Growing Calls for Moratorium on Climate Geoengineering

We are at last becoming a type 1 civilization just as Michio Kaku stated.
Mankind has long been the manipulator, a species which rather than adapt itself to the environment, adapted the environment to itself. I think it only natural that it would come to this. Its an inevitable step in mans unique journey.

I am more along the lines of this guy when he says,

"Politicians in rich countries see geoengineering as 'Plan B' so they don't have to make the hard choices of reducing emissions causing climate change," Mooney told Tierramérica.

"It's a political strategy aimed at letting industrialized countries off the hook for their climate debt," he said.

At some point steps have to be taken to control our our pollution output. And those steps may be drastic in some areas, but what do we leave behind if we don't take those steps?

Climate Geoengineering? Isn't that what chem trails are all about?

I'd imagine trying to push the climate back in the other direction with geoengineering would cause a hell of al ot more problems than it would solve.

I mean, it would be like trying to play a game of labyrinth with your elbows.

We can barely understand the ecosystem and the climate, and now we're going to try and manipulate it?

No way, we'd just screw something else up. Too many unknown factors.

if they really gave a shit about the planet they would cover it in hemp..
save the planet.....

Me must not forget that planting trees and painting your roof white are bioengineering.

At the present rate of human CO2 emissions it would require about one trillion fast growing evergreen trees like the sequoia to sequester it from the atmosphere -- that's about 450 trees per person on Earth.

Four years ago I planted a sequoia sapling one foot tall and six inches wide. Today it is 12 feet tall and six feet wide. They are the fastest growing conifer and grow in USDA zones 6 to 10 (about half the United States).

Two years ago I planted another 30 sequoia saplings (about $5 each) and 17 survived reaching heights from four to eight feet. It is when trees are young and growing that they suck the most carbon out of the air, in exchange for the oxygen they provide. I figure that right now my 18 sequoias are "evapo-transpiring" about 500 pounds of CO2 out of the air each year.

Some people object to my planting a "foreign" species here in Pennsylvania. But I remind them that the sequoia was the dominant tree in the northern hemisphere during the age of dinosaurs, even growing in the Arctic, until an asteroid wiped them out 65 million years ago.

It is good to know that people all around the world are planting this magnificent tree because at the current, rapidly accellerating rate of global warming these ancient Sequoias might soon go extinct in California.

:D when are we gonna see this on our new site...

http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5202

LEADING GEOENGINEERING TECHNOLOGIES:

A SUMMARY OF POTENTIAL IMPACTS

Stratospheric aerosols (SRM)
interruption of African and Asian monsoons, potentially affecting food supplies of up to 2 billion people(4)

ozone depletion

irreversibility (sudden temperature rise if stopped)

worsening ocean acidification

reduced efficacy of solar energy generation

profiteering

militarization(5)

Cloud whitening (SRM)
altered precipitation patterns and storm tracks(6)

unknown effects on marine life if executed on a vast scale

extremely energy intensive

is inherently trans-boundary

would take place over the oceans, a global commons

Ocean Fertilization (CDR)
disturbance of marine food web(7)

worsening ocean acidification(8)

commercial exploitation already underway(9) production of toxic algal blooms(10)

production of harmful gases such as dimethylsulphide (DMS)

Biochar (CDR)
unsustainable land use requirements (hundreds of millions of hectares)(11)

unproven claims regarding soil amendment properties(12)

puts at risk those populations depending on forests and marginal lands

attempts underway to accredit biochar on carbon markets with oil and airline industry backing(13)

Why else is Geoengineering unacceptable?

It can’t be tested: No experimental phase is possible – in order to have a noticeable impact on the climate, geoengineering must be deployed on a massive scale. “Experiments” or “field trials” are actually equivalent to deployment in the real world because small-scale tests do not deliver the data on climate effects. For people and biodiversity, impacts would likely be massive as well, and immediate and possibly irreversible.

It is unequal: OECD governments and powerful corporations (who have denied or ignored climate change and its impact on biodiversity for decades but are responsible for most of historic GHG emissions) are the ones with the budgets and the technology to execute this gamble with Gaia. There is no reason to trust that they will have the interests of more vulnerable states or peoples in mind.

It is unilateral: Although all geoengineering proposals run into the tens of billions of dollars, for rich nations and billionaires, they could be considered relatively cheap (and simple) to deploy. The capacity to act will be within the hands of those who possess the technology (individuals, corporations, states) in the next few years. It is urgent that multilateral measures are taken to ban any unilateral

It is risky and unpredictable: The side effects of geoengineered interventions are unknown. Geoengineering could easily have unintended consequences due to any number of factors: mechanical failure, human error, inadequate understanding of ecosystems and biodiversity and the Earth’s climate, unforeseen natural phenomena, irreversibility, or funding interruptions.

It violates treaties: Many geoengineering techniques have latent military purposes and their deployment would violate the UN Environmental Modification Treaty (ENMOD), which prohibits the hostile use of environmental modification.

It is the perfect excuse: Geoengineering offers governments an option other than reducing emissions and protecting biodiversity. Geoengineering research is often seen as a way to “buy time,” but it also gives governments justification to delay compensation for damage caused by climate change and to avoid taking action on emissions reduction.

It commodifies our climate and raises the spectre of climate profiteering: Those who think they have a planetary fix for the climate crisis are already flooding patent offices with patent applications. Should a “Plan B” ever be agreed upon, the prospect of it being privately held is terrifying. Serious planet-altering technologies should never be undertaken for commercial profit. If geoengineering is actually a climate emergency back-up plan, then it should not be eligible for carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism or any other offset system.

Why should COP 10 establish a moratorium on Geoengineering? Because without a moratorium, a few powerful governments, companies or industries who have the means to deploy geoengineering could subject the rest of the planet, its biodiversity and peoples to geoengineering’s unknown and potentially devastating effects. Real-world experiments/deployment using geoengineering technologies cannot be allowed, even less in the absence of global international debate and rules. Moratoria are a stopgap measure until the UN system gains capacity to monitor and assess new technologies.(14) A moratorium on geoengineering is essential because the risks of not having a moratorium in place are too high: Both biological and cultural diversity are already under intense pressure and climate change is making things worse. We simply cannot afford to gamble with geoengineering technologies – large-scale, dangerous, speculative – proposed by scientists, industries and governments from the countries that have the heaviest ecological footprint on Earth.
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It will also keep us enslaved to dirty energy sources as companies will claim their geoengineering schemes can counter the effects of continuing to use them. I do however see biochar as viable IF not run by a multinational only seeking to commoditize it, used on a small scale ONLY if need be and not comprised of coal ash. Cover crops actually imo are better for soil and plants.

Bah. Research does not preclude "doing something now",....and it MIGHT just save your ass in some as of yet unforeseen future. We may Geo-engineer Mars ( Terraform ) sometime in the next century or two.

This is why you see politicians balking on clean energy or doing anything to adequately address global warming through decreasing Co2 emissions through sustainable agriculture (can't step on big ag's toes), holding polluters accountable, etc. This scheme is now being devised to afford corporate polluters a way to invest in a scheme that is not a solution but will be marketed as one in order for them to escape responsibility for decreasing their emissions. Companies like BP are looking into this as well as others to classify this as a "green" action while it is only a disguise to continue the status quo.... and a dangerous disguise it is in that playing with the Earth's atmosphere and ecosystems in this way is very risky and not assured.

It is amazing to me to watch this unfold as corporations and certain organizations looking to back this (like the Gates Foundation) are the ones scaremongering that destruction is imminent in order to fascilitate its institution (while at the same time supporting climate denier candidates to keep progress at bay in order to fascilitate their scheme as well) while people like Al Gore, Vandana Shiva, David Suzuki and others are calling for renewable energy, reforestation, sustainable agrculture, soil carbon sequestration, carbon taxes, etc. These are actually level headed SOLUTIONS and not bandaids that will heal the climate balance through natural processes rather than these junk science schemes with unknown variables and results.

It will do no good to inject anything into the atmosphere to counter CO 2 emissions if industry will still be allowed to use the atmosphere as an open sewer. It will solve nothing, but of course it will make companies huge profits, especially if any residual "problems" should arise needing a countermeasure that will again make them money. And people complain about carbon taxes to hold them accountable? Institute these schemes and companies will own everything including the food you eat and water your drink, such as it will be. See the shell game?

Geoenginneering as a course of action should not even be entertained. It is outrageous that the same companies pushing this don't seem to give a damn about taking responsibility for the pollution they dump on our planet each and every day, and that proves this is not caring about the environment to them. In the end it comes down to all of us changing our wiring and seeing that unless we too change in our initial behavior these schemes do nothing but perpetuate the very problems we started with.

Although, it does prove one thing to me: that these companies know full well that global warming is real and exacerbated by human activity. Their scam is outted .