Hey John, thank you for the article! I feel that there is substantial confusion regarding whether to delay or even accelerate research into SRM and similar stuff.
The argument against researching geoengineering methods seems to be that having SRM available in the short-term would do more harm than good. However, this makes the fundamental assumption that research enables geoengineering in the first place. In my view, the “how to” deploy geoengineering is already public. Deployment (unilateral or not) could happen now.
If one assumes the „information hazard to be out of the box“, all that further geoengineering research does is reduce our uncertainty regarding the effects of environmental interventions. This seems to be a good thing.
I also believe that (in the mid-term) geoengineering can be done for 1 billion $ or less as Marine Cloud Brightening seems to be potentially cheaper to implement and possibly harder to detect and trace. Furthermore, cost estimates do not account for accelerating technological progress that could cut costs relative to income even further in the next decades.
As I argue in the piece, I don’t think deployment could happen now, at least for stratospheric aerosol injection. I don’t think it will happen until there is significant within-country demand for SAI at least among all major powers. We are a long long way away from that. The governance challenges for things like marine cloud brightening are lower so I agree that could plausibly be used much sooner.
The information/attention hazards depends not only on the idea of solar geoengineering but how much it is discussed. This is widely accepted in eg biorisk where many researchers will not mention published papers on gain of function research. It is clear that further scientific discussion and attention would increase the info/attention hazard.
My main concern with SAI research is that it is a waste of money. The case is less clear for more regional solar geo
Hey John, thank you for the article! I feel that there is substantial confusion regarding whether to delay or even accelerate research into SRM and similar stuff.
The argument against researching geoengineering methods seems to be that having SRM available in the short-term would do more harm than good. However, this makes the fundamental assumption that research enables geoengineering in the first place. In my view, the “how to” deploy geoengineering is already public. Deployment (unilateral or not) could happen now.
If one assumes the „information hazard to be out of the box“, all that further geoengineering research does is reduce our uncertainty regarding the effects of environmental interventions. This seems to be a good thing.
I also believe that (in the mid-term) geoengineering can be done for 1 billion $ or less as Marine Cloud Brightening seems to be potentially cheaper to implement and possibly harder to detect and trace. Furthermore, cost estimates do not account for accelerating technological progress that could cut costs relative to income even further in the next decades.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Hello! thanks for this
As I argue in the piece, I don’t think deployment could happen now, at least for stratospheric aerosol injection. I don’t think it will happen until there is significant within-country demand for SAI at least among all major powers. We are a long long way away from that. The governance challenges for things like marine cloud brightening are lower so I agree that could plausibly be used much sooner.
The information/attention hazards depends not only on the idea of solar geoengineering but how much it is discussed. This is widely accepted in eg biorisk where many researchers will not mention published papers on gain of function research. It is clear that further scientific discussion and attention would increase the info/attention hazard.
My main concern with SAI research is that it is a waste of money. The case is less clear for more regional solar geo
I largely agree!