Geoengineering report baffles reporters - September 02, 2009
Yesterday the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, delivered its official view on geoengineering. Scientists analyzed a dozen different approaches and weighed their pros and cons. Then, being scientists, they plotted their results in a bizarre phase space that nobody could understand. Many a reporter, myself included, were scratching our heads when co-author Ken Caldeira popped this little gem up onto the screen:
(Note: error bars are purely symbolic. Huh?)
Now I want to be fair, the Royal Society report is actually very well written and it contains a lot of good information about the geoengineering proposals out there. But it's a nuanced take on a complex issue. So it's not surprising that you saw a range of headlines. The most inaccurate enthusiastic one by far, came from those lovely folks at the Register:
Boffins: Give up on CO2 cuts, only geoengineering can work
The Financial Times landed on the other end of the spectrum:
Hopes dashed for geo-engineering solutions
And in between came everybody else:
Study says 'geoengineering' to flight climate likely, but risky (USA Today)
Royal Society warns climate engineering 'could cause disaster' (the Times)
World must plan for climate emergency-report (Reuters)
Investment in geo-engineering needed immediately, says Royal Society (the Guardian)
These headlines make the report look like a Kurosawa film, but most of the actual stories are pretty accurate in my opinion. The bottom line is that the Royal Society felt that the only sure way to save the planet is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But in the event of a global climate emergency, we should at least know the consequences of geoengineering.
You can read our coverage here.
Update: I've included the updated diagram off the Royal Society website.
Comments
Ha - like you, I was intrigued and amused to see headlines on the same report that seemed to draw diametrically opposed conclusions! Perversely, this has probably helped the issue become polarized so far, and allowed some degree of reasonable discussion - let's hope it lasts.
Revealing my geeky roots, I rather liked the graph above - to the point that I produced my own version, using different axes (http://2020science.org/eZ )
But I can well believe it manages to bamboozle even the most clear-headed reader.
Perhaps that was the point - hiding the truth in plain sight... No, now I'm just getting paranoid - and forgetting that scientists forget how complex even the simplest things seem sometimes :-)
Posted by: Andrew Maynard | September 2, 2009 05:08 PM
An opinion in today's "Province" newspaper (British Columbia) uses the Royal Society report to fuel his AGW denialism: http://www.theprovince.com/technology/this+rubbish+over+global+warming/1952944/story.html
Posted by: Scott | September 2, 2009 05:21 PM
Nice post Geoff, but to be fair the "boffins" in Lewis's post in the Register are Pete Cox and Hazel Jeffery writing in Physics World, not the Roy Soc panel
Posted by: Oliver | September 2, 2009 06:08 PM
Notice the error in the top right of that Caldeira slide - 'low affordability' should actually be 'high'.
Posted by: Mark | September 2, 2009 06:21 PM
My class is conducting background research for their ecological science fair projects and we found this report very interesting. However, while the ideas are plausible and may very well work to help turn around global warming, we wonder if any of the ideas will ever be developed beyond paper since three out of the four have "low affordability."
Posted by: Ecological Science Fair Projects | September 2, 2009 06:25 PM
Leave the sulfur in military and commercial jet fuel. That relocates "strato" to "zero" cost with undiminished effectiveness. It **makes** money via less expensive aviation kerosene. Geoengineering, Official Truth to implementation, is baksheesh.
Posted by: Uncle Al | September 2, 2009 07:02 PM
You win the prize for the best reporting on the reporting on the report!!
The diversity of headlines is amazing -- apparently the press conference provided a kind of Rorschach-like experience for attending reporters.
This suggests a next step: produce a completely impenetrable content-free press conference as an investigation into what signals reporters will see in the noise.
Posted by: Ken Caldeira | September 2, 2009 09:28 PM
It would help if the captions on the slide were correct. Upper right should read "High effectiveness; high affordability."
Posted by: BobH | September 3, 2009 05:24 AM
BobH - the current version of the Royal Society report has the correct captions - think Geoff used an earlier version.
Posted by: Andrew Maynard | September 3, 2009 12:04 PM
What's not to understand? Straightforward graph showing four dimensions of geo-engineering approaches.
Posted by: Nick Fraser | September 3, 2009 03:47 PM