Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2012 Symposium (2013) / Chapter Skim
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Overview of Climate Engineering--Eli Kintisch
Overview of Climate Engineering--Eli Kintisch
Pages 5-12
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From page 5... ...
As the global climate crisis intensifies, taboos once held by scientists and policymakers are falling by the wayside. Adaptation, the organized response to a warming planet and its myriad local impacts, was once viewed by top officials as a distraction from the main priority of mitigating global greenhouse gas emissions.
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From page 6... ...
Every serious researcher or policy expert who studies climate engineering, including Crutzen, believes that cutting greenhouse gas emissions is at least as important as developing geoengineering technologies, if not more urgent. It is useful to consider abatement, carbon dioxide removal, and solar radiation management in proper context with one another.
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From page 7... ...
suggest that if a similar quantity of sulfur aerosol were artificially injected into the stratosphere, the cooling could be essentially instantaneous. Cheap: A recent study by an aerospace research firm suggests that the costs of deploying a global SRM scheme to offset anthropogenic warming "are comparable to the yearly operations of a small airline" (McClellan et al.
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From page 8... ...
Slow: Global yearly emissions of CO2 are 34 million cubic metric tons, resulting in an accumulation of 500 billion tons of anthropogenic CO 2 in the atmosphere. Relying heavily on CDR as part of a climate response strategy means creating a massive industry -- perhaps the biggest engineering project in human history -- to steadily remove this mass of gas from the atmosphere one molecule at a time.
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From page 9... ...
In 2007 Sir Richard Branson launched a $25 million contest called the Virgin Earth Challenge to encourage the development of technologies that "will result in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects."1 The 11 contest finalists represent a decent survey of leading commercial entities in this area, including firms that propose to sequester carbon in biochar added to soil, to directly capture atmospheric CO2 through chemical methods, or to burn biofuels and sequester the resultant CO2 in the ground. GEOENGINEERING RESEARCH POLICY AND PUBLIC OPINION Several European governments have supported organized programs to support climate engineering research.
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From page 10... ...
CONCLUSION As the world's population contends with the challenge of climate change, respected scientists will continue studying climate engineering as part of a suite of responses -- the most important of which is the immediate curtailing of greenhouse gas emissions. For policymakers and researchers in this area, the following considerations will have to be taken into account: the need to address risks inherent to the two types of climate engineering through research despite a lack of dedicated funding for such work in the United States; the conduct of such studies, including possible field studies, in an ethical way; and ongoing, open debate on the study and use of climate engineering while mindful of public opinion, still nascent, on the prospect of deploying the technology.
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From page 11... ...
2011. Public engagement on geoengineering research: Preliminary report on the SPICE deliberative workshops.
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