most of the time. Although there is
always a chance that someplace might be negatively impacted, the
robust results are that solar geoengineering tends to increase food
production by diminishing heat stress (see attachment).
>
> By working to remove an option that vulnerable communities might use
to reduce harm caused primarily by CO2 emissions from developed
countries, Naomi Klein, ETC, etc are increasing the potential for
damage to "the disproportionately vulnerable". In their effort to be
politically correct, they are exposing to increased risk the very
communities they paternally (maternally?) claim to be protecting.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 10:54 PM, Joshua Jacobs <josh...@gmail.com
<javascript:>> wrote:
>>
>> Respect, Naomi Klein as I may, I am befuddled by the spin that
seems to have been swallowed by her, multiple media outlets, and
researchers alike. How do the HSRC activities to restore a marine
ecosystem constitute an act of geoengineering (or eco-terrorism to
some) any more or less than "native" ecosystem restoration or
conservation projects around the world? Furthermore, why is
"geoengineering" such a reviled word when used in reference to these
projects while "conservation" and "restoration" are revered...even
when they fundamentally apply to the same process? That is, imposing
our imperfect idea of what Nature would do without us. In addition,
to what prehistoric ideal state can we possibly "restore" a constantly
evolving ecosystem to in lieu of a changing climate (now
and millennia in the past)?
>>
>> Despite my bewilderment in the overuse of an Appeal to Nature
Argument in Naomi's article, I see great value in supporting the rich
biodiversity of both native and novel ecosystems (see Emma Marris'
"The Rambunctious Garden"). With the enormous carbon exchange that
goes on between global ecosystem and atmosphere each year(~210 Gt
taken in by photosynthesis, ~210 respirated/decomposed back, plus ~9
Gt anthropogenic), it seems foolish not to utilize the capacity of
ecosystems to store atmospheric carbon in organic, mineralized, or
re-fossilized forms. Furthermore, it is necessary to have ecosystem
management (of any scale) be financially and politically, as most
certainly ecologically, viable. This is what I believe that Russ
George has been, albeit clumsily, aiming for. We would do well to
improve on his model.
>>
>> Thoughts on this?
>>
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