Climate Intervention Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth (2015) / Chapter Skim
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4 Governance of Research and Other Sociopolitical Considerations
4 Governance of Research and Other Sociopolitical Considerations
Pages 149-176
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From page 149... ...
Albedo modification will test international relationships in unprecedented ways. Although coordinated international efforts to deal with globalscale threats have been successful in the past, such as the Montreal Protocol, no similar international effort has been undertaken to address the sort of deliberate global alteration that would be involved in albedo modification.
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From page 150... ...
A single nation, or even a very wealthy individual, could have the physical and economic capability to deploy albedo modification with the intention of unilateral action to address climate change in a geographic region. Establishing strong international norms regarding the conditions under which deployment of albedo modification might be warranted could help dissuade such unilateral and uncoordinated action.
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From page 151... ...
Previous Discussions of Governance of Albedo Modification Research Several authors have discussed the governance arrangements that they believe are needed to manage research related to albedo modification. One of the first public calls for research on climate intervention came in the early 1990s.
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From page 152... ...
They must be care fully developed by informed consensus in order to avoid encouraging the rogue forms of geoengineering they are intended to prevent. Early discussions on albedo modification research focused on the so-called "double moral hazard" issue -- that on one hand research into these proposed techniques could lead to policy makers deciding to lose focus and/or urgency for reducing emissions, while on the other hand, not researching albedo modification techniques could allow for a situation where an albedo modification approach is deployed without a full understanding of its consequences (either a sanctioned or unsanctioned approach; see further discussion in the "Ethical and Sociopolitical Issues" section below)
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From page 153... ...
A year after the publication of the Royal Society report, the Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies was held at the Asilomar Conference Center in California in March 2010. This conference brought together more than 100 leading researchers and thinkers to discuss a wide range of scientific and research governance issues.
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From page 154... ...
3. Disclosure of geoengineering research and open publication of results.
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From page 155... ...
Such a regulation would, at best, make conducting modest low-level SRM research extremely difficult and, at worst, impossible. That said, clearly one of the first objectives of an SRM research programme should be to give more precise meaning to the phrase "modest low-level." This definition is important both to begin to create clear norms within the international scientific 1 "SRM" in this text refers to "solar radiation management," where the committee prefers to use the term "albedo modification" instead.
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From page 156... ...
defines geoengineering for federal agencies; (2) leverages existing resources by having federal agencies collect information and coordinate federal research related to geoengineering in a transparent manner; and if the administration decides to estab lish a formal geoengineering research program, (3)
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From page 157... ...
CHOICE 5: Experimental field studies that push out beyond the boundaries of an "allowed zone" (however defined) should be subjected to international regulatory oversight, review and approval.2 In its report Solar Radiation Management: The Governance of Research (2013a)
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From page 158... ...
It called for the White House to establish a new advisory commission that would be charged with helping to guide this research. The BPC task force -- composed of 18 leading experts in the field of climate intervention science and governance3 -- argued that The federal government should develop transparency protocols for all potentially risky forms of climate remediation research.
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From page 159... ...
They must also help develop appropriate governance structures for research into those technologies, domestically and internationally. In a paper titled "Vested Interests and Geoenginering Research," Long and Scott (2013)
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From page 160... ...
Approximately a month later, a similarly sized second workshop was convened by Jane Long and others (Long et al., 2015) in San Francisco to examine in detail the research governance needs of the eight proposed field projects that had been presented at the Harvard workshop.4 Although these proposed studies by no means included all of the possible albedo modification field experiments that one might see in an initial set of studies, participants argued that they did span a wide enough space to provide a basis for developing a reasonably detailed assessment of research governance needs.
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From page 161... ...
($M) Equivalent Energy and Mass Synopsis 1 SCoPEx Process study 10 ΔRF = 0.01-0.1 W/m2 103 g of S Stratospheric A = 101 km2 and <105 propelled T = 1 week g of H2O balloon to N=4 test chemistry E = 2.4 × 1012 J response to H2SO4 and H2O and to test aerosol microphysical models 2 Cirrus cloud Process study 0.5 ΔRF = 1-10 W/m2 3 × 10 g Ice nucleation seeding A = 102 km2 of BiI3 seeding from T = 1 week aircraft in upper N=4 troposphere E = 2.4 × 1015 J to test cirrus dispersal mechanisms 3 MCB Phase Technology 1 ΔRF = 0.1-5 W/m2 Sea salt Marine cloud 1-2 development, A = 1 × 102 km2 brightening: Process study T = 2 weeks (1)
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From page 162... ...
5 MSGX Scaling test, 100 ΔRF = 0.2 W/m2 5 × 108 g Sustained technology A = 1 × 106 km2 of S stratospheric development T = 6 months injection of N =1 H2SO4 from E = 1.3 × 1019 J aircraft, observe mesoscale effects from satellites and aircraft 6 Climate Climate >1,000 ΔRF = 0.5 W/m2 1 × 1012 g Test global response test response test A = 5 × 108 km2 of S per climate response T= 10 years year to large-scale N=1 modulated E = 8 × 1022 J input (either stratospheric sulfate or marine cloud brightening) continued 162
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From page 163... ...
The portfolio spans three primary categories of albedo modification: stratospheric aerosol injection, cirrus cloud seeding (strictly speaking this is long-wavelength not "albedo modification") , and marine cloud brightening, degree of local perturbation (change in local peak radiative forcing, ΔRF)
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From page 164... ...
BOX 4.1 RESPONSES TO KEY GOVERNANCE QUESTIONS IDENTIFIED IN PREVIOUS WORKSHOPS Below are responses to two general questions about albedo modification research governance developed by participants in a workshop held in San Francisco (March 31 to April 2, 2014) in which participants examined eight field studies that had been proposed in a workshop at Harvard in early March.
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From page 165... ...
If the government decides at some point to organize a strategic research program on climate engineering, what advice do we have?
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From page 166... ...
5. Make the research strategy for climate engineering part of a larger climate research strategy.
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From page 167... ...
. Research into proposed albedo modification techniques faces a so-called "double moral hazard" (see explanation in "Previous Discussions of Governance of Albedo Modification Research" section above)
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From page 168... ...
Nations with the means to deploy albedo modification techniques are more likely to have the means to adapt to the secondary effects of such deployments. Potential intergenerational implications compound the ethical issues regarding who has authority, whether legal or moral, to enter into deliberate actions that might precipitate profound effects or place obligations on future generations.
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From page 169... ...
At the federal level, this includes the Weather Modification Reporting Act, the National Weather Modification Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
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From page 170... ...
open-access research policy mandatory in the United States, at least insofar as the research entails field experiments that are conducted domestically and are of such a scale that they could actually affect climate or weather." Title VI of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act gave the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
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From page 171... ...
"In the case of research involving field experiments, the National Environmental Policy Act may require an Environmental Impact Assessment, unless the proposed project fits into a category excused from such assessment. If an assessment is required and prepared, the public will have ample notice and opportunity for comment" (Morgan et al., 2013)
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From page 172... ...
This has primarily involved agreements to phase out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances, but albedo modification techniques that involve injection of aerosols into the stratosphere also might be considered activities that may have adverse effects on ozone, and could therefore be subject to the Convention as more information becomes available. The 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution defines "air p ollution" as substances that "endanger human health, harm living resources and ecosystems and material property and impair or interfere with amenities and other uses of the environment," and "long-range transboundary air pollution" as air pollution "which has adverse effects in the area under the jurisdiction of another State at such a distance that it is not generally possible to distinguish the contribution of individual emission sources or groups of sources." Eight protocols to CLRTAP detail reduction commitments for specific pollutants, including sulfur, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and heavy metals.
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From page 173... ...
. shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries," that parties "shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space," and that a party that places an object into space "is internationally liable for damage to another State Party to the Treaty or to its natural or juridical persons by such object." There is ongoing scholarship in this area, and further research on these legal questions would be helpful in understanding the existing national and international constraints on albedo modification research and deployment.
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From page 174... ...
One of the common themes that emerges from these previous discussions is that, whatever the governance mechanism for some types of albedo modification research, it should be transparent and done with input from a broad set of stakeholders to engender trust among the stakeholders, and to ensure all dimensions are appropriately considered. Another common theme is that the goal of the governance should be to ensure that the benefits of research are realized toward helping society understand the challenges and impacts of albedo modification while minimizing the risks associated with the conduct of such research.
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From page 175... ...
. As described below, there are no domestic laws or international legal agreements that directly regulate albedo modification research, but this lack of statute should not limit efforts to establish self-governance within the scientific community or more formal governance structures based on the principle that both transparency and civil society engagement are critical to development of support for continuation of research, let alone getting support for public financing of the research.
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