Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN
Greg Rau said: I'm with you on the CO2 mining and ocean angles ... obviously more RD needed for all of the above and this won't happen for free. This leads me to your puzzling comment on the need for commercialization: My own view on a repeat of the big American successes in public investment such as the Manhattan and Apollo Projects is that research could enable large scale mining of carbon from the air as a commercial enterprise. Since when were the Manhattan and Apollo Projects commercial enterprises? Michaelson speaks of a Climate Change Manhattan Project... to reevaluate our assumptions about what environmentalism should look like. That was the context. You are right the A bomb was not profit driven, although of course there were big economic drivers for America's entry into WW2, and the links between military research and the private sector subsequently became prominent. The WW2 comparison to climate change is more about required urgency and scale of a technological response to a security emergency. The work of the United States Geological Survey in making geotechnical data available for free via http://minerals.usgs.gov/ is a good example of public research aimed at commercial objectives. Similar with government research on hydraulic fracturing. In terms of ocean based algae biofuel, government would need to assess and regulate possible sites and methods against a comprehensive analysis of risk and potential. NASA's Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae program http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/OMEGA/index.html is an example of public research that could be massively scaled up to support climate management, with resulting technology made available to the private sector so that innovation and replication could flourish. Robert -- 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.
Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN
Robert, I agree, lots of great and sometimes profitable things flow from government programs that are policy not profit driven. The same must happen with carbon/climate management. While there may be a few niches where profit from CO2/climate mitigation might have current profit incentives, asking the required global mitigation effort to pay it's way in the current market is like asking Neil Armstrong to go to the moon and back and show a profit - it won't (didn't) happen. As with moon travel and all of the tech and market benefits that accrued, we need government policies that truly launch CO2/climate mitigation. How do we make that happen? Fear is a powerful motivator of government action, e.g.,Manahattan, Apollo programs, as some veterans of these programs well know and who have worked actively to diffuse/dilute climate concerns (read Merchants of Doubt, and the recent astronaut letter: http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4 This is a battle for hearts and minds and the future of the planet. Let's hope that reason prevails (in time). Greg From: Robert Tulip rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au To: gh...@sbcglobal.net gh...@sbcglobal.net; geoengineering geoengineering@googlegroups.com Cc: j...@metatronics.net j...@metatronics.net Sent: Mon, October 1, 2012 1:01:27 AM Subject: Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN Greg Rau said: I'm with you on the CO2 mining and ocean angles ... obviously more RD needed for all of the above and this won't happen for free. This leads me to your puzzling comment on the need for commercialization: My own view on a repeat of the big American successes in public investment such as the Manhattan and Apollo Projects is that research could enable large scale mining of carbon from the air as a commercial enterprise. Since when were the Manhattan and Apollo Projects commercial enterprises? Michaelson speaks of a Climate Change Manhattan Project... to reevaluate our assumptions about what environmentalism should look like. That was the context. You are right the A bomb was not profit driven, although of course there were big economic drivers for America's entry into WW2, and the links between military research and the private sector subsequently became prominent. The WW2 comparison to climate change is more about required urgency and scale of a technological response to a security emergency. The work of the United States Geological Survey in making geotechnical data available for free via http://minerals.usgs.gov/ is a good example of public research aimed at commercial objectives. Similar with government research on hydraulic fracturing. In terms of ocean based algae biofuel, government would need to assess and regulate possible sites and methods against a comprehensive analysis of risk and potential. NASA's Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae program http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/OMEGA/index.html is an example of public research that could be massively scaled up to support climate management, with resulting technology made available to the private sector so that innovation and replication could flourish. Robert -- 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. -- 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.
RE: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN
Robert. Do you or anyone know how we could make application for these junk science scholarships? 10. “junk science” is paid for by energy companies - $22 million by ExxonMobil alone since 1998. Surely, the First Nations (ACP) idea of digging radiocarbon beneath Greenland ice dome or Antarctic should qualify for their award? People also study (i) cold fusion, (ii) anti-gravity devises, and (iii) neutrino transmitters through earth's core for high speed telecomms. Where can I get funding, and who we could contact to apply these? OR IS THE ABOVE A FALSE STATEMENT? We should avoid false statements appearing in the group. I think for good or bad, Robert has a duty to clarify his allegations on Exxon's junk grant making programme. Note: FN and ACP (Pacific Caucus) insists the Pleistocene glaciations were a result of a new continental rift or geological fault that penetrated the crust in its entirety. Water penetration into asthenosphere then dissolved peridotite en masse in process called partial melting and triggering the topmost water contact section of asthenosphere to liquefy and spill magma onto sea floor as the continents overloaded with snow above liquefied asthenosphere beneath Hudson Bay and Baltic Sea and Greenland. Iceland and volcanic island formation were self-sustaining as heft of developing ice sheets grew higher and sea levels world wide dropped, allowing magma to move beneath and through the thin oceanic plates onto sea floor. Regards, Albert Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2012 07:48:35 -0700 From: rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au Subject: Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN To: andrew.lock...@gmail.com; geoengineering@googlegroups.com This paper deserves discussion. Here are some quotes from it that I found particularly salient. Robert Tulip Jay Michaelson - Tulsa Law Review GEOENGINEERING AND CLIMATE MANAGEMENT: FROM MARGINALITY TO INEVITABILITY http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146934 1. Climate Management (CM) (Geoengineering) is a climate change strategy that, unlike regulation, might actually stand a chance of becoming reality. 2. despite rises in temperatures, a high-grossing documentary film by a Nobel laureate, visible changes in glaciers and ice shelves, and widespread understanding of the climate crisis in Europe, … the view [exists] that climate change is either not happening, or is part of some natural cycle and requires further study. I did not take these claims at their word in 1998, and I do not do so today. Yet if the pseudo-controversy regarding climate change proves anything, it is that my earlier article was correct. We should be very pessimistic about greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction as an effective climate change policy, because it would so greatly impact some of the largest and most powerful industrial, commercial, and corporate entities in the country (indeed, the world). 3. Climate Management lets the free market be free, uses technology rather than a restraint on behavior, and avoids government regulation. 4. not to pursue it, I argue, is to condemn coastal areas, temperate forests, and thousands of species to extinction. What, exactly, is the price of our pride? 5. educating well-meaning consumers to reduce their carbon footprints, change their light bulbs, and so on--is actually counterproductive…. rhetoric that all of us are responsible for climate change, and each of us has the power to make a change, is factually false and politically misleading. Let's be honest: without coordinated political action, consumers' personal choices are ineffectual... Every calorie of energy an individual devotes to calculating her own carbon footprint is a misdirected one; 6. Ocean Iron Fertilisation (OIF) is scarcely different from planting trees. Trees, too, grow more productively with fertilizers, forest management, and other forms of human intervention. Yet we do not regard tree farms as “geoengineering.” Is planting “‘trees” ‘ in the ocean really so different? Perhaps we do not yet know the precise efficacy of phytoplankton carbon sequestration but there are complexities regarding afforestation, as well. 7. Climate Management is not building dams; we are using our limited knowledge of atmospheric science to either increase the albedo and opacity of the stratosphere, or create new carbon sinks in the oceans. Geoengineering is neither geo- nor engineering. 8. “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and it is better prevent disease than simply manage it or mitigate its effects. Understanding geoengineering as climate management renders comprehensible its positive and negative attributes. We are not talking about a fanciful dream of “hacking the Earth.” We are talking about Plan B, because Plan A seems so expensive that a few key players remain intent on blocking it. 9. popular books,
Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN
This paper deserves discussion. Here are some quotes from it that I found particularly salient. Robert Tulip Jay Michaelson - Tulsa Law Review GEOENGINEERING AND CLIMATE MANAGEMENT: FROM MARGINALITY TO INEVITABILITY http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146934 1.Climate Management (CM) (Geoengineering) is a climate change strategy that, unlike regulation, might actually stand a chance of becoming reality. 2. despite rises in temperatures, a high-grossing documentary film by a Nobel laureate, visible changes in glaciers and ice shelves, and widespread understanding of the climate crisis in Europe, … the view [exists] that climate change is either not happening, or is part of some natural cycle and requires further study. I did not take these claims at their word in 1998, and I do not do so today. Yet if the pseudo-controversy regarding climate change proves anything, it is that my earlier article was correct. We should be very pessimistic about greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction as an effective climate change policy, because it would so greatly impact some of the largest and most powerful industrial, commercial, and corporate entities in the country (indeed, the world). 3. Climate Management lets the free market be free, uses technology rather than a restraint on behavior, and avoids government regulation. 4. not to pursue it, I argue, is to condemn coastal areas, temperate forests, and thousands of species to extinction. What, exactly, is the price of our pride? 5. educating well-meaning consumers to reduce their carbon footprints, change their light bulbs, and so on--is actually counterproductive…. rhetoric that all of us are responsible for climate change, and each of us has the power to make a change, is factually false and politically misleading. Let's be honest: without coordinated political action, consumers' personal choices are ineffectual... Every calorie of energy an individual devotes to calculating her own carbon footprint is a misdirected one; 6. Ocean Iron Fertilisation (OIF) is scarcely different from planting trees. Trees, too, grow more productively with fertilizers, forest management, and other forms of human intervention. Yet we do not regard tree farms as “geoengineering.” Is planting “‘trees” ‘ in the ocean really so different? Perhaps we do not yet know the precise efficacy of phytoplankton carbon sequestration but there are complexities regarding afforestation, as well. 7. Climate Management is not building dams; we are using our limited knowledge of atmospheric science to either increase the albedo and opacity of the stratosphere, or create new carbon sinks in the oceans. Geoengineering is neither geo- nor engineering. 8. “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and it is better prevent disease than simply manage it or mitigate its effects. Understanding geoengineering as climate management renders comprehensible its positive and negative attributes. We are not talking about a fanciful dream of “hacking the Earth.” We are talking about Plan B, because Plan A seems so expensive that a few key players remain intent on blocking it. 9. popular books, endless articles in liberal magazines, and two high-end documentary films (An Inconvenient Truth and Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour) have failed to sufficiently mobilize popular opinion. Although many people profess to care about global warming, the issue came in dead last in a 2010 Pew Research Center poll of issues that matter to Americans. 10. “junk science” is paid for by energy companies - $22 million by ExxonMobil alone since 1998. 11. scientific consensus about climate change is settled [FN59]--928 peer-reviewed articles to 0 does not a controversy make. 12. Gingrich: Instead of imposing an estimated $1 trillion cost on the economy …, geoengineering holds forth the promise of addressing global warming concerns for just a few billion dollars a year. Instead of penalizing ordinary Americans, we would have an option to address global warming by rewarding scientific innovation. 13. Caldeira, Wood, and Myrhvold estimate the costs of an Arctic-focused SRM process to be only $20 million in startup costs and $10 million in annual operating costs. 14. none of us would ban treatments for heart disease because they do not address the “root problem.” Likewise here. 15. what is really “nuts,” as the old cliché holds, is doing the same thing as before and expecting a different result. If there is a concern about the feasibility of a particular project, then more, rather than less, research is warranted. Doubtless, the Apollo missions to the moon seemed loony at the time, yet a serious campaign of research and development yielded success. Likewise, perhaps, with climate management. 16. the 2007 debacle with the for-profit corporation Planktos, which attempted, on its own initiative, to conduct limited testing
Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN
I don't quite follow this line: Climate Management lets the free market be free, uses technology rather than a restraint on behavior, and avoids government regulation Let's hope that there is not a market free-for-all and zero regulation when it comes to CM (SRM). Didn't the current recession teach us anything about the safety of unregulated markets? There will be no bailout if we screw up earth's habitability, either via CO2 or via unanticipated/inequitable/unregulated side effects from CM. And increasing CO2 is not just a climate problem, it's also about unprecedented acidification of 70% of the planet. Solving all of this is going to require a careful and rapid application of international government policy and regulation that changes behaviors, markets, and RD that will lead to air CO2 stabilization if not reduction. Well researched and well regulated CM (SRM) might be a partial, interim solution. -Greg From:Robert Tulip rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au To:andrew.lock...@gmail.com andrew.lock...@gmail.com; geoengineering geoengineering@googlegroups.com Sent:Sat, September 29, 2012 8:00:17 AM Subject:Re: [geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN This paper deserves discussion. Here are some quotes from it that I found particularly salient. Robert Tulip Jay Michaelson - Tulsa Law Review GEOENGINEERING AND CLIMATE MANAGEMENT: FROM MARGINALITY TO INEVITABILITY http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146934 1.Climate Management (CM) (Geoengineering) is a climate change strategy that, unlike regulation, might actually stand a chance of becoming reality. 2. despite rises in temperatures, a high-grossing documentary film by a Nobel laureate, visible changes in glaciers and ice shelves, and widespread understanding of the climate crisis in Europe, … the view [exists] that climate change is either not happening, or is part of some natural cycle and requires further study. I did not take these claims at their word in 1998, and I do not do so today. Yet if the pseudo-controversy regarding climate change proves anything, it is that my earlier article was correct. We should be very pessimistic about greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction as an effective climate change policy, because it would so greatly impact some of the largest and most powerful industrial, commercial, and corporate entities in the country (indeed, the world). 3. Climate Management lets the free market be free, uses technology rather than a restraint on behavior, and avoids government regulation. 4. not to pursue it, I argue, is to condemn coastal areas, temperate forests, and thousands of species to extinction. What, exactly, is the price of our pride? 5. educating well-meaning consumers to reduce their carbon footprints, change their light bulbs, and so on--is actually counterproductive…. rhetoric that all of us are responsible for climate change, and each of us has the power to make a change, is factually false and politically misleading. Let's be honest: without coordinated political action, consumers' personal choices are ineffectual... Every calorie of energy an individual devotes to calculating her own carbon footprint is a misdirected one; 6. Ocean Iron Fertilisation (OIF) is scarcely different from planting trees. Trees, too, grow more productively with fertilizers, forest management, and other forms of human intervention. Yet we do not regard tree farms as “geoengineering.” Is planting “‘trees” ‘ in the ocean really so different? Perhaps we do not yet know the precise efficacy of phytoplankton carbon sequestration but there are complexities regarding afforestation, as well. 7. Climate Management is not building dams; we are using our limited knowledge of atmospheric science to either increase the albedo and opacity of the stratosphere, or create new carbon sinks in the oceans. Geoengineering is neither geo- nor engineering. 8. “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and it is better prevent disease than simply manage it or mitigate its effects. Understanding geoengineering as climate management renders comprehensible its positive and negative attributes. We are not talking about a fanciful dream of “hacking the Earth.” We are talking about Plan B, because Plan A seems so expensive that a few key players remain intent on blocking it. 9. popular books, endless articles in liberal magazines, and two high-end documentary films (An Inconvenient Truth and Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour) have failed to sufficiently mobilize popular opinion. Although many people profess to care about global warming, the issue came in dead last in a 2010 Pew Research Center poll of issues that matter to Americans. 10. “junk science” is paid for by energy companies - $22 million by ExxonMobil alone since 1998. 11. scientific consensus about climate
[geo] Geoengineering and Climate Management: From Marginality to Inevitablity by Jay Michaelson :: SSRN
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146934 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 -- 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.
