SANDPIT: Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP)

There is international consensus that dangerous levels of climate change must be avoided. Yet without radical changes in the ways energy is sourced and used, analyses suggest that there is a very real risk that the Earth will start to experience unacceptably damaging and disruptive environmental change later this century. What future actions can be taken to safeguard environmental quality, ecosystems, agriculture, economy, and societies if the conventional approaches to tackling climate change, through mitigation and adaptation, prove insufficient? Could we take direct control of our planet's temperature in an emergency? Deliberately manipulating the Earth's climate is not a novel idea, however increasing awareness and concern about the potentially serious nature of a much warmer climate has led to recent debates regarding the ethics and feasibility of making a direct intervention in the Earth's climate and natural systems to counteract global warming and the other known impacts of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.As this new research field, known as 'geoengineering', has gained in international profile, ideas for either removing CO2 from the atmosphere or directly altering the amount of sunlight absorbed at the surface have proliferated. Suggested means of removing CO2 span marine and terrestrial biospheres, from enhancing marine productivity by fertilizing the surface of the ocean with nutrients, to adding lime to neutralize the CO2 acidity. Direct cooling of the surface could potentially be done by injecting sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere or planting more reflective varieties of crops. However, despite the effort and scientific ingenuity being brought to bear in thinking up different geoengineering schemes, all remain un-quantified in their effectiveness, particularly at the regional scale. Some are unlikely ever to work as envisaged, and many contain the potential for undesirable climatic side-effects and risks to the environment and to society. Currently we have insufficient information to inform the debate we need to have on geoengineering. The Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals ('IAGP') is an interdisciplinary project which will begin to address this gap in our knowledge, paying particular attention to the potential for side-effects and unanticipated consequences of geoengineering schemes. The project will develop a comprehensive evaluation framework (involving stakeholders and publics), which will allow an in-depth comparison of all major geoengineering proposals. The project research tools will include state-of-the-art computer representations of the Earth system, accounting for ocean circulation, sea-ice, and greenhouse warming and atmospheric processes and dynamics, as well as the cycling of carbon and nutrients within the ocean. Important questions to be addressed include: whether different technologies can be combined to maximize mitigation benefits and minimize unwanted risks, how might geoengineering schemes be adequately controlled and 'turned off' quickly if needed, how to include the public's views in how benefits and side-effects are defined in order for policy-makers to take informed decisions. The project combines Earth system modelling and deliberative engagement with stakeholders and publics to ensure the evaluation is accountable to a variety of values and criteria and ensures that issues and society's values are centrally incorporated within the evaluation.The results of our analysis of the effectiveness and implications of different CO2 removal and direct cooling schemes will not only have direct policy relevance through informing decisions about our global environmental future, but will be carefully tailored to give wider audiences information in a sufficiently clear and meaningful way that the debates surrounding geoengineering can be progressed further within society.

The beneficiaries Policymakers and the public are the main beneficiaries, but there are benefits for researchers, and for commercial groups developing technology in this area. How they will benefit Defining an integrated assessment framework, and quantifying metrics through first-rate climate modelling, will provide a vital step in appraising geoengineering proposals. Policymakers and the public will benefit by the provision of timely and informative policy-relevant science in the emerging field of geoengineering. Others will benefit from clear indications of the requirements expected of geoengineering schemes. Ensuring the benefit Integral to this project is stakeholder engagement. Measures to be taken to ensure that beneficiaries such as policymakers and public have access to our work include: I. Website - the principle tool for dissemination and contacts will be the website, providing focus for public knowledge exchange throughout the project and the principle vehicle for dissemination of key milestones. A stakeholder specific area of the website will be username/password controlled. II. Stakeholder engagement - two one-day workshops to help identify and select metrics for the assessment of geoengineering schemes, and a final deliberative assessment exercise with public and policy stakeholders. Biannual stakeholder e-newsletters will maintain contact and engagement. III. Public perception study - the engagement of the public in a study of attitudes towards geoengineering IV. Dissemination event - distribution of a final policy-orientated report at a one-day event. V. Publications - International peer-reviewed publications for the science and policy communities. We expect that, through the continuous engagement with stakeholders, benefits will become evident at an early stage. This is appropriate as public discussion of geoengineering is already current. However the principal results of the modelling and climate-control studies, as well as conclusions from the final deliberative workshops will become available from years 3 and 4 of the project. Managing Dissemination and Exploitation In addition to the engagement programme which is an integral part of the research (see above), we will establish an Advisory Panel to provide communication with science policy expertise in government and other bodies (DECC, CCC, Royal Society). This will ensure currency and knowledge exchange to help steer the project. We also aim to build on the network of expertise from the EPSRC/NERC Sandpit event, specifically via interaction with the SPICE project team. The stakeholder engagement will improve the relevance and therefore impact of the policy-relevant science, and the stakeholder network will provide a first point of dissemination of outputs. Public interactions either in-depth via focus groups/deliberative assessment or through the website, will enable the impact of the work conducted here to be informed by and disseminated to the public throughout the project. Within the project team, all members will be involved in impact activities, through participation, and expert advice. Frequent team meetings and a dedicated project coordinator will facilitate this focus on impact. Our relevant track record and experience is: Pidgeon, Ridgwell and Forster have significant relevant experience in public advice and engagement with policy makers in the area of environment, Darton with generating and applying metric sets. Vaughan will have support of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the School of Environmental Sciences, to facilitate the skill acquisition necessary to conduct the stakeholder workshop activities. Website designer Delgado-Esteban has set up and maintained high-quality websites in related areas including: www.lwec.org.uk, www.tyndall.ac.uk, www.adamproject.eu and www.gear.uea.ac.uk.