IPCC takes note of geo-engineering's potential to tackle climate change

The Times of India , Thursday, October 24, 2013
Correspondent :
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently took note of modelling that suggests some geo-engineering methods, if realisable, have the potential to substantially offset a global temperature rise. Since then, various futuristic ploys straight out of Hollywood disaster movies are claiming new legitimacy. These disregard IPCC's clear warnings that both solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal — the two main types of geo-engineering projects on the anvil — threaten side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale. Having already opened one Pandora's box with greenhouse gas emissions, it would be dangerously irresponsible for us to open another with geo-engineering. Being able to influence the world's weather shouldn't be confused with being able to control it.

Consider the idea of using various kinds of 'space reflectors' to reduce sunlight reaching our planet. This is a classic case of treating a symptom instead of the disease. The side effects are unpredictable and most likely calamitous. Nobody knows how this would impact weather patterns in various regions, or reorder ocean currents and photosynthesis. Nobody could even guarantee that a local science experiment wouldn't blow up into a large-scale phenomenon. In a deeply interconnected world, an attempt to reduce rainfall in the US could lead to a drought in India. One geo-engineering project could end up threatening the food security of billions.

The loudest proponents of geo-engineering decry the difficulty of getting a global consensus on reducing greenhouse emissions. This argument is disingenuous because this is exactly the kind of consensus that would anyway be needed to set up a global regulatory regime for geo-engineering. In short, we can't bypass international climate change diplomacy. Nor can we sidestep weaning ourselves off from fossil fuels. Thankfully, science and markets are increasingly giving a conjoined thumb up to renewable alternatives.

COUNTERVIEW

Geo-engineering can avert disaster

Pyaralal Raghavan

Geo-engineering experiments, which seek to combat climate change through calculated human interventions that reduce temperature, have been described in derogatory terms like hacking the earth for far too long. With time running out and nations still unable to forge any consensus on policies for combating climate change through traditional methods like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the use of geo-engineering offers the best way out. One should certainly not be caught napping if the climatic tipping point happens sooner than anticipated.

Fears about geo-engineering persist because of their possible use in weather warfare or because of worries of setting off irreversible changes. But these are largely generic issues which are applicable to almost all new technologies and there are globally acceptable ways to prevent such misuse. So it was no surprise when the IPCC finally accepted the need for considering use of geo-engineering technologies to combat global warming.

For why geo-engineering might be necessary, look to the complete failure of any global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Countries that had signed onto the Kyoto Protocol, designed to limit emissions, are increasingly reneging from the emissions targets they had agreed to. And the two biggest emitters, the United States and China, do not have any binding targets at all. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions require a great number of coordinated policy actions across the globe, for which political will is clearly absent. The IPCC estimates that global temperatures will rise between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees centigrade by the end of this century. The last figure, or anything close to it, is clearly catastrophic — it would mean oceans flowing over currently low-lying regions of the world. Shouldn't we pre-empt such a catastrophe by all means at our disposal?

 
SOURCE : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/IPCC-takes-note-of-geo-engineerings-potential-to-tackle-climate-change/articleshow/24614486.cms
 


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