    [House Hearing, 115 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                GEOENGINEERING:
                      INNOVATION, RESEARCH, AND TECHNOLOGY

    =======================================================================

                                 JOINT HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                         SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT &
                             SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                NOVEMBER 8, 2017

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 115-36

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

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                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                       HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
    FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma             EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         ZOE LOFGREN, California
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois             SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
    BILL POSEY, Florida                  AMI BERA, California
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
    JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma            MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
    RANDY K. WEBER, Texas                DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
    STEPHEN KNIGHT, California           JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
    BRIAN BABIN, Texas                   JERRY McNERNEY, California
    BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia           ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
    BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia            PAUL TONKO, New York
    RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana         BILL FOSTER, Illinois
    DRAIN LaHOOD, Illinois               MARK TAKANO, California
    DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
    JIM BANKS, Indiana                   CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
    ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
    ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
    CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
    RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
                                     ------

                          Subcommittee on Environment

                        HON. ANDY BIGGS, Arizona, Chair
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon, Ranking
    BILL POSEY, Florida                      Member
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
    RANDY K. WEBER, Texas                CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
    BRIAN BABIN, Texas                   EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
    JIM BANKS, Indiana
    CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
    RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
    LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
                                     ------

                             Subcommittee on Energy

                       HON. RANDY K. WEBER, Texas, Chair
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         MARC A. VEASEY, Texas, Ranking
    FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma                 Member
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   ZOE LOFGREN, California
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois             DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
    JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma            JERRY McNERNEY, California
    STEPHEN KNIGHT, California, Vice     PAUL TONKO, New York
        Chair                            BILL FOSTER, Illinois
    DRAIN LaHOOD, Illinois               MARK TAKANO, California
    DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
    LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas

                                C O N T E N T S

                                November 8, 2017

                                                                       Page
    Witness List.....................................................     2

    Hearing Charter..................................................     3

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Andy Biggs, Chairman, Subcommittee on
      Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
      House of Representatives.......................................     4
        Written Statement............................................     5

    Statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Ranking Member,
      Subcommittee on Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................     7
        Written Statement............................................     9

    Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
      on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................    11
        Written Statement............................................    13

    Statement by Representative Randy K. Weber, Chairman,
      Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................    15
        Written Statement............................................    17

    Statement by Representative Marc A. Veasey, Ranking Member,
      Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................    19
        Written Statement............................................    21

                                   Witnesses:

    Dr. Phil Rasch, Chief Scientist for Climate Science, Laboratory
      Fellow, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
        Oral Statement...............................................    23
        Written Statement............................................    26

    Dr. Joseph Majkut, Director of Climate Policy, Niskanen Center
        Oral Statement...............................................    45
        Written Statement............................................    47

    Dr. Douglas MacMartin, Senior Research Associate, Cornell
      University
        Oral Statement...............................................    57
        Written Statement............................................    59

    Ms. Kelly Wanser, Principal Director, Marine Cloud Brightening
      Project, Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and
      Ocean, University of Washington
        Oral Statement...............................................    72
        Written Statement............................................    74

    Discussion.......................................................    89

                 Appendix I: Additional Material for the Record

    Statement submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
      Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
      U.S. House of Representatives..................................   106

    Letter submitted by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Ranking
      Member, Subcommittee on Environment, Committee on Science,
      Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...........   107

    Statement submitted by Mr. Floyd DesChamps, President, The Desner
      Group, LLC.....................................................   111

                                GEOENGINEERING:
                      INNOVATION, RESEARCH, AND TECHNOLOGY

                                  ----------

                          Wednesday, November 8, 2017

                      House of Representatives,
                        Subcommittee on Environment and
                                Subcommittee on Energy,
                   Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                       Washington, D.C.

        The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:11 a.m., in
    Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Andy Biggs
    [Chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment] presiding.

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. The Committee on Science, Space, and
    Technology Subcommittee on Environment and Subcommittee on
    Energy joint hearing on Geoengineering: Innovation, Research
    and Technology is called to order.
        Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare
    recesses of the Subcommittee at any time, and I now recognize
    myself for five minutes for an opening statement.
        Good morning, and welcome to the joint Environment
    Subcommittee and Energy Subcommittee hearing on geoengineering.
    I thank each of our witnesses for being here today.
        Since this is the first time we're discussing the topic of
    geoengineering this Congress, it is important to explain what
    geoengineering actually is. In its simplest terms,
    geoengineering is the concept of using scientific understanding
    to alter the atmosphere in a way that produces positive
    outcomes and results. Many of the concepts in this field deal
    with solar radiation management, or how to influence the
    effects of the sun on the earth.
        But the field is by no means limited to solar research.
    Geoengineering can also be used to manipulate different levels
    of gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide. These
    avenues of geoengineering research and others are still in the
    developmental stage, and any or all of them may warrant further
    exploration.
        While there are at least a few programs in our Nation's
    universities that are looking into these concepts, federal
    research is still limited. However, if in the future the
    government wants to actually apply the concepts and findings of
    geoengineering research, we must fully examine both the
    potential merits and potential pitfalls of this emergent field.
        Since the theories and concepts involved are still so new,
    we cannot say definitively if geoengineering technology
    warrants full-scale development or deployment. Quite simply,
    more basic research is necessary to determine whether it is a
    viable tool.
        Today, we will learn about what research has been conducted
    on geoengineering and which promising concepts should be
    explored further. We will hear from government, academia, think
    tank and industry representatives who have unique perspectives
    on this topic. They will tell us about the research being done,
    as well as future concepts and how they could be used
    responsibly.
        We as lawmakers have a responsibility to explore these
    concepts, learn as much as possible about them, and discuss
    ideas about how we can be helpful in supporting basic research.
        I'd also like to take a moment to clarify any
    mischaracterizations about this hearing. The purpose of this
    hearing is to discuss the viability of geoengineering and any
    early-stage research associated with this approach. The hearing
    is not a platform to further the debate about climate change.
    We've had lots of that this session. Instead, its aim is to
    explore approaches and technologies that have been discussed in
    the scientific community and to assess the basic research
    needed to better understand the merits of these ideas. It is my
    hope that members will respect this focus so that we can have a
    meaningful discussion about geoengineering.
        Again, I want to thank the witnesses for being here today,
    and I look forward to hearing more about these interesting
    concepts.
        [The prepared statement of Chairman Biggs follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. With that, I yield back my time and
    recognize the Ranking Member, Ms. Bonamici for her opening
    statement.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
    you for holding this important hearing.
        I'm very encouraged that the Science Committee is
    discussing geoengineering, a field of science and engineering
    that is still in its infancy and has ample areas for future
    research, and it's noteworthy for its potential. It's important
    that we consider it from political, ethical, legal, and
    environmental perspectives.
        Geoengineering is a set of climate interventions that aim
    to manipulate our climate to either remove greenhouse gases
    from our atmosphere or reduce the amount of sunlight absorbed
    by the Earth. Now, some may argue that geoengineering is a way
    to use technology to bypass important mitigation and adaptation
    strategies that address the impacts of climate change, but even
    with geoengineering, our first and primary actions to address
    climate change must be mitigation and adaptation strategies.
        In our communities, climate change is not a partisan issue.
    Nationwide, there are fishers and farmers and small-business
    owners, and servicemen and women who are having to change the
    way they do their jobs because of climate change, and
    regardless of their political affiliation. The economic,
    health, and environmental consequences of climate change are
    well known, and our understanding about how to address the
    causes of climate change continue to improve.
        It's critical that we support scientific research about
    climate, and that we build on rather than break down decades
    worth of progress on this issue. I urge the Committee to hold
    hearings specifically on mitigation and adaption strategies to
    help communities grapple with this situation.
        Geoengineering is an option our country should explore. The
    state of current geoengineering research makes clear that we
    are years or perhaps decades away from potential deployment,
    and the risks of deployment are not well understood, and we're
    hoping for some answers here today. In fact, a key finding in
    the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Climate Science
    Special Report, which was published last Friday, determined
    that further assessments of the technical feasibilities, costs,
    risks, co-benefits, and governance challenges of climate
    intervention or geoengineering strategies, which are as yet
    unproven at scale, are a necessary step before judgments about
    the benefits and risks of these approaches can be made with
    high confidence.
        This is because of a lack of technical maturity and
    understanding of the risks associated with geoengineering. We
    do not currently have enough evidence to determine whether any
    of the various proposals for geoengineering can provide long-
    term solutions to address the impacts of climate change, or
    that they would not pose any adverse consequences to our
    environment.
        Our climate is changing, and the warming trends observed
    over the last hundred years are primarily caused by human
    activities, specifically the emission of greenhouse gases. In
    fact, this is one of the most prominent findings in the Climate
    Science Special Report. This report unequivocally lays out the
    need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to prevent long-term
    warming and short-term climate change.
        I want to ask the Subcommittee Chairman for unanimous
    consent to include a letter addressed to him and Chairman Smith
    into the record. It's been signed by many prominent members of
    the geoengineering research community, highlighting the urgency
    of the threat that climate change poses and reemphasizes that
    geoengineering is not a magic fix to addressing climate change.
        Chairman Biggs. Without objection.
        [The information appears in Appendix I]
        Ms. Bonamici. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to
    yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from
    California, Mr. McNerney.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Bonamici follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Mr. McNerney, please.
        Mr. McNerney. Well, I thank the gentlewoman from Oregon,
    and I thank the Chairman for calling this hearing.
        Climate change is happening, and the effects are
    accelerating faster than the scientific models predict. The
    changes we are experiencing today are the results of heating
    that has taken place over the past decades. Meanwhile, carbon
    concentration in the atmosphere is continuing to increase.
    Therefore, additional heating and climate impacts are
    inevitable even if we were to stop carbon emissions
    immediately. In other words, we are committed to significant
    change.
        The unknown is how much change we're committed to and how
    fast it will take place. It's not known if we are committed to
    truly catastrophic change with the current policies or not. But
    no matter what, it's absolutely critical to reduce carbon
    emissions and prepare for the changes that are coming, in other
    words, mitigate and adopt.
        The changes we are committed to may be so strong that we'll
    need to know what can be done to prevent utter catastrophe.
    What tools are available? What are the technical feasibilities?
    What are the costs and what are the risks of the different
    approaches to avoiding catastrophic change?
        That's where this hearing comes in. What are the
    hypothetical alternatives and how do we best go about
    determining their feasibility, costs, and impacts?
        I will be dropping a bill next week, which members of the
    panel have already seen, and I need guidance from experts on
    what changes to the proposed legislation is needed.
        Thank you, I yield back.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you.
        I now recognize the Chairman of the entire Committee,
    Chairman Smith.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I also thank
    Congressman Weber for letting give my opening statement before
    him. I have a markup that began in the Judiciary Committee that
    unfortunately I've got to attend but I hope to be back shortly.
        Mr. Chairman, first I want to thank the Chairman of the
    Environment Subcommittee, you, for having this hearing, and
    also Representative Weber of Texas, the Chairman of the Energy
    Subcommittee, for your interest in this subject. I also want to
    thank the gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, for his
    persistent interest in this subject. Every time I've seen him
    on the House Floor for the last couple of months, he's wanted
    to have this hearing, so we appreciate his interest as well.
        Mr. Chairman, geoengineering's potential is worth
    exploring. Generally, we know that the technologies associated
    with geoengineering could have positive effects on the Earth's
    atmosphere. These innovations could help reduce global
    temperatures or pull excess greenhouse gases out of the
    atmosphere.
        For instance, one of the most intriguing ideas in this
    field is solar radiation management. This concept involves
    finding innovative strategies to reduce the amount of sunlight
    that reaches and warms the earth. Today, one of our witnesses
    will expand on this idea with a concept that brightens clouds
    and reflects sunlight, which is measured in albedo. While this
    technology is interesting, we have a lot to learn.
        Some have questioned the unintended consequences of
    geoengineering. One concern is that brightening clouds could
    alter rain patterns, making it rain more in some places or less
    in others. Such technologies could drastically reduce global
    temperatures in the future by spraying aerosols into the
    atmosphere to reflect sunlight. While we are not sure this is
    plausible, some scientists believe it could achieve substantial
    environmental benefits at a cheaper cost than regulations.
        Regardless of these claims, we still do not know enough
    about this subject to thoroughly understand the pros and cons
    of these types of technologies.
        As the climate continues to change, geoengineering could
    become a tool to curb resulting impacts. Instead of forcing
    unworkable and costly government mandates on the American
    people, we should look to technology and innovation to lead the
    way to address climate change.
        Geoengineering should be considered when discussing
    technological advances to protect the environment, and
    geoengineering should not be ignored before we have an
    opportunity to discover its potential. This hearing will help
    Congress do just that.
        Mr. Chairman, I thank our witnesses today for testifying on
    the current state of geoengineering research and for their
    recommendations about how to advance practicable efforts in
    this area, and I'll yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I now recognize the Chairman of the Energy Subcommittee,
    Mr. Weber, for an opening statement.
        Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me add my welcome
    to today's joint Environment and Energy Subcommittee.
        Good morning and welcome to today's Joint Environment and
    Energy Subcommittee hearing. Today, we are going to hear from a
    panel of experts on the status of America's research in
    geoengineering, a field truly in the scientific unknown.
    Hearings like today's help remind us of the Science Committee's
    core focus: the basic research that provides the foundation for
    technology breakthroughs.
        Within the DOE lab system, Pacific Northwest National Lab
    is leading the effort to protect--to explore the potential
    impact of geoengineering technology. PNNL hosts geoengineering
    researchers who hope to open the dialog on this groundbreaking
    technology--Jerry, you'll be glad to hear--and consider what
    methods could have the most positive impact on the climate.
    Some proposed ideas at PNNL include placement of mirrors in
    space, injection of naturally occurring substances into the
    atmosphere to mimic a volcanic eruption, or brightening the
    clouds overhead. All of these methods could have a cooling
    effect on our lower atmosphere.
        It's amazing to think that molten lava from volcanic
    eruptions can actually produce compounds that cool the air.
    Brightening clouds is equally interesting, but only early-stage
    evaluation has occurred on the practicality of this approach.
    As we will hear from one of our witnesses, we have already seen
    ship tracks that create this brightening effect, where the
    sunlight is reflected back into the atmosphere. By injecting
    aerosols composed of seawater particles into low ocean clouds,
    researchers could shrink the size of water droplets and in turn
    brighten those clouds.
        PNNL's Climate and Earth Systems Science researchers and
    partnerships have to rely on computer models to understand the
    potential impact of these very basic geoengineering methods,
    but as we've heard before in this Committee, models are only as
    good as the data they use.
        I believe that we should consider funding appropriately
    scaled field-testing to improve the accuracy of geoengineering
    models. Through the National Labs, the United States already
    partners with researchers from Canada, China, Denmark, Germany,
    Japan, and Norway. These scientists used the output from 12
    climate models in the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison
    Project, which seek to understand the possible climate effects
    of geoengineering.
        Geoengineering has the potential to provide us with a whole
    new understanding and approach to atmospheric research. If we
    put aside the debates about climate change, we can support
    innovations in science that can create a better prospect for
    future generations.
        The Federal Government should prioritize this kind of basic
    research so we can not only understand the science of
    geoengineering, but hopefully partner with the private sector
    to develop technology to mitigate changes in climate. When the
    government supports basic research, everyone has the
    opportunity to access the fundamental knowledge that can lead
    to the development of future technologies.
        The future's bright for geoengineering, and I want to thank
    our panel of witnesses for testifying today. I look forward to
    a productive discussion about the innovation, research and
    technology of this emerging field of science.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Weber.
        I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Energy
    Subcommittee, Mr. Veasey, for an opening statement.
        Mr. Veasey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and we have an
    excellent panel of witnesses today and I'm really looking
    forward to hearing their insights, and thank you very much for
    being here.
        Despite the numerous claims, geoengineering is not the
    answer to 150 years of polluting our planet at an unsustainable
    rate, and in order to slow the impact of climate change and
    eventually reverse its effects, we have to get out priorities
    straight, and mitigation and adaptation must be part of the top
    priorities. We must face the global challenge of climate
    change, and solving this challenge requires every nation to
    find effective solutions to reduce our emissions and set us on
    a far more sustainable path.
        The scientific community has made clear that climate change
    will continue to be an issue for the rest of this century and
    beyond. The long-term nature of this challenge is the reason we
    need to investigate every possible solution in addition to
    implementing mitigation and adaptation strategies.
        Geoengineering, in particular, is in its very early stages
    and more research is required to expand our understanding of
    its risks and potential benefits. During our discussion today,
    I hope the witnesses can provide us with their recommendations
    on what types of research the Federal Government should invest
    in for the benefit of all Americans. These recommendations will
    help shape our national investments in climate modeling, Earth
    systems research, laboratory experiments, and potential small-
    scale field tests in the coming decades.
        On that note, I would like to stress to my colleagues the
    importance of supporting the full spectrum of research at the
    Department of Energy. In particular, activities within the
    Office of Science's Biological and Environmental Research
    program are crucial to expanding our knowledge of Earth systems
    and climate modeling. Funding this important research can have
    numerous benefits, including advancing the field we are
    discussing today.
        It is unfortunate that the Trump Administration's budget
    proposal included a 43 percent cut to BER with major cuts and
    outright eliminations of key activities within the Earth and
    Environmental Systems subprogram. These cuts would hurt the
    emerging field of geoengineering, but more importantly, they
    would cripple our ability to understand the range of factors
    driving global temperatures upward. If you are a climate
    skeptic, then you must support more research to expand our
    collective understanding. If you cannot support that, then you
    are choosing to ignore the facts. Frankly, we have no time to
    ignore the mounting scientific evidence as it relates to
    climate change. We need productive dialogue if we want to
    better understand this challenge and embrace the necessary
    solutions.
        In addition to supporting the key research activities that
    underpin geoengineering, there may also be additional federal
    investments that Congress should consider in order to have an
    impact in the near future. Carbon dioxide removal strategies
    are a generally less-risky form of climate intervention that
    may prove useful in our efforts to fight the impacts of climate
    change. These strategies come in the form of bioenergy with
    carbon capture and sequestration, direct air capture
    technologies, enhanced geological weathering, and land use
    management, just to name a few.
        The National Academies examined carbon dioxide removal in
    2015 and concluded that this area is ripe for further federal
    research investments. For this reason, I included this critical
    research in a draft bill that I will be introducing in the
    coming weeks: the Fossil Energy Research and Development Act.
    In addition to authorizing key R&D activities for carbon
    capture, utilization, and sequestration activities, the bill
    would also instruct DOE to create a research program on carbon
    dioxide removal. I hope that my of my colleagues on both sides
    of the aisle will join me as a cosponsor of this legislation.
    The bill would push the DOE to prioritize the important work of
    environmental mitigation within the Office of Fossil Energy.
    The public health and economic benefits are considerably
    numerous. I hope this bill can be a bipartisan path forward to
    an area of research at DOE that needs it.
        I look forward to working with my colleagues on these
    issues, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance
    of my time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Veasey follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Veasey.
        Let me introduce our witnesses. Our first witness today is
    Dr. Phil Rasch, Chief Scientist for Climate Science and
    Laboratory Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
    Previously, Dr. Rasch served as a Chair of the International
    Global Atmospheric Chemistry program and was named a Fellow of
    the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He
    received a bachelor's degree in atmospheric science and
    chemistry from the University of Washington and a master's of
    science in meteorology from Florida State University, and he
    completed his Ph.D. at the National Center for Atmospheric
    Research in Boulder, Colorado.
        Our second witness is Dr. Joseph Majkut, Director of
    Climate Policy at Niskanen Center. Previously, Dr. Majkut
    worked as a Congressional Science Fellow under the American
    Association for the Advancement of Science and the American
    Geoscience Institute. Dr. Majkut received degrees from
    Princeton University, the Delft University of Technology, and
    Harvey Mudd College.
        Our next witness is Dr. Douglas MacMartin, Senior Research
    Associate at Cornell University. Previously, Dr. MacMartin led
    the Active Control and Flow Control Research programs at the
    United Technologies Research Center. He received his bachelor's
    degree from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. in
    aeronautics and astronautics from MIT.
        And our last today is Ms. Kelly Wanser, Principal Director
    at Marine Cloud Brightening Project, Joint Institute for the
    Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of
    Washington. Ms. Wanser is a Member of the National Academies of
    Sciences. She received her bachelor's degree from Boston
    College and her master's degree from the University of Oxford.
        I now recognize Dr. Rasch for five minutes to present----
        Dr. Rasch. Are we ready?
        Chairman Biggs. We're going to keep discussing her for a
    few minutes. No, I think we're now ready to recognize Dr. Rasch
    for five minutes to present his testimony. Thank you, Dr.
    Rasch.

                      TESTIMONY OF DR. PHIL RASCH,

                  CHIEF SCIENTIST FOR CLIMATE SCIENCE,

                           LABORATORY FELLOW,

                 PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

        Dr. Rasch. Thank you. Chairmen Biggs and Weber and Smith,
    Members Bonamici and Veasey and Subcommittee Members, thanks
    for the opportunity to be here.
        I testified before this Committee in 2010 on
    geoengineering. I'm the Chief Scientist for Climate Science at
    Pacific Northwest National Labs, where I lead programs studying
    Earth's atmosphere and environmental change. I've also been
    involved in geoengineering research. I've authored about 20
    papers on geoengineering, supported mainly by philanthropic
    foundations and the NSF in my previous job. I was also a member
    of the committee that wrote the National Research Council
    report on geoengineering, and a lead author on relevant
    chapters from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
    report as well.
        Americans have become increasingly aware of changes in our
    environment ranging from dramatic decreases in sea ice in the
    arctic to increases in summertime heat waves, droughts, floods,
    fires, and damage from hurricane and other extreme weather
    events including increasing ocean acidity that damages
    fisheries.
        Evidence in the National Climate Assessment and elsewhere
    indicates that the changes are connected to increases in carbon
    dioxide so a prudent step to reducing impacts is to stop
    increasing carbon dioxide as quickly as possible.
        Two engineering methods attempt to address some of these
    threats through two very different strategies. I'm not an
    expert in the carbon dioxide removal strategy you heard about
    earlier so I won't discuss it further, and I'll sometimes talk
    about solar radiation management as sunlight reflect methods, a
    term I prefer.
        Sunlight reflection methods try to reflect some of the
    sun's energy back to space, cooling the planet. Two strategies
    have received the most attention so I'll focus on those. One
    method is called marine cloud brightening. You'll all have felt
    the surface temperature go down when a cloud passes overhead on
    a hot summer day by reflecting sunlight back to space. This is
    how clouds cool the planet. We know clouds can be further
    brightened. One dramatic example occurs when ocean freighters
    add particles below clouds to change them and form bright ship
    tracks. Marine cloud brightening attempts to mimic that kind of
    cooling by introducing sea salt particles below clouds.
    Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering tries to mimic the cooling
    effects of large volcanic eruptions by placing extra particles
    in the upper atmosphere.
        Let me just cover a bit of what we know and don't know and
    then make some recommendations for progress. There's a lot more
    detail in my written testimony. We know it's still early days
    for SRM research but there are hints it could help address
    climate change by offsetting, delaying or slowing warming.
    Hints are, that help counter other changes as well. We think
    SRM could buy time for other measures to be put in place. Even
    if it works, though, we know it won't be a magic bullet. It
    won't compensate for all problems, and it may have side
    effects. Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering and marine cloud
    brightening have some common features but they're different
    with different risks and impacts to the planet.
        If we used geoengineering, it would need to be adjusted to
    balance the excess carbon in the atmosphere, and we think it
    would be very risky to balance a lot of carbon dioxide.
        We don't yet know whether geoengineering should be a part
    of the strategies addressing climate change. It'll take at
    least a decade to sort out the benefits, risks, and tradeoffs
    associated with these different technologies.
        So what should we do? I think it's time for a coherent and
    goal-oriented geoengineering research program that complements
    ongoing research in Earth systems science but focuses on a
    defined set of objectives targeting better understanding of the
    effectiveness and potential risks associated with specific
    geoengineering techniques. That program should include
    modeling, lab studies, small-scale field studies, and
    technology development in addition to addressing societal needs
    for transparency in governance.
        Small-scale field studies are needed. These studies should
    be far too small to affect climate but they'll help us
    understand the processes important to the SRM strategies, and
    also help answer crucial questions for climate science. I
    discuss one example in my written testimony. I believe it's
    urgent to have a review on governance strategy for this program
    to help with public understanding and engagement and to improve
    safety.
        Thanks, and I'm happy to take questions.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Rasch follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, Dr. Rasch.
        Now I'll recognize Dr. Majkut for five minutes to present
    his testimony.

                    TESTIMONY OF DR. JOSEPH MAJKUT,

                      DIRECTOR OF CLIMATE POLICY,

                            NISKANEN CENTER

        Dr. Majkut. Thank you, Chairmen Biggs and Weber, and
    Ranking Member Bonamici, and Members of the Committee. I'm
    grateful for the invitation to join you today.
        My name is Joseph Majkut, and I'm the Director of Climate
    Policy at the Niskanen Center here in Washington, D.C., where
    my work focuses on research in climate energy issues, and my
    personal area of expertise is climate science.
        There is no practical scientific doubt that human activity
    is contributing to climate change nor that continuing emissions
    will lead to more warming. There is, however, a great deal of
    uncertainty about the extent of future warming and its
    environmental and economic consequences. Given that
    uncertainty, we should think about this as a risk management
    problem. There may be no perfect solution but in general we
    should seek ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimize
    societal vulnerability, and otherwise limit the potential costs
    of a warming planet.
        Geoengineering may be one such tool to address those
    potential costs. Further research judiciously done will help us
    answer that question. With that in mind, I would like to
    emphasize three points from my written testimony.
        The first is that there is a great deal of uncertainty
    about whether or not geoengineering would work in practice. By
    changing the reflectivity of the high atmosphere or brightening
    clouds, we might be able to offset some degree of global
    warming quickly and reduce its attendant effects but the risk
    of unintended consequences might be large.
        We do know that once we start cooling the planet by
    artificial means, stopping will be followed by rapid warming as
    long as CO2 levels remain high. We also know that a
    geoengineered world could not simultaneously hold temperatures,
    rainfall and weather patterns static, meaning that there will
    be tradeoffs should engineering ever be used to partially or
    completely offset global warming.
        The second is the developing a better scientific
    understanding of those potential tradeoffs justifies ongoing
    and future research. Whether or not each of us is concerned
    about the risks of climate change or repulsed by the very idea
    of geoengineering, changes to the Earth's climate will
    inevitably force future generations to confront such choices.
    This research will be affordable and need not supplant other
    efforts to understand the nature of climate change. Such
    research will occur in supercomputing facilities, at the lab
    bench, and also in small-scale field experiments.
        I'll add that I hope it will also be approached via the
    social sciences as judgments of whether geoengineering is good
    or practical are not consigned to questions of chemistry or
    physics. Both the 2015 report from the National Research
    Council and the most recent update of the U.S. Global Change
    Research Program's strategic plan highlight the importance of
    this research and complementary observational and theoretical
    work in climate science, especially since other countries or
    private actors might start intervention experiments of their
    own.
        Lastly, Congress should consider what regulatory governing
    structure will maximize innovation and scientific progress
    while protecting the public and environment from ill-informed
    experiments or premature deployment of these technologies.
    Under the 1971 Weather Modification Act, experiments intent on
    altering the weather or planetary albedo are already regulated,
    and those regulations currently require that researchers report
    their activities to NOAA before and after working in the field.
        For today, that is enough. No one to our knowledge is set
    on large experiments in the near future. However, regulatory
    governance should grow as experiments grow larger, and it is
    not clear at present how such regulations might look.
        Our research at the Niskanen Center indicates that small-
    scale experiments should be subject to little more than
    reporting requirements and existing environmental protections
    because their climatological effect will be vanishingly small.
    However, Congress may want to consider if intermediate scale
    experiments should be subject to prior approval of an agency,
    and if large-scale experiments subject to the express
    permission of Congress itself. How we define small, medium and
    large is a question that will require further thought and
    should involve the input of the scientific community and civil
    society. A well-defined and stable regulatory structure will
    publicly clarify research progress and intent, and that intent
    should be to clarify the questions of how geoengineering might
    work and what the costs and benefits of doing it may be. That
    information could be used by future policymakers to avert
    trillions of dollars in losses.
        If the worst-case scenarios of global warming come to pass,
    these technologies could be used to help people, savings lives
    and economies from the most severe effects of climate change.
    Even if emissions reductions happen quickly, future generations
    may still find limited geoengineering of use. Managing the
    risks of climate change is not easy but it will be an ever-
    present task in the 21st century and beyond. Research into
    these technologies is an important part of that task as are
    adapting to warming and reducing emissions. A sturdy whip and a
    well-plotted course are no substitute for a close watch on the
    waters ahead nor lifeboats if we need them.
        Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you, and I look
    forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Majkut follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, Dr. Majkut, and I apologize for
    mispronouncing your name earlier. I apologize.
        I now recognize Dr. MacMartin for five minutes to present
    his testimony.

                  TESTIMONY OF DR. DOUGLAS MACMARTIN,

                       SENIOR RESEARCH ASSOCIATE,

                           CORNELL UNIVERSITY

        Dr. MacMartin. Thank you. So I want to start by thanking
    the Committee Members for the opportunity to testify today. So
    I'm Douglas MacMartin at Cornell University with a background
    in both engineering and climate science, and I've been working
    on geoengineering for about the last ten years, and I think one
    of the striking things about this panel is actually how broad
    our agreement is likely to be on almost all of the issues.
        So the reason we're all here of course is that as was
    reaffirmed last week by the U.S. National Climate Assessment,
    we know that the Earth's climate is changing as a direct result
    of human emissions of greenhouse gases, and we know that the
    United States is already experiencing some impacts as a result.
    While these impacts may be manageable today, they will continue
    to grow so long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, and so
    the less we emit, the lower the risk, and nothing we say here
    today about geoengineering changes the fact that we must reduce
    our greenhouse gas emissions and that this effort remains the
    most important component of a strategy to respond to climate
    change.
        That said, geoengineering approaches could become a
    valuable additional component of an integrated strategy to
    manage climate impacts. So carbon dioxide removal can
    effectively produce negative emissions, but we need research
    there on scalability, costs, and local impacts, and I'll focus
    primarily on the sunlight reflection, or solar geoengineering
    side, so ideas like adding aerosols to the stratosphere or
    making marine boundary layer clouds more reflective, and I'd
    say from the limited modeling research that we've done to date,
    it's plausible that a limited amount of solar geoengineering,
    used in addition to cutting emissions could reduce some of the
    impacts of climate change but there's still considerable
    uncertainty into the side effects and risks, and that will
    require focused, goal-oriented research. That could take
    decades, at least a decade, maybe more, which is why it's
    important to start it soon.
        So it's important to stress at the outset that solar
    geoengineering cannot be a substitute for cutting emissions for
    several reasons. This conclusion has been reached by every
    assessment of this technology including by the National
    Academies in 2015, so first it does not compensate all of the
    impacts of climate change so ocean acidification would continue
    unchecked.
        Second, if we keep adding greenhouse gases to the
    atmosphere, we'd have to continually increase the amount of
    geoengineering we were doing, so keep adding more and more
    aerosols to the stratosphere every year just to keep
    temperatures in balance, and that would lead to increased side
    effects and risks.
        And third, because of the long lifetime of carbon dioxide
    in the atmosphere, if we relied only on solar geoengineering,
    that would lead to a practically indefinite commitment to
    future generations to either continue deploying it or accept
    the consequences of high CO2.
        However, as long as it's considered as a supplement to
    cutting emissions, then it might reduce some climate damages
    and so it would be valuable to conduct the needed research. A
    coherent prioritized research effort needs to be driven by the
    end goal of supporting informed decisions regarding these
    approaches, and research would need to be integrated into the
    overall U.S. climate science research effort and should include
    explicit attention to research governance.
        The next step is probably to clearly articulate research
    needs and how to address them. This might benefit, for example,
    from an expert body like the National Academies. For
    stratospheric aerosol injection, we know that it works at least
    for a degree or two of cooling. It works in the sense of
    cooling the planet simply by analogy with what happens after
    large volcanic eruptions, and the observations made after
    eruptions have helped calibrate our climate models. Near-term
    research here is likely to continue to be primarily model-
    based, and once we better understand the uncertainties we need
    to address, it's likely we would need some outdoor experiments
    to resolve key uncertainties, but I should emphasize that these
    would always be at a very small scale. Marine cloud brightening
    would also benefit from small-scale, controlled experiments,
    which would also help inform critical uncertainties in climate
    change science. All of this research will build on continued
    investments in climate modeling, in high-performance computing,
    and in our ability to collect observations about the Earth
    system.
        So in summary, I and I think many of my colleagues in the
    research community believe that even with our best efforts at
    mitigation, the risks of future climate change are sufficiently
    concerning that we may need to consider all of the options at
    our disposal. I conclude that it's essential to conduct
    focused, goal-oriented research to support informed decisions
    but reiterate that this needs to be in addition to the work of
    reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases and not a
    substitute.
        Thank you, and I look forward to all of your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. MacMartin follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, Doctor.
        I now recognize Ms. Wanser for five minutes for her
    testimony.

                     TESTIMONY OF MS. KELLY WANSER,

                          PRINCIPAL DIRECTOR,

                   MARINE CLOUD BRIGHTENING PROJECT,

                     JOINT INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY

                      OF THE ATMOSPHERE AND OCEAN,

                        UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

        Ms. Wanser. Thank you. I should have some slides.
        Thank you, Members of the Committee. It's an honor to be
    here, and I commend you for taking up this challenging topic.
    My name is Kelly Wanser. I spent 20 years as an executive and
    entrepreneur in the technology industry focused on
    understanding and securing large, complex systems. Ten years
    ago, I became interested in how we might apply technology to
    risks in the Earth system and helped form a collaboration that
    became the marine cloud brightening project. I'm now its
    Program Director. Prior to that, I served as an advisor to the
    laser inertial fusion energy program at Lawrence Livermore
    National Laboratory and as senior advisor to ocean conservancy,
    looking at ocean climate risk.
        I'm here today because increased heat in the atmosphere
    poses risks to our way of life and critical parts of nature we
    rely on. We may require options for directly reducing heat in
    the Earth system. There is a need and an opportunity for
    innovation, and there are important steps we can take in
    developing a research program.
        Small particles--aerosols--and the way they interact with
    clouds to reflect sunlight are one of the primary ways that
    nature keeps our planet cool. The most promising approaches to
    rapidly reducing heat in the climate involve adding particles
    to the atmosphere to slightly increase this reflective effect.
        One approach to reducing heat, marine cloud brightening--
    next slide--would use sea-salt mist sprayed from ships to
    brighten clouds over the ocean. Next slide.
        [Slide]
        Applied to a fraction of all marine clouds, it might offset
    2 degrees of warming globally, and the way the particles
    brighten clouds and cool the system is a gap in our ability to
    forecast weather and climate, and in this way research in
    marine cloud brightening may be of strategic importance to
    emergency preparedness, national defense, and many industries.
        Today, we lack technical capabilities and scientific
    knowledge for marine cloud brightening or any proposed approach
    to rapidly reducing heat in the Earth system. Next slide.
        [Slide]
        Delivering aerosols with the right properties at sufficient
    scale is a hard engineering problem and takes time. Next slide.
        [Slide]
        Once we have technology, next steps are to build a system
    to enable small-scale field experiments to determine whether
    these ideas are feasible and basic processes to input to
    models. There is a well-defined research plan that starts with
    land-based testing, moves to single ship studies, and finally
    to misting one region of clouds to determine brightening
    effects. This research plan will take years.
        Satellite--next slide.
        [Slide]
        Satellite, aerial and surface observations are critical and
    we will want to support our current infrastructure as well as
    leverage disruptive new technologies and remote sensing from
    innovative companies like Saildrone, Spire Aerospace, and
    others. The work will also require significant advances in
    modeling and data analysis and increased computing capacities
    to support assessment and prediction of effects. It will take a
    decade of core technology development and basic science to
    determine if any options are feasible and another decade to
    scale capabilities for readiness. Work must commence soon to
    produce knowledge and options within a time frame relevant to
    climate risks. With changes occurring around the world, it is
    likely and may be inevitable that others will develop
    capabilities. With a potential to produce geographically
    variable climate outcomes, the United States has a security
    interest in understanding and controlling them.
        Taken alone, capabilities for reducing heat in the
    atmosphere are not a solution. They should ultimately be
    considered as part of a portfolio within a management framework
    that includes emissions reduction, greenhouse gas removal, land
    and ocean management, industrial practices, economic
    incentives, and adaptation. Given the magnitude and urgency of
    the problem and our current lack of knowledge and capabilities,
    defining a research agenda and developing funding pathways for
    research may be critical. A National Academies study to help
    define a research agenda and establish a governance framework
    for research activities may be a valuable initial step. Next
    slide.
        [Slide]
        This type of work is not unprecedented. In 1934, the U.S.
    government undertook the largest effort to address an
    environment problem in our Nation's history: planting 220
    million trees through the center of the Midwest to address the
    great storm of the Dust Bowl. Now may be the time to research
    the possibility of shelter belts in the sky.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Wanser follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Biggs. Thank you. I think each of the witnesses
    for your very interesting testimony. I recognize myself now for
    five minutes for questions.
        Dr. Rasch, I understand that most of the federal research
    on the topic of geoengineering has been conducted at our
    federal labs. Can you elaborate on how much funding is
    currently slated for this type of research?
        Dr. Rasch. To my knowledge, the current funding is
    restricted essentially to a few university professors through
    the National Science Foundation. The rest of it is being
    occasionally supported from various agencies to stay engaged in
    activities like the research reports which you've heard about
    but most of the other work that's being done is being done
    through supportive philanthropic organizations or for free on
    weekends and evenings by scientists who are interested in these
    things. It probably is bounded by less than a million dollars a
    year. It could be a few hundred thousand dollars a year of
    supported research directly for geoengineering. That's to my
    knowledge. I don't really know.
        Chairman Biggs. Any other panelists want to weigh in on
    that question? Dr. MacMartin?
        Dr. MacMartin. The National Center for Atmospheric Research
    has been providing computer time, which is supported by the
    NSF, but that's basically--Phil's answer is correct.
        Chairman Biggs. And so I would guess that--and I don't want
    to presume anything but it sounds like you would agree that the
    topic has not been adequately pursued in the recent phase?
        Dr. Rasch. Right. My reaction is that it's very easy to
    identify the fact that a very small amount of effort has been
    put into this area and that progress could be made much more
    rapidly with a relatively small amount of funding.
        Chairman Biggs. It leads me to ask why has geoengineering
    not received the same kind of funding as maybe some other types
    of research over the last 8 to ten years. Dr. Rasch?
        Dr. Rasch. Well, I think there's a recognition by all that
    it's quite a controversial subject of real concern to citizens
    of the United States and to other scientists as well, and there
    is some reluctance to take the first step is my sense. That's
    my best answer.
        Chairman Biggs. Dr. Majkut, or actually anyone on the
    panel, outside of the Federal Government, is--and you mentioned
    some of the philanthropic supporters of geoengineering
    research. What's the postsecondary education or university
    level of research in this area? Ms. Wanser?
        Ms. Wanser. So the overall philanthropic funding in this
    area is, I would characterize it as maybe in the range of $1 to
    $2 million a year, mostly allocated towards one program, the
    stratospheric aerosol program at Harvard. For the most part my
    experience in the philanthropic community is that this subject
    matter is not yet acceptable for funding, so traditional
    sources of environmental and climate research funding in the
    philanthropic community are not yet funding in this area.
        Chairman Biggs. And Dr. Majkut, how about universities?
        Dr. Majkut. Well, we know there's a few research programs
    around the country, Harvard University, Washington, other
    individual scholars. Whether or not this particular item falls
    under a research priority for a particular university I don't
    think is a question that's easy for me to answer. There are
    individual academics who put their energy into it, as Phil
    says, but it's not a very large field as you go to these
    scientific meetings where geoengineering is discussed. You see
    that there's a relatively small number of people working on
    these issues.
        Chairman Biggs. Are other countries working on
    geoengineering research, Dr. MacMartin?
        Dr. MacMartin. So I think the largest program in the world
    is probably the one at Beijing Normal University in China but
    that's relatively new and unclear exactly where they're going
    with that, but in Europe there's some small efforts as well but
    not substantially larger than what's in the United States.
        Chairman Biggs. So thinking of it in terms of global
    competition, it doesn't sound like we're falling behind global
    competitors, it's just that we're not advancing as rapidly as
    perhaps many or some would like. Is that fair to say?
        Dr. MacMartin. Not yet but that may change depending on
    China's future----
        Chairman Biggs. Dr. Rasch?
        Dr. Rasch. It was just--I might beg to differ a little bit
    with Dr. MacMartin that my sense is that over the last five
    years or so, a variety of European countries have identified
    explicitly some funding for geoengineering research that
    amounts to a few million dollars a year perhaps for--at that
    level, which is substantially larger than the amounts that I
    could identify in the United States.
        Chairman Biggs. Well, again, thank all of you for being
    here, and my time is expired, and I recognize the Ranking
    Member of the Environment Subcommittee, Ms. Bonamici.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Just to follow up on the Chairman's questions about work
    being done internationally, were any of you at the conference
    in Berlin? Yes? So in terms--I know the Chairman mentioned
    global competition but we also need to I think have a
    conversation with the concerns, and Dr. Rasch, you recognize,
    as our constituents do, there's some controversy and we need
    some ethical discussions and boundaries, and Dr. Majkut, you
    mentioned that there's a statute in the United States that
    research needs to be reported and there needs to be some
    framework. So how much work is being done internationally on
    collaborating on some of these questions of what are the
    frameworks and what are the ethical considerations and how much
    is regulated in terms of--climate doesn't know political
    boundaries so, you know, somebody in the United States has to
    comply with this law but what about internationally? Who's
    leading that discussion?
        Dr. Majkut. So there are several newer organizations that
    are looking at the international aspects of this research and
    also, you know, geoengineering more broadly as something that
    might be used to prevent climate risk not represented here
    today. I think those discussions are beginning to occur but
    it's--you know, they're consigned to issues that are related to
    but not just scientific, right, so the moral and ethical
    frameworks in which we look at these questions. Those
    conversations are beginning. It's still early stage.
        Ms. Bonamici. And how does the United States compare with
    other--you mentioned China, Russia, other countries that are
    maybe working on this in terms of having some sort of
    regulatory framework or guidance and ethical considerations.
        Dr. Majkut. I couldn't say about the foreign countries,
    sorry, but the United States, I think, you know, as I
    testified, has a framework in place for any research that's
    going to take place in the next few years, and because of the
    strength of our scientific community and the National Academy
    of Sciences, I expect that we will remain at the front of
    figuring how we can go about this research judiciously.
        Ms. Bonamici. And Dr. MacMartin, we've heard today a few
    times that geoengineering is not going to be the magic bullet
    or a fix, it's not a substitute for mitigation and adaptation,
    and you said that geoengineering could be part of the strategy.
    So could you please talk about the range of activities that
    would be included in mitigation and adaptation, and what
    mitigation work is still required to prevent the most
    catastrophic consequences of climate change and what role might
    geoengineering play in that in terms of priorities?
        Dr. MacMartin. So I think it is clearly that we eventually
    have to get to zero emissions or net zero emissions of carbon
    dioxide principally. Basically when we hit zero is when we stop
    making the problem worse, and the question really is how fast
    that happens because we can't do that overnight. That would
    have serious economic consequences if we tried to do that
    instantly. And so the question in some sense is, how do you
    balance the needs of our--how do you balance the needs of our
    grandchildren to have a safe environment and to have a decent
    economy. So the best efforts at mitigation are still probably
    going to result in some serious climate damage. You can imagine
    using carbon dioxide removal in the long term to pull the
    CO2 levels back down and in the interim potentially
    thinking of solar geoengineering as a way to keep the
    temperatures from getting too bad so that you don't do things
    like lose parts of Antarctic ice sheets while you're waiting
    for the CO2 removal to bring us back down.
        Ms. Bonamici. Does anybody else want to add to that, the
    question of--we know there's a lot of interest in exploring
    geoengineering but what are the mitigation and adaptation
    activities that perhaps need to have priority?
        Dr. Majkut. Well, we know that, or our sense is that
    mitigation and adaptation are both beneficial today. The
    question of geoengineering is if it will be beneficial in the
    future. They're very different by nature. Reducing emissions
    permanently reduces the net impact of humans on the climate.
    Potentially introducing these technologies at some later date
    will do that temporarily but their nature is very different.
        Ms. Bonamici. Dr. Rasch?
        Dr. Rasch. If I can follow up, it's just to affirm what
    Doug MacMartin said, which is essentially I think many of us
    view the sunlight reflection methods as being an interim
    solution which allows--provides some breathing space while the
    mitigation and adaptation measures take place, and I think we
    all believe that they should occur as rapidly as possible. Lots
    of us are hoping that the carbon dioxide removal methodologies
    will be economically viable and provide a mechanism for drawing
    some of the CO2 out of the atmosphere, so that's a
    very important strategy to consider.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. My time is expired. Thank you, Mr.
    Chairman.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you.
        The Chair recognizes Mr. Weber, the Chairman of the Energy
    Subcommittee, from Texas.
        Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
        Dr. Rasch, in your testimony you said you'd been kind of
    looking at this field for about ten years and you published 20
    papers, or maybe it was in your comments before your testimony
    as I read through it, and you also cited another gentleman that
    had published 42 papers, and what was his name?
        Dr. Rasch. Ben Kravitz----
        Mr. Weber. Okay, and----
        Dr. Rasch. --another colleague here at PNNL working with
    me.
        Mr. Weber. And how long has he been in the field?
        Dr. Rasch. Probably ten years as well. He started as a
    Ph.D. student working for a very eminent professor who chose to
    support him to work in this area based on his work on volcanic
    eruptions because this is a related--the impacts of volcanoes
    are related to the ones we're exploring today.
        Mr. Weber. Right. So the theory and concept of
    geoengineering is not new in the scientific community. Would
    you say it's just kind of taken off in the last 10 years?
        Dr. Rasch. Well, it's interesting. You can go back to the
    1960s and find conversations that have been occurring about
    geoengineering. It certainly started to receive a huge amount
    of attention following a paper that was published by a Nobel
    Prize-winning chemistry named Paul Crutzen in 2006, so it's
    about ten years old. In fact, that scientist and that paper was
    what brought me into the field and it might have been some of
    the other people on this committee.
        Mr. Weber. And is Paul Crutzen--what country is he from?
        Dr. Rasch. He has spent the last 30 years or so in Germany.
    He did have a position at my former institute, the National
    Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado, and he's
    originally from Holland.
        Mr. Weber. Okay, not that you know much about him.
        Dr. Rasch. I didn't quite know how to answer that.
        Mr. Weber. Well, we only have five minutes so--so he
    published the paper, and you got interested. Is he still active
    in this field?
        Dr. Rasch. He is engaging. He's in his late 80s and ill so
    he's not as heavily involved but he does actually endorse the
    importance of doing research in this area to this day.
        Mr. Weber. Okay. So as we've heard today, research has been
    moving kind of slowly, and of course, you just described the
    last ten years, I guess. So how do you get that idea out there
    to make more people interested in it? In your opinion, what
    steps could be taken to increase the participation of
    researchers while encouraging experiments in geoengineering?
    What needs to be done?
        Dr. Rasch. Well, I'm a strong advocate for this coherent
    research program that involves a set of five elements, which
    I've listed in my written testimony.
        Mr. Weber. Okay.
        Dr. Rasch. And which I'd be happy to discuss.
        Mr. Weber. Okay. So much of what we know today is based on
    computer climate modeling. So how would small-scale field
    experiments improve those models, and can you describe a small-
    scale experiment?
        Dr. Rasch. Sure. You saw some examples of some of the
    elements of a small-scale experiment on the slides Ms. Wanser
    showed, and----
        Mr. Weber. Did you all collaborate on those?
        Dr. Rasch. We have been working together.
        Mr. Weber. Good.
        Dr. Rasch. I'm part of that marine cloud brightening team
    that's located at the University of Washington, where I also
    have an appointment.
        So it would involve seeing whether we could--let's talk
    about marine cloud brightening for a moment. It would--that one
    we know it is possible to make clouds more reflective but it
    only happens in certain circumstances, and we're very--it's
    very difficult to be precise about the circumstances that it
    can occur in. So what we would like to be able to do--first
    off, there are many variables that take place which could help
    to explain that. The weather situations and clouds could be
    part of it. We see these clouds form in the wake of freighters
    which have different technologies on board. They use different
    kinds of fuel. They use different emission----
        Mr. Weber. That's kind of fascinating because those
    emissions that come from those freighters is producing a heat
    content, perhaps carrying CO2 obviously with it, and
    so you're saying that in and of itself produces droplets that
    intermingle with the clouds?
        Dr. Rasch. It's actually the particles that come out. If
    the emission controls on those ships were perfect, then they
    probably wouldn't be producing these ship tracks. What happen
    is that every cloud drop wants to form on a particle, all cloud
    drops in the atmosphere, and these ships release some
    particles, and when they do, those particles act to allow more
    clouds--more drops to form in certain clouds.
        Mr. Weber. So you can duplicate that process?
        Dr. Rasch. That's part of it, so what we would like to see
    is if we can do it in precisely the circumstances because I was
    saying, as ships--one ship is different from another, and it's
    very difficult to be precise about exactly what the conditions
    were that allows the brightening to occur, and we would like to
    be more precise about those things?
        Mr. Weber. Okay. My time is expired, Mr. Chairman. Thank
    you.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you.
        The Chair recognizes the Ranking Member on the Energy
    Subcommittee, Mr. Veasey from Texas.
        Mr. Veasey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        In addition--and this is for all the witnesses to answer.
    In addition to the solar radiation management, one alternative
    climate intervention strategy that the National Academies
    examined recently is carbon dioxide removal. What is the
    potential of carbon dioxide removal to play a significant role
    in our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change?
        Dr. MacMartin. So there's a number of ideas that have been
    suggested including bioenergy with carbon capture and
    sequestration, so basically you grow crops, you burn them in a
    power plant, you suck the CO2 out of the flue gas
    and store it underground, and the problem with ideas like that
    is that the scale that you need to do them on to make a dent in
    climate change is something of order the scale that we're
    currently emitting CO2 at, which as a species is
    about 40 gigatons per year, and so unless you're talking about
    pulling, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 gigatons per year out of the
    atmosphere, it's a pretty small dent. And the problem basically
    is that things like the bioenergy with carbon capture and
    storage would compete with land use that we use for food crops,
    and then there's another set of ideas to directly capture it
    from the atmosphere, directly capture CO2 from the
    atmosphere. That is almost certain to be technically feasible
    but right now probably too expensive, and it's almost certain
    to be cheaper to not put it in the first place than to take it
    out after you've put it in. And then there's a variety of other
    ideas that are probably less well understood. So the bottom
    line is, all of the things need either--we need something that
    is scalable, cost-effective, and does not have substantial
    local impacts, and right now we don't have any ideas that
    satisfy all three of those, which is why we would need more
    research in that, and if we don't start now, it's not going to
    happen.
        Ms. Wanser. I would add to that list genetically engineered
    organisms and plants that might more efficiently capture carbon
    in the way that nature does but in an accelerated fashion. Some
    of the new capabilities with genetic modification, the CRISPR
    technologies, may be relevant for investment in this area.
        I would also say that carbon removal capabilities at scale,
    many of them carry serious ecological consequences that also
    need to be evaluated as we look at them.
        Mr. Veasey. Another controversial area in the Congress, the
    GMOs.
        Some of the riskier strategies for carbon dioxide removal
    include ocean iron fertilization and the large-scale enhanced
    weathering. What are the drawbacks to these strategies in an
    environmental and public-health context?
        Dr. Majkut. Well, those technologies, you know, could
    prospectively capture quite a bit of carbon dioxide from the
    atmosphere and retain it in places where it would be durable
    either the sea or in rocks. The issue, as Doug says, is to do
    this in a way that's going to significantly affect how much
    excess CO2 is in the atmosphere. It's going to take
    a lot of land or a lot of ocean, and the ecological effects of
    either of those things is not quite known.
        Mr. Veasey. Also, I wanted to talk with you briefly about
    funding levels. You know, I'm very concerned, as a lot of
    people are, about federal R&D programs under this
    Administration. We saw in the budget proposal earlier this
    year, the Trump Administration supports very large cuts to
    research agencies. For example, the proposal included major
    cuts to climate modeling and Earth systems sciences at the DOE.
    Will these funding cuts hurt or help us better understand the
    field of geoengineering?
        Ms. Wanser. So I think it's important to acknowledge that
    if we're interested in engineering the climate system that our
    capabilities or observing, analyzing and interpreting the
    information about the climate system are essential. So all of
    the platforms and capabilities and talent that we have are not
    only areas that we want to preserve but if we're interested in
    active intervention in the Earth system, we would want to
    advance and enhance those capabilities.
        Dr. MacMartin. I would just second that. We need the same
    climate models. We need a lot of the same observational
    capacity, and we use the exact same high-performance computing.
        Mr. Veasey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back
    my time.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you.
        The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey.
        Mr. Posey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling
    this very interesting hearing, and thank the witnesses for
    their informative testimony.
        Do you believe--this is for anyone on the panel, for all on
    the panel--there's a risk that in starting to build
    geoengineering capabilities, we could lose control of them, and
    how do you think it would compare to the risk of bioengineering
    and nanotechnologies?
        Dr. Rasch. I'm willing to take a stab at it. I think
    scientists are all concerned about the possibility of this--us
    losing control of it and adopting it but I personally feel that
    it works better to operate from a position of knowledge about
    it rather than the absence of that knowledge, and I think the
    cat's kind of out of the bag at this point in the game that the
    technology is possible. So I would prefer to be spun up on what
    it's----
        Mr. Posey. Okay. Ms. Wanser, you had your hand up next.
        Ms. Wanser. Well, solar climate engineering technologies
    actually have a high barrier to entry, so they're relatively
    expensive to engineer and relatively expensive to measure, and
    they scale linearly, so you evolve solar climate engineering
    technologies with a number of disbursals you have. They're very
    easy to see and detect. Whereas nanotechnology and
    bioengineering techniques have very low barriers to entry. They
    now--you can now buy a kit to engineer organisms with CRISPR
    for less than $200, and you could release them into the wild.
    So the challenge with things like bio engineering is that they
    are low barriers to entry and self-replicating. So in some
    senses, solar climate engineering actually is less challenging
    from a governance perspective provided we have a framework in
    place.
        I disagree a little bit with Dr. Majkut that we already
    have one. I think it's part of what we would want to define in
    conjunction with the research program. But I think some of the
    challenges here are a bit more straightforward than they are in
    some of these other fields.
        Mr. Posey. Anyone else care to comment?
        Dr. MacMartin. Yeah, I just wanted to add, if we did put
    aerosols into the stratosphere at any point, the lifetime in
    the stratosphere is about a year or two, and so whatever we put
    up there is just going to come back down. That also means that
    if you want to maintain it, you have to constantly be putting
    more in. So there's less risk of it running away when you're
    actually deploying it than there would be for, say, a
    biotechnology-type intervention.
        Mr. Posey. Any hard evidence on the effect that subsurface
    activity has on the atmosphere? I mean, we know what ended the
    last Ice Age. It was an asteroid strike which basically created
    the Gulf of Mexico and darkened out the Earth for many, many
    years and allowed it to freeze over. There are some conditions
    that exist here now that have the potential to recreate that
    catastrophe. Some of the research I've seen at Yellowstone, the
    big volcano in the Azores that they say will cause 100-foot-
    high tsunami, you know, but your thoughts on how that may
    affect us?
        Dr. Majkut. Well, relevant to these questions, there's a
    volcano, Mount Agung, which is on currently a level 3 eruption
    watch, so we may have a natural experiment coming up should it
    erupt and inject sulfates into the atmosphere. Then we would
    see a repeat of what previous volcanoes have done and probably
    some cooling influence, and thankfully the scientific community
    I believe is ready and standing by to observe that and
    understand the processes as best they can. That's certainly
    true.
        Dr. Rasch. If I might follow up----
        Mr. Posey. Dr. Rasch?
        Dr. Rasch. --it's to say just that the scientific community
    is very interested in a rapid response team for watching over
    these volcanic eruptions but they are sort of assembling it as
    we speak, and it's not maybe quite as far along, as Joe
    mentioned.
        Mr. Posey. One last question. What have other countries
    done so far in this realm?
        Dr. Rasch. The rapid response team is part--is an
    international effort. There's certainly a very large and
    interested part of American U.S. scientists participating but
    that is an international activity.
        Mr. Posey. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time's
    expired.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you.
        I recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney.
        Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chairman and I thank the
    witnesses.
        You have seen the legislation I am about to introduce. Do
    any of you have comments about that legislation, whether you
    think it's useful or should be improved or anything like that?
    Anyone care to answer that question?
        Dr. Rasch. I've had only a chance to look at it very
    briefly and would be delighted to provide some more comments
    offline.
        Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
        Dr. Majkut. I have the same idea.
        Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
        Dr. MacMartin. So I haven't read through it in complete
    detail but I think in general I'm very supportive of having the
    National Academies involved in trying to understand exactly--
    basically lay out the roadmap for research in this area as well
    as looking at the governance side of things.
        Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
        Ms. Wanser. As I mentioned in my remarks, I'm very
    supportive of the notion of a National Academies study process
    to help define a research agenda. The community to date in
    geoengineering has been very small and centered in modelers
    with some physicists and some ethicists and policy researchers.
    So I believe that that process could help expand the array of
    disciplines that we need to look at this area and also help to
    build consensus about what a research program should look like.
        Mr. McNerney. Well, following up with that on a governance
    framework, what sort of scope of organizations and individuals
    should be involved in the development of a governance
    framework?
        Dr. Majkut. I think we should be looking at sort of all the
    concerned parties, right? So the scientific community plays a
    vital role. I think civil society should play some role as
    well, and I think Congress should take into consideration the
    idea that you might want to have a say in how these things get
    governed, and then going forward, we can also look at managing
    these types of things with international partners as well.
        Mr. McNerney. Ms. Wanser, you mentioned that it would take
    about 20 years for the technology to be deployable. Would
    having a research governance mechanism speed up that timeline
    in your opinion?
        Ms. Wanser. At the moment, one of the barriers to
    technology development and field research is the lack of either
    a government framework or social license for the work. So I
    think it would reduce risk for people who would fund the
    research and people who would enter the field to have an
    appropriate governance framework to allow it to proceed. So
    yes.
        Mr. McNerney. Very good.
        Do any of you know if there have been field tests on
    geoengineering that have been carried out by other countries?
        Dr. Rasch. I'm not aware of any.
        Dr. MacMartin. There's been--there was a brief attempt in
    the U.K. to do an experiment that was just on a tethered hose
    so it was just developing hardware that didn't actually take
    place, and there was an attempt in Russia a number of years ago
    to try to do something that was a bit of a stunt but it wasn't
    really scientifically accurate.
        Mr. McNerney. Do Russia and China have limitations on what
    their scientists are able to do in terms of geoengineering?
        Dr. MacMartin. So the program in China right now is purely
    based on climate modeling and much more focused on what the
    impacts of deploying solar geoengineering would be. I do know
    from conversations with them that they're asking questions
    about whether their next phase of their research should involve
    some experimental work but they have not yet made any decisions
    about that.
        Mr. McNerney. So we don't need to be worried about them
    doing large-scale deployments?
        Dr. MacMartin. I don't think we need to be worried about
    anybody doing large-scale deployments because if you want to do
    scientific research, the research questions are all about
    process uncertainties, you know, trying to understand chemical
    reaction rates in the stratosphere and things like that, and
    they don't require large tests to do those things.
        Mr. McNerney. So then what are some of the key ethical
    questions that we should be considering in moving forward with
    this field of work?
        Dr. MacMartin. I think my personal answer to that would
    simply be that a lot of people are very concerned about the
    slippery slope and whether an effort in research is eventually
    going to lead to deployment, and I think a lot of people are
    very concerned about the research effort in geoengineering
    detracting from efforts in mitigation, and so in some sense the
    issues with ethics and governance are primarily wrapped up in
    involving the public participation and where we want to be
    going as a society in the future.
        Mr. McNerney. Mr. Chairman, I want another five minutes. I
    yield back.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, and the Chair recognizes the
    gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Extremely interesting
    topics, and I appreciate you convening this hearing and your
    witnesses being here.
        You've already alluded to it a little bit about the safety
    and environmental risks of this research being proposed, and we
    just talked about Russia and some of the other countries and
    maybe deploying fully things of this nature, and you mentioned
    a slippery slope, Dr. MacMartin, and what do you mean exactly
    by slippery slope? Is this something that you mess around with
    Mother Nature and it may turn into something that's even worse
    than you're trying to fix?
        Dr. MacMartin. I was actually referring to the societal
    process, the concern that if we start doing research, that
    eventually that's going to lead to deployment, and people might
    think wait, wait, we haven't actually decided on deployment
    yet.
        Mr. Babin. Right.
        Dr. MacMartin. So that's a concern that people have
    expressed.
        Mr. Babin. Okay. But is that a concern with any of you
    folks that are involved in this, that we could unleash
    something irreversible if you continue to do this cloud
    brightening or the stratospheric procedure? Is that a
    possibility?
        Dr. Rasch. I think at the level that we're talking about
    doing things right now, as I think Joe mentioned, the changes
    to the planet are vanishingly small. It would be hard for you
    to notice, to even detect it if you didn't know it was
    happening. So it's really tiny compared to, for example, the
    impact that flying an aircraft from Washington, D.C., to
    Seattle would have on the planet. So they're small today. If
    one wants to get to the point of considering having a climate-
    altering effect, then the impacts get much more important to
    worry about, and we have to be more careful when things get
    ramped up to that time.
        Mr. Babin. Right.
        Dr. Rasch. As Kelly mentioned, I think it would take 20
    years to decide on whether we have a good enough understanding
    to decide that it might be useful to do this or not, if we're
    going all out on it.
        Mr. Babin. All right. Thank you.
        Anybody else want to add to that?
        Dr. Majkut. Yeah, I think I would just reiterate that a lot
    of the sort of smaller-scale field experiments that scientists
    are presently proposing to do are going to be unnoticeable to
    the untrained eye. You need a really fancy experimental setup
    and cool instruments to even detect that it's going on, right?
    Questions of, you know, does this research affect sort of other
    societal questions about how we address climate change are real
    but I think it's--you know, it's a bit of speculation to say
    whether that'll cut one way or another. We should go about this
    judiciously and carefully and slowly and with an open and
    transparent process. I think that's probably the best approach.
        Dr. MacMartin. I agree.
        Mr. Babin. Okay. Yes, ma'am?
        Ms. Wanser. I think one of the things that may be helpful
    from a governance process or an oversight process is a
    definition of what we mean by research-scale or small-scale
    experiments and then lots of transparency with regard to that
    so that where it's not easy for people to understand what the
    limits of these things are. We have some very bright, shiny
    lines between what we do for research and the kinds of things
    that would have greater impacts.
        Mr. Babin. Okay. And while you're at the mic, you discussed
    the need for research framework earlier in this field, and
    could you explain what your whole-systems approach to
    geoengineering research would be?
        Ms. Wanser. Well, probably not terribly briefly, but I
    think there's--it's what sometimes referred to as a
    transdisciplinary field, so we think about certainly the
    climate research part of it. We have a technology innovation
    component. We need to think how systems would interact together
    and how different actions taken on the Earth system would
    interact like policies that we make that change the forcings in
    the climate too. So part of a research program is to bring
    people who are not currently present into the discussion
    starting with aerosol engineers and other types of engineers
    who would be needed to think about how these things would
    actually work, looking at the innovations in observations
    measurement and computing. So today the experiment that I
    showed you about marine cloud brightening, they do observations
    like that now of pollutants, and when they go out and take
    those measurements, they bring them back. They take months to
    analyze the data. If we're acting on the Earth system actively,
    we're going to want information much faster and we're going to
    need to improve our systems to do that.
        So when we think about the whole system, we have to think
    forward a little bit about what we'd be looking at in terms of
    the feedback to the perturbations that we make and how we need
    to understand them. Does that help?
        Mr. Babin. Yes. Yes, it does. Thank you very much, and my
    time is expired, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you. The Chair recognizes the
    gentleman from New York, Mr. Tonko.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our
    impressive panel of witnesses for joining us today.
        As the only New Yorker on the Committee, I would like to
    take a moment to give special thanks to Dr. Douglas MacMartin
    from Cornell University. We thank you for your time and your
    expertise, and we thank Cornell for the contributions it makes.
        The recently released 4th National Climate Assessment
    Climate Science Special Report represents the scientific
    collaboration of some 13 United States federal agencies with
    sign-off from the White House. That report found with high
    confidence a likely human contribution of well over 90 percent
    of the observed change between 1951 and 2010 in the global
    climate. Furthermore, the report found with very high
    confidence that the magnitude of climate change beyond the next
    few decades will depend primarily on the amount of greenhouse
    gases emitted globally and on the remaining uncertainty in the
    sensitivity of Earth's climate to those emissions.
        We know the harms caused by climate change are grave and
    that they are growing. They have already done harm to human
    health, to water quality and availability, sea-level rise, and
    they have worsened natural disasters. For this and countless
    other reasons, failure to address climate change will result in
    significant economic harm to our country and her people.
        Given the conclusions of these impartial scientists and the
    widely accepted consensus that climate change is real and
    primarily driven by human activity, I urge all members of this
    Committee to move forward with this White House-approved
    consensus in mind.
        Geoengineering absolutely should be a part of the
    discussion of solutions, but with that said, we can't lose
    sight of the fact that significant reductions in GHG emissions
    are indeed necessary.
        So for all of our witnesses, you have emphasized that
    numerous gaps remain in the scientific understanding of
    geoengineering technologies. Can each of you just briefly
    describe these gaps in the scientific understanding of
    geoengineering strategies?
        Dr. Rasch. Yeah, I'll mention one or two because I could go
    on for the whole five minutes. So----
        Mr. Tonko. One or two will do.
        Dr. Rasch. Okay. So we at the moment don't--the situation
    of using geoengineering differs from either the marine cloud
    brightening or volcanoes because we would intend to put
    particles into the atmosphere continuously rather than they
    would just occur episodically, and we don't know how the
    existing particles will respond to the--to putting in these
    kind of particles for long periods of time. Models tell us that
    it will be different from the way it would work for a volcano,
    let's say, so that would be one example of something which we
    don't know but we need more information.
        Mr. Tonko. Okay. Thank you.
        Doctor?
        Dr. Majkut. One particular aspect of this that really
    fascinates me is questions of when you have these sort of
    compensating mechanisms of warming at the surface and cooling
    in other parts--either concentrated parts of the atmosphere or
    high up in the atmosphere, what are going to be the effects on
    other conditions that we care about, not just temperature,
    right? So biology, the oceans. I think a lot of these
    downstream issues need to be investigated much further.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
        And Dr. MacMartin?
        Dr. MacMartin. So I would second both of those and just
    reiterate that we know a fair amount of stratospheric aerosols
    just from observing volcanic eruptions, but it is different
    from a large volcanic eruption. We don't actually have any
    observations of geoengineering obviously and so we sort of have
    to figure out as we go how do we go collect that knowledge
    about what the processes in the stratosphere are going to be.
        Mr. Tonko. Okay. Thank you.
        Ms. Wanser. Well, we don't yet have any technology for
    producing aerosols of the type and at the scale that we're
    talking about for this, and until we know what the limits of
    those technologies are, what we're inputting to our models is
    very much guesswork, and we also don't know how to measure and
    detect in real time.
        Mr. Tonko. So then what would the next steps be to address
    these gaps? Any recommendations to the Committee?
        Dr. MacMartin. So I think one step is clearly to actually
    just start by saying if we want to support informed decisions
    in 10, 15, 20 years to be very careful that writing down what
    all the uncertainties are and propagating those through the
    climate models, so if there's something uncertain about
    stratospheric aerosol microphysics or chemistry, how important
    is that in terms of influencing our decisions and therefore
    what experiments would we need to do to help resolve those
    uncertainties. That's the type of research that I think we need
    to be focused on.
        Mr. Tonko. Anyone else?
        Dr. Rasch. Yeah. I mean, I will just say that there are--I
    think one of the things that is missing so far is that the
    research that's been done today is primarily curiosity driven
    and people have picked at various elements of the
    geoengineering unknowns, but I think we need to do it in a much
    more systematic way to try and move pretty quickly towards
    getting an idea about what are the tradeoffs involved in this
    work.
        Mr. Tonko. Okay. With that, I yield back, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you.
        The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr.
    Foster.
        Mr. Foster. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for holding
    this hearing. It really shows a level of engagement on this
    issue that I think is overdue and very welcome.
        Are there any sort of zero-order either cost estimates or
    estimates for the amount of aerosols that you'd need, for
    example, to reverse a 2-degree warming or a calculation of, you
    know, if you have a gigaton of coal, how many gigatons or tons
    of aerosols you have to put into the atmosphere? Are there any
    rough estimates based on volcanoes and similar that people have
    done?
        Dr. MacMartin. So I'll give you a rough estimate that 1
    degree of--1 degree Celsius of cooling, so 1.8 Fahrenheit is,
    say, 10 megatons of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere,
    and in terms of cost, there's estimates of costs that are in
    the billions of dollars, but quite frankly, I don't think that
    the direct economic costs of bringing material to the
    stratosphere, those probably are not the reasons why we would--
    how we would evaluate this. It's far more a question of what
    the risks and the side effects are.
        Mr. Foster. Right. Okay. So it wouldn't be the direct costs
    of actually even carrying this out. They all would be dwarfed
    by, you know, the trillion-dollar scale effects of, you know--
    --
        Dr. MacMartin. Yeah, and the direct costs of doing it is
    probably more observational capacity of satellites and things
    to monitor things.
        Mr. Foster. Which brings me to the issue of international
    governance because, you know, Congress can pass all the laws we
    want and if, you know, China decides that it wants to preserve
    its islands it just built in the South China Sea or, you know,
    Bangladesh or Micronesia decides that they're going to be
    underwater in short order, you know, their interests are not
    necessarily aligned with ours, or if you do this and you see
    it's going to redistribute rainfall globally, you know, or
    reverse the Gulf stream or stop the Gulf stream. You know,
    there are worries like that that are out there. And so it seems
    like you need an international mechanism for someone who will
    say no, you cannot do that. And you know, we're in a tough
    situation right now because we have an Administration that's
    done things like reject the Paris agreement. And so I was
    wondering if there are serious, maybe outside this country,
    serious discussions of how we're going to regulate this
    internationally.
        Dr. MacMartin. Discussions are beginning but, you know, as
    we kind of see here today, this is a new topic for
    conversation, particularly for a lot of policymakers. So
    they're sort of at their early stages. I highlight in my
    testimony some ideas. I'd be happy to follow up with you about
    them in more detail about how we can accomplish some of these
    questions here and sort of build a national governance model
    that could influence how things work internationally. I think
    that would be a good thing to talk about. But yeah, we're still
    at very early stages in terms of international issues.
        Mr. Foster. It also seems to me that the level of
    controversy having to do with CO2 removal strategies
    is much lower than albedo modification, particularly
    atmospheric. Is that a fair reading of sort of your--the
    attitudes you see toward this, that the objections of CO2
    removal are simply going to cost a lot more than averting the
    emissions in the first place.
        Dr. MacMartin. So in terms of direct climate impacts, then
    there's basically no climate impacts from pulling CO2
    out. It just--that solves the root of the problem. But I think
    one of the reasons there hasn't been any pushback is perhaps
    people don't quite get what the local impacts might be. So if
    you need to displace land area the size of India for food crops
    for bioenergy, I think that would actually have some serious
    consequences. So I think yes, people are less concerned about
    CDR but maybe they should be a little bit more concerned than
    they are.
        Mr. Foster. That would be a very technology-specific thing.
        Dr. MacMartin. Very, very specific to the technology.
        Mr. Foster. And so now, when you got these sort of natural
    experiments from volcanoes going off, how frequent are
    volcanoes that actually provide you relevant data and get
    enough aerosols up in the stratosphere that you actually get a
    useful volcano? Do they happen once a decade, once a century,
    or once every few years?
        Dr. Rasch. Probably less frequently than once a decade and
    more frequently than once a century they come alive.
        Mr. Foster. All right.
        Dr. Rasch. They do have smaller-scale volcanoes. One went
    off in Iceland a few years ago that was useful for
    understanding some aspects of, for example, the way clouds
    could be brightened by addition of extra particles in the
    atmosphere. But the really big eruptions like Pinatubo or
    Agung, those are----
        Mr. Foster. Those are rare. I remember after that volcano
    happened, I called up Nathan Myhrvold, who you're probably well
    aware is one of the, you know, people of means interested in
    paying for this, and he indicated that it simply didn't put
    enough into the high stratosphere to be useful.
        Dr. Rasch. For the stratospheric aerosol analog.
        Mr. Foster. Right. But now, if you look at the historic
    record of----
        Chairman Biggs. The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Foster. Excuse me. I yield back.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Foster. I appreciate that.
        The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Banks.
        Mr. Banks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a very interesting
    discussion today. Thank you for being here.
        I believe like probably most of my colleagues do that it's
    imperative that we deal with the reality of a $20 trillion
    national debt. Even though that debt is driven by mandatory
    spending programs, our constituents at home expect us to find
    savings wherever possible. We've seen in my home State of
    Indiana the innovative utilization of public-private
    partnerships to overcome this dilemma. One example I'd like to
    point to is the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute. The
    Institute is a public-private partnership between universities
    and research institutions, industry and the State of Indiana.
    The Institute fosters collaboration between these entities in
    life sciences research and support the commercialization of
    their research. One big advantage, in my view, of an
    arrangement like this is that the participation of industry
    ensures that research will be directed toward endeavors that
    are commercially viable and produce a positive return on
    investment.
        So with that, I'd like to hear the panel's perspective on
    the potential for public-private partnerships to advance
    research in this area. Dr. Rasch, if you could respond to that
    first, we'd appreciate it.
        Dr. Rasch. Well, I know that my laboratory is quite
    interested in these public-private partnerships. I have to
    admit I'm not an expert in the area and can't tell you about
    the potential for this particular application.
        Mr. Banks. Okay. And next to you?
        Dr. Majkut. I would also have to demur. I think public-
    private partnerships are useful in many contexts but it's hard
    for me to state strongly one way or another on this issue.
        Mr. Banks. Ms. Wanser, I see you raising your hand.
        Ms. Wanser. So I see tremendous opportunity for public-
    private partnerships and the disruptive innovation that's
    happening in remote sensing and in computing. So for the types
    of capabilities that we need to monitor and interpret what we
    would do in geoengineering, there are particular opportunities
    to work with those companies to do things in a way that's
    potentially an order or two orders of magnitude less expensive
    than we do it now in satellite observations, in ocean
    observations, the opportunity to have much more comprehensive
    Earth coverage and a much more granular level, and at the same
    time I think that are big opportunities for partnerships in the
    computing space for the adoption of cloud computing for some of
    the workloads that we do in this area that could be done on the
    public cloud in a cheaper and more agile way and opportunities
    to explore exoscale computing for the kinds of things we
    haven't solved yet in terms of understanding the Earth system
    more rapidly.
        Mr. Banks. So you agree that public-private partnerships
    are fruitful, but do you believe that the environment exists to
    further public-private partnerships as it stands today?
        Ms. Wanser. My experience leads me to believe--to be
    hopeful, yes.
        Mr. Banks. Thank you. I yield back.
        Chairman Biggs. Thank you. I thank each of the witnesses
    for being here today and a very interesting Committee hearing,
    and appreciate the members and their questions.
        The record will remain open for two weeks for additional
    written comments and written questions from members.
        And this hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 11:44 a.m., the Subcommittees were
    adjourned.]

                                   Appendix I

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                       Additional Material for the Record

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