Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
MONDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2008
PROFESSOR BRIAN
LAUNDER, DR
DAN LUNT
AND DR
DAVID SANTILLO
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. It is
very nice to see you. Could I welcome our first panel of witnesses
to this, the geo-engineering case study within the Innovation,
Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee's investigation
into geo-engineering, and to thank very much indeed, Dr Dan Lunt
of the University of Bristol for joining us. Welcome to the Committee.
And Professor Brian Launder from the University of Manchester,
welcome to you, Brian, I hope you enjoy your experience with us.
We have an empty chair for Dr David Santillo who is geo-engineering
the Tube at the moment to try and make sure that it arrives on
time! When he arrives he will join us on the platform. I wonder
if I could start with you, Professor Launder. Could you tell the
Committee, as briefly as you can, what is your understanding of
geo-engineering? What is it?
Professor Launder: Geo-engineering
is the beneficial intervention in order on a global scale to change
the climate in directions that we wish in the context of severe
global heating with which we are threatened. It amounts to looking
at schemes that will either provide a shade against incoming solar
radiation or ways of withdrawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Q2 Chairman: It is not sensible,
is it, Dr Lunt? It is not a serious suggestion, is it?
Dr Lunt: It has certainly been
suggested seriously within the scientific literature and also
it is out there in the public conscience. There have been some
articles in the popular press and the scientific press as well.
It is certainly out there and is certainly being considered seriously
within the scientific community.
Q3 Chairman: In terms of the scientific
community, and we on this Committee take the science community
very seriously most of the time, where is the consensus within
the scientific community on geo-engineering?
Professor Launder: I would say
that of those who have looked at the issue 90% believe that we
are in dire straits and the only way of escaping is to give time
to move towards a genuinely almost carbon-free lifestyle globally,
we must have a period two or three decades at least, but perhaps
indefinitely, where we rely on the types of intervention that
I have hinted at in order to give time.
Q4 Chairman: Are you actually saying
that this is a technology, or a group of technologies, which will
seriously buy us sufficient time in order for us to have the long-term
solutions to the amount of carbon we are putting into our planet?
Professor Launder: They have the
potential. Sceptics could say, "Well, this hasn't been tested"
or "That hasn't been tested". What is very urgently
needed now is to properly evaluate, to spend enough time developing
schemes from the drawing board to at least an operational scale
where their effectiveness can be evaluated so that one may discern
barely workable schemes from those that really do work.
Q5 Chairman: Dr Lunt, do you buy
into this, that this is a holding technology with the potential
to be a long-term solution?
Dr Lunt: I guess this has to be
a personal viewpoint really. For me, I would be very worried about
seeing this as a long-term indefinite solution. Any sort of geo-engineering
that is carried out should also be carried out at the same time
as a concerted effort to reduce emissions, a move to more energy
efficient lifestyles, new technologies, so that we do not have
to rely on it indefinitely because there are certainly worries
about some technology that you have to rely on indefinitely because
of the problems of it failing or becoming too expensive. If we
do aim for it, we should certainly aim for something that is temporary.
Q6 Dr Gibson: This is not scientists
just making up the terminology to be unique and set up their own
little enclave of conferences and so on? There have been examples
of this in the past. Is it a serious concept that came out of
conferences at the beginning or is it just a dream in somebody's
head?
Dr Lunt: I do not know of any
conferences that have been solely about geo-engineering, but certainly
within the very major conferences in the geo-sciences, for example
the AGU, which is the big American geo-science conference, and
the EGU, which is the European one, for the last few years there
have been dedicated sessions to geo-engineering and there has
been a relatively large number of submissions. It is not just
a thing that people discuss on internet news groups, it is actually
out there in conferences, yes.
Professor Launder: The first scientific
papers on what we have started to call geo-engineering emerged
in the 1970s. By the beginning of this century there was a very
well-developed feeling amongst a group of scientists that we would
need to move towards that. In 2004 the Isaac Newton Institute
in Cambridge held a two-day event on the topic and more recently
there have been expert group meetings in Harvard. It is by no
means a fanciful group of scientists looking for some easy way
to get money.
Q7 Dr Gibson: Some of the effects
of geo-engineering ideas may be irreversible, is that so?
Professor Launder: In the short-term
if, for example, we simply cut down the incident sunlight by 2
or 3% in order to cool the planet but do nothing about the level
of CO2 in the atmosphere that will increase the acidification
of the oceans and those effects will be irreversible, yes.
Q8 Dr Gibson: Who are your big competitors
in this field in terms of the way forward? Are you in the Coca-Cola
Championship or are you in the Premier Division as against the
other technologies? Give us a picture of it because we do not
know where you sit as against other mitigating technologies.
Professor Launder: Personally,
I would be delighted, and I think this probably goes for the majority
of the experts you will be talking to, if somehow someone had
a magic bullet that would discover how to make fusion work and
we could use that for all of our power. I just do not see it happening
fast enough.
Q9 Dr Gibson: The man on the Tube
will speak for himself when he arrives, but how do you see the
criticisms that Greenpeace have levelled at the issue in terms
of morality, ethics and so on? You must have had this levelled
at you many times, I am sure.
Professor Launder: I do not think
I can answer that simply because I have not acquainted myself
sufficiently. I just keep my head down like any eager-beaver scientist.
Q10 Dr Gibson: Does that mean that
you do not care about the morality?
Professor Launder: Not at all.
Q11 Dr Gibson: You are opening up
that point.
Professor Launder: Let me say
more than anything else what alerts me is when I look across the
Sunday lunch table and see my two granddaughters who are five
years-old and think what will they inherit in 25/30 years' time.
Q12 Dr Gibson: Dan, what do you think
about this area of morality and ethics?
Dr Lunt: I am not completely aware
about the Greenpeace arguments, but my understanding from what
I think David would say if he was here is if we go down this route
of geo-engineering then there is the danger that in the public
mind if there is a solution out there then they do not need to
be energy efficient, reduce their energy use or whatever. Personally,
I do have some sympathy with that, it is a fair argument, but
it is very difficult to test whether that would be the case or
not. These geo-engineering ideas are out there already and certainly
a proportion of the public are aware of them. My impression from
talking to friends is it is not affecting their decisions about
energy use at the moment. In terms of the ethics and morality,
it is a case of is it the lesser of two evils? The idea of geo-engineering
per se to me is pretty grotesque really in some ways, but if it
is the lesser of two evils then maybe that is the route we have
to go down.
Q13 Dr Gibson: Where do you chaps
get your funding from?
Dr Lunt: I have not been in the
field of geo-engineering very long at all so I would not call
myself a complete expert. The one study that we have done and
carried out at Bristol that I led just arose out of a chat over
coffee. I think it was an article in the New Scientist
or something talking about geo-engineering and we thought that
was something we could try and we did it in our spare time using
free computer time on the university machines. No funding.
Q14 Dr Gibson: What did you work
on before?
Dr Lunt: The geo-engineering stuff
was and still is completely in my own time, if you like. My actual
speciality is I am a paleoclimate modeller, a past climate modeller
and future climate modeller.
Q15 Dr Gibson: You must get funded,
Professor Launder?
Professor Launder: My field of
research, I hasten to say, is not in geo-engineering. I will not
bore you with how I got involved.
Q16 Dr Gibson: How did you get your
chair?
Professor Launder: I am a mechanical
engineer. Gosh, I have forgotten what I was going to say.
Q17 Dr Gibson: So what got you into
this geo-engineering stuff? What was the light that suddenly shone?
You said your granddaughters, but it does not happen just like
that.
Professor Launder: Besides that,
there was a geo-engineering conference held in Cambridge in 2004
and I went along to that and was persuaded that it was very important.
Dr Gibson: Has Prince Charles found out
about this yet? He has not pronounced on this yet, but I bet he
will.
Q18 Chairman: Before we get on to
Prince Charles, you mentioned earlier about the issue of scaling
up, Professor Launder, and so far there have been a number of
laboratory experiments, and we have obviously got evidence about
some of those, which seem to be incredibly interesting.
Professor Launder: Laboratory
and field trials.
Q19 Chairman: If I can be frank with
you, a few years ago this Committee did a piece of work on carbon
sequestration long before that became a popular move, and we were
looking forward to one large scale demonstrator plant at Peterhead,
which never came off. That was a proven technology which we knew
could be scaled up. Scaling up geo-engineering on a global scale
seems to be the most incredulous challenge and yet you feel it
is possible.
Professor Launder: Yes, I do,
but on the point you raised there is still a huge gap between
the PhD type of research that Dr Gibson was mentioning and actually
putting it into practice. There is an awful lot of development
and detailed design activity.
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