Re: [geo] Re: NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters- Naomi Klein

[p.j.irvine]

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  [mailto:
> geoengi...@googlegroups.com ] *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" 
> > 
> 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.  Althou

Re: [geo] NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters- Naomi Klein

[Jane Long]

Letters to the editor?

On Monday, October 29, 2012, David Lewis wrote:

> Naomi has invented her own distorted version of an idea Bill McKibben
> first advanced in the late 1980s in his book "The End of Nature".  McKibben
> wrote at that time that he felt differently about being in what he formerly
> regarded as the pristine wilderness now that he realized that human
> activity had changed the composition of the atmosphere which had changed
> global climate which must have changed every ecosystem on the planet.
>
> Naomi's use of this McKibben idea requires her to define everything as
> fine until she heard all the fuss about a geoengineering experiment out in
> the Pacific.
>
> Now she can't look at an orca swimming in the Gulf of Georgia in front of
> her home without worrying that it wouldn't be swimming there unless that
> 120 tonnes of fertilizer had been dumped in the Pacific hundreds of miles
> away.  She feels strange.   She writes: "once we start deliberately
> interfering with earth's climate systems - whether by dimming the sun or
> fertilizing the seas - all natural events can begin to take on a sinister
> tinge.  as if all of nature were being manipulated behind the scenes".
>
> 1,000,000 tonnes per hour of the CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere
> by civilization is absorbed by the ocean every hour, but a one time
> application of 120 tonnes of fertilizer, because it is "deliberate" in a
> way that the CO2 Naomi emits while flying around the world on her speaking
> tours isn't, bothers her.
>
>
>
>
> On Sunday, October 28, 2012 5:38:06 PM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira 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 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?
>>>
  --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups "g

[geo] Re: Scientists Eat Crow on Geoengineering Test. Me, Too | Climate Central

[David Lewis]

Lemonick, author of "Scientists Eat Crow on Geoengineering Test. Me, Too" 
willfully distorts the scale.  Goldfinger was plotting to undermine the 
global financial system, i.e. have a planet wide effect.  The Haida scheme 
is more on the scale of a "goofy Trailer Park Boys 
scenario". 
 Eg:  at one point in their movie, the Trailer Park Boys decided to go 
downtown in broad daylight to literally knock over parking meters to get at 
the coins inside.  Even the Trailer Park Boys scriptwriters didn't think 
anyone would buy a plot that included a global effect from this.  

On Friday, October 26, 2012 1:09:53 AM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:
>
>
> http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/iron-dumping-leaves-geoengineers-with-egg-on-their-faces.-me-too-15147
>
> Harvard’s David Keith calls it the “goofy Goldfinger scenario”  – a rogue 
> nation, or even an individual, would conduct an unsupervised geoengineering 
> experiment — and he confidently predicted in a story I wrote last month 
> that it would never happen.It took about a month for him to be proven 
> wrong. In mid-October, the Guardian reported that an American named Russ 
> George had dumped 100 metric tons of iron sulfate into the waters off 
> western Canada, triggering a bloom of algae. George claimed he did it with 
> the knowledge of Canadian authorities, using equipment lent to him by NOAA 
> (which said it didn’t know of his plans).Some species of algae produce 
> dangerous toxins for both sea life as well as humans. The term "red tide" 
> is often associated with these algal blooms.Credit: NOAAScientists 
> (presumably including Keith) were outragedthat such a thing could happen. 
> It’s not that they have anything against algae, but rather that the project 
> was a type of geoengineering —  a suite of anti-climate-change strategies 
> that are highly controversial because they have the potential for 
> triggering significant unintended consequences.But triggering an algae 
> bloom is also a way to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and along 
> with spewing particles into the stratosphereto block some of the sun’s 
> heat, it’s one of the main techniques geoengineers talk about using if 
> efforts to limit those emissions ultimately fail.Before they would be 
> prepared to take such a major step, however, responsible scientists would 
> take baby steps first: they would do small-scale experiments, under 
> controlled conditions, with the supervision of some sort of regulatory or 
> funding body that could take an independent look at the potential risks.In 
> 2009, climate scientists met to try and figure out a system of voluntary 
> standards to guide geoengineering research, much as molecular 
> biologists met in 1975 to assess the potential risks of 
> biotechnology.Nothing much came of the 2009 conference, but at least it 
> raised the consciousness of those who might be interested in going ahead 
> with real-world experiments. The lack of any governing authority for 
> geoengineering is partly why scientists decided to cancel a proposed U.K. 
> test known as the Stratospheric Particle Experiment for Climate 
> Engineering, or SPICE, in the spring of 2012.Andrew Parker of the Belfer 
> Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government told the New York 
> Timesthat George’s actions had apparently violated an international 
> convention on ocean dumping and a U.N. convention on ocean fertilization 
> for geoengineering purposes, along with a set of voluntary principles on 
> geoengineering developed at Oxford. (George maintained that he wasn’t 
> geoengineering at all: he was just trying to help the 
> indigenous Haida people who live the region to re-invigorate their salmon 
> fishery by increasing the fishes’ food supply.)The scientists were 
> outraged, in short, because someone went ahead and did an experiment they 
> were too principled to do. But since there is no enforceable international 
> agreement on geoengineering, outrage is pretty much all they’ve got.For my 
> part, I was outraged because I’d been so convinced by Keith and others this 
> sort of rogue behavior was nothing to worry about. There’s not much chance 
> of a binding treaty on geoengineering in any case, they said (and on that I 
> agree). But the prospect of widespread finger-wagging by scientists would 
> almost certainly be enough to stop any rogue geoengineer in his or her 
> tracks.Evidently not
>

-- 
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RE: [geo] Re: NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters- Naomi Klein

[Doug MacMartin]

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 
[mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com  ] 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- Naom

Re: [geo] Re: NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters- Naomi Klein

[Ken Caldeira]

Two points:

1. Plants do not care much about precipitation but are sensitive to soil
moisture. The focus on precipitation may be misplaced. On a global mean
basis evaporation = precipitation so decreased precipitation means
decreased evaporation. Less precipitation does not necessarily mean drying.
Talking about precipitation changes without talking about evaporation
changes is like talking about assets without talking about debts.

2. The issue is that solar intensity causes higher ratio of
precip-to-temperature changes than do changes in CO2. If the concern is not
to have less precip than in pre-industrial days, we could be talking about
solar geoengineering not being able to compensate for all of the warming,
rather than solar geoengineering causing a decrease in precipitation. It is
all scenario dependent.

___
Ken Caldeira

Carnegie Institution for Science
Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu
http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab  @kencaldeira

*Our YouTube videos*
The Great Climate Experiment: How far can we push the
planet?

Geophysical Limits to Global Wind
Power
More videos 



On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:48 AM, 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 cou

Re: [geo] Re: NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters- Naomi Klein

[Stephen Salter]

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