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GEOENGINEERING

A wider role for climate scenarios

Nature Sustainability volume 1, pages 214–215 (2018)Cite this article

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Most published geoengineering scenarios are climate modelling studies, which biases the public perception of what is possible and desirable. Scenarios should be used more broadly to engage scientists, policymakers and society in a debate about which future climate and world we want.

Are computer modellers using scenarios as Trojan horses to drive a geoengineering agenda, or are scenarios stimulating broader consideration? Ideally, scenarios trigger a debate about what is possible and how choices could affect us. Debates hinge on a diversity of vantage points. Yet of about 100 publications that matched the search criteria in Talberg’s analysis and categorization of geoengineering studies, more than two-thirds came from the physical sciences, mostly on simulations of climate models in response to SRM. Nine out of ten contained no formal scenario-construction method and did not use a participatory scenario-building process, meaning they present scenarios almost as facts or refer to other literature rather than involving interested parties in a debate of how legal, ethical and environmental criteria should be considered in a set of scenarios. Only ten studies used scenarios as a tool to explore these various dimensions of societal development, and only three of those ten were published in peer-reviewed journals.

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  1. Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Reto Knutti

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  1. Reto Knutti
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Correspondence to Reto Knutti.

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Knutti, R. A wider role for climate scenarios. Nat Sustain 1, 214–215 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0067-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0067-3

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