Form to make comments on AGU position draft for climate interventions - Jan. 20 deadline - AGU membership not required!
Ron Baiman
Leslie has confirmed that the deadline for comments has been extended to Jan. 20th and that AGU membership is not necessary.
Andrew Lockley
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Andrew Lockley
Ronal Larson
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Robert Tulip
Here are my comments
Overall, the proposed AGU support for research on methods to increase albedo is a highly welcome contribution to the most important existential question for our planetary future, how best to respond to climate change. However, the draft statement displays confusion and negativity that does much to remove the clarity and purpose of its overall support, reflecting widely held political assumptions. My main concern is that the Introduction presents a partisan argument that excludes what may prove the only real solution, a Grand Bargain with the fossil fuel industry to allow ongoing emissions in exchange for climate stabilisation.
The AGU draft starts off with the false and unscientific claim that “Climate intervention (CI) measures cannot substitute for deep cuts in emissions or the need for adaptation. “
This non-substitution claim is a religious and political mantra designed to reinforce social polarisation and gain political backing, not a science-based observation. The fact is, CI measures CAN substitute for emission reduction in the short term. It would be perfectly possible to scale GHG removal over coming decades to larger than current emissions and allow emissions to continue, enabling a slower decarbonisation of the economy. Similarly, it is possible to scale up solar geoengineering to achieve net zero heating while emissions continue. Those are both simple examples of substitution that refute the AGU opening line. Arguments against CI such as ocean acidification and side effects do not recognise the orders of magnitude of the physical forces involved in climate change, failing to accept that the risks of not proceeding with CI research are far worse than the risks and benefits of proceeding.
The AGU draft claim that CI cannot substitute for climate adaptation is ignorant, immoral and dangerous. It means, for example, that refreezing the Arctic to slow sea level rise cannot substitute for turning hundreds of millions of people into climate refugees and destroying beaches, ports and wetlands as we ‘adapt’ to rising sea level. It means that deploying Marine Cloud Brightening to cool the Atlantic cannot substitute for spending hundreds of billions of dollars on ‘adapting’ to worsening hurricanes. Of course CI must be a substitute for adaptation to limit the scale and trauma of adaptation needed. This non-substitution argument is a recipe for failing to mobilise CI as fast as possible. We need CI as a far superior substitute to the harms of ongoing warming.
The non-substitution argument is designed to protect government funding for emission cuts. However, if that funding rests on the false premise that emission cuts alone can cool the planet, it is not fit for purpose and needs to switch focus to something that actually can cool the planet, effective climate intervention through albedo enhancement.
I am using harsh language here because I am sick of seeing this echo chamber language about substitution that allows wasting of precious time needed for urgent deployment of methods to enhance planetary albedo. The only reasoned criticisms I have seen of my view are political, that the non-substitution argument is popular on the left. With due respect, the AGU should stick to scientific analysis rather than second-guessing the popularity of its views, especially when these views are blatantly delusional and wrong.
The thinking behind this AGU statement against substitution rests on primitive tribal loyalty, not analysis of evidence. They are saying the emotional hatred of fossil fuels within their tribe is so strong they are willing to junk the scientific method and instead support a baseless and highly partisan political attack, or otherwise their friends might shun them. AGU should not support such contentious and harmful political arguments that muddy the clear view needed on causes and responses for mitigating climate change.
The draft continues to analyse replacement in its section headed “Opportunities & Challenges”. But after repeating the opening political assertion, the document doesn’t say anything to justify it (because they can’t). Instead, it veers to the non-sequitur that “even stopping GHG emissions now could leave Earth at levels of warming many would consider unacceptable.” Far from supporting the non-substitution argument, that actually undermines it. We all know it is not possible to stop emissions now. But this fanciful counterfactual scenario of a sudden end to combustion actually supports the call for direct cooling to augment emission reduction as an immediate substitute strategy. Noting that we are already at an “unacceptable level of warming” should lead to recognition that solar geoengineering is the only thing that can return the planet to an acceptable temperature, and that even accelerated emission cuts would be marginal to warming for many decades. The implication that AGU should mention here is that in fact cutting emissions cannot substitute for direct cooling as a way to stabilise and repair the climate.
The section on Needed Actions is excellent, but leaves out three crucial points, that business must be included, research must be effective, and cooperative governance of geoengineering will protect and enhance biodiversity, security, stability and prosperity.
The call for “dialogue that includes and engages communities and the broader public” should be expanded to include dialogue with industry stakeholders. The fossil fuel industry can either block or enable this work. Excluding them will dangerously delay progress. They have the skills, resources and contacts to ensure research proceeds quickly. These assets must be mobilised in partnership, not rejected.
The call “to advance safe, fair, inclusive, and equitable action” leaves out the critical point that climate action must be effective. The high risk is that political ideology will continue to distort research priorities so that actions that don’t cool the planet (eg electric cars) will get priority over actions that do cool the planet. The “Climate Justice” agenda that action must be fair, inclusive and equitable is essential, but without saying that action must be effective all these possible benefits will be missed. Restoring and repairing the climate is the indispensable foundation for progress toward social justice.
Effective cooling can enable the ongoing economic prosperity needed to protect and enhance biodiversity, stability and security. Without this foundation, there is no prospect for inclusion, justice and equity. Too-rapid decarbonisation presents massive risks of economic collapse and resulting conflict and poverty. Cutting emissions needs to be placed within a strategic vision of a critical engineering path from our current crisis to a sustainable future. That path has to include the need for energy security, which can only be delivered through a gradual shift to renewable sources alongside ongoing emissions. On biodiversity, problems such as poleward drift, coral bleaching and sea level rise present major extinction threats, which can only be forestalled by immediate cooling action.
International cooperation and public private partnership are needed for direct climate cooling through albedo enhancement. Such collaboration would offer the most plausible path to support ongoing world peace and security, for example by helping Russia and China to shift their diplomatic focus from confrontation to cooperation, and bringing the fossil economy into the climate action tent. These benefits for world peace, together with the need to slow climate tipping points, significantly and massively outweigh the risks of delay.
The HPAC call for a climate triad to cool, remove and reduce as equal priorities presents a workable climate strategy. Achieving that equality requires acceptance that action to cool the climate and remove GHGs does in fact present an effective substitute for current thinking on accelerating emission reduction and adaptation. Cutting emissions should continue where it makes economic and ecological and environmental sense, without pretending it could be enough to slow climate change.
The AGU draft statement well articulates the current informed scientific consensus on the urgent need to advance from the complacent IPCC focus on emission reduction alone, and, by supporting planetary brightening, from the IPCC recognition of the need to remove greenhouse gases. It effectively rebuts the ignorant voices that oppose cooling research, and also refutes the alleged ‘Net Zero Commitment’ that imagines achieving net zero emissions would be enough for climate stability. As such the AGU position is highly important and welcome as an advance on previous prevailing views. Yet solving the climate emergency will need more – a radical paradigm shift in how our species inhabits and manages our planet, to regulate the atmosphere to produce optimal conditions for flourishing. This shift to a brighter planet will need gradual incremental measures that respect the inertia and momentum of the world economy with its deep conservative entrenchment of fossil fuels. Respecting and engaging the fossil economy has to abandon the ideological belief that direct cooling cannot replace faster emission cuts. Part of the research agenda should include the ethical debate on whether a slower energy transition, backed by climate intervention, would be a good approach.
Robert Tulip
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Ron Baiman
I'd like to support the draft and urge that it be made both more urgent and more inclusive of other Direct Climate Cooling methods in addition to SRM. I recommend that it be made more urgent as there is no other option to avoid increasing calamity in the short-run (at least several decades and possibly a century or more) until we are able to cut and draw down sufficient GHGs from the atmosphere and oceans to restore a stable climate and regenerate our ecosystem. I also recommend that it be more inclusive of other Direct Climate Cooling (DCC) methods, some of which have little to no risk and can, and should be, rolled out for assessment and deployment immediately. In this sense greater inclusiveness in DCC methods points to the practicality of more urgent deployment of local and low-risk methods even as more global and higher-risk methods are researched and tested further. The draft mentions "Localized surface albedo modification" noting that they are "less studied" as a category of Climate Intervention but neglects to point out and urge that these and other low-risk and local DCC methods can and should be immediately (if found to be effective in pilots) deployed with little to no risk. For documentation of 18 different potential DCC methods (including but not exclusively SRM methods), see this final Healthy Planet Action Coalition statement: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TowThwi6j6cX3iLGBRrj22D30cYhKa_9/edit
A similar problem with (non-CDR) GHG reduction efforts is the seemingly afterthought treatment of methane removal in the statement. Methods to burn concentrated anthropogenic and natural methane releases are already included in GHG offset protocols like that of California: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/compliance-offset-program/compliance-offset-protocols/mine-methane-capture-project
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