New paper on MCB in the Arctic - promising results

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H simmens

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Dec 13, 2025, 1:19:07 PM12/13/25
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Abstract:

Marine cloud brightening (MCB) is one of several proposed sunlight reflection methods which could potentially be used to cool the planet on a relatively short timescale. In this work, we use complex models of the Earth system to simulate what would happen if small sea-salt particles were emitted near the surface to brighten the clouds in the Arctic. There is evidence from both high-latitude effusive volcanoes and higher resolution models that the addition of small particles in the Arctic atmosphere does brighten clouds. We run simulations using a middle-of-the-road greenhouse gas emissions scenario, which would lead to around 3 degrees of global warming by 2100, and we aim to maintain the Arctic temperature to near present-day levels. These simulations show that the introduction of sea-salt particles brightens the clouds in the Arctic and leads to substantial Arctic cooling, which also restores Arctic sea ice. Additionally, we find limited evidence for impacts outside of the Arctic. Finally, we emphasize that this is a very idealized modeling exercise where the technical and governance feasibility, as well as the impacts on coastal communities, ecosystems, and atmospheric chemistry are not considered. Thus, results should be interpreted with caution.

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

Ron Baiman

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Dec 13, 2025, 5:19:59 PM12/13/25
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Hi Herb,
If the logistical and engineering aspects of MCB deployment are worked out there is no doubt imv that it could be very helpful in many locations.  However, localized intensive cooling concentrated exclusively in the Arctic (not balanced by similar cooling in the Antarctic) is not a good idea, which exemplifies the problem of using an exclusive MCB strategy. It’s just not uniform enough (barring imv unrealistic logistical scenarios) for significant global (as opposed to regional and targeted) cooling impact. 
Best,
Ron


Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 13, 2025, at 12:19 PM, H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com> wrote:



Perhaps MCB can do the job in the Arctic anywaywithout need for SAI. 

Herb

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John Nissen

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Dec 14, 2025, 4:12:04 PM12/14/25
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Hi Ron,

I very much doubt that the three models they use have correct assumptions about the cooling power requirements for lowering the Arctic temperature.  The albedo loss alone contributes somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 W/m2 heating, averaged globally.  This translates to 0.25 to 0.5 petawatt heating within the Arctic.  To reduce the temperature, cooling power has to be greater than the heating power.  MCB cannot produce nearly enough cooling power to overcome the heating from albedo loss: the area of cloud that can be brightened is orders of magnitude too little.  And there is the heating resulting from atlantification to be overcome as well as from albedo loss, possibly doubling the cooling requirement.

I am afraid this paper is raising undue hopes for the people who, for some reason, are against SAI, when research from MacMartin and others indicates that SAI is extraordinarily benign if the SO2 is injected at suitable latitude and altitude at the appropriate time of year.  MCB is also an excuse to delay, when cooling is desperately urgently needed to deal with tipping elements in the Arctic.

Cheers, John


rob...@rtulip.net

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Dec 15, 2025, 4:04:04 AM12/15/25
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John

 

As you know, I got to know Stephen Salter well in his last years.  This led me to take a strong interest in MCB.  The result of this study was that I formed the view that if the technology problems can be solved so that the required submicron monodisperse salt particles can be produced at low cost, MCB has promise to be a superb technology for global weather modulation. 

 

However, that technology problem has not been solved yet, and the current cost barriers from the Great Barrier Reef work are immense.  Too much energy is now needed to generate MCB particles to make it cost effective as a global cooling technology.  There is an excellent discussion in this COP30 MCB conversation between Hugh Hunt, Daniel Harrison and others. 

 

Some other papers are https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/14507/2021/ by Robert Wood and https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2025/ea/d5ea00073d by Harrison

 

Hopefully intensive R&D will find a feasible way to solve the cost problem, but if not, MCB might become the triplane of the world cooling industry.  We don’t know.

 

How I imagine the future is that a steady background of moderate level SAI will be required, and that a suite of other cooling methods will also be deployed, all optimised by AI to deliver the best possible all round weather outcomes.  Meanwhile large scale ocean based algae production will develop to manage the carbon problem alongside ongoing fossil fuel use.

 

Global cooling is a project on the scale of the Manhattan Project, the Moon Shot and the Covid vaccine.  In advance of the billions that will have to be invested to assess and develop the optimal technologies, there is limited value in speculating about which technologies will be better.  OTEC, OIF, SAI, MCB and others could all have a useful place in the cooling ecosystem.  Only when the funds are in place to properly try to commercialise these technologies based on cooling ROI will these questions be answered.

 

So the main focus now should be getting to that funding point, by working out the story that can convince the public that the climate cooling paradigm shift is needed.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Dec 15, 2025, 4:42:12 AM12/15/25
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Dear Robert,

 

it is a very common mistake in scientific circles that something like global cooling could and will be decided by some world body, which then provides the billions needed etc. That’s a Top-Down approach, born from experts who know there is a certain demand, no doubt about that, but who know very little about product development and markets. I am afraid, that, since there is no precedence for a global Top-Down project - it simply won’t happen.

 

Climate cooling, like everything else, will be a bottom-up development. In this sense the MCB project at the Great Barrier Reef is a great example. Of course there is no guarantee that such bottom-up development works, but that’s really the only pathway to global cooling. If one fails another one will spring up etc. Global cooling is a systemic necessity, which means: It will happen.

 

I am not saying when it will happen nor if that will be too late or not. That depends on many future developments which I cannot foresee. But it certainly will happen, and we might even see it happen in our lifetime.

 

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

rob...@rtulip.net

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Dec 15, 2025, 7:05:29 AM12/15/25
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Hi Oswald, you say there is “no precedence for a global Top-Down project”.

 

The Montreal Protocol is the ideal global top down precedent for an Albedo Accord.   A second precedent is the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Institutions.  There are numerous international bodies that regulate and govern commerce in fields such as mail, patents, banking, meteorology, standards, trade, agricultural research, health, tourism, food, aviation, labor, telecoms, etc.  Then there is the Covid vaccine.  And at the national level, as I mentioned, there are the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project.

 

Here is some AI expansion on these points.

 

“Albedo governance” isn’t some weird one-off – it fits a long tradition of specialised global regimes that quietly make modern commerce possible. Over the last century and a half, states have repeatedly created narrow, technical international bodies whenever markets needed predictable rules across borders. We already live inside a dense web of such institutions.

  • The Universal Postal Union (UPU), founded in 1874 and now a UN specialised agency with 190+ members, coordinates postal policies so that a letter posted in Sydney can reach a village in Kenya or Peru with a known price and standard of service.
  • The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) harmonises international rules for patents, trademarks and other intellectual property, giving inventors and companies confidence that their ideas can travel safely between jurisdictions.
  • The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) provides the framework for global cooperation on weather and climate data, knitting together national meteorological services so that aviation, shipping, agriculture and disaster early-warning systems can all rely on a common, interoperable stream of forecasts.
  • The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) develops thousands of voluntary international standards that underpin everything from container sizes and quality management systems to information security, allowing global supply chains to function smoothly.
  • In trade, the World Trade Organization (WTO) sets and arbitrates rules on tariffs, subsidies and intellectual property, so that companies can invest and trade across borders with some expectation of fair treatment and transparent dispute resolution.
  • In food and farming, the CGIAR system links 15 international agricultural research centres in a global partnership to improve crop yields, resilience and sustainability, providing public-good knowledge that individual companies or countries would under-invest in on their own.

None of these bodies “run the world”. They do something more modest but more important for business: they create a stable, rule-based environment for specific cross-border systems – mail, patents, weather data, standards, trade, agricultural research – where pure market forces and ad hoc bilateral deals would be chaotic and inefficient.

From this perspective, an Albedo Accord is not an exotic idea. It is the next logical step: a specialised international regime to manage a shared technical system – planetary reflectivity – that underpins all commerce just as surely as the postal network, the patent system, or the global standard for shipping containers.

 

Over and above these specialised international bodies, we also have recent and historic examples of concentrated, mission-driven efforts that changed the trajectory of risk in a remarkably short time.

The COVID-19 vaccines are the most obvious recent case. Faced with an acute global threat, governments, companies and researchers compressed what is normally a decade-long development and approval process into less than a year. Massive public funding, advance purchase agreements, regulatory fast-tracking and unprecedented data-sharing turned a scientific possibility into billions of doses delivered around the world in record time. No single company or country could have achieved that on its own; it required a deliberately organised, risk-sharing effort to create a public good.

At the national level, history offers other examples of this kind of focused mobilisation. The Manhattan Project brought together scientists, engineers and industry under a single, secret wartime program and delivered the first nuclear weapons in just a few years. The Apollo Program turned John F. Kennedy’s 1961 promise of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” into reality by 1969, through a sustained, well-funded effort that spanned government, contractors and academia.

All three cases are very different in purpose and ethics, but they show the same structural lesson:

  • when leaders perceive an existential or strategic threat,
  • and when they set a clear, concrete goal and align funding, institutions and talent around it,
  • the normal constraints on speed and scale change.

An Albedo Accord would not look like the Manhattan Project or Apollo in its secrecy or nationalism, nor like the COVID response in its crisis-driven improvisation. But it belongs in the same family of undertakings: a decision to treat planetary brightness and climate stability as a shared strategic objective, and to organise research, governance and deployment accordingly, instead of hoping that a fragmented, under-funded status quo will somehow deliver a stable climate by accident.

 

Above the specialised agencies and standard-setting bodies, there is also a core group of heavyweight international institutions that already shape the rules of the global economy:

  • The United Nations (UN) provides the overall political forum where states negotiate collective security, sustainable development and international law. It already hosts climate agreements like the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC, so any Albedo Accord will almost certainly need a UN anchoring, even if it is negotiated first among a smaller coalition of willing states.
  • The World Bank Group finances development and infrastructure, and is rapidly expanding its climate role. It has committed to raise climate finance to 45% of its total lending and delivered over US$50 billion in development finance with climate co-benefits in 2025 alone. The Bank already helps countries design regulations and investments for low-carbon, resilient development; it could play a similar role in financing and de-risking albedo-related public goods.
  • The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private-sector arm, specialises in creating bankable climate projects and mobilising private capital in emerging markets. Its climate portfolio is in the tens of billions of dollars and growing, with a mandate to crowd in private investment for low-carbon, resilient growth. If albedo restoration is framed correctly, it becomes exactly the sort of global public-good infrastructure that needs blended public–private finance of the kind IFC already manages.
  • The International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulates global shipping. It has already adopted a revised greenhouse gas strategy, agreed a path to net-zero emissions from shipping, and approved a global fuel standard plus carbon-pricing framework for the sector. For an Albedo Accord, IMO is a natural partner because shipping is both a major emitter and a potential delivery platform for some marine-based cooling and ocean-brightening technologies.
  • The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is the “central bank for central banks”. It now has a dedicated green-finance focus, supports climate-scenario analysis and stress-testing through its committees, and warns that unmanaged climate risk could threaten global financial stability. BIS and its network are where concepts like “planetary solvency”, capital requirements and insurance regulation can be aligned with the reality of a darkening, more volatile planet.

Together with other players – the IMF, regional development banks, export credit agencies, standards bodies – these institutions show that we already know how to build international regimes for specific systemic risks and opportunities:

  • We have the UN for political legitimacy,
  • the World Bank/IFC for development and blended finance,
  • the IMO for sector-wide regulation of a global industry,
  • and the BIS family for integrating climate into financial stability and risk supervision.

An Albedo Accord would not be starting from scratch. It would plug into this existing scaffolding: negotiated under UN auspices, financed and de-risked by the World Bank/IFC and others, implemented in part through sectors like shipping under IMO rules, and overseen financially through BIS-linked standards for banks and insurers. That is how restoring planetary brightness can move from an abstract idea to a governed global public good backed by real institutions.

 

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is the best global precedent we have for an Albedo Accord. It shows that the world can:

  • recognise an invisible atmospheric threat
  • accept clear scientific evidence
  • and negotiate a binding treaty that actually changes industrial practice worldwide.

A few specific features make Montreal an ideal top-down model:

  1. Clear physical target
    • Montreal had a simple, measurable objective: stop thinning the ozone layer by phasing out specific chemicals (CFCs, halons, etc.).
    • An Albedo Accord would likewise need a clear physical target: stabilise or raise planetary albedo to keep Earth’s energy imbalance within agreed bounds.
  2. Concrete control knobs
    • Montreal regulated a short, named list of substances, with timetables and percentages for phase-out.
    • An Albedo Accord would identify a small, controlled set of levers – e.g. specific aerosol interventions, marine cloud projects, ocean-based brightening techniques – and spell out where, how and under what limits they can be used.
  3. Science–policy machinery
    • Montreal embedded a scientific assessment process that periodically reviewed ozone data, model projections and chemical substitutes, and then updated control schedules.
    • An Albedo Accord would need the same: a standing albedo science panel that tracks cloud, ice and brightness changes, monitors interventions, and recommends adjustments.
  4. Finance and fairness
    • Montreal created a Multilateral Fund to help developing countries adopt alternatives, recognising that phase-outs imposed real economic costs.
    • An Albedo Accord would likewise require financing mechanisms so that vulnerable countries are not forced to choose between development and climate safety, and so that no one can complain that albedo governance is just rich-country technocracy.
  5. Legal teeth and near-universal membership
    • Montreal is legally binding, with trade measures and reporting obligations; it is one of the few treaties with universal ratification.
    • For albedo, that level of legitimacy matters: if you are going to touch “the global thermostat”, you need as close to global consent and compliance as possible, even if you start with a club of the willing.

 

The International Maritime Organization is a good illustration of both what we can do – and what we’re currently not doing – when it comes to the sky.

On the one hand, IMO has shown it can set global rules for a whole industry. Its sulphur rules (culminating in the 2020 global sulphur cap for ship fuel) were designed to cut air pollution and save lives. Technically, they’ve been a success: sulphur emissions from ships have fallen sharply, and coastal air quality has improved.

But from an albedo perspective, this is also a cautionary tale. The sulphate particles from dirty ship fuel helped to brighten marine clouds over the main shipping lanes, increasing reflection of sunlight over parts of the ocean. When IMO cleaned up the fuel, those particles vanished and the clouds dimmed. Several recent studies suggest that this change in shipping aerosols has contributed to the recent drop in planetary albedo and the sharp increase in heat uptake over the North Atlantic.

In other words, IMO made a correct decision for health and local air quality, but it did so without any framework for weighing the global albedo consequences. The result is that we have simultaneously:

  • cleaner air near shipping routes, and
  • slightly darker oceans and clouds, adding yet more heat to a system that is already running a surplus.

This is not an argument for going back to filthy fuel. It is an argument for having an explicit, global albedo strategy. If you tighten sulphur rules (as we should), you must also think about other, better-governed ways of restoring the lost reflectivity. Right now, no international body has that job. The IMO regulates shipping. The UNFCCC negotiates emissions. No one is in charge of the planetary mirror itself.

An Albedo Accord is meant to fill exactly that gap: to give us a way to coordinate decisions like the sulphur cap with an overall plan for planetary brightness, instead of changing one part of the system and discovering later that we have made the world darker.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

H simmens

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Dec 15, 2025, 8:35:14 AM12/15/25
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Robert,

You have been arguing for an Albedo Accord for a considerable period of time. Unless I missed it I have not yet seen a proposal or white paper from you making a detailed case for why that is the best institutional approach to cooling the planet and what needs to be done to bring it about. 

I would find it extremely helpful to be able to review and comment on such a detailed proposal. 

I remain skeptical - not about the ends that you are attempting to achieve - but about the means of an Albedo Accord. 

Perhaps a detailed argument that contrasted the Albedo Accord with other institutional approaches to achieving the same outcome would convince me otherwise. 

That said, I fully agree with your statement:

“  In advance of the billions that will have to be invested to assess and develop the optimal technologies, there is limited value in speculating about which technologies will be better.  OTEC, OIF, SAI, MCB and others could all have a useful place in the cooling ecosystem.  Only when the funds are in place to properly try to commercialise these technologies based on cooling ROI will these questions be answered.

 

So the main focus now should be getting to that funding point, by working out the story that can convince the public that the climate cooling paradigm shift is needed.“



This perspective of course at the heart of HPAC’s DNA and Mission statement.  

We do not attempt to prematurely favor one technology or approach over another. Doing so would take HPAC down an unhelpful path of becoming embroiled in extremely technical and often divisive debates (as we have seen on these lists for four years ) instead of focusing on the absolute need for lowering average temperatures in order to restore  a safe and healthy climate -through the Climate Triad. 

(I now often go beyond the Triad by invoking the Climate Quad - the Triad plus DA- Dynamic Adaptation.)

Herb

PS 

Reinforcing your quoted comments above here is a small portion of the idealized future scenario looking back from 2035 contained in my book A Climate Vocabulary of the Future:

“Five billion watched as the first SIV’s — Stratospheric Injection 
Vehicles — released their sulfur payloads high in the sky. Celebrations, incantations and demonstrations brought people together for the first time in decades. 

On the split screen one also saw sleek sea vessels with slim snouts meticulously crafted to deliver designer salts to brighten 
marine clouds as the vessels tacked through open waters on their way 
to dampen a potential hurricane or help save an endangered coral reef. 

Other once exotic technologies did their share. Drones thinned 
cirrus clouds; buoyant flakes of rice husks cooled the ocean while 
brightening marine clouds. Solar powered fizzball units injected 
nanobubbles, cooling the waters.

Vast areas of ocean deserts came to life again using marine permaculture techniques. Kelp was grown by 
use of nutrient rich deeper ocean waters, providing valuable crops that cooled and restored the ocean’s vitality. Turbine pumps sprayed sea 
water droplets to cool the atmosphere and neutralize methane.

Iron — ocean iron fertilization — was added to depleted corners of the ocean raising productivity, increasing ocean life and drawing down CO2 as this new life decayed and sank to the bottom. 

On land, mirrors were carefully deployed by the millions, trans-
forming the climate by reflecting heat and cooling farmland, buildings, people and animals. A billion white and green roofs transformed cities and countryside alike as friendly ‘climate color wars’ broke out as communities competed to be the first to whiten and green their roofs, their roads, and their structures. 

Ecosystems were restored one hectare after another using Geotherapy, regenerative agriculture, animal pasture restoration, silvopasture, 
hydro ecology and more. Agricultural sprawl was reversed as effectively as urban sprawl. 

These efforts, which engaged millions, cooled the land, conserved 
water, and salvaged degraded soils. 

Removal efforts focused on land and ocean. Hundreds of thousands 
of direct air capture machines each removing CO2 from the atmosphere
popped up where energy and opportunities to sequester carbon were available.

 A whole new field of carbonetics emerged to create, enhance 
and maintain these devices, helping to ensure that they consumed less 
energy each year. 

The deplorable degradation of millions of acres of soil was no 
longer as the newly formed Society of Soil Savants instituted a living 
soils program that brought back the billions of diverse, delightful, daz-
zlingly distinct creatures that create and maintain the miracle of soil. 

Vast agricultural lands were sprinkled with precise amounts of 
minerals — including biochar and terra preta — carefully formulated to 
weather in ways that removed carbon while enhancing soil life.

These and other nourishing interventions helped restore the biotic integrity of millions of acres. 
Biochars were creatively incorporated into products as diverse as plaster, roofing, paint, bricks, cosmeceuticals, fabrics and more. 

Orange olivine, an abundant mineral, became a kind of magic elixir as 
spreading it on beaches and allowing it to mix with waves captured vast quantities of CO2 and reduced the acidic ocean…..

These and other techniques were managed and orchestrated by the 
climacrats and scientists at the World Climate Organization’s Center for Climate Restoration. 

Managing such an unprecedented international effort required 
extraordinary monitoring and evaluation capabilities. These were 
provided through the use of artificial climate intelligence which turned 
the billions of bits of data collected into coherent and actionable 
patterns…


Most everyone recognized that there were still decades more work 
ahead stopping carbon pollution, removing many billions of tons from 
the skies and carefully monitoring and adjusting the direct climate 
cooling that appears to have saved life on this planet. 

When changes in rainfall and temperatures in some regions benefited some countries more than others, a carefully designed Inter-
national Climate Triad Equity Pact (ICTEP) guaranteed that those 
countries that were harmed would be compensated fully and fairly by 
the international community……

As of New Year 2035, the Triad based restoration movement was 
proving that it could succeed in achieving the unthinkable this century — restoring a healthy climate. To celebrate the success revelers in 450 cities celebrated by cheering on as 450 carbon concentration clocks showed the first decline in CO2 concentrations since the industrial revolution from — you guessed it — 451 to 450 parts per million. 



Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com



Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Dec 15, 2025, at 7:05 AM, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:



oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Dec 15, 2025, 11:07:29 AM12/15/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, John Nissen, Ron Baiman, H simmens, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration, Climate Alliance Healthy

Dear Robert,

 

I am fully aware of these projects.

 

The Montreal Protocol is regulation only, no technology has been invented by the regulators. In case of SAI the matter is different, it requires inventing, development and operation of technology, something no bureaucracy has ever done.

 

Regards

 

Oswald

 

 

 

David Price

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Dec 15, 2025, 12:01:15 PM12/15/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, John Nissen, Ron Baiman, H simmens, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration, Climate Alliance Healthy
Hi Oswald

Actually that’s not correct. The technology surrounding CFCs and their replacement by more “ozone-friendly” alternatives has evolved significantly since 1992 — and the problem is not yet “solved”. And there is still a need for further improvements!





David 
From my cellphone

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

On Dec 15, 2025, at 8:07 am, oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Dec 15, 2025, 3:41:46 PM12/15/25
to David Price, rob...@rtulip.net, John Nissen, Ron Baiman, H simmens, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration, Climate Alliance Healthy

Hi David,

 

the Montreal protocol is really regulation. It is good that technology has evolved since then.

 

I was referring to an email by Robert stipulating that SRM should now be started, since MCB does not work. It is really very common mistake by scientists to demand that something is introduced or created by the global community. I just want to make the point that the process which is called for is non-existent.

 

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

 

David Price

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Dec 15, 2025, 5:55:46 PM12/15/25
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Hi Oswald

You make a fair response! My point is that an albedo accord would also have to be a form of regulation — hammered out by bureaucrats— and the ideas/methods for implementing the regs would evolve over time as engineers and scientists learned from the process.  

David 
From my cellphone

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

On Dec 15, 2025, at 12:41 pm, oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Dec 16, 2025, 4:00:46 AM12/16/25
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Hi Alan,

 

I agree that regulation is necessary. But it is not sufficient, regulation does not create anything. Regulation is always limiting, it stops people from doing the wrong thing. It does not create the right thing.

 

If regulation can only limit, you need something to be limited at first. This is where the error happens. Scientists, especially from natural science, stipulate a reversed order. The Top-Down approach says: Ok, lets regulate this, then technology follows. That’s not going to happen. At first, before all regulation, you need an industry, a technology, a living organism, call it as you like, which actually does something, and then you can regulate it.  

 

In SAI we now have a first serious contender, Stardust. I do not know if they will succeed, but let’s assume so. Once they have done their first field-tests they will ask for regulation. This is the right order. Industry first, regulation second. The regulators will then say, ok, yes you can do this but only say 2 tons per day, and only on Mondays. This is, of course, a stupid rule, but it shows the case. Regulation follows industry, sometimes it comes 10 years after the first generation, sometimes it comes 1 day after that, but it is always second, and it is always limiting, non-creative.

 

I am aware of the fact that governmental bodies can not only regulate, they can also create things. But history shows that most initiatives, most technical development and most inventions stem from private bodies. In SAI there are many technical challenges to be solved before any regulation is needed. At this stage regulators will rightfully say: What do you need us for, there is nothing to do.

 

It is a subject I work on and I will talk about it in the next NOAC session  on 22nd of December. Of course I will refer to AMR rather than SAI, but the organizational subject is identical for both methods.

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