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Geoengineering schemes need ranking system to avoid wasting money, destroying the planet mongabay.com October 26, 2008
With so-called geoengineering proposals proliferating as concerns over climate change mount, Philip Boyd of New Zealand's NIWA warns that "no geo-engineering proposal has been tested or even subjected to preliminary trials". He says that despite widespread media attention, scientists have yet to even come up with a way to rank geoegineering schemes for their efficacy, cost, associated risk, and timeframe. Thus is it unclear whether ideas like carbon burial, geochemical carbon capture, atmospheric carbon capture, ocean fertilization, cloud manipulation, "space sunshades", or strategically-placed pollution can be effective on a time-scale relevant to humankind, economical, or even safe. "The rationale for any geo-engineering scheme must be based on its efficacy," he writes, then noting that existing proposals have often started out with "overoptimistic claims on efficacy", "oversimplistic cost estimates", and failure to recognize "unwanted" and "potentially expensive" side-effects.
To better evaluate human solutions to a human-created problem, Boyd writes that scientists "must apply metrics that incorporate efficacy, cost, risk and time in order to rank where future research effort is best focused." He proposes a transparent ranking system based on objective criteria to determine what projects are most promising and therefore worthy of limited government research funds. "Funding research into only a few promising schemes, according to such metrics, may lead to one or two relatively reliable mitigation options that can be placed in a 'climate-change toolbox'. In the near future, we must decide the relative importance of time, cost, risk and efficacy in tackling climate change if it is decided to press ahead with a geo-engineering approach. Of course, it could transpire after such an analysis that climate mitigation strategies with a very low risk but apparently higher costs, such as direct carbon capture and storage, are the best approach." "As the costs of inaction and of delaying the mitigation of climate change are rising, an initial high investment — matched with a very low risk — may seem more and more reasonable," he concludes. Philip W. Boyd.Ranking geo-engineering schemes. Nature geoscience | VOL 1 | NOVEMBER 2008 | www.nature.com/naturegeoscience Related Shell Oil funds "open source" geoengineering project to fight global warming (7/21/2008) Shell Oil is funding a project that seeks to test the potential of adding lime to seawater as a cost-effective way to fight global warming by sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide in the world's oceans, reports Chemistry & Industry magazine. Geoengineering solution to global warming could destroy the ozone layer (4/24/2008) A proposed plan to fight global warming by injecting sulfate particles into Earth's upper atmosphere could damage the ozone layer over the Arctic and Antarctic, report researchers writing in the journal Science. Planktos kills iron fertilization project due to environmental opposition (2/19/2008) Planktos, a California-based firm that planned a controversial iron-fertilization scheme in an attempt to qualify carbon offsets, announced that it failed to find sufficient funding for its efforts and would postpone its project indefinitely. Too early to say if iron seeding will slow global warming - scientists (1/10/2008) Schemes to use feed the ocean with iron as a way to enhance carbon sequestration from the atmosphere are premature and could be damaging to sea life and marine ecosystems, warns a letter published in the journal Science by an international group of scientists. New research discredits a $100 billion geoengineering fix to global warming (11/29/2007) Scientists have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture.
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