Truth and the future of humanity

[John Nissen]

Hi everyone,

In the BBC Reith Lecture today (Radio4, 9 am) Rutger Bregman's chosen hero was Bertrand Russell, who championed truth and the love of humanity, present and future.  The lecture series is entitled "Moral revolution", and Russell championed the kind of revolution in morality we now need to protect the future of humanity from catastrophic climate change and sea level rise.

The lecture took place in Silicon Valley and so AI was discussed.  Bregman chose to highlight the threats from AI rather than the benefits.  Someone in the audience raised the issue of huge benefits, one being in the diagnosis of cancer where AI could outcompete humans in the analysis of scans.  But another major benefit of AI could be in the outing of truth where the future of humanity is at stake.

PRAG's mission for planetary restoration is not only based on the desire for a better future for humanity but also on the truth of the climate situation and what can and has to be done about it.  We have already started to look at AI in connection with an "Arctic emergency record card" and the AI bots helped to formulate a letter I wrote to the Financial Times.  I apologise for not immediately following up on this, but we need to press ahead.

We have been vigorously discussing the scientific truth of the situation in the Arctic, as well as globally.  It turned out that some basic physics was quite contentious when applied to lowering the temperature in the Arctic as well as globally.  My argument, which could be supported by AI, is that to lower the temperature of a body being heated there has to be greater cooling power than the heating power such that the net total is negative.

If my argument is correct and my estimates of heating power reasonable, then huge cooling power will be needed to lower the Arctic temperature, as required to prevent catastrophic climate change and sea level rise resulting from the tipping elements in the Arctic.  SAI is the only available technique with sufficient power.  This argument also holds for lowering the global temperature, whose rise is threatening coral reefs, the Amazon rainforest, and water supplies from Himalayan and other non-polar glaciers.  Again, only SAI has the cooling power.

We have also been discussing the threats to humanity from unabated climate change and sea level rise.  The threats to billions of people are so deadly that prevention is essential.  This brings us to the necessary risk/risk analysis: the risks of rapid SAI deployment versus the risks of delayed or no deployment leading to tipping point catastrophes.  The analysis is a no-brainer: the risks from rapid SAI deployment, having already been well scrutinised, pale into insignificance compared to the risks from delayed or no deployment of SAI.  Thus we need urgent emergency SAI deployment, ramping up to full strength as quickly as possible.  The possible speed is indicated by major efforts in the past: the war effort, the Manhattan project and the Kennedy moon-shot.

Soumitra has raised the issue of present suffering and how this is getting worse.  This is a strong argument towards rapid SAI deployment, as well as the need for adaptation and resilience during the years it will take to return temperatures to a more tolerable level than they are today.  SAI is an essential ingredient for the restoration of the planet to a safe, sustainable, biodiverse and productive state, for the future prosperity of humanity.

Bregman is surprisingly optimistic about the future.  He says that a revolution in morals is possible, and it only takes a small group to achieve this.  He gives a number of examples from the past.  I think that, with the help of AI and the willingness within our four groups (and from Paul Gambill), we could spearhead a movement towards the morality of planetary restoration and deploying the means to do it.  

Cheers, John

[Douglas Grandt]

John,

Your bringing up AI stating “…  another major benefit of AI could be in the outing of truth where the future of humanity is at stake” tickled my curiosity as to whether AI has been co-opted by the ERA dogma or not, so I did a basic inquiry.

Good news: we’ve got a friend* indeed!

Cheers,

Doug G

* Claude undermines ERA credibility of Gore, Hayhoe, Hertsgaard, Kolbert, Mann and Pierrehumbert, just to name the most notorious “true believers.” Perhaps the key to shining the light on these folks is to be found in the source documents referenced by Claude in the text below.

If somebody has already done this basic inquiry, apologies I’m not aware of it:

MY INQUIRY TO CLAUDE

What is the fastest that global economies can be decarbonized and what is the soonest that global average temperature can begin to fall toward and reach Holocene pre-industrial levels?

CLAUDE’S RESPONSE

I’ll search for current information on decarbonization timelines and temperature trajectory research.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Based on my research, I can provide answers to both of your questions, though they reveal challenging timelines:

## Fastest Decarbonization Timeline

The speed at which global economies can realistically decarbonize is constrained by both technical and historical precedents. Current global decarbonization rates are only 1.02% per year, yet the world would need to decarbonize twenty times faster to limit warming to 1.5°C . To meet net-zero by 2050 targets, decarbonization rates of 7-9% per year would be required, which would be basically a quadrupling of the rate since the Paris Agreement was adopted .

Historically, even the fastest national decarbonization efforts fall far short of what’s needed. The fastest sustained rates among developed nations ranged from about 2-3.6% per year, with Sweden achieving the highest at 3.6% . No country has achieved rates of decarbonization remotely consistent with Paris Agreement targets .

The IEA projects that with current policies, net-zero could theoretically be achieved by 2050, but most current pledges fall well short of what’s required, and even if fulfilled, would still leave around 22 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions worldwide in 2050 .

## Temperature Decline Timeline

Regarding when temperatures could begin falling and potentially return to pre-industrial levels, the science reveals sobering constraints:

**After reaching net-zero**: Climate models indicate that 50 years after abrupt emission cessation, temperatures would decline by approximately 0.19°C on average, with a range from 0.44°C cooling to 0.04°C warming . However, temperatures would remain approximately constant for at least 1,000 years after emissions stop, due to a near balance between CO2 concentration decay and reduced ocean heat loss .

**Returning to pre-industrial levels**: If CO2 emissions stopped altogether, it would take many thousands of years for atmospheric CO2 to return to pre-industrial levels due to its very slow transfer to the deep ocean and burial in ocean sediments, with surface temperatures staying elevated for at least a thousand years .

To actually reduce temperatures significantly below their peak would require sustained **net-negative emissions** through carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Researchers estimate that on average 222 gigatonnes of carbon removal would be needed to lower temperatures by just 0.1°C —roughly 13% of all CO2 ever emitted since the industrial revolution.

The stark reality is that without massive deployment of carbon removal technologies operating for centuries, returning to Holocene pre-industrial temperature levels appears effectively impossible on any timescale relevant to human civilization. The focus of climate policy has shifted to limiting peak warming rather than reversing it.

[Sources are indicated within the text]

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On Dec 16, 2025, at 2:06 PM, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[John Nissen]

Hi Doug, Robert and Greg,

Claude has acknowledged that without cooling intervention, temperatures cannot fall for decades even with the most strenuous CDR activity.  I assume ChatGPT would give the same answer. 

Claude and ChatGPT should now be asked to acknowledge that, with SAI cooling intervention, it should be possible to lower the Arctic temperature and the global temperature. What would the benefits be for each?  As temperatures rise remorselessly, which tipping elements in the Earth System (see Steffen et al 2018) could reach a point of no return if their local temperature is not lowered soon?

ChatGPT has already been prompted with some answers. Some prompting for Claude may be necessary, especially concerning Arctic tipping elements being close to a point of no return due to the ever rising Arctic temperature.  Cooling power has to be greater than heating power to lower the temperature.

With positive answers, the next question is about the wisdom of a strategy without cooling intervention, as promoted by many climate scientists.  Ask what could be done to change the strategy from one of emissions reduction to one that included SAI.

Cheers John 

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Please be extremely careful when citing AI. This particular response is no exception. 220Gt Co2 removal for 0.1 C temperature decline is false and because it is not cited, cannot be confirmed. Looking for the quote, Claude says it is from here, in an uncited statement:

"Current scientific understanding suggests that net-negative CO2 emissions would reduce global warming at roughly the same rate as ongoing emissions increase it. In quantitative terms, reducing the global average temperature by just 0.1°C would require about 220 gigatonnes (Gt) of net-negative CO2 emissions. Gross amounts of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will need to be even greater, given that it is impossible to reduce CO2 emissions fully to zero (hence the net in net-zero). For comparison: 220 Gt amount to five years of current annual emissions..."

This part of the above statement is also false, "Current scientific understanding suggests that net-negative CO2 emissions would reduce global warming at roughly the same rate as ongoing emissions increase it." While it would be valid to say that "X" scenario creates this modeled result, it is false to say that "current scientific understanding suggests..." faster removal than emissions creates faster cooling through several mechanisms. Total loading is one. There are also cooling feedbacks with removal that enhance the cooling rate relative to the warming rate. The ocean evaporation feedback is one for starters, ocean burial is another, where buried heat returns to the surface far slower than it was absorbed.

Additionally, Claude's response below is also false, "The stark reality is that without massive deployment of carbon removal technologies operating for centuries, returning to Holocene pre-industrial temperature levels appears effectively impossible on any timescale relevant to human civilization." The reason is the same as above. A specific scenario would create this results, but other scenarios with greater removal faster would create different results. The scenarios that AI is trained with by far, are common internet content, that speak to IPCC scenarios only, where IPCC has no restoration scenarios and only addresses removals because of overhsoot of 1.5 C and hard to decarbonize sectors.

Steep trails,

B

Bruce Melton PE
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[Douglas Grandt]

Bruce, Robert and John,

My objective was to simply determine if Mann et al. ERA statements have had any influence within the AI-osphere, and my initial inquiries indicate none at all.

Inspired by your inputs, I made three follow-up inquiries, which further validate that at least this AI (Claude) sees nothing to support Mann et al.

Hence, I for one have concluded that AI could play a role in “outing of truth” as John postulated. Knowing that Mann et al. apparently have no leg to stand on may help develop a strategy to sideline the ERA obstructionists and their baseless belief.

Note the final two paragraphs in particular

Cheers,

Doug

PART 2 (FOLLOW-UP CLARIFICATION)

https://claude.ai/share/af1c837a-bda3-4372-b288-ffc058ba0b20

My follow-up inquiry for clarification 

Claude, your response clearly undermines the emissions reduction alone dogma of Gore, Hayhoe, Hertsgaard, Kolbert, Mann and Pierrehumbert, just to name the most notorious “true believers” that achieving Net Zero emissions will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations to begin falling within 3-4 years and global temperatures to begin to decline within 3-4 decades. Am I understanding you correctly?

Claude’s response

You’re understanding the scientific evidence I presented correctly, but I should clarify what the research actually shows versus what those scientists advocate.

The key distinction is between:

What happens at net-zero (emissions = removals): The scientific consensus, including work by many climate scientists, indicates that temperatures would roughly stabilize - neither continuing to rise significantly nor falling substantially. This is the “zero emissions commitment” finding I cited.

What’s needed for actual temperature decline: Sustained net-negative emissions through large-scale carbon dioxide removal.

However, I should be careful about characterizing the positions of the scientists you mentioned as a monolithic “dogma.” While I don’t have access to their most recent statements, the claim that they uniformly assert CO2 concentrations will fall within 3-4 years of reaching net-zero and temperatures will decline within 3-4 decades seems inconsistent with mainstream climate science literature.

The IPCC and most climate scientists I’m aware of distinguish between:

∙ Temperature stabilization (achievable at net-zero)

∙ Temperature reversal (requiring net-negative emissions)

If specific scientists are claiming that net-zero alone will cause temperatures to decline back toward pre-industrial levels within decades, that would indeed contradict the modeling evidence showing temperatures remain elevated for centuries to millennia after emissions cease, absent large-scale carbon removal.

Do you have specific statements from these scientists making those claims? I’d be interested to understand if there’s a miscommunication about their positions or if there’s a genuine disagreement with the broader literature I found.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

My 2nd follow-up clarification 

It may be that Al Gore’s claim that temperatures will begin to fall in 3-4 decades assumes that the CO2 removal would continue unabated beyond the point at which Net Zero is achieved, and he assumes sustained net negative can achieve global cooling trend. Do you have a calculation of the time from Net Zero to the inflection from warming to cooling?

Claude’s response

I don’t have a specific calculation from my search results for the exact timing of the inflection point from warming to cooling after net-zero, and this is actually a crucial detail that would depend heavily on the assumptions about net-negative emissions.

Let me search for more specific information on this:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Excellent question. The search results provide some helpful specifics:

Timing of Temperature Decline After Net-Zero

The key finding is that net-negative CO2 emissions are required for temperature decline, not just net-zero. Here’s what the research shows:

At the point when greenhouse gas removals exceed emissions – when the world becomes net-negative – temperatures will be in decline .

More specifically, achieving net-zero GHG emissions globally implies net-negative CO2 emissions, leading to a slight decline in the global temperature . This is because reaching net-zero GHG emissions (including methane and other short-lived gases) requires being net-negative on CO2 specifically.

Rate of Temperature Decline

Long-term temperature decline at about 0.03–0.04 °C per decade is broadly consistent with achieving net-zero GHGs . This would be approximately 0.3-0.4°C per century.

The Critical Timeline Question

However, I don’t see a specific calculation in these results for how many years after reaching net-zero CO2 it would take to achieve net-negative and begin cooling. The timing depends entirely on:

1. How quickly net-negative emissions ramp up after net-zero

2. The scale of carbon removal deployed

3. How much residual hard-to-abate emissions remain

If Gore is assuming a rapid and sustained transition from net-zero to significant net-negative emissions (say, within a decade or two of reaching net-zero around 2050), then a 3-4 decade timeline to begin observable cooling could be plausible - you’d be looking at temperatures peaking around 2050-2060 and beginning to decline by 2080-2090.

Would you like me to search for more specific modeling on the transition period from net-zero to net-negative?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

My final follow-up clarification 

Can you find any science that validates Gore, Hayhoe, Hertsgaard, Kolbert, Mann and Pierrehumbert’s claim that achieving Net Zero emissions will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations to begin falling within 3-4 years and global temperatures to begin to decline within 3-4 decades.

Claude’s response

I cannot find scientific literature that validates the specific claim that achieving net-zero emissions will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations to begin falling within 3-4 years and temperatures to begin declining within 3-4 decades. In fact, the scientific evidence I found contradicts this claim on both fronts.

What the Science Actually Shows:

On CO2 concentrations after net-zero:

If CO2 emissions from human activities are reduced to net zero, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would decline at a rate just fast enough to compensate for the slow warming of the deep ocean  . However, this is a very gradual decline, not a rapid one beginning within 3-4 years.

On temperature after net-zero:

The research consistently shows that temperatures would stabilize (plateau), not decline, for extended periods:

∙ The result would be approximately constant global average surface temperatures over decades or centuries 

∙ When we reach net zero, warming will stop within approximately 0.2°C, but net zero CO2 is needed to halt warming while net-zero GHGs implies declining temperatures and happens decades later than net zero CO2 

For actual temperature decline:

Net-negative emissions (not just net-zero) are required. At the point when greenhouse gas removals exceed emissions, when the world becomes net-negative, temperatures will be in decline .

Could Not Find the Specific Claims

I searched for specific statements from Gore, Hayhoe, Mann, and others about the 3-4 year CO2 decline and 3-4 decade temperature decline timeline but could not find them making these particular claims in any scientific publications or reliable sources. The search results mostly returned climate skeptic websites criticizing these scientists on other matters.

If they have made such specific claims, they would be inconsistent with the mainstream climate science literature, which clearly indicates that temperature stabilization (not decline) occurs at net-zero CO2, and meaningful temperature decline requires sustained net-negative emissions.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

###

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On Dec 17, 2025, at 6:54 PM, robert...@gmail.com wrote:

220GtCO₂ removal for 0.1^oC cooling is nonsense.  I ran this through WTF a while back for another purpose, and it calculated that a 10GtCO₂ removal pulse would reduce surface temperature by ~0.1^oC about 25 years afterwards and a similar amount over the indefinite future thereafter.  Before you dismiss this as being an equally unconfirmed statistic, remember that WTF uses the FaIR model computations and FaIR does have the approval of the IPCC.

On AI, I have commented previously that AI should never be cited as an authoritative source.  By all means use AI to provoke your creative thinking and help you find authoritative sources, but do the research properly and quote those sources, not the AI.  

AI is bullshit.  In a formal sense this means that it doesn't care whether what is spits out is true or not.  In its current form it's just a large language model that produces often compelling and apparently coherent text, but without regard for its truth.  That doesn't mean it isn't true, it just means that unless you go somewhere else to check its veracity, you'll not know whether it is or not.

Bullshitting is to be distinguished from lying.  Liars know what they're saying is untrue.  Bullshitters are indifferent to whether it is or not.

Regards

RobertC

On Dec 17, 2025, at 6:09 PM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:



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[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Doug--On the Al Gore statement a few years ago, having been science guy at a few of his leadership training sessions, I sought clarification and eventually found that it was based on misinterpretation of a test case that carbon cycle modelers ran where they put 1000 GtC in the atmosphere at once and then looked at what models did. Basically what they did was, over a decade or two, to get down to an airborne fraction of about one half, so the value that is often assumed.

I think he has more recently said there would be a drop (though not that big) if the world went to zero emissions in one year--which I think is based on the fact that not all of the last few years of emissions have yet come down to an airborne fraction of a half. Again, I'm not happy with that as given emissions are pretty steady, whether one says that it takes a few years emissions to get down to an airborne fraction of a half or say only the last year has to do it does not really matter (well, (1) until emissions start dropping sharply, and (2) if one is only talking about CO2 and not the short-lived species, etc.

But, overall, interesting findings from your queries.

Best, Mike

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[Peter Fiekowsky]

Mike and Doug,

Interesting discussion here. Let me suggest an alternative approach to the question of what happens when we get to net zero: Put it into a climate model, and see for yourself. I’ve been using MAGICC 7 model, which is available online: https://live.magicc.org/.

If you put an hour into it, you can get the answers you want. This is how I (based on Shannon Fiume’s work) modeled the cooling resulting from removing 60 Gt CO2 / year between 2030 and 2050, and 20 Gt / year between 2051 and 2100. Here’s the result.

AI is limited to what scientists say, and scientists generally have political leanings on what they say. The mathematical model is non-political. Insofar as you want to be non-political, I highly recommend using MAGICC. If you have an ax to grind, quote the scientists you like and ignore the math. That’s what most people do!

If you need help-call me. I’ll be around next week.

Peter

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[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Peter--First a question about the model simulation--what does it assume about the ongoing path of GHG emissions during this period? That is, Is the  60 GtCO2/yr interval composed of a combination of reductions of the current emissions of some amount of the 40 GtCO2/year and of ocean uptake of CO2 and then by the time of the 20 GtCO2/yr, that would all that would be needed as global emission levels would be sharply down by then? So, basically, would your goal be met if global CO2 emissions went to zero immediately (not possible, but hypothetically), and then 20 GtCO2 of ocean uptake out to 2100?

Or, is there some underlying presumption of CO2 emissions going, say, to net zero by 2050 and then you proposal is in addition?

It all just makes me wonder if what you should be pushing for as a proposal is for a net CO2 pathway what is a combination of emissions being brought down and ocean fertilization brought up such that to get to where your scenario requires is to get to a net negative 20 GtCO2 emissions pathway ASAP and for the rest of the century (and likely beyond as there will likely be, or already are) reductions in C uptake, emissions from permafrost thawing, and remaining direct CO2 emissions from human activities that will have to be countered)? And in stating your proposed path this way, it would allow for including enhanced ecosystem uptake/enhanced natural sinks, biochar, and other approaches to all be contributing rather than putting the entire burden on ocean uptake.

Best, Mike MacCracken

PS--On using MAGICC, I concur it as very useful, though back nearly two decades when I was doing it, it was not easy to use from a MAC computer system.

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[Peter Fiekowsky]

Hi Mike-The climate restoration simulation I did is maximally simple. It starts with the SSP-119 model in which emissions go almost to net-zero in 2050 and changes the CO2 emission curve to a flat -60 Gt / year from 2025 to 2050, and -22 Gt / year from 2060 to 2100. I did that so people wouldn't be tempted to tweak it. It's stupidly simple. However if you tried to make it more realistic, it wouldn't make a bit of difference, but you'd spend the rest of your life debating what 'realistic' is. 

If you imagine emissions going down linearly to zero in 2050, then removals would need to start at 90 Gt / year (with emissions of 30 Gt) in 2025. Actual removals would then decrease to 60 as emissions went to zero. That's silly--but simple. The point is to remove all the needed CO2 by 2050, and then keep removing what gets emitted from the ocean from 2050 to 2100 so that we get to zero warming by 2100. It's a baseline scenario that shows the scale of removal needed to achieve zero warming by 2100.

And yes, you can include whatever sinks you want to include. CO2 is CO2 however it's removed. 

It takes 5-10 minutes to do another run. The roughly "net zero by 2050 and afterwards" variations are the faint gray lines you see near the top. These models were designed in 2014. Ten years later they appear ridiculously optimistic.

Best regards,
Peter

[rob de laet]

Hi Peter, 

wonderfully simple simulation, very helpful. Thank you.

We now are all in agreement that the cloud cover/albedo anomaly feedback due to aerosol changes is a ''non-CO2'' accelerator of the warming. 

In the work by Peter Bunyard and myself, it is not just the cloud cover but also the diminished amount of latent heat transport upwards and out into space that causes this parallel warming. It is due to the malfunctioning of ecosystems (particularly ocean systems and tropical rainforests) that combined are an additional, substantial cause of global warming, one which signature is getting slowly clearer recognition. 

Reversal of this separate accelerator caused by disruption of the water cycles due to biosphere destruction needs its own strategic approach to cool the planet. It actually sequestrates lots of atmospheric carbon in the process, but its primary cooling effect will be much faster: increased cloud cover and export of latent heat out into space. 

Combining these different programs may still avert large scale collapse, if we hurry. 

Kind regards,

Rob de Laet 

Project Lead Cooling the Climate

Member of the EcoRestoration Alliance

Fellow of Global Evergreening Alliance

Fellow fo the Schumacher Institute

Planetary Solvency Taskforce

Co-founder of Senang Eco Services

WhatsApp: +55 71 992617846

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[Douglas Grandt]

Mike, Peter and John,

Much appreciate your multiple responses, and you’ve guided me to further hone my Claude AI assessment, which (not surprisingly) gives more insight into and refutes Gore’s and Mann’s statements.

Importantly, if Claude is representative of other AI platforms’ training (side-by-side comparison of replicated inquiries may be prudent), John’s idea of using AI to reveal truths (i.e., the level of future devastation) may play a role in an effective messaging campaign strategy.

Mike, pay particular attention to Claude’s response to my final query re Gore 🙏

Best regards,

Doug 

Continuing from previous queries:

My next query:

Please comment on this email from Peter Fiekowsky to Michael MacCracken in context with Claude's earlier assessment of Michael Mann's beliefs, especially Mann's apparent disregard of ocean outgassing CO2 as temperatures decline as suggested by Peter's "keep removing what gets emitted from the ocean":

Hi Mike-The climate restoration simulation I did is maximally …(Peter’s complete email text and graphic)

Claude’s response:

This is a fascinating exchange that reveals important nuances in the climate restoration debate. Let me break down what Peter Fiekowsky’s model shows and how it relates to the broader scientific discussion:

## Key Insights from Fiekowsky’s Model

**The ocean outgassing issue:** Fiekowsky explicitly acknowledges something often overlooked in simplified “net-zero solves everything” narratives - that as you remove atmospheric CO2 and temperatures begin to decline, the ocean will outgas CO2 back into the atmosphere. His phrase “keep removing what gets emitted from the ocean from 2050 to 2100” is critical. This is a physical reality: oceans have absorbed roughly 25-30% of anthropogenic CO2, and as atmospheric concentrations fall, they’ll release some back, working against restoration efforts.

**The scale required:** His model shows 60 Gt/year CO2 removal from 2025-2050, then 22 Gt/year from 2060-2100. For context, current global CO2 emissions are around 37 Gt/year, and current CO2 removal capacity is measured in mere megatons, not gigatons. He’s proposing removal at scales vastly exceeding current human emissions.

**The timeline:** The model shows temperatures peaking around 2030 at ~1.3°C, then declining to near-zero warming by 2100. This is a 70-year cooling period following aggressive removal - much longer than a “3-4 decade” timeline from net-zero.

## Regarding Michael Mann’s Position

I should be careful here because I haven’t found specific statements from Mann claiming that net-zero alone (without continued removal) will cause temperatures to decline within 3-4 decades. However, if Mann or others are advocating for net-zero as sufficient for temperature decline without explicitly accounting for:

1. The need for sustained net-negative emissions (not just achieving net-zero once)

2. Ocean outgassing as atmospheric CO2 falls

3. The massive scale of removal required (60+ Gt/year initially in Fiekowsky’s model)

…then they would be understating the challenge considerably.

## The Critical Distinction

Fiekowsky’s model doesn’t show “achieve net-zero and wait for cooling.” It shows “remove CO2 at scales far exceeding current emissions, maintain that removal for decades to counteract ocean outgassing, and you might achieve zero warming by 2100.” This is climate **restoration** (active reversal), not climate **stabilization** (the outcome of net-zero).

The chart you’ve provided actually supports my earlier assessment: even with heroic levels of CO2 removal (60 Gt/year), it takes until approximately 2100 to return to near-zero warming - and the CO2 concentration only falls to ~300 ppm, still well above the pre-industrial ~280 ppm.

Would you like me to search for any specific statements from Mann or others about whether they account for ocean outgassing in their net-zero scenarios?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

My response:

Please do!

Claude’s response:

Excellent! I found Mann’s actual statements. Now let me search for whether he addresses ocean outgassing specifically:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This is extremely revealing! Now I have Mann’s actual statements. Let me analyze what I found:

## What Michael Mann Actually Says

Mann’s position on ocean uptake is clear from multiple sources:

**His claim about ocean uptake at net-zero:**

The oceans continue to draw carbon from the atmosphere and the atmospheric CO2 concentration decreases, causing cooling. This negative “carbon cycle inertia” almost perfectly offsets the positive thermal inertia, and the net inertia of the system is very close to zero .

More specifically, if you stop emitting carbon right now, the oceans start to take up carbon more rapidly, and such ocean storage of CO2 mostly offsets the warming effect of the CO2 that still remains in the atmosphere. Thus, the actual lag between halting CO2 emissions and halting temperature rise is not 25 to 30 years but more like three to five years .

## The Critical Problem: Mann Does NOT Address Ocean Outgassing During Cooling

This is the key issue that Peter Fiekowsky explicitly accounts for in his model but Mann apparently does not. Here’s what Mann says versus what the physics requires:

**Mann’s narrative:** Oceans absorb CO2 when emissions stop → temperatures stabilize quickly → problem largely solved

**Fiekowsky’s model (and basic ocean chemistry):** If you want temperatures to actually *decline* (not just stabilize), you need sustained net-negative emissions because as atmospheric CO2 falls and temperatures drop, oceans will outgas CO2 back into the atmosphere, working against your restoration efforts.

Mann talks about ocean uptake offsetting thermal inertia *at the point of reaching net-zero*, creating temperature stabilization. But **he does not discuss what happens if you try to go further and actually cool the planet** through carbon removal. The ocean doesn’t just keep absorbing indefinitely - it’s a dynamic equilibrium system.

## The Specific Claims You Asked About

I could not find Mann (or the other scientists you mentioned) making the specific claim that:

- CO2 concentrations will begin falling within 3-4 years of net-zero

- Temperatures will begin declining within 3-4 decades

What Mann *does* claim is:

- Warming will *stop* within 3-5 years of reaching net-zero (temperature stabilization)

- The Zero Emissions Commitment is near zero (no additional warming after net-zero)

These are fundamentally different claims than “temperatures will decline back toward pre-industrial levels.”

## The Fiekowsky Chart Context

Fiekowsky’s model shows that even with heroic CO2 removal (60 Gt/year), you need to **“keep removing what gets emitted from the ocean”** for 50+ years to achieve cooling. This is the physics that Mann’s “empowering” message appears to gloss over.

Mann is technically correct about temperature *stabilization* at net-zero, but this is very different from climate *restoration* (returning to pre-industrial conditions), which requires the sustained net-negative emissions and dealing with ocean outgassing that Fiekowsky explicitly models.

Would you like me to search for statements from the other scientists you mentioned?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

My final query:

Yes, it is Al Gore who explicitly claims that temperature will begin to decline in 30-40 years after achieving Net Zero, presumably a quasi static decline in atmospheric CO2 emissions rather than a sudden cessation in say 2030.

Claude’s response (Mike please note):

Perfect! I found Gore’s actual statements. Let me search for more specific claims about the 30-40 year temperature decline:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Excellent! Now I have Gore’s actual statements. Here’s what I found:

## Al Gore’s Actual Claims

Gore has made two distinct claims that are important to separate:

**Claim 1: Temperature stabilization at net-zero**

Temperatures will stop going up with a lag of as little as 3 to 5 years once net zero is reached  .

**Claim 2: CO2 atmospheric decline at net-zero**

If we stay at true net zero, half of the human-caused CO2 will have fallen out of the atmosphere in as little as 25 to 30 years  .

## Critical Analysis in Light of Fiekowsky’s Model and Ocean Outgassing

Gore’s claims reveal a fundamental misunderstanding (or miscommunication) about what happens at net-zero:

**Gore says:** At net-zero, half the CO2 falls out of the atmosphere in 25-30 years

**The physics (per Fiekowsky’s model):** At true net-zero, atmospheric CO2 would be roughly stable because:

- Natural sinks (oceans, land) continue absorbing some CO2

- BUT as atmospheric concentrations fall, oceans begin outgassing CO2 back

- These approximately balance out at net-zero

**What Gore appears to be describing** is not net-zero at all, but rather a scenario where we continue *net-negative emissions* for 25-30 years after initially reaching net-zero. This is exactly what Fiekowsky models - sustained removal of 60 Gt/year initially, then 22 Gt/year from 2060-2100 to “keep removing what gets emitted from the ocean.”

## The Key Distinction Gore Glosses Over

Gore’s language “if we **stay at true net zero**” is doing a lot of hidden work. What does “stay at” mean?

- **Literal interpretation**: We reach net-zero and maintain exactly zero net emissions → CO2 stabilizes, temperatures stabilize

- **Gore’s apparent meaning**: We reach net-zero and continue aggressive carbon removal to offset ocean outgassing → CO2 declines, temperatures could eventually decline

## Regarding Temperature Decline in 30-40 Years

I did NOT find Gore explicitly claiming temperatures will *decline* (not just stop rising) in 30-40 years after net-zero. What I found is:

1. Temperatures **stop rising** in 3-5 years (temperature stabilization)

2. CO2 declines by half in 25-30 years (IF we “stay at” net-zero - which requires net-negative)

3. No explicit claim about when temperatures begin **declining**

However, if Gore believes CO2 falls by half in 25-30 years, he would logically expect temperature decline to follow, which would put us in the 30-40 year timeframe you mentioned.

## The Critical Problem

**Gore does not explicitly address ocean outgassing**. His claim that CO2 falls by half at “true net-zero” only works if “true net-zero” actually means sustained net-negative emissions sufficient to overcome ocean outgassing - which is precisely what Fiekowsky models and what Gore’s framing obscures.

This is either:

- A communication failure (using “net-zero” when he means “net-negative”)

- Or a fundamental misunderstanding of the ocean carbon cycle dynamics

Would you like me to search for statements from the other scientists you mentioned (Hayhoe, Hertsgaard, Kolbert, Pierrehumbert)?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

In conclusion:

Thanks, but not yet … I need to ponder and share your updated assessment.

Claude summarizes:

That makes complete sense. This is genuinely complex material with significant implications for climate policy and public understanding.

To summarize what we’ve established:

**Michael Mann’s position:** Temperatures stabilize (stop rising) within 3-5 years of reaching net-zero due to ocean uptake offsetting thermal inertia. He does NOT address what happens during active cooling attempts or ocean outgassing during temperature decline.

**Al Gore’s position:** Temperatures stop rising in 3-5 years at net-zero, and CO2 falls by half in 25-30 years “if we stay at true net-zero.” He does NOT explicitly address ocean outgassing, and his language about “staying at net-zero” while CO2 declines appears to conflate net-zero with sustained net-negative emissions.

**Peter Fiekowsky’s model:** Explicitly accounts for ocean outgassing during cooling, requires 60 Gt/year removal initially and sustained 22 Gt/year removal from 2060-2100 to “keep removing what gets emitted from the ocean,” achieving near-zero warming by 2100 - a 70-year process, not 30-40 years.

**The scientific literature:** Indicates temperature stabilization at net-zero, but temperature decline requires sustained net-negative emissions, and return to pre-industrial levels would take centuries to millennia even with carbon removal.

Feel free to return whenever you’d like to continue exploring this, whether it’s searching for the other scientists’ statements or diving deeper into any aspect of the carbon cycle dynamics and restoration timelines.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

###

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 19, 2025, at 10:34 PM, Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com> wrote:



Hi Mike-The climate restoration simulation I did is maximally simple. It starts with the SSP-119 model in which emissions go almost to net-zero in 2050 and changes the CO2 emission curve to a flat -60 Gt / year from 2025 to 2050, and -22 Gt / year from 2060 to 2100. I did that so people wouldn't be tempted to tweak it. It's stupidly simple. However if you tried to make it more realistic, it wouldn't make a bit of difference, but you'd spend the rest of your life debating what 'realistic' is. 

If you imagine emissions going down linearly to zero in 2050, then removals would need to start at 90 Gt / year (with emissions of 30 Gt) in 2025. Actual removals would then decrease to 60 as emissions went to zero. That's silly--but simple. The point is to remove all the needed CO2 by 2050, and then keep removing what gets emitted from the ocean from 2050 to 2100 so that we get to zero warming by 2100. It's a baseline scenario that shows the scale of removal needed to achieve zero warming by 2100.

And yes, you can include whatever sinks you want to include. CO2 is CO2 however it's removed. 

It takes 5-10 minutes to do another run. The roughly "net zero by 2050 and afterwards" variations are the faint gray lines you see near the top. These models were designed in 2014. Ten years later they appear ridiculously optimistic.

<image.png>

Best regards,
Peter

On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 8:30 AM Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:

Dear Peter--First a question about the model simulation--what does it assume about the ongoing path of GHG emissions during this period? That is, Is the  60 GtCO2/yr interval composed of a combination of reductions of the current emissions of some amount of the 40 GtCO2/year and of ocean uptake of CO2 and then by the time of the 20 GtCO2/yr, that would all that would be needed as global emission levels would be sharply down by then? So, basically, would your goal be met if global CO2 emissions went to zero immediately (not possible, but hypothetically), and then 20 GtCO2 of ocean uptake out to 2100?

Or, is there some underlying presumption of CO2 emissions going, say, to net zero by 2050 and then you proposal is in addition?

It all just makes me wonder if what you should be pushing for as a proposal is for a net CO2 pathway what is a combination of emissions being brought down and ocean fertilization brought up such that to get to where your scenario requires is to get to a net negative 20 GtCO2 emissions pathway ASAP and for the rest of the century (and likely beyond as there will likely be, or already are) reductions in C uptake, emissions from permafrost thawing, and remaining direct CO2 emissions from human activities that will have to be countered)? And in stating your proposed path this way, it would allow for including enhanced ecosystem uptake/enhanced natural sinks, biochar, and other approaches to all be contributing rather than putting the entire burden on ocean uptake.

Best, Mike MacCracken

PS--On using MAGICC, I concur it as very useful, though back nearly two decades when I was doing it, it was not easy to use from a MAC computer system.

On 12/18/25 5:37 PM, Peter Fiekowsky wrote:

Mike and Doug,

Interesting discussion here. Let me suggest an alternative approach to the question of what happens when we get to net zero: Put it into a climate model, and see for yourself. I’ve been using MAGICC 7 model, which is available online: https://live.magicc.org/.

If you put an hour into it, you can get the answers you want. This is how I (based on Shannon Fiume’s work) modeled the cooling resulting from removing 60 Gt CO2 / year between 2030 and 2050, and 20 Gt / year between 2051 and 2100. Here’s the result.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/arcticmethane/CAEr4H2kbnUK9Qboyz0POOGX2-mmFYXdZS0%3DOhyS4X6Y6FAsnBQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Interesting Doug. AI is maddening. There are so  many errors here, or regurgitation of reticent consensus science, it's like the Gish gallop where a debater makes so many inaccurate statements that the other team cannot possibly refute them all in the time allotted. 

Ocean outgassing alone? What about the other two thirds of Earth systems that are now degraded and their sequestration compromised to reversed? It's the poor understanding of feedbacks and conservative ocean and ice sheet inertia assumptions in modeling that have created this "hypothesis" that warming will stop with net zero. There is no way to know the true rate of feedback emissions therefore reticent science understates. Hansen (and others) look at proxies for a reason. This is to remove the assumption of feedback rates from the equation because with proxies, feedbacks are fully realized. 

The modeling on atmospheric CO2 stabilization with net zero... For centuries at least, proxy analysis shows warming in the pipeline from not just feedbacks but flux equalization from ocean and ice sheet inertia. Our climate forcing is wildly out of balance with our Earth systems heat content and net zero alone will take centuries at least to see equalization which is also false because these modelings do not consider tipping that will become irreversible by mid-century without restoration, with natural emissions dwarfing humankind's.

Ocean re-emissions are oversized as well. Forty percent of ocean heat is buried in the abyss and not available for re-emissions for centuries.

There is also ambiguity in these responses... What is it, ocean outgassing starts at net zero, or it starts when the atmospheric/ocean equilibrium flips back to where the ocean emits?

And nary a mention of the scenario bias where everything that is not a quote regurgitation from a public discussion, is based on executive summary information, or scenarios, and none of the scenarios AI looks at are less than 1.5 C, or return to natural variation. It all has no mention anywhere of concepts of tipping/degradation/ Earth systems collapse, points of no return, and cascading responses.

I have been working on an article extremely critical of AI and non-expert use as it relates to AI training on sea level rise and anthropogenic cause. What this AI experiment about Mann and others' statements on net zero has shown me, beyond wholesale regurgitation of consensus science, is that the problem is even deeper than what I have been experimenting with with sea level rise. If one assumes that legacy climate culture is authoritative, AI is very compelling. 

What I would like to know now Doug, if you have the time, what does Claude say about this entire sequence of call and response, when he/she/it is introduced to the concept of warming in the pipeline from ocean and ice sheet cooling inertia and natural feedback emissions from tropical, temperature and boreal forests, and permafrost.

Another twist of this experiment is that Claude cannot find at least some of what Mann is supposed to have said, or it cannot find it initially, then looks deeper? (What? Is there is a two-stage query training with Claude where the first look is cursory????) So, what do other AI platforms say about identifying Mann's exact quote(s)?

Steep trails,

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
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Twitter - BruceCMelton1 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/9FE583BD-9601-42BF-9540-6CFC6773A714%40mac.com.

[Douglas Grandt]

Bruce and Mike,

Appreciate your technically “deep dive” critique, Bruce. Not sure that it adds or detracts from this particular AI (Claude) having no apparent training, knowledge, or validation of Mann’s net zero arm-waving explanation, or undermining John’s hope that AI might be useful in exposing truths about future harm that adherence to Mann-Gore climate policy leadership would likely bring to bear.

The trail seems to be getting steeper and off course, but you lured me into asking this follow-up question ⬇️, Claude’s response to which is over my pay grade.

Mike, would you care to speculate as to whether it supports or detracts from my “null hypothesis” that AI might be agnostic on Mann-Gore so-called “science”—or if AI (Claude ChatGPT, Grok, etc.) is legitimately unable to validate and therefore refutes their assertions—given your “history” with Gore and staff, and familiarity with Mann?

Best,

Doug

My current query:

What scientific data, observations, postulations, academic papers or any other alleged opinions do Mann and Gore cite to back up their assertions?

Claude’s response:

Perfect! Now let me search for what Al Gore cites:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Now let me fetch the key paper Mann is citing:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Excellent! Now I have the primary source. Let me search for the Palazzo Corner paper that Mann is citing:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Perfect! Now I have the complete picture. Here’s what Mann and Gore actually cite:

## What Scientific Sources Do Mann and Gore Cite?

### **Michael Mann’s Primary Citation:**

Mann’s claims are based primarily on the **Palazzo Corner et al. (2023)** paper “The Zero Emissions Commitment and climate stabilization” published in *Frontiers in Science*.

**Key findings from this paper that Mann cites:**

- Average ZEC (Zero Emissions Commitment) across models is close to zero for at least 50 years

- For emissions up to 1000 GtC, the average ZEC is “very slightly negative (just under −0.1°C)”

- However, there’s substantial uncertainty: individual models range from −0.3°C cooling to +0.3°C warming

- 66% likelihood that additional warming will be less than 0.3°C once zero emissions are reached

- BUT: 33% chance warming could be more than 0.3°C

**Critical limitation Mann acknowledges but downplays:**

The paper explicitly states uncertainty increases dramatically beyond 100 years, and the “coincidental balance between positive climate inertia and negative carbon cycle inertia is **tenuous** and subject to possible revision.”

### **What Mann Does NOT Cite:**

Mann provides **NO citations** for his claim about ocean uptake rates or the 3-5 year temperature stabilization timeline. His statement that “the oceans continue to draw carbon from the atmosphere and the atmospheric CO2 concentration decreases” lacks specific supporting references for the timescale or magnitude.

### **Al Gore’s Primary Source:**

Gore appears to be citing **the same Palazzo Corner et al. (2023) paper** that Mann is promoting, filtered through Mann’s own interpretation and public communications.

**What Gore claims but doesn’t cite specifically:**

- “Half of human-caused CO2 will have fallen out of the atmosphere in as little as 25-30 years” at “true net zero”

- No scientific paper I found makes this specific claim about CO2 atmospheric decline at actual net-zero

### **The Critical Problem with Both Citations:**

**The Palazzo Corner paper itself** makes clear that:

1. **ZEC applies to temperature stabilization, not decline**

2. **Substantial uncertainty** exists (−0.3°C to +0.3°C range)

3. **No discussion of ocean outgassing** during active cooling scenarios

4. **No validation** of Gore’s “50% CO2 reduction in 25-30 years at net-zero” claim

**What Neither Mann Nor Gore Cite:**

Neither provides scientific support for:

- Ocean outgassing rates during temperature decline

- The dynamics of maintaining net-zero while oceans release CO2

- The scale of continued removal needed (which Fiekowsky explicitly models at 22-60 Gt/year)

### **Bottom Line:**

Both Mann and Gore are extrapolating from a paper about **temperature stabilization at net-zero** to make claims about **temperature decline and CO2 atmospheric reduction**—processes the paper doesn’t actually model or validate. The Palazzo Corner paper is about what happens when you stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere, not what happens when you actively try to remove it faster than the ocean can outgas it.

This is the fundamental gap: the paper they cite supports “warming stops,” but neither Mann nor Gore provide scientific citations for “CO2 falls by half in 25-30 years” or for handling ocean outgassing during active restoration.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

###

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 20, 2025, at 11:19 AM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/d9271ef9-c9a3-4a85-8cd6-c13c85b226b6%40earthlink.net.

[Peter Fiekowsky]

Doug-

Great discussion here. I liked how you asked Claude about my statements, and how Claude analyzed them.

I think we’re all here to work on giving our children the best world we can— with CO2 and temperatures close to preindustrial levels. We know where we’re going, and what path will take us there fastest.

The difference between my model and Mann or Gore is that I’m specifying the result we want. That is safe CO2 by 2050 and zero warming by 2100. We ask MAGICC what route will get us there—that’s engineering. Science just predicts the future based on the past and present. It doesn’t tell us what we need to discover or invent to have what we want. The IPCC, Mann and Gore are saying, “we’re flying in this direction-- Where will we probably end up? Certainly an interesting question.

It’s like me flying a plane scientifically and saying, I’m heading West from San Francisco. Where will I end up?  The answer is, of course, “somewhere”, but probably not Hawaii. Almost no matter what, it’ll be a catastrophe.

However, if I just set my GPS to Honolulu, Hawaii, I’ll probably get there. Maybe I’ll need to modify a plane to get there, but I’ll get there. That’s the intentional climate restoration model.

We now know the path to a restored CO2 and climate. The problem is that we need to remove 60 Gt CO2 / year and peer reviewed papers only discuss pathways that remove 1 Gt / year. The good news is that we know we need to do 60 Gt/year, and that Nature removed 20 Gt / year in 1992, after the Pinatubo eruption.  Now we just need to figure out how to remove CO2 three times faster than Nature did randomly in 1992.  

Despite the fact that no papers have been peer reviewed, our preprint paper shows how it almost certainly happened. Please ask Claude to look at this preprint: The Pinatubo CO2 pause suggests a rapidly testable path to multi-Gt mCDR , and see if scaling up to 60 Gt / year is plausible.

The journal editor who rejected it said, “It’s not science—it’s different from existing ocean fertilization thinking. We’ll resubmit next year.

Peter

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Rob--I'd like a bit of clarification. So, the models do a quite good reproduction of climate change over the past 150+ years with what they have done on GHG, volcanic, aerosol and other forcings. Now, it might be that there is some calibration in there, but it is not really clear that there is room for your mechanism to have had a large effect. So, what is the effect on global average temperature are you suggesting that the mechanism you are discussing is responsible for--or it just an included aspect of how cloud feedback in the models works.

On the other hand, it is suggested that the Medieval warm period of nearly 1000 years ago might have been a result of land clearing in Europe, and this being a relatively regionally focused influence, I wonder if the mechanism that you are suggesting might have been more dominant than at present, where the changes are pretty clearly dominated by the increasing GHG concentrations? So, I'm just wondering if you and colleagues have looked at other periods and wheether the mechanism that you are describing might have been more evident?

Best, Mike

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/985774017.2927122.1766204226721%40mail.yahoo.com.

[rob de laet]

Dear Mike, 

thank you for the question. Below I have drafted a few points that show that the GHG increases are not the only game in town. 

Here are some indications:

A Century of Reforestation Reduced Anthropogenic Warming in the Eastern United States

This article shows that from 1900 to 2000, much of North America warmed about 0.7°C, but the U.S. East Coast and Southeast cooled about 0.3°C (the “warming hole”). The authors argue that widespread 20th-century reforestation is an important contributor to that anomaly. Present-day forests in the eastern U.S. cool land surface temperature about 1–2°C annually versus nearby short vegetation; at midday in summer the surface cooling is strongest, about 2–5°C. Most deforestation since 1960 has occurred in the tropics, while temperate and boreal regions have generally been stable or net gaining forest area in recent decades.

The Goessling, Rackow & Jung study on the 2023 temperature surge and “record-low planetary albedo” has a panel showing the 2023 ERA5 low-cloud-cover anomaly (percent) derived from the ECMWF/Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis. (arXiv)

During major rainforest droughts like in 2023 in the Amazon, Congo and maritime SE Asia, stressed forests emit fewer biogenic cloud-forming aerosols and less water vapour, which reduces low-cloud cover and cloud brightness over and downwind of these regions (including nearby oceans), lowering albedo and causing an extra, biophysically driven warming signal, which of course has a greater impact around the equator than elsewhere. 

It is also likely that declining ocean biology leads to lesser cloud production. Why there is a lot of emphasis on anthropogenic aerosol effects (mainly due to lower sulphur content in shipping fuel) is because these particles can be observed by satellites and bioaerosols amd secundary effects not. 

A 1 percentage-point decline in low-cloud fraction over the tropics and subtropics could increase absorbed solar energy by roughly 0.5 W/m²—equivalent to about 0.4 °C of equilibrium global warming, or ~0.1–0.2 °C of near-term observed warming—similar in magnitude to estimates for 2023’s radiative imbalance. This apart from the reduced latent heat export up and out into space. 

There is growing evidence that these biophysical effects cause a large part of global warming in the last decades, now completely attributed to greenhouse gas warming. One of the biggest climate unknowns is how intact natural ecosystems regulate climate, because Earth-system science and climate models are largely calibrated on already disturbed, human-modified landscapes. As I have reasoned before, the climate sensitivity of the Earth is a combination of GHG levels and the level of climate regulation by the biosphere. It is clear that our planet is now more climate sensitive than it was a few decades back, due to the decline in natural regulation by ecosystems as they have been massively degraded due to the population explosion, the massive landuse change due to food production and the growth of human infrastructure (cities, roads etc). 

Looking forward to your thoughts on this, 

Kind regards, 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/371fde78-e9ae-4f9d-9b00-836fd7d47616%40comcast.net.

[John Nissen]

Hi Doug,

Claude, in its various pronouncements, ignores the possibility of SRM to reduce temperatures.  A body being heated requires greater cooling force/flux/power than the net heating force/flux/power if the temperature is to be reduced.

You need to instruct Claude that the heating power from GHGs (due to reduced thermal radiation into space) and from lost cloud and ice albedo (due to reduced shortwave radiation into space), less power from blackbody radiation (due to increased thermal radiation into space), has to be countered by greater SRM cooling power (by increasing shortwave radiation into space) in order to produce "net negative heating" and reduce the temperature of the Earth System in general or the Arctic subsystem in particular.  None of the things Claude has said about reducing temperature a certain amount without SRM are true.  Claude needs to acknowledge the physics and correct itself.

Another important matter is that every model incorporates the assumptions of the modeller, who may be wrong about them.  Thus referring to a model to obtain temperature curves can lead to seriously wrong results, e.g. the reduction in temperature shown by the model Peter Fiekowsky has recommended to use.  While GHGs are heating the planet, there is no way to bring the temperature without SRM, and certainly no way to restore the planet to a reasonably safe and healthy state.

Robert T ran some of my text through ChatGPT and it accepted the physical arguments and the need for SAI.  I challenged some of its other responses.  Its main problem with SAI that I didn't challenge was how to govern the deployment: that requires some difficult discussion as it's a political question.

Cheers, John

On Sun, Dec 21, 2025 at 2:07 AM Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com> wrote:

Peter, 

The directions this thread is taking is very interesting—unanticipated tangents that are equally poignant and elucidating. 

My intended goal is to assure there is a basis to feel confident that relying on AI as suggested by John’s proposal to expose truths about [my choice of words] 1) future harm from adherence to Mann-Gore policy leadership versus, 2) relative benefits of take a better informed strategic proverbial “fork in the road.”

I particularly like your analogy comparing navigating by setting a definite destination vs. a general compass heading and likely not arriving at the intended destination. Even laymen can visualize the difference in likely outcomes.

I took liberty to quote your entire email because I felt confident 1) your argument would prevail, 2) the AI query is not public and 3) it just might open Claude’s eyes or expand awareness to our side of the debate, in addition to testing in not-so-subtle terms where AI (at least Claude for starters) will reinforce or undermine either side, free to search, find and present credible factual supporting references.

I feel more and more confident that we can understand the viability of each AI platform through carefully designed queries such that responses to critical rhetorical lines of reasoning might become predictable for use in reaching out and convincing or shaming influential folks whose arguments are simply rooted in fear, ignorance or indecision, e.g., the likes of Gore, Hayhoe, Hertsgaard, Kolbert, Mann, McKibben, Revkin, etc.

As Jim says* “criticisms welcome”

 

Best,

Doug

* just one blatant example on his page

2011 – Aug. 26: Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications: Revised paper, criticisms welcome.

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 20, 2025, at 6:01 PM, Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com> wrote:



Doug-

Great discussion here. I liked how you asked Claude about my statements, and how Claude analyzed them.

I think we’re all here to work on giving our children the best world we can— with CO2 and temperatures close to preindustrial levels. We know where we’re going, and what path will take us there fastest.

The difference between my model and Mann or Gore is that I’m specifying the result we want. That is safe CO2 by 2050 and zero warming by 2100. We ask MAGICC what route will get us there—that’s engineering. Science just predicts the future based on the past and present. It doesn’t tell us what we need to discover or invent to have what we want. The IPCC, Mann and Gore are saying, “we’re flying in this direction-- Where will we probably end up? Certainly an interesting question.

It’s like me flying a plane scientifically and saying, I’m heading West from San Francisco. Where will I end up?  The answer is, of course, “somewhere”, but probably not Hawaii. Almost no matter what, it’ll be a catastrophe.

However, if I just set my GPS to Honolulu, Hawaii, I’ll probably get there. Maybe I’ll need to modify a plane to get there, but I’ll get there. That’s the intentional climate restoration model.

We now know the path to a restored CO2 and climate. The problem is that we need to remove 60 Gt CO2 / year and peer reviewed papers only discuss pathways that remove 1 Gt / year. The good news is that we know we need to do 60 Gt/year, and that Nature removed 20 Gt / year in 1992, after the Pinatubo eruption.  Now we just need to figure out how to remove CO2 three times faster than Nature did randomly in 1992.  

Despite the fact that no papers have been peer reviewed, our preprint paper shows how it almost certainly happened. Please ask Claude to look at this preprint: The Pinatubo CO2 pause suggests a rapidly testable path to multi-Gt mCDR , and see if scaling up to 60 Gt / year is plausible.

The journal editor who rejected it said, “It’s not science—it’s different from existing ocean fertilization thinking. We’ll resubmit next year.

Peter

From: Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>
Date: Saturday, December 20, 2025 at 9:39 AM
To: Bruce Melton Austin Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>, Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
Cc: Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>, arctic...@googlegroups.com <arctic...@googlegroups.com>, robert...@gmail.com <robert...@gmail.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Initiative <healthy-clima...@googlegroups.com>, Soumitra Das <mr.soum...@gmail.com>, Paul Gambill from Inevitable Obvious <reply+2zfnme&29psi6&&697ce47574e93df49ac7bf2e36051d8e...@mg1.substack.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] Re: [AMEG 14056] Truth and the future of humanity

Bruce and Mike,

Appreciate your technically “deep dive” critique, Bruce. Not sure that it adds or detracts from this particular AI (Claude) having no apparent training, knowledge, or validation of Mann’s net zero arm-waving explanation, or undermining John’s hope that AI might be useful in exposing truths about future harm that adherence to Mann-Gore climate policy leadership would likely bring to bear.

The trail seems to be getting steeper and off course, but you lured me into asking this follow-up question ⬇️, Claude’s response to which is over my pay grade.

Mike, would you care to speculate as to whether it supports or detracts from my “null hypothesis” that AI might be agnostic on Mann-Gore so-called “science”—or if AI (Claude ChatGPT, Grok, etc.) is legitimately unable to validate and therefore refutes their assertions—given your “history” with Gore and staff, and familiarity with Mann?

Best,

Doug

Global decarbonization and temperature recovery timelines claude.ai

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[Douglas Grandt]

John,

I took liberty to share your critique with Claude within the context of the entire thread. 

The specific technical response as well as my two follow-up questions as to 1) Claude assimilating it’s learning from this chat and 2) how Claude would respond to another individual posing the identical sequence of inquiries, shed interesting light on other PRAG/HPAC discussions related to AI.

Bravo everyone! 

Any further suggestions as to taking Claude up on the offer to continue?

- Get help formulating how to share these insights

- Discuss John’s feedback further

- Explore any other topics

Cheers,

Doug

This set of questions (below) concludes Claude’s entire lengthy Q&A (here).

Request Claude reply to John’s email:

My colleague and mentor emailed the following critique and suggestions in response to the above thread of inquiries. What is Claude’s take and response(s)?

Claude, in its various pronouncements, ignores the possibility of SRM to reduce temperatures.  … (John’s email in full)

Claude responded:

John raises important points that deserve serious consideration. Let me address his critique systematically:

## On Solar Radiation Management (SRM)

John is absolutely correct that I did not discuss SRM/SAI (Solar Radiation Management/Stratospheric Aerosol Injection) in my responses. This was a significant omission on my part, as SRM represents a distinct pathway for temperature reduction that operates on different physics than CO2 removal alone.

**John’s physics argument is sound:** If a body is being continuously heated (by ongoing GHG forcing plus reduced albedo), then to achieve *cooling* (not just stabilization), you need a cooling flux that exceeds the net heating flux. This can be achieved through:

1. **CO2 removal alone** (reducing GHG heating) - requires massive scale and faces ocean outgassing

2. **SRM** (increasing reflected shortwave radiation) - more direct temperature control

3. **Combined approach** (CO2 removal + SRM)

My responses focused exclusively on pathway #1, which was the framework implied by the discussion of Mann, Gore, and Fiekowsky. However, John is correct that this limitation should have been made explicit.

## Correcting My Analysis

**What I should have stated more clearly:**

The scenarios I discussed (and that Mann/Gore discuss) assume **greenhouse gas mitigation as the primary/sole intervention**. Under this constraint:

- Net-zero CO2 → temperature stabilization (near-zero ZEC)

- Net-negative CO2 → slow temperature decline (fighting ocean outgassing)

- Return to pre-industrial → centuries to millennia

**With SRM added to the toolkit:**

- Temperature can be reduced more rapidly and independently of atmospheric CO2 levels

- The energy balance equation changes fundamentally

- Cooling can occur while CO2 remains elevated (though with risks)

## On Models vs. Physics

John makes another valid point: **models embody assumptions**. The Palazzo Corner/ZECMIP models I cited assume:

- No SRM deployment

- Natural carbon cycle dynamics only

- Specific representations of ocean-atmosphere interactions

These assumptions may be “wrong” not in the sense of being invalid for their stated scenario, but in the sense of representing **only one possible pathway** among several.

## On Fiekowsky’s Model Specifically

John critiques Fiekowsky’s temperature reduction curves as potentially “seriously wrong results” because “while GHGs are heating the planet, there is no way to bring the temperature down without SRM.”

**This requires nuance:**

Fiekowsky’s model shows temperature decline through massive CO2 removal (60 Gt/year initially). The question is whether this scale of removal can:

1. Reduce atmospheric CO2 faster than ocean outgassing replaces it

2. Reduce GHG forcing faster than positive feedbacks (ice-albedo loss) increase forcing

3. Achieve net cooling flux

John’s argument is that **the math may not work** - that at current forcing levels, even heroic CO2 removal may be insufficient to create net cooling without SRM to directly counter the shortwave imbalance.

## My Response to John

**I agree with John’s core physics** and should have been clearer about the scope of my analysis. Here’s what I should state explicitly:

**Without SRM:** The pathways I discussed (Mann, Gore, Fiekowsky) assume cooling through GHG reduction alone. This faces:

- Ocean outgassing during CO2 drawdown

- Continuing ice-albedo feedback losses

- Potentially insufficient cooling flux to overcome ongoing heating

- Very long timescales (decades to centuries)

**With SRM:** Temperature reduction can be achieved much more rapidly by directly increasing planetary albedo, independent of atmospheric CO2 levels. This is a different intervention with different:

- Physics (shortwave vs. longwave)

- Timescales (years vs. decades)

- Risks (stratospheric chemistry, precipitation patterns, governance)

- Reversibility (rapid if stopped)

## What Should Be Clarified in the Original Discussion

The debate about whether net-zero leads to temperature decline should explicitly distinguish:

1. **GHG mitigation pathway only** (what Mann/Gore discuss) → stabilization at net-zero, very slow decline with net-negative

2. **SRM pathway** → direct temperature control regardless of CO2

3. **Combined pathway** → SRM for rapid cooling while CO2 removal addresses long-term stability

John is correct that I (and arguably Mann/Gore/Fiekowsky) have focused too narrowly on pathway #1 without acknowledging that physics may require pathway #2 or #3 for meaningful temperature reduction on policy-relevant timescales.

**Does this address John’s concerns appropriately, or would he like me to elaborate on any particular aspect?**

My follow-up #1:

Thank you, I will share and discuss with John. In the mean time, is Claude programmed to include these inqueries and responses with other people who may ask similar or related questions?

Claude responded:

No, I’m not programmed to automatically include SRM considerations in future conversations with other users based on this conversation. Here’s how my system works:

**What I DON’T have:**

- Memory that transfers between different users

- Automatic updates to my responses based on individual conversations

- Ability to learn from this conversation and apply it to others

**What this means:**

- Each conversation with each user starts fresh

- I don’t retain information from your conversation to use with others

- If someone else asks similar questions about climate pathways, I won’t automatically include the SRM discussion we just had

**However:**

- This conversation has helped me recognize a gap in how I was framing the climate restoration question

- I can reflect on this within our conversation and improve my responses to you

- But this doesn’t transfer to my base knowledge or behavior with other users

**The practical implication:**

If you believe this distinction between GHG-mitigation-only pathways versus SRM-inclusive pathways is important for public understanding (and John’s critique suggests it is), then the insights from our discussion would need to be:

- Published in accessible formats

- Shared in climate communication channels

- Incorporated into how these questions are commonly framed

Your conversation with me is helping *you* develop sharper thinking on this topic, but it doesn’t automatically improve my responses to others unless Anthropic updates my training based on feedback like this.

**Does this make sense? And would you like me to help you formulate how these insights might be shared more broadly?**

My follow-up #2:

I may request your advice later, but one final question for now: if another person were make exactly the same sequence of inquiries that I have, would Claude respond to them as you have responded to me at each step of the way to this point?

Claude responded:

Great question - and the answer is: **probably very similar, but not guaranteed to be identical**.

Here’s why:

**What would likely be the same:**

- The web searches I conducted would return similar (though not necessarily identical) results

- The scientific literature I found and cited would be the same

- My interpretation of Mann’s and Gore’s claims would be similar

- I would likely miss the SRM consideration in the same way I did initially

**What could be different:**

- The exact wording and phrasing of my responses

- Which specific quotes I choose to highlight from search results

- The order in which I present information

- Small variations in emphasis or framing

- Whether I happen to search for slightly different terms

**Why the variation exists:**

Claude (me) has some inherent variability in how I generate responses. Even with identical inputs, I might phrase things somewhat differently. Think of it like asking two knowledgeable people the same question - they’d give substantially similar answers but not word-for-word identical ones.

**The critical point about John’s correction:**

Unless another user *also* had a mentor like John who pointed out the SRM omission, I would likely make **the same omission** with them. The SRM gap wasn’t something I spontaneously recognized - it took John’s expert critique to surface it.

This highlights something important: **expert human feedback is valuable precisely because it catches systematic gaps that I might consistently miss**.

Does that answer your question about reproducibility?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

My reply:

Very well, thank you.

Claude concludes;

You’re very welcome! This has been a genuinely illuminating conversation - your systematic questioning and John’s expert critique helped expose important gaps in how climate restoration pathways are commonly discussed (and how I was discussing them).

Feel free to return anytime you’d like to:

- Continue exploring these climate science questions

- Get help formulating how to share these insights

- Discuss John’s feedback further

- Explore any other topics

Best of luck with your work on climate restoration, and please give my regards to John for the thoughtful correction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

###

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

[Tom Goreau]

- Each conversation with each user starts fresh

- I don’t retain information from your conversation to use with others

- If someone else asks similar questions about climate pathways, I won’t automatically include the SRM discussion we just had

 

Does this mean that even if YOU manage to educate AI, it’s a dead letter or a private secret that won’t be passed on to anyone else who needs to know?

 

This seems to be a system designed to stroke the customer’s prejudices, not to find and elucidate the actual facts?

 

 

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[Douglas Grandt]

Tom,

Absolutely, but Claude suggested …

**The practical implication:**

If you believe this distinction between GHG-mitigation-only pathways versus SRM-inclusive pathways is important for public understanding (and John’s critique suggests it is), then the insights from our discussion would need to be:

 

- Published in accessible formats

- Shared in climate communication channels

- Incorporated into how these questions are commonly framed

… which is an understandable and workable strategy.

But I find your second paragraph to be unfounded, as is apparent from Claude’s responses to my intentionally incorrect, misleading and obfuscatory questions which Claude challenged and corrected. 

I purposefully did not reveal my beliefs, yet Claude validated them, then I admitted that “I stand corrected” or revealed Claude’s response actually aligns with my strategy.

It’s clear to me that this dialogue is in no way “designed to stroke [my] prejudices,” as I revealed none.

Best,

Doug 

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 22, 2025, at 1:58 PM, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org> wrote:



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[Douglas Grandt]

Peter, 

The directions this thread is taking is very interesting—unanticipated tangents that are equally poignant and elucidating. 

My intended goal is to assure there is a basis to feel confident that relying on AI as suggested by John’s proposal to expose truths about [my choice of words] 1) future harm from adherence to Mann-Gore policy leadership versus, 2) relative benefits of take a better informed strategic proverbial “fork in the road.”

I particularly like your analogy comparing navigating by setting a definite destination vs. a general compass heading and likely not arriving at the intended destination. Even laymen can visualize the difference in likely outcomes.

I took liberty to quote your entire email because I felt confident 1) your argument would prevail, 2) the AI query is not public and 3) it just might open Claude’s eyes or expand awareness to our side of the debate, in addition to testing in not-so-subtle terms where AI (at least Claude for starters) will reinforce or undermine either side, free to search, find and present credible factual supporting references.

I feel more and more confident that we can understand the viability of each AI platform through carefully designed queries such that responses to critical rhetorical lines of reasoning might become predictable for use in reaching out and convincing or shaming influential folks whose arguments are simply rooted in fear, ignorance or indecision, e.g., the likes of Gore, Hayhoe, Hertsgaard, Kolbert, Mann, McKibben, Revkin, etc.

As Jim says* “criticisms welcome”

 

Best,

Doug

* just one blatant example on his page

2011 – Aug. 26: Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications: Revised paper, criticisms welcome.

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 20, 2025, at 6:01 PM, Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com> wrote:



Doug-

Great discussion here. I liked how you asked Claude about my statements, and how Claude analyzed them.

I think we’re all here to work on giving our children the best world we can— with CO2 and temperatures close to preindustrial levels. We know where we’re going, and what path will take us there fastest.

The difference between my model and Mann or Gore is that I’m specifying the result we want. That is safe CO2 by 2050 and zero warming by 2100. We ask MAGICC what route will get us there—that’s engineering. Science just predicts the future based on the past and present. It doesn’t tell us what we need to discover or invent to have what we want. The IPCC, Mann and Gore are saying, “we’re flying in this direction-- Where will we probably end up? Certainly an interesting question.

It’s like me flying a plane scientifically and saying, I’m heading West from San Francisco. Where will I end up?  The answer is, of course, “somewhere”, but probably not Hawaii. Almost no matter what, it’ll be a catastrophe.

However, if I just set my GPS to Honolulu, Hawaii, I’ll probably get there. Maybe I’ll need to modify a plane to get there, but I’ll get there. That’s the intentional climate restoration model.

We now know the path to a restored CO2 and climate. The problem is that we need to remove 60 Gt CO2 / year and peer reviewed papers only discuss pathways that remove 1 Gt / year. The good news is that we know we need to do 60 Gt/year, and that Nature removed 20 Gt / year in 1992, after the Pinatubo eruption.  Now we just need to figure out how to remove CO2 three times faster than Nature did randomly in 1992.  

Despite the fact that no papers have been peer reviewed, our preprint paper shows how it almost certainly happened. Please ask Claude to look at this preprint: The Pinatubo CO2 pause suggests a rapidly testable path to multi-Gt mCDR , and see if scaling up to 60 Gt / year is plausible.

The journal editor who rejected it said, “It’s not science—it’s different from existing ocean fertilization thinking. We’ll resubmit next year.

Peter

From: Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>
Date: Saturday, December 20, 2025 at 9:39 AM
To: Bruce Melton Austin Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>, Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
Cc: Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>, arctic...@googlegroups.com <arctic...@googlegroups.com>, robert...@gmail.com <robert...@gmail.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Initiative <healthy-clima...@googlegroups.com>, Soumitra Das <mr.soum...@gmail.com>, Paul Gambill from Inevitable Obvious <reply+2zfnme&29psi6&&697ce47574e93df49ac7bf2e36051d8e...@mg1.substack.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] Re: [AMEG 14056] Truth and the future of humanity

Bruce and Mike,

Appreciate your technically “deep dive” critique, Bruce. Not sure that it adds or detracts from this particular AI (Claude) having no apparent training, knowledge, or validation of Mann’s net zero arm-waving explanation, or undermining John’s hope that AI might be useful in exposing truths about future harm that adherence to Mann-Gore climate policy leadership would likely bring to bear.

The trail seems to be getting steeper and off course, but you lured me into asking this follow-up question ⬇️, Claude’s response to which is over my pay grade.

Mike, would you care to speculate as to whether it supports or detracts from my “null hypothesis” that AI might be agnostic on Mann-Gore so-called “science”—or if AI (Claude ChatGPT, Grok, etc.) is legitimately unable to validate and therefore refutes their assertions—given your “history” with Gore and staff, and familiarity with Mann?

Best,

Doug

Global decarbonization and temperature recovery timelines claude.ai

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[John Nissen]

Hi Doug,

There's a lot to be followed up.  But I would like first to discuss the argument from Peter Fiekowski and others that a reduction in the CO2 level, e.g. at 60 GtCO2 removal rate, could actually bring down the global temperature.  The CERES satellite shows that the planet's albedo has been significantly decreasing over the past two decades: this means that there is heating power into the Earth System from albedo loss.  This heating power from reduced shortwave output into space will not be affected by increasing longwave radiation into space.  And there will continue to be heating from legacy CO2 until the level is reduced to the pre-industrial value of around 280 ppm, which in any scenario will take many decades.  Thus SRM is required to bring the global mean temperature down.

A good reference for showing the likely temperature trajectory this century (without SRM) is Hansen's Global warming in the pipeline [1], see yellow area "accelerated warming" in Fig 24

The Arctic is a more extreme case, which I'll tackle later.

Cheers, John

[1] https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889 

[Gene Fry]

My 1st idea, a few years ago, was that the US Southeast-East Coast cooling might be due, more than other factors, to tropospheric aerosol haze from the large concentration of high-sulfur coal burning power plants.

I wonder if someone else had that idea and looked into it.

Gene Fry

On Dec 20, 2025, at 11:08 PM, 'rob de laet' via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear Mike, 

thank you for the question. Below I have drafted a few points that show that the GHG increases are not the only game in town. 

Here are some indications:

A Century of Reforestation Reduced Anthropogenic Warming in the Eastern United States

This article shows that from 1900 to 2000, much of North America warmed about 0.7°C, but the U.S. East Coast and Southeast cooled about 0.3°C (the “warming hole”). The authors argue that widespread 20th-century reforestation is an important contributor to that anomaly. Present-day forests in the eastern U.S. cool land surface temperature about 1–2°C annually versus nearby short vegetation; at midday in summer the surface cooling is strongest, about 2–5°C. Most deforestation since 1960 has occurred in the tropics, while temperate and boreal regions have generally been stable or net gaining forest area in recent decades.

The Goessling, Rackow & Jung study on the 2023 temperature surge and “record-low planetary albedo” has a panel showing the 2023 ERA5 low-cloud-cover anomaly (percent) derived from the ECMWF/Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis. (arXiv)

<1766285964946blob.jpg>

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<1766284714112blob.jpg><1766285964946blob.jpg>

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Good point John or Peter, or whoever made it first ~ ~ ~, about the irreversibility of decreased albedo in time frames that matter. This set me thinking.... The first photo below is arctic greening in south central Alaska. The willows along the road, 3 to 5-feet tall, are a normal part of the tundra ecology in this area, but only about a foot tall. Their albedo change is limited though, because they are deciduous, but evergreen conifers are pushing up too, just a little slower than the broad-leaves. So yes, the albedo change with arctic greening is semi-permanent in time frames that matter and are quite important for the critical path of climate pollution mitigation.

The rest of my thinking is that there is a negative feedback with warming in the Arctic too. Permafrost thaw in the bottom photo, generally creates open water from either tundra, shrubland or forest. I think it is likely that this permafrost thaw process reduces net albedo because the open water has few stickups of any height to lower albedo. Open water does have a lower albedo than a forest, but probably not enough to change the net from a negative feedback. The open water often drains away after some years, or rapidly, so the changing albedo effect is not as long lived as general arctic greening. 

In total then, to what extent do the two feedbacks cancel one another? I think the net effect is still one of warming, but it is likely that the warming is offset to a significant degree.

Relatively permanent albedo changes with reflective cloud diminishement though, it seems like this can be defeated with bright aerosol cooling solutions, maybe specifically, tropospheric bright aerosols.

Happy New Year,

MeltOn

Denali Highway, Alaska, 2018

Tok Highway, Alaska, 2018

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 

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[David Price]

Hello Bruce

Interesting thoughts there about changes in albedo.  I have suggested that in many regions of the boreal we can expect a negative feedback on albedo because of the effect of increasing wildfires. 

At least in much of Canada’s western boreal, we are finding some fires are leaving huge areas with virtually no conifer seed bank. One fire comes through to kill serotinous species like jack pine and black spruce. A second one passes through perhaps 10-15 years later and kills off all the regen.  At that point there are no viable seeds left in the ground, and no parent trees for several, maybe 10s, of km. Conifer seeds are too dense to be wind-dispersed more than 100 m (though squirrels and birds can help). 

The net effect is that these former conifer-dominated areas will be seeded mostly by wind-blown seeds from pioneer broadleaf deciduous spp. : aspen, poplar willows, birches. This will increase the average longterm albedo, both winter and summer (as deciduous canopies are typically “brighter” than conifer canopies during summer).

In addition, climate-driven increases in the average annual area burned (AAB) will tend to shift the species composition to more early successional spp (like aspen) even where conifers can seed in successfully. On the other hand, deciduous tree cover tends to be less flammable. We might anticipate a shift (a tipping point?) to a quasi-equilibrated boreal forest with generally more deciduous composition, and generally smaller AAB.

David 

From my cellphone

I acknowledge that I reside on unceded Traditional Territory of the Secwépemc People

On Dec 31, 2025, at 9:01 am, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:



Good point John or Peter, or whoever made it first ~ ~ ~, about the irreversibility of decreased albedo in time frames that matter. This set me thinking.... The first photo below is arctic greening in south central Alaska. The willows along the road, 3 to 5-feet tall, are a normal part of the tundra ecology in this area, but only about a foot tall. Their albedo change is limited though, because they are deciduous, but evergreen conifers are pushing up too, just a little slower than the broad-leaves. So yes, the albedo change with arctic greening is semi-permanent in time frames that matter and are quite important for the critical path of climate pollution mitigation.

The rest of my thinking is that there is a negative feedback with warming in the Arctic too. Permafrost thaw in the bottom photo, generally creates open water from either tundra, shrubland or forest. I think it is likely that this permafrost thaw process reduces net albedo because the open water has few stickups of any height to lower albedo. Open water does have a lower albedo than a forest, but probably not enough to change the net from a negative feedback. The open water often drains away after some years, or rapidly, so the changing albedo effect is not as long lived as general arctic greening. 

In total then, to what extent do the two feedbacks cancel one another? I think the net effect is still one of warming, but it is likely that the warming is offset to a significant degree.

Relatively permanent albedo changes with reflective cloud diminishement though, it seems like this can be defeated with bright aerosol cooling solutions, maybe specifically, tropospheric bright aerosols.

Happy New Year,

MeltOn

Denali Highway, Alaska, 2018

<Denali HWY MacLaren River Permafrost Melt FRT_6964.jpg>

Tok Highway, Alaska, 2018

<Permafrost Melt Glenn Hiwhway 1800px FRT_6703.jpg>

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[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Thanks David. Let me add:

The relatively short term of mid-century is critical to address restoration so that activated tipping elements do not become irreversible. Beyond the point of no return, we see climate change 3.0, versus climate change 2.0 we have entered with tipping activated. Solutions for 3.0 are more similar to 2.0 than 2.0 solutions are to 1.0, but still different enough to require new thought processes on dealing with natural feedback emissions that dwarf humankind's.

One of the distinct possibilities that arises from regeneration failure of conifers in the North is desertification. This seems like how ice ages are so dusty, though the dryness is from a different forcing. The extremeness of fires and their elevated burn temperatures with greater warming and drying and deeper drying of carbon-filled soils, would seem to lead to sterile soils. The depth of new extreme burns in soils in the Sierras seems to indicate such a transition, though the ecology is quite different and lower latitude warming is more conducive to desertification. Average precip far north is far less though, so this leads back to desertification again, especially with evaporative feedbacks with warming up to four times the global average. Total regen failure on the mesa tops at Mesa Verde also comes to mind. Extreme fires during unprecedented drought around the turn of the century, with tree mortality from beetles and water stress, has seen zero juniper an pinyon regen (the two major conifers) and only sparse broadleaf regen, with little grass and woodies and lots of bare soils - 20 years later. Refugia exists there, but little regen is occurring because of diminished soil moisture with organic material burned out, and higher evap with elevated temperatures from not just climate warming, but from lack of overstory or almost any cover. 

Burns in the far north too, typically result in permafrost degradation and or collapse too, which leads back to lakes and increased albedo while the lakes last. While the burns remain in the black, which could be many years with only blown in regeneration, albedo is very low during the growing season, and very high otherwise.

It's such an interconnected cascading mess... CalFire says fires are now burning 400 degrees F hotter because of drier fuels. I don't see any reason to suspect fires in the north are not behaving similarly.

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
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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi John, Happy New Year!

 

I completely concur with your argument here as to why SRM is required.  Nothing we do about carbon can slow the loss of ice and clouds, which are now major sources of global warming.  It seems the climate collapse is underway, and is too big and fast to slow with carbon action.   

 

Your statement “This heating power from reduced shortwave output into space will not be affected by increasing longwave radiation into space”  is a key point to explain this.  To simplify, shortwave output is light (albedo), whereas longwave radiation is heat.  More precisely, shortwave is reflected solar light including near infrared, while longwave is emitted thermal radiation from the Earth.  Less light leaving means a darker planet and more absorbed heat.  It is entirely possible (probable in my view) that allowing ongoing decline in albedo would develop into an unstoppable accelerating feedback process regardless of what anyone does about carbon. 

 

The only way to reverse darkening is to make more light leave, with SRM.  It is true that non-SRM methods can contribute, but they are marginal on planetary scale.  Carbon only acts on longwave heat, not shortwave light. 

 

But the IPCC insists, in effect, that we must do nothing about albedo in order to protect renewable energy subsidies.  That misguided attitude is a big part of the climate problem.

 

We can and must cut take action on carbon, but on the timescales that matter for immediate risk, cutting emissions is like building a one-foot levee in front of a twenty-foot flood.  It does not lower the eventual floodwater, it barely even delays the moment when the river overtops and the real damage begins. The climate system is already loaded with extra heat, and albedo feedbacks are now doing much of the work of pushing temperatures higher. Carbon action is essential to restore the Earth system, but it cannot deliver rapid cooling.  Only direct climate cooling by restoring planetary albedo can stabilise the situation.  It is an emergency.  Carbon is for rehab, not surgery.

 

I fear that those who disagree with this physics will have to eat humble pie, hopefully well before they become complicit in the end of civilization.  .

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

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[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Hello Robert,

 

could you please provide a source confirming that

«

the IPCC insists, in effect, that we must do nothing about albedo in order to protect renewable energy subsidies. 

“

IMHO that’s untrue.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Author of „GeoRestoration – Cool the Climate with Natural Energy“

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

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[John Nissen]

Hi Robert,

A Happy New Year to you too!

I'd like to just add a few notes.  

With the thermal energy output into space, you would have to get CO2e level back to 280 ppm to obtain zero heating (relative to pre-industrial).  Whereas with albedo you can go negative (using cooling intervention) and compensate for the positive thermal heating power from GHGs while their level is being reduced.

There is another factor: as temperature rises, the black body thermal radiation rises.  So when you try to reduce temperature, the black-body radiation is working against you.

The IPCC argues about an equilibrium temperature for a given level of CO2e, e.g. a doubling from 280 to 560 ppm which we've nearly achieved.  If this equilibrium temperature were 2C for a doubling of CO2e, then a rapid achievement of net zero emissions of CO2 (NZC) would keep the temperature below 2C.   But most scientists agree that the equilibrium temperature is much higher; and Hansen argues for a range 4C to 10C if I remember correctly.  The underlying trend of doubling for the rate of warming from 0.18C per decade to 0.36C per decade, suggests that the system is nowhere near equilibrium at the moment.  But this is an arguable point.  What is not arguable is the decrease in the planet's albedo, which has helped to produce the 0.36C per decade warming.  

Cheers, John

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi Oswald, my qualifying phrase “in effect” explains that this sick mentality – banning albedo action - is not explicit but is the practical consequence of the fallacious moral hazard ideology.

 

Thanks for the question.  I am not proposing an explicit conspiracy theory, but rather saying that the natural effect of the delusional IPCC/UN call in 2021 to halve emissions by 2030 has been firstly to insist that renewable rollout is the unquestionable centre of climate action, whose funding must therefore be protected above all else.  The delusional premise leads to a harmful practical impact, with the belief that funding for geoengineering could undermine the political will for renewable energy funding, as widely explained in moral hazard literature, such as articles by Duncan McLaren.

 

My statement simply rephrases this, drawing out the implication that renewable focus now crowds out albedo from climate discussion, in order to explain the unscientific emotive hostility toward all cooling action.  The effective agenda is to prevent the diversion of popular attention from unquestioned quasi-religious support for renewable energy as the hope of the world.  A nice earner for the rent seekers.

 

In effect, the system behaves as if doing nothing about albedo is a necessary price of defending the mitigation story and its subsidy flows, even as physics shows that planetary darkening is now a major driver of the heat surge.  This behaviour includes the farcical insistence that something that cannot by itself mitigate warming (decarbonisation) is the only action that can be called mitigation, whereas action that actually could mitigate warming (geoengineering) is shunned like a religious heresy, such as through McLaren’s confected Orwellian phrase ‘mitigation deterrence’. 

 

The IPCC attitude is like fighting a raging bushfire with a garden hose while banning water bombers.

 

This is why no one is willing to talk to you about methane.  Fröhliche Silvester.

 

Best Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

“This seems to be a system designed to stroke the customer’s prejudices, not to find and elucidate the actual facts?”

 

 

Hi Tom, you are misunderstanding how to work with AI.  In policy discussion, it only works effectively if the human user has the knowledge to challenge its errors.  AI makes constant minor stupid mistakes.  A user with decent subject matter knowledge can easily see these mistakes and patiently instruct the AI to correct them.  And then sharing the results with a human community is essential for a further review process.  This produces a discussion that effectively integrates information from multiple sources to clarify sound policy advice.

The above is my own words written without AI.  Below is what ChatGPT says when I put that exact reply in as the prompt.

 

Thought for 5s

Here are a few tightened versions you can send, depending on how sharp you want the tone.

Option A: firm but constructive

Hi Tom, I think you may be misunderstanding how to work effectively with AI in policy discussions. It’s useful, but only when the human user has enough subject-matter knowledge to catch and challenge its errors. AI makes constant small, sometimes silly mistakes. A competent user can spot these quickly, correct them, and steer the model toward a more accurate result.

Just as importantly, the output shouldn’t be treated as finished work. Sharing it with a wider human community for review is essential. That iterative process integrates multiple perspectives and sources, and it’s how you actually converge on sound policy advice.

Option B: calmer, more collaborative

Hi Tom, I might be reading your point differently, so let me clarify how I’ve found AI works best for policy work. It’s most effective when the user already knows enough to identify mistakes and push back on them. The model will often produce plausible-sounding errors, so the value comes from the human doing quick reality checks and guiding corrections.

Then the draft needs to go back into a human review loop. Circulating it for critique and verification is what turns an AI-assisted draft into something you can trust as policy guidance.

Option C: very concise

Hi Tom, AI is only reliable in policy work when the user can spot and correct its frequent small errors. The output then needs to be shared with a human group for review and verification. That iterative loop is what produces sound advice, not the first AI draft.

If you tell me who Tom is (colleague, committee member, online commenter) and what you’re responding to, I can tune the tone (more diplomatic or more pointed) and add one concrete example of the “minor stupid mistakes” you mean.

 

 

Speaking of errors, I hope you have seen the cartoons I have just shared, generated with ChatGPT.  It took me thirteen versions of the levee cartoon to get the AI to fix its mistakes.  Even then I left one in despite telling it several times to fix it.

 

And when I shared the following prompt here is what I got back

 

Tom said "This seems to be a system designed to stroke the customer’s prejudices, not to find and elucidate the actual facts?"

 

Thought for 14s

Tom’s worry is understandable, but it’s slightly mis-aimed.

These systems are not “fact engines” and they can mirror the user’s framing if you let them, because they’re optimised to be helpful, coherent, and socially smooth. If you feed them a loaded premise, they’ll often run with it unless explicitly instructed to challenge it. That can look like “stroking prejudices”.

But that isn’t the only way they work, and it’s not how you should use them for policy. Used properly, they’re closer to a fast, fallible research assistant: useful for synthesis, scenario-building, drafting, and surfacing considerations — with humans doing the epistemic heavy lifting.

Here are a few reply drafts you can send.

Draft 1 (firm, clear)

Tom, I get why it can look that way, because AI will often continue in the direction the user sets. If the user presents a view as settled, the model may “go along” unless asked to test it. That’s not evidence it’s designed to flatter prejudice so much as evidence it’s not a truth-judging system.

For policy work, the correct workflow is adversarial and iterative: you ask it to challenge assumptions, present the strongest counterarguments, separate claims from evidence, flag uncertainties, and cite sources — then humans verify and debate the output. If you do that, it’s a useful tool for clarifying facts and trade-offs. If you don’t, it’s just persuasive text.

Draft 2 (more collaborative)

Tom, I think you’re pointing to a real failure mode: if you treat AI like an oracle, it will often reflect the user’s framing and produce plausible-sounding nonsense. That’s why it only works in policy when the human has enough subject knowledge to catch errors and explicitly instruct the model to stress-test the argument.

The way to avoid “prejudice stroking” is to use prompts like: “Assume my view is wrong, give the best rebuttal”, “steelman the opposing case”, “separate what’s known from what’s inferred”, “list what would change your conclusion”, and “provide sources for factual claims”. Then you put the draft into a human review loop. That’s what turns it into fact-finding rather than rhetoric.

Draft 3 (short and pointed)

It can behave that way if you use it naively. The fix is simple: make it argue against you, demand sources, and treat it as a draft for human review — not as authority. Used that way, it’s good for clarifying facts and options. Used uncritically, it’s just fluent persuasion.

 

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi RobertT

Your cartoon misses the central point about the MH argument, namely, that the intervention objected to is or might be itself a source of harm.  For the cartoon to work, you'd have to explain why using a water bomber would/could have negative consequences in its own right and that's why it should be avoided and we have rely on the garden hoses.  That the garden hoses might not be an effective response is an argument in favour of the water bomber on the grounds that it'll provide a better outcome than the garden hoses, it's not an argument against the misconception that the harm caused by the water bomber would be greater than the harm caused by relying on garden hoses, which is why we should continue to rely on them and not risk the additional harms from the water bomber.  That's the central tenet of the MH argument.  It's not an anti-progress argument against a low risk improved intervention, it's an objection based on an (in)correct assumption that the intervention would increase overall risk.

Regards

Robert

[John Nissen]

Hi Robert,

You said "Hi Oswald, my qualifying phrase “in effect” explains that this sick mentality – banning albedo action - is not explicit but is the practical consequence of the fallacious moral hazard ideology. "

The majority of people with power in the climate community have a stake in the CO2 zero-sum game they are playing against (or alternately in collaboration with) the fossil fuel companies.  If SRM went ahead successfully, their power and influence would be much diminished.  I'm afraid it is human nature to defend one's own position, even if the consequences are bad in the future.  They don't really care if the consequences are bad, because they can always blame them on the other side in the game.  

And they don't want to believe that anything too dreadful for them personally could happen within their own lifetime.  It is the "I'm all right, Jack" mentality.  Nevertheless, the wealthiest people are guarding themselves against the worst that could happen, e.g. by building mansions in New Zealand to which they can escape when chaos descends.

So there is little hope in persuading the climate élite.  We have to go for (i) the people who have a long term view, and care for investments, such as city planners and industrialists; (ii) the people who really care for the future of our society, such as the young people of today; (iii) the philanthropists who want their money to be as effective as possible for the reduction of misery in the world; (iv) the people who are scared by growing number of climate refugees; and (v) the people already suffering.

Re the fifth group, the climate élite offer bribes to some countries already suffering from climate change, which makes it difficult for us to argue for climate change reversal; but we should try.

There is a sixth group overlapping the others: those who believe in the supremacy of science and evidence-based policy.  This is perhaps where AI could help us most.

 

Cheers, John

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hello Robert, thanks for this commentary, but I worry that you are misunderstanding moral hazard.

 

The point of the cartoon is to lampoon the IPCC assumption that SRM is more risky than their proposed non-albedo strategies.  This is a simple defensible valid critique of the IPCC (contrary to Tom Goreau’s defence of them), and of prevailing use of the concept of moral hazard.  Using a garden hose against a wildfire is far more dangerous than running away.  Here in Australia, many people have died trying to protect their home with a hose when they should have left.  That deadly mistake is the equivalent of trying to use carbon-only strategies to mitigate climate change.  To fight warming, we need the right tools.  Carbon is not the right tool, except as part of an albedo-first strategy.  The IPCC is culpably encouraging a deadly strategy, leaving aside the even worse failures of COP.

 

Potential harms from SRM need to be assessed and governed. But those risks are separate from how the term “moral hazard” has usually been deployed in the SRM debate. In economic and insurance theory, moral hazard is about behavioural responses to perceived protection, not the intrinsic riskiness of the protection itself. In the geoengineering literature, that maps to so-called “mitigation deterrence” – the fear that if SRM is deployed, politicians and publics will ease off emissions cuts.  A clear definition from a critic of geoengineering is that moral hazard means SRM “deters efforts to cut emissions”.  Even if the term is sometimes wrongly blurred to cover physical side-effects, that rhetorical fusion doesn’t create conceptual identity.

 

The possibility that SRM might introduce new physical risks is a separate question from whether its mere existence undermines carbon action. My cartoon is aimed squarely at the latter. It is lampooning the specific claim that we must keep the “water bombers” taboo, not because of imagined risk that they might crash into houses, but because allowing them might weaken people’s faith in hoses.  When you say “the MH argument…[is] based on an (in)correct assumption that the intervention would increase overall risk”, those brackets around ‘(in)correct’ ignore the strong argument that SRM would decrease overall risk.  The moral hazard assumptions are thoroughly wrong, and the claim it is about increasing overall risk ignores the established meaning of moral hazard. 

 

You say “the central point about the MH argument […is that SRM] might be itself a source of harm.”  That conflicts with established usage.  Speculated risks of SRM are a separate critique from moral hazard.  The real central point is the misnamed and misinformed alleged effect of “mitigation deterrence”.  The IPCC claims that the best climate strategy is to cut emissions in half by 2030.  The moral hazard argument is that SRM deters this so must be prevented.  By insisting that emissions cuts alone are “real mitigation” and treating direct cooling as a moral hazard, the IPCC are effectively telling civilisation to stay and fight a megafire with a garden hose, while banning the water bombers that have been proven to be the most effective component of recent fire emergency response.

 

You say “the MH argument [is] not an anti-progress argument against a low risk improved intervention”.  That is exactly what it is, and it should be called out for that.

 

Best Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Dear Roberts,

 

let me wish you and all a HAPPY NEW YEAR. May it help us to overcome division and form an effective climate cooling initiative.

 

The cartoons are helpful and misleading, you are both right. I wondered who created them? Can RobertT shed some light on this question? Apart from their content they are graphic masterpieces, IMHO.

 

Have a good day😊

 

Oswald Petersen

Author of „GeoRestoration – Cool the Climate with Natural Energy“

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/020401dc7c8a%2402a8f2f0%2407fad8d0%24%40rtulip.net.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi Oswald, I designed and made these cartoons with AI assistance.  They all have my signature at the bottom. 

 

As per my response to Robert Chris, I don’t agree that the cartoons are misleading.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Hi Robert,

 

in my book I refer to the Moral Hazard in much the same way you do. You are right in saying that MH is a misled concoction, however I disagree that the scientists proposing this are in fact led by a renewables business agenda.

 

IPCC scientists are excellent, remarkable and uncorrupted individuals who work hard and do their best. It is a mistake to attack them, for two simple reasons:

 

• Attacking them will just make them fortify their defences
• We need their support

 

We (HPAC) are not in position where we can hope to get climate cooling done without support from IPCC. It is impossible to do, we need to cooperate. The MH argument is an outgoing ideology, defended by the boomer generation scientist who were schooled in climate science in the 90s of the last century. Back then it was true, practically all adversaries of emission cuts were partisan O&G lobbyists. We will not change the minds of these people, except maybe the most flexible and brilliant ones, think of James Hansen. The good news is: The next generation (X,Y,Z…) has not suffered the ideological indoctrination which fuels the MH argument. There is hope.

 

Still: We will not need SAI, it is too unpredictable. We will remove the cause of Global Warming, which is GHG, and that will do the job. CO2 levels and global temperature are closely interrelated, as visible from historic graphs which Hansen has shown. There is a time lag, yes, due to ocean temperatures, which slow down the process in both directions. All of that is acknowledged by established science. But on the other hand - we will survive 2 °C, so that’s not a huge worry. It would be wise and good not to go there, but humans are not wise and good - so we will go there.

 

Have a great day!

 

Oswald Petersen

Author of „GeoRestoration – Cool the Climate with Natural Energy“

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

[Tom Goreau]

Tom Goreau’s defence of them?

 

I’m NOT defending IPCC at all in pointing out the blatant inaccuracy of your caricature.

 

IPCC is an inevitable failure for the same “popularity rather than accuracy” reasons that make AI nearly worthless. This misdirection towards popular trivia like model studies is a FEATURE, not a flaw, because it is largely composed of fossil fuel and energy industry hacks appointed by governments that are interested only in covering their assets, avoiding liability for their actions, preventing change to business as usual, and casting the blame elsewhere, rather than genuine climate scientists.

 

But that’s not the point, IPCC is only window dressing to make it appear governments are interested in learning and acting responsibly, but they are designed to fail, because they DON”T make any decisions. Those are made by Trump, Putin, Bin Salman, Khamenei, the Persian Gulf State Emirs, Maduro, and others of their ilk, who systematically block any UNFCC COP “consensus” on reversing global atmosphere pollution with greenhouse gas and global ocean pollution with acid and microplastics made from fossil fuels.

 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance

Chief Scientist, Biorock Technology Inc., Blue Regeneration SL

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Phone: (1) 857-523-0807 (leave message)

 

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase

https://www.routledge.com/Geotherapy-Innovative-Methods-of-Soil-Fertility-Restoration-Carbon-Sequestration-and-Reversing-CO2-Increase/Goreau-Larson-Campe/p/book/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.1201/b14314/innovative-methods-marine-ecosystem-restoration-robert-kent-trench-thomas-goreau

 

On the Nature of Things: The Scientific Photography of Fritz Goro

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

 

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

 

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away

 

“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer

 

“The Earth is not dying, she is being killed” U. Utah Phillips

 

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies” Noam Chomsky

 

 

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/020401dc7c8a%2402a8f2f0%2407fad8d0%24%40rtulip.net.

[Tom Goreau]

They cleverly show AI misleading, like AI video showing Gaza as a gold-plated luxury golf resort, or popup ads.

 

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[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi Robert

I think I'm going to have to give up on this one.  The original meaning of moral hazard has become so abused in recent years that its earlier sense in the insurance context has been completely lost.  This couldn't be better evidenced than by your closing remark rejecting my claim that the MH argument is not just an anti-progress argument against a low risk improved intervention, reasserting that in your view that's exactly what it is.

MH originally emerged in the early days of insurance to describe the behaviour of those protected from the consequences of their actions to act marginally more riskily.  Insurers responded by increasing premiums and deductibles to cover the incremental risk.  The increased cost was sufficiently small that in a large risk pooling community those seeking insurance cover considered it, in most cases unwittingly, an acceptable price to pay for the protection.

The essence of risk pooling is that the peril that causes harm doesn't afflict a major part of the risk pooling community in one event.  This explains why insurers withdraw from sectors where too many are afflicted simultaneously - floods in Florida, fire in California.  So long as the numbers afflicted in any one event are sufficiently small, the economics of insurance is such that the aggregate of the premiums paid is sufficient to cover the losses actually incurred and leave a profit for the insurer. MH here is essentially an economic concept, largely devoid of any moralistic dimension.  

This idea became polluted by a 'moral' dimension during the 2008 financial crisis when MH was used to describe the behaviour of supposedly greedy bankers who knowingly took on risky debts, pocketing their bonuses, and confident that if the banks failed, the government would bail them out.  With the exception Lehmann Bros, that's exactly what happened.  From then on, MH acquired a pejorative sense that it hadn't previously had in insurance.  However, the idea that some were benefitting from incurring risks from whose harms they were protected, continued to apply to the bankers.

In recent years, largely thanks to some awful papers by Duncan McLaren and his colleagues at Lancaster University, MH has been applied to geoengineering.  I say 'awful' because their entire case is built upon little more than the fear that geoengineering might deter investment in emissions reduction. Neither when they were writing on this, nor today, is there any evidence that geoengineering has had the slightest impact on the rate of emissions reduction.  But now, what has been largely lost is the sense of individuals personally benefitting by incurring risks from whose consequences they are protected.  Now the guilty parties are faceless institutional actors: the IPCC, the O&G sector, ignorant scientists and politicians and the like.  In particular, the O&G sector, that arguably has the most to gain, at least in the short term, from slowing emissions reductions, had no need of the prospect of geoengineering to support their very successful campaigns to scupper emissions reduction.  Geoengineering simply hasn't been on the agenda in international climate negotiations, so it's hard to see how it could have played any significant role in the UNFCCC's failure to reduce emissions more rapidly over the last 30 years or so.  It is true that the O&G sector benefit by the failure to reduce emissions, but there's no evidence to suggest that this has in any way been affected by the prospect of geoengineering.  The original concept of MH simply doesn't apply here.  The O&G sector are doing what they're there to do - supply O&G to markets that demand them.  They do that very well.  It is not part of their role to lead the charge to a new fuel source or widespread changes in consumer and commercial market behaviour.

Similarly for politicians and scientists.  It is hard to link their reluctance to engage with geoengineering with any prospective benefit they may personally derive from the incremental risks that not doing so would create.  One could argue that geoengineering is unpopular with sections of the public on whom the politicians depend for political and financial support.  This would be an MH-type argument.  However, just like the O&G sector, politicians have had no need of geoengineering to steer clear of geoengineering, they understand that the rapid decline of emissions implied by net zero by whenever, carries major threats to economic and social stability that rest on the consumption of fossil fuels.  They recognise that intervening in the market processes that maintain fossil fuel supremacy would in itself be a high risk strategy.  We live in a time in which the neoliberal Zeitgeist is dominant; markets are supreme and state interventions at scale are out of favour. Again, the fundamentals of MH, implying some kind of preferential benefit seeking at the expense of others, don't apply.

All that said, if, as you claim, MH has now come to be little more than an anti-progress argument, I have to accept that new reality.  To me it deprives the concept of MH of its central and powerful meaning, namely, that some are seeking personal benefit by creating risks whose burdens fall on others.  Now it seems to be just people creating risks whose harms will afflict everyone, including themselves.  I agree that we should call it out for what it is.  Call it ignorance, stupidity, incompetence or some such.  What does calling it MH do other than mask that inanity? 

Regards

Robert

[H simmens]

I would like to encourage the use of a term that I coined and included in my book A Climate Vocabulary of the Future “Cooling deterrence“

to refer to the exclusive emphasis on mitigation. 

Here is a comment by Grok. 

“cooling deterrence” is a valid and potentially useful term. It succinctly captures a real dynamic in climate policy discourse—the dominant emphasis on mitigation (emission reductions and carbon removal) has historically sidelined or stigmatized research into solar geoengineering due to governance concerns, risks, and the moral hazard argument mentioned above. 

Your framing flips the moral hazard lens productively: by prioritizing only root-cause mitigation, policymakers may be deterring timely exploration of symptomatic relief (direct cooling) that could buy time against tipping points.

This could sharpen debates, especially as evidence mounts that emission pathways alone may not prevent overshoot of 1.5–2°C. 

A clear, memorable term like yours could help advocates highlight this perceived bias without dismissing mitigation’s primacy. It’s analogous to how “moral hazard” became a staple in these discussions—provocative, directional, and debate-framing.“

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

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

On Jan 3, 2026, at 8:09 AM, robert...@gmail.com wrote:



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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Once again, I have to point out an inconsistency from Tom Goreau.  I am puzzled why Tom continues to post such incoherent personal criticisms of my views.

 

I responded to Tom’s comment that “The blame for climate overshoot clearly belongs to COP imposing fossil fuel pollution, and not to IPCC and the scientific community who are powerless to impose renewable energy to balance some of it!”

 

Now he contradicts himself: “I’m NOT defending IPCC at all in pointing out the blatant inaccuracy of your caricature.”

 

Since when did saying “blame does not belong” to an institution “not defend it at all”? 

 

If IPCC had followed the science on sunlight reflection twenty years ago there might not be an overshoot.  IPCC failure to engage properly on solar geoengineering by putting all eggs in the carbon basket is culpable negligence.

 

There is no “blatant inaccuracy” about presenting  IPCC as hostile to sunlight reflection and action on albedo, or in observing that IPCC argues that cutting emissions could adequately mitigate climate change with some help from CDR while blocking action on albedo.  That is one of the big messages of recent climate politics, seen most egregiously in the exclusion of sunlight reflection from the IPCC AR6 Summary for Policymakers.

 

Suggesting that  “to impose renewable energy” would “balance some fossil fuel pollution” at a climate-relevant scale is precisely the order of magnitude error highlighted by the cartoon.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[H simmens]

Robert T,

For better or worse the IPCC mandate has been to synthesize the published peer reviewed literature. 

You claim “If IPCC had followed the science on sunlight reflection twenty years ago there might not be an overshoot.“

So that I could better understand your animus towards the IPCC can you provide references to the peer reviewed literature 20 years ago or even say 10 years ago that “followed the science on sunlight reflection.”  

It has always seemed to me that if there is to be blame placed it should first be placed on the hands of the larger scientific community for not addressing sunlight reflection until recently rather than on the IPCC and/or the COP’s/ global decision-makers. 

But perhaps I am incorrect and there has been adequate and convincing peer reviewed scientific literature going back 20 years that addresses the need for Sunshine reflection that has been intentionally ignored or minimized by the IPCC. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

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

On Jan 3, 2026, at 9:53 AM, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:



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[John Nissen]

Brilliant! Is that copyright? I'd love to send it some environment enthusiast friends.

Nothing wrong with hoses, but we have a climate emergency. Effective cooling required urgently: the Arctic is in meltdown, global warming undiminished, extreme weather becoming more extreme, sea level rise accelerating, and climate refugees on an escalated increase as a result.

Cheers John 

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Hi Oswald - Prospero ano felicidad!

I can understand not implementing SAI, or at least the concept. But what about other strategies for emergency temporary cooling to prevent activated tipping elements from passing the point of no return? Hansen has not yet definitively said we need emergency cooling, but he has said everything but this in peer reviewed work with the distinct implication that it will be required. Many others are of course are saying emergency cooling is definitively required in peer review.

The reason temporary emergency cooling is needed, and that 2 C will cause the passing of the point of no return for some tipping elements, is that once Earth systems degradation begins, which is the same thing as tipping activation, the degradation does not stop unless the degradation forcing is removed, i.e. by removing the warming effects that caused the degradation to begin through climate restoration back to within the natural variability of our old climate. This means that activated tipping elements will pass the point of no return regardless of any climate pollution mitigation action (elimination, removals and or cooling) as long as the temperature is above the maximum natural variation of our old climate where degraded systems cannot stabilize or self-restore. Hansen and others are clear that removal of the degradation forcing means restoring our climate back to within the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth systems (natural variation). This time frame has been identified for numerous activated tipping elements at significant time above 1.5 C, with many saying mid-century is the time of the point of no return. The lag here is not really about the temperature equilibrium, it is about degradation of systems so severe that stabilization and or self-restoration is not possible. 

Atmospheric GHG removal, plus decarbonization to limit the amount of CDR needed so as to restore to natural variation below 1 C warming (350 ppm CO2), these are the actions of the permanent cure. Time frames for full implementation however to avoid the point of no return are risky, therefor prudence says we need to temporarily cool to avoid risks of the point of no return with significant time above 1.5 C, or about mid-century for most already activated tipping elements.

The school of thought that decarbonization can halt warming is of course flawed because it based on modeling that does not include fully developed fast feedbacks. Hansen of course avoids this pitfall by using proxy evidence that includes fully developed fast feedbacks.

So what you say that SAI is not needed, does this include all temporary emergency cooling strategies, or just SAI? Example: temporary pausing IMO sulfur regs to restore a few tenths of a degree C cooling is 100% shovel ready with absolutely known side effects that include a portion of the global respiratory disease mortality. This is of course a heavy lift, but risk/risk analysis reveals inaction is far more meaningful than temporarily allowing respiratory disease mortality from sulfate air pollution.

Steep trails,

Bruce

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
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Twitter - BruceCMelton1 

[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Dear Bruce,

 

you are right, cooling measures are indeed needed. Emission reduction alone won’t do the job, but of course it is needed. I think all in this forum agree on that.

 

What cooling strategy?

 

Our proposal is TFCD. Tropospheric Ferric Chloride Dispersion. It reduces methane, CO2 and restores lower cloud cover. It is the only strategy (AFAIK) that cools on the three most important fronts. Methane, CO2 and albedo. It would cool the climate by 0.5 to 1.0 °C, which would be sufficient to prevent the worst.

 

The science behind TFCD has been provided by Franz Oeste and Renaud de Richter, among others, and we are proud to work with these eminent scientists.     

 

SAI is a strategy which creates a new, unknown climate. It may work or not, I cannot predict that, but I would prefer to live on a planet which is not used for atmospheric experiments. Removing GHG is not an experiment, but a method to root out the cause of Global Warming. Again, it may work or not, I cannot predict that either, but I can predict that it will do no harm.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Author of „GeoRestoration – Cool the Climate with Natural Energy“

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi Oswald

Your final sentence strikes at the heart of this debate.  You say that removing GHGs is not an experiment, it may or may not work, but you can predict that it will do no harm.

If I lock you in a room for 24 hours, I can guarantee that that will do you no harm.  You can have water, food, a comfortable bed and chair, heat to keep you warm or AC to keep you cool and whatever you want to keep you amused while you're there.  You'll be fine.  I can predict that.

Unfortunately, during those 24 hours someone sets the building on fire.  You die.  Think of the tragic reality of those poor kids at the News Years Eve party in Switzerland.  That's exactly what happened to them.

The problem with your prediction is that it's worthless.  You can't predict that removing GHGs will do no harm, either directly or indirectly.  Any cooling at scale is going directly to change temperature gradients in the atmosphere and this will have weather effects.  You cannot predict that those weather effects will all be benign. 

Removing CO2 reduces surface temperature very very slowly, leaving plenty of time for the metaphorical building to burn down.  Removing methane works much quicker and would without question be a great idea.  The problem is that a lot of things have to go right for its benefits to be delivered at scale in a  timely manner.  They may.  But you can't guarantee that because, as you've noted in an earlier post, no one's currently interested to finance it.  When might they be?  Will that be soon enough?  The harms caused by continuing warming while the TFCD is being scaled would be indirect effects of pursuing that policy.  The risks from those indirect harms could be considerable.

Looking ahead you might think that a 'solution' that caused billions of people to die prematurely was totally unacceptable.  In a century, looking back, people might wonder why for fear of condemning, say 4 billion to a premature death, we didn't act more decisively to avoid the premature death of 7 billion.

Personally, I regard a collapse on that scale as being perfectly plausible.  I have no idea how likely it is, but it's definitely plausible.  Being plausible, I would like to think our policymakers would actively be devising and implementing policies to avoid such an outcome.  They'll have no better idea than anyone else about what will work, how quickly, what unmitigable risks it might entail and so on.  If you regard the situation we now face as a genuine emergency, which I do, the tried and tested response is to try every feasible intervention so you can learn by doing, continually scaling up those that work and revising or abandoning those that don't.

Taking SAI off the table now is much like locking yourself in that room.  You might be OK but it's almost certainly not the least risky approach the situation we face.

Regards

RobertC