Publication Date:
2013-11-18
Description:
A number of climate engineering ideas have been proposed to deal with global climate change. The proposed methods either treat the causes or the symptoms of climate change through enhance carbon sequestration or the management of incoming solar radiation. Currently, the effectiveness of these methods and their secondary effects, which have the potential to cause catastrophic damage, are poorly understood. Although climate engineering is a controversial subject, evaluating the proposed methods is important because artificial manipulation of the climate may be necessary or desired by society at some time in the future and thus, the benefits and risks need to be quantified. Furthermore, since the costs of some methods are low enough that private entities or individual governments could implement them without a full global consensus, having a thorough understanding of them is necessary to prevent potentially dangerous actions. We use an Earth system model, which can identify not only local but also global feedback effects, to evaluate a number of climate engineering methods that are either ocean-based or will have a strong impact on the oceans. The methods include ocean fertilization, CO2 sequestering ocean pipes, large-scale afforestation, enhanced chemical weathering, and solar radiation management. Although these methods have been studied individually before, their effectiveness and risks, relative to one another, have not been evaluated with one model as we have done. Our results identify not only the effectiveness and risks of the methods, but also some of the related economic, political, and societal issues that need further study.
Type:
Conference or Workshop Item
,
NonPeerReviewed
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