Full text of WaPo "Scientists knew 2023s would be hot!" article

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Colleagues,

My apologies if this link has already been shared  - but I think the full text merits sharing if it hasn't already!

It succinctly lays out the gravity of our situation and possible causes - including the Bunker Fuel aerosol loss that Hansen et al. 2023 point to as a likely key proximate factor.

Best,

Ron

Scientists knew 2023’s heat would be historic — but not by this much 

By Scott Dance 

,  

Sarah Kaplan 

and  

Veronica Penney 

January 9, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST 

 

 

The year 2023 was the hottest in recorded human history, Europe’s top climate agency announced Tuesday, with blistering surface temperatures and torrid ocean conditions pushing the planet dangerously close to a long-feared warming threshold. 

According to new data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Earth’s average temperature last year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the preindustrial average, before humans began to warm the planet through fossil fuel burning and other polluting activities. Last year shattered the previous global temperature record by almost two-tenths of a degree — the largest jump scientists have ever observed. 

This year is predicted to be even hotter. By the end of January or February, the agency warned, the planet’s 12-month average temperature is likely to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level — blasting past the world’s most ambitious climate goal. 

The announcement of a new temperature record comes as little surprise to scientists who have witnessed the past 12 months of raging wildfires, deadly ocean heat waves, cataclysmic flooding and a worrisome Antarctic thaw. A scorching summer and “gobsmacking” autumn temperature anomalies had all but guaranteed that 2023 would be a year for the history books. 

But the amount by which the previous record was broken shocked even climate experts. 

“I don’t think anybody was expecting anomalies as large as we have seen,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said. “It was on the edge of what was plausible.” 

The staggering new statistics underscore how human-caused climate change has allowed regular planetary fluctuations to push temperatures into uncharted territory. Each of the past eight years was already among the eight warmest ever observed. Then, a complex and still somewhat mysterious host of climatic influences combined with human activities to push 2023 even hotter — ushering in an age of “global boiling,” in the words of United Nations Secretary General António Guterres. 

Unless nations transform their economies and rapidly transition away from polluting fuels, experts warn, this level of warming will unravel ecological webs and cause human-built systems to collapse. 

A man cools off with a mist dispenser set up in a street in central Baghdad amid soaring temperatures, on Aug. 15. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images) 

A year that ‘doesn’t have an equivalent’ 

When ominous warmth first appeared in Earth’s oceans last spring, scientists said it was a likely sign that record global heat was imminent — but not until 2024. 

But as the planet transitioned into an El Niño climate pattern — characterized by warm Pacific Ocean waters — temperatures took a steeper jump. July and August were the two warmest months in the 173-year record Copernicus examined. 

Can you guess how crazy last year’s weather was? Try this game. 

As Antarctic sea ice dwindled and the planet’s hottest places flirted with conditions too extreme for people to survive, scientists speculated that 2023 would not only be the warmest on record — it might well exceed anything seen in the last 100,000 years. Analyses of fossils, ice cores and ocean sediments suggest that global temperatures haven’t been this high since before the last ice age, when Homo sapiens had just begun to migrate out of Africa and hippos roamed in what is now Germany. 

Autumn brought even greater departures from the norm. Temperatures in September were almost a full degree Celsius hotter than the average over the past 30 years, making it the most unusually warm month in Copernicus’s data set. And two days in November were, for the first time ever, more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the preindustrial average for those dates. 

“What we have seen in 2023 doesn’t have an equivalent,” Buontempo said. 

This year’s record-setting conditions were driven in part by unprecedented warmth in the oceans’ surface waters, Copernicus said. The agency measured marine heat waves from the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Parts of the Atlantic Ocean experienced temperatures 4 to 5 degrees Celsius (7.2 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average — a level that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration classifies as “beyond extreme.” 

While researchers have not yet determined the impacts on sea life, similar heat waves have caused massive harms to microorganisms at the base of the food web, bleached corals and fueled toxic algae blooms, she added. 

Though the oceans cover about two-thirds of Earth’s surface, scientists estimate they have absorbed about 90 percent of the extra warming from humans’ burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect those emissions have in the atmosphere. 

“The ocean is our sentinel,” said Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at the nonprofit Mercator Ocean International. 

The dramatic warming in the ocean is a clear signal of “how much the Earth is out of energy balance,” she added — with heat continuing to build faster than it can be released from the planet. 

A helicopter fights a wildfire in Reguengo, Portalegre district, south of Portugal, on Aug. 8. Intense heat across caused fires across Portugal and neighboring Spain. (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images) 

Sunbathers pack into Macumba beach, in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro, on Sept. 24, during a heat wave. (Tercio Teixeira/AFP/Getty Images) 

What drove the record warmth 

Scientists are still disentangling the factors that made this year so unusual. 

The largest and most obvious is El Niño, the infamous global climate pattern that emerges a few times a decade and is known to boost average planetary temperatures by a few tenths of a degree Celsius, or as much as half a degree Fahrenheit. El Niño’s signature is a zone of warmer-than-normal waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, which release vast amounts of heat and water vapor and trigger extreme weather patterns around the world. 

But El Niño alone cannot explain the extraordinary heat of the past 12 months, according to Copernicus. Because it wasn’t just the Pacific that exhibited dramatic warmth this year. 

Scientists also believe the Atlantic may have warmed as a result of weakened westerly winds, which tend to churn up waters and send surface warmth into deeper ocean layers. It could also have been the product of below-normal Saharan dust in the air; the particles normally act to block some sunlight from reaching the ocean surface. 

Around the world, in fact, there has been a decline in sun-blocking particles known as aerosols, in large part because of efforts to reduce air pollution. In recent years, shipping freighters have taken measures to reduce their emissions. Scientists have speculated the decline in aerosols may have allowed more sun to reach the oceans. 

And then there is the potential impact of a massive underwater volcanic eruption. When Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai blasted a plume 36 miles high in January 2022, scientists warned it released so much water vapor into the atmosphere, it could have a lingering effect for months, if not years, to come. 

NASA satellite data showed the volcano sent an unprecedented amount of water into the stratosphere — equal to 10 percent of the amount of water that was already contained in the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere. In the stratosphere, water vapor — like human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide — acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat like a blanket around the Earth. 

But it won’t be clear how much of a role each of those factors played until scientists can test each of those hypotheses. 

What is clear, scientists stress, is that this year’s extremes were only possible because they unfolded against the backdrop of human-caused climate change. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high of 419 parts per million in 2023, Copernicus said. And despite global pledges to cut down on methane — which traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over a short time scales — levels of that gas also reached new peaks. 

Only by reaching “net zero” — the point at which people stop adding additional greenhouse to the atmosphere — can humanity reverse Earth’s long-term warming trend, said Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. 

“That is what the physical science tells us that we need to do,” Ceppi said. 

Icebergs drift as they melt due to warm temperatures along the Scoresby Sound Fjord, in Eastern Greenland on Aug. 16. (Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images) 

What comes next 

Almost half of all days in 2023 were 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the preindustrial average for that date, Copernicus said — giving the world a dangerous taste of a climate it had pledged to avoid. 

At the Paris climate conference in 2015, nations agreed to a stretch goal of “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.” Three years later, a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that staying within this ambitious threshold could avoid many of the most disastrous consequences of warming — but it would require the world to almost halve greenhouse gas emissions in just over a decade. 

But emissions have continued to rise, and now the world appears poised on the brink of surpassing the Paris target. 

At least one climate science organization believes the barrier has already been crossed. Berkeley Earth said in December that 2023 is virtually certain to eclipse it, though its estimates of 19th century temperatures are slightly lower than those other climate scientists use. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean the world has officially surpassed the limit set in the Paris climate agreement in 2015. That benchmark will only be reached when temperatures remain 1.5 degrees Celsius above average over a period of at least 20 years. 

But scientists are already speculating that the planet could set another average temperature record in 2024. Some also say the latest spike in global temperatures is a sign the rate of climate change has accelerated. 

Whether or not 2023 surpasses the 1.5 degree limit, the year “has given us a glimpse of what 1.5 may look like,” Buontempo said. 

He hoped that the latest record allows that reality to set in — and spurs action. 

“As a society, we have to be better at using this knowledge,” Buontempo added, “because the future will not be like our past.” 

Alonzo McAdams drinks a bottle of water given to him from a Salvation Army truck handing out water, and other supplies for the homeless in Tucson, on July 26. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images) 

More on climate change 

Understanding our climate: Global warming is a real phenomenon, and weather disasters are undeniably linked to it. As temperatures rise, heat waves are more often sweeping the globe — and parts of the world are becoming too hot to survive. 

What can be done? The Post is tracking a variety of climate solutions, as well as the Biden administration’s actions on environmental issues. It can feel overwhelming facing the impacts of climate change, but there are ways to cope with climate anxiety. 

Inventive solutions: Some people have built off-the-grid homes from trash to stand up to a changing climate. As seas rise, others are exploring how to harness marine energy. 

What about your role in climate change? Our climate coach Michael J. Coren is answering questions about environmental choices in our everyday lives. Submit yours here. You can also sign up for our Climate Coach newsletter. 

Climate change and global warming 

HAND CURATED 

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June 20, 2023 

 

By Scott Dance 

Scott Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment. He joined The Post in 2022 after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun, where he most recently focused on climate change and the environment. 

Twitter 

 

By Sarah Kaplan 

Sarah Kaplan is a climate reporter covering humanity's response to a warming world. She previously reported on Earth science and the universe.  

Twitter 

 

By Veronica Penney 

Veronica Penney is a climate graphics reporter at The Washington Post. She previously worked as a data reporter on Colorado Public Radio's investigative team and covered climate change as a reporting fellow at the New York Times. 

[H simmens]

Thanks Ron. 

Sarah Kaplan one of the authors of the article is a first rate Climate journalist and the thoroughness of the article reflects her skills. 

That said there are several statements that are inconsistent with the science or good practice. 

One was a quote: 

“I don’t think anybody was expecting anomalies as large as we have seen,” from a climate scientist that demonstrated the insularity and group think of some in the Climate scientific community. I don’t think that Jim Hansen was particularly surprised for one. Too bad he wasn’t quoted. 

A second eyebrow raising comment was “Only by reaching “net zero” — the point at which people stop adding additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere — can humanity reverse Earth’s long-term warming trend, said Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at Imperial College London.”

This comment would lead the reader to believe that if and when net zero is reached cooling would immediately begin, when absent the other two legs of the Climate triad temperatures will remain sharply elevated and likely continue increasing for centuries depending on how high temperatures are if and when net zero is reached. Such a message conveys a false reassurance totally unwarranted and provides critics with ammunition for opposing DCC - Direct Climate Cooling. 

The third eyebrow raising comment was “That benchmark will only be reached when temperatures remain 1.5 degrees Celsius above average over a period of at least 20 years.”

Depending upon how this 20 year standard - a standard I don’t believe has been universally adopted or accepted or one that makes much sense - is interpreted the world would have to wait another 10 or 20 years - when temperatures will likely be above 2° C - to solemnly pronounce that we’ve passed 1.5° C and we can begin to get worried. 

And of course it goes without saying that the CTO - Climate Triad Omerta - or code of silence about the need for massive CDR and urgent DCC to reduce temperatures and ultimately restore the climate continues to be obeyed in this article. 

By the way I watched an extraordinary online program yesterday where an international nonprofit climate marketing group presented the results of their detailed surveys of thousands of inhabitants of every one of the G20 countries. 

By far the message that resonated the most and changed attitudes in every one of the countries was a message built around these four simple words:

“Later is too late”

Listeners were urged to incorporate these four words - which have been trademarked by the firm - into our messaging campaigns. 

The presenters emphasized as strongly as they could that it’s time the climate community start following evidence based market research rather than our own hunches as to what may be an effective set of messages. 

And their conclusion is that messages that focus on jobs or prosperity or even threats have little purchase. 

It’s about preserving life for future generations that must be reiterated over and over and over and over again. 

Much research over many years has shown that the following:

• A Simple Message
• Repeated over and over again
• Presented  by trusted sources 

are the three essential keys to effective Climate communication. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Jan 9, 2024, at 5:56 PM, Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Ron and Herb, thanks for sharing this article.  It includes the absurd consensus dogma “Unless nations transform their economies and rapidly transition away from polluting fuels, experts warn, this level of warming will unravel ecological webs and cause human-built systems to collapse.” 

There is no prospect of such rapid economic transformation, and even if there were, it would not save systems from collapse. Carbon action even at impossible scale would still be too small and slow to mitigate climate risk in the short term.  The only action that could make any difference in time is higher albedo.  As Herb says, later is too late.

 

I am astonished that such nonsense remains solemnly agreed and no one even debates it in the mass media except for denialists.  Talk about the emperor’s new clothes.

 

Fossil fuel use is going up, not down.  The absence of political interest in rapid transition makes the consensus dogma a stupid proposal.  It is impossible. These “experts” are living in Wonderland.

 

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip



 

By Scott Dance 

Scott Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment. He joined The Post in 2022 after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun, where he most recently focused on climate change and the environment. 

Twitter 

 

By Sarah Kaplan 

Sarah Kaplan is a climate reporter covering humanity's response to a warming world. She previously reported on Earth science and the universe.  

Twitter 

 

By Veronica Penney 

Veronica Penney is a climate graphics reporter at The Washington Post. She previously worked as a data reporter on Colorado Public Radio's investigative team and covered climate change as a reporting fellow at the New York Times. 

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[rob de laet]

Dear Robert, 

Agree that the tunnel vision focus on carbon will lead to collapse. Agree that increasing albedo is an important way out, but it is not the only viable path to avert collapse. The cooling power of water can stop the heating up of the Earth, not just by increasing albedo but by increasing the transport of heat back out into space via evapotranspiration and the self-reinforcing feedback loop of a revived biotic pump, increasing precipitation over dried out continents.  

Photosynthesis turns liquid water into vapor, via the leaves of trees and plants, as we all know, but the power of this process seems to be underestimated. 

Water vapor transports heat up into the higher atmosphere, where it forms clouds and ejects the heat out into space, cooling the surface of the Earth in several ways, including through increased albedo. This process also creates the winds to carry rains into the interior of continents, aka the biotic pump.

Understanding these intricate processes opens ways to fight climate change much more effective than just focusing on CO2. According to calculations made by Peter Bunyard and myself, reforesting or transitioning to agroforestry an area of about 250 million ha of land in the tropical zone, or the increase of evapotranspiration via a regenerated biosphere of about 10.000 km3 of liquid water would be enough stop the planet from heating up further, while the world goes through the slow motion of decarbonization. Bru Pearce proposes a doubling of living biomass from 550 Gt to 1100 Gt to reverse the destruction set in from the start of human civilization (defined as city forming, nothing more) and agriculture. A combination of measures including a program of cloud brightening in the right places and ocean biology restoration may be sufficient to avert collapse. We obviously have to act fast, at some point in the near future our collective agency to deploy these measures at the scale and speed necessary to avert collapse, will falter sooner rather than later. 

Best,

Rob de Laet 

Member of the EcoRestoration Alliance

Fellow of Global Evergreening Alliance

Co-founder of Senang Eco Services

WhatsApp: +55 71 992617846

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Rob, Increasing biomass is essential, as you say.  The point I was making is that increasing albedo is by far the fastest possible climate protection response, if the politics can be sorted.  Growing trees at scale will take much longer than rebrightening marine clouds.  It is about sequencing.  All cost-effective cooling measures need funds.  The paralysis is just crazy.  The 2023 temperature result should engage the public in a response like the Covid vaccines.  But while WaPo etc keep up the delusional fantasy of emission reduction alone there is no hope. Climate policy needs a paradigm shift.  Later is too late.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/1687562673.11150314.1704883106026%40mail.yahoo.com.

[rob de laet]

Thank you Robert, 

Agree, but I think we have to do ''whatever it takes'', which includes all these elements in an overall package,. The heating up of the planet is probably for more than half caused by the removal of forests, especially rain forests and if we do not reverse that (which can have a starting effect in as little as a decade starting from zero) the cloud brightening will become a permanent feature. 

I made a calculation for the cost of the regreening of the tropics, which in large part must be done through agroforestry food production, next to forest protection and reforestation, as we also need to have a new green revolution and transition our foodsystem, which is largely based on fossil fuels (especially oil and gas) to regenerative agriculture. The cost would be around 0,5% of Global GDP over a period of at least a decade, probably two, but it would start cooling within a few years, increasingly mitigate extreme weather, preserve biodiversity, increase the income stream of about 500 million rural smallholder families or at least 2,5 billion people in the Global South, slowing, possibly reversing migration to cities and the Global North, stabilizing societies, while helping a lot to transition food production while rebuilding soils. 

Cloud brightening and ocean revival can be done with much smaller sums of money of course, and ocean revival will also help improve the foodsystems while sequestering huge amounts of carbon and reverse ocean acidification. Cloud brightening can be a crucial and affordable bridge program, but if we do not revive the Earth's capacity for homeostasis we will have to continue it for a very long time, while natural systems as such can regain that capacity within decades if not faster. 

best,

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[robert...@gmail.com]

I know we don't like being negative but we should also resist the temptation not to be realistic merely because being so, is so deeply depressing!

Without reciting the details of which we're mostly aware, there can be little remaining doubt that averting a climate catastrophe is becoming more challenging by the day.  At what point would it be sensible to start asking 'What if we don't avert a climate catastrophe?'.  If our underlying concern is to mitigate human suffering, it may well be that our best way to do that is to soften the blows from the catastrophe as it begins to happen (it won't be a single sudden event), and we'll do that by intelligent anticipatory planning.  Denying the possibility that that might be necessary seems to me to be just as feeble minded as denying the possibility that human behaviour has affected the climate.

The desire for a healthy planet may need to be a little more nuanced.  When Noah was building his Ark was he depressed at the thought of what was being lost, or exhilarated by what he was doing to ensure the survival of humanity and many species besides?  Quite likely both.  I'll let the biblical scholars on the list fill in the details!  What might a 21st century Ark look like?

Regards

Robert

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[rob de laet]

hear hear! Thank you Robert!

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[John Nissen]

Hi Chris and everyone,

 

I think we must focus on averting catastrophes, rather than wondering how we could adapt to them.  I believe that the highest-risk catastrophes arise from tipping point processes in the Arctic.  Keeping the global mean surface temperature below 1.5C was supposed to avert the triggering of these tipping processes. But actually these processes were activated around 1980 when the global temperature we around 0.5C.  The only way to halt and reverse these tipping processes is with SRM.

 

The climate crisis is upon us.  The rapid warming of the Arctic since 1980 (four times the global average) has led to a reduced Arctic-tropics temperature gradient which puts less energy into the jet stream wave and is no doubt responsible for the dramatic growth in extremes of weather: droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and flooding.  A similar disruption of jet stream behaviour in the Southern Hemisphere may be responsible for the growth in extremes in that half of the planet.  SRM is our only hope of reversing these trends.

 

Of course we should have a long-term goal, and now we can say with reasonable confidence that the goal should be the restoration of atmospheric greenhouse gases, global temperatures and Arctic temperature and albedo to 1980 levels or better.  The restoration of Arctic temperature and albedo implies refreezing the Arctic.

 

I think we can be pretty confident that refreezing the Arctic is both possible and extremely urgent.  Preparations for large-scale deployment should start this year: the leading candidates being SAI, MCB using seawater spray, and Ocean Pasture Restoration (which has a direct cooling effect besides CDR). 

 

At the NOAC meeting on Monday I asked people to read and consider what I wrote for my “Hope for 2024”. 

 

So what are all the points that are crucial to get agreed in order to give us hope for decisive action in 2024 towards a healthy planet?

 

First of all, as Peter Fiekowsky says, we have to want climate restoration before it will happen.

·        Climate restoration needs to be a goal.  It is arguably the best means of protecting the planet and its diversity for the benefit of ourselves and future generations.

 

Actions on temperature

·        The planet is too hot.  We are already experiencing dangerous temperature overshoot.  The target should be to bring the global temperature below the 0.5C it was before a steep rise around 1980.

·        Since 1980 the temperature in the Arctic has been rising about four times faster than the global average, and tipping point processes in the Arctic appear to have been triggered around 1980.

·        Without direct cooling intervention to halt these processes, catastrophic climate change and sea level rise are almost inevitable.

o       Catastrophic climate change could come from disruption of atmospheric circulation via disruption of the jet stream behaviour.  We are already experiencing a trend towards more extremes of heat, drought, floods and wildfires as the jet stream waves get stuck more often and for longer.  The stuck wave amplifies the effect of global warming on temperature and humidity.

o       Catastrophic climate change could also come from disruption of ocean circulation via disruption of the AMOC.  The strength has declined about 40% since 1980.

o       A catastrophic boost to global warming could come from permafrost methane.

o       Catastrophic sea level rise could come from a partial collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

·        Rapid cooling of the Arctic will require powerful SRM*, so fears of SRM need to be assuaged, especially for SAI** being the most powerful.

·        SRM will also be needed to cool other specific regions, including the Antarctic and the Himalayas.

·        Selection of SRM techniques and preparation for their deployment need to start ASAP, preferably in 2024.

 

To this we need action on GHG emissions and removals:

·        We will probably need 50 years to get CO2e below 385 ppm (as it was in 1980) and allow the phase-out of SRM. 

·        CDR has to remove CO2 faster than it is being emitted: we probably only have two ways to do this: sequestering carbon in soil or in the ocean depths. 

·        Within 50 years MCB and other cooling interventions might have to take over from SAI as we run out of SO2 either extracted from fossil fuels during refinement or captured from fossil fuel burning.

 

Finally action to enhance natural vitality in the world’s soils and oceans is required both for increased biodiversity and to boost food productivity.  The measures on CDR could have these co-benefits.

 

Best wishes for 2024, John

 

* SRM = solar radiation management, aka solar geoengineering

** SAI = stratospheric aerosol injection

 

All this is entirely practicable, but we need to start SRM deployment to refreeze the Arctic ASAP to minimise risks of catastrophes which include abrupt climate change and metres of sea level rise. These risks are growing exponentially as irreversibility points approach for some of the tipping points which would mean failure to avert catastrophe.

 

On the positive side, climate restoration is still within our grasp.

 

Cheers, John

 

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[H simmens]

Hi Bruce,

The two concerns you mentioned were addressed at the webinar organized by the Climate marketing firm. 

First they emphasized that ‘Later is too late” should be the core of the message but not the entirety of the message consistent with the expanded messages you suggest. 

Secondly questions were raised that similar messages focusing on the next generation and the need for immediate action have often been articulated. 

The response was the all important second component of an effective message campaign. 

And that is repetition repetition repetition something Climate advocates have not been particularly good at to say the least. 

Message discipline however boring it may be is essential. 

Of course having the kinds of financial resources available to amplify the message remains a huge challenge as the climate deniers, appeasers, Brightsiders, inactivists and reactivists have long had the resources and the influence to prevent the message of urgency from being received by the masses. 

Have any of the individuals and institutions on these lists ever rigorously tested their messages to various target constituencies with the assistance of marketing and communication professionals? 

How can we expect to breakthrough to those who need to be made aware of the urgent need for cooling in the absence of an evidence based communication strategy? 

In the meantime the Climate Media Omerta or code of silence alas remains rigidly enforced in the United States, though less so in most other countries. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Jan 11, 2024, at 12:30 PM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:



Good review Herb and your finale is spot on:

"Much research over many years has shown that the following:

• A Simple Message
• Repeated over and over again
• Presented  by trusted sources 

are the three essential keys to effective climate communication."

I particularly like the phrasing "Later is too late." But... we have heard this time and again in one form or another. I invite everyone to add four (+/-) more words to this phrase to emphasize how much more important it is now with the warming acceleration.

"Later is too late, the dangerous 1.5 C target has been exceeded."

"Later is too late, end of century impacts are here."

"Later is too late because of 30 years of delay."

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
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Twitter - BruceCMelton1



 

By Scott Dance 

Scott Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment. He joined The Post in 2022 after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun, where he most recently focused on climate change and the environment. 

Twitter 

 

By Sarah Kaplan 

Sarah Kaplan is a climate reporter covering humanity's response to a warming world. She previously reported on Earth science and the universe.  

Twitter 

 

By Veronica Penney 

Veronica Penney is a climate graphics reporter at The Washington Post. She previously worked as a data reporter on Colorado Public Radio's investigative team and covered climate change as a reporting fellow at the New York Times. 

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[Alan Kerstein]

Since the discussion is about an education campaign, let’s start with a basic educational principle: start from where the student is. The center of gravity of the target population probably has some concern about climate change but is clueless about tipping points or recent ominous trends. Until such people become aware of the urgency of the crisis, discussion about methods for cooling the Earth might sound bonkers from the get-go and the geoengineering brand could go from invisible to radioactive. So I think that the first step is to focus on the facts about the urgency of the crisis. When the target audience has thoroughly internalized this and frantically demands action, they can be told that there is an extreme solution that is only a last resort, but in the spirit of “desperate times demand desperate measures,” with great reluctance we feel compelled to recommend active measures to cool the Earth.

I understand that this doesn’t fully measure up to the urgency of the situation, but as momma said, “you can’t hurry love.”

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[Ron Baiman]

Thanks all for this wide-ranging discussion that I think we all (broadly) agree with!

One comment on Rob's concerns (please excuse Rob if you're already aware of this!). The HPAC paper on direct climate cooling (DCC) that has been submitted to Oxford Open Climate Change and is currently in the reviewing process ( https://essopenarchive.org/users/673263/articles/672102-understanding-the-urgent-need-for-direct-climate-cooling )

includes land and ocean nature based and non-nature based direct climate cooling methods from Sev, Jim Baird, and others that span the gamut from SRM to TRM (Thermal Radiation Management) - a term that I've been told was coined by John Nissen.

Given the extreme emergency situation that we face, I think we need to investigate and if reasonable, deploy, every possible DCC method we can muster asap including reducing emissions of short-term species like methane (hat has a (unlike carbon emission reductions) rapid cooling impact and  "Supporting the Utilization of Ship Fuels that Cool the Atmosphere While Preserving Air Quality Benefits" (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mVlr5MKBrFUUq8Hm4ZmeCPcfKK8myuel/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116465941111195452408&rtpof=true&sd=true) that I know many of you (including Rob) support!

Here's the graph from the NYTimes (Thanks Mike for sharing!) that is "worth more than a thousand words":

Best,

Ron

[Peter Fiekowsky]

Climate change can be solved--through Climate Restoration

Peter

On Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 9:55 AM Carol Cespedes <ccesp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Action now can restore.

Carol Cespedes

On Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 11:30 AM Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Good review Herb and your finale is spot on:

"Much research over many years has shown that the following:

• A Simple Message
• Repeated over and over again
• Presented  by trusted sources 

are the three essential keys to effective climate communication."

I particularly like the phrasing "Later is too late." But... we have heard this time and again in one form or another. I invite everyone to add four (+/-) more words to this phrase to emphasize how much more important it is now with the warming acceleration.

"Later is too late, the dangerous 1.5 C target has been exceeded."

"Later is too late, end of century impacts are here."

"Later is too late because of 30 years of delay."

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1

On 1/9/2024 6:09 PM, H simmens wrote:

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[robert...@gmail.com]

The 'buying time' argument has been around since the early days of geoengineering - see for example Wigley, T. M. L. 2006. ‘A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization’. Science 314(5798): 452–454. doi:10.1126/science.1131728.

The problem with this framing is that it requires the policymaker first to have a sense that there's a need to buy time.  Until that penny has dropped, the buying time argument is little more than a solution looking for a problem.  The people that matter aren't interested because they don't recognise that there's a problem for which geoengineering is the solution.

The problem with climate change is that from a policy perspective it is insidious.  The scouts may know the Indians are amassing their forces but until they're visible at the top of the hill in front of you, the general leading his troops can too easily ignore the threat (forgive the allusion to Westerns, just a sign of my age!).  The apocryphal boiled frog is another apposite metaphor.

Climate danger is not yet sufficiently 'clear and present'.  We need to chill and accept that until the climate has claimed a billion or so lives and caused a major disruption of the lifestyles of the affluent (in both the Global North and South - there are plenty of very rich people in the Global South), our ideas are not going to get taken up as serious policy options.  By then their potential to buy time will have likely been significantly reduced, if not entirely exhausted.

Hey ho!

Regards

Robert

On 13/01/2024 17:55, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas wrote:

Sir David King's words at the HPAC meeting this week go very well with "later is too late." He said, "buying time." This concept also works excellently with CDR and geoengineering. Decarbonization will work alone in centuries. CDR in a decade or two with war-time motivation. These are "too late" though. Geoengineering "buys time" for CDR and decarbonization to work to stabilize activated tipping responses. because "later is too late."

We have been geoengineering with sulfates for 150 years... On the frightening aspect of geoengineering: New regulations on shipping fuel sulfur to reduce respiratory disease caused by air pollution aerosols have unmasked warming because these sulfur aerosols emissions create significant global cooling, and new direct injection engine particulate emission regulations for also reducing respiratory disease are another source of diminishing global cooling sulfates; these new regulations have certainly contributed to the temperature spike in 2023. Global cooling sulfur emissions from fossil fuels are definitively geoengineering and we have been doing this for 150 years. We know exactly how many people die every year from respiratory disease caused by air pollution (7 or 8 million), and we know exactly what weather patterns are produced by this simple global cooling sulfur aerosol geoengineering. Temporarily rescinding these regulations will knock a few tenths of a degree C off the current temperature, and plausibly another tenth or two degrees C to come as the direct injection engines' particulate emissions regulations further penetrate the fleet.

Getting ready for the big freeze coming to Austin,

B

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1

On 1/11/2024 12:02 PM, H simmens wrote:

 Hi Bruce,

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/28521e2a-5058-4157-a57f-557feed805e8%40earthlink.net.

[H simmens]



 There’s little question Robert that your analysis holds true for vast numbers of people who have yet to internalize the existential threat that the continuation of our present course makes all but inevitable. 

But I’ve been seeing more and more another group of people - still relatively small  - who have gone from the belief that emission reductions alone (ERA) can avoid enough of the disaster movie scenarios to still fight for ERA to instead a conviction that it’s too late even with aggressive ERA to avoid climacatastrophe. 

These folks who are generally quite knowledgeable and sophisticated either don’t know anything about direct climate cooling or more commonly have internalized acceptance that cooling is much too dangerous and complicated and will inevitably lead to mitigation deterrence. 

Another similar group has been uncovered through a multi national survey of young people last year that showed an alarming number convinced that a dystopian future is all but inevitable. 

One has to assume that the vast majority of these young people have either no knowledge or a distorted knowledge of the potential of cooling to avoid a dystopian planet. 

These ever-growing segments of the Climate engaged (or formerly engaged) can I believe be converted away from the certainty of certain doom by a simple and repetitive message that a cooling based Triad policy urgently implemented at sufficient speed, scale and scope can stabilize and ultimately restore a safe climate. 

To achieve that requires alas a muscular extremely well financed advocacy group of international scale and scope that you and I have been advocating for sometime. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Jan 13, 2024, at 2:00 PM, robert...@gmail.com wrote:



The 'buying time' argument has been around since the early days of geoengineering - see for example Wigley, T. M. L. 2006. ‘A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization’. Science 314(5798): 452–454. doi:10.1126/science.1131728.

The problem with this framing is that it requires the policymaker first to have a sense that there's a need to buy time.  Until that penny has dropped, the buying time argument is little more than a solution looking for a problem.  The people that matter aren't interested because they don't recognise that there's a problem for which geoengineering is the solution.

The problem with climate change is that from a policy perspective it is insidious.  The scouts may know the Indians are amassing their forces but until they're visible at the top of the hill in front of you, the general leading his troops can too easily ignore the threat (forgive the allusion to Westerns, just a sign of my age!).  The apocryphal boiled frog is another apposite metaphor.

Climate danger is not yet sufficiently 'clear and present'.  We need to chill and accept that until the climate has claimed a billion or so lives and caused a major disruption of the lifestyles of the affluent (in both the Global North and South - there are plenty of very rich people in the Global South), our ideas are not going to get taken up as serious policy options.  By then their potential to buy time will have likely been significantly reduced, if not entirely exhausted.

Hey ho!

Regards

Robert

On 13/01/2024 17:55, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas wrote:

Sir David King's words at the HPAC meeting this week go very well with "later is too late." He said, "buying time." This concept also works excellently with CDR and geoengineering. Decarbonization will work alone in centuries. CDR in a decade or two with war-time motivation. These are "too late" though. Geoengineering "buys time" for CDR and decarbonization to work to stabilize activated tipping responses. because "later is too late."

We have been geoengineering with sulfates for 150 years... On the frightening aspect of geoengineering: New regulations on shipping fuel sulfur to reduce respiratory disease caused by air pollution aerosols have unmasked warming because these sulfur aerosols emissions create significant global cooling, and new direct injection engine particulate emission regulations for also reducing respiratory disease are another source of diminishing global cooling sulfates; these new regulations have certainly contributed to the temperature spike in 2023. Global cooling sulfur emissions from fossil fuels are definitively geoengineering and we have been doing this for 150 years. We know exactly how many people die every year from respiratory disease caused by air pollution (7 or 8 million), and we know exactly what weather patterns are produced by this simple global cooling sulfur aerosol geoengineering. Temporarily rescinding these regulations will knock a few tenths of a degree C off the current temperature, and plausibly another tenth or two degrees C to come as the direct injection engines' particulate emissions regulations further penetrate the fleet.

Getting ready for the big freeze coming to Austin,

B