Re: [geo] Does Geoengineering Present a Moral Hazard? by Albert Lin :: SSRN

[Josh Horton]

This article makes for an interesting read but is based on some fuzzy 
logic.  To my knowledge, the limited empirical data available on moral 
hazard in the geoengineering context (Ipsos MORI, work by Dan Kahan, etc.) 
all suggest that the issue is pretty inconsequential.  But here the author 
simply dimisses that data in favor of purely theoretical psychological 
considerations from which he derives bold and confident predictions that 
moral hazard is real and deeply problematic: "Heuristics and biases will 
influence risk perceptions among the general public, fostering 
overconfidence in seemingly easy technological 'solutions' and neglect of 
accompanying risks, and cultural cognition will lead persons of 
hierarchical and individualistic orientations to favor geoengineering over 
other climate policy options" (pp. 23-24).  Whatever happened to basing 
predictions on facts and observations?

Josh Horton

On Thursday, September 27, 2012 1:48:14 PM UTC-4, Mike MacCracken wrote:
>
>  Initial reactions to the abstract:
>
> While many of the geoengineering approaches might be said to be 
> unconventional (even though virtually all imitate some natural or existing 
> phenomenon) and untested (at least untested adequately), this charge that 
> the proposals are risky seems to me to need to be put in the context of the 
> very great risks created by the increasing concentrations of GHGs (indeed, 
> even by sustaining the concentrations that we have) for which 
> geoengineering approaches are intended to reduce the likelihood. This issue 
> is not geoengineering or not, but human-induced climate change due to GHGs 
> with or without various approaches to geoengineering. There will be 
> different consequences depending on the choices made, and the issue would 
> seem to be the relative consequences (very likely all negative compared to 
> having human-induced GHG emissions being near zero). And yes, governance 
> aspects and moral hazard and Man-nature perspectives, etc. are different 
> too, and so is the likelihood of international actions on cutting 
> emissions, etc., so a lot to consider. But the critical matter this is a 
> relative risk issue—and saying that geoengineering alone (as done here) is 
> (inherently) risky seems to me to be an unfortunate way to start off the 
> consideration.
>
> Mike MacCracken
>
>
> On 9/27/12 5:09 AM, "Andrew Lockley"  wrote:
>
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2152131
>
> Albert Lin 
>
> University of California, Davis - School of Law
> August 23, 2012
> Ecology Law Quarterly, Forthcoming 
>
> Abstract: 
>  Geoengineering, a set of unconventional, untested, and risky proposals 
> for responding to climate change, has attracted growing attention in the 
> wake of our collective failure so far to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. 
> Geoengineering research and deployment remain highly controversial, 
> however, not only because of the risks involved, but also because of 
> concern that geoengineering might undermine climate mitigation and 
> adaptation efforts. The latter concern, often described as a moral hazard, 
> has been questioned by some but not carefully explored. This article 
> examines the critical question of whether geoengineering presents a moral 
> hazard by drawing on empirical studies of moral hazard and risk 
> compensation and on the psychology literature of heuristics and cultural 
> cognition. The article finds it likely that geoengineering efforts will 
> undermine mainstream strategies to combat climate change and suggests 
> potential measures for ameliorating this moral hazard.
>
> Number of Pages in PDF File: 39
>
> Keywords: 
> geoengineering, climate change, moral hazard, risk compensation
>
> Accepted Paper Series
>
> 

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[geo] A GE long shot

[Rau, Greg]

Sorry if already discussed.  - Greg

GEOENGINEERING:
Scientists suggest deploying asteroid dust to cool the planet

Published: Tuesday, October 2, 2012

A group of Scottish scientists suggests that dust from an asteroid, suspended 
in space, could block incoming sunlight and help to cool the Earth.

Russell Bewick of the University of Strathclyde in Scotland said, "We can buy 
time to find a lasting solution to combat Earth's climate change. The dust 
cloud is not a permanent cure, but it could offset the effects of climate 
change for a given time to allow slow-acting measures like carbon capture to 
take effect."

Bewick proposes to suspend a large asteroid within the Lagrange point L1, where 
the gravitational pull of the Earth and the sun cancel each other out. A device 
consisting of electromagnets, called a "mass driver," would hurl dust away from 
the asteroid's surface. The device would work to propel the asteroid into the 
L1 point as well as generate the dust.

The researchers say the largest near-Earth asteroid, 1036 Ganymed, could 
generate a dust cloud dense enough to block 6.58 percent of incoming solar 
radiation. The cloud would be about 11 million-billion pounds in mass and about 
1,600 miles wide.

A main challenge would be pushing an asteroid the size of Ganymed to the L1 
point.

"The company Planetary Resources recently announced their intention to mine 
asteroids," Bewick said. "The study that they base their plans on reckons that 
it will be possible to capture an asteroid with a mass of 500,000 kilograms 
[1.1 million pounds] by 2025. Comparing this to the mass of Ganymed makes the 
task of capturing it seem unfeasible, at least in everything except the very 
far term. However, smaller asteroids could be moved and clustered at the first 
Lagrange point."

Safety is also a concern, Bewick said.

He added, "On the global scale, it is not possible to test because the test 
would essentially be the real thing, except probably in a diluted form. Climate 
modeling can be performed, but without some large-scale testing, the results 
from these models cannot be fully verified."

The group will publish its findings in the Nov. 12 issue of the journal 
Advances in Space Research(Charles Choi, 
LiveScience,
 Sept. 28). -- RE

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[geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited

[Rau, Greg]

Possible solutions:
fertilize
genetically select/modify
reduce CO2 recycling (CROPS, Biochar)
all of the above.
Greg

Nature | News
Earth’s carbon sink downsized

Abundance of soil nutrients a limiting factor in plants’ ability to soak up 
carbon dioxide.

  *   Amanda 
Mascarelli<http://www.nature.com/news/earth-s-carbon-sink-downsized-1.11503?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20121002#auth-1>
01 October 2012

Plants need enriched soil to make use of increasing carbon dioxide.

As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to climb, most climate 
models project that the world’s oceans and trees will keep soaking up more than 
half of the extra CO2. But researchers report this week that the capacity for 
land plants to absorb more CO2 will be much lower than previously thought, 
owing to limitations in soil 
nutrients1<http://www.nature.com/news/earth-s-carbon-sink-downsized-1.11503?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20121002#b1>.

Because plants take up CO2 during photosynthesis, it has long been assumed that 
they will provide a large carbon ‘sink’ to help offset increases in atmospheric 
CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Some scientists have argued that the 
increase might even be good for plants, which would presumably grow faster and 
mop up even more CO2. Climate models estimate that the world’s oceans have 
absorbed about 30% of the CO2 that humans have released in the past 150 years 
and that land plants have gulped another 30%.

But the latest study, by ecologists Peter Reich and Sarah Hobbie at the 
University of Minnesota in St Paul, suggests that estimates of how much CO2 
land plants can use are far too optimistic. Plants also need soil nutrients, 
such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to grow. But few studies have tested whether 
soils contain enough of these nutrients to fuel growth in proportion to rising 
CO2.

“This work addresses a question that’s been out there for decades,” says Bruce 
Hungate, an ecosystem scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. 
"It's a hard question to answer, because it takes a long time to see how 
ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycles change."

Long-term growth

In a 13-year field experiment on 296 open-air plots, the researchers grew 
perennial grassland species under ambient and elevated concentrations of both 
atmospheric CO2 and soil nitrogen.

“Rather than building a time machine and comparing how ecosystems behave in 
2070 — which is hard to do — we basically create the atmosphere of 2070 above 
our plots,” says Reich.

Reich and Hobbie found that from 2001 to 2010, grasses growing under heightened 
CO2 levels grew only half as much in untreated as in enriched nitrogen soils.

Researchers do not have a firm grasp on the complexities of nitrogen and carbon 
cycle interactions, so “the vast majority of models do not adequately reflect 
nutrient limitation”, says Adrien Finzi, a biogeochemist at Boston University 
in Massachusetts. “The real strength in this study is that now we have this 
13-year record of a single ecosystem. It provides a really strong case for the 
claim that soil resources and nitrogen limitation in particular can impose a 
major constraint on carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems.”

A study published in March modelled nutrient cycling across the globe to 
predict how much carbon plants could sequester over the next 100 years when 
nutrient limitations are taken into 
account2<http://www.nature.com/news/earth-s-carbon-sink-downsized-1.11503?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20121002#b2>.
 Those simulations, which included nitrogen limitations in northern hemisphere 
soils and phosphorus limitations in the tropics, predicted that land plants 
will absorb 23% less carbon than is projected by other models.

Researchers say that much more work is needed to understand how nutrient 
dynamics will affect carbon uptake — particularly in forest ecosystems, which 
are expected to be important carbon sinks. Often, says Hungate, these 
ecosystems seem to offer a “partial, natural, easy solution” to the climate 
problem. “But it turns out that in reality, ecosystems are complex and only 
have limited flexibility.”
Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11503
References

1. Reich, P. B. & Hobbie, S. E. Nature Climate Change advance online 
publication, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1694 (2012).
Show context

2. Goll, D. S. et al. Biogeosciences 9, 3547–3569 (2012).

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[geo] Re: Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN

[Michael Hayes]

On Monday, September 17, 2012 10:15:11 AM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote: 
>
>  Dr. Michaelson's foundational work and this follow up are welcomed 
>> contribution to the subject. The principal difference between his prior and 
>> latter works is that, within that time frame, it has been confermed that we 
>> are all ready in the process of changing our climate in a 'reasonably 
>> knowable' way! We only lack the topical (legaly meaningless) declaration 
>> of 'intent'.It is no longer a question of; if GE/CM/etc should be used, but 
>> how can we make it better (or even controlable).The horse left the barn at 
>> the beginning of the industrial revolution. Deciding to close the barn door 
>> or not, at this time, is useless in corralling the pony. Dr. Michaelson's 
>> statement of "geoengineeering becomes inevitable" may possibly be modified 
>> to state 'became'.
>>
>  
Thanks,
 
Michael
 
 

> Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity
>
> Jay Michaelson 
>
> Hebrew University of Jerusalem
>
> December 14, 2010
> Tulsa Law Review, Vol. 14, p. 221, Winter 2010 
>
> Abstract:  
> In 1998, when I wrote the first law review article advocating 
> Geoengineering as a climate change mitigation strategy, Geoengineering was 
> both unknown and unpopular. Twelve years later, the political economy of 
> Geoengineering – or as I prefer to call it, Climate Management (CM) – has 
> shifted, precisely because the conditions I outlined in 1998 have stayed so 
> strikingly the same. Then, I argued that the lack of political will, 
> absence, complexity, and sheer expense of climate change mitigation made 
> meaningful preventive measures, i.e. cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) 
> emissions, extremely difficult to undertake. After a decade of obfuscation 
> and misinformation by powerful political actors, the case seems stronger 
> than ever.Today, while CM remains at the margins of our popular political 
> discourse, there has been an explosion of scientific and policy analyses. 
> Solar Radiation Management (SRM: increasing the concentration of sulfur 
> dioxide in the upper atmosphere) and Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF: seeding 
> gigantic phytoplankton carbon sinks in the oceans by fertilizing them with 
> iron) have both been explored and advanced by credible scientists, 
> scholars, and even entrepreneurs. Additionally, CM has been tentatively 
> explored by conservative think-tanks and pundits – to the horror of 
> environmentalists.Yet the mere fact that conservatives support 
> Geoengineering should not, in itself, cause liberals and greens to oppose 
> it. Supporting CM should give any environmentalist pause, both because of 
> its riskiness and because so many of our political foes support it. But CM 
> is a climate change strategy that, unlike regulation, might actually stand 
> a chance of becoming reality. It is the only approach to climate change 
> that can act as a compromise between liberals and libertarians, greens and 
> browns. As climate change becomes ineluctable, geoengineeering becomes 
> inevitable.
>
> Number of Pages in PDF File: 39
>
> Keywords: climate change, greenhouse effect, geoengineering, Newt 
> Gingrich, Paul Crutzen, climate management, international law, 
> environmental law
>
> JEL Classification: K32, K33
> Accepted Paper Series 
>

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Re: [geo] A GE long shot

[Jim Fleming]

A great graduate student analytical problem, but please don't try it on the
home planet.

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Rau, Greg  wrote:

>  ** Sorry if already discussed.  - Greg
>  GEOENGINEERING: Scientists suggest deploying asteroid dust to cool the
> planet
>
>  Published: **Tuesday, October 2, 2012**
> 
>
> A group of Scottish scientists suggests that dust from an asteroid,
> suspended in space, could block incoming sunlight and help to cool the
> Earth.
>
> Russell Bewick of the University of Strathclyde in Scotland said, "We can
> buy time to find a lasting solution to combat Earth's climate change. The
> dust cloud is not a permanent cure, but it could offset the effects of
> climate change for a given time to allow slow-acting measures like carbon
> capture to take effect."
>
> Bewick proposes to suspend a large asteroid within the Lagrange point L1,
> where the gravitational pull of the Earth and the sun cancel each other
> out. A device consisting of electromagnets, called a "mass driver," would
> hurl dust away from the asteroid's surface. The device would work to propel
> the asteroid into the L1 point as well as generate the dust.
>
> The researchers say the largest near-Earth asteroid, 1036 Ganymed, could
> generate a dust cloud dense enough to block 6.58 percent of incoming solar
> radiation. The cloud would be about 11 million-billion pounds in mass and
> about 1,600 miles wide.
>
> A main challenge would be pushing an asteroid the size of Ganymed to the
> L1 point.
>
> "The company Planetary Resources recently announced their intention to
> mine asteroids," Bewick said. "The study that they base their plans on
> reckons that it will be possible to capture an asteroid with a mass of
> 500,000 kilograms [1.1 million pounds] by 2025. Comparing this to the mass
> of Ganymed makes the task of capturing it seem unfeasible, at least in
> everything except the very far term. However, smaller asteroids could be
> moved and clustered at the first Lagrange point."
>
> Safety is also a concern, Bewick said.
>
> He added, "On the global scale, it is not possible to test because the
> test would essentially be the real thing, except probably in a diluted
> form. Climate modeling can be performed, but without some large-scale
> testing, the results from these models cannot be fully verified."
>
> The group will publish its findings in the Nov. 12 issue of the journal 
> *Advances
> in Space Research*(Charles Choi, 
> *LiveScience*,
> Sept. 28). -- RE
> *
> *
> **
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "geoengineering" group.
> To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
>



-- 
James Fleming
STS Program
Colby College
5881 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, ME  04901
Ph: 207-859-5881
Fax: 207-859-5846
Web: http://www.colby.edu/profile/jfleming 

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Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited

[markcapron]

Greg,
 

Another solution is rapid nutrient recycling, as happens in the Ocean Afforestation ecosystem.
 

Deploying the Ocean Afforestation ecosystem over 4% of the world's ocean surface would imply cycling about 16 times the global artificial nitrogen plant fertilizer production.  The recycle will happen over distances of a few kilometers and time scales of a few months.  The ecosystem would also be cycling proportional masses of all the other nutrients needed to grow macroalgae.
 
Perhaps more important than nutrients, land plants are limited by fresh water and the timing of fresh water (no good to rain in August if the corn kernel silks lacked water to deploy July).

 
Mark E. Capron, PEOxnard, Californiawww.PODenergy.org
 
 

 Original Message Subject: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limitedFrom: "Rau, Greg" Date: Tue, October 02, 2012 10:53 amTo: geoengineering 

Possible solutions: 
fertilize
genetically select/modify
reduce CO2 recycling (CROPS, Biochar)
all of the above.
Greg

Nature | News




Earth’s carbon sink downsized
Abundance of soil nutrients a limiting factor in plants’ ability to soak up carbon dioxide.

Amanda Mascarelli
01 October 2012
Plants need enriched soil to make use of increasing carbon dioxide.
As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to climb, most climate models project that the world’s oceans and trees will keep soaking up more than half of the extra CO2. But researchers report this week that the capacity for land plants to absorb more CO2 will be much lower than previously thought, owing to limitations in soil nutrients1.

Because plants take up CO2 during photosynthesis, it has long been assumed that they will provide a large carbon ‘sink’ to help offset increases in atmospheric CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Some scientists have argued that the increase might even be good for plants, which would presumably grow faster and mop up even more CO2. Climate models estimate that the world’s oceans have absorbed about 30% of the CO2 that humans have released in the past 150 years and that land plants have gulped another 30%.
But the latest study, by ecologists Peter Reich and Sarah Hobbie at the University of Minnesota in St Paul, suggests that estimates of how much CO2 land plants can use are far too optimistic. Plants also need soil nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to grow. But few studies have tested whether soils contain enough of these nutrients to fuel growth in proportion to rising CO2.
“This work addresses a question that’s been out there for decades,” says Bruce Hungate, an ecosystem scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. "It's a hard question to answer, because it takes a long time to see how ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycles change."
Long-term growth
In a 13-year field experiment on 296 open-air plots, the researchers grew perennial grassland species under ambient and elevated concentrations of both atmospheric CO2 and soil nitrogen.
“Rather than building a time machine and comparing how ecosystems behave in 2070 — which is hard to do — we basically create the atmosphere of 2070 above our plots,” says Reich.
Reich and Hobbie found that from 2001 to 2010, grasses growing under heightened CO2 levels grew only half as much in untreated as in enriched nitrogen soils.
Researchers do not have a firm grasp on the complexities of nitrogen and carbon cycle interactions, so “the vast majority of models do not adequately reflect nutrient limitation”, says Adrien Finzi, a biogeochemist at Boston University in Massachusetts. “The real strength in this study is that now we have this 13-year record of a single ecosystem. It provides a really strong case for the claim that soil resources and nitrogen limitation in particular can impose a major constraint on carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems.”
A study published in March modelled nutrient cycling across the globe to predict how much carbon plants could sequester over the next 100 years when nutrient limitations are taken into account2. Those simulations, which included nitrogen limitations in northern hemisphere soils and phosphorus limitations in the tropics, predicted that land plants will absorb 23% less carbon than is projected by other models.
Researchers say that much more work is needed to understand how nutrient dynamics will affect carbon uptake — particularly in forest ecosystems, which are expected to be important carbon sinks. Often, says Hungate, these ecosystems seem to offer a “partial, natural, easy solution” to the climate problem. “But it turns out that in reality, ecosystems are complex and only have limited flexibility.”
Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11503
References
1. Reich, P. B. & Hobbie, S. E. Nature Climate Change advance online publication, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1694 (2012).
Show context
2. Goll, D. S. et al. Biogeosciences 9, 3547–3569 (2012).
 
-- You recei