The contradictory and ambivalent recommendations of the report of the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI), published last week, reflect the emerging faultlines in the global debate over geoengineering.
The global debate has been heavily dominated by a very small group of North American scientists actively engaged in geoengineering research. They are present in almost all of the expert deliberations, including SRMGI. They have been the leading advisers to parliamentary and congressional inquiries and their views will, in all likelihood, dominate the deliberations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as it grapples for the first time with the scientific and ethical tangle that is climate engineering. In sum, they have made themselves the "go to guys" on climate engineering.
The scientists in this group– dubbed the "geo-clique" by author Eli Kintisch – also allocate much of the funds to geoengineering research via ...