Talk:Climate engineering

Governance

I removed the section, as there is a reasonble question as to whether governance is possible or desirable, especially when noting the claim above that a wealthy individual could do some of this. Section quoted below (with the raw URL references replaced by external links, for readability.

There is presently a lack of a universally-agreed framework for the regulation of either geoengineering activity or research. The London Dumping Convention addresses some aspects of the law in relation to biomass ocean storage and ocean fertilization. The Oxford Martin School at Oxford University has a programme to evaluate geoengineering governance. The 'Oxford Principles' have resulted from this work:

• Principle 1: Geoengineering to be regulated as a public good.
• Principle 2: Public participation in geoengineering decision-making
• Principle 3: Disclosure of geoengineering research and open publication of results
• Principle 4: Independent assessment of impacts
• Principle 5: Governance before deployment

These principles have been endorsed by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee on “The Regulation of Geoengineering” http://www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/oxford-principles/history/ , and have been referred to by authors discussing the issue of governance. http://www.economist.com/node/15814427

The Asilomar conference was replicated to deal with the issue of geoengineering governance http://www.economist.com/node/15814427, and was made into a TV documentary programme, broadcast in Canada. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs) 18:24, 9 August 2012

Citing the claim that the IPCC no longer uses the term 'geoengineering'

I have examined the notes listed as citing evidence that the IPCC no longer uses the term 'geoengineering' that are offered here, and do not find that they support the claim. Specifically, the first note links an IPCC document which does not include any statement about a decision to not use the term. 2A02:AA16:577F:B80:E995:D5DE:5016:17E3 (talk) 10:45, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's always hard to find a ref that says that something is not the case or something does not exist... If the three big working group reports of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report don't use the term "geoengineering" anymore then I think this is an OK reference to use for this statement. Yes, even better would be an official statement by the IPCC saying "we don't use this term anymore" but I suspect such a document doesn't exist. We could alternatively ask some of the IPCC report authors. Perhaps User:Jonathanlynn has a suggestion for this. EMsmile (talk) 21:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Many scientists prefer to avoid the term geoengineering because it covers two broad and distinct categories of action -- carbon dioixide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). So the term geoengineering is ambiguous and confusing. It is also emotionally freighted. For definitions of CDR and SRM see the glossary (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Annex-I.pdf) to the Working Group III contribution (mitigation) to the Sixth Assessment Report. The glossary does not include an entry for geoengineering. There is extensive coverage of CDR in the WGIII report including in the Summary for Policymakers, but SRM is mentioned only briefly in Ch 14. This reflects the lack of scientific literature on SRM. See Ch 14 section 14.4.5 for a discussion of the two terms and of geoengineering and the international governance issues including cross-working group Box 4 on SRM (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Chapter14.pdf) Jonathanlynn (talk) 10:00, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Much more work needed

I haven't looked at this article closely before, as I didn't quite understand the distinction before. Now, I can certainly see the purpose of this article, as well as its limitations.

Don't have time to contribute more to it right now, but some quick suggestions:

• Can we come up with a page image of any kind? Perhaps even a square gallery like what Co-benefits of climate change mitigation or climate change and birds have, with several images to represent each notable method?

• "Moral hazard and ethics" does not appear to cite a single source newer than mid-2010s.

• "History" section seems too far down? In general, article layout is strange. First, we go through different methods, than we list some, often vague and seemingly not very comprehensive reasons why some are opposed, than we confirm that quite a lot of people are indeed opposed, and then we mention a few assessments by various organizations, nearly all inconclusive. Surely there has to be a better way to organize it?

InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:13, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh, and here is another fun discovery. It turns out we also have a planetary engineering article, which is like a confused mix between this one and terraforming. Small, receives 9 times fewer views than this one, and basically all of the current article has been written by two student editors a couple of years ago. Thoughts on how to deal with it? InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:07, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I am against investing much time into this article. I am not sure if you've read my comment on this talk page from December 2022? If not, I copy it again below: "Also, I think this article needs to remain brief and not build up a parallel structure: a lot of the content that has now been added under "ocean geoengineering" is already at carbon sequestration. So the reader should be mainly referred to that other article. Same with iron fertilization: there is a good article on that so we don't need to build up new content about iron fertilization here. Just an excerpt from the iron fertilization article is sufficient and then refer readers across. Otherwise we'll end up with the same/similar content in several articles and would need to updated content in several places which is not efficient. Basically, the term "climate engineering" is just an umbrella term for a range of technologies. It might still be used in the media but as the IPCC has dropped this term, I think we can expect that it will become less used in future. People will more likely speak about carbon dioxide removal, carbon sequestration and so forth. That's where we should put our energy as Wikipedia editors, in my opinion."

As for the history section being further down towards the end of the article, I think that is good. For science and tech type articles I think the history section should NOT be at the start of the article as it's unlikely that the main thing that readers are looking for is the history of that science or tech topic. Placing it towards the end, near the standard section "society and culture", is appropriate in my opinion.

And I hadn't seen the planetary engineering article before. Hadn't heard of the term yet either. If there is overlap then this should be reduced. EMsmile (talk) 08:02, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I remember that comment. I just don't think my goals are in contradiction to it.

Sure, this article should mainly serve as a directory which only gives a brief overview of the specific interventions. I.e. much like what tipping points in the climate system currently does, and what I would want the article on biome impacts (a proposed modification of the ecosystem effects article) to ultimately look like. (As well as my proposed alternative to the "co-benefits" article, that secondary impacts draft.) The thing is, even directory-style articles can well be of a different quality level. Given the whole "people often only read the lead" argument I have seen several times on here, wouldn't picking a great page image (probably a 2x2/3x2 collage at the end of the day) be even more of a priority then?

And my objection is not that history is at the end of the article per se, but rather that in the article's current state, we list a few objections and downsides from often vaguely defined "opponents", while the positive views on the subject are either absent or hidden somewhere within history of these assessments. It's almost like a joke: you would think that nobody wants it, yet those big organizations keep researching it regardless. Solar geoengineering also seems to have a similar issue, at least in my view, and this is where I think we can likely do a lot better.

Lastly, I think that page might just be another term which was mainly invented on here and/or picked up from general conversation. It doesn't seem to cite any source actually using this term (much like the ecological collapse article). I now think that the best thing to do with it would probably be to make a disambig pointing to either this page, or terraforming. (Once anything unique to it is spread to the articles which would need it more, of course). InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Your idea about a disambiguation page got me thinking: how about we change it over to become a short article like marine resources. It gives a short intro and then a list of relevant articles. This might do the trick? EMsmile (talk) 13:54, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps, though there is a notable difference, as marine resources at least has firm roots in a reliable source (SDGs) while with planetary engineering, the most reliable recent source I could find was this conference paper from over 30 years ago. It's even technically possible some newer uses of it have been examples of WP:Citogenesis. I'll have to think about it. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:03, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: POLT 444 Politics and Policy in a Warming World

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2023 and 11 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Coccineum, Amorysuperfan1, Coffins63 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Coffins63 (talk) 23:11, 1 November 2023 (UTC)