Hello, This is my first contribution to this list, but for someone who spends most of my time working with laypersons of some kind or other (mostly in the corporate world), I thought I would throw in my two cents.
In my view, a reshaping of the public discussion about geoengineering is necessary, or these projects will never get off the ground. The public has several profound misunderstandings which need to be corrected, including: 1. That geoengineering equals stratospheric aerosol injection. The survey below makes that pretty clear. 2. That geoengineering always has catastrophic consequences. The potentially minimal, probably controllable, and fully reversible impacts associated with marine cloud brightening and some other techniques make it clear that there is a way to do with minimal risk. 3. That “Plan A” – i.e. GHG mitigation – is working. The INDCs under the Paris Agreement and projections of increasing energy use make it hard to see how anything will be done to meaningfully “bend the CO2 curve”. China and India are not going to halt development of their economies and continue to leave millions in abject poverty – that is unrealistic, and an unfair proposition. 4. That GHG mitigation alone is itself risk-free, and has no unintended consequences. For example, take the recent paper by MacDonald on HVDC in the USA, which found that 1.6+ million acres of open land would have to be fully converted to solar farms to generate enough electricity to power the country; scale that globally, and we are talking about converting a meaningful fraction of open lands to industrial-scale solar farms. This is a severe impact of larger magnitude and severity than some proposed geoengineering projects. 5. That we have time to deal with this issue. Considering the current radiative forcing commitment, there isn’t time to “wait and see” if the Paris Accord will work. Government policies are in a dangerous place right now -- ignoring technologies like MCB which have almost unrivaled promise, while focusing on "GHG mitigation" which always seems to be planned for 20 years in the future, but is never achieved (at least not at any scale that could make a difference). At this stage this is a battle to win public acceptance for consideration of geoengineering technologies. It must start with educating the public or it will go nowhere and we are going to have a +2C world and worse before we know it. Tobias Schultz On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Tobias Schultz < [email protected]> wrote: > > > > > *. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * > > > > *Tobias Schultz * > > > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto:geoengineering@ > googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Hawkins, Dave > *Sent:* Friday, August 12, 2016 2:37 PM > *To:* [email protected] > *Cc:* Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>; Geoengineering < > [email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [geo] Public attitudes to climate engineering research and > field experiments: > > > > Ron, > > Re your point 2: if one wants to get a picture of what current public > awareness implies regarding geo of either form, one needs to survey the > public as we find them; not as primed with information most of the public > lacks. One can do a study of the impact of such priming by surveying > primed and unprimed subgroups. That could indicate the value of education. > > > Sent from my iPad > > > On Aug 12, 2016, at 4:53 PM, Ronal W. Larson <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Andrew and list (that hopefully will get eventually to persons conducting > these surveys): > > > > 1. I understand that the intent was only to study the “solar” half of > "Geo” as exemplified by this sentence: “….*Information material on > climate engineering, which we defined as stratospheric aerosol injection > for the purpose of this survey;**”** . *But there are many on this list > who would love to see similar surveys for the other half of “Geo”: > CDR/NET. No question here got to any part of CDR/NET, so I think we > know much less about “aerosol injection” than we could have. > > > > 2. As with other such surveys, the respondents clearly didn’t feel well > informed. I urge more learning/education take place if anyone is planning > something similar for CDR/NET - or for both halves of “geo” in a single > survey. > > > > Ron > > > > > > > > On Aug 12, 2016, at 11:44 AM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > Public attitudes to climate engineering research and field experiments: > Preliminary results of a web survey on students' perception in six > Asia-Pacific countries > > Masahiro Sugiyama, Takanobu Kosugi, Atsushi Ishii, and Shinichiro Asayama > > Abstract: > There is a growing literature on public surveys regarding solar > geoengineering, but the spatial coverage has been mostly limited to the > Western societies. However, the non- Western voices are paramount to > climate engineering governance since technology's reach is global and since > different cultures and socio-political backgrounds might substantively > affect governance discourse. Here we report a preliminary analysis of an > international web- based survey conducted in March 2016, targeting > university students in Japan, Korea, Australia (OECD countries), China, > India, and the Philippines (non-OECD), a diverse set of six countries in > the Asia-Pacific region. Our questionnaire builds on earlier studies by > Mercer et al. (2011) and Merk et al. (2015) but digs deeper into the aspect > of field experimentation. > The survey results show that non-OECD undergraduates tend to be more > seriously concerned about climate change and open to the idea of climate > engineering than OECD counterparts. Majorities of the students believe that > an international framework is needed and that scientists should openly > disclose all the results of field tests, including negative ones. > > Keywords: > geoengineering, solar radiation management, climate change, public > opinion, public > awareness > > > > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > <WP16_24.pdf> > > > > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- ----- Tobias C. Schultz -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
