Download or read book A Case for Climate Engineering written by David Keith and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading scientist argues that we must consider deploying climate engineering technology to slow the pace of global warming. Climate engineering—which could slow the pace of global warming by injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere—has emerged in recent years as an extremely controversial technology. And for good reason: it carries unknown risks and it may undermine commitments to conserving energy. Some critics also view it as an immoral human breach of the natural world. The latter objection, David Keith argues in A Scientist's Case for Climate Engineering, is groundless; we have been using technology to alter our environment for years. But he agrees that there are large issues at stake. A leading scientist long concerned about climate change, Keith offers no naïve proposal for an easy fix to what is perhaps the most challenging question of our time; climate engineering is no silver bullet. But he argues that after decades during which very little progress has been made in reducing carbon emissions we must put this technology on the table and consider it responsibly. That doesn't mean we will deploy it, and it doesn't mean that we can abandon efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But we must understand fully what research needs to be done and how the technology might be designed and used. This book provides a clear and accessible overview of what the costs and risks might be, and how climate engineering might fit into a larger program for managing climate change.
Download or read book Climate Engineering and the Law written by Michael B. Gerrard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to focus on the legal aspects of climate engineering, making recommendations for future laws and governance.
Download or read book Imagining Climate Engineering written by Jeroen Oomen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the increasing attention for climate engineering, a set of speculative technologies aimed to counter global warming. What is the future of the global climate? And who gets to decide—or even design—this future? Imagining Climate Engineering explores how and why climate engineering became a potential approach to anthropogenic climate change. Specifically, it showcases how views on the future of climate change and climate engineering evolved by addressing the ways in which climate engineers view its respective physical, political, and moral domains. Tracing the intellectual and political history of dreams to control the weather and climate as well as the discovery of climate change, Jeroen Oomen examines the imaginative parameters within which contemporary climate engineering research takes place. Introducing the analytical metaphor ‘ways of seeing’ to describe explicit or implicit visions, understandings, and foci that facilitate a particular understanding of what is at stake, Imagining Climate Engineering shows how visions on the knowability of climate tie into moral and political convictions about the possibility and desirability of engineering the climate. Marrying science and technology studies and the environmental humanities, Oomen provides crucial insights for the future of the climate change debate for scholars and students.
Download or read book Theological and Ethical Perspectives on Climate Engineering written by Forrest Clingerman and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The climate is changing as an unintended consequence of human industrialization and consumerism. Recently some scientists and engineers have suggested climate engineering—technological solutions that would intentionally change the climate to make it more hospitable. This approach focuses on large-scale technologies to alleviate the worst effects of anthropogenic climate change. This book considers the moral, philosophical, and religious questions raised by such proposals, bringing Christian theology and ethics into the conversation about climate engineering for the first time. The contributors have different views on whether climate engineering is morally acceptable and on what kinds of climate engineering are most promising and most dangerous, but all agree that religion has a vital role to play in the analysis and decisions called for on this vital issue. Calming the Storm presents diverse perspectives on some of the most vital questions raised by climate engineering: Who has the right to make decisions about such global technological efforts? What have we learned from the decisions that caused the climate to change that might shed light on efforts to reverse that change? What frameworks and metaphors are helpful in thinking about climate engineering, and which are counterproductive? What religious beliefs, practices, and rituals can help people to imagine and evaluate the prospect of engineering the climate?
Download or read book Engineering the Climate written by Christopher J. Preston and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management discusses the ethical issues associated with deliberately engineering a cooler climate to combat global warming. Climate engineering (also known as geoengineering) has recently experienced a surge of interest given the growing likelihood that the global community will fail to limit the temperature increases associated with greenhouse gases to safe levels. Deliberate manipulation of solar radiation to combat climate change is an exciting and hopeful technical prospect, promising great benefits to those who are in line to suffer most through climate change. At the same time, the prospect of geoengineering creates huge controversy. Taking intentional control of earth’s climate would be an unprecedented step in environmental management, raising a number of difficult ethical questions. One particular form of geoengineering, solar radiation management (SRM), is known to be relatively cheap and capable of bringing down global temperatures very rapidly. However, the complexity of the climate system creates considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of SRM’s effects in different regions. The ethical issues raised by the prospect of SRM are both complex and thorny. They include: 1) the uncertainty of SRM’s effects on precipitation patterns, 2) the challenge of proper global participation in decision-making, 3) the legitimacy of intentionally manipulating the global climate system in the first place, 4) the potential to sidestep the issue of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, and, 5) the lasting effects on future generations. It has been widely acknowledged that a sustained and scholarly treatment of the ethics of SRM is necessary before it will be possible to make fair and just decisions about whether (or how) to proceed. This book, including essays by 13 experts in the field of ethics of geoengineering, is intended to go some distance towards providing that treatment.
Download or read book Climate Adaptation Engineering written by Emilio Bastidas-Arteaga and published by Butterworth-Heinemann. This book was released on 2019-03-16 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate Adaptation Engineering defines the measures taken to reduce vulnerability and increase the resiliency of built infrastructure. This includes enhancement of design standards, structural strengthening, utilisation of new materials, and changes to inspection and maintenance regimes, etc. The book examines the known effects and relationships of climate change variables on infrastructure and risk-management policies. Rich with case studies, this resource will enable engineers to develop a long-term, self-sustained assessment capacity and more effective risk-management strategies. The book's authors also take a long-term view, dealing with several aspects of climate change. The text has been written in a style accessible to technical and non-technical readers with a focus on practical decision outcomes. - Provides climate scenarios and their likelihoods, hazard modelling (wind, flood, heatwaves, etc.), infrastructure vulnerability, resilience or exposure (likelihood and extent of damage) - Introduces the key concepts needed to assess the risks, costs and benefits of future proofing infrastructures in a changing climate - Includes case studies authored by experts from around the world
Download or read book Engineering Response to Climate Change Second Edition written by Robert G. Watts and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2013-03-22 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear, concise discussion of today’s hottest topics in climate change, including adapting to climate change and geo-engineering to mitigate the effects of change, Engineering Response to Climate Change, Second Edition takes on the tough questions of what to do and offers real solutions to the practical problems caused by radical changes in the Earth’s climate. From energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions reduction, to climate-altering technologies, this new edition explores the latest concerns such as acidification of the ocean, energy efficiency, transportation, space solar power, and future and emerging possibilities. The editors set the stage by discussing the separate issues of the emissions of radiatively important atmospheric constituents, energy demand, energy supply, agriculture, water resources, coastal hazards, adaption strategies, and geo-engineering. They explain the difference between the natural and human drivers of climate change and describe how humans have influenced the global climate during past decades. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions, calculations, and possible research topics. See What’s in the Second Edition: New conceptual tools and research necessary for problems associated with fossil fuels Cutting-edge topics such as adaption and geo-engineering The latest concerns such as acidification of the ocean, energy efficiency, transportation, and space solar power Solutions to problems caused by changes in the Earth’s climate So much has changed in the 15 years since the publication of the first edition, that this is, in effect, a completely new book. However, the general theme is the same: the climate energy problem has become largely an engineering problem. With this in mind, the book explores what engineers can do to prevent, mitigate, or adapt to climate change.
Download or read book Earthmasters written by Clive Hamilton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the effects climate change will have on Earth by the end of this century, focusing on a collaboration between scientists and big business to develop advances in geoengineering so that humans can fight global warming.
Download or read book Can Science Fix Climate Change written by Mike Hulme and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-04 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change seems to be an insurmountable problem. Political solutions have so far had little impact. Some scientists are now advocating the so-called 'Plan B', a more direct way of reducing the rate of future warming by reflecting more sunlight back to space, creating a thermostat in the sky. In this book, Mike Hulme argues against this kind of hubristic techno-fix. Drawing upon a distinguished career studying the science, politics and ethics of climate change, he shows why using science to fix the global climate is undesirable, ungovernable and unattainable. Science and technology should instead serve the more pragmatic goals of increasing societal resilience to weather risks, improving regional air quality and driving forward an energy technology transition. Seeking to reset the planet’s thermostat is not the answer.
Download or read book Climate Engineering written by Daniel Edward Callies and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate Engineering: A Normative Perspective takes as its subject a prospective policy response to the urgent problem of climate change, one previously considered taboo. Climate engineering, the “deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment in order to counteract anthropogenic climate change,” encapsulates a wide array of technological proposals. Daniel Edward Callies here focuses on one proposal currently being researched—stratospheric aerosol injection—which would spray aerosol particles into the upper atmosphere to thus reflect a small portion of incoming sunlight and slightly cool the globe. This book asks important questions that should guide moral and political discussions of geoengineering. Does engaging in such research lead us towards inexorable deployment? Could this research draw us away from the more important tasks of mitigation and adaptation? Should we avoid risky interventions in the climate system altogether? What would legitimate governance of this technology look like? What would constitute a just distribution of the benefits and burdens associated with stratospheric aerosol injection? Who ought to be included in the decision-making process? Callies offers a normative perspective on these and other questions related to engineering the climate, ultimately arguing for research and regulation guided by norms of legitimacy, distributive justice, and procedural justice.
Download or read book Climate Geoengineering Science Law and Governance written by Wil Burns and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-05 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sobering reality of the disconnect between the resolve of the world community to effectively address climate change, and what actually needs to be done, has led to increasing impetus for consideration of a suite of approaches collectively known as “climate geoengineering,” or “climate engineering.” Indeed, the feckless response of the world community to climate change has transformed climate geoengineering from a fringe concept to a potentially mainstream policy option within the past decade. This volume will explore scientific, political and legal issues associated with the emerging field of climate geoengineering. The volume encompasses perspectives on both of the major categories of climate geoengineering approaches, carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management.
Download or read book Climate Intervention written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growing problem of changing environmental conditions caused by climate destabilization is well recognized as one of the defining issues of our time. The root problem is greenhouse gas emissions, and the fundamental solution is curbing those emissions. Climate geoengineering has often been considered to be a "last-ditch" response to climate change, to be used only if climate change damage should produce extreme hardship. Although the likelihood of eventually needing to resort to these efforts grows with every year of inaction on emissions control, there is a lack of information on these ways of potentially intervening in the climate system. As one of a two-book report, this volume of Climate Intervention discusses albedo modification - changing the fraction of incoming solar radiation that reaches the surface. This approach would deliberately modify the energy budget of Earth to produce a cooling designed to compensate for some of the effects of warming associated with greenhouse gas increases. The prospect of large-scale albedo modification raises political and governance issues at national and global levels, as well as ethical concerns. Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth discusses some of the social, political, and legal issues surrounding these proposed techniques. It is far easier to modify Earth's albedo than to determine whether it should be done or what the consequences might be of such an action. One serious concern is that such an action could be unilaterally undertaken by a small nation or smaller entity for its own benefit without international sanction and regardless of international consequences. Transparency in discussing this subject is critical. In the spirit of that transparency, Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth was based on peer-reviewed literature and the judgments of the authoring committee; no new research was done as part of this study and all data and information used are from entirely open sources. By helping to bring light to this topic area, this book will help leaders to be far more knowledgeable about the consequences of albedo modification approaches before they face a decision whether or not to use them.
Download or read book Climate Change and Pragmatic Engineering Mitigation written by Jacqueline A. Stagner and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together 18 experts with diverse backgrounds and expertise from around the globe to tackle climate change from multiple angles. A comprehensive exposition of the interconnection between ocean, weather, and climate variability is a pre-requisite for understanding the challenge. The solution approach encompasses a better appreciation of the roof, refined solar energy estimation, heightened heat exchange effectiveness, improved understanding of photovoltaic operation in the Arctic, and integration of thermoelectric with photovoltaic. Adaptation is an essential and immediate remedy that every individual must take part in, understanding that men and women respond to the thermal environment differently. Imagine future buildings made from appetizing materials, closing a sustainable design process with self-sufficient communities. Would hydrogen become a crucial part of the mitigation?
Download or read book The Governance of Solar Geoengineering written by Jesse L. Reynolds and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solar geoengineering could reduce climate change, but poses risks. This volume explores how it is, could, and should be governed.
Download or read book Engineering Sustainable Life on Earth written by John F. Coplin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate scientists have clarified the main causes of climate change, and the tight timescale within which humans must change behaviour, and implement effective solutions, wherever they are needed across the world. This book uncovers many of the powerful actions and uses them effectively to achieve sustainable human life, of improved quality, in a way that is affordable out of earned income for all humans, wherever they live. The ultimate solution to climate change lies not just in doing and consuming less but does instead entirely revolve around our ability to "out innovate" the problem. John F. Coplin, CBE, FREng, FCGI, has had a long and distinguished career in engineering and has operated and advised at all levels from heads of state, company chairs, engineering directors, government advisory boards, and on the shop floor. He is perfectly placed to take a wide-ranging approach, applying modern design and innovative engineering at a systemic level in order to provide novel approaches that will have far-reaching impact on reversing humankind’s impact on this planet. His projections and solutions are based on facts, reasonable calculations, and science learnt from nature. Unafraid to challenge current thinking, John looks at solutions across multiple sectors, including aviation, cars and domestic local transport, clean and renewable energy, food and agriculture, and housing and communities, and describes the particular potential of hydrogen as fuel. The book is written in a language for all. It is small enough to be used is a practical guide to where some of the most useful improvements are to be found and as a way to start important conversations.
Download or read book Engineering Methods for Precipitation Under a Changing Climate written by J. Rolf Olsen and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Selected papers from the ASCE Workshop on Engineering Methods for Precipitation under a Changing Climate, held in Reston, Virginia, May 30, 2017. Sponsored by the Subcommittee on Hydroclimatology and Engineering Adaptation of the Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate of ASCEThis collection contains seven peer-reviewed papers on engineering design for precipitation extremes.Topics include engineering methods for designing for and managing precipitation extremes and floods throughout the life cycle of a building, approaches to uncertainty and how acceptable risk is determined, and interactions with climate scientists on engineering needs for climate information and projections. Also included is a report on the discussions held during the workshop and the conclusions and recommendations that were drawn.This report provides information to practitioners and researchers working to ensure functional infrastructure while adapting to extreme precipitation changes
Download or read book Climate Change Geoengineering written by Wil C. G. Burns and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-22 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, eleven prominent authorities on climate change consider the legal, policy, and philosophical issues presented by geoengineering. The book asks: When, if ever, are decisions to embark on potentially risky climate modification projects justified? If such decisions can be justified, in a world without a central governing authority, who should authorize such projects and by what moral and legal right?
