Yale Climate & Energy Workshop - Scenario Planning for Solar Radiation Management

Yale Climate & Energy Institute Workshop: Scenario Analysis of Solar Radiation Management: Imagining Possible Futures

Overview

This 1.5 day workshop sponsored by the Yale Climate & Energy Institute will be held in New Haven, Connecticut during September 9-10, 2011. YCEI would like to thank the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy for generously providing additional funding for the workshop.

The difficulty of reducing greenhouse gas emissions has become painfully apparent, as have the complex challenges faced by communities who wish to prepare themselves for climate change. Concerned that adaptation and mitigation attempts may fail, a group of scientists, engineers, concerned businesspeople and others has begun to call for research into techniques which could directly intervene in the Earth’s climate system—a wide variety of technologies and approaches popularly known as “geoengineering.”

This workshop focuses on geoengineering strategies which attempt to manage the amount of solar energy reaching the earth, particularly by dispersing particles into the stratosphere. Solar- shading proposals, some of which could be implemented fairly quickly and with relatively few resources, exemplify both the promise and the problem of geoengineering. By their very nature, such strategies are intended to have dramatic global effects, and therefore can only be understood in light of an immensely complicated scientific, political, regulatory and ethical environment which must be considered from multiple perspectives at once.

There have already been several major attempts to navigate this complexity, including a 2009 Royal Society report and the 2010 Asilomar Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies, which the workshop organizers attended. The YCEI workshop will complement and expand such efforts through a focused process of scenario planning led by Jay Ogilvy (a founding practitioner of modern scenario analysis).

Scenario approaches are well-established in military, government and business circles, and they have been applied in the environmental context by groups such as the Tellus Institute. Scenarios are more than simple numeric projections; they are attempts to collaboratively imagine a range of plausible futures while paying due respect to the ways in which multiple complex systems might work— or fail—together. The relevance to geoengineering seems obvious.

To achieve the necessary breadth, we are extending invitations not only to climate scientists, ethicists, and international lawyers, but to defense experts, environmental psychologists, mitigation and adaptation experts, sociologists, historians, political scientists, agricultural biologists and others. We are building a group which can think through the complex interplay of forces affecting the future and outline plausible and detailed possibilities for worlds in which geoengineering has been attempted or avoided. from a wide variety of fields.

As soon as it concludes, the student organizers will start preparing a full record of our collaboration, containing proposed scenarios along with notes on agreements, disagreements, questions and concerns. This record will be disseminated as a short, professionally made booklet which we hope will guide and enrich the geoengineering conversation.

Suggested Reading:

Stanford Journal of Law, Science, and Policy May 2011 Issue on Geoengineering Responses to Climate Change
http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjlsp/cgi-bin/articles/index.php?CatID=1013

Summary of Royal Society 2010 report on geoengineering:
http://royalsociety.org/Geoengineering-the-climate/

Report of the 2010 Asilomar Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies:
http://www.climateresponsefund.org

Alan Robock. "Twenty Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. May/June 2008.
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/20Reasons.pdf

Enjoying New Haven

"Connecticut's second-largest city has risen from its ashes to become an arts mecca. . . . At the city's center stands tranquil New Haven Green, bordered by graceful colonial churches and Yale. Ethnic restaurants, theaters, museums, pubs and clubs dot the city."
- Lonely Planet Guide to New England, 2009

For more information about things to do in New Haven, please visit:
http://www.infonewhaven.com

Traveling to/from New Haven

Contact

Please contact William Walker (william dot walker at yale dot edu). He will book your travel and ground transportation tickets for you. You can also reach him at 203 432 9794.  

By Car

New Haven is accessible via both I-91 and I-95. The workshop will be held at the Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT. It is a short walk from the Omni hotel, where you will be staying.

By Train

If you are traveling from Boston, Philadelphia, or Washington D.C., you may wish to consider traveling via Amtrak: http://www.amtrak.com

Metro North services New Haven directly from Grand Central station in NYC. http://www.mta.info

By Air

The closest airport is Bradley International Airport (BWI) in Hartford, about an hour away by shuttle.

You can also choose to fly into JFK, LGA, or Newark airports in the NY/NJ area, about two hours away by shuttle.

A limited number of flights do service Tweed Airport in New Haven.

Ground Transportation

QConn Shuttle will assist you with ground transportation from the major airports around the greater New Haven area. Their website is http://www.qconnshuttle.com/

CT Limo will assist with ground transportation from Bradley or the NY area airports. Please be prepared to wait up to an hour for the shuttle. http://www.ctlimo.com/

CT Limo typically drops off at Phelps Gate, a 5 minute walk away from the Omni hotel where you will be staying.

If you happen to fly into Tweed airport in New Haven, you can take a taxi from the airport to your hotel.

Lodging

We have booked a block of rooms at the Omni Hotel. 

155 Temple Street
New Haven, Connecticut 06510
Phone: (203) 772-6664, Fax: (203) 974-6777

http://www.omnihotels.com/FindAHotel/NewHavenYale.aspx?cid=sd_psg_b-property