Transcripts For CSPAN2 Debate On Climate Engineering 20131214

Next david keith and Clive Hamilton debate the idea of scientifically manipulating the merman to address the threat of Global Warming. This is about an hour. Many thanks scott for that introduction and for the invitation to come and debate climate engineering with david here today. I want to talk a little bit about some of the implication but more about the social and political meaning of what it would mean to have a geoengineered planet and i want to draw on a bit of historical experiencexperienc e to get some idea of what that means. Now david has become the foremost advocate of geoengineering in response to Global Warming and in his new look a case for climate engineering if you put forward an innovative approach to solar geoengineering, that is the use of a fleet of planes to inject sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere to create a layer of tiny particles between the sun and the earth and i should point out that today we are going to be talking about this form of aerosol spraying rather than other forms of geoengineering. Scott said the problem really is that geoengineering can be done quickly unilaterally and cheaply thinking of sulfate aerosols. By mimicking the effects of such a solar shield could need addressed his desire to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth surface and so cooling the planet. David in his new book proposes that we start slowly and subject increase the injections until there are enough sulfate articles in the stratosphere to slow by half the rate of human induced warming. Going only halfway davids ideas will sharpen your reduce the risk of disturbance to the global rainfall patterns. And i think when i was reading the book the fact that david keith who in my estimation is the worlds most influential geoengineering scientists, that david should be calling for a Research Program reading to deployment i think takes the debate to a new level. Now while david in his book and elsewhere in his discussions on sulfate aerosol spraying expresses a confidence in humanitys ability to regulate the earths climate. Other eminent atmospheric scientists have more doubts. Allen robot lists 20 reasons why geoengineering might be a bad idea and one of those reasons is crucial i think to davids proposal for what he calls sulfate injections in order to slow down the rate of warming. What is the crucial objection that i want to begin my talk with . It is this. This is the Allen Roebuck point. Once deployed the effects of solar radiation management on the climate with a difficult to isolate from the effects of natural variability and indeed from the effects of human induced Global Warming. It would take it is estimated or guessed at least a decade from full deployment of sulfate aerosol spraying before enough data became available to judge confidently whether these solar filters were working as planned. If Allen Roebuck is right in this objection i think this fact would drive the data into the heart of the scheme which ice i said it would take a decade to generate the data needed to assess the impact of full deployment of sulfate aerosol spray it would take much longer with davids proposal to start slowly and go halfway. With no desire for bull information coming in we will be flying blind for a very long time. So i think the scheme that david reposes is after initially setting the control variables the engineer must obtain feed that from the system before adjusting it to make it work optimally. The problem of course is that around the scientific literature for a while and giving the importance i expect and reading davids bookie would creep up this argument since it seems crucial to the effectiveness of the red ability of what he proposes. When he does mention this objection he claims that its doubly wrong. First he says that we can learn a lot from local tests, small atmospheric tests of sulfate aerosol spraying that have a large signal and environment with little noise. Its true that local tests can tell us important things about atmospheric chemistry that but they can tell us next to nothing about the effects of solar geoengineering on the climate system of the earth as a whole. Secondly david writes and i quote even if that werent tested on full scale we would still not resolved all necessities. I must say im a bit mystified by that statement. It seems he is saying the objection is smaller than the critics claim. So i think davids response to what is being called the killer objection to solar geoengineering is to not engage with it at all. Even if Allen Roebuck objection is not fatal to the planned for solar geoengineering there are of course deeper concerns. Any Deployment Program would rely heavily on in the rate of atmospheric measurements. Models would be used to aggregate and assess the streams of incoming data on land sea and air temperatures on petition around the world and unusual weather patterns and atmosphere and chemistry including changes in the ozone layer and the way that sulfate particles fall out of the stratosphere. Models would also still be used to make projections about combined sulfate injections and elevated Carbon Dioxide concentrations. Decisiondecision makers in government would be highly dependent on the technocratic elite who might look at the Global Climate regulation pages. Lets think about this world of technocrats and policymakers. First, in mike luck, earthmasters i explain the apparent contradiction of conservative thinktanks by the American Enterprise institute, the Cato Institute and extremist Heartland Foundation which for years have rejected the validity of Climate Science and thinktanks that express geoengineering. They are endorsing a solution to problem they have said does not exist. Why could this paradox emerged . For them the conservative thinktanks and other conservative politicians like newt gingrich, geoengineering promises to turn a drastic failure of the Free Enterprise system into a giant of human ingenuity. Instead of Climate Change being a vindication environmentalist warnings geoengineering exposes the lack of faith inhumanity. Instead of shrinking from hubris the call is for greater mastery. However conservatives backing solar geoengineering seem not to understand that in seeking to a void government regulation with fossil fuel use they are endorsing government regulation with climate. And doing so are a scientific era christie far more powerful. Such a bureaucracy would not regulate individual behavior but it would regulate the conditions in which individuals behave. Beyond the ideological contortions of conservatives what more can be said about the geoengineering world . In his book, david keith has argued for comprehensive Research Program to arguing for deployment subject to the absence of surprises. So i think it is at home in this world of technocratic technocratic control and although he claims otherwise i think its still true that David Cleaves to the idea that a separation can be maintained between a pure domain of science and the arena of politics which always threatens to he invites us to measure would call a World Without politics a world i must confess i find difficult to imagine but one in which science of the worlds climate. But what can history teach us about the relationship between scientific expertise and political power when decisions are being made . When future political leaders must make decisions on Climate Control which scientists will they turn to. History tells us they will choose the ones they most trust. Trust has a contingent relationsrelations hip with expertise. It was not only edward tellers reputation as the father of the hbomb that turned them into one of the foremost architects of the cold war but also his straightened anticommunism with unmatched access to the republican white house. He was even invited into the pentagon to help choose the russian cities and military facilities that would be a literacy it at first strike. In a world of Climate Control, not just the weather but the nature of politics would change. We have seen this before with world shifting technology. Steven shangkun the destroying of science recently wrote about once in churchills wartime ruminations and britains commitment to building the atom bomb. Britain had considerable scientific advantage over the United States in the world war. He wrote the distinction between an domains of science and politics has put pressure on when theres a prospect prospect that the nature of the politics diplomacy and the use of military force will be transformed by the existence of new science and technologies. Churchill rights shangkun suspected that scientists had a pernicious wish to pilot expertise into political influence. He took the view, this is churchill, took the view that science issue have been no more influence on government policy than dentists. But politicians often have no choice and churchill surrounded himself with a small group of men who had won his trust. His job then was to adjudicate adjudicate however as the historian graham has shown in his recent book churchill came to rely on one scientist in particular the oxford physicist frederick linderman. Lenderman was not a topranking scientist but he was of churchill social class and political convictions and was skilled in the art of flattery. When criticized for some help closeness to linderman churchill responded, love me, love my dog. Even so, churchill always retained a help a skepticism. The in the 1937 article published oddly enough in the news of the world, the article titled life in a world controlled by a scientist churchill wrote, there are secrets to mysterious for man and his present state to know, secrets which once penetrated may be fatal to Human Happiness and glory. But the busy hands of the scientist are already fumbling with the keys of all the chambers hitherto forbidden to mankind. I think the words have a very contemporary relevance. While perhaps not all would concur to churchills conviction were left locked i think most of us would agree with him that moral development, selfcontrol and Political Institutions led well behind our formidable scientific technological prowess. It would be much better churchill declared to call a hault and material progress in discovery rather than to be mastered by our own apparatus our own technology and the forces which it directs. The geoengineering world with the one in which the conditions of our daily life are set by experts far away where human knowability is churchill might put it is no longer possible not only because we would ian happening an artificial world but because we made it necessary to inhabit an artificial world. Given humans are proposing to engineering climate because of the cascade of institutional failures and self interested behaviors, any suggestion that the deployment of a solar shield would be done in a way that fulfill the strongest principles of justice and compassion would lack credibility to say the least. So we find ourselves in situations where geoengineering has been proposed because of our penchant for deceiving ourselves and inflating our virtues. If they just Global Warming solution cannot be found, who can believe in just geoengineering regime. David confirms that if the solar field for impact solar warming more effectively in some parts of the world than in others. In some areas it may exacerbate drought and anothers floods. The temptation of those to control the heat shield can manipulated in a way that sets their own interests first would be everpresent an almost irresistible. No wonder nations of the south are leading early moves through the commission of biological diversity on Geoengineering Research. So whatever the motives and professionalism of Geoengineering Research is and i certainly question davids, the idea is already attracting a range of actors with a diversity of purposes and standpoints not all of them admirable. So i think its naive of researchers to imagine that they can isolate themselves in a cocoon of scientific neutrality nor can they absorb themselves of responsibility for how their schemes might he used or misused in the future. We are, after all, talking about technologies designed to regulate the conditions of life. Once the political corporate and military players become involved the geoengineering experts will lose control of how its used. Actually, i think its a little more complicated than that. Those experts when it comes to the crunch will have a choice to go with the authorities plan or to get out. The exemplars here i think are rather complicated. Both of them play vital roles in the manhattan ratchet to build the first atomic weapons. Oppenheimer, often called the father of the atom bomb, spent much of the posthiroshima years trying to limit the spread of Nuclear Weapons. Oppenheimer worked to restrain the monster that he had help create and thereby earned the ire of the authorities. Teller worked to place himself at the very center of the Nuclear Arms Race and attain the kind of power undreamed of by other scientists. He would do so because he was the most aggressive advocate of Nuclear Weapons including the use of Nuclear Explosions for Civil Engineering projects creating new harbors with Nuclear Bombs for example. When controlling the worlds climate become central to the exercise for global strategic and military power is Nuclear Weapons did in the postwar era which side will they take oppenheimers are tellers . It persuades one or more governments to embark on it and Global Climate control becomes a strategic weapon or if it goes badly wrong but is pursued nevertheless where will it stand . Lets go a bit deeper on the politics of geoengineering. I think it goes to the very heart of anxieties that many people have about embarking on solar geoengineering. The failures of political structures and moral weaknesses have prevented us from reducing Carbon Emissions consistent with the scientific warnings. Yet these very same things provide the political and social landscape from which those full third sulfuric acid we launch. The first question must be whether geoengineering leaps over these moral and political obstacles or whether they will in fact corrupt or undermine attempts at installing this lowball solar shield. What were the obstacles to plan a that have led us to be talking about plan b . I think there are perhaps five of them. The first obstacle to Emission Reductions has been the power of the power the fossil fuel lobby. Geoengineering leaps over this hurdle or at least pushes it off into the future. But, it may also corrupt plan b because the fossil fuel companies are likely to back geoengineering as a substitute for carbon abatement rather than a means to buy some time until we have enough legal and economic incentives to introduce Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and so on. Exxon, conocophillips and shall our Oil Companies already dipping their toes into researching geoengineering. The Second Barrier has been the weakness of lytic leaders and institutions. With governments trading offsides against the best interests and electability. There is no reason to believe that geoengineering will escape that quagmire. Instead it will become mired in it taking out new device ones in which Clear Authority of Climate Science including geoengineering science will be lost again. The third difficulty has been the elusiveness of global agreement. For some, the capacity of geoengineering doesnt obviate the need for international consent if its defining virtue. Yet it may well take us from a situation of anguished indecision 21 of outright conflict. The fourth is the sway of Climate Science denial. As our suggested geoengineering has the mysterious power to bypass the ejection objections of the most fervent deniers but at what cost . They will not accept the strategy of using geoengineering to buy time which is effectively what they believe is the case. Buying time is merely buying time to do what they have fiercely resisted. They want a substitute for penalties on fossil fuels, one that insulates the prevailing system from change. More viscerally, they want to prove that its wrong. David slo rampart doesnt deny it but capitulate to it and he may soon find guess to give up his insistence that geoengineering is acceptable only if its accompanied by emission cuts. He has already gone halfway by adding that it caused us to ease the pressure to cut emissions. Finally, and i will finish on this point, what of Public Resistance to carbon taxes and the like which has surely been a major obstacle to political progress in responding to the science to my country as well as here. Solar geoengineering this obstruction. Economists including scott here have told us that it will be incredibly cheap. By buying is time david expects that the technologtechnolog ical progress will avert the need for price penalty on fossil fuels in order to achieve decarbonization. But what i gamble this is. In the United States without a carbon penalty we are seeing quite rapid investment but we are also seeing a massive and frightening expansion new oil and gas wells and around the world huge new coalmines. They may find that it is fossil fuels rather than cheap renewables that fly in the window of opportunity and not by geoengineering. So the verdict seems straightforward. Solar geoengineering cannot leap from the obstacles to decarbonization. One way or another most of the forces that have rocked to plan a are like the to bedevil plan b only in the ideal world of a World Without politics does solar geoengineering have a chance of working as dave describes it in his book. A technofix them is an attempt to apply a technological solution to our problem that is essentially social political. Sometimes technofixes work. Often political and social problems just reappear in another form and that is what will happen in my estimation if davids solar geoengineering advocacy succeeds. Thanks very much. [applause] thank you clive very much and we will turn right over to david keith. Thanks a lot. I will start by saying scott did a great job of introducing the basic idea and i would say one crucial difference is that scott said instead of emissions, i and i think almost everybody else involved with this has been Crystal Clear about that it may or may not make sense to do this but if it doesnt make sense as well as cutting emissions, nothing you do to reduce the amount of sunlight and this geoengineering does anything to change the longterm risks of putting carbon in the atmosphere so there is no way that these type elegies get you out of the long remedy to stop being carbon in the atmosphere. On the first im going to First Respond to a few things that clive said before circling back to say savings about the hard underlying questions about thinking about the relationship of people and nature that are raised here. Clive makes assertions that are first of all very serious and sensible problems but he and a way that i dont understand implies that i and other people like me hold the use that we dont hold and never held an consistently say that we dont hold and i dont understand why he is doing that great i want to bring some of those up. Lets start with a simple technical one. He said alan robock was the first person to raise this objection about the deductibility of the signal so not only is that not true but actually was myself and doug and kim have published a paper calculating how long that is but the fact is its not 10 years its 20. If you did that slo wrapup it would take more like 20 years to attack the signal. There are other signals you could detect sooner but it should give you some pause that this may not be the simplistic fatal objection that you heard or maybe something about clyde story that he was leaving out when you seek literature that the first people to raise this was us. Clive says its naive for scientist to mention they can isolate themselves in a cocoon of scientific neutrality. Yeah, that is why i quit my job and physics 25 years ago because the connections to Nuclear Weapons began to do on socially with relevant things and that is why i walked out of the lab and spent time working with lawyers and activists learning how to teach Public Policy institutions doing research on the ways in which science is not isolated from the world and the ways in which political and social forces shape what happens in science. I have spent a lot of my career working on that so its kind of odd, i mean i have lots of things i do wrong and it made mistakes and the fundamental thing is shouldnt be personal but clive has said the opposite of what i actually think. I have to i think you have to ask yourself why. The answer is simple. Its easier easier to to attack a dog with a straw. Theyre very good reasons that we shouldnt geoengineering by painting a straw dog and aching feet of say things that they dont say that you can easily see that they dont make you might look another writings is a kind of a week way to do it and its because its very hard to engage the really serious choices that the spring up. I think there are in fact some very substantive reasons not to do it and they are some of the same is a various brought up, the fact that no doubt decisions will not and should not be made by scientists. One thing i spent a lot of my crude doing is emphasizing that while scientists may know more facts than other people their values ought to count absolutely no more than anyone elses and Public Policy decisions and that is why we have worked in decisionmaking context. A lot of the work at Carnegie Mellon is to try to find ways to figure out Public Values and incorporate them into the decisions because tech crabs and they began to design something always subconsciously told in their set of values into what the right answer is and not the way i think Public Policy ought to work. A few others to illustrate this and im sorry to do this personal stuff but i think its relevant. A few clues that might make you think theres something a little odd about the waste of three that, the first person that i am aware of to write about the military history of the kind of cold war climate manipulation in the context you are sharing was me. That is not to say i got it all right if that was precisely because i was deeply concerned about these military connections and i spent a lot of time writing about that. David has written a whole look about. The purge first person to use the word moral hazard in this context was me in the same article in 2000 because of the concerns very realistic and i think wellfounded incorrect concerns of these technologies may well lead to less emphasis on cutting emissions and will certainly lead to their use by parties. By the way i dont find any mystery at all about the stats. They are paid front man for the industry and they will of course deny it Climate Science and they will of course embrace things like this is what it means to do that. Nothing surprisinsurprisin g about it, that is what they are paid to do but lets not confusr conversation about what the real issues are here. Finally and i just have to keep doing this and then i will stop. Clive says it will ever do need to put a price on carbon. Im mystified because i spent so long arguing the opposite that you absolutely have to have a price on carbon to produce. You have to price using the atmosphere in order to effectively mobilize efforts and no amount of technological innovation is going to solve our problems without social consensus when you saw the memphis context social consensus means rules. Technology never does the job. Im kind of puzzled why that and i hope in response clive will think less about painting me as a guy who doesnt get it all and think about what is wrong with these ideas and i think there are good rings wrong with them and what we as a species and people actually ought to do which are the heart questions that we should be engaged with not exact we who said what to whom. So, i would say the heart problems here are to basic science is hard and interesting and fun to play with but the really hard questions are also true. Theres a pretty good Scientific Consensus that doing small amounts of sharing would have nearterm benefits and longterm benefits that are substantial and rob white for most ecosystems for most people. That doesnt mean he shouldnt necessarily do it. There are good reasons not to do it but thats a fair summary as the science as i understand and we can talk about the science more if youd like here the hard questions or who decides to use this power. How will we manage the fact that some people will most certainly use it as an excuse to avoid emission cuts. How specifically we construct policies that enable us to get some of the benefits this technology appears to offer, real benefits to people now living in this generation in terms of reduced Climate Change and if its both to people and benefits that we actually dont have another way to provide given the timescales of carbon and the environment. Under what conditions is it ethical to do this . And how does it change our leadership in the Natural World . I want to talk about that and then clothes close. Arguments for Environmental Protection have in my view become increasingly technocratic it has nothing do with joint sharing but hopefully you will find them useful. When somebody for example that may be a researcher who loves the rain forest and maybe worked on and insects in their rainforest and spent their career than they just love it when they testified to positions of power to congress or would have if they often talk about Services Holding carbon for the fact that there may be lots of genetic material that could be extracted to produce more wonder drugs. Overall this is called under the rubric Ecosystem Services and the language and most people talk. In the environment of the Sikh Community talks about the acute danger the climate poses to be blinded does pose some danger of not only to people and not all parties are there just because they pose it as a danger to people. Clive has an extreme version that takes the morality out of it and makes it an easy choice. In a total catastrophe its obvious what we should do. The questions about intergenerational equity and Mother Nature counts on its own and so on. I would say arguments of doubt utility have merit we are cutting, care folks take care cutting the side short by not talking about the nonutilitarian ways in which we would want to preserve the Natural World. Many people care about the polling data, many people care about this even though they dont say it explicitly in policy debates. This is important for geoengineering because while the costs and benefits as we get climate warming to people and ways we could adapt and pay money to insulate humans further from the environment, if you actually want to weaken the rate of Climate Change as a combination of Climate Change and mans appropriation of land from nature, humans appropriation causing the extinction spasm we are creating and causing drastic changes to the Natural Environment is a combination of those two things, slowing the rate of Climate Change could significantly reduce that stress. So, the most obvious answer is that its crazy. The most obvious answer is that you cant make things more natural by some engineered topdown system which controls the whole world and i think thats a good answer and its an answer which might lead you and certainly lead some people to say we should never do it. I dont think its a complete answer. There are plenty of cases where we attempt to do what are effectively engineered solutions to try and help make the natural system more like it was before we messed with it. I think they are our interesting analogies between what i and others are proposing to research and do in the way of solar geoengineering in the proposals with passenger pigeons which represent engineered manipulation of the world to bring up actual world more like the one before we messed with it to give you personal and noticed a lawyer at worked with my parents who are biologist to build these boxes to fairground dawkins. The falcons were bred and moved and this helped to introduce falcons to this part of the world. We introduce them after they had been destroyed by ddt. That rate of production would have been meaningless if we had not first dealt with the ddt rob lum. Not perfectly but by massively restricting it in the food chain. That analogy is strong here too so they use of solar geoengineering cannot itself solve this problem but doing it in combination with cutting emissions could reduce the impact more than it is technically possible to do by doing emissions cuts alone. So to be clear about it, most of all i advocate a serious program. This topic was effectively taboo for decades and was known for a long time. The first reports about this topic come from the 1960s about the same time as their first reports on Climate Change and was interwoven with Climate Change predicted for backing the National Economy academys rep port, the 1982 reporter m. I. T. Impact on the environment. All of those with ports talk about these technologies as part of the context of the climate problem but then as it became more political the talk was effectively suppressed for the fear of the topics that clive was raising often called the moral hazard. Then this burst forth again in 2006 when Paul Crichton wrote an article that in effect said nothing new but the person that said that in his duster and unimpeachable credentials to understand the ozone layer really kind of holds the cork out of the bottle to use an overused metaphor and this exponential amount of Research Going on. I recommend the program. I think its crucial because the weakest risk i see our risks to do with Different National interest pulling against each other and distorting and shaping the way that it could be harmful to people. Its crucial to be publicly funded what we want to do is avoid as much as possible institutional locking. You want to avoid doping big centralized government institutions and private institutions that control this and try to create diversity. I would like to see funding that spent most of its money to say how this would not work in technically the reasons it would not work both the reasons that are the bigger ones to do with the interaction of the technical system and the human system. When that being not to take a job that clive but that is my job here. I and several have been thinking exclusively about how delays in decisionmaking and human system create really catastrophic eightyear where human decisions about implementing with time delays can create catastrophic behavior and its an example of the way interaction in decisionmaking in this technology could be very harmful i think its crucial that it had a minimum corporate interests and its focus in a diverse wham funding groups to show it wont work in funding some groups to figure out explicitly and creatively however. Obviously its hard to do all that and im not naive about the fact its all going to magically happen and there wont be corruption. I think there will be but the challenge is how to make it happen in a useful way. Why advocate this . The fundamental reason is this real prospect that these technologies in the balance can materially reduce the risk for natural ecosystems in the next halfcentury. A habit i find among some colleagues and shield the geophysicist to think about the long run of history and say correctly the this technologies is nothing to impact the co2 climate system which goes on for a millennium. Thats true. Theres kind of a moral mistake is that implies the next generation we have actually have it direction direct connection with dont count and its a marginal thing. I think we have a direct moral responsibility who will be imperiled by Climate Change. Its tempting to say of course that this is the wrong answer and the simple answers you just have emissions now. The reason we are not cutting emissions is not simply industrial capitalism and its not simply fossil fuel industries greatest that we have dealt the system in material terms that supports the elimination of competition and transportation in ways irrespective of the solar system or what have you and hidden the material waste of time on a fossil fuel economy. That is not a statement that we can change but we actually can change it. Even a very concerted effort to cut emissions that would have might you have a carbon price well over 100 a and involve hard law to push fossil fuels i think realistic effect takes half a century to bring emissions to zero. The climate problem comes from the sum of past emissions so even want to bring emissions to zero the climate risk is because of co2 in the air so in some sense cutting it are caught copper mentoring. And that cutting emissions run the risk of co2 in the air as solar geoengineering manages to some extent some of the shortrun risk from the co2 emission. You have Different Things and they can service complements. One is not a simple substitute for the other. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you david. Im going to now allow clive to respond somewhat to david and david may want to respond somewhat to clive but after so many minutes of this i have got to try to close that initial discussion. I have some essence of my own which i think some of you are like to share or i think will help illuminate or least intended to illuminate the topic for a wider audience and then after i ask a few questions we will go to the audience. So clive. Thanks very much, scott. I just want to clarify that because listening to david respond to my critique of his arguments i am left puzzled. It is Something Like that and we want to respond so that stopped happening and that was part of the argument in favor of research on the subject and the subject matter and this includes cleaning up smog by putting catalytic converters on their cars and whatever. And therefore we had to make a plan b. The second justification is that we want to substitute and this is why the concerns that i mentioned are very concerning. And this includes the kind of paperwork that he associates with. And this is one of our cheap options. Including restructuring our economies as well. In the third item that we are talking about here and respect was not the right word, but the most defensible one is buying time. We need to engage in bioengineering because the political makeup of the obstacles are too great at the moment and so for three or four or five decades, the star reports will go away and we can implement this program so we should be doing it without having to charge taxes of 100 or more at a time. So when you say that we should go into a program of gradual deployment, if it could be possible in iran in 2025, what is your justification . In which obstacles will be overcome by we have these soul issues . And will then make it easier for us to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions . Well, im not sure. But i think you might be able to and i think this is kind of wishful thinking, but you might be able to construct specific political ways to tie together this implementation and i am frankly not that excited about this if that prospect is not that likely. I think there are fundamental reasons why it has been hard to get this changed end up buying time had equated to buying political time, i contribute back to nonsense. And i am focused on how we can change the politics now to get emissions cuts. And i am excited about things like other things that seem to be getting a little bit more political traction. So again, i dont see that argument. Go ahead. So if there is actual good evidence that people are actually losing crops from heat stress during the growing season. That is affecting some of the portions of the world now. A couple of years ago, i do a bunch of arctic ski trips and you can see the glaciers are back almost taller than they were before they were for grabbed from the 1960s before and so where the glaciers are, these things are happening. And i think that there is a real benefit to reducing them. And i dont mean an emergency framing. I do think its kind of overdone, its a bit of a copout and it has been a focus of one problem or another. And so its kind of the chief argument to do this. I am arguing for it on what i think are the most basic rounds that we could provide some benefits in terms of lessened risk. But it just doesnt always work. But as you know, engineering doesnt always solve Climate Change. And that includes the warming of the globe that suppresses it. And as soon as you take away the solar shield aura comes rushing back, what you do and so that is what we are talking about and there are several answers to that. And lets assume that there is a future pathway for admissions and this is exactly the same place he wouldve been 100 years out as we were 200 years out. That is one simple answer. Yes, but you have to admit in these terms. Yes, you can spread out the impact, but sooner or later you have to stop. And that includes what youre going to change in the meantime. Yes, i want you to answer my question. What is so bad about helping come up with what i feel we have a more clear it duty in helping actual individuals. Why does that argument not fit with your . There are three kinds and one is its not a simple matter of just reducing meds, but it has all kinds of effects on the climate as well. In the second kind of response is every likelihood, and this is the core of the argument and the politics that we are engaging in, is it actually the world will change if you engage in solar energy engineering. On the way that we would hope, and that is to allow these political and economic obstacles to be used, but what it might do is make these conditions decrease about what they would have done. And because it will make it easier for people who are resisting us and say, what is the problem. So we can just pollute until the coal runs out and so that is the profound danger. And when you argue this in your book, its that we can reduce this by engaging in engineering. And you know, the truth is that if people who want to do nothing about Climate Change, theyre the ones sometimes most attractive yearbook. Welcome a couple of things. In my reading to the current science and that the risks are more than the benefits. And so as to whether the book is soothing, i do not intend to be soothing. I get many colleagues would say i over exaggerate the risks. Many spell this out and a lot of times one of the things is global extinction and its very hard. We are talking about one or 2 of solar insulation, if you do this for a hundred years, youll freeze the product over to the equator. So this brings for the first time the power to do that. And i talked about that explicitly and when we think about this, we talk about the very worst cases if they are misused. Its a very strange thing. I dont find it soothing at all. In the middle question is really the hard one. I was certain that the only effectiveness was simply to cause people to the more carbon, i would not advocate. I think there is a clear risk that that is true, but i think the politics are hard to get at. And i think that there are plenty of scenarios and you can imagine these to be occurring, in which this is part of the recognition of how serious the problem is. Any final coupling of this technology and cutting the omission. In the amount we think that this should be, we are actually talking about this as well. And there is an argument which i given the book, and some you may cut them him a little to lessen you otherwise would. So its better than almost nothing, which is what we are talking about now. And so we have an Environmental Activism order going on, and will we be able to couple the things and maybe wont be possible just to implement these. At this point, i would like to just frame what we have going on. And the reason we are here talking about this topic is not because we dont take it seriously. And im a little bit concerned about the views that we shouldnt Pay Attention to geoengineering, but we have not dealt with it properly. And taking seriously what science tells us about the impacts and there are two kinds of extreme conditions. And one is an Environmental Group that has been part of the strongest opponent and we are there against the idea of technology and when i read their webpage, they spend virtually no time talking about Climate Change is a problem. And one of the concerns that i had and if you prescribe to geoengineering, you know, how cannot be the sensible thing to do, given the risks that we face on the clientside . And i think ive mainly directed at them and not really sure what you are suggesting that we do. So we are all going to agree. The reasons why we have it, that if it works and we like it, it will not embolden us to do more to reduce emissions and that is a problem. But are there other circumstances . Well, based in the uk there has been a principal concern with catastrophic Climate Change and the release of methane in the arctic. And they think that is the stabilizing of the arctic that is a priority and we shouldnt risk going over any kind of cliff because that situation would be a runaway and are reversible. Some little bits of guys in there are these risks that are associated and we just need to be more open that we would use it on the alternative is so unacceptable, that however much you wish you didnt have to deal with, that it was the better of the two that we could talk about. And so what are your responses to those extreme positions . Well, ive issued a warning about the political danger of human engineering. And i think that we can learn from these lessons of history when we start to think about this technology and how it gets used and what i essentially do is map out the architecture of the political and ideological groups that have been drawn to geoengineering and they are billionaires do decide to put money into geoengineering for a range of this and their ideological individuals that are drawn to it. And im saying that this is not a scientific question principally and we have to issue these warnings about what it means for the Principal Task of heading the saw from Climate Change. But i dont think we should be part of this in terms of what its for and against. So under what government circumstances should this be pursued . Because at the moment we have a freeforall. We have eccentrics and russia doing all sorts of weird things and fertilizing the oceans and we have the project because someone has a concept of interest and we have conservatives have releases to cut emissions and under no circumstances, i think it is disastrous. And what we need is an early and comprehensive Government Program and they will have a powerful say in what kind of research has been done and who funds it and it will be thought essential to deploy some kind of geoengineering. I think thats a very important thing and actually a central point. So i hear you saying that you are not against doing research in a correct. And let me just ask about that. Under no circumstances from this . I mean, it seems to me that it is not necessarily very clear. Under any circumstances . The risks are so great that i find it not impossible to imagine the circumstances with this imaginable. And so, you know, i dont have these principles in opposition. If we ever did get to that point, it actually could be done and it very likely could have been. And i think it will happen within the next 30 years. And so the major support there. Its a technology capitulation on the desire to see this. Where in this new book we are advocating a. Okay, so, david, my question is im hearing that there is actually more agreement and we are not opposed to research. And i think that we actually agree on a bunch of political risks to digest, yes, we are sort of pushing and shoving. If you we were thinking we were going to use this because of our concern for poor people and someone. Im trying to be careful about this. I think that its an unusual point of view from a privileged person from a particular social class that has much more chance to be in the world more than one of a thousand people. And i absolutely dont think that that is why. I like to talk about what i think will happen. And we all have a personal view of this. And so it is part of the report that is being done on engineering and we can particularly have this makes sense, although it is not possible always with engineering solutions. And i think its disingenuous to say the we have written a book, which can be very influential when lawmakers have been talking and thinking about this and how it might be the answer. And so you know, if you do the thing i was talking about, just slowing this down, cutting the emissions and what we have done is cut these emissions and we can see views drawn down and that is a slower process and that it effectively should be judged and this is not quite right. But in any case, the one benefit of Going Forward allows you to pull the concentration on. But if you just think about slowing the rate of change and you ask about things that trigger the stability that we are worried about, the answer is from the little that we know and we dont know them very well and this is exactly where the Tipping Point by and it doesnt always capture this. I think there is fair evidence that if you change more slowly and risk last, no one can say exactly how much. And so it could include shaking their head for the audience. So that is one answer. I think there is some reason to believe this as well. And the point is you get to the same situation more slowly. And this includes the overall rates of change and have a low investment once again. And that has some benefits in the way that i and many other people understand climate risks. That is one answer. The answer about whether you have this in an emergency, you have to tell me what this means. As i say if you think you want to use it, it might be a reason to try it so you have more sensible situations. Okay. We do have a lot of experts, so im going ask one more question, and im going to ask for this great audience to offer their questions. And people want to ask a question and you can use the microphone so that people can hear it at cspan. And so my question would be than about this question of governance, which is a question of who decides and wrapped up within that is the politics and someone and this includes a variety on this question of government. I think everyone agrees that its important. And they dont agree how we should resolve this problem and some think that there should be no restraints in the thing you dont want is to have some United Nations agreement where unanimity is required in the countries have vetoed this if you want to restrict off of a country like the United States. And that now create the situation where even the countries that are in the u. S. They wish to have some agreements with unusual restraint. Because each one of the other not to use it. And this includes global agreement on this, because all countries would be affected. Thats not to say that every country should be part of this. But what it does is acknowledge the other countries that are affected. And it creates a space in which the countries can sense the negotiating bargains and there are other people who think this is the equivalent in to what you think about this crisis and technology . And this includes comments about the way people think of it and its interesting that some of the other people bought far ahead and weapons are not really compatible we have this system and we have these kind of arbitrary powers and the ultimate thing im not sure, but then im not generalizing, but this is something that this is something that we can tolerate. And you cant do that and what that volatility means that we are going to live on the planet. And this is something we are painfully evolving towards and i actually think that in the long run that the technology is part of this occasion and if we are going to manage this, including deciding to use it or not to use it in the long run, i think that that requires a Global Governance of force including what this is about. So this includes the reshaping of the system and there is a situation that is part of this that has the old system of governance. So exactly how we do that, its farreaching and we need to pretty quickly start to have these multilateral agreements in principle including how it is regulated. I think this question is really going to be a huge thing, although we are starting to think about it now. And its a surprising thing to all of us involved. And this is a reference to geoengineering is a potential policy responses to try to change in one report we are expecting to be mentioned back in april. We are talking about it and therefore normalizing this in response to Climate Change and this includes regulation of geoengineering and at the moment it is a complete mass in terms of international law. One proposal is the International Trade unit with modification for hostile purposes in this includes the modification that was taken during the vietnam war and that is part of changing the definition of hostile with geoengineering. My preferred option is to talk about Climate Change and this includes transparency and oversight and Geoengineering Technology for the Geoengineering Technology at the same Time Beginning to establish the infrastructure to reach any democratic decisions over any deployment that we might have in the future. But i think that the politics are more likely part of this. In one scenario that i think is 2035 in northern china, and their instrument is social unrest. The legitimacy of the government in beijing is really stressed and they can see no way out with an attempt to take control of the Climate Change and try to hold onto it, Holding Onto Power in that way. In the u. S. Will collaborate with the domestic opposition in the United States that prevents a u. S. President for going along with that. But it will make public statements opposed as well. Okay, there we go. Fiction and nonfiction. Yes, i pretty much agree with everything that you said. And there actually is, initially we started off with a lot of disagreement, but there is some agreement in this as well. So let me ask, can we hand the microphone to the front . The people who would like to ask questions, could you please identify yourself and then ask your question from the microphone . It seems to me that the geoengineering is kind of madefortv. When i first met david at a meeting and then later i saw him in a much more prestigious meeting in washington dc that focused largely on solar geoengineering. And it struck me that the tenor of those two meetings was very different with philosophical discussion and it was dominated with practical issues of implementations. Both of you have written a book about geoengineering i would like to ask david why did you write about that instead of this . Well, thats easy. I run a Small Company and we are trying to develop this Carbon Capture to provide this to make transportation fuels have a low Carbon Footprint and as a consequence, i have done my best to manage this by not doing Academic Work were speaking about it. So i now speak about it with things like green tech audiences and i only accept speaking engagements and then i am predisposition not to use my harvard hat or use my knowledge as to what i think your company is doing in the future. It reminds me about this as well. One thing i worked on is Carbon Capture. And i think its great youre trying to avoid these conflicts of interest, but its easy for the public to identify those and in some case overlook that it arrives in academia. So for a certain extent, im not sure that those are easily separable. And we are doing research on various topics and what we think are interesting. People now have graduate students in a that are partially funded by their companies. And the other part is part of the stuff, that these two things are really messy and theres a spectrum of Carbon Capture what we are doing. And it may or may not work. But it doesnt present really hard governance challenge or even this because its very easy to quantify and i think its pretty easy to reduce and regulate it. But because it is hard to explain all of that. You get this and were talking about this and the money is in the patents and so forth and because of that confusion, i generally dont do both. Okay. So questions are adding up. Okay, i am taking names, so im going to speak about this. And i have a technical question, actually. And so as far as the impact being not obtainable in any geographic area, its widely understood that it will benefit most people and most ecosystems in many regions are impacted and there is obviously a power dynamic as there is in no matter whether this is a global kind of framework, ultimately the ones who can and will be able to do this will do so. But the regions that can be negatively affected are those that will not have the power to say this when it comes down to it. Especially with a large distributing issue and i just want to technically talk about, what are these distribution effects and how does that impact how we feel the government situation should be handled. Thats a great question. No, i dont think we know very well. And theres no one geoengineering system. And even for this, we dont have as as a part of it. So even a simplistic character and it may not be reality and the effects are much more even and that work has now been replicated almost precisely with the two digit numbers and even the 15 models to show that it is relatively equal. And so i dont trust those models were the idealized models of this either. So you are sort of assuming that many of us share these concerns that the world is too much dominated by this by the wealthy in ways that are not equitable. And the question is how to change that in some technologies tend to exacerbate this and its not all due to which way this goes. It is not true that only a few powerful situations can do it. So understanding aerospace, we didnt make that up is the kind of technical capabilities in this way. There are many countries distributed around the world in this a sense. This is a kind of leveling technology in the same way that Nuclear Weapons are not part of it. The bottom line is that we can only make these decisions in the end. I think we can only make these stable decisions with some kind of strong global opinion. Yes, i think it is a profoundly important question. Im not convinced that it is a level i think technology and i dont see the world standing by and letting north korea take control of the worlds weather. But i think its an extremely important point to make. But we have to distinguish between differences of impact that would result in differences in the perceptions of contacts. In this a lot shows the kind of counter situation what is happening in the United States. And if there is someone out there playing with the weather, people are playing with this and we have a lot of that were part of this end it was some kind of formation as well. [laughter] cohead, and i will be passed that. I just wanted to hear little bit about the risks. Without run the risk of global acid rain . The phosphoric level . One are the downsides of this . Okay, sure. I have decided things into two categories. One is a risk in a particular way in the method that we use and the second thing is a risk or lack of effort and its a perfect way like magically turning this into the sun and it doesnt compensate for august in the atmosphere and i think the most on this one is really a bad scenario and this increases the rate on either risks have to do with this to fallenness and this calculates how many people will die as a consequence of the air pollution and that is relatively strong, but its not zero and i think it has a different moral consequence and this is people not putting on this and those are two of the most common acid rain scenarios. And i think that the big concern our armies were the ones we havent thought out. Yes, a most general point is complexity. It seems to me that climate scientists have made enormous advances in understanding how the system works. And this is true in a sense that as we look back at it, it just becomes all complex and this is really changing in a certain way and they are going to be substantial that we can barely get their. Yes, it is certainly true. And you can also argue with how quickly we change this. And the fundamental driver of climate and its also true this isnt part of it. And weve altered the nitrogen cycle more than the carbon cycle and then we have altered this in the way that big impacts have taken place. And all of these are their ones and we are in a dynamic equilibrium, which is very different and that means that its not like we are all sitting here trying to do is tinker with this for fun, because that would be crazy and we are in a dangerous equilibrium and we have no way to last and we are having part of this as a potential way to reduce the risks. Please identify yourself or your question. Hello, i have a question about risk. And im not sure that i can do this, its a very emotional example to crystallize that. And the only we can do this is to do math and this includes the risks of another 9 11. And what i dont understand about this point and then the risks of the other options that prevent 9 11 that are better than other invasions of privacy. And we understand the risks around the invasions of privacy and this includes geoengineering. And they are so big that you dont want to have any way to do this. Even if there is no other way to prevent 9 11. Thank you for that example. I might just point out the two options in this case that are not separable, that talking about the geoengineering in a response to Climate Change changes the way people think about how we should respond to Climate Change other than geoengineering. In other words, it can and may reduce the incentive to pursue Emission Reduction and this includes gradual deployment. That we should engage in this abatement because it makes sense when i read it two or three times, but it did worry me that we were arguing about this that he said that i expect this and this is impossible and so i think it is part of those who want to see geoengineering as a substitute for these omissions. So what i am saying is that it changes the political environment. But if we didnt pursue it, it would radically change the way the politics have been carried out. I have tried to get a census as to what kind of world that would be like. And what would be the profound transformation in the political infrastructure and that would change this strategy as well. There are other options as far as Global Engineering goes. [inaudible] [inaudible question] yes, but i mean, this discussion is premised on the assumption that the world is part of this definition for every sensible person who believes that we should be doing a far greater scale. In the world has been a part of this and that is why people are now talking about pursuing plan b. And the thing about plan b is that it has a sort of stopgap measure and it will become a substitute for doing what we must do for cutting Greenhouse Gas emissions. Another question if we have time. Hello, i would like to follow up on the previous question and it seems to me that your argument of geoengineering makes sense if you believe that without geoengineering we will [inaudible] and so this will become part of this. I think the political nature disappears because of this with geoengineering and it provides what we have witnessed on the prospect. Okay. Say that again. So the concern is what we are doing with geoengineering. And it will become a lot more serious. The ability to have this. One thing about geoengineering in particular is there are other benign forms of geoengineering that we havent really talked about. This includes the carbon catcher. There are people like me who are deeply skeptical and in a way it is an obligation upon us to have seen more plan a. And that is what i do among other things, to try to persuade the world that plan a is absolutely essential to head off a radically transformed world that will end suffering for a very long time and of course, that is what most environments have had to do now. Most environments are not willing to talk about this in geoengineering and they dont want to talk about this just like another adaptation in the late 1990s. And they saw that as a capitulation and it accepts that there will be enough climatic change to worry about adaptation. And most people who are involved in these fields at this stage have been providing an excuse by decisionmakers on capitol hill not to pursue this in the standards on someone in this includes the research and engineering that will undermine things and produce Carbon Dioxide emissions and those with commercial interests, they have been drawn to the geoengineering field because it kind of solves their commercial or ideological problems. I think it is objectively true that there are some folks in the impression will be a lot of the work was done by people by commercial interests and we have this quietly done in some of the more environmentally prominent situations. We have tried to eradicate this as well with other polls. And the vast majority people are actually doing it now and so this could include what is really is when it gets out into the world. And then you have to be a least little bit offensive in what people think. Then the more common on the related line. It is quite correct that they are just talking about it. But it alters the conversation and we make may get the world to be in a worse place and this could be by pushing against it like they are and i believe both of us are. And there are consequences and we have real advantages and consequences. We are getting near the end and if you could introduce yourself, that will help. Thank you so much. Hello, i am from the American University in washington and i have been doing some research about this engagement and its important to know to separate the money for public advocacy for research and money going into Scientific Research and it is true that on the right we need to talk about the research coming from think tanks and the observation has been a part of it. There has been a lesson in the room and it would be nice if we could address this. It doesnt do anything to alter this. If we reduce the end of this for omissions abatement, it is not only about Climate Change but will go on unchecked. Burning fossil fuels passes on a whole host of risks. And so we have this profoundly imperfect fix, as are all fixes and there are no perfect fixes. All of them have holes. But the fact that makes it can prevent, and a lot of it is profoundly imperfect and that is not the reason that we have in itself to discount that. We are slowly ramping down this proposal, which is going to take a hundred years or 200 years, it seems. And theres enormous number of certifications if we continue to emit Carbon Dioxide according to the availability of fossil fuels. And i would like for you to answer this observation. And if that is the case pursuing this it is part of this and when i argue, it is part of this to permitting the world to take this rough Emission Reduction. Standard de tella teller utilitarian cost benefit analysis which i dont believe, but it is important to run it. So i address it. If someone produced during the hearing, less. Both of those numbers are much bigger than the numbers now. So i have no way to say that what we should do is business as usual, keep committing cartridges like we are doing now. I not only did say that trying to do the opposite, and cut emissions. Absolutely should cut emissions. If you subscribe to that then you should do a little revision cutting, which is much more that we are doing now. And that is only if you subscribe to that which, in fact , in the book i said i dont. I read this page is extremely carefully, david. After your statement where you said i expect there will be available, one that spends less on reducing emissions. Even spend a couple of pages criticizing in pretty robust terms those organizations which produce reports saying that we must not allow efforts, worked to divert effort from cutting emissions and you describe those arguments as confused and in that by saying, in any case, there is no basis for glib statements that they should not alter the amount. So what is your position . Briefly. Briefly . My position is that we need to find arguments for that. I would like help. I think that is the real, hard challenge. The fact is, the standard machinery of the normal way that we do Public Policies from the established centex would says that the answer that i say in the book, that answer i like. The question is how to get beyond the glibness and think about actual, sensible reasons to argue for the strong emissions cuts that both of us want see. That is a heck of a point to and. I want to first think the person who has enabled this entire meeting, organized everything, not easy. [applause] and then finally, of course, are speaker. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. Good. [inaudible conversations] well, i was very restrained. [inaudible conversations] book tv is on facebook. Like us to interact with book tv guests and viewers, watch videos , and get uptodate information on events. It facebook. Com booktv. All we ever had to go on, and what has been accepted by everyone the is what manson himself was to tell people. Its illegitimate son of a teenage prostitute mother who cared so little about her child that she once tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer. How as a child he was abused by the uncle said she would have moved into their home one after another. Now when he was 0910 she was so tired of having to even try to perfunctorily take care of him that she threw him into the juvenile Justice System where he suffered greatly, and from there his life turned back. He did not know who his father was. He did not think his mother knew his father was. So he said he finally learned even as a child that this tree was his father in prison was his mother. And that is what everybody pretty much accepted. It decided to check it out. First part is, lets look at the man so life. Added to get there . Second question, where was see and what kind of things were happening in our culture . That made it possible for a Charles Manson to recruit a few dozen followers who would do these things. Again, history does not happen in a vacuum. And i am kind of convinced that if Charles Manson had been paroled from prison in nebraska and ended up in a, instead of los angeles when they try these things he would have been impelled on the pitch fork and stack up in a field as the scarecrow. He was in the right places at the right time. How did that happen . So what i thought i would do because you folks tonight, you have heard over and over during the years peoples different versions of what happened on the night of august 1910 to 1969. I will tell you, there is some new material my book because in the course of my interviewing quite a few people, including, especially propitious patricia chemical who was involved both nights and do, besides a couple of sound bites of the 25th anniv