On May 15, the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project announced that a planned field trial associated with the project won’t happen. The intention had been to test hardware that could be used to inject aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight as a way to artificially cool the planet, a form of “solar radiation management.”
Pat Mooney, author and award-winning director of ETC Group will provide an overview of the politics behind some of the most critical issues facing the planet today: unsustainable agriculture, corporate concentration in the life industries and geoengineering.
Bill Gates is one very confused billionaire philanthropist. He understands global warming is a big problem [...] But he just doesn’t want to do very much now to stop it from happening…
View ETC Group’s submission for the Zero Draft of RIO+20. Section 2 specifically details perspectives on geoengineering and the rationalization behind a ban.
‘Earth Grab – Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes’ – essential, cutting-edge climate science in everyday language – is published this week (27 October 2011). The authors reveal information that the large corporations who profit from climate change do not want the public to know.
Just days after the British got cold feet, the Washington-based thinktank the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) published a major report calling for the United States and other likeminded countries to move towards large-scale climate change experimentation.
Opponents of proposals to “geoengineer” the planet have two reasons to celebrate this week. Firstly, ETC Group has learned that UK scientists, in the midst of controversy, are on the cusp of postponing an imminent test of an experimental hose [...]
Envisioning a worst-case scenario in which climate change spirals out of control, researchers in the United Kingdom are planning to test a hose-and-balloon device that spews particles into the atmosphere in an attempt to bring global temperatures back down.
The method is a geoengineering technique that would mimic the cooling effect of giant volcanic eruptions. When thrown high into the atmosphere by volcanoes, small particles reflect sunlight into space, decreasing the amount of heat energy that arrives on Earth. If humans could place similar particles up high, we could theoretically offset the effects of greenhouse gas warming, researchers reason. [Read: Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas]
The upcoming tests, led by engineer Hugh Hunt at the University of Cambridge, would suspend a hose 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) into the atmosphere using a gigantic helium-filled balloon that is similar to a weather balloon. The hose will carry only water for now as researchers grapple with the challenges of keeping the hose aloft and functional. No actual geoengineering will take place.
UPDATE: Friends, the experimental hose designed by British scientists (to put sulphates in the stratosphere) that we informed you about last week continues to provoke controversy. Read updates from project-favorable media from Time Magazine, the New Scientist – to a letter from the Royal Society . Also Southern perspectives on geoengineering in a conference late this month.
It sounds barmy, audacious or sci-fi: a tethered balloon the size of Wembley stadium suspended 20km above Earth, linked to the ground by a giant garden hose pumping hundreds of tonnes of minute chemical particles a day into the thin stratospheric air to reflect sunlight and cool the planet.
There are two new reports out on geoengineering that we would like to bring to your attention. The first report, “Climate engineering: Technical status, future directions, and potential responses” is a detailed technical examination of different geoengineering technology. Also in the realm of public opinion about geoengineering, a new report was also recently released in the UK: Public Engagement on Geoengineering Research: Preliminary Report on the SPICE deliberative workshops. This report concerns two of the major research projects that were funded in the UK following the release of the Royal Society report in 2009: the Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP) and the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE).
Dear friends, We just wanted to send you an update on the letter we signed last week on the IPCC meeting on geoengineering that got underway this morning in Peru. First of all, there has been quite a lot of media coverage, and I include links to a sampling of it. Please feel free to circulate in your networks.
Closed sessions, angry geo-engineers, US weather extremes and a plethora of NGOs. Who will lift the veil on these murky talks which we, the public, are barred even from observing? Decisions are – or are not – being made that will affect every human being on Earth, yet most of the discussions here are being held in closed session to which civil society, in the form of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the press, have no access.
Today, 125 international and national organizations, representing at least 40 countries from all continents, sent an open letter to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), demanding a clear statement of its commitment to precaution and to the existing international moratorium on geoengineering. The IPCC will hold an expert meeting on geoengineering 20-22 June in Lima, Peru. (The letter is available and open for signatures here.)
The likelihood that such technology could bring a safe, lasting, democratic and peaceful solution is miniscule
On the eve of climate talks that began last week, the UN’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres, told the Guardian: “We are putting ourselves in a scenario where we will have to develop more powerful technologies to capture emissions out of the atmosphere.”
In a move that suggests the UN and rich countries are despairing of reaching agreement by consensus at global climate talks, the US, British and other western scientists will outline a series of ideas to manipulate the world’s climate to reduce carbon emissions. But they accept that even though the ideas could theoretically work, they might equally have unintended and even irreversible consequences.
The IPCC must take great care not to squander its credibility on geoengineering, a topic that is gathering steam when there is no real progress on mitigation and adaptation. The IPCC’s announcement of the expert meeting already suggests that geoengineering has a place in the portfolio of legitimate responses to climate change…
Some scientists are concerned about the ethical and legal dimensions of emerging technologies such as geo-engineering and unmanned aerial vehicles. For pressure group Scientists for Global Responsibility, a loose alliance of scientists and engineers concerned with placing ethics at the centre of the development of technology…
The US military has long been interested in weather modification and geoengineering, but we now get a glimpse of into its thinking on geoengineering research governance! The RAND Corporation has just published a 93 page report looking at what options would best serve US interests…
Exactly one year ago, the HOME campaign (www.handsoffmotherearth.org) was launched at the World Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Since then, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have joined the campaign, sent in their pictures and helped raise awareness about the dangers of geoengineering experiments.
The Royal Society’s Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI) had an exclusive invitation-only Chatham House chat about how to manage the sun (no kidding!). Associated Press’s Charles Hanley was allowed into the meeting and sent this disturbing report out. Good thing because there is not much information on the website of this “initiative”.
Geoengineering Moratorium at UN Ministerial in Japan
Risky Climate Techno-fixes Blocked! In a landmark consensus decision, the 193-member UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will close its tenth biennial meeting with a de facto moratorium on geoengineering projects and experiments.
These kinds of dangerous experiments, promoted by a small group of scientists and rich industrial countries, are a continuation of the technological nightmare that’ s been imposed on our peoples for five centuries – Tom Goldtooth, Director, Indigenous Environmental Network
Now, in response to climate change, these same people want to put Mother Earth at risk with geoengineering technologies. We can’t afford to threaten our planet in this way, especially when simple, just and proven solutions are at hand.
Clive Hamilton, author of Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change, on why we’ve left it too late to stop climate change, his horror over geoengineering and the urgent need to become citizens rather than consumers Tom Levitt: What does this book say to the environmental movement? Clive Hamilton: One [...]
Geoengineering moratorium proposal will go to UN Biodiversity Convention Nairobi, Kenya – A formal recommendation for a moratorium on all climate geoengineering activities is being sent to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for consideration by its 193 member governments when the CBD gathers in Nagoya Japan this October. Governments attending the Nairobi [...]
“There is a legend in our family that, shortly before his death, Einstein expressed regret in having contributed to the science that made the atomic bomb. In a conversation with our family friend, Leo Szillard, he said, “the ancient sages were right: it is better to do nothing.” Szillard, and other atomic scientists of those [...]
“The British and American scientists involved do not intend to wait for international rules on technology that deliberately alters the climate.” Such rules could be set in motion this week as scientists and diplomats from 193 nations meet under the auspices of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s scientific body.
American environmentalist and writer, Bill McKibben has led and inspired the global movement to halt climate change for several decades. Now he is adding his voice to the movement against geoengineering the climate. His 1989 book, The End of Nature, motivated a generation of global activists and policy-makers to stand up against the massive human [...]
Hands up if you think more messing with the planet is the wrong answer to the climate crisis. Add your picture to a gallery of people from around the world calling a stop to geoengineering experiments. Upload your picture from the Join H.O.M.E page.
On May 15, the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project announced that a planned field trial associated with the project won’t happen. The intention had been to test hardware that could be used to inject aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight as a way to artificially cool the planet, a form of “solar radiation management.”
View + Comment at this link: http://www.cbd.int/climate/geoengineering/review/ The Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a moratorium on geoengineering activities in 2010. The Secretariat was instructed to prepare two papers as part of that decision: one on the impacts of geoengineering on biodiversity and the other on regulatory frameworks. Those papers are now available for peer review. [...]
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