Part 1: Knowing enough when there is no stopping rule - scientific understanding and deployment conditions
(The Hartwell Paper; Prins et al, 2010)
As the authors of the Hartwell Paper allude to in the quotation above, climate change as a human-global phenomenon has been described by many as a ‘wicked problem’. Wicked problems are where the systems involved are highly complex and partially understood. Facts, values, frames of reference and potential solutions are often in dispute, and uncertainties exist which may be difficult or impossible to resolve through conventional scientific means (Rayner, 2012).
As a core part of our contribution to the ERW-D programme we witnessed the sustained work by natural scientists (plus some techno-economic specialists) developing the research underpinnings of ERW, and based on an open, ongoing display of their knowledge in the making. Additionally, we have started to wonder whether it may be both timely and beneficial to take into account the idea of ‘making good’. Dictionary definitions of making good offer various meanings: to make valued or complete, to recompense or repair damage, to be successful, to effect or fulfil something intended or promised. Such definitions are indicative of expectations for why scientific research is of so much value in policy making. But they also provide glimpses into the problems that can occur when science finds itself stretched by the demands placed upon it, and where the challenges it raises can be epistemological rather than contributing to problem-solving in any straight-forward way. A good indication of this is given in the opening quotation.
ERW-D is an evolving research (innovation) and deployment proposal
The ERW-D programme was energised early on by the idea that silicate rock dust can be readily utilised, as a waste product from the mining industry. If transported across relatively short distances it would be inexpensive to supply, had potential to improve soil structure (as enhancer or amendment), and so could be beneficial for farming; hence its evident relevance to the agricultural sector (Beerling et al, 2018). On the other hand, ERW’s raison d’être was as a CDR technology.: ie, to assist with meeting the wider global climate challenge based in scientific understanding of the processes of carbon removal and sequestration. The proposal here is, by spreading rock dust on the ground, to chemically fix carbon in groundwater and increase carbonate sedimentation in the oceans. Another idealised commitment might be to the idea of using mineral resources locally to multiply benefits across the environmental sphere, to people, and society-wide (inclusive of rural communities). This presupposes that conducting environmental alongside social science research has potential to support such a positive sustainability narrative.
Subsequently, the ERW-D research and innovation programme has conducted analysis of techno-economic challenges concerning deployment at different scales (Beerling et al, 2025), including social science input on the role that can be played by Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Currently in the UK, RRI is institutionally approved by EPSRC as an integrative approach for science and society to work together (Framework for responsible research and innovation – UKRI). Beerling et al’s (2025) ERW-D scalability analysis acknowledges how RRI can provide an overarching enabling framework so that science does not simply operate autonomously and blind to its social context.
But RRI can take many forms, as Waller et al (2025) have argued in a carefully worked through assessment of different approaches to greenhouse gas removal innovation and research taken across five different GGR technologies. RRI was initially proposed to build ethical and social concerns into otherwise solely techno-economic programmes; in particular, where development was ‘upstream’ of deployment or commercialisation (Rogers-Hayden and Pidgeon, 2007). By contrast the state of scientific knowledge with some carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches, including ERW, could be thought of as simultaneously exhibiting both upstream and downstream (i.e. deployed) characteristics.
Thus far, the ERW-D social sciences team has shown the relevance of this distinction between fundamental scientific research and its deployment in society. Our first specialist ERW-D publication (O’Sullivan et al, 2025) elucidates a composite of generic public conditions for ERW deployment based on having studied perceptions of the balance of risks and benefits while valuing fairness towards spatial distribution of ERW impacts. Also important to the analysis was understanding how, under particular conditions, deployment would not be considered locally acceptable. Non-acceptability conditions included: “being ineffective as a CDR, environmental contamination connected to ecosystems, the absence of remediation plans, and mitigation deterrence through false accounting” (O’Sullivan et al, 2025, abstract). Overall, the reported findings suggested that ERW deployment as a carbon removal technology would be dependent upon transparent governance and monitoring, informed also by understanding the case for more place specific pathways reflecting how place is valued.
So far, so good. In moving onto our second blogpost, however, we shift gear from what we have established thus far as an approach to dealing with the inevitable epistemological problem that ERW science is both necessary in advance of deployment while lacking a stopping rule. What follows comes from making the equally plausible assumption that scientific inquiry will always reach beyond itself into timeless efforts towards understanding.
References
- Beerling, D. J. et al. (2018) Farming with crops and rocks to address global climate, food and soil security. Nat. Plants 4, 138–147.
- Beerling, D.J., Reinhard, C.T., James, R.H., Khan, A., Pidgeon, N.F., and Planavsky, N.J. (2025) Challenges and opportunities in scaling enhanced weathering for carbon dioxide removal. Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, 6, 253.
- O’Sullivan, K., Pidgeon, N., Henwood, K. et al. (2025) Who pays for carbon dioxide removal? Public perceptions of risk and fairness of enhanced rock weathering in the UK. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1010. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05384-9
- Prins, G. et al (2010) The Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford and LSE MacKinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events
- Rayner, S. (2012). Uncomfortable knowledge: the social construction of ignorance in science and environmental policy discourses. Economy and Society 41 107-125 https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2011.637335
- Rogers-Hayden, T. and Pidgeon, N.F. (2007) Moving engagement “upstream”? nanotechnologies and the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering inquiry. Public Understanding of Science, 16, 346-364.
- Waller, L., Cox, E., Binner, A., Garcia, T.C., Everett, R., Henwood, K., Ingram, J., Morris, C., O'Sullivan, K., Pidgeon, N., Price, C., Reed, M., Silvestri, A. and Bellamy R. (2025) Responsible research and innovation of carbon removal: strategies for field trials. Frontiers in Climate 7:1658453. doi: 10.3389/fclim.2025.1658453