Having seen my name dropped here I thought I might make a small comment. My thoughts are that it would be strategically ill-advised for the geoengineering community to denigrate Dr. Shiva or challenge her to debate. I have read her writings extensively and agree with some of the comments about weak on the science. She is a scientist only at the margins, but she is a public policy advocate of the greatest talent and acuity. Because I admire her I have attempted to better inform her about soil and carbon cycles. Given time I feel she may warm up to recalcitrant carbon and afforestation strategies, although she will never admit to favoring geoengineering, for the reasons she gives in the interview.
I agree with Ron that it is unfortunate that biochar, remineralization and reforestation/afforestation have been associated with geoengineering. These are natural processes that have been going on since the dawn of life, and although they are susceptible to human intervention (what isn't?), likely will continue long after we are gone (unless we screw the pooch even worse). Lines are being drawn and sides are being taken in this debate over "natural" versus "engineered" remedies and while we can lament the polarization and call it "anti-science" or "pro-science", chances are none of that will change the direction or acceleration of the debate. I lean more towards nature-driven processes as inherently safer, having the benefit of billion-year trials, but cannot exclude the possibility they may not be fast enough to preserve our species, to say nothing of our civilization. We have the examples of post-Colombian encounter reforestation, and post-Mongolian incursion reforestation, lowering atmospheric PgC dramatically on multi-century time scales. Clearly those are sequestration techniques having relative cost and risk advantages over many others and I think even Naomi Klein and Vandana Shiva might buy in to those strategies eventually. The limitation is the "multi-century" part. Vandana Shiva seems to think that going back to organic farming practices can entirely solve the climate crisis. She has pounded a stake in the ground and tied herself to that. If she is to be countered, it will be on the issues of urgency and degrees of effectiveness, IMHO. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
