Climate Interventions Risk Framework White Paper

Abstract

This work describes a structured, risk-based approach for analyzing questions related to the potential deployment of a climate intervention in any user-established future scenario, and further provides a structured means for considering what the potential consequences of such interventions may be. Because the climatological, technological, and geopolitical conditions are currently not believed to be supportive of climate intervention use, the framework establishes a three-pronged approach to frame key analytical questions predicated on future scenarios of interest to the user. These three pieces are: (1) Building a scenario. (2) Assessing the likelihood of that scenario based on assumptions about an actor and their motivations for deploying a climate intervention. (3) Analyzing the potential consequences of that climate intervention. Finally, results from this consequence analysis are compared against projected consequences of unabated climate change as a complete risk analysis of deploying a climate intervention.