As interest in geoengineering grows, it may be time for the federal government to start its own research program, experts told a House panel yesterday.
David Keith, a University of Calgary physicist, said a proposal to cool the planet by injecting particles into the stratosphere to simulate a volcanic eruption could be done "a few hundred times more cheaply" than cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.
"The low price tag is very attractive, but it raises the risk of unilateral action," he told members of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. "The cost is so little that the richest people on the planet could afford to buy an ice age."
That, Keith said, means it's important for governments to begin to develop programs to assess environmental and geopolitical risks and begin considering how to regulate potential geoengineering field tests or eventual large-scale deployments.
Rob Jackson, a biologist at Duke University, said that determining the cost of geoengineering techniques, both monetary and environmental, is likely to require complex analyses that, in the United States, might be best handled by a federal research program split among several agencies.
'Solar radiation management' carries poorly understood risks
While much attention has focused on "solar radiation management" techniques, including aerosol injections, Jackson said geoengineering also encompasses deceptively simple practices that may still carry risks that aren't fully understood.
"Imagine providing incentives for planting trees on former croplands or pasture," he said. "This activity will remove carbon from air as the trees grow."
But trees also tend to be darker than the grasses they would replace in this scenario -- in order to absorb more sunlight.
"The same plantation that cools the Earth by removing carbon could warm it by reflecting less light," Jackson said. "And your new plantation affects the Earth in other ways, too. "Trees typically use more water than other plants, and this increased evaporation cools land locally, loads energy into the atmosphere and produces clouds that absorb or reflect sunlight and produce rain. Overall, these biophysical changes can affect climate more than carbon removal."
As it now stands, the federal government spends little on geoengineering research, said Philip Rasch, chief climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
"I think that the total grants from U.S. agencies today for geoengineering research amounts to about $200,000 a year," he said. "If you add in some invisible funding from faculty members or scientists like myself donating their time, it might double. If you add in foundation money, it might come to a million dollars."
Poor government funding, but many freelancers
The scientist said it would be "very easy to make a big difference" with a small increase in federal research funding. Among the agencies that could contribute to a federal geoengineering research program, Rasch said, are NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"There are many outstanding unresolved and important issues that need to be addressed if one wants to understand geoengineering better," he said. "There are a bunch of first-class research scientists in the U.S. and Europe now working for free in their spare time to think about this, but there are some things that take money to solve. And a much better job could be done if there were a funded program for geoengineering."
The hearing yesterday was part of a joint U.S.-U.K. effort to examine geoengineering. Lawmakers on the House Science and Technology Committee plan to collaborate and share findings with their colleagues on the U.K. House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee (ClimateWire, Nov. 6, 2009).
Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said that in addition to working with lawmakers in the United Kingdom, he would like to discuss geoengineering "with similar committees in other E.U. parliaments."
"I think we will have other countries that will join us," he said. "If we're going to do anything in this area, it needs to be done globally."
Yesterday's hearing was the committee's second on geoengineering. The panel plans a third hearing later this spring to examine governance issues.
This article was authored by Lauren Morello and is posted courtesy of E&E Publishing, LLC/ClimateWire. To access the ClimateWire web site, go here.