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Geoengineering Climate: Science & Governance

The Royal Society's study on geoengineering, chaired by Professor John Shepherd, assesses methods to counteract climate change due to insufficient global emission reductions. It categorizes geoengineering into Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques, which are slower but address CO2 levels, and Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques, which act quickly but have potential risks and do not address CO2. The report recommends increased global emission reduction efforts, prioritizing CDR over SRM, and funding a 10-year geoengineering research program.

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14 views2 pages

Geoengineering Climate: Science & Governance

The Royal Society's study on geoengineering, chaired by Professor John Shepherd, assesses methods to counteract climate change due to insufficient global emission reductions. It categorizes geoengineering into Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques, which are slower but address CO2 levels, and Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques, which act quickly but have potential risks and do not address CO2. The report recommends increased global emission reduction efforts, prioritizing CDR over SRM, and funding a 10-year geoengineering research program.

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vyly.8c.c2px1923
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
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Geoengineering the

climate: science,
governance and
uncertainty
01 September 2009
The Royal Society has published the findings of a major study into geoengineering the
climate.

The study, chaired by Professor John Shepherd FRS , was researched and written
over a period of twelve months by twelve leading academics representing science,
economics, law and social science.

Man-made climate change is happening and its impacts and costs will be large,
serious and unevenly spread. The impacts may be reduced by adaptation and
moderated by mitigation, especially by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
However, global efforts to reduce emissions have not yet been sufficiently successful
to provide confidence that the reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change
will be achieved. This has led to growing interest in geoengineering, defined here as
the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract
anthropogenic climate change.

However, despite this interest, there has been a lack of accessible, high quality
information on the proposed geoengineering techniques which remain unproven and
potentially dangerous. This study provides a detailed assessment of the various
methods and considers the potential efficiency and unintended consequences they
may pose. It divides geoengineering methods into two basic categories:

1. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques, which remove CO2 from the
atmosphere. As they address the root cause of climate change, rising CO2
concentrations, they have relatively low uncertainties and risks. However, these
techniques work slowly to reduce global temperatures.
2. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques, which reflect a small
percentage of the sun's light and heat back into space. These methods act
quickly, and so may represent the only way to lower global temperatures
quickly in the event of a climate crisis. However, they only reduce some, but not
all, effects of climate change, while possibly creating other problems . They also
do not affect CO2 levels and therefore fail to address the wider effects of rising
CO2, including ocean acidification.
The report recommends:

 Parties to the UNFCCC should make increased efforts towards mitigating and
adapting to climate change and in particular to agreeing to global emissions
reductions of at least 50% on 1990 levels by 2050 and more thereafter;
 CDR and SRM geoengineering methods should only be considered as part of a
wider package of options for addressing climate change. CDR methods should
be regarded as preferable to SRM methods.
 Relevant UK government departments, in association with the UK Research
Councils, should together fund a 10 year geoengineering research programme
at a level of the order of £10M per annum.
 The Royal Society, in collaboration with international science partners, should
develop a code of practice for geoengineering research and provide
recommendations to the international scientific community for a voluntary
research governance framework.

From: The Royal Society

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