Why has geoengineering been legitimised by the IPCC? | Science ... http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/sep/2...

Why has geoengineering been

legitimised by the IPCC?
This morning's publication of the IPCC's summary for
policymakers tells a familiar and gloomy story of the science of
climate change. The big surprise is the decision to mention the
controversial idea of geoengineering

Planet Earth. Photograph: Corbis

Today marked an important punctuation mark in the story of humanity's attempts to get
to grips with climate change as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
published its summary for policymakers (pdf here). Climate sceptic journalists and
interest groups will be making the most of the tiniest surprises and variations in the
climate scientists' new representation of the state of their art. But the evidence is largely
unsurprising. For all the talk of a "hiatus" in warming, the IPCC continues to fly its one
major fact: more greenhouse gases means more warming.

The big surprise comes in the final paragraph, with a mention of geoengineering. In the

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Why has geoengineering been legitimised by the IPCC? | Science ... http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/sep/2...

scientific world, a final paragraph is often the place to put caveats and suggestions for
further research. In the political world, a final paragraph is a coda, a big finish, the place
for a triumphant, standing-ovation-inducing summary. The IPCC tries to straddle both
worlds. The addition of the word "geoengineering" to the most important report on
climate change for six years counts as a big surprise.

There are many reasons to be worried about geoengineering. The idea is old. Countless
inventions have been proposed as a technological fix to climate change, but scientists
have only recently taken it seriously. Their previous reticence was largely due to a
concern that talking about easy solutions would wobble the consensus on the need for a
cut in emissions that had been painstakingly built over decades. Geoengineering was
taboo too seductive, too dangerous and too uncertain. It is now moving towards the
mainstream of climate science. As the number of geoengineering studies published
shoots up, it is now acceptable to discuss it in polite scientific company.

There is an argument that the taboo has already been broken and that, like sex
education, it therefore has to be discussed. Those of us interested in geoengineering
were expecting it to appear in one or two of the main reports when they are published in
the coming months. To bring it up front is to give it premature legitimacy.

The description of geoengineering provided in the summary document is suitably

critical. The report points to troubles with both carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the
atmosphere and solar radiation management (SRM) reflecting a bit of sunlight back
into space. In the case of CDR, the sheer scale of the clean-up makes it grotesquely
expensive and difficult, and SRM would likely have unintended, unpredictable and
disastrous effects on regional weather, among many other troubles (see this pdf for
more). But the paragraph still states that: "Modelling indicates that SRM methods, if
realizable, have the potential to substantially offset a global temperature rise." This
science is still very young. Climate science historian James Fleming describes such
studies as "geo-scientific speculation". To include mention of geoengineering, and its
supporting "evidence" in a statement of scientific consensus, no matter how layered
with caveats, is extraordinary.

If I were one of the imagined policymakers reading this summary, sitting in a country
whose politicians were unwilling to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions (ie any
country), I would have reached that paragraph and seen a chink of light just large
enough to make me forget all the dark data about how screwed up the planet is. And
that scares me.

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