Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse
Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2018 11:07 pm
Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse
The 2018 Negative Emissions Conference discussed immediate practical responses to climate change, under the theme 'Integrating Industry, Technology and Society for Carbon Drawdown.' A media report on the conference is here.
Convened by the National Committee for Earth System Science, the Australian National University, CSIRO, University of Tasmania and the Australian Research Council, the conference was held in the Shine Dome in Canberra, home of the Australian Academy of Science. The Shine Dome is a futuristic piece of 1959 architecture, dating from a time of confident scientific optimism and respect for knowledge. Just a mile or so across the lake from Australia's national Parliament House, and adjacent to the Australian National University, the Shine Dome aims to reflect the central place of science in modern Australia.
Locals sometimes refer to the Shine Dome as the Martian Embassy, perhaps combining its flying saucer design style and the sense that scientists are somehow alien to the practical business of Australian politics and culture. Participants in the two day conference on Negative Emissions came from all around our planet, but may well have felt like aliens in view of the complete lack of attention their visit to Canberra prompted from national politicians and media, apart from keynote addresses by one former almost Prime Minister, Dr John Hewson, and Australia’s former ceremonial Head of State, Governor-General Michael Jeffrey.
This conference brought together leading global scientists working on methods to remove carbon dioxide to stop climate change. After attending the conference, my feeling was that the title of this thread, Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse, would have been a more accurate subtitle, if not title. The situation is highly depressing, even apocalyptic, with the world displaying very limited vision, engagement and capacity to prevent catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. The conference heard from leading scientists, including a message that the current planetary trajectory will produce dangerous conflict and collapse before physical tipping points are crossed, showing the extreme urgency of addressing the primary security crisis of the greenhouse effect.
Climate change is theoretically viewed as the most important existential problem we face, and yet discussions of practical ways to stop it somehow generate almost total indifference from the broader society. An existential problem is one that touches on the conditions of human existence. There should be no dispute that the extreme risk of climate change could tip our planet over into an entirely unhospitable state for us, on an unpredictable timeframe.
Part of my interest is to explore how this global ethical context of climate change, with risks of extinction, war, famine and plague, relates to apocalyptic thinking, but before touching that difficult topic I will set the scientific and political scene.
Meanwhile, the dominant political discussions are off on tangents. The world is fiddling while the planet burns, with the useless debate between the false premise that emission reduction alone could prevent global warming and the appalling psychotic madness of Trumpian denial. Both sides largely ignore the real solution, removing carbon from the air, a technical challenge that is now entirely marginal to politics but needs to move to the centre of global security discussion.
I attended the conference and presented a poster on the work I have proposed using iron salt aerosol as a carbon removal technology. The discussions helped a great deal to see the scientific and cultural context for this and a range of other related proposals. My specific interest is helping define how atmospheric iron cooling can enable progress. There are many other more advanced cooling methods, such as soil biochar, ocean alkalinity, marine plants, direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, not to mention the related range of solar radiation management methods.
I will use this thread to reflect on my notes from the conference, and will link each post to the twitter handle #NEConf2018 to alert those interested in the conference. Comments and questions are most welcome.
The 2018 Negative Emissions Conference discussed immediate practical responses to climate change, under the theme 'Integrating Industry, Technology and Society for Carbon Drawdown.' A media report on the conference is here.
Convened by the National Committee for Earth System Science, the Australian National University, CSIRO, University of Tasmania and the Australian Research Council, the conference was held in the Shine Dome in Canberra, home of the Australian Academy of Science. The Shine Dome is a futuristic piece of 1959 architecture, dating from a time of confident scientific optimism and respect for knowledge. Just a mile or so across the lake from Australia's national Parliament House, and adjacent to the Australian National University, the Shine Dome aims to reflect the central place of science in modern Australia.
Locals sometimes refer to the Shine Dome as the Martian Embassy, perhaps combining its flying saucer design style and the sense that scientists are somehow alien to the practical business of Australian politics and culture. Participants in the two day conference on Negative Emissions came from all around our planet, but may well have felt like aliens in view of the complete lack of attention their visit to Canberra prompted from national politicians and media, apart from keynote addresses by one former almost Prime Minister, Dr John Hewson, and Australia’s former ceremonial Head of State, Governor-General Michael Jeffrey.
This conference brought together leading global scientists working on methods to remove carbon dioxide to stop climate change. After attending the conference, my feeling was that the title of this thread, Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse, would have been a more accurate subtitle, if not title. The situation is highly depressing, even apocalyptic, with the world displaying very limited vision, engagement and capacity to prevent catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. The conference heard from leading scientists, including a message that the current planetary trajectory will produce dangerous conflict and collapse before physical tipping points are crossed, showing the extreme urgency of addressing the primary security crisis of the greenhouse effect.
Climate change is theoretically viewed as the most important existential problem we face, and yet discussions of practical ways to stop it somehow generate almost total indifference from the broader society. An existential problem is one that touches on the conditions of human existence. There should be no dispute that the extreme risk of climate change could tip our planet over into an entirely unhospitable state for us, on an unpredictable timeframe.
Part of my interest is to explore how this global ethical context of climate change, with risks of extinction, war, famine and plague, relates to apocalyptic thinking, but before touching that difficult topic I will set the scientific and political scene.
Meanwhile, the dominant political discussions are off on tangents. The world is fiddling while the planet burns, with the useless debate between the false premise that emission reduction alone could prevent global warming and the appalling psychotic madness of Trumpian denial. Both sides largely ignore the real solution, removing carbon from the air, a technical challenge that is now entirely marginal to politics but needs to move to the centre of global security discussion.
I attended the conference and presented a poster on the work I have proposed using iron salt aerosol as a carbon removal technology. The discussions helped a great deal to see the scientific and cultural context for this and a range of other related proposals. My specific interest is helping define how atmospheric iron cooling can enable progress. There are many other more advanced cooling methods, such as soil biochar, ocean alkalinity, marine plants, direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, not to mention the related range of solar radiation management methods.
I will use this thread to reflect on my notes from the conference, and will link each post to the twitter handle #NEConf2018 to alert those interested in the conference. Comments and questions are most welcome.