scholarly journals Who May Geoengineer: Global Domination, Revolution, and Solar Radiation Management

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (01) ◽  
pp. 138-165
Author(s):  
Patrick Smith
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Solar Radiation Management ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
The Face ◽  
Severe Climate Change ◽  
Radiation Management

This paper uses a novel account of non-ideal political action that can justify radical responses to severe climate injustice, including and especially deliberate attempts to engineer the climate system in order reflect sunlight into space and cooling the planet. In particular, it discusses the question of what those suffering from climate injustice may do in order to secure their fundamental rights and interests in the face of severe climate change impacts. Using the example of risky geoengineering strategies such as sulfate aerosol injections, I argue that peoples that are innocently subject to severely negative climate change impacts may have a special permission to engage in large-scale yet risky climate interventions to prevent them. Furthermore, this can be true even if those interventions wrongly harm innocent people.

Situating and Abandoning Geoengineering: A Typology of Five Responses to Dangerous Climate Change

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (01) ◽  
pp. 23-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Heyward
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Solar Radiation Management ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Government Organizations ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Potential Strategy ◽  
Dangerous Climate Change ◽  
Radiation Management

Geoengineering, the “deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment in order to counteract anthropogenic climate change” (Shepherd et al. 2009, 1), is attracting increasing interest. As well as the Royal Society, various scientific and government organizations have produced reports on the potential and challenge of geoengineering as a potential strategy, alongside mitigation and adaptation, to avoid the vast human and environmental costs that climate change is thought to bring (Blackstock et al. 2009; GAO 2010; Long et al. 2011; Rickels et al. 2011). “Geoengineering” covers a diverse range of proposals conventionally divided into carbon dioxide removal (CDR) proposals and solar radiation management (SRM) proposals. This article argues that “geoengineering” should not be regarded as a third category of response to climate change, but should be disaggregated. Technically, CDR and SRM are quite different and discussing them together under the rubric of geoengineering can give the impression that all the technologies in the two categories of response always raise similar challenges and political issues when this is not necessarily the case. However, CDR and SRM should not be completely subsumed into the preexisting categories of mitigation and adaptation. Instead, they can be regarded as two parts of a five-part continuum of responses to climate change. To make this case, the first section of this article discusses whether geoengineering is distinctive, and the second situates CDR and SRM in relation to other responses to climate change.

scholarly journals Widespread variation in heat tolerance and symbiont load are associated with growth tradeoffs in the coral Acropora hyacinthus in Palau

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Cornwell ◽  
Katrina Armstrong ◽  
Nia S Walker ◽  
Marilla Lippert ◽  
Victor Nestor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Habitat Restoration ◽  
Natural Resistance ◽  
Lower Growth ◽  
Coral Reef Resilience ◽  
The Face ◽  
Lower Growth Rate ◽  
Acropora Hyacinthus ◽  
The Cost

Climate change is dramatically changing ecosystem composition and productivity, leading scientists to consider the best approaches to map natural resistance and foster ecosystem resilience in the face of these changes. Here we present results from a large-scale experimental assessment of coral bleaching resistance, a critical trait for coral population persistence as oceans warm, in 221 colonies of the coral Acropora hyacinthus across 37 reefs in Palau. We find that bleaching resistant individuals inhabit most reefs but are found more often in warmer microhabitats. Our survey also found wide variation in symbiont concentration among colonies, and that colonies with lower symbiont load tended to be more bleaching resistant. By contrast, our data show that low symbiont load comes at the cost of lower growth rate, a tradeoff that may operate widely among corals across environments. Corals with high bleaching resistance have been suggested as a source for habitat restoration or selective breeding in order to increase coral reef resilience to climate change. Our maps show where these resilience corals can be found, but the existence of tradeoffs with heat resistance may suggest caution in unilateral use of this one trait in restoration.

Self-Undermining Rhetoric in the Past and Present

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Seth Levine
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Economic Insecurity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Broad Concept ◽  
The Face

This chapter considers the prospects for political change in the face of communicative barriers to collective action. It begins to address this question by identifying several of the most well-known historical and recent moments in which there was large-scale mobilization on some economic insecurity issues. This discussion, in concert with the empirical findings in this book, helps clarify the prospects for political action (and policy change) on these issues. The chapter then uses the findings from the book to identify three types of people that are most likely to become active. It also talks about the implications of having this (narrower) set of people active as opposed to the full range of people that find the issues to be important. It concludes by reiterating how self-undermining rhetoric is a broad concept that can apply in many different situations beyond those considered herein.

A gendered approach to understanding climate change impacts: lessons from a coastal region of Bangladesh.

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
S. Momtaz ◽  
M. Asaduzzaman ◽  
Z. Kabir
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Household Surveys ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Key Informant ◽  
The Face

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to understand the vulnerability of women's livelihoods to climate change impacts in Bangladesh. Data were collected through a survey of 150 randomly selected women from a sample of households. Focus group discussions, key informant interviews, participant observations, and a transect walk, provided supporting information to substantiate the household surveys. The chapter first outlines the theoretical foundation on which the research is based. This is followed by examining women's vulnerability in the study area. The chapter then describes women's coping strategies in the face of climate change-induced disasters. The chapter further explores women's adaptive capacity through the examination of their access to various services. It ends with a set of recommendations for policy makers in order to improve the situation of women's vulnerability.

scholarly journals Anthropocenic Limitations to Climate Engineering

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Oomen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Solar Radiation ◽  
Solar Radiation Management ◽  
Climate Engineering ◽  
Engineering Research ◽  
Future Experimentation ◽  
Fundamental Objection ◽  
Climatic System ◽  
Radiation Management ◽  
And Control

The development of climate engineering research has historically depended on mostly western, holistic perceptions of climate and climate change. Determinations of climate and climate change as a global system have played a defining role in the development of climate engineering. As a result, climate engineering research in general, and solar radiation management (SRM) in particular, is primarily engaged in research of quantified, whole-Earth solutions. I argue that in the potential act of solar radiation management, a view of climate change that relies on the holistic western science of the climatic system is enshrined. This view, dependent on a deliberative intentionality that seems connected to anthropocenic notions of responsibility and control, profoundly influences the assumptions and research methods connected to climate engineering. While this may not necessarily be to the detriment of climate engineering proposals—in fact, it may be the only workable conception of SRM—it is a conceptual limit to the enterprise that has to be acknowledged. Additionally, in terms of governance, reliability, and cultural acceptance, this limit could be a fundamental objection to future experimentation (or implementation).

scholarly journals Evidence for changes in historic and future groundwater levels in the UK

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Jackson ◽  
John P. Bloomfield ◽  
Jonathan D. Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Climate Indices ◽  
Groundwater Levels ◽  
Groundwater Drought ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk

We examine the evidence for climate-change impacts on groundwater levels provided by studies of the historical observational record, and future climate-change impact modelling. To date no evidence has been found for systematic changes in groundwater drought frequency or intensity in the UK, but some evidence of multi-annual to decadal coherence of groundwater levels and large-scale climate indices has been found, which should be considered when trying to identify any trends. We analyse trends in long groundwater level time-series monitored in seven observation boreholes in the Chalk aquifer, and identify statistically significant declines at four of these sites, but do not attempt to attribute these to a change in a stimulus. The evidence for the impacts of future climate change on UK groundwater recharge and levels is limited. The number of studies that have been undertaken is small and different approaches have been adopted to quantify impacts. Furthermore, these studies have generally focused on relatively small regions and reported local findings. Consequently, it has been difficult to compare them between locations. We undertake some additional analysis of the probabilistic outputs of the one recent impact study that has produced coherent multi-site projections of changes in groundwater levels. These results suggest reductions in annual and average summer levels, and increases in average winter levels, by the 2050s under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, at most of the sites modelled, when expressed by the median of the ensemble of simulations. It is concluded, however, that local hydrogeological conditions can be an important control on the simulated response to a future climate projection.

Impacts and Adaptation of Climate Change on Urban Economic System: A Perspective from the Urban Planning

2012 ◽  
Vol 174-177 ◽  
pp. 2270-2277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Qiang Wei ◽  
Yi Ping Fang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Economics ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Heat Island ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Island Effect ◽  
System A ◽  
The Face ◽  
Economic Developments

Climate change has a significant impact on the environment and is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of nature disaster and create new hazards (e.g., rise in sea level). As densely populated and resource-intensive regions, cities will experience the enhanced heat island effect, flooding or water scarcity as a result of extremes in rainfall, and severe storms may devastate entire settlements. In the face of a projected rise in the frequency and severity of nature disasters due to socio-economic developments and climate change the question arises of how to adapt to and ameliorate impacts of natural disasters. This paper provides some insights into this subject from an urban planning perspective and takes a review on the aspects of climate change impacts on urban economics, based on the practices of mitigation and adaptation experiences, some strategies of adaptation are provided and discussed at last.

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