What ever happened to transparency in solar geoengineering research? a 🧵 of reflections on our new opinion article in PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... - ThreadSky

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social • 109 days ago

What ever happened to transparency in solar geoengineering research?

a 🧵 of reflections on our new opinion article in PNAS

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2419587122

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polarrobs.bsky.social•109 days ago

Yet another reason to park geoengineering - without global governance agreements, efforts can degenerate into the wild west.

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•109 days ago

If you’d told me 15 years ago that we would talk about for years transparency as a general value in SRM research without ever doing anything substantive to advance it...

I would have been a bit surprised. There was such a strong consensus that transparency was crucial to doing this research.

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•109 days ago

Fifteen years later, the lack of action has left transparency an empty talking point.

There had been lot of discussion about creating an international research registry. We should still do that!

Also: Funders should disclose where they are getting money and how it is allocated. So basic.

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•109 days ago

The issue of pass-through funding and donor-advised funds is also a problem. Scientists who receive philanthropic funding might not even know who the original donor(s) were.

Nonprofits need to do a better job with funding disclosures.

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•109 days ago

Is it a burden? Yes, but so what. These are completely trivial institutional and behavioral changes compared to what we are asking the public to do to confront climate change.

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•109 days ago

Now, I will share some personal views - these are just mine, not the opinions of my co-authors.

I think one reason the situation might be so bad is that the watchdogs who would normally be in a position to call out the lack of transparency have their own issues with transparency.

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•109 days ago

It’s obvious that SRM policy advocacy groups like SilverLining, who has an arm of its organization that uses donations to pay lobbyists in DC, should offer the public a clear list of their sources of funding and how it is being used.

crispapoll.bsky.social•105 days ago

This is a genuine question - where have you seen substantive investments in transparency in science in the last 15 years? NAS still has to release reports encouraging scientists to share their data and code, to promote reproducible practices, etc.,

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•105 days ago

I feel like data sharing has been an area of increasing emphasis from journals and funders, and there's some empirical support for this improving over time (e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-021-00981-0), though data sharing isn't actually the main area I'm concerned about when it comes to something like SRM.

crispapoll.bsky.social•105 days ago

Most journals are not enforcing their standards; we looked at climate risk studies - https://osf.io/29nhv. In any event, sharing data and code isn’t the whole story for needed transparency but it’s much easier than making values-laden assumptions open and few people do it

hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social•105 days ago

thanks for sharing the paper! The practices are written up in a very concrete way that will make this a great addition to all kinds of syllabi. Yeah, I feel like the data sharing piece is the one that is easiest for people to wrap their heads around.

crispapoll.bsky.social•105 days ago

Thanks! In any event, I like the piece a lot - I'm just concerned that there is a broader issue with transparency in a lot of climate-risk research (whether academia or otherwise). You may hear from me again about transparency & conflicts of interest!

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