Additional detail via Additional detail via ScienceNews regarding the statement yesterday by 13 National Academies of Science on the call for additional research into Geoengineering:

The new statement also argues that research could point the way towards developing a stable climate via such things as reforestation and “geoengineering technologies.” Such measures “would complement our greenhouse gas reduction strategies,” it said.

The document didn’t spell out what those geoengineering measures might be, so I asked for clarification from Michael Clegg, Foreign Secretary of the NAS, here in Washington.

“These are essentially engineering approaches to soaking up carbon dioxide,” he explains. “One suggestion that has been made in the past, for example, is the so-called fertilization of the oceans with iron. But none of this has been looked at very carefully from a scientific perspective,” he notes. “So what the statement commits is to organize a conference to look more carefully at some of these possibilities to see whether they’re plausible – whether any of them offer solutions.”

Such a conference could occur within the next 18 months, Clegg says, although he adds that no actual dates have been discussed.

In a joint statement, 13 National Scientific Academies (including those from the G8 as well as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa) have called for "prompt action to deal with the causes of climate change" via both mitigation and adaptation. The document also calls for research on:

"... approaches which may contribute towards maintaining a stable climate (including so-called geoengineering technologies and reforestation), which would complement our greenhouse gas reduction strategies. The G8+5 academies intend to organise a conference to discuss these technologies."

The International Emissions Trading Association has released a whitepaper with recommendations on carbon offset policy in relation to a forthcoming US federal cap-and-trade program. The paper describes how an offset program should be designed to maximize the benefits that offsets can provide to any climate regulatory framework. The white paper is The International Emissions Trading Association has released a whitepaper with recommendations on carbon offset policy in relation to a forthcoming US federal cap-and-trade program. The paper describes how an offset program should be designed to maximize the benefits that offsets can provide to any climate regulatory framework.

The white paper is available here.

Kevin Whilden from Climos was one of the co-authors along with Aimee Barnes from Ecosecurities and David Hunter from IETA.

Given the recent activity at both the IMO LC and at the recent CBD meeting, Climos has issued a statement summarizing our position.

Available here

Also, Climate Wire covered this story this morning.  We note the following quote from Daniel Shepard which provides some color:

“There is no expert or scientific knowledge out there to even base a decision on one way or another, so they sent it to this London Protocol office, to sort of ask them, ‘Do you think we should ban it?’” said Daniel Shepard, a spokesman for the United Nations, in a telephone interview.

We await the guidance from the IMO LC Scientific Group to be released shortly.

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 is a landmark piece of Federal legislation to address the growing problem of climate change. It is comprehensive and innovative, however it misses the mark on one small detail. You can read our comments below. The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 is a landmark piece of Federal legislation to address the growing problem of climate change. It is comprehensive and innovative, however it misses the mark on one small detail. You can read our comments below.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has aroundtable discussion on Geoengineering. Climos is participating along with several other distinguished scientists engaged in research on various large-scale techniques to mitigate climate change, collectively known as geoengineering. There are some very interesting perspectives presented by the panelists. You can read the article posted by Dr. Margaret Leinen and Dan Whaley of Climos, titled "Geoengineering could buy the time needed to develop a sustainable energy economy".

Climate Wire has published a news article (subscription required) on developing nation's concerns over the impacts to ocean from climate change, as well as the impacts from potential 'fixes' such as ocean fertilization. These statements are part of negotiations happening as part of the Marine Biodiversity Working Group of the UN General Assembly (link to daily summaries). The stated reasons for concern over OIF are because of potential "severely negative consequences on marine ecosystems". Interestingly IUCN argued that OIF and any other related activities should undergo strict environmental impact assessments. Last March, Climos engaged Tetratech to develop the first EIA for ocean iron fertilization.

Reuters release…

Oceans absorbing less CO2 may have 1,500 year impact
Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:06pm BST

By Sylvia Westall

VIENNA (Reuters) - Global oceans are soaking up less carbon dioxide, a development that could speed up the greenhouse effect and have an impact for the next 1,500 years, scientists said on Wednesday.

Research from a five-year project funded by the European Union showed the North Atlantic, which along with the Antarctic is of the world’s two vital ocean carbon sinks, is absorbing only half the amount of CO2 that it did in the mid-1990s.

Using recent detailed data, scientists said the amount absorbed is also fluctuating each year, making it hard to predict how and whether the trend will continue and if oceans will be able to perform their vital balancing act in the future.

Oceans soak up around a quarter of annual CO2 emissions, but should they fail to do so in the future the gas would stay in the atmosphere and could accelerate the greenhouse effect, a prospect project director Christoph Heinze called “alarming”.

Oceans are like a “slow-mixing machine”. Carbon absorbed in the North Atlantic takes around 1,500 years to circulate around the world’s seas. This means changes to their fragile balance could be felt long into the future, Heinze said at a geoscience conference in Vienna.

Scientists are still debating the reasons why oceans are absorbing less carbon dioxide. While some point to CO2 saturation, others say it could be caused by a change in surface water circulation, triggered by changes in weather cycles.

Heinze described a “bottleneck effect” because of the large amount of manmade carbon dioxide oceans already store.

“The more CO2 the oceans store, the more difficult it will be for them to take up the additional load from the atmosphere and carbon absorption will stagnate even further,” Heinze said.

Some forms of sea life have suffered from the large amounts of CO2 absorbed, because of changes in acidity levels.

“The seafloor is becoming an increasingly hostile environment,” said Marion Gehlen, from the Laboratory of Climate and Environment Science in France.

“This corrosive water means mollusc organisms have a hard time making their shells and eventually they might not be able to do it at all.”

For the scientists there is only one thing humans can do to resolve the problem — reduce emissions by at least 75 percent.

“We must act now. The good news is that while the negative effects can last a long time, the good things we do will also have an effect for the next 1,500 years,” Heinze said.

“It’s cheap and it’s possible to do this but people must have the will to do it.”

(Editing by Mary Gabriel)

PDF of press release here.
“CARBOOCEAN: How much man-made CO2 can the ocean absorb?”

The UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission recently formed an ad-hoc Consultative Group on Ocean Fertilization in part for the purpose of addressing several scientific questions posed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) London Convention Scientific Group.  Participating were Ken Caldeira, Scott Doney, Ulf Riebesell, Andrew Watson, Phil Boyd, Chris Sabine, Scott Barrett and others.  They have released a statement in advance of the IMO LC SG working session in Guayaquil, Ecuador in May.

Addressed in the statement were three principle questions:

• What constitutes “large scale” in the ocean?
• Is there justification of the need for experiments at scales of order 200km by 200km?
• What is the assessment of the impacts on oceans of experiments at such scales?

A few quotes:

“There is no well-established meaning to “large scale” that would allow it to usefully distinguish between activities that would and activities that would not damage the ocean environment”

“The effects on the fertilized patch of stirring and mixing with water that has not received the fertilization treatment becomes less important near the center of the patch as patch size increases. This would provide incentive to develop experiments at scales of order 200 km by 200 km, this scale being larger than that of typical ocean eddies. For the same reason, it may be easier to assess the influence of surface manipulations on the sinking fluxes of particles when the experiments are at this scale.”

“It is impossible to assess the impacts of experiments through information on spatial scale alone. A host of factors, including rates, amounts, concentration, duration and composition of chemical addition, location, time of year, and so on, could all jointly be determinative of ocean impacts.”

The complete statement is available here. 

Tetra Tech, together with Climos, will develop a Conceptual Model and a Master Environmental Report as part of this process. The Conceptual Model will review the scientific background, experimental history, and recent research results for this technique, in addition to providing a detailed review and exploration of environmental questions and concerns. The Master Environmental Report will provide an environmental management framework to evaluate the characteristics and sensitivities of the affected marine environment. Tetra Tech, together with Climos, will develop a Conceptual Model and a Master Environmental Report as part of this process. The Conceptual Model will review the scientific background, experimental history, and recent research results for this technique, in addition to providing a detailed review and exploration of environmental questions and concerns. The Master Environmental Report will provide an environmental management framework to evaluate the characteristics and sensitivities of the affected marine environment.

James Hansen and Pushker A. Kharecha announce a James Hansen and Pushker A. Kharecha announce a new paper modeling the effect of the world reaching Peak Oil production on atmospheric CO2 levels assuming that coal emissions are phased out by midcentury. The conclusion is that 450 ppm is not an unreasonable ceiling by 2100 if rising prices on allowances and offsets can be sustained and efficiencies can be implemented allowing us to stretch existing reserves.

Climos was mentioned in this week’s Time Magazine cover story “10 Ideas that are Changing the World” under a section (#6) on Geoengineering. While we generally refrain from using the term Geoengineering– since it’s a general catch-all for approaches that treat the symptoms (i.e. warming, as in Solar Radiation Management or SRM) as well as those that address the cause (greenhouse gasses, as in forms of biological sequestration such as OIF and some other chemical and mechanical approaches)– we applaud the generally thoughtful though simplistic tone of the piece which, in short, was “lets research some of these approaches and better understand what our options are.”

We should add that in drawing a distinction between SRM techniques and OIF and other carbon mitigation approaches we intend no slight. Both have their conceptual place and many of the same arguments and cautions apply to both.

Not everyone appreciated the article of course. It quickly drew negative comments from Bill Becker (Presidential Climate Action Partnership) at Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog as well as none other than the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope at HuffPo.

We think both pose the same “false dilemma“, i.e. that to research, and potentially eventually to implement, these options implies that they will be used in place of emissions reductions. Clearly they should not be–and we have never heard any credible voice suggest that they should.

Thankfully there is finally a large and growing worldwide motivation to address emissions–even here in the US the momentum towards such legislation is unmistakeable. (Climos plays an active role in such efforts. For instance, you will find us at every California CARB AB 32 Scoping Plan meeting — the next one is April 4th in Sacramento– as well as involved in efforts at the national and international level. )

More specifically, there seems to be a clear and unsubstantiated assumption that adding tools to mitigate carbon will somehow lessen the motivation to address the underlying cause (emissions). Last year the UN organized the planting of 1 billion trees. This is large scale biological mitigation. We did not see any complaints that this would lessen the pressure on emitters–nor should there be. Lets hope the UN and others, perhaps incentivized by market mechanisms (planting trees costs money too), plant many more. Lest we forget: This problem is large and worsening quickly. We need more options, not fewer–let’s understand what they are.

Becker in particular uses selective quotation to support his argument. Citing cautious comments by Dan Schrag from an Eli Kintish  Science magazine interview of Schrag, Anderson, Chisholm and Victor after the recent geoengineering forum at Harvard University, Becker conveniently ignores other comments from Anderson and Victor and even Schrag himself that we need to understand these options.

“Victor: I agree completely, and let me just add that, in addition to all those factors, this has to be viewed as part of a rational overall strategy for thinking about the problem. Because if the climate proves to be a lot more sensitive–the data on the sea ice I found terrifying, and the evidence keeps coming in–then we will need a quick-response option that you might deploy for a while. It would be truly outrageous if we didn’t think about that option and probably even do some more work on it, and test some elements of it, so we’re ready.”

and

“Anderson: I think that’s right. In my mind, after transitioning from putting geoengineering in the category of an unacceptable approach, just a very few years ago, I think geoengineering will bring a focus to this debate that no other discussion can engender. And I think it’s a focus of our scientific knowledge–what we do and do not know. It’s a focus on the very intimate link between the energy issue and the climate issue. It brings focus on the political structure, and in particular [on] which political leaders bring the blueprint to the table that would actually lead to the negotiation of international treaties and so on.

When you look at all of them together, that’s when you realize that the rates of all these changes are out of control. Regaining control of the system–the global system, the energy structure, the political system–this is the challenge. And I think that’s why geoengineering carries with it the requirement to look at these things together.”

Even Eli’s title for the interview (visible in the browser title bar) characterizes the consensus of the interview differently: “CLIMATE CHANGE: Scientists Say Continued Warming Warrants Closer Look at Drastic Fixes”.

The Becker and Pope articles both also assume there is a substantial risk of catastrophic unintended consequences from these various approaches, while the truth is that a thoughtful evaluation reveals little evidence to support this– the most widely considered techniques (aerosols and OIF) simulate natural events that have happened relatively frequently in geologic time, and will surely happen again. As Anderson remarks in the Science Magazine interview:

“There’s a really clear mathematical formulation [that] tells you how that system responds to those perturbations. … Nature provides us with very large perturbations that we need to study very carefully, including the glacial ice system, including the ocean steps”

Furthermore, the credible scientific voices considering many of these techniques are only recommending that we contemplate or continue a process of small to moderate scale demonstrations, nothing more. These demonstrations should be done by the world’s top scientists, and the results subjected to peer-review. Environmental leaders should be an integral part of this process.

Several comments on the article were made at the Geoengineering groups forum here and here.

There was also a thoughtful article from David Schnare this week at Scripps News, though not directly related to the Time piece.

Recent interview on environmentalresearchweb regarding new Winckler, et al paper Recent interview on environmentalresearchweb regarding new Winckler, et al paper http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/research/33219;
jsessionid=69D426A709D16458584DA96B1113BA3A Mar 5, 2008 Dusting up climate records To date, records of past dust levels in the equatorial Pacific region have been inconsistent, with some showing a rise in dust levels during interglacial periods and others a dust minimum at those times. Now, measurements generated by researchers at Cornell and Columbia universities in the US for three sites in the Pacific Ocean show dust levels consistently 2.5 times higher during glacial periods than for interglacial times, matching the trend for records from Antarctica. "Our study provides, for the first time, a quantitative basis for evaluating the role of dust in past climate change and in changes in biogeochemical cycles," Gisela Winckler of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, US, told environmentalresearchweb. "Our results from a region of heightened climate sensitivity provide a benchmark for the development and testing of new dust models, while also providing vital input for models of climate variability and ocean biogeochemistry." According to Winckler, observations like the team’s are crucial not only in constraining but also in advancing modern climate models. "On top of that, our records may have implications with respect to large-scale iron fertilization of the ocean," she added. Wind-borne dust can be a major source of iron while artificial iron fertilization has been suggested as a method of boosting carbon sequestration in the oceans. The idea is that adding iron boosts growth of phytoplankton, which absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then die, taking the carbon with them as they sink to the ocean depths. But it’s a controversial proposal – it’s not clear how effectively the process would work in practice, and many people are worried about unforeseen effects. "Accurate reconstruction of dust flux variability in the past may serve as a natural experiment to evaluate the efficacy of fertilization of the ocean through artificial iron addition in the High Nutrient-Low Chlorophyll region of the equatorial Pacific," said Winckler. "While we caution that the idea of iron fertilization is complex and controversial, we believe that assessing the past response to natural variability of iron could enable scientists to develop more quantitative predictions about the possible efficacy of artificial iron addition in the future." Winckler and colleagues used levels of common thorium (232Th) as a proxy for dust in cores taken from three sites in the Pacific. The sites spanned roughly 6000 miles of the Equator, stretching from a spot near Papua New Guinea to a location off Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands. "We find remarkable consistency among the three study sites spanning more than a quarter of Earth’s circumference, as well as between tropical regions and the Antarctic, indicating a synchronous response to climate change by interhemispheric dust sources," said Winckler. The researchers believe that dryer and windier conditions during glacial periods led to increased dust transport. "Dust is a tremendously interesting component of the climate system, and probably the one we know the least about," said Winckner. "Over the last two decades, scientists have extracted a beautiful record of the variability of dust fluxes to polar regions, mostly from Antarctic ice cores, showing that the world during ice ages was much more dusty than the warm/interglacial world. However, we know much less about low and mid latitudes, where it matters because this is where people live and where probably the engine of the Earth's climate system lies." The researchers, who reported their work in Sciencexpress, say that the next step is to obtain similar records from critical regions with the goal of providing a "global dust map", both in the present and in the past. Winckner also plans "to continue the path of getting 'observationists' and 'modelers' together – like in our present work". Abstract of the SciExpress piece: Covariant Glacial-Interglacial Dust Fluxes in the Equatorial Pacific and Antarctica Gisela Winckler, Robert F. Anderson, Martin Q. Fleisher, David McGee, Natalie Mahowald Dust plays a critical role in Earth’s climate system and serves as a natural source of iron and other micronutrients to remote regions of the ocean. We have generated records of dust deposition over the past 500,000 years at three sites spanning the breadth of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Equatorial Pacific dust fluxes are highly correlated with global ice volume and with dust fluxes to Antarctica, suggesting that dust generation in interhemispheric source regions exhibited a common response to climate change over late-Pleistocene glacial cycles. Our results provide quantitative constraints on the variability of aeolian iron supply to the equatorial Pacific Ocean and, more generally, on the potential contribution of dust to past climate change and to related changes in biogeochemical cycles.

Two respected scientific organizations have issued a joint position on ocean fertilization. These organizations are the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), and the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection. The position statement highlights the outstanding scientific questions that need to be considered by any future ocean fertilization activities.

Also discussed is the relationship of ocean fertilization research activities to the emerging global carbon market, including a brief reference to the Climos Code of Conduct:

“We commend efforts by some commercial ventures to create codes of conduct and obtain outside reviews.”

Link to the full position statement

Climos announced the close of a $3.5M Series A financing today with Braemar Energy Ventures and investor/entrepreneur Elon Musk.

The 2008 AGU Ocean Sciences meeting is being held from March 2-7 in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Margaret Leinen will present on ocean fertilization.

The abstract for her talk is below:

CONDUCTING OCEAN FERTILIZATION IN A RESPONSIBLE WAY

The ocean science community, NGOs, government and the private sector are considering issues related to the potential of ocean fertilization to sequester CO2. Most issues are scientific and concern the efficacy or the side effects of ocean fertilization. Uncertainty about how commercial ocean fertilization would be conducted has led to additional concern over the types and standards of measurement, independent verification, measurement of side effects, the availability of data from commercial fertilization projects, deployment in sensitive marine areas, and other issues. Ocean fertilization is likely to take place on the high seas beyond national jurisdictions. There is as yet no clear international regulatory frameworks that apply directly to this activity. This implies that a voluntary code of conduct might be helpful in identifying the standards of responsible behavior. Other fields, like nanotechnology, have dealt with issues of ethics and responsibility in commercialization of scientific ideas. Drawing on such examples, we propose elements that could be included in a code of conduct for responsible ocean fertilization experiments and activities related to commercialization

Session #:200
Date: 03-04-2008
Time: 13:45

On February 26-27, Climos presented at the Carbon Forum America conference in San Francisco. This was the largest carbon market conference ever held in North America, with over 1,500 participants. On February 26th, Climos CEO Dan Whaley presented at a panel on high-tech innovation to combat climate change. On February 27th, Climos presented a Side Session on the science of ocean fertilization, with talks by Dr. Margaret Leinen and two independent scientists specializing in ocean fertilization, Dr. Kenneth Coale of Moss Landing Marine Labs, and Dr. Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Dr. Kenneth Coale is the Director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, the graduate program and research facilities serving seven California State University Campuses. He is a global marine biogeochemist with expertise in trace metals, carbon and nutrient cycling and radionuclides in the marine and lacustrine systems.  Dr. Coale was the Chief Scientist or Principal Investigator on all the US led Ocean Iron Fertilization expeditions.  

Ken worked extensively with John Martin, the California oceanographer who originally proposed the iron hypothesis which led to the iron fertilization experiments and who was the Director of Moss Landing before Ken.  John Martin passed away in 1993, several months before the first cruise was performed that proved his hypothesis.  

Dr. Francisco Chavez is a biological oceanographer with interests in how climate change and variability regulate ocean ecosystems on local and basic scales. He was born and raised in Peru where he attended Markham College in Lima.   He was one of the first members of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) twenty  years ago, and is a senior scientist there.   At MBARI he pioneered time series research and the development of new instruments and systems to make this type of research sustainable. Chavez has authored or co-authored over 100 peer reviewed papers with 10 in Nature and Science, and is past member of the NSF Geosciences Advisory Committee. He has been heavily involved in the development of the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) and been on the Governing Boards of the Central and Northern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS), the Pacific Coastal Ocean Observing System (PaCOOS) and the Center for Integrated Marine Technologies (CIMT). Chavez is a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences; honored for distinguished research on the impact of climate variability on oceanic ecosystems and global carbon cycling. He was recently honored as Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad Pedro Ruiz Gallo in Peru in recognition of his distinguished scientific career and for contributing to elevate academic and cultural levels of university communities in particular and society in general.

NEON Expands its Board of Directors

• How are ecosystems across the United States affected by changes in climate, land use, and invasive species over time? How do they respond and at what rates?
• How do biogeochemistry, biodiversity, hydroecology, and biotic structure and function interact with changes in climate, land use, and invasive species across the nation? How do these feedbacks vary with ecological context and scale over time?

The American Geophysical Union recently published a revised policy statement on the Human Impacts on Climate, which makes a causal link between climate change and human GHG emissions. The statement also discusses the range of expected impacts, such as, “Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and—if sustained over centuries—melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters.”

The AGU Council adopts position statements that relate the understanding and application of the geophysical sciences to relevant public policy. In making such statements, the Council limits itself to positions that are within the range of available geophysical data or norms of legitimate scientific debate. The full statement is reproduced after the break.

Human Impacts on Climate

Adopted by Council December 2003
Revised and Reaffirmed December 2007

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/climate_change2008.shtml

The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century. Global average surface temperatures increased on average by about 0.6°C over the period 1956–2006. As of 2006, eleven of the previous twelve years were warmer than any others since 1850. The observed rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is expected to continue and lead to the disappearance of summertime ice within this century. Evidence from most oceans and all continents except Antarctica shows warming attributable to human activities. Recent changes in many physical and biological systems are linked with this regional climate change. A sustained research effort, involving many AGU members and summarized in the 2007 assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, continues to improve our scientific understanding of the climate.

During recent millennia of relatively stable climate, civilization became established and populations have grown rapidly. In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change—an additional global mean warming of 1°C above the last decade—is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it. Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and—if sustained over centuries—melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters. If this 2°C warming is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of CO₂ must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century. With such projections, there are many sources of scientific uncertainty, but none are known that could make the impact of climate change inconsequential. Given the uncertainty in climate projections, there can be surprises that may cause more dramatic disruptions than anticipated from the most probable model projections.

With climate change, as with ozone depletion, the human footprint on Earth is apparent. The cause of disruptive climate change, unlike ozone depletion, is tied to energy use and runs through modern society. Solutions will necessarily involve all aspects of society. Mitigation strategies and adaptation responses will call for collaborations across science, technology, industry, and government. Members of the AGU, as part of the scientific community, collectively have special responsibilities: to pursue research needed to understand it; to educate the public on the causes, risks, and hazards; and to communicate clearly and objectively with those who can implement policies to shape future climate.

The National Center for Policy Analysis presents a The National Center for Policy Analysis presents a policy discussion of geoengineering alternatives, including reforestation, atmospheric sun screens, and ocean iron fertilization. The premise is that CO2 emissions are still increasing exponentially, and that this doesn't appear likely to change anytime soon despite our best intentions. Therefore we should explore alternative mechanisms, such as geoengineering, although it must be done in a way to does not reduce the incentive cut emissions.