Geo what?

Geoengineering is perhaps not something that is currently widely known by the public, however it has the potential to be a major player in our future climate.

Broadly defined by the US National Academy of Science (1992) as:

"Large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry"

With Marchetti (1977) first coining the term as a description of CO₂ disposal via injection into sinking thermohaline currents.

So.....?

Put simply, the surface temperature of the Earth results from the net balance of incoming solar (shortwave) radiation and outgoing terrestrial (long wave) radiation (Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997). Geoengineering options attempt to rectify the current and potential future radiative imbalance via either: reducing the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the Earth. This is called Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

The other option is to physically remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and preventing it from returning there. Which can be subdivided into the enhancement or creation of (a) Land and (b) Ocean carbon sinks or (c) creating new sinks. This is known as Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).

Why now?

Geoengineering has been proposed in order to moderate anthropogenic climate change and despite some serious social and policy maker opposition, proposals are undergoing serious consideration.
There has been a recent realisation that existing mitigation efforts are proving to be hugely ineffectual on a global scale, shown by post-2000 anthropogenic CO₂ trends as seen in Canadell et al (2007). this has lit a beacon of interest in Geoengineering (Crtuzen, 2006), with a growing number of proposals being brought to light in scientific literature (Boyd, 2008). Both Vaughan and Lenton (2009) and Lenton and Vaughan (2011) have given a broad review of geoengineering proposals. 

I've tried to give a broad overview of Geoengineering here, however there are many major caveats and problems associated with it. I'll go into these in later posts.

Until then...

Design for Change

In my introduction I stressed that much is made of climate change mitigation but I feel that little is understood of the behind the scenes work which is being done in major companies across the world.
There is a huge shift towards innovative design and manufacture to cut carbon by (in the construction industry) up to 50% by 2025 as detailed by the Construction 2025 report (UKGov, 2013).

Taken from the Laing O'Rourke 2013 Annual Review

For example, one of the leaders of this approach is Laing O'Rourke who are championing Zero-Carbon construction, adopting the process of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA). While I do not fully understand the processes which are involved, it basically involves an early intervention into the design phase and offsite manufacture which reduces energy consumption through advanced thermal efficiency, eliminating waste while cutting the construction process by roughly 30% through concept to completion. 
They state that this has cut carbon emissions by up to 50% although there is little scientific evidence to support this at the moment. 
However if their facts are true and is backed up with scientific evidence, this could be a major step forward to a green future and a better outcome for temperature scenarios. 
Let's hope all construction companies adopt this method soon as it seems promising.
In the interests of UCL the DfMA process is currently being used in the process of building the Francis Crick Institute.

Until next time...  

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210099/bis-13-955-construction-2025-industrial-strategy.pdf

http://annualreview2013.laingorourke.com/downloads/pdfs/laing-o-rourke-annual-review-2013.pdf

http://www.laingorourke.com/engineering-the-future/product-and-process-innovation.aspx

Just a few quick definitions of amelioration and mitigation:

I'll start with mitigation as it is probably the term that most people are aware of. Steffan et al (2007) describe mitigation as:
"taking pressure off the Earth system through drastically improved technology and management, wise use of Earth's resources, control of human and domestic animal population, and overall careful use and restoration of the natural environment." This can be done through a wide variety of things such as publicly known renewable energy sources (wind, solar, tidal etc) to wholesale changes in building design and manufacture. 

The amelioration efforts are likened by Vaughan and Lenton (2011) to medicating a sick patient, deliberately treating the climate to decrease levels of atmospheric CO2, this is done through geoengineering techniques which are branched into solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

I'll detail the techniques in later blogs but for now that's it,

Cheers,
Sam.