8 Items

Clouds in a blue sky

Flickr CC/arbyreed

Journal Article - Science

Social Science Research to Inform Solar Geoengineering

    Authors:
  • Tyler Felgenhauer
  • William A. Pizer
  • Massimo Tavoni
  • Mariia Belaia
  • Mark E. Borsuk
  • Arunabha Ghosh
  • Garth Heutel
  • Daniel Heyen
  • Christine Merk
  • Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
  • Jesse L. Reynolds
  • Katharine Ricke
  • Wilfried Rickels
  • Soheil Shayegh
  • Wake Smith
  • Simone Tilmes
  • Jonathan B. Wiener
| Nov. 12, 2021

Professors David Keith and Joseph Aldy and their co-authors say deeper social science research could contribute to policy decisions on this tool to address climate change.

Earthrise over the Moon

NASA/Bill Anders

Journal Article - Nature Sustainability

Policy Design for the Anthropocene

    Authors:
  • Thomas Sterner
  • Edward B. Barbier
  • Ian Bateman
  • Inge van den Bijgaart
  • Anne-Sophie Crépin
  • Ottmar Edenhofer
  • Carolyn Fischer
  • Wolfgang Habla
  • John Hassler
  • Olof Johansson-Stenman
  • Andreas Lange
  • Stephen Polasky
  • Johan Rockström
  • Henrik G. Smith
  • Will Steffen
  • James E. Wilen
  • Francisco Alpízar
  • Christian Azar
  • Donna Carless
  • Carlos Chávez
  • Jessica Coria
  • Gustav Engström
  • Sverker C. Jagers
  • Gunnar Köhlin
  • Åsa Löfgren
  • Håkan Pleijel
  • Amanda Robinson
| 2019

The authors examine the complexities of designing policies that can keep Earth within the biophysical limits favorable to human life.

Sunset on the Indian Ocean

NASA

Journal Article - Environmental Research Letters

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Tactics and Costs in the First 15 Years of Deployment

| 2018

We review the capabilities and costs of various lofting methods intended to deliver sulfates into the lower stratosphere. We lay out a future solar geoengineering deployment scenario of halving the increase in anthropogenic radiative forcing beginning 15 years hence, by deploying material to altitudes as high as ~20 km. After surveying an exhaustive list of potential deployment techniques, we settle upon an aircraft-based delivery system. Unlike the one prior comprehensive study on the topic (McClellan et al 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 034019), we conclude that no existing aircraft design—even with extensive modifications—can reasonably fulfill this mission. However, we also conclude that developing a new, purpose-built high-altitude tanker with substantial payload capabilities would neither be technologically difficult nor prohibitively expensive. We calculate early-year costs of ~$1500 ton−1 of material deployed, resulting in average costs of ~$2.25 billion yr−1 over the first 15 years of deployment. We further calculate the number of flights at ~4000 in year one, linearly increasing by ~4000 yr−1. We conclude by arguing that, while cheap, such an aircraft-based program would unlikely be a secret, given the need for thousands of flights annually by airliner-sized aircraft operating from an international array of bases.

Inspiration Point, Canada

Wikimedia CC/Allysa Felix

Journal Article - Economic Letters

Potentially Large Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity Tail Uncertainty

| July 2018

The authors reply to Cox et al. (2018), Nature 553 (7688), 319–322. Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), the link between concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and eventual global average temperatures, has been persistently and perhaps deeply uncertain. Its "likely" range has been approximately between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Centigrade for almost 40 years (Wagner and Weitzman, 2015). Moreover, Roe and Baker (2007), Weitzman (2009), and others have argued that its right-hand tail may be long, "fat" even. Enter Cox et al. (2018), who use an "emergent constraint" approach to characterize the probability distribution of ECS as having a central or best estimate of 2.8℃ with a 66 percent confidence interval of 2.2–3.4℃.

Satellite image of Hurricane Katia (left) making landfall over the Mexican state of Veracruz, Hurricane Irma (center) approaching Cuba, and Hurricane Jose reaching peak intensity

NOAA

Journal Article - Review of Environmental Economics and Policy

Recommendations for Improving the Treatment of Risk and Uncertainty in Economic Estimates of Climate Impacts in the Sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report

| June 04, 2018

Large discrepancies persist between projections of the physical impacts of climate change and economic damage estimates. These discrepancies increase with increasing global average temperature projections. Based on this observation, the authors recommend that in its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) improve its approach to the management of the uncertainties inherent in climate policy decisions.

ash in the upper atmosphere

Wikimedia CC/Peter Shanks

Journal Article - Environmental Politics

Fast, Cheap, and Imperfect? US Public Opinion about Solar Geoengineering

| May 2018

Solar geoengineering, which seeks to cool the planet by reflecting a small fraction of sunlight back into space, has drawn the attention of scientists and policymakers as climate change remains unabated. Unlike mitigation, solar geoengineering could quickly and cheaply lower global temperatures. It is also imperfect. Its environmental impacts remain unpredictable, and its low cost and immediate effects may result in "moral hazard," potentially crowding out costly mitigation efforts. There is little understanding about how the public will respond to such tradeoffs.

Solar One power plant

NREL

Journal Article - Nature Energy

Policy Sequencing toward Decarbonization

| November 2017

Many economists have long held that carbon pricing—either through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade—is the most cost-effective way to decarbonize energy systems, along with subsidies for basic research and development. Meanwhile, green innovation and industrial policies aimed at fostering low-carbon energy technologies have proliferated widely. Most of these predate direct carbon pricing. Low-carbon leaders such as California and the European Union (EU) have followed a distinct policy sequence that helps overcome some of the political challenges facing low-carbon policy by building economic interest groups in support of decarbonization and reducing the cost of technologies required for emissions reductions. However, while politically effective, this policy pathway faces significant challenges to environmental and cost effectiveness.

the passage of day into night in this view of ocean and clouds over Earth

NASA/ISS Crew

Journal Article - Nature Climate Change

Solar Geoengineering Reduces Atmospheric Carbon Burden

| September 2017

Solar geoengineering is no substitute for cutting emissions, but could nevertheless help reduce the atmospheric carbon burden. In the extreme, if solar geoengineering were used to hold radiative forcing constant under RCP8.5, the carbon burden may be reduced by ∼100 GTC, equivalent to 12–26 percent of twenty-first-century emissions at a cost of under US$0.5 per tCO2.