One of the best breakdowns of this terminological mess I've seen - the Labadie framing is genuinely clever. The point about intentionality is where it gets philosophcally interesting for me; I work adjacent to climate policy and the "inadvertent" framing for fossil fuels has always felt conveninent. Stafford Beer's heuristic cuts right through that. Precise language probably matters more in governance than in science, so retiring geoengineering feels overdue.
As someone quite familiar with the academic literature through my PhD research on SAI, this is a fantastic post.
Worth noting that the linguistic quandary around the topic is directly relevant to governance challenge for climate interventions (/solar radiation management/solar geoengineering/...) as well. The UNEA-4 meeting broke down around an attempted resolution on SRM and CDR partly because of a debate around needing to decouple governance between the two.
I coined the term that is also used by the international group I cofounded the Healthy Planet Action Coalition “ Direct Climate cooling”.
Unlike all of the other terms that don’t say anything about what results from their use I think it’s essential to use the word cooling as well as direct because unlike emission reductions which indirectly may cool the climate in many decades or in hundreds of years these methods can cool the climate rapidly.
One of the best breakdowns of this terminological mess I've seen - the Labadie framing is genuinely clever. The point about intentionality is where it gets philosophcally interesting for me; I work adjacent to climate policy and the "inadvertent" framing for fossil fuels has always felt conveninent. Stafford Beer's heuristic cuts right through that. Precise language probably matters more in governance than in science, so retiring geoengineering feels overdue.
As someone quite familiar with the academic literature through my PhD research on SAI, this is a fantastic post.
Worth noting that the linguistic quandary around the topic is directly relevant to governance challenge for climate interventions (/solar radiation management/solar geoengineering/...) as well. The UNEA-4 meeting broke down around an attempted resolution on SRM and CDR partly because of a debate around needing to decouple governance between the two.
(cf. https://research.american.edu/carbonremoval/2019/11/04/the-hidden-politics-of-carbon-removal-and-solar-geoengineering/)
Wow thanks for pointing that out, Adrian, will give this a read now.
I coined the term that is also used by the international group I cofounded the Healthy Planet Action Coalition “ Direct Climate cooling”.
Unlike all of the other terms that don’t say anything about what results from their use I think it’s essential to use the word cooling as well as direct because unlike emission reductions which indirectly may cool the climate in many decades or in hundreds of years these methods can cool the climate rapidly.