UN Geoengineering Governance Fails Again!
Calls for a Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement disrupt the UNEA-6 and that is a good thing!
The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, February 26 - March 1, 2024 took up the subject of global governance of solar geoengineering and stratospheric aerosol injection. Led by the ETC Group (Hands Off Mother Earth, Geoengineering Monitor), African countries, Columbia, Mexico, Fiji, and Vanuatu advocated for a ban on outdoor experimentation with dangerous solar radiation management technologies.
Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering
View the entire Open Letter here.
We call for immediate political action from governments, the United Nations, and other actors to prevent the normalization of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option. Governments and the United Nations must assert effective political control and restrict the development of solar geoengineering technologies at planetary scale. Specifically, we call for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.
Withdrawn resolution on solar geoengineering at UNEA-6 is a “victory for common sense”, says HOME! Alliance
By Geoengineering Monitor February 29, 2024.
Nairobi, Kenya – In the early hours of this morning at the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6) a resolution on solar geoengineering was withdrawn. Numerous African countries, along with many others from the Global South, advocated for the Assembly to reaffirm a precautionary approach to geoengineering, as it has been established by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and other UN bodies.
The African Group at UNEA-6 highlighted the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) call for a Solar Geoengineering International Non-Use Agreement. However, some of the highest emitting countries, especially those already investing in geoengineering research, opposed the mention of precaution in the resolution and wanted instead to study the “risks and benefits” of solar geoengineering technologies, thereby prioritizing research institutions and programs that are already led or heavily influenced by geoengineering advocates.
Solar geoengineering, also known as Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), describes an array of geoengineering techniques designed to partially block sunlight from reaching the Earth, to mask the heating effect of greenhouse gasses. The most common of the proposed techniques is Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), which involves spraying sulfur dioxide (a coolant that also erodes the ozone layer) into the stratosphere, which would further pollute the Earth’s already-polluted atmosphere.
The CBD introduced a moratorium on SRM and other forms of geoengineering in 2010, recognizing the serious impacts on biodiversity and related livelihoods that this technology can entail.
Read reactions from members of the Hands Off Mother Earth! (HOME!) Alliance below:
Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group Latin America Director
“Solar geoengineering is a dangerous techno-fix brought by researchers and powerful actors in the same Northern countries that have caused climate change: it´s about adding more pollution to an overpolluted world. At UNEA-6, precaution prevailed over the attempts to legitimate this risky and unfair technology.”
Mfoniso Antia, HOMEF Program Manager and Hands Off Mother Earth Africa Working Group
“Even if solar geoengineering is only deployed over the northern hemisphere, it will disrupt local and regional weather patterns and further imbalance the climate, with potentially catastrophic effects for Africa, including on water availability and food production. I’m happy for Africa’s leadership on geoengineering at UNEA-6, which builds on the African Ministerial Conference on the Environments decision on the non-use of solar geoengineering technologies.”
Barbara Ntambirweki, ETC Group, African Technology Assessment Platform (AfriTAP)
“The Africa Group at UNEA-6 led powerful opposition to Switzerland’s solar geoengineering resolution—withdrawn this morning—forming the basis for future efforts towards a non-use agreement on solar geoengineering internationally.”
Mary Church, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
“The vocal opposition to geoengineering at UNEA-6 sends a powerful message underscoring a broad commitment to upholding established norms of international environmental law. Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) technologies are dangerous and do not have any role to play in our common future. These technologies cannot tackle the root causes of the climate crisis and would instead enable major polluters to delay the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels.”
Niclas Hällström, Director, WhatNext?
“The strong negotiations by Africa and other developing countries around the UNEA-6 negotiations on the solar geoengineering resolution is a major victory. They insisted any resolution on SRM must acknowledge the existing geoengineering moratorium, the call for a Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement and that solar geoengineering poses massive, unacceptable risks and can never be a response to climate change. This was not acceptable to countries hoping for these kinds of dangerous technologies, which caused the negotiations to collapse. The ground is now set for a coalition of African and other willing countries to further exert leadership by advancing a Non-Use Agreement on their own terms.”
Contact: Laura Dunn, laura [at] etcgroup.org
Nations fail to agree ban or research on solar geoengineering
By Joe Lo on Climate Home News February 29, 2024.
Highlights:
Governments have failed to agree on how the United Nations should regulate controversial solar radiation management (SRM) techniques, which aim to lessen the effects of climate change by dimming the sunlight reaching Earth.
As countries were unable to reach consensus at talks on Wednesday, the status quo will continue. Solar radiation management is currently legal in most nations. But there has been a de facto global moratorium in place on geoengineering – which includes SRM – since 2010, when it was agreed by governments under the Convention on Biological Diversity, with exceptions for small-scale scientific research studies.
the UK government announced a five-year research programme on delivering “risk-risk analyses” of SRM techniques.
African nations, on the other hand, were opposed to anything that enables SRM. In a letter to the chair of the talks, seen by Climate Home, the African Group chair, Alick Muvundika, proposed a global governance mechanism to prevent the use of SRM (or “non-use” in UN parlance), arguing that the risks to the environment are too great and that the option of SRM undermines “real climate solutions”.
The letter added that “there are efforts to use Africa to justify use of this dangerous technology, often with the argument that the risk of climate change must be weighed against the risks of deployment of the technology”. Muvundika called this a “false dichotomy”.
The UNEA talks on the issue were not public. But annotated texts seen by Climate Home show that the African Group’s position was supported by Colombia, Mexico, Fiji and Vanuatu.
The draft resolution shows that the US and India opposed the African Group’s call for a repository of existing research on SRM. However, the State Department told Climate Home that the US had “expressed interest in supporting proposals for a repository of scientific information jointly hosted by relevant UN organisations”, partly due to “an information gap that is particularly acute for developing countries”.
This is not the first time a proposal for an expert group on SRM has been rejected: the US and Saudi Arabia derailed Switzerland’s first attempt in 2019, with the Guardian reporting that they did not want their research into SRM to be regulated.
With views among nations so polarised, Switzerland pulled its latest motion on Wednesday night. This means that, at least for now, there will be no expert group and no “non-use” agreement on SRM.
Back to business as usual. Stealth geoengineering experiments and the slow march to blotting out the sun to save us from global warming. Had the Swiss proposal been adopted, geoengineering would effectively become legal and governed by the the “United Nations Expert Team on Climate Intervention” or UNEP. Knowing how easily politicians at the UN are lobbied to the detriment of others, this is certainly a good thing.
I support a permanent ban on stratospheric aerosol injection OR ANY OTHER TECHNOLOGY THAT WOULD BLOCK SUNLIGHT as the dangers far outweigh and possible benefits.
Please check out my solution, the Environmental Modification Accountability Act (ENMOD AA). Demand transparency, create verification!
Other Show References:
WEATHER AND CLIMATE MODIFICATION (1965)
Report of the SPECIAL COMMISSION ON WEATHER MOIDIFICATION
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/1965/nsb1265.pdf
Stratospheric Albedo Modification by Aerosol Injection
With Sounding Rockets (2009)
Past attention focused on guns and airplanes as means of lofting aerosols or their chemical precursors, but large sounding rockets are cheap, energetically efficient, can be designed to inject aerosols at any required altitude, and involve little technical risk. Sophisticated, mass-optimized "engineered" particles have been proposed as possible aerosols, but the formidable problems of their production in quantity, lofting and dispersion have not been addressed.
Landmark study shows the Global South is more supportive of SRM geoengineering
By Pete Irvine
In a landmark study out today, Baum et al. finds that the public in the Global South are more supportive of Solar Radiation Management (SRM) research and the prospect of deployment.
Baum, C.M., Fritz, L., Low, S. et al. “Public perceptions and support of climate intervention technologies across the Global North and Global South.” Nat Commun 15, 2060 (2024).
Supplementary Information (Methods, framing, lack of informed participants)
It’s mind control ~ Stephen Marley
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“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” ― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Believe = religion
Think = opinion
Know = science
What I know.
What do you know that’s different?
Published (SubStack, X, MSN, Google, PaPundits, et, al.)
Peer reviewed (the world)
And undisputed (so far)
ISR ToA = 1,368 W/m^2.
From the Sun’s perspective Earth is a flat, discular, pin head.
To average that discular energy over a spherical surface divide by 4.
(disc = π r^2, sphere = 4 π r^2)
1,368/4=342.
(Not even close to how the Earth heats & cools + this is Fourier’s model which even Pierrehumbert says is no good.)
Deduct 30% albedo.
(Clouds, ice, snow created by GHE/water vapor.)
342*(1.0-0.3)=240.
Deduct 80 due to atmospheric absorption.
(If this were so ToA would be warmer than surface.)
Net/net of 160 arrives at surface.
Per LoT 1 160 is ALL!! that can leave.
17 sensible + 80 latent + 63 (by remaining diff) LWIR = 160
Balance is closed, done, over, fini, “Ttthhhat’s ALL folks!!”
So where does this second source of surface upwelling heat flow of 396 come from?
396 is the S-B BB calculation for any surface at 16 C, 289 K, that serves as the denominator of the emissivity ratio: 63/396=0.16.
It is a theoretical calculation.
It is not real.
It is a duplicate “extra.”
It violates LoT 1.
396 up – 2nd 63 LWIR (How convenient.) = 333 “back” from cold to hot w/o work violating LoT 2.
Not that it matters.
Erase the 396/333/63 GHE “extra” energy loop from the graphic and the balance holds true.
IR instruments do not measure power flux, they are calibrated to report a referenced temperature and infer power flux assuming the target is a BB. (Read the manual.)
16 C + BB = 396 & incorrect.
16 C + 0.16 = 63 & correct.
There is no GHE.
There is no GHG warming.
There is no CAGW,
The consensus is wrong – Aahhgain!!!
Disagree?
Bring science which is not appeals to authority, off topic esoteric Wiki handwavium and ad hominem gas lighting and insults.