Aaaaaaaaaand Here We Go: Royal Society Floats First Draft Geoengineering Framework

[hatrack]

The Royal Society of London, the world's oldest scientific publisher, has unveiled a proposal to create the first serious framework for future geoengineering experiments. It's a sign that what are still considered drastic and risky measures to combat climate change, like artificially injecting tiny particles into the Earth's atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, are drifting further into the purview of mainstream science. The august scientific body has issued a call to create "an open and transparent review process that ensures such experiments have the necessary social license to operate."

Professor Steve Rayner, the co-director of the Oxford Geoengineering Programme, released what's been christened the 'Berlin Declaration', at the world's first major climate engineering conference currently underway in Germany. Rayner issued a call for amendments from the conference's attendees, which includes top climate scientists, policymakers, and geoengineering scholars.

The draft, in its current iteration, states that "New technologies have the potential to provide significant benefits to society, but they can also be controversial. Indeed the controversies surrounding new technologies have often led to a backlash against their development, as has been seen in the fields of genetically modified organisms and nuclear power." You can read the full draft here—it was distributed at the Climate Engineering Conference in Berlin, where I'll be reporting from all week.

It's specifically focused on a subset of geoengineering projects called solar radiation management, which also includes proposals to brighten clouds over the ocean and to send tiny mirrors into orbit to deflect sunlight. The grander geoengineering projects, which fall into this category, have inspired comparisons to schemes befitting Dr. Evil.

EDIT

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-royal-society-of-london-proposes-framework-for-geoengineering-climate-engineering

[DetlefK]

1. Please stick to the rule of Futurama on this one:

No homeopaths!

[Ghost Dog]

2. An "open and transparent review process..."

Ay, there's the rub.

"an open and transparent review process that ensures such experiments have the necessary social license to operate." ... "the conference's attendees, which includes top climate scientists, policymakers, and geoengineering scholars." ...

How to achieve such an "open and transparent review process," something much needed in all spheres of public policy, of public life, in any putative democracy or, indeed, in an anarcho-sindicalist polity? Well, for a start, surely:

1. Exclude the politicians and other such "policymakers" from the public review process: their job is not to intrude upon the public debate, but to receive and execute instructions based on the conclusions arrived at by said review process;

2. Exclude all corporations and representatives of corporations. Exclude the 'power of money' and other such nefarious influences, exclude, indeed, any and all economic considerations: this issue is bigger than all of that, and economic systems can much more easily adapt to rapid change than can environmental systems.

Following such principles I'd suggest, under UN auspices, the Human Rights Committee, for example, to open up a secure (ie free from psyops and other such interference) open internet channel as a forum for the review/debate including adecuate finance for all forms of openly-available media formats, including broadcast-quality streaming video (make it more interesting than the usual TV, or even what's on facebook).

Open and transparent, and focused on the issues, is what's absolutely necessary, here and everywhere.

This, of course, the neo-Fascists will never allow, since it goes completely against their political philosophy which states that the 'public' is incapable of running its own affairs so therefore a superhuman elite overclass is needed to govern (in its own interest).

/off rant (sorry).

[Duppers]

3. first how about stop burning fossil fuels

Which produces all the carbon which has caused this coming nightmare.

Oh no, can't talk about that. Wind turbines kill birds...solar panels are expensive and ugly...etc.

[OnlinePoker]

4. Better some framework than no framework.

Without some sort of oversight, you'll have asses dumping iron into the ocean like that guy did off Haida Gwaii last year.

[n2doc]

5. The only way anything will happen is if the rich can make money off of it

If they can make money both by causing the problem and mitigating it, they are even happier. See War, rebuilding.