Thread by @DoctorVive

I would love to see proponents of using solar #Geoengineering, rather than complaining about cancel culture & calling for the protection of "science" from politics (I mean, lol), actually address the reasoned claims about geoengineering these scientists are making👇

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https://twitter.com/FHBBiermann/status/1483011689301823490

First, they argue that "First, the risks of solar geoengineering are poorly understood and can never be fully known."

Is this not true?

2/x

Are proponents of using solar #Geoengineering claiming that the risks *can* be fully known, or that we should develop and deploy technologies to dim the sun without fully understanding the risks?

3/x

Second, the scientists calling for a ban on solar #Geoengineering warn that "speculative hopes about the future availability of solar geoengineering technologies...can disincentivize governments, businesses, and societies to do their utmost to achieve decarbonization."

4/x

Do geoengineering proponents disagree that this speculative hope disincentivizes decarbonization? Or do they acknowledge that dynamic, & if so are they proposing to address it? Or do they believe that geoengineering will enable the fossil-fuel system to continue safely?

5/x

Third, the scientists calling for a ban on solar #Geoengineering argue that "the current global governance system is unfit to develop & implement the far-reaching agreements needed to maintain fair, inclusive, and effective political control over solar geoengineering deployment."

Can proponents of using solar geongineering understand the difference between lacking institutions to govern the deployment of a technology but having the institutions to understand the risks and ban it? Same institutions, but two different kinds of governance.

7/x

Or, are proponents of solar geoengineering proposing that the international community already has the institutions that will enable equitable and safe geoengineering governance? If so, they need to address the scientists' arguments to the contrary.

8/x

Or, if they agree that we currently lack these institutions, how are they proposing to upend the international governance order in the next decades to ensure the safe and equitable deployment of a technology that doesn't even exist yet?

9/x

I encourage everyone to read the paper that accompanies the open letter, in which the scientists calling for a ban on solar geoengineering lay out their arguments in some detail. They are serious and to be grappled with, not just dismissed with rhetorical fear-mongering.

10/x

Open letter here: solargeoeng.org/non-use-agreem…

Longer paper here:
wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wc…

Finally, I will just highlight, as the scientists opposed to geoengineering note, that "the international community has a rich history of international restrictions and moratoria over activities and technologies judged to be too dangerous, undesirable, and risky."

12/x

They have a full paragraph on those banned activities and technologies (in the screenshot below) that's well worth reading.

13/x

Anyhow, just wanted these conversations to be honest and substantive.

So far I've seen geoengineering proponents try to reframe these arguments as a form of "cancel culture" and...

14/x

...with some self-contradiction, invoke both an enlightenment-era science outside politics *and* the danger of scientists ceding geoengineering to the red-hat-wearing right.

15/x

That seems to me like a rhetorical strategy to sidestep reasoned arguments for a ban on geoengineering and try to boost support for dimming the sun by making people feel shame and fear for opposing it.

Anyhow, my 2 cents.

/fin