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James Fleming, “Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control”
Abstract
In the summer of 2008 the Chinese were worried about rain. They were set to host the Summer Olympics that year, and they wanted clear skies. Surely clear skies, they must have thought, would show the world that China had arrived. So they outfitted a small army (50,000 men) with artillery pieces and rocket launchers (over 10,000 of them) and proceeded to make war on the heavens. The idea was to "seed" clouds with silver iodide before they got to Beijing and rained on the Chinese parade. Or maybe the idea was to frighten the rain gods. Who knows? In any case, none of it worked: the massive, loud, and surely expensive operation had, according to most experts, no measurable effect on the weather around the Chinese capital. You might say you can't blame them for trying. But according to James Rodger Fleming, you can. In his incisive new book Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control (Columbia UP, 2010), Fleming shows that although people have always dreamed of controlling the weather, and many have tried to do so, no one has ever succeeded. The reason is simple: the atmosphere of the Earth is not like your refrigerator or oven. It's just too big and complex to be man-handled by any known or even realistically imagined technology. But, as Fleming demonstrates, there are always desperate people who refuse to accept this intuitive fact. So we are presented with a gallery of rain-making mountebanks, charlatans, and swindlers ever-ready to part rain-seeking fools and their rain-seeking money. In Fleming's excellent telling, the story is entertaining though a bit sad. It's sadder still that the weather-controlling con is still being run by seemingly well-intentioned people who claim they can "fix" global warming by means of some outsized, outrageous, and out-of-this-world engineering scheme. Fleming, who both knows the science and has looked at the history, is more than dubious. The only way we can "fix" the sky is to leave it alone and hope for the best. It turns out, however, that leaving the sky alone is hard. It's actually easier to attack it, proclaim victory, and continue as before. Just ask the Chinese.
... CDR on the other hand was from the start framed explicitly as a (temporary) substitute for decarbonization. In 1977, a landmark scientific paper put CDR on the map (Fleming, 2010) when US physicist and climate skeptic Freeman Dyson (1977) proposed large-scale planting of fast-growing trees to help stabilize atmospheric CO 2 levels. While Dyson saw the phase-out of fossil fuels as a necessity in the long term, he considered it unlikely in the short term: "it seems inevitable that we shall continue for many decades to burn fossil fuels and to increase the level of atmospheric CO 2 " (p. ...
... But substituting CDR and SRM for other forms of mitigation was controversial. Nordhaus co-authored an important 1992 US National Academy of Science (NAS) report about climate policy, which discussed several geoengineering options (Fleming, 2010). While industry representatives on the author panel, including Robert Frosch from car manufacturer General Motors, advocated geoengineering as a way of avoiding the cost of emission reductions (Fleming, 2010), some scientists were less convinced. ...
... Nordhaus co-authored an important 1992 US National Academy of Science (NAS) report about climate policy, which discussed several geoengineering options (Fleming, 2010). While industry representatives on the author panel, including Robert Frosch from car manufacturer General Motors, advocated geoengineering as a way of avoiding the cost of emission reductions (Fleming, 2010), some scientists were less convinced. Many report contributors were worried that even the thought that we could offset some aspects of inadvertent climate modification by deliberate modification schemes could be used as an excuse by those who would be negatively affected by controls on the human appetite to continue polluting and using the atmosphere as a free sewer. ...
Carbon dioxide removal is rapidly becoming a key focus in climate research and politics. This is raising concerns of “moral hazard” or “mitigation deterrence,” that is, the risk that promises of and/or efforts to pursue carbon removal end up reducing or delaying near‐term mitigation efforts. Some, however, contest this risk, arguing that it is overstated or lacking evidence. In this review, we explore the reasons behind the disagreement in the literature. We unpack the different ways in which moral hazard/mitigation deterrence (MH/MD) is conceptualized and examine how these conceptualizations inform assessments of MH/MD risks. We find that MH/MD is a commonly recognized feature of modeled mitigation pathways but that conclusions as to the real‐world existence of MH/MD diverge on individualistic versus structural approaches to examining it. Individualistic approaches favor narrow conceptualizations of MH/MD, which tend to exclude the wider political‐economic contexts in which carbon removal emerges. This exclusion limits the value and relevance of such approaches. We argue for a broader understanding of what counts as evidence of delaying practices and propose a research agenda that complements theoretical accounts of MH/MD with empirical studies of the political‐economic structures that may drive mitigation deterrence dynamics.
This article is categorized under: The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Benefits of Mitigation
The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge
Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance
... This prevailing narrative of climate engineering notably conflicts with a body of literature which has pointed to the longer-standing history of these measures (see, particularly, Baskin, 2019;Fleming, 1998Fleming, , 2010Keith, 2000, Oomen, 2021Schubert, 2021;Stilgoe, 2015). Such accounts have dated the historical roots of climate engineering back to the first half of the twentieth century and beyond, suggesting that these proposals are, in fact, older than the very crisis they promise to address. ...
... Such histories are not limited to historical scholarship, but include interdisciplinary accounts that seek to make sense of the historical emergence and trajectory of climate engineering proposals. It should be noted, that even after two decades of intensifying debate over climate engineering, this body of literature remains surprisingly small (see, e.g., Baskin, 2019;Fleming, 2010;Keith, 2000;Oomen, 2021;Schubert, 2021;Stilgoe, 2015; for the context of weather modification, see, e.g., Harper, 2017;Kwa in Miller & Edwards, 2001). The article contextualizes these histories of climate engineering, secondly, with the rich body of historical, sociological, and political research that has explored relations between climate science and the state. ...
... It was not until the 1980s really that climate and weather became differentiated into two objects and that the climate emerged as a global category (Edwards, 2006(Edwards, , 2010Miller, 2004;Miller & Edwards, 2001). In what remains one of the most comprehensive and authoritative accounts on the history of climate engineering, historian Jim Fleming therefore expands in much detail on the rain-making and cloud seeding schemes of Cold War "weather warriors" as important precursors of today's climate intervention proposals (Fleming, 2010). ...
Since the early 2000s, proposals to deliberately modify the Earth's climate have gained political traction as a controversial last resort measure against dangerous global warming. The article provides a ‘longue durée’ picture of such climate engineering proposals. It traces their historical trajectory from the late 1950s to their most recent arrival on mainstream climate policy agendas. This perspective suggests that the history of climate engineering unfolds not only along historically specific modes of understanding climatic change. It also corresponds to changing alliances between climate science and the state. By bringing together historical scholarship with contributions from sociology and science policy studies, the article sheds new light on the rise of climate engineering proposals. It recontextualizes these proposals within the bigger history of the political cultivation of climate science. This perspective highlights how deeply entwined efforts to understand and efforts to govern climatic change have always been.
This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge
The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge
The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice
... Although the idea of intentionally attempting to influence the global climate in response to climate change is often perceived as a relatively recent development, it has a longer history reaching back as far as the 1930s (Fleming, 2010, Fleming, 2006, Uther, 2014. CE has its historical roots in the idea of deliberately controlling the weather. ...
... One well known example is Operation Popeye, a US cloud seeding campaign during the Vietnam War intended to extend the length of the monsoon season and hamper enemy supply chains. Concerns about escalation led to the establishment of the Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD, full name Convention on the Prohibition of Military of Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques) by the UN in the 1970s (Parkinson, 2010, Fleming, 2010. ...
... The next section gives a brief introduction to the CE governance debate and introduces the proposed Code of Conduct (2). The following sections situate this paper in the wider literature on the role of discourse and governance in CE (3), outline the methodological approach (4), detail the results of the analysis, and discuss the possible implications of the results for the development of CE research governance (5 & 6). 10 (Fleming, 2010, Crutzen, 2006, Oldham et al., 2014. As it is becoming questionable whether current global mitigation commitments are consistent with achieving the Paris temperature targets, discussion of the need for intensified research and outdoor testing of some CE techniques is picking up speed (Anderson and Peters, 2016, IPCC, 2018, Dykema et al., 2014, Keith, 2013. ...
In addition to mitigation and adaptation as strategies for governing climate futures, a third way of responding to climate change is now emerging: Intentional intervention into the global climate, often termed ‘climate engineering’ (CE). There is a growing awareness that formal governance of some types of CE is going to be needed in the coming years, and that informal governance is already being shaped by the discourses and practices of CE research and assessment. Increased attention is being paid to the types of scientific and societal discourses shaping the emergence of CE governance. Contributing to this literature, this thesis asks how the discursive construction of CE governance is taking place in science, industry, civil society, and politics. The project emphasises that, as discourse is the source code with which contested futures are written, ‘cracking the discursive code’ underpinning the CE governance debate can help critically anticipate the emergence of future governance practices and infrastructures. In this vein, the thesis peruses several interrelated aims: (1) Exploring a framework for shifting the analytical perspective on the role of discourse in (CE) governance development processes; (2) Anticipating and critically reflecting upon how given discursive structures may be making certain types of CE governance more/less thinkable and practicable, (3) emancipating those engaging in the CE governance debate to recognize and expand the bounds of the discursive structures they are reproducing, and (4) informing the design of participatory processes to further “open up” discursive diversity in CE governance development.
... Die Impfung von Randwolken eines Hurrikans vor der Küste Floridas, der möglicherweise angeregt durch den Eingriff kurz darauf seine Zugbahn änderte und Verwüstungen in einer Küstenstadt in Georgia anrichtete, zeigt auf, auch wenn die Kausalität nie geklärt werden konnte, welche Gefahren und Konflikte mit solchen Operationen verbunden sein können(Röhl 1985). Von 1962 bis 1983 wurden weitere Versuche zur Abmilderung oder Umlenkung von Hurrikanen im »Project Stormfury« unternommen, eine Zusammenarbeit des amerikanischen Wetterdienstes mit der U.S. Navy und später der U.S. Air Force(Fleming 2010).Die Schritte von der Wettermodifikation hin zur Klimakontrolle fielen in die ersten Jahre des Kalten Krieges. Damals setzte das ehrgeizige Streben nach technischer und zivilisatorischer Überlegenheit auf beiden Seiten des Eisernen Vorhangs ein. ...
... Der Begriff Klimakrieg wurde nicht wie heute oft metaphorisch, sondern auch im engen militärischen Sinne gebraucht. Von Edward Teller, dem »Vater« der Wasserstoffbombe, ist das Zitat überliefert, die Auseinandersetzung über die Kontrolle des Wetters sei »the likely cause of the last war on earth«(Fleming 2010). Oftmals bestimmt die klimainduzierte Vernichtung von Lebensraum und Ressourcen Kriegsziele und Kriegsführung (Belge & Gestwa 2009, Hamblin 2013). ...
Die aktuelle Diskussion um das Climate Engineering als mögliche Antwort auf die globale anthropogene Erwärmung blickt auf eine längere Vorgeschichte zurück. Erste Versuche, das Wetter durch die Erzeugung von Niederschlägen zu modifizieren, führten mit der Zeit zu Plänen, immer großskaliger einzugreifen. Viele der ursprünglichen Ideen verschwanden in den Schubladen, wenige blieben. Dieses Kapitel zeichnet die wechsel-hafte Geschichte des Climate Engineering bis in die heutigen Tage nach und zeigt auch auf den begleitenden wissenschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Diskurs. From rainmaking to climate intervention-A look at the history of ideas and development of climate engineering: The present-day discussion about climate engineering as a possible answer to global warming looks back on a longer history spanning several decades. Initial attempts to modify the weather by generating precipitation eventually led to plans to intervene on an ever larger scale. Many of the original ideas disappeared in the drawers, only a few remained. This chapter traces the checkered history of climate engineering up to the present day and also points to the accompanying scientific and social discourse. De la lluvia artificial a la intervención climática-Una mirada a la historia de las ideas y el desarrollo de Ingeniería Climática: El debate sobre la ingeniería climática como posible respuesta al calentamiento global tiene una larga historia. Los primeros intentos de modificar el clima generando precipitaciones condujeron con el tiempo a planes para intervenir en el sistema terrestre a gran escala. Muchas de las ideas originales desaparecieron en los cajones, otras permanecieron. Este capítulo traza la accidentada historia de la inge-niería climática hasta nuestros días y señala también el discurso científico y social que la acompaña.
... Nevertheless, the growing urgency of the climate change issue, due to the weakness of global political solutions, continues to drive related scientific activity and interest (Frumhoff & Stephens, 2018). The historical roots of geoengineering science offer a further arena for critical discussion (e.g., Fleming, 2010;Oomen & Meiske, 2021) and linked analysis opens up, amongst other things, the way in which geoengineering ideas are shaped by socio-cultural context. Insight offered by an examination of the intellectual and political framing of geoengineering solutions has been advanced recently by Schubert (2022). ...
... Soviet science had a longstanding interest in weather and climate modification (Oldfield, 2013). Historians of science including James Fleming (2010) and Jacob Hamblin (2013) have drawn attention to the activities of Soviet scientists in this area within the context of Cold War tensions and highlighted the connection with broader discussions around environmental modification and climate management during this period (see also Hamblin, 2010;Harper & Doel, 2010). Soviet work in this area pre-dated the Cold War period, driven by domestic needs in agriculture as well as a state-led agenda aimed at understanding the complexities of physical systems to assist the effective utilization and management of natural resources. ...
Soviet science contributed significantly to our understanding of anthropogenic climate change and, as part of this, played a central role in the emerging science underpinning climate modification and geoengineering initiatives. A key focus of discussion was the use of stratospheric aerosols linked to the innovative ideas of Mikhail Budyko and colleagues. This work had its origins in what has been termed the theory of aerosol climatic catastrophe, which gained prominence in the Soviet context during the early 1970s. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the ideas of Budyko concerning the use of stratospheric aerosols were advanced by Yuri Izrael and his collaborators. The associated body of work gained traction during the 2000s and engendered a wider debate concerning the efficacy of geoengineering solutions amongst Russia's climate scientists. The legacies of this scientific discussion are also evident in recent high‐level international debates such as those linked to the activities of the IPCC. While significant geopolitical obstacles remain in the way of an international agreement linked to the possible deployment of geoengineering measures, interest continues to grow. The maturity of Russian science in the area of geoengineering and climate modification ensures that it remains an important voice within the broader scientific debate. At the same time, the progressive isolation of Russian science from the international scene due to wider geopolitical events risks deflecting attention away from contemporary popular and political debate in this area and alienating this rich scientific tradition at a critical juncture.
This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge
Climate, History, Society, Culture > Disciplinary Perspectives
Climate, History, Society, Culture > Technological Aspects and Ideas
... The broader American tendency toward technofixes to social problems and its embrace of technocracy can be traced at least as far back as the Progressive Era. In fact, some of the intellectual roots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century embrace of technocratic rule come from the mind of Bacon (1624), by some considered to be the great-grandfather of plans for 'planetary engineering' such as geoengineering and terraforming (Fleming, 2010;Fogg, 1995). Inheritors of the Baconian tradition, Americans embraced elements of technocracy during the Progressive Era. ...
... Perhaps with this Archimedean lever humans could even 'change the climate.' All this arguably also amounted to the first time 'geoengineering' was proposed, albeit in an entirely different context (Fleming, 2010;Fogg, 1995). ...
Moral hazards are ubiquitous. Green ones typically involve technological fixes: Environmentalists often see ‘technofixes’ as morally fraught because they absolve actors from taking more difficult steps toward systemic solutions. Carbon removal and especially solar geoengineering are only the latest example of such technologies. We here explore green moral hazards throughout American history. We argue that dismissing (solar) geoengineering on moral hazard grounds is often unproductive. Instead, especially those vehemently opposed to the technology should use it as an opportunity to expand the attention paid to the underlying environmental problem in the first place, actively invoking its opposite: ‘inverse moral hazards’.
... The term encompasses two technically dissimilar suites: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) proposes a variety of natural and technological sinks for filtering and storing carbon directly from the atmosphere (unlike CCS, which operates at source), while schemes for solar radiation management (SRM) propose that increasing the albedo of the planet's surfaces could reflect a degree of sunlight and thereby reduce warming and its impacts. The initial pairing of these suites was a function of scale and intent, with early conceptualizing of both CDR and SRM as transboundary, even planetary interventions in the climate system (Keith, 2000;Shepherd et al., 2009), with some harkening to Cold War era weather modifications (Fleming, 2009) or a renewed sense of stewardship as part of the 'Anthropocene' zeitgeist (Brand, 2009; see also Rockström et al., 2009). ...
... In the past, there were more frequent comparisons and analogies made with initiatives and frameworks of planetary stewardship (e.g. the Anthropocene, eco-modernism, rewilding -see Brand, 2009;Buck, 2014), or hubris in attempts to control regional and global environments (e.g. weather modification -Fleming, 2009; or fixing the nitrogen cycle - Morton, 2015) or to marshal powerful, dual-use technology platforms (e.g. nanotechnology, or nuclear). ...
This thesis explores recent proposals for novel carbon sinks (carbon removal) and planetary sunshades (sunlight reflection) – often treated as forms of climate engineering, or deliberate and large-scale climate interventions. I examine sunlight reflection and carbon removal as case studies of emerging sociotechnical strategies in climate governance, where imperfect projections produced by expert assessments influence political debate and planning. I explore the hidden politics of expert assessment: How knowledge is constructed, contested, and communicated by expert networks, and how these shape understandings of future climate options. My inquiries are grounded in analytical frameworks from the intersection of global environmental governance and science and technology studies, as well as stakeholder-facing technology governance frameworks such as ‘responsible research and innovation’. I ask three research questions. Firstly: How is knowledge and evidence about sunlight reflection and carbon removal created (Chapters 2 and 3)? I focus on scientific expert networks in the global North, and the aims, epistemologies, and effects of their assessment practices. Secondly: What does this knowledge do (Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5)? I examine how assessment practices set in play resonant terms and frames of reference that actively – if imperfectly – steer climate governance in their image. Thirdly: How can this knowledge be used to bridge differences (Chapters 5 and 6)? I move from how knowledge is constructed to focusing on that construction as a form of experimentation – engaging with different expert networks and knowledge types to use assessment practices as platforms exploring new directions for research and policy. The chapters represent three directions. The first is from analytical to engagement work, using critical mappings of the knowledge economy to inform bridging activities amongst experts and stakeholders. The second is from retrospective to generative work – from analysis of how knowledge is constructed, to activities that use the future as a sandbox to generate new knowledge, and that in turn shape assessments. The final direction moves from general technological categories to specific approaches – engaging first with the wider politics of planetary interventions, and then with those of particular approaches and their expert networks. I begin with interpretive reviews. Tools of the Trade (Chapter 2) juxtaposes a mission-oriented mode of assessment prioritizing actionable evidence for policy audiences against a deliberative mode aiming for open-ended appraisal with diverse stakeholders. The Practice of Responsible Research and Innovation (Chapter 3) takes a more critical look at deliberative activities, pointing out that these, by setting themselves up against mission-oriented work, engage in the same implicit and instrumental politics of knowledge-making. Delaying Decarbonization (Chapter 4) examines the longer and wider arc of climate governance, treating sunlight reflection and carbon removal as sociotechnical strategies that draw on the same political rationales that have informed a host of antecedent strategies, from market mechanisms and carbon capture to shale gas and short-lived climate pollutants. I conclude with bridging and generative engagements on particular approaches. Is Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage Feasible? (Chapter 5) engages members of integrated assessment modeling groups and a multi-disciplinary group of critical experts, and finds that perspectives on how the ‘feasibility’ of novel climate options should be calculated are actually reflections on the influence of economic modeling work in climate policy. Engineering Imaginaries (Chapter 6) engages scholars invested in early conversations on the risk profiles and appropriate governance of a planetary form of sunlight reflection, and explores the value of anticipatory foresight approaches to create mutual learning amongst entrenched perspectives, and to generate governance that might be robust against many future plausibilities.
... The U.S. Air Force has for decades been involved in weather control methods [72]. There is an abundance of historical documentation of weather modification techniques, for example, "A recommended National Program in Weather Modification [73], and "Weather Modification Programs, Problems, Policy, and Potential"-U.S. Senate [74], and numerous U.S. Patents and scientific publications pertaining to weather modification [75]. ...
The Anthropocene is the Epoch of Man, in which human activities have drastically changed Earth's geology, landscape, ecosystems, biodiversity and climate. The energy necessary to power modern civilization comes from petroleum, natural gas, and coal, the latter derived from millions of years of photosynthesized vegetation, subsequently stored underground. The best stratigraphic markers of the Anthropocene are combustion products of these fuels such as spherical carbonaceous particles and iron-containing magnetic particles. We have previously shown that particle pollution from combustion sources, not carbon dioxide, is the primary cause of global warming. More recently, we have shown combustion products, notably coal fly ash and HULIS aerosols, not chlorofluorocarbons, are the primary cause of stratospheric ozone depletion. Modern-day transformation of the biosphere is strikingly evident in the atmosphere, which has been polluted to the point of overcoming Earth's atmospheric flywheel (radiation buffering mechanism). The planet is already in a Hothouse Earth phase, with runaway warming triggering multiple "tipping points" that threaten biosphere integrity and human civilization itself. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, the stratospheric ozone layer has been badly damaged, and increasingly deadly ultraviolet radiation now penetrates to Earth's surface. This situation has been made unimaginably worse by the deliberate, covert planetary modification, euphemistically called geoengineering. While the scientific community, government leaders, the mainstream media, and indeed the masses "look the other way" and ignore the obvious atrocities in our skies, ongoing tropospheric aerosol geoengineering operations continue to spray toxic substances, such as coal fly ash, into the atmosphere. Humanity must wake up to the dire reality we face. International cooperation and crash efforts will be necessary to at least slow the rate of biosphere collapse and salvage something of our critical life support systems. Our time is short to phase out and end all geoengineering activities and to reduce and/or eliminate all sources of coal fly ash and HULIS-type aerosols.
... During the Cold War era starting in the late 1940s, opportunities for wet warfare by inducing heavy storms at will, were explored by both sides of the militarytechnological arms race [42]. The political, military, and ethical implications of geotechnical climate engineering to 'control' the climate led to a public outcry in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. ...
... Conversely, some who fear the low barriers to entry when it comes to conducting geoengineering are looking to security institutions to interdict such efforts. 178 More generally, the high degree of uncertainty surrounding the global and localized impacts of these interventions has prompted grave concerns around justice and human security possibilities. As such, it has been difficult to arrive at any form of consensus on whether geoengineering should be implemented, who should implement it and how it should be governed. ...
This research report is a product of the Environment of Peace initiative
launched by SIPRI in May 2020. It sets out the evidence base that provided
the foundation for Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk, a
policy report published in May 2022. - visit: www.environmentofpeace.org.
The report is published in four parts—Elements of a Planetary Emergency (part 1); Security Risks of Environmental Crises (part 2); Navigating a Just and Peaceful Transition (part 3); and Enabling an Environment of Peace (part 4).
This part, part 3, focuses on needed transitions towards sustainability and
climate resilience. Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Professor at Ohio University, and his
colleagues argue these transitions must happen quickly and will inevitably
meet opposition. Policymakers must prioritize both just and peaceful
approaches to achieve sustained success. The authors analyse evidence
from the major climate mitigation, adaptation and conservation approaches
to illustrate the downsides of ill-considered interventions. They explore
the potential for climate adaptation to help build and sustain peace, while
documenting the main pitfalls of maladaptation. Finally, they look at the need
to manage the risks of transition in petrostates.
... L'histoire des sciences et des techniques comprend plusieurs travaux sur l'histoire de la recherche en modification du climat durant la Guerre Froide (Fleming, 2010 ;Hamblin, 2013 ;Kwa, 2001). La géo-ingénierie est également un terreau fertile pour proposer des projections, à court et moyen terme, du futur climatique et sociétal, une fois le stade du déploiement dépassé (Buck, 2019). ...
Ce travail met au jour, grâce à l’analyse qualitative du discours, les procédés discursifs par lesquels les discours scientifiques et experts sur l’ingénierie climatique (IC) cherchent à « faire monde ». Nous abordons la prolifération des discours sur l’IC dans les années 2000 par le biais de leur lien avec la notion d’Anthropocène, popularisée par le prix Nobel de chimie Paul Crutzen. L’analyse de ces discours révèle l’articulation de plusieurs thèmes récurrents : l’inefficacité des mesures politiques d’atténuation, le catastrophisme, le rôle accordé à l’humanité dans les récits de maîtrise du climat (et donc dans le futur), et enfin l’IC comme concrétisation de cette promesse de maîtrise. Dans un second temps, nous montrons, à travers deux exemples (celui d’un ingénieur-chercheur, David Keith, et celui d’un think tank, l’American Enterprise Institute), l’intrication, chez les acteurs prônant le recours à l’IC, du scientifique et du politique, de l’expertise et du militantisme. Le discours expert permet dès lors de construire un monde dans lequel se dessine un futur possible de maîtrise technologique du climat, vision dans laquelle les scientifiques et ingénieurs sont érigés au rang d'administrateurs de l'environnement global.
... His opinion was complemented by engineer Eugenio Lobo Parga, who affirmed that these foreigners were totally ignorant of the country's topography and water reality." 28 Llona concluded by saying: ...
Objective/Context:
This paper studies the role of the Chilean state during the great drought of 1967-1969 as a mediator between human beings and nature. Institutional adaptations and the effort to improve the infrastructure were elements of continuity with respect to previous droughts, but there were novelties as well, such as attempts to pursue weather modification and the artificial melting of glaciers. The support of technologies and scientists operating from peripheral state institutions was essential for these purposes. All the above took place in the context of the Cold War when the predominant environmental imaginaries made human intervention look favorable and necessary for the modernization of countries.
Methodology:
Diverse primary sources were used, such as ministerial documents, decrees, bulletins, and reports of different state institutions that allowed understanding the logic of state management during the water crisis. Similarly, research in national and international press helped identify how imaginaries about the environment were expressed and disseminated publicly, which tended to validate novel efforts to control nature.
Originality:
This is an original study for Latin America, which addresses the early appearance of science and technology in the efforts of what today would be known as geoengineering: mainly through the observation of new actors, which expanded the traditional forms of mediation between humans and nature, led by the state, concerning climate crises.
Conclusions:
In the 1960s, optimism grew for the human capacity to control and manipulate water resources by appealing to ways other than those previously known, associated with infrastructure development. Expert knowledge was placed at the service of peripheral institutions of the state to promote these changes with lasting consequences. The human desire to control nature at all costs was validated, which helps explain the temporal projection of experiments with artificial rain and glacier control to the present day in Chile.
... Peasants can change the earth through work, but only the divine can alter the sky. That is, humans sent a message from this world to the other asking God to be merciful (Fleming 2012). Leaders, who were intermediaries between the two worlds, took the only possible course of action to prevent a famine. ...
We analyze the case of pro-pluvia rogations (PPR) performed by the Catholic Church in Murcia, Spain since 1600. PPR were ceremonies to ask God for rain. We show a structural break in the prayer data during the 1830s, coinciding with the end of the ancien régime in Spain. PPR responded to environmental shocks and were used by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities to control the population, ensure stability, and maintain the status quo. Thus, PPR in Murcia have acted as a social resilience instrument. At the same time, PPR highlight the conflict between civil and religious authorities and within religious authorities. Understanding the motives, timing, and other characteristics of religious rituals is crucial to understand the evolution of institutions, the persistence of beliefs and strategies for social adaptation to the environment over the long run.
... Solar radiation management includes a variety of artificial strategies for reducing sunlight such as increasing the reflectivity of clouds, crops, buildings, or the sea surface, releasing reflective aerosols into the stratosphere, or launching orbiting giant mirrors to reflect sunlight (Nicholson, 2020;Wagner, 2021). case of solar radiation management projects which follow a long history of military scientific interest in controlling weather and the environment [e.g., DDT to fight malaria during WWII, cloud seeding and defoliation chemicals during the Vietnam War (Tollefson, 2008;Fleming, 2012)]. Most critics of geoengineering express misgivings about its effectiveness, unintended consequences, and diversion from the need to reduce CO 2 and other greenhouse gas emissions (Chaturvedi and Doyle, 2015;Thomas and Warner, 2019). ...
In this Perspective, we argue that much climate change research conflates “gender” with “women.” We ask, what are the consequences of this conflation, and what do we learn when we follow sociologist George Homan's classical command to “bring men back in” to our analysis of the gendered dimensions of climate change? We find, first, that scholarship on gender and climate change tends to depict women mainly as victims of the uneven impacts of climate change. While this assessment is accurate on its face, it leads to solutions that address the problem (women's troubles), not its causes (men's greater responsibilities and failures relating to climate change). We note that researchers' focus on women's suffering diverts attention from a thorough examination of the mechanisms and consequences of men's domination of climate change research and policy. We find, further, that analysts' gender/women conflation hinders redress of women's injuries by camouflaging men's blameworthiness and offering solutions that often increase women's duties. Gender researchers' emphasis on women's plight and inequality obscures the exception that proves the rule: men wield the (sometimes) invisible hands that create and perpetuate the climate crisis at the expense of everyone, including women. In this Perspective, we acknowledge women's relative vulnerability to climate change, outline in some detail the role of men and masculinity in the climate crisis, and identify the unique strengths that women and men each bring to the table to address the environmental challenges facing humanity.
... One stream of analysis of solar geoengineering places it within a history of the Cold War (Scheffran, 2019) as well as military involvement with weather modification, such as the monsoonal cloud seeding by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War (Fleming, 2010). This led to the 1978 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, an international treaty that bans modification of the environment for hostile purposes. ...
Solar geoengineering, or reflecting incoming sunlight to cool the planet, has been viewed by international relations and governance scholars as an approach that could exacerbate conflict. It has not been examined through the framework of environmental peacebuilding, which examines how and when environmental challenges can lead to cooperation rather than conflict. This article argues that scholars should treat the link between solar geoengineering and conflict as a hypothesis rather than a given, and evenly examine both hypotheses: that solar geoengineering could lead to conflict, and that it could lead to peace. The article examines scenarios in which geoengineering may lead to negative peace—peace defined as the absence of conflict—and then applies a theoretical framework developed by environmental peacebuilding scholars to look at how solar geoengineering could relate to three trajectories of environmental peacebuilding. A peace lens for solar geoengineering matters for research and policy right now, because focusing narrowly on conflict in both research and policy might miss opportunities to understand and further scenarios for environmental peacebuilding. The paper concludes with suggestions for how research program managers, funders, and policymakers could incorporate environmental peacebuilding aims into their work.
... In particular, knowledge on the anthropogenic drift of the Earth System has been driven by the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 and subsequent scientific programs such as the above-mentioned International Geosphere Biosphere Programme in the period 1987-2015 (now "Future Earth"). Politically, the history of geoengineering exemplifies for instance how strategic defense and scientific knowledge were closely intertwined during the Cold War (Fleming, 2010;Hamblin, 2013). Epistemologically, we could speak of a co-evolution between knowledge and the Anthropocene. ...
... In this regard, few applications rival military technologies in their needs for intense concentrations of energyfor instance, in explosives, combat aviation, orbital platforms, naval propulsion, and (increasingly) directed energy weapons and new forms of battlefield power provision (66). Beyond this, the dedicated military antecedents to many key geoengineering technologies make military interests some of the strongest drivers behind this burgeoning planetary control ideology (67,68). Acknowledging how narratives of planetary control influence the debate on climate change raises a further issue. ...
... However, in practice, controlling the distribution of climate impacts is surely going to be extremely challenging, perhaps impossible, and would come with a serious risk of leading to international conflict. The military potential of SRM technology (Fleming 2010) might also be attractive to a unilateralist nationalist leader, backed by a strong military industry. Climate emergency might be invoked as an excuse for developing weaponised climate engineering technology, and could have the added benefit of projecting an image of strong leadership befitting a populist leader, feeding populist opinion, fear and support on which such a regime would depend. ...
... While those who subscribe to techno-boosterism long for the promised land of the 'technological sublime' or the 'unabashed utopia' of stratospheric aerosol injections (O. Morton, 2015), the world cannot afford to rely on the unknowable outcomes of geoengineering (Buck, 2020;Fleming, 2010;IPCC, 2018). As historians with a sense of professional ethics, if we wish to avoid the unpredictable, asymmetrical global consequences of geoengineering, we have a lot of work to do. ...
The scientific consensus on the causes of climate change has galvanised global history in the Anthropocene. Within this expanding subfield, however, many historians have afforded imperialism too little explanatory power. This reticence is partly attributable to the intellectual formation of the discipline itself, which long severed human from natural history. It is also due to the paleo-biological scale of climate change and the related propagation of ‘species history’ by Dipesh Chakrabarty. Obscuring global asymmetries in responsibility for climate change, this approach has deflected attention from the intersections of imperialism and environmental degradation. This article surveys the historiography and methodological challenges of climate change, Chakrabarty's influence on Anthropocene scholarship, and critical responses by global historians. It also summarises recent global histories which have closely analysed the interconnections between empire and climate change, indicating a tipping point in global environmental historiography. These studies reveal intimate, necessarily longue durée linkages between the industrialisation, fossil-fuel combustion, and exploitative socio-political structures underpinning both imperialism and climate change.
... In this regard, few applications rival military technologies in their needs for intense concentrations of energyfor instance, in explosives, combat aviation, orbital platforms, naval propulsion, and (increasingly) directed energy weapons and new forms of battlefield power provision (66). Beyond this, the dedicated military antecedents to many key geoengineering technologies make military interests some of the strongest drivers behind this burgeoning planetary control ideology (67,68). ...
Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990. Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses—covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries—draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve. However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control. Synthesizing the various impediments to mitigation reveals how delivering on the commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement now requires an urgent and unprecedented transformation away from today's carbon- and energy-intensive development paradigm.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 46 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... Este tipo de elementos componen una tecnosfera aérea residual, a la cual hay que añadir una parte activa constituida por el tráfico aéreo, entre otras actividades humanas. Desde el inicio del Tecnoceno dichas actividades han sido muy numerosas, uno de cuyos ejemplos es la intervención meteorológica (Fleming, 2004(Fleming, , 2010Bonnheim, 2010). ...
The emergence and proliferation of techno-sciences since the mid-20th century has rapidly
accelerated the transformation of natural spheres. The technosphere is a new interconnected system that has superimposed itself upon the biosphere. It consists of multiple artificial objects and their various interrelationships, accounting for a considerable amount of the environmental risks of our time. This article explores its expansion during the Great Acceleration of the 20th century from two practices within techno-scientific activity: the use of computer simulations and meteorological intervention. Both of them currently converge in the recent proposals for solar radiation management (SRM), which aims to transform and regulate atmospheric conditions in order to reduce global warming. The current climate crisis and the advancements in geoengineering suggest that there are certain elements that may give rise to the appearance of future climate techno-sciences, based on private initiatives and research platforms such as Future Earth. The prediction and prevalence of underlying risks are matters to be anticipated by STS studies. Together, they form an agenda of issues centered on the Technocene: the era of techno-sciences as the main altering force of the Earth System.
... B. die Aufforstung und Wiederaufforstung). 91 Die Forschungszu sammenhänge, die politischen Rahmenbedingungen sowie die Begrifflichkeiten haben sich über die letzten beiden De kaden aber verändert. Es gilt daher, die Negativemissions technologien in den bisher gängigen Begriffsrahmen ein zuordnen, um sie dann klarer als bisher von Maßnahmen abzugrenzen, die bereits die Entstehung von Treibhaus gasen verhindern sowie von Maßnahmen des sog. ...
... Weather modification and geoengineering represent the deliberate alteration of atmospheric and climate conditions, locally or globally, by humans using the available assets and resources based on the existing theoretical understanding of weather and climate processes (see [1][2][3][4][5][6] and references herein). Over the years, people have sought to modify the environment, including the atmosphere, in an attempt to adapt to its ever-changing conditions. ...
Intentionally altering natural atmospheric processes using various techniques and technologies for changing weather patterns is one of the appropriate human responses to climate change and can be considered a rather drastic adaptation measure. A fundamental understanding of the human ability to modify weather conditions requires collaborative research in various scientific fields, including, but not limited to, atmospheric sciences and different branches of mathematics. This article being theoretical and methodological in nature, generalizes and, to some extent, summarizes our previous and current research in the field of climate and weather modification and control. By analyzing the deliberate change in weather and climate from an optimal control and dynamical systems perspective, we get the ability to consider the modification of natural atmospheric processes as a dynamic optimization problem with an emphasis on the optimal control problem. Within this conceptual and unified theoretical framework for developing and synthesizing an optimal control for natural weather phenomena, the atmospheric process in question represents a closed-loop dynamical system described by an appropriate mathematical model or, in other words, by a set of differential equations. In this context, the human control actions can be described by variations of the model parameters selected on the basis of sensitivity analysis as control variables. Application of the proposed approach to the problem of weather and climate modification is illustrated using a low-order conceptual model of the Earth’s climate system. For the sake of convenient interpretation, we provide some weather and climate basics, as well as we give a brief glance at control theory and sensitivity analysis of dynamical systems.
... APE has a colorful global history (Fleming, 2010). The methods used to evaluate the precipitation effects of APE include physical tests, numerical simulations, and statistical tests (Sin Kevich et al., 2013;Breed et al., 2014;Spiridonov et al., 2015). ...
The Hequ region of the upper Yellow River, eastern Tibetan Plateau, was selected as a case study for evaluating the artificial precipitation enhancement (APE) performance and for optimizing site selection. The distinctive precipitation-runoff process at large scale and in complex land surfaces and soil conditions was relatively considered in high-altitude cold regions. A comprehensive approach, combining precipitation regression analysis and a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) semidistributed hydrological model, was proposed to improve artificial precipitation enhancement. First, a historical precipitation regression formula was established for the Hequ region and the Banma-Aba region during 1969 e1996 and then applied to quantify the precipitation effect of APE during 2016e2017 in the Hequ region. The artificial and natural precipitation datasets were used to drive the SWAT model, and the model results were compared to evaluate the runoff effect of APE. Finally, the spatial distribution of the runoff coefficient was used to determine the optimal site selection for APE. From late May to September, the natural precipitation was 381.7 mm, and the increased precipitation of 52.9 mm led to the runoff increase of 539 million m 3 over the operation area of 20,565 km 2 in 2016; from late May to August, the natural precipitation was 377.7 mm, and the increased precipitation of 81.7 mm led to the runoff increase of 699 million m 3 over the operation area of 13,482 km 2 in 2017. Areas with high runoff coefficients were distributed in the southwestern Hequ region. The optimal sites of APE are concentrated in the Tangke region and Mentang surrounding area; the high-altitude areas (3753e5318 m) and high-water-yield land cover regions should be given priority. This study provides an objective evaluation method of APE precipitation and runoff effects and a practical suggestion for improving APE by optimizing site selection in high-altitude cold regions.
The material scope of the analysis in the text encompasses theoretical aspects of the processes and changes in the energy sector, referred to as energy transitions or transformations. Next to the theoretical aspects of the processes and changes in social sciences, the analysis includes a cross-sectional approach to the accomplishments of the studies of the energy transition and transformation in the literature. A selection of assumptions and categories in the studies is used in the synthetic study of the processes and changes in the energy sector, as exemplified by Poland. In order to elaborate the objective scope of the analysis, the following research questions have been presented in the text: (1) Which one of the factors, within the group of factors, substantially influences the speed of the processes and changes in the energy industry in Poland?, (2) Which one of the factors, within the group of factors, substantially influences the shutting off of the paths leading to processes and changes in the energy industry in Poland? Therefore, one can recognise that the content and essence of the questions fall within the compass of the issues addressed by various approaches within social studies of technology, as focused on the substitution of energy technologies and carriers. The theoretical and methodological framework in the text is provided by the assumptions and categories originated by, inter alia, the following researchers: S. Huntington (with regard to the analogy with political transitions), F.W. Geels and J. Schot (with regard to the typology of technological transitions in the approach of Multi-level Perspective), and A. Cherp, V. Vinichenko, J. Jewell, E. Brutschin and B. K. Sovacool (with regard to the integrative and meta-theoretical approach to a variety of directions in the studies of energy transition). - ROSICKI Remigiusz, ROSICKI Grzegorz (2022), The scenarios of energy transitions and transformations as exemplified by Poland, [in:] Ł. Wojcieszak (ed.), Bezpieczeństwo energetyczne Polski na początku trzeciej dekady XXI w., FNCE: Poznań, pp. 183–215.
In recent years we have faced huge uncertainty and unpredictability across the world: Covid-19, political turbulence, climate change and war in Europe, among many other events. Through a historical analysis of worldviews, Peter Haldén provides nuance to the common belief in an uncertain world by showing the predictable nature of modern society and arguing that human beings create predictability through norms, laws, trust and collaboration. Haldén shows that, since the Renaissance, two worldviews define Western civilization: first, that the world is knowable and governed by laws, regularities, mechanisms or plan, hence it is possible to control and the future is possible to foresee; second, that the world is governed by chance, impossible to predict and control and therefore shocks and surprises are inevitable. Worlds of Uncertainty argues that between these two extremes lie positions that recognize the principal unpredictability of the world but seek pragmatic ways of navigating through it.
Geoengineering is a technological response to anthropogenic climate change. There are two kinds of geoengineering: Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). SRM aims at reducing the amount of incoming solar light and CDR at reducing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Over the past decades, geoengineering has moved from a fringe proposal to a more mainstream contender along with mitigation and adaptation to avert climate change. However, it faces important ethical challenges.
Application of Climate Engineering: A problem for peace and security: Although a global consensus about the implementation of climate engineering (CE) technologies is currently unlikely, their initial intention appears to be peaceful. However, the application of some CE technologies requires a steady – or even intensifying – use over long periods of time in order to avoid physical or psychological termination effects. Such CE applications are difficult to reconcile with democratic policy and thus carry a substantial conflict potential. Furthermore, difficulties in measurement or application doses of CE technologies may amplify already existing conflicts. From CE applications, plausible and relevant direct and indirect consequences for peace and security can be derived. The most important linkages of effects and their implications for security are described in complex networks of the consequences of CE applications. These are implemented in a diffusion model to assess the predominant activities and sinks that are possible in such network structures. Applying this model to the examples of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), the immanent political and socioeconomic consequences become apparent. Interestingly, some of these effects can already be triggered by information about the CE application, e.g. by fake news.
This paper demonstrates how the first major locus of climate-change fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries already integrates climate into an economic rhetoric that views climate policy as a zero-sum competition between rival nations. In speculative fiction of the period, climate change occurs principally as a result of largescale human geoengineering projects aimed at transforming the world. Examples of this deliberate anthropogenic climate change include texts by Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and George Griffith. Sf writers found ways to monetize as-yet-unincorporated aspects of nature such as climate as resources for the market economy ; access to resources, in turn, became part of the economic and political balance of power between state entities. Plots to disrupt, control, and monopolize climate were conceptualized as grandiose capitalist schemes capable of unleashing significant collateral damage ; yet many of these novels present geoengineering as laudable entrepreneurship operating out of legitimate economic self-interest. At the extreme, several stories outright weaponize the weather and convert climate change into military might, featuring the same kind of technological brinksmanship that defines an arms race. The economics of early climate change fiction foreshadows, and potentially conditions us, to view climate as a resource worth fighting for.
In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently pushed beyond its many physical implications (e.g., global warming, reduced biodiversity) and social significance (e.g., climate justice, economics, migration) to interpret the Anthropocene metaphysically. According to such interpretations, the Anthropocene imposes nothing less than a wholly new understanding of the world. This raises the question regarding the character of such an imposition. To develop this question, this article discusses three metaphysical interpretations of the Anthropocene: Clive Hamilton’s, Timothy Morton’s, and Bruno Latour’s. Among many voices today, these authors are specifically relevant because they predominantly correlate the imposition of a new, nonmodern world with the scientific object “Earth” as it is developed in Earth system science. The purpose here is to elucidate the ways in which this correlation is made, and to inquire after the role of science—a modern activity par excellence—in the advent of the world of the Anthropocene. The critical question is how this role could be legitimated in the proclaimed absence of a modern framework ensuring science’s status as a beacon of certainty and truth.
Historical explorations of tropical heat in a colonial context have largely focussed on two interconnected spheres: colonial perceptions of place and body, and the implications of heat on different bodies as found in medical thought and practice. This article moves the discussion towards a history of colonial scientific thought about heat as component of weather and of escalating nature-induced hazards, studied in the observatory or meteorological department. It considers how heat features in nascent meso-scale atmospheric knowledge, in meteorological theory, and as a by-product of urbanisation and land-use change. In so doing, it conceptualises the scientific understanding of heat as essentially responsive, embodied within science as a result of the way heat was prioritised within a local context and in the contemporary understanding of human-induced climatic change. The article bridges disciplinary boundaries between the history of science and environmental history, shedding light on an underexplored aspect of the Straits Settlements' past: the scientific history of urban heat.
Cette thèse a pour objet d’interroger la singularité historique du concept d’Anthropocène dans le domaine des sciences de la Terre afin de répondre au problème de savoir à quel titre il peut être considéré comme un événement réflexif de la modernité. Pour ce faire, nous entreprenons une archéologie de ce concept selon trois temporalités. La première, s’étalant du XIXe siècle au début du XXe siècle, interroge le statut des énoncés savants caractérisant l’influence globale de l’agir humain. Il apparaît que l’activité géologique de l’humanité était déjà au cœur des sciences modernes. La temporalité intermédiaire de la deuxième partie montre comment le discours géologique est profondément renouvelé après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. La Terre est alors réinventée comme un environnement total au sein d’un dispositif de savoir et de pouvoir. Enfin, la troisième partie, en temporalité courte, analyse le processus de fabrication du concept d’Anthropocène, principalement dans les sciences du système Terre et dans la géologie. Résultant d’associations entre des acteurs aux projets hétérogènes, ce processus oscille entre une dynamique d’extension et une dynamique de spéciation du concept dans les normes de la géologie, qui sont bousculées par l’actualité de l’Anthropocène. Au bilan, il ressort que ce concept s’inscrit dans le long héritage du dire géologique de la modernité, mais le renouvelle profondément. L’actualité géologique définie comme une pathologie dessine en creux une norme de santé de la Terre que la politique doit s’approprier.
Money-free economies are a necessary – even if not sufficient – basis for establishing ecosocialism so that freely associated producers can produce to satisfy everyone’s basic needs while taking account of ecological limits. This chapter briefly outlines contemporary economic and environmental challenges, such as vast socio-political and economic inequalities and a global lack of sustainability increasingly couched in terms of emergencies and extinctions, including of humans. Fatal weaknesses of monetary economies that flourish within capitalism are identified. A vision of how such a nonmonetary ecosocialism might operate is outlined. Practical movements already oriented towards money-free societies are discussed. This underdeveloped area of thought and study might well be constituted in future as “real value studies” – building on certain nonmarket socialist thought. Money-free economies allow for the centrality of ecological, social, and humane values, enabling local people to establish direct and participatory decision-making over production on the basis of their real needs.
Investigating the relationship between literature and climate, this Companion offers a genealogy of climate representations in literature while showing how literature can help us make sense of climate change. It argues that any discussion of literature and climate cannot help but be shaped by our current - and inescapable - vantage point from an era of climate change, and uncovers a longer literary history of climate that might inform our contemporary climate crisis. Essays explore the conceptualisation of climate in a range of literary and creative modes; they represent a diversity of cultural and historical perspectives, and a wide spectrum of voices and views across the categories of race, gender, and class. Key issues in climate criticism and literary studies are introduced and explained, while new and emerging concepts are discussed and debated in a final section that puts expert analyses in conversation with each other.
Les rapports du GIEC pointent l’urgence du réchauffement climatique. Conjointement, le GIEC essaie d’imaginer des scénarios, certains plus pessimistes que d’autres, et de proposer des solutions selon les tendances économiques mondiales, le progrès technologique et les politiques climatiques, pour respecter l’objectif de limiter ce réchauffement climatique à +1,5°C ou 2°C par rapport à la période préindustrielle. Un scénario parmi d’autres accorde une importance aux technologies d’émissions négatives (TEN) dans un avenir dans lequel les émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) ne pourront baisser de manière importante. Les TEN consistent à prélever des GES et à les stocker dans le sous-sol ou dans les océans. Les TEN et les technologies de capture et séquestration de carbone (CSC) gagnent de plus en plus de place dans les débats académiques et dans les discours des plus grands hommes d’affaires du monde tels qu’Elon Musk. Les TEN sont complexes sur plusieurs points : les avis divergent sur la faisabilité de la technologie, sur sa capacité de séquestration, sur la possibilité de son déploiement, sur sa sécurité et sa stabilité sur le long terme. Il était donc intéressant de savoir si elles sont une solution miraculeuse ou un aveuglement aberrant.
S’appuyant sur la théorie des représentations sociales, ce mémoire a comme objectif d’étudier les représentations des TEN chez les universitaires et de voir en quoi les représentations de l’économie et de l’environnement sont déterminantes dans les représentations des TEN. Les représentations sociales peuvent éclairer la dynamique entre les personnes et l’environnement, le climat et la technologie. La méthodologie de recherche est essentiellement qualitative de type exploratoire. Elle s’appuie sur des entretiens semi-directifs avec des experts, ingénieurs, physiciens pour recueillir leurs représentations sur le thème étudié : les TEN. Six universitaires belges et français et un universitaire turc ont été choisis pour leur connaissance au sujet de la capture et séquestration du carbone. Les entretiens ont eu lieu par des réunions ZOOM. Divers aspects des TEN ont été abordés lors de ces entretiens comme leurs impacts environnementaux, la capacité technologique, leur place parmi les solutions pour faire face au réchauffement climatique.
Les résultats montrent, à travers l’analyse du discours, que les universitaires ne soutiennent ni ne rejettent totalement les TEN. Ces représentations sociales varient sur la place que les universitaires accordent aux TEN parmi les solutions pour faire face au réchauffement climatique. Le soutien aux TEN et CSC est conditionné par la mise en œuvre d’une série d’autres solutions de décarbonisation, en particulier les énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique. Les interviewés se montrent assez critiques quant aux impacts environnementaux des TEN, le coût économique et la capacité de séquestration du carbone.
The topic of increasing the reflectivity of the Earth as a measure to counteract global warming has been the subject of high-level discussions and preliminary research since several decades, though prior to the early 2000s there was only very limited research on the topic. This changed in the mid-2000s, particularly following the publication of a special section of Climatic Change with a lead paper by Crutzen (2006), which posited the idea of stratospheric aerosol injections as a possible solution to a policy dilemma. The discussions around the publication of Crutzen (2006) demonstrated how contentious the topic was at that time. The special section of Climatic Change contributed to breaking the ‘taboo’ on albedo modification research that was perceived at that time, and scientific publications on the topic have since proliferated, including the development of several large national and international projects, and the publication of several assessment reports over the last decade. Here we reflect on the background and main conclusions of the publications in 2006, the developments since then, and on some of the main developments over the next decade that we anticipate for research and dialogue in support of decision-making and policy development processes.
Climate predictions - and the computer models behind them - play a key role in shaping public opinion and our response to the climate crisis. Some people interpret these predictions as 'prophecies of doom' and some others dismiss them as mere speculation, but the vast majority are only vaguely aware of the science behind them. This book gives a balanced view of the strengths and limitations of climate modeling. It covers historical developments, current challenges, and future trends in the field. The accessible discussion of climate modeling only requires a basic knowledge of science. Uncertainties in climate predictions and their implications for assessing climate risk are analyzed, as are the computational challenges faced by future models. The book concludes by highlighting the dangers of climate 'doomism', while also making clear the value of predictive models, and the severe and very real risks posed by anthropogenic climate change.
The complexity trap snaps and gives rise to misconceptions and even denialism when scientists leave their narrow field of expertise and uncritically use their well-trained epistemological concepts in areas where they do not apply. This mechanism is rather universal and affects in similar ways non-climate scientists in their assessment of climate science results, specialists in a climate science sub-discipline in interdisciplinary controversies, and climate scientists participating in the complex socio-economic process of policymaking. Awareness of the complexity trap mechanism is the first step to avoid being caught in the trap.
This chapter takes a closer look at the conceptual roots of the Anthropocene. Tracing the history of the Anthropocene concept helps in explaining how certain political imaginaries have found their way into new forms of Anthropocene governance. Using the approach of genealogy, it holds that the production of discourses is inherently tied to forms of political power. A genealogical perspective asks questions such as ‘How did it become possible to conceive of the Earth as an interlinked system and of humanity as a geological actor in the first place?’ In four sections, it first briefly summarizes the debate on the origins and historical predecessors of the Anthropocene concept, then introduces Foucault’s concept of genealogy and outlines an analytical framework to operationalize it. The third section illustrates how to use this approach in practice by taking the Whole Earth movement as an example. The concluding section summarizes the findings and discusses their relevance for International Relations.
This chapter offers a concise summary of the current state of Climate Engineering, introducing these emerging technologies as existing, to a large degree, so far only in the minds of people and the calculations for climate models. As well as outlining the ideas on which these approaches are based which date back decades, in some cases centuries, the chapter outlines the currently few political discussions of CE at the margins of climate policy. Kreuter discusses this peculiar state of affairs and explores the relevance of social construction in this context based on the state of the art of social science analysis of CE.
This chapter analyzes the development of nuclear technology in the late 1930s and early 1940s as an instance in which the presence of legitimizing frames voiced by academic actors coincided with the subsequent development and eventual use of the emerging technology. Kreuter highlights similarities as well as differences between the development of nuclear technology and the current discussion of CE approaches before identifying thematic security, complexity, economy and appropriateness frames in the academic discussion on nuclear technology. Concluding by broadening the perspective, Kreuter points out a multitude of factors which bore on the eventual outcome of use of nuclear weapons technology.
The term “science diplomacy” broadly identifies interactions between scientific and foreign policy communities connected to the promotion of international scientific exchanges (also as a way to establish constructive relations between countries), and the provision of scientific advice on issues of relevance to more than one nation. Science diplomacy initiatives have been positively portrayed by practitioners, while recent scholarship has underscored the need for these actions to more directly address social and global challenges. In what follows we sketch the contours of a data-driven “science diplomacy 2.0” that could actually be seen as more directly tackling these challenges in two important ways. First, we outline a multi-layered approach that integrates data and meta-data from various disciplines in order to promote greater awareness about what kind of research should actually be prioritized in science diplomacy actions. Second, we argue for the creation of responsible innovation observatories for operationalizing such a methodology at both national and global levels.
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