Summary of Meeting with U.S. DOE to

Discuss Geoengineering Options to Prevent Abrupt and Long-Term Climate Change

 

 

Introduction

 

A meeting was held at the U.S. Department of Energy Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on June 16, 2004 to discuss several geoengineering options to prevent abrupt and long-term climate change and to request funding for climate modeling research in some of these areas. The meeting between Environmental Reference Materials, Inc. of Research Triangle Park, N.C. and the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program was arranged through the offices of Sen. Elizabeth Dole, N.C. and Representative Richard Burr, N.C.

 

This report summarizes the discussions held at that meeting and subsequent comments submitted by the attendees and others.

 

In attendance were the Director of the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program, Mr. David Conover, Mr. Alvia Gaskill from Environmental Reference Materials, Inc., Dr. Ken Caldeira from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) Climate and Carbon Cycle Modeling Group and Dr. Michael MacCracken, the former Director of the Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and now a participating guest scientist at LLNL.

 

MacCracken noted that he and Dr. Caldeira’s participation in the meeting should not be taken as an indication of support of the various geoengineering options presented. Rather, they were there to listen and question and possibly provide an objective analysis of these options should they go beyond the concept stage.

 

Caldeira said that he also does not support any specific scheme, but does support investigation, evaluation and attempts to improve technologies and approaches that have a prima facie chance of competing in some future marketplace and regulatory environment.

 

The meeting began at 9:30 a.m. Caldeira and MacCracken discussed with Conover some of the background for thinking about geoengineering as an approach as they waited for Gaskill to complete his research on how long it takes to get to DOE HQ on the Metro Blue Line from Springfield where he had parked his car. It turns out it takes a very long time. It was mentioned that a Dr. Khan from DOE was preparing a report on geoengineering options. He is welcome to reference our work.

 

Gaskill then arrived and presented a PowerPoint slide show on the topic of Practical Geoengineering Options to Prevent Abrupt and Long-Term Climate Change. A CD version of the slides covering long-term climate change was provided along with an emailed version. An emailed version only was provided of the discussion of abrupt climate change.