Friday 27 May 2011

an honest broker?

One of my current challenges is to define my personal position on geoengineering. This, as I hope you will see, is not as easy as it sounds. Here is my default position, which is being modulated as I read more about the interface between science and politics...
I am a strong advocate of geoengineering research, of that I am sure. Pandora's box is open (and has been for a while) and, unless the problem is carefully, robustly and honestly studied I fear stealth advocacy. Interestingly (and I've not finished the book) I suspect there are two types of stealth advocacy, conscious and unconcious. More on that later...

My position on geoengineering (i.e. deployment) is much less clear. I should say from the outset that advocacy of research does not, in any way, mean advocacy of deployment. In the short term I am going to attempt to refine my position from defaults, which are...

I want to be neutral and honest.
I think that reducing our dependence on CO2 (no subscripts, sorry) is the right thing to do
I have some green credentials, but could do better.
Ideas/themses/narratives that resonate with me are: 'A bad idea whose time has come', 'Mongoose and mitigation', 'plan B', although they all have issues...

Is it OK to say I don't know yet?

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