Climate Engineering Technologies Research Articles

Identifying key-psychological factors influencing the acceptance of yet emerging technologies–A multi-method-approach to inform climate policy

The best combination of possible climate policy options (mitigation, adaptation and different climate engineering technologies) to tackle climate change is unknown. Climate policy is facing a hard decision in answering the question whether climate engineering technologies should be researched, limitedly deployed or even deployed at global scale. Such technologies bear large epistemic and ethical uncertainties and their use as well as non-use might have severe consequences. To deal with such uncertainties, the (ethical) assessment of climate engineering technologies should include the perspectives of various stakeholders including laypersons to inform climate policy. To facilitate (ethical) technology assessment, we propose a novel 2-step methodology to collect and analyze data on ethical concerns and the acceptability of climate engineering technologies. Thereby we focus on Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) as an use case. We propose an innovative combination of newly developed methods consisting of two data collection tools (Cognitive-Affective Mapping and large-scale survey) and two types of data analyses (using graph theory and factor analysis). Applying this multi-method approach we were able to identify (1) central ethical and governance related concerns regarding SAI (by Cognitive-Affective Maps) and (2) to estimate the relative importance of core constructs (positive and negative affect, risk and benefit perception, trust) on the acceptability of SAI (by large-scale survey).

Penerapan Teknologi Budidaya Tanaman Stroberi Di Desa Pangkalan Kabupaten Indramayu

The geographical condition of Indramayu, which is in the lowlands, is not the right land for cultivating strawberry plants. But it is not impossible for this plant to grow and develop well. The purpose of this community service program is to provide technical guidance to improve the knowledge and skills of Pangkalan Village young people in cultivating strawberry plants by applying climate engineering technology. The equipment given in this activity is water cooling, air conditioning, temperature and humidity control, and spray machines. This activity can be said to be successful as seen by the skills of the participants in managing tools and growing and developing strawberry plants well.

An Approach to Scientific and Legislative Governance of Solar Radiation Modification Research in the United States

The climate crisis requires immediate, rapid, and responsible action across all sectors. Without implementation of aggressive mitigation strategies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that we will fail to remain below the catastrophic global warming threshold of 1.5°C. Climate engineering technologies, such as carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification (SRM), have been proposed as mitigation strategies, but have not been deployed at scale. In addition to the scaling problems, SRM technologies, particularly stratospheric aerosol injection, have faced criticism over ethical implications of their implementation. The United Nations (UN) efforts to introduce international governance over SRM have been blocked by several countries, including the United States (US). Meanwhile, domestic researchers in the US have independently pursued small-scale experiments. The effects of these experiments remain uncertain, yet, if scaled, extend to non-consenting countries, including those already more susceptible to the climate crisis. We recommend that the US (1) stop blocking the UN from pursuing research into the impacts of SRM to allow for equitable governance options to be explored and (2) establish a national advisory committee on solar geoengineering.

Values in early-stage climate engineering: The ethical implications of “doing the research”

Calls for research on climate engineering have increased in the last two decades, but there remains widespread agreement that many climate engineering technologies (in particular, forms involving global solar radiation management) present significant ethical risks and require careful governance. However, proponents of research argue, ethical restrictions on climate engineering research should not be imposed in early-stage work like in silico modeling studies. Such studies, it is argued, do not pose risks to the public, and the knowledge gained from them is necessary for assessing the risks and benefits of climate engineering technologies. I argue that this position, which I call the “broad research-first” stance, cannot be maintained in light of the entrance of nonepistemic values in climate modeling. I analyze the roles that can be played by nonepistemic political and ethical values in the design, tuning, and interpretation of climate models. Then, I argue that, in the context of early-stage climate engineering research, the embeddedness of values will lead to value judgments that could harm stakeholder groups or impose researcher values on non-consenting populations. I conclude by calling for more robust reflection on the ethics and governance of early-stage climate engineering research.

Effects of opinion statements on laypeople's acceptance of a climate engineering technology. Comparing the source credibility of researchers, politicians and a citizens' jury

To examine the influence of different actors' fictitious statements about research and deployment of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), we conducted an online survey in Germany. Participants assess researchers and a citizens' jury to be more credible than politicians. Credibility has a strong positive effect on SAI acceptance in both pro-SAI and contra-SAI conditions. Reading the statement against SAI-deployment led to significantly lower acceptance scores compared to reading the pro-statement. However, the difference between messages was unexpectedly small, indicating that the message content was not fully adopted while underlying traits and attitudes mainly shaped acceptance even despite, or because of, low levels of knowledge.

Support for the Deployment of Climate Engineering: A Comparison of Ten Different Technologies.

Due to the renewed increase in CO2 emissions seen in recent years, the deployment of climate engineering technologies might become necessary if the global temperature increase is to be kept within 1.5 °C. If climate engineering is to be deployed, however, public support is required. The present study hence compared public support for a broad range of climate engineering technologies. Further, the factors that drive public support were investigated and compared across the technologies. In an online survey conducted in Switzerland, respondents (n = 1,575) were randomly allocated to the description of 1 of 10 climate engineering technologies, of which 7 were specific carbon dioxide removal measures and 3 were solar radiation management measures. The results show that the level of public support for afforestation was the highest. The levels of public support for the other climate engineering technologies were relatively similar, although a tendency for solar radiation management to have a lower level of support was identified. Across all the investigated climate engineering technologies, the perceived benefits were an important driver of public support. Additionally, for all the technologies but afforestation, a higher level of trust in industry/science/government increased the level of public support, whereas the factor perceived risks and tampering with nature was found to be a negative predictor of support. The present findings suggest that there are opportunities available for the deployment of several climate engineering technologies in combination with other mitigation measures. Communicating the benefits of such technologies might be an effective strategy in terms of fostering increased support.

Responsible Innovation and Climate Engineering. A Step Back to Technology Assessment

Much in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is part of a participatory turn within the Technology Assessment (TA) and Science and Technology Studies (STS) community. This has an influence also on the evaluation of Climate Engineering (CE) options, as it will be shown by reference to the SPICE project. The SPICE example and the call for democratisation of science and innovation raise some interesting concerns for the normative evaluation of CE options that will be addressed in the paper. It is by far not clear, or so it will be argued, how much of the innovation process of CE technologies should be put in the hands of social actors and the wider public. This is due not only to special features about CE technologies but also to some more principle concerns against some features of participatory RRI approaches. Still, this does by no way mean that ethical and societal issues in the context of CE technologies should be ignored. Rather, the paper will argue that one can take a step back to expert TA linked to the evolution of approaches of ethical impact analysis in this area. This does not only lead to reconsider the emphasis on participation and democratisation of research and innovation, but also opens up for an alternative evaluative framework for CE technologies developed in the last part of the paper.

Psychological factors influencing laypersons’ acceptance of climate engineering, climate change mitigation and business as usual scenarios

In the past two decades, research on so-called climate engineering approaches has increased. These technologies are considered to be potential substitutes for mitigation strategies in combating climate change. The ongoing process of layperson acceptance and resultant opinion formation can be expected to play a crucial role in future public debate about field experiments or the actual deployment of climate engineering.In July 2017, we assessed public reactions from the German population in a representative online survey. Participants were given a brief text informing them about climate change and one of four different scenarios in a between-subject design (N = 678). Two of the scenarios described the use of climate engineering technologies - stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) - one of them covered conventional mitigation strategies and the fourth group was given an outline of the business-as-usual (BAU) approach.The mitigation scenario (willingness for individual behaviour changes) showed the highest acceptance rate (M = 74.23), which was significantly higher than acceptance of the other scenarios (p < .001). Acceptance of BECCS (M = 53.15) was higher than acceptance of SAI (M = 46.25, p = .043) and BAU (M = 42.94; p = .006). We undertook a relative-importance analysis to investigate the influence of multiple predictor variables on acceptance formation for each scenario; the variance thus explained ranged from 80.3% to 86.8%. The results point up the influence of perceived risks, subjective norms and affective responses on the acceptance of climate engineering technologies. By contrast, person-specific and relatively stable variables, such as environmental attitudes and wishful thinking, are particularly relevant in the evaluation of the mitigation scenario.

Sulfur in the Sky with Diamonds: An Inquiry into the Feasibility of Solar Geoengineering

AbstractSolar geoengineering (SG) is considered a promising, albeit controversial, climate engineering technology to help reduce predicted global warming. However, the complexity of SG raises serious doubts about its political practicability. The objective of this article is to investigate this technology's feasibility, a fundamental dimension of said practicability. Feasibility is here understood as a political property: the higher the feasibility of a state of affairs ranks, the greater its eventual political practicability. According to this perspective, the less SG clashes with economic, institutional, and moral soft constraints, the more feasible it becomes, and hence the greater its political practicability. An analysis of economic and institutional soft constraints points to a high degree of SG feasibility. This feasibility is, however, limited by the perceived non‐bearable moral costs which SG involves. Given the greater weight of moral soft constraints, SG's overall feasibility is therefore low. Based on these indications, the article offers suggestions for lessening SG's friction with soft constraints, especially with the highly sensitive moral ones, with the aim of increasing this technology's feasibility. On the basis of this heightened feasibility, the paper concludes with policy recommendations which improves the practicability of SG.

Viable and convivial technologies: Considerations on Climate Engineering from a degrowth perspective

Faced with the urgency of climate change, Climate Engineering has been framed as a fast and feasible technological solution. At the same time, however, critique against it is getting increasingly louder. This paper articulates a critical analysis of Climate Engineering technologies from a point of view situated within the degrowth discourse. In the first part two approaches discussed within the degrowth debate are presented: the concept of viability based on a biophysical perspective and the concept of conviviality based on a socio-cultural approach. In a second step formalized arguments from the point of view of applied ethics are articulated and applied to three Climate Engineering Technologies: Sulfate Aerosol Injection, Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage, and Afforestation. In a third step, an extended version of the trade-off argument about mitigation versus Climate Engineering solution is discussed from a degrowth perspective: accordingly, within the current dominant growth paradigm, climate engineering technologies might lead to reduced mitigation efforts. The paper follows the argumentative turn in applied ethics and displays a formalization of arguments that can help clarify decision-making and identify the different dimensions at stake. The paper articulates arguments against the deployment of CE technologies and advances a new version of the trade-off-argument based on a degrowth perspective. From the point of view of a degrowth-based critique of technology, the only type of Climate Engineering Technology ethically acceptable would be afforestation under specific conditions.

Public perception of climate engineering and carbon capture and storage in Germany: survey evidence

ABSTRACTClimate engineering (CE) and carbon capture and storage are controversial options for addressing climate change. This study compares public perception in Germany of three specific measures: solar radiation management (SRM) via stratospheric sulphate injection, large-scale afforestation, and carbon capture and storage sub-seabed (CCS-S). In a survey experiment we find that afforestation is most readily accepted as a measure for addressing climate change, followed by CCS-S and lastly SRM, which is widely rejected. Providing additional information decreases acceptance for all measures, but their ranking remains unchanged. The acceptance of all three measures is especially influenced by the perceived seriousness of climate change and by trust in institutions. Also, respondents dislike the measures more if they perceive them as a way of shirking responsibility for emissions or as an unconscionable manipulation of nature. Women react more negatively to information than men, whereas the level of education or the degree of intuitive vs reflective decision making does not influence the reaction to information.POLICY RELEVANCECurrent projections suggest that the use of climate engineering (CE) technologies or carbon capture and storage (CCS) is necessary if global warming is to be kept well below 2°C. Our article focuses on the perspective of the general public and thus supplements the dialogue between policymakers, interest groups, and scientists on how to address climate change. We show that in Germany public acceptance of potentially effective measures such as SRM or CCS-S is low and decreases even more when additional information is provided. This implies that lack of public acceptance may turn out to be a bottleneck for future implementation. Ongoing research and development in connection with CCS-S and SRM requires continuous communication with, and involvement of, the public in order to obtain feedback and assess the public’s reservations about the measures. The low level of acceptance also implies that emission reduction should remain a priority in climate policy.

Climate Engineering Economics

This article reviews and evaluates the nascent literature on the economics of climate engineering. The literature distinguishes between two broad types of climate engineering: solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal. We review the science and engineering characteristics of these technologies and analyze the implications of those characteristics for economic policy design. We discuss optimal policy and carbon price, interregional and intergenerational equity issues, strategic interaction in the design of international environmental agreements, and the sources of risk and uncertainty surrounding these technologies. We conclude that climate engineering technologies, similar to mitigation and adaptation, should be a fundamental part of future domestic and global climate policy design. We propose several avenues in need of additional research.

Using Legal Principles to Guide Geoengineering Deployment

Climate change will be unavoidable, long-lasting, and potentially catastrophic. While mitigation is critical, it can no longer enable us to avoid many of the consequences of climate change. Not surprisingly, many nations and their scientists are beginning to study the feasibility of engineering the climate. Indeed, earlier this year the United States’ National Research Council concluded that the likelihood that society will need to deploy some form of geoengineering is becoming increasingly likely. Nevertheless, no one has begun determining what principles society should apply when deciding whether to deploy geoengineering. This article identifies and reviews legal concepts that can inform this decision. Then, it determines which legal principles should be used and which can be discarded. Next, it applies decision-making theories to determine the best approach to utilize these principles. With this background, it proposes a prioritization of the principles – cost-benefit analysis, consideration of alternatives, intergenerational equity, regional equity, reversibility of consequences, and containment of effects. Finally, it demonstrates the value of the principles by applying them to some of the most promising climate engineering technologies to determine, based upon present information, which would be the most acceptable to deploy.

Dual high‐stake emerging technologies: a review of the climate engineering research literature

The literature on climate engineering, or geoengineering, covers a wide range of potential methods for solar radiation management or carbon dioxide removal that vary in technical aspects, temporal and spatial scales, potential environmental impacts, and legal, ethical, and governance challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive review of social and natural science papers on this topic since 2006 and listed in SCOPUS and Web of Science. It adds to previous literature reviews by combining analyses of bibliometric patterns and of trends in how the technologies are framed in terms of content, motivations, stakes, and recommendations. Most peer‐reviewed climate engineering literature does not weigh the risks and new, additional, benefits of the various technologies, but emphasizes either the potential dangers of climate engineering or the climate change consequences of refraining from considering the research, development, demonstration, and/or deployment of climate engineering technologies. To analyse this polarity, not prevalent in the literature on earlier emerging technologies, we explore the concept of dual high‐stake technologies. As appeals to fear have proven ineffective in spurring public engagement in climate change, we may not expect significant public support for climate engineering technologies whose rationale is not to achieve benefits in addition to avoiding the high stakes of climate change. Furthermore, in designing public engagement exercises, researchers must be careful not to steer discussions by emphasizing one type of stake framing over another. A dual high‐stake, rather than risk–benefit, framing should also be considered in analysing some emerging technologies with similar characteristics, for example, nanotechnology for pollution control. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:255–268. doi: 10.1002/wcc.333This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge &gt; Knowledge and Practice

Editorial: in the name of sustainability

Over the past decades an enormous number of projects, enterprises and initiatives invoking sustainability objectives have multiplied in the most diverse domains: human health, agriculture, energy, climate engineering, information and communication technologies, aerospace, landscape, computer modelling, technological innovation, etc. Many of these projects have become highly public and intensely politicised, so it comes as no surprise that the recurring 'technical progress' and 'sustainable development' claims are often contested and criticised. Indeed, these technological initiatives, whether seen as effective vehicles for accelerating human development or for addressing local/global problems, draw attention to two different kinds of contemporary dilemma: the paradoxes of technology and the paradoxes (or contradictions) of sustainability, both of which demand a great deal of reflexivity. This editorial looks into the critique of the ways in which sustainability narratives have been used to motivate or justify many projects. The special issue that this editorial introduces seeks to promote a critical discussion around the contemporary and unsolved paradoxes of the technology-development-sustainability nexus, which is begging for rethinking the very concept of sustainability.

Mapping the landscape of climate engineering.

In the absence of a governance framework for climate engineering technologies such as solar radiation management (SRM), the practices of scientific research and intellectual property acquisition can de facto shape the development of the field. It is therefore important to make visible emerging patterns of research and patenting, which we suggest can effectively be done using bibliometric methods. We explore the challenges in defining the boundary of climate engineering, and set out the research strategy taken in this study. A dataset of 825 scientific publications on climate engineering between 1971 and 2013 was identified, including 193 on SRM; these are analysed in terms of trends, institutions, authors and funders. For our patent dataset, we identified 143 first filings directly or indirectly related to climate engineering technologies—of which 28 were related to SRM technologies—linked to 910 family members. We analyse the main patterns discerned in patent trends, applicants and inventors. We compare our own findings with those of an earlier bibliometric study of climate engineering, and show how our method is consistent with the need for transparency and repeatability, and the need to adjust the method as the field develops. We conclude that bibliometric monitoring techniques can play an important role in the anticipatory governance of climate engineering.

Laypeople's Risky Decisions in the Climate Change Context: Climate Engineering as a Risk-Defusing Strategy?

ABSTRACTThis study explores the development of laypeople's preferences for newly emerging climate engineering technology (CE). It examines whether laypeople perceive CE to be an acceptable back-up strategy (plan B) if current efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions were to fail. This idea is a common justification for CE research in the scientific debate and may significantly influence future public debates. Ninety-eight German participants chose their preferred climate policy strategy in a quasi-realistic scenario. Participants could chose between mitigation and three CE techniques as alternative options. We employed a think-aloud interview technique, which allowed us to trace participants’ informational needs and thought processes. Drawing on Huber's risk management decision theory, the study addressed whether specific CE options are more likely to be accepted if they are mentally represented as a back-up strategy. Results support this assumption, especially for cloud whitening. This result is especially relevant considering the high prevalence of the plan B framing in CE appraisal studies and its implications for public opinion-formation processes.

The Paradox of Climate Engineering

Climate engineering technologies, sometimes also referred to as geoengineering technologies, attempt to ward off the worst effects of climate change by intervening in the global climate system. We see the potentials offered by climate engineering technologies in counteracting the threats of climate change but also take into account the risks that arise from the side effects of these technologies on natural, social and political systems. We find a paradox of climate engineering, which consists in the circumstance that exactly those technologies that are capable of acting fast and effectively against rising temperatures at comparatively low costs, are also the technologies that are likely to create the greatest amount of social and political conflict. To address this apparent paradox, we argue that an institutional setting for researching and potentially deploying climate engineering technologies is needed which creates a sufficiently high degree of social and political legitimacy and addresses a set of specified problems connected to climate engineering. We present a proposal for such an institutional setting that explicitly addresses these concerns. Policy Implications • Research on and potential uses of climate engineering technologies need to be coordinated internationally in a multilateral institutional setting. • An international climate engineering agency should be created that coordinates and disseminates research on climate engineering. • Research results should be evaluated by the IPCC. • Decision-making on climate engineering should occur within the UNFCCC, where the states party to that convention should decide on norms and rules that govern climate engineering (regarding, for example, an upper limit for manipulations of the radiation balance, a uniform metric for making different responses to climate change comparable, and a time limited moratorium on field tests and deployments of climate engineering technologies).

Opening up the societal debate on climate engineering: how newspaper frames are changing

The use of climate engineering or geoengineering technologies to combat climate change has been a controversial topic, even in the scientific debate. In recent studies, it has been claimed that the debate on climate engineering technologies may be closing down prematurely, with detrimental effects on the possibility of social and ethical reflection in appraising these controversial technologies. We examined the extent to which the debate on climate engineering is opening up or closing down, analyzing the diversity of English-speaking newspaper frames in the period 2006–2011. The results provide strong support for an opening of the debate, especially since 2009, given the decline of overly deterministic frames, the emergence of frames related to sociopolitical issues and an overall more balanced distribution of the various frames. This provides evidence that different perspectives are voiced in the public debate, which may enable societies to critically reflect on these emerging technologies.

Climate engineering and climate tipping-point scenarios

Many scientists fear that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have set the Earth on a path of significant, possibly catastrophic, changes. This includes the possibility of exceeding particular thresholds or tipping points in the climate system. In response, governments have proposed emissions reduction targets, but no agreement has been reached. These facts have led some scientists and economists to suggest research into climate engineering. In this paper, we analyze the potential value of one climate engineering technology family, known as solar radiation management (SRM) to manage the risk of differing tipping-point scenarios. We find that adding SRM to a policy of emissions controls may be able to help manage the risk of climate tipping points and that its potential benefits are large. However, the technology does not exist and important indirect costs (e.g., change in precipitation) are not well understood. Thus, we conclude the SRM merits a serious research effort to better understand its efficiency and safety.