Horribly inaccurate/leading Guardian article -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/17/us-geoengineers-spray-sun-balloon
SPICE was not cancelled - the testbed was called off.
Thousands of tonnes (in the intro) turns out to be 10's-100's kg in the body of the article
Still captures some interesting issues (I will post on after consideration).
Governance?????
Matt,
ReplyDeleteYou're not the only one with this reaction, see David Keith's response:
"The story is incorrect in several crucial ways. First and most important no experiment is definitely planed or funded.
It’s true that we are in the early stages of planning and experiment to look at aerosol and ozone science questions, and that one of the topics we will address is risks of aerosol SRM. A balloon based platform is one of the possible methods. But, there is no possibility that it will go forward within a year as claimed in the article. Moreover, I would only support and participate in such an experiment if (a) it’s funding was substantially public and (b) it was supported and approved by relevant public science research agencies, and (c) it provided a real opportunity to advance our understanding of the risk or efficacy of SRM."
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/geoengineering/EgH1-2MXGQE
At the very least, this article is incredibly sloppy and unprofessional for a newspaper of the Guardian's stature.
Josh Horton
Yeah, I spoke to David about the experiment in Mainz and he stated the above to me then too. Just when I thought the Guardian could get no lower! (I note as a second thrust they've published the ETC map today as well). Thanks for the heads up - I am in the google group, but mostly keep quiet.
ReplyDeleteI do wish he (DK) would be a bit more careful when talking about SPICE though. It's depressing that the field trail has become the entire project - the desktop impact modelling and ozone lab stuff is still going on and is really important. I accept this is mostly not his fault...
He needs to add (d) progress is made on governance (although I suspect he thinks that's caught up in (a) and (b)...)