Ogmius
Issue #41, Summer 2015

Ogmius Exchange
The Postmodern Prometheus by Dr. Jack Stilgoe

In this issue of Ogmius we feature an article by Dr. Jack Stilgoe, a Lecturer in Science and Technology Studies at University College London. He is the author of Experiment Earth – Responsible Innovation in Geoengineering (published by Routledge). This article is based on a piece originally published in the Guardian newspaper.

April 2015 marked the bicentennial of the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The explosion of Mount Tambora in Indonesia could be heard a thousand miles away. Thousands living around the mountain died, but its effects spread far further and longer, and its cultural echoes continue to this day. The ash and sulfur from the volcano stretched miles up into the stratosphere, spreading around the globe. The volcano’s impact on the world’s weather meant that 1816 became known as the ‘year without a summer’. In a grand villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, four British friends escaping the cold and rain challenged each other to write ghost stories. Their host, George (known to most people as Lord Byron) was already an established poet. But it was Mary (then still a teenager) whose effort would change the way we think about technology forever. Her story was published two years later as Frankenstein, and given the subtitle ‘The Modern Prometheus’ after the Titan who stole fire from the gods. It was, in Shelley’s own words, a story ‘on which would Speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror’.

Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and friends had no idea that their holiday had been ruined by a volcano on the other side of the world. In the 200 years since, scientific understanding of the Earth system has explained how volcanoes can cool the planet and inspired some techno-enthusiasts to ask a Promethean question – what if we could mimic a volcano and counteract global warming?

The possibility of geoengineering or, as a report earlier this year from the National Academies relabeled it, ‘climate intervention’, began as Cold War technological hubris. In the 1960s, when global warming was first brought to the attention of the American president by his own scientific advisory committee, the presumption was that technology would be our salvation, either by shading the surface of the planet or by removing greenhouse gases. Read more …

Research Highlight
Research on Emissions, Air Quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies
in Northern Ghana (REACCTING) by Katie Dickinson

Our Research Highlight describes a project currently underway at CSTPR led by Research Scientist Katie Dickinson. Katie is an environmental economist who studies how humans behave in the face of environmental risks. Her research topics have included sanitation behaviors in India, malaria-related decision making in Tanzania, willingness to pay for mosquito control in Wisconsin and Florida, and homeowners’ wildfire mitigation choices in Colorado.

Cooking over open fires using solid fuels like wood and charcoal is a widespread practice throughout the world. This behavior impacts local and regional air quality, global climate, and human health: household air pollution from biomass burning is estimated to contribute to four million premature deaths annually. In order to be effective and generate useful insight into potential solutions to this complex problem, cookstove intervention studies must both select cooking technologies that are appropriate for local socioeconomic conditions and cooking culture, and include comprehensive and interdisciplinary measurement strategies along a continuum of outcomes.

REACCTING (Research on Emissions, Air Quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana) is an ongoing interdisciplinary randomized cookstove intervention study in the Kassena-Nankana Districts of Northern Ghana. The study tests two types of biomass burning stoves that were identified as having the potential to meet local cooking needs; the stoves also represent different “rungs” on the cookstove technology ladder, including an affordable and locally-made low-tech rocket stove and an imported, highly efficient gasifier stove. The 200 intervention households were randomized into four different intervention arms. In three groups, households received different combinations of two improved stoves, while the fourth group serves as a control for the duration of the two year study. (At the end of the study, these households will get to choose which stoves they would like.) Throughout the study period, ongoing measurements are made across groups at multiple steps in the causal chain linking the intervention to final outcomes of interest. These measurements assess stove use and cooking behavior, cooking emissions, household air pollution and personal exposure, health burden, and local to regional air quality. Read more …

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The Center welcomes Dr. Jan Marco Müller as a sabbatical visitor to CSTPR and University of Colorado Boulder from August – December 2015.

Jan Marco Müller, a German citizen born in 1971, served 2012-2014 as Assistant to Professor Anne Glover, the then Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission. In February 2015 he joined the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Brussels as a Policy Officer for International Relations. Jan Marco Müller joined CSTPR as a sabbatical visitor from August-December 2015.

Following his studies of Geography, Media Sciences and Spanish, he received a PhD in Geography from the University of Marburg (Germany) with a thesis about the impact of market liberalisation on the transport system of Colombia, funded with a grant from the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

From 2000-2004 he served as Assistant to the Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig (Germany). During this time he was instrumental in the foundation of the Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER), the network of Europe’s largest environmental research centres, to which he served as Secretary in the first three years.

In 2004 he joined the European Commission as Research Programme and Communications Manager of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability in Ispra (Italy), which is one of the seven Institutes constituting the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s in-house science service.

In 2007 he left the Commission to work as Head of Business Development & Public Relations at the Headquarters of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) in Wallingford (Oxfordshire), which as part of the Natural Environment Research Council in the UK’s centre of excellence for integrated research in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and their interaction with the atmosphere.

In 2009 he returned to the Commission, serving until January 2012 as Assistant to the Director-General of the Joint Research Centre, based at the JRC Headquarters in Brussels. Following a brief stay in the Interinstitutional Relations Unit of DG Research and Innovation, he joined the former Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) in March 2012 to support the recently appointed Chief Scientific Adviser in her tasks, before returning to the JRC in 2015.

Jan Marco Müller has fulfilled many scientific assignments, including having served four years on the Scientific and Technical Advisory Board of the French national environmental research centre IRSTEA (formerly known as CEMAGREF) and as an Assistant Professor for Urban Geography at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. Since May 2012 he is a Policy Fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) of the University of Cambridge.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded Deserai Crow a 3-year grant for a project titled “Community Recovery and Colorado’s Extreme Floods of 2013: Policy Learning in the Context of Resources, Coalitions, and Political Conditions.”

Project Abstract: One of the most damaging natural hazards, flooding, annually causes billions of dollars in damage, response, and recovery losses for U.S. communities. As populations increase in flood prone areas, communities are becoming more vulnerable to floods. The responsibility for flood management has shifted from the federal to the local level and communities are now responsible for making decisions about if, how, and where to rebuild. Because of their potentially recurring nature, floods offer an opportunity for communities to learn from and adapt to these experiences with the goal of increasing resiliency through reflection, modification of former policies, and adoption of new policies. By following the response to the September 2013 floods in Colorado communities, this study will investigate how communities successfully learn from extreme events to increase resilience and decrease vulnerability to future floods. The project seeks to contribute to the fields of public policy and natural hazards research with the following objectives: to advance knowledge of policy learning in the aftermath of extreme events; to advance knowledge of disaster recovery, specifically as it relates to the role that community processes, citizens, and other stakeholders play in promoting long-term recovery and resilience; and to inform governments of lessons from flood responses to the September 2013 floods, with the goal of contributing to the effectiveness of governance in flood-affected communities.

The PIs will conduct longitudinal comparative case studies of seven Colorado communities, located in Colorado’s three most severely impacted counties from the September 2013 floods. This study will follow communities through their recovery and planning process over a period of three years. Four types of data will be used to examine flood recovery processes and outcomes. First, in-depth interviews will be conducted of participants in the planning and decision process of the community at three intervals during the recovery process. Second, surveys will be conducted with a larger sample of recovery process participants than those interviewed. Third, periodic surveys of community residents will be conducted. Finally, documents related to flood recovery and demographic data will also be gathered. Combined, these data will enable both qualitative and quantitative analysis of recovery processes and stakeholder participation, extent of damage, coalition beliefs and behavior, political context, and resource availability in communities.