Returning home

I'm coming to the end of my journey now, and what a journey it's been.

I set out expecting mine to be an easy task; surely somewhere a way to safely remove carbon dioxide from the air and manage climate change was in development?

But instead, I've been confronted with a whole host of difficult questions and ethical concerns, some of which I've found quite daunting. But, I've learned a lot and I'm taking away some valuable messages from this experience.

Firstly, geoengineering is a serious issue and needs to be treated as such.

Secondly, research is being done and will continue on geoengineering projects. This must be performed in an ethical, responsible way for the safety of our planet.

Thirdly, frameworks for responsible innovation have been developed and must be not only encouraged but enforced within the context of geoengineering research. Some public engagement has already started but there hasn't been nearly enough.

Once a mandatory framework for ethical research is in place, next comes the science.

The most natural forms of geoengineering that I've seen, to me, are the most acceptable. This is an opinion that echoes that voiced in focus groups held so far by Corner et. al. (2013). REDD+ schemes are a no brainer - they reap benefits in ecology and biodiversity as well as reducing atmospheric CO2. The same can be said of afforestation projects, as long as care is taken over where forests are planted so that the reduction in surface albedo does not offset and negative carbon emissions.

Enhanced weathering too seems to have great potential. It deserves more careful study, but I won't be holding my breath for its launch.
 
Lastly, the road to developing enhanced weathering, or any other scheme for that matter, into a safe and acceptable form ready to be deployed is extremely long. But climate change isn't waiting for us. We must not fall into the fatal trap of the moral hazard and rely too much on a techno-fix to solve our problems - it might never come.

Instead, urgent action needs to be taken to prevent dangerous climate change from happening in the first place. That is the most important message of all.

Responsible innovation

"Taking care of the future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present".

This is how Stilgoe et. al. (2013) define responsible research and innovation. Scinetific progress is an essential part of societal progress and overcoming challenges, but it must be done in a safe, mindful and responsible way. Especially in the context of geoengineering research, where the results could impact everyone on the planet!

From The Pioneer Woman.com

Macnaghten and Chilvers (2014) list the following lines of question that should be considered throughout any responsible research and development (R&D) process:

• How will the risks and benefits be distributed?
• What other impacts can we anticipate? How might these change in the future?
• What don't we know about?
• What might we never know about?
• How should standards be drawn up and applied?
• How should risks and benefits be defined and measured?
• Who is in control?
• Who is taking part?
• Who will take responsibility if things go wrong?
• How do we know we are right?
• Why are researchers doing it?
• Are these motivations transparent and in the public interest?
• Who will benefit?
• What are they going to gain?
• What are the alternatives?

(As listed in Stilgoe et. al. (2013).)

It's a long list but that just confirms that there's a lot to consider. Responsible innovation isn't an easy task, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile - quite the opposite.

The questions should encourage self-awareness and self-reflection by scientists and governments involved in R&D.

Stilgoe et. al. (2013) identify four key pillars of responsible innovation which can be used as a framework within which these questions can be answered, and which should be applied to R&D in geoengineering.

These are:

Anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness.

Anticipation is a systematic process and encourages foresight within research. Anticipating potential problems before they arise can not only increase resilience, but further advance innovation.

Reflexivity means being able to reflect upon one's actions and intentions - at an institutional level as well as personal - to gain an appreciation of how other people in society might feel about what you're doing. 

Inclusivity. This seems to be a recurring theme across the literature. Making sure people at all levels of society are included in any development process so they're able to voice opinions and air concerns. Inclusivity encourages engaging the wider public through forums, interviews, focus groups and surveys. But inclusivity on its own isn't sufficient; Callon et. al. (2009) stipulate three criteria to ensure inclusivity is worthwhile. These are: intensity (how early and consistently the public is engaged), openness (how diverse the group itself is, ensuring that all parts of society are represented) and quality (the wholeness of discussion, ensuring that every necessary aspect of the research is covered so the public has had opportunity to raise concerns with every part of the research).  

The final component of Stilgoe et. al's (2013) framework is responsiveness. Acting upon issues raised during these processes and making sure that the most desired route of innovation across the whole of society is realised.

Together these four values create a framework that can help to ensure technologies are developed in a responsible way, which the whole of society finds acceptable and desirable. A tall order but the alternative is unacceptable. 

It is only be following a framework like this one that geoengineering technologies could be developed in a truly ethical and considerate way.

Ice ice baby

I've just reached Planet Fenglewelt, where headlines recently appeared claiming that the inhabitants here may have already been accidentally geoengineering their planet without realising it.

The news broke at the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting when NOAA scientist Charles Long announced that aeroplanes could be having a geoengineering effect.

Mr Long speculated that aerosols in contrails might be acting as nuclei on which water vapour condenses to form ice crystals high in the sky. Small ice crystals could be scattering sunlight on it's way through the atmosphere, thus stopping it from ever reaching and warming the planet surface.



Source: Wired.

The Smithsonian reported that the hypothesis originated when scientists noticed that the amount of sunlight reaching the planet surface had varied from the 1950s - 1980s, showing an initial "dimming" trend before "brightening" again. This subtle change couldn't apparently be accounted for by changes in the sun's actual output, so they started to look for possible explanations in the atmosphere - possible mechanisms that could be reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the ground.

The hypothesis is still in early days and a lot more research needs to be done before it is confirmed. And in any event, aviation is estimated to account for up to 3.5% of total anthropogenic radiative forcing, so any conclusions that aeroplanes are cooling the planet would be premature to say the least!

Weathering the storm of climate change

My quest for new and alien technologies continues, re-motivated by the furore of the COP21 climate talks at the start of the month. The pact to aim to keep global warming below 2 degrees, and ideally below 1.5 degrees is highly ambitious - so ambitious, in fact, that some people question whether it will be possible without removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (Edmonds et. al., 2013; van Vuuren et. al., 2013). Forests will doubtless play an important role in removing some carbon dioxide from the air, but will this be enough? Has the Paris climate deal opened the door to more exotic forms of geoengineering?  

As yet, nobody knows. But I am now resuming my hunt for technology that could help keep global warming below the crucial 2 degree - and maybe even 1.5 degree - threshhold.

Weathering (the chemical breakdown of rocks) is a natural process that ultimately leads to carbon dioxide being stored on the ocean floor. It is a very slow phase of the natural carbon cycle but the mechanism could be enhanced as a method for artifical carbon dioxide removal. On the planet Bahshald, where I have just landed, the feasibility and effectiveness of this is being researched.

In a paper published in Nature Climate Change this month, Taylor et. al., (2015) found that distributing pulverised (particulate) silicate rocks across the tropics would increase the rate of terrestrial weathering. They used CMIP5 general circulation models running RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 (two different emission scenarios). They then considered various application rates for three different rocks: dunite, harzbugite and basalt (the former two are commerically mined and major terrestrial reserves exist for the latter).

Taylor et. al.'s simulations suggest enhanced weathering could sequester hundreds of petagrams of carbon dioxide by 2100. They project that in a RCP8.5 scenario, atmospheric CO2 would be significantly lowered through enhanced weathering, and in a RCP4.5 scenario, emissions to date may even be reversed (Fig. 1). Compared weight-for-weight, dunite and harzbugite consumed twice as much CO2 as basalt. All three rocks approach a maximum CO2 consumption as more rock is applied.

Figure 1. Atmospheric CO2 concentration lowered by enhanced weathering. Top row (a, c) assumes RCP4.5 scenario, bottom row (b, d) assumes RCP8.5 scenario. Left column (a, b) assumes lower rock application rate of 1 kg per square metre per year. Right column (c, d) assumes higher rock application rate of 5 kg per square metre per year. Blue line shows emission scenario with no enhanced weathering. Black (pink) line shows emission scenario plus enhanced basalt (harzburgite) weathering. Dunite was excluded as it is not present in as large reserves. Source: Taylor et. al. (2015)

Taylor et. al. (2015) also show that enhanced weathering could have added benefits by reducing oceanic carbon-dioxide concentrations, thus reducing ocean acidification - a huge added benefit which is not possible through solar radiation management. Under scenario RCP4.5 and high harzburgite application, current ocean acidificaiton may even be reversed.

Is it too good to be true? 

Well, the authors have not considered any additional emissions that would result from mining, processing, transporting or applying such vast quantities of rock in their simulations - which could reduce carbon sequestration capacity by 8 - 33% (Taylor et. al., 2015). The authors also use idealised scenarios in their models, and do not consider practical or logistical limitations to deploying such a technology. However, their simulations show that enhanced weathering of pulmerized basalt or harzburgite could significantly lower atmospheric CO2, and help reduce ocean acidification.


Furthermore, the identified hotspots for enhanced weathering are primarily tropical forests, excluding Asian cropland (Taylor et. al., 2015), which would doubtless mean considerable objections from conservational or ecological groups. However, basalt can also promote crop growth in acidic tropical soils by making the soil more alkaline (Anda et. al., 2009). Although as Taylor et. al. suggest, areas undergoing REDD+ or afforestation schemes may be well suited to deployment of the technology, as they will already have infrastructure set up.

This technology has promising potential, and warrants more research into ways the rock weathering could be made even more efficient to account for the fact that it is unlikely to be applied accross all the areas that were used in this study and to make up for associated mining and transportation emissions. Further studies could also consider the potential for enhanced weathering in more barren and less ecologically-contentious regions.

Great green sinks (pt. 2)

During and following the COP21 conference, REDD+ schemes received a lot of attention. They've been hailed as perhaps necessary to avoid a global mean temperature rise of 2 degrees.

Also spoken about at Paris was afforestation - growing forests in novel areas. A little more complicated by nature, this has not received quite the same glowing response as REDD+.

Forests sequester carbon from the air, leading to a negative radiative forcing (having a negative effect on surface energy balance, resulting in a lower temperature). But forests also lead to a set of complex, nonlinear biogeophysical feedbacks. These may act to enhance the negative radiative forcing, or offset it.

Perhaps the most important influence on the net radiative forcing is the location of the forest, and numerous studies warn that afforestation won't act to mitigate climate change everywhere on the planet.  


Figure 1. Dark boreal forests have significantly lower albedo than surrounding snow. Source: State of Alaska Fish and Game Dept.

For example, at boreal regions prone to (white) snow cover, creating (dark green) tree cover means a substantial decrease in surface albedo (Fig. 1 and 2B). By simulating the changes in albedo and atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the associated radiative forcings that would result if boreal forests were planted, Betts (2000) showed that the carbon dioxide soaked up by new forests was not enough to offset the decrease in albedo, resulting in net positive radiative forcing. This essentially equates to a rise in surface temperature.

At tropical latitudes the decrease in albedo is offset by cooling caused by increased evapotranspiration and precipitation compared with pastureland (Bonan, 2008). Case studies for this include Amazonia, where deforested areas for cattle grazing produce a much drier, hotter climate than forest-covered areas (Bonan, 2008). Similar results have been seen in Africa and Asia.

Figure 2. Geographic, biogeochemical and biogeophysical properties of nonforest (green) and forest (blue). The forests have also been split into tropical (pink), temperate (yellow) and boreal (purple). A: Geographic extent of forest vs nonforest. B: Total carbon stored as nonforest vs forest. C: Net ecosystem production (NEP) for tropical, temperate and boreal forest. D: Satellite-derived direct-beam albedo for snow-covered and snow-free forests. E: Evapotranspiration normalized by equilibrium rate in relation to canopy resistance for: wheat (green), corn (blue), deciduous forest (pink), jack pine (yellow) and oak savanna (purple). Individual data points plotted as points and means as bars. Source: Bonan, 2008. 

But there are other important considerations. For example, with a population projected to reach nearly 10bn by 2050, it's important that sufficient arable land is left free for agricultural use.

The Great Green Wall

The world’s largest tree planting project is already underway in China, and has seen over 66 billion trees planted since 1978. The Three-North Shelterbelt Project, dubbed the Great Green Wall, will stretch 4,500km by its completion in 2050, increasing global forest cover by over a tenth.

When completed, the wall will act as a protective shield from dust storms, which are becoming increasingly frequent and extreme as a result of growing desertification. 

Figure 3. Thin green line: the trees will form a barrier across dusty desert regions. Source: Imagine China via The Economist

The logistics of the project are huge: people living in regions being afforested must undertake a certain number of mandatory tree-planting days per year. In rural areas this often means asking people to leave farmland untended and plant trees instead. But the trees are being planted in dry, arid regions, and many are not surviving. The project is also raising concerns among rural communities of potential groundwater depletion as a result of the new green wall.

GCM studies have also shown that the surface temperature will be raised as a result of the project, and precipitation in China will increase over most locations (Fan et. al., 1998; Gao et. al., 2003). The project has received heavy criticism, and must serve as a lesson to other countries considering afforestation programmes: future afforestation programmes must carefully consider the environment of the intended forest, and be certain of the success of such a large project before embarking upon it. There must also be careful research to model regional and global effects on climate by newly planted forests.

Fighting fossil fuels: In conversation with Fossil Free UCL

Yesterday I spoke with Savina Venkova from Fossil Free UCL. She gave me her take on the Paris climate deal, why getting off fossil fuels is crucial to tackle climate change, and the challenges that lie ahead.


 
KG: Why is it absolutely necessary for UCL to cut its ties with the fossil fuel industry, and especially right now?

SV: The era that we're in right now is one past climate denialism. For the past few years or so it's been firmly accepted that climate change is happening and that fossil fuels and western civilization are largely the cause of it. Right now we're on a tipping point: organisations like UCL can either stand with the fossil fuel industry and be dinosaurs, basically pulling society back from progressing on issues of climate change - or they can be leaders. That's why it's so crucial for UCL to divest and cut all ties right now.

Why is it such a bad idea for us to rely on a geoengineered techno-fix to solve climate change?

A quote that really sums it up for me is that: "science teaches us that every problem has a solution, but history teaches us that every solution comes with a whole host of other problems".

I think that for the past few years and decades - even before the Industrial Revolution - western civilization and society has had this idea that western science and technology is going to fix everything and that there's a right answer to everything; if a problem isn't being solved then you just have to keep looking for the right answer. But if you want to "solve" a problem as complex, as deep and as long-lasting as climate change then you're not going to find a technology that's going to solve it.

That's a really nice quote. It sums up an attitude that I see a lot, of using science to "tackle" problems but really only treating the symptoms of a problem while ignoring the root cause.

Yeah, and another analogy, for example, is if you look at the internet and smartphones. They were supposed to save people labour, but in the end they're creating even more labour. We spend so much time trying to sort through our inboxes and manage our social profiles online but people are still working just as much, if not more, despite the fact that this technology was supposed to save us from that.   


Via BBC News

Are you feeling optimistic about the deal that was brokered in Paris at the COP21?

[Laughs] Me personally, and I'd say Fossil Free UCL as a whole, we were actually pretty upset with it because even though the media and the general opinion was "oh, what a lovely agreement just came through!" I think a lot of that was just general mindless enthusiasm. A lot of the issues that were supposed to be solved by this COP were not actually addressed in this agreement. For example, the 2 degree warming target: it was put in there that it would be nice to keep warming below 2 degrees, and ideally below 1.5 [degrees]. But there was no cap on emissions and regarding fossil fuels, in the final draft their aim was to cut their usage down to a safe amount within 100 years, which as we know isn't going to lead to less than 2 degrees warming - it's going to lead to 3 or 4. And in the final draft there wasn’t even anything on phasing out fossil fuels! They also took out the bit about human rights. On the whole it was not a very good agreement.

I've heard a lot of disappointment that not enough was made legally binding, no real deadlines were included. It was quite underwhelming.

Demonstrations marked the close of COP21. Thousands of people formed symbolic red lines that cannot be crossed. Source: Emma Cassidy/Survival Media Agency via CommonPeople.org.

  

Fossil Free UCL was in Paris last weekend at the climax of the COP. What was the atmosphere there like at the end?

So at the start of Saturday [12th December] the atmosphere was pretty elated. Fossil Free UCL had joined a bunch of other groups in doing civil disobedience, which had been legalized that day. So basically we felt like this movement for civil expression had won this small battle. But over the course of the march we heard the news, and then we started seeing all these articles about what was coming out of the agreement. And that's when the mood got a little bit sour because as part of civil society groups we were large enough and we were enthused by how many people had come all the way to Paris to have their say and how many people were active in doing something for climate change, but we felt pretty betrayed by our governments and companies as well.

Something that added to that bitterness and confusion were the statements that were coming out from well-known groups like Greenpeace and WWF and so on, because they were a little bit ambiguous and quite positive. And you can see why they did that, you know, of course they weren't going to come out and say the whole thing sucked for obvious reasons, but at the same time we felt like what needed to be said was not actually said. But we kind of expected it...

You held a COPupation at UCL before setting off to Paris. What were your highlights of that?

Actually quite a few highlights. We had a lot of mini events going on. We had film screenings, we had talks, we had panel discussions. A really good highlight for us was having other groups coming in from the London community, like the London Latinxs, and on the last day we had a discussion about colonialism and climate justice. So it was nice to have that because at UCL, although we would like to represent Global South issues, we are quite white and privileged.


Fossil Free UCL occupied private campus space and demanded that UCL take serious action on climate change. Source: Fossil Free UCL on Tumblr

 

What are your hopes and plans for 2016?

Obviously UCL has to divest! The only problem with that - and this isn't us backing down, it's only going to make us try harder - is UCL's relationship with BHP Billiton. As you know, BHP Billiton funds the UCL Institute of Sustainable Resources, and so that's a big problem for UCL. Because all the other companies that UCL invests in - Shell, BP, Rio Tinto and so on - they could easily do without those investments and I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem to get rid of them in the end. But UCL has a rule that it's not allowed to divest from any companies that it receives funding from. So obviously divesting from BHP Billiton would mean dismantling a whole department which is necessary, but I'm guessing will come with a lot of opposition. So that's on the agenda and something we're going to hope to break this year.

Do you think there's going to be any momentum now following what happened in Paris?

I think in addition to what happened in Paris. BHP Billiton was involved in a mining accident in Brazil a few weeks back that was called a “human calamity”. And so there are a lot of people associated with UCL who have ties in Brazil and can testify to what a horrible thing happened there and how awful it is that UCL is even remotely involved in that.


How could people get involved with your campaigns?

Sign our petition! But anyone can sign a petition, and so what we really need is not just people being pissed off - anyone can do that anyway - but also bringing it up in any way that you can. For example in social groups, or student reps. If student reps mention it at meetings then everything that happens in a meeting is reported and then sent to the union, which is supportive of our campaign. So that would help because it would inform them that the student body as a whole is united, or at least a significant part of it.

A challenge for us is this: because we're a student-run campaign we tend to think of things in terms of students, but we really want to involve staff. If staff members care to get involved, there's a lot of influence they have and a lot they can do to help us.



Savina is an alumna of UCL and completed her Masters in Environment and Sustainable Development at The Bartlett’s Development Planning Unit.

To keep up to date with the latest news follow Fossil Free UCL on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

Great green sinks

Forests gained a lot of attention during the Paris climate talks recently.

The world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter, China, has not pledged to peak its annual emissions until 2030, noted Houghton et. al., (2015) in the latest Nature Climate Change, which coincided with COP21. What's more, very few developing countries expect to peak theirs until 2050. It means that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may be essential if we are to avoid a 2 degree rise in global temperatures (Fig. 1; Houghton et. al., 2015).



Figure 1. Historic carbon emissions 1850 - 2015 (solid lines): annual carbon emissions from fossil fuels (solid grey line) and tropical forest management (solid green line). Total carbon emissions (solid black line). From 2015, the total emissions to ensure a 75% probability of avoiding a rise of over 2 degrees C (dashed black line) are shown. Total fossil fuel emissions to avoid a rise of 2 degrees C if the only changes are made to fossil fuel usage (dashed grey line). Total emissions from fossil fuels (orange line) if successful changes to forest management are implemented simultaneously (dashed green line; negative emissions show CO2 removal from atmosphere). Effect of tropical forest management on carbon emissions mitigation (hatched grey area). Source: Houghton et. al., 2015.

So it is no coincidence that plans for reductions in deforestation, reforestation (replacing trees that have been cut down), and afforestation (growing trees in novel areas) all featured in many national pledges at COP21. The role of forests as carbon sinks was explicitly mentioned in the final agreement, which encouraged countries to conserve and sustainably manage their forests.

Though it doesn't involve science-fiction-worthy technology, large-scale forest projects are a form of carbon-dioxide-removal geoengineering (Caldeira et. al., 2013). Such programmes also provide employment for locals and promote wildlife conservation.




Tropical Amazon rainforest. Source: American University

REDD+

Deforestation and forest degradation is responsible for 1 - 2 Pg (petagram) of carbon emissions every year (Houghton et. al., 2015). However, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (more snappily known as REDD+) projects have gained considerable momentum in the past few years, culminating in their formal inclusion in many pledges at the COP. The final agreement text promised funding for REDD+ projects from the Green Climate Fund (which will total at least $100bn/year).

In a case study of the tropical Colombian Andes, Gilroy et. al. (2014) described REDD+ as a convergence of carbon storage, biodiversity protection and economic viability - especially in areas where cleared forest is used for cattle grazing, which yields low economic returns. Abandoned deforested areas have shown promising rates of recovery with minimal human intervention (Sanchez-Cuervo et. at., 2012), suggesting that wider-scale forest regeneration could be seen on a large scale, with little human effort.

The German, Norwegian and UK governments all pledged to provide funding for global REDD+ schemes during the Paris climate negotiations. On the other hand, some critics warn that REDD+ projects should not be implemented by developing nations instead of transitioning away from dirty fossil fuels - rather, they should complement other emission-reducing policies.

Carbon locked in trees is vulnerable to wildfires, like those in Indonesia earlier this year. These came at a devastating cultural, human, environmental and economic cost and saw thousands of tonnes of carbon being rapidly released into the atmosphere. Such risk of catastrophic wildfires like this somewhat undermine forests' potential as a permanent carbon sink; the images (Fig. 2) provide a dramatic reminder of just how temporary carbon storage as trees can be. Worryingly, scenes like these may become more frequent as global mean temperatures rise. Such risks mean that carbon storage as trees is classified as "decadal" (as opposed to "centurial" - "millenial" in geological stores) (Caldeira et. al., 2013).

Figure 2a. A fire fighter extinguishes a blaze in Indonesia. Source: The Guardian.

  

Figure 2b. A plane flies over a burning Indonesian forest. Source: mb.com

But the benefits of forest conservation and regeneration do still outweigh the potential risks - indeed they will likely form a necessary role in avoiding a 2 degree temperature rise. Plus, the forests with the most scope for significant REDD+ projects are mainly tropical, rich in biodiversity and home to some of the highest concentrations of threatened species on the planet (Myers et. al., 2000); protecting the forests will also mean saving many species from extinction. 

At the moment, Houghton et. al., (2015) speculate that the biggest challenge for mass REDD+ projects is economic and political - not least given that current forest management is producing net positive emissions rather than negative. But now with the full backing of the UNFCCC, including substantial Green Climate Fund sponsorship for projects, hopefully these challenges can be overcome.