“Managing Climate Change: Prospects and Limits of International Action” Ted Parson University of Michigan Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Alan Robock, Martin Bunzl, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy L. Stenchikov write in Science that: Scientific and political interest in the possibility of geoengineering the climate is rising (1). There are currently no means of implementing geoengineering, but if a viable technology is produced in the next decade, how could it be tested? We argue that geoengineering cannot be tested without full-scale implementation. The initial production of aerosol droplets can be tested on a small scale, but how they will grow in size (which determines the injection rate needed to produce a particular cooling) can only be tested by injection into an existing aerosol cloud, which cannot be confined to one location. Furthermore, weather and climate variability preclude observation of the climate response without a large, decade-long forcing. Such full-scale implementation could disrupt food

In an interesting post on ChinaDialogue, Qin Xuan, a reporter at Southern Metropolis Daily, analyzes the aftermath of Copenhagen citing some sources close to the Chinese delegation. The most interesting claim is that the “developed nations are becoming more closely aligned, while developing nations are diverging. Maintaining unity within the developing world is an increasingly difficult task” for China. Indeed, the core of Xuan’s analysis is that members of the “BASIC” group (China, India, Brazil and South Africa) are increasingly seen by developing countries as more part of the developing bloc in the alignment of climate interests. Qin Xuan write that “I believe that China should form