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Progress in Physical Geography Progress in Physical Geography http://ppg.sagepub.com/ Climate change : Climate engineering through stratospheric aerosol injection Mike Hulme Progress in Physical Geography 2012 36: 694 originally published online 9 August 2012 DOI: 10.1177/0309133312456414 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ppg.sagepub.com/content/36/5/694 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Progress in Physical Geography can be found at: Email Alerts: http://ppg.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://ppg.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://ppg.sagepub.com/content/36/5/694.refs.html >> Version of Record - Sep 19, 2012 OnlineFirst Version of Record - Aug 9, 2012 What is This? Downloaded from ppg.sagepub.com at Edinburgh University on December 16, 2012 Progress report Progress in Physical Geography 36(5) 694–705 ª The Author(s) 2012 Climate change: Climate Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav engineering through DOI: 10.1177/0309133312456414 stratospheric aerosol injection ppg.sagepub.com Mike Hulme University of East Anglia, UK Abstract In this progress report on climate change, I examine the growing literature dealing with the proposal to engineer global climate through the deliberate injection of aerosols into the stratosphere. This is just one of a wide range of technology proposals to geoengineer the climate, but one in particular which has gained the attention of Earth System science researchers and which is attracting wider public debate. I review the current status of this technology by exploring a number of different dimensions of the proposal: its history and philosophical and ethical implications; how it is framed in public discourse and perceived by citizens; its economic, political and governance characteristics; and how the proposed technology is being researched through numerical modelling and field experimentation. Unlike many other geoengineering interventions, stratospheric aerosol injection has no additional societal co-benefits: its sole raison d’etre would be to offset planetary heating caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. The deployment of such a technology would have profound implications for the view humans have of themselves in relation to the non-human world. Keywords climate change, geoengineering, public engagement, science governance, solar radiation management, strato- spheric aerosol injection I Introduction This is not a review of the much wider field of deliberate engineering of the Earth’s climate This is the second of three progress reports I am (sometimes referred to as ‘geoengineering’, writing for Progress in Physical Geography although this term is rather imprecise). This covering the broad theme of (anthropogenic) topic would be too broad for a short progress climate change. Two years ago I reviewed the report and a good introduction exists in the form growing scholarly literature examining (criti- of the Royal Society’s (2009) report on geoengi- cally or otherwise) the knowledge-making prac- neering (see also popular books such as tices of the IPCC (Hulme and Mahony, 2010). Here, I turn my attention to another feature of cli- mate change discourse which has gained salience in certain scientific, political and social settings Corresponding author: Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia, Science, Society and in recent years, namely the prospect of control- Sustainability (3S) Group, School of Environmental ling the Earth’s heat balance through deliberate Sciences, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK injection of aerosols into the stratosphere. Email: [email protected] Downloaded from ppg.sagepub.com at Edinburgh University on December 16, 2012 Hulme 695 Goodell, 2010, and Kintisch, 2010a). The tech- therefore divided into five sections dealing nical and environmental aspects of many of with, respectively: context and history; philo- these other forms of intervention have been sophy and ethics; framings, discourse and pub- comprehensively reviewed by Vaughan and lic perceptions; economics, politics and Lenton (2011). Rather, this review reports on governance; and numerical modelling and studies which consider the specific technology field experimentation. of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which I survey the literature in this order because at is itself merely one technology within the the very heart of SAI technology lies a series of geoengineering family of solar radiation man- crucial questions about, inter alia, the meaning agement (SRM) interventions. I focus on SAI of nature, the human desire for climate control, because of the danger that the policy and public the ethics of technology and the public govern- discourse around geoengineering ‘closes down’ ance of science. Earth System scientists, atmo- on this particular technology (cf. Stirling, spheric engineers and physical geographers 2008): this technology has been deemed who embark on research into the technical ‘affordable’ and ‘effective’ (Royal Society, feasibility and environmental sensitivities of 2009) and substantial work research into SAI such interventions need alerting to these prior is now being undertaken. It therefore demands questions emerging from human imagination close critical scrutiny. and public concern (cf. Macnaghten and Owen, SAI might be thought of as deliberate ‘global 2011). The literature reviewed here therefore dimming’ (Wild et al., 2007) with the intention extends well beyond physical geography and of offsetting the accumulation of heat in the includes publications in science and technology lower atmosphere and oceans caused by rising studies, policy studies, political science, envi- concentrations of greenhouse gases. The prog- ronmental sociology, philosophy of science and ress report does not survey other SRM tech- human geography. niques such as cloud-whitening or surface albedo enhancements, nor the other geoengi- neering family of Carbon Dioxide Removal II Context and history (CDR) techniques. As Robock (2008, 2011a) The growth of scientific, scholarly, political and points out, the philosophical, ethical and gov- public attention to the idea of stratospheric aero- ernance aspects of SRM and CDR interventions sol injection is frequently attributed to an article are radically different; and, as I suggest here, written in 2006 in the journal Climatic Change some of these aspects with regard to SAI are by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric che- also particularly distinctive. mist Paul Crutzen (Crutzen, 2006). Although Nor is this a review of merely the numerical the idea of SAI was not new at this time (cf. simulation studies of SAI which have been Budyko, 1977; NAS, 1992), Crutzen (2006: conducted using a variety of Earth System 212) argued that ‘the usefulness of artificially models to explore the atmospheric and biogeo- enhancing Earth’s albedo and thereby cooling chemical response to aerosol injection. My climate by adding sunlight reflecting aerosol concern is much broader than this. The very in the stratosphere might again be explored and idea of deliberately modifying the composition debated as a way to ... counteract the climate of the stratosphere to effect a global system forcing of growing CO2 emissions’. Although response – namely some form of temperature recognizing the important legal, ethical and regulation or ‘global climate control’ – evokes societal dimensions of such an undertaking, a wide range of cultural, social, political and Cruzten (2006: 216) called for ‘active scientific ethical responses. The progress report is research of the kind of geo-engineering Downloaded from ppg.sagepub.com at Edinburgh University on December 16, 2012 696 Progress in Physical Geography 36(5) discussed in this paper’. Six years later, such example, claimed it to be the most ‘affordable’ active research is now taking place. and ‘effective’ of all the geoengineering tech- With SAI grouped alongside a range of other nologies they surveyed (Royal Society, 2009). large-scale climate intervention technologies, The present context in which SAI has gained rather loosely labelled together as ‘geoengineer- this emblematic status needs to be understood ing’, Crutzen’s 2006 article prompted signifi- against a much longer history of human desire cant scientific attention being given to the idea for climate control. Fleming’s excellent histori- of deliberate engineering of the Earth’s climate. cal survey of human efforts to ‘control’ climate For example, a simple Scopus search for ‘solar (Fleming, 2010) is recommended as the place to radiation management’ in peer-reviewed start such an examination (see also Keith, 2000; journal article titles, keywords and abstracts for a critical assessment of Fleming’s history, finds none pre-dating 2007. It has also prompted see Hamblin, 2011). The desire to ‘improve’ cli- significant media attention – especially in mate for human benefit is a long-standing one, Anglophone nations (Buck, 2012a; Nerlich and whether on regional scales through land modifi- Jaspal, 2012) – and the emergence of a new cation, locally through cloud-seeding, or public discourse about ‘Plan B’ and ‘global domestically through indoor and outdoor tem- climate control’. perature regulation (e.g. Hitchings, 2011; Within three years of Crutzen’s paper, the Meyer, 2002a, 2002b). The distinctiveness of first national academy assessment of ‘geoengi- SAI should be understood and analysed in this neering’
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