The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Adolf Hitler describes the concept of the "Big Lie" in Mein Kampf (1925), attributing the technique to others—particularly to Jews and Marxists—though ironically, he and the Nazi regime later used it extensively themselves.  Here is the key passage, paraphrased and contextualised: 

 

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.  It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this lie may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down.”

 

Key ideas:

• The big lie is more believable than a small one because people cannot imagine someone telling such a colossal untruth.
• People are more inclined to believe the big lie because they themselves only tell small lies, and assume others do the same.
• Even when confronted with evidence, doubt lingers—the emotional impact of the big lie outlasts rational refutation.

 

Irony and Use

Although Hitler described the big lie as a tactic of others, the Nazis used it themselves—most infamously in promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as blaming Jews for Germany’s defeat in WWI.  Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, is often (though incorrectly) credited with formulating the principle: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” That sentiment reflects the same logic: emotional repetition can override reason.

 

Applying Hitler’s Big Lie theory to the dominant claim that decarbonisation alone can prevent dangerous climate change reveals unsettling parallels in how large-scale political narratives can persist despite clear physical contradictions.

 

The Claim (The Big Lie)

"If we decarbonise the economy—shifting from fossil fuels to renewables—we will stop dangerous climate change."

This is a simple, emotionally satisfying message that aligns with values of sustainability, innovation and responsibility. It is repeated across media, politics, and scientific institutions as if it were a proven solution.

 

Why It Fits the 'Big Lie' Pattern

1. Colossal Scale
   The claim is sweeping and utopian: that replacing one sector (energy) will fix an entire planetary energy imbalance involving oceans, clouds, ice, and feedbacks. Yet dangerous warming is now driven largely by feedback loops—especially the loss of Earth’s reflectivity (albedo)—not just by direct emissions.
2. Emotional Persuasion
   The narrative appeals to morality and guilt: humans caused the problem through pollution; now we must atone by going green. People are drawn to the idea of redemption through action, even if the action (renewable transition) does not address the most urgent physics.
3. Incomprehensibility of the Alternative
   Most people find it hard to believe that a massive, globally coordinated effort (like net zero by 2050) could be futile or misdirected. They trust that if everyone is doing it, it must work. Suggesting that it won't—because it ignores non-linear tipping points and feedbacks—seems implausible, even subversive.
4. Persistence Despite Evidence
   Even as satellite data (e.g. CERES, Loeb et al.) shows accelerating heat uptake and falling planetary albedo, the core decarbonisation narrative remains untouched. Solar geoengineering and albedo restoration are dismissed or postponed—not because they are unviable, but because they violate the established story.
5. Reinforced by Power and Profit
   The Big Lie is backed by powerful industries—not fossil fuels, but the trillion-dollar renewable sector. Policies, subsidies, research funding and institutional agendas all depend on maintaining the illusion that net-zero carbon emissions is a complete solution.

 

The Big Lie of Decarbonisation: Why It Fails

The claim that decarbonising the global economy can prevent dangerous climate change is a Big Lie—a grand, emotionally appealing falsehood repeated so often that it has become dogma, despite being too small, too slow, too expensive, too contested, and too difficult to work.

 

Why This Narrative Persists

This lie is not believed because it's plausible, but because it is comforting, profitable, and politically convenient. It fits a moral narrative—human sin through pollution, redemption through renewables—that conceals its utter inadequacy as a climate response.

 

Why Decarbonisation Can’t Deliver

1. Too Small
   The scale of avoided warming from emissions cuts is tiny compared to the heat already locked in by Earth’s energy imbalance. Cutting carbon does not reverse the warming—it only reduces future additions.
2. Too Slow
   The time required to fully decarbonise (even under optimistic scenarios) is decades too late. Meanwhile, feedbacks—melting ice, vanishing clouds, methane release—are accelerating.
3. Too Expensive
   Trillions are being poured into a solution that doesn’t cool the planet. And worse, these funds are diverted from viable interventions like albedo restoration and carbon removal.
4. Too Contested
   Global political unity on deep decarbonisation is a fantasy. Fossil fuel demand remains strong, and many nations will resist or delay, especially in the Global South.
5. Too Difficult
   The required transformation of energy, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure is beyond what our political, institutional, and material systems can achieve in time.

 

The Real Path Forward

We must replace this failing paradigm with a physically grounded sequence:

1. Cool the planet directly by restoring Earth’s reflectivity (e.g. marine cloud brightening, polar brightening).
2. Remove the trillions of tonnes of legacy greenhouse gases with advanced chemical, biological and geological methods.
3. Reform the energy system not for climate salvation, but for sustainability, equity, and resilience.

In this model, decarbonisation becomes a side effect, not the primary goal. The moral clarity of “zero emissions” must yield to thermodynamic realism: what matters is cooling the Earth now.

The moral hazard argument against geoengineering serves the financial interests of the renewable energy industry, not the climate. This is the core of the Big Lie—a false solution that sustains a lucrative political consensus while letting the planet burn. It is time to name it, reject it, and build a new path—one that starts with the sky, not with the grid.

 

The Big Lie of Decarbonisation: Sins of Emission and the Path Not Taken

The core narrative of global climate policy is built on a seductive but fatal Big Lie: That if we atone for the sins of emission—by reducing fossil fuel use and embracing renewables—we can prevent dangerous climate change.

This story has become a secular religion:

• Carbon is the original sin.
• Decarbonisation is the act of repentance.
• Net zero is the promised salvation.

 

But this morality tale collapses under the weight of physical reality. The world is not warming because of today’s emissions, but because of the massive heat imbalance already in the Earth system, driven by feedback loops and loss of planetary reflectivity.

 

Why Decarbonisation Fails: Not Moral, but Material

This strategy doesn’t fail because it’s insufficient—it fails because it’s unworkable:

1. Too small to affect planetary heat in the near term.
2. Too slow to prevent tipping points now unfolding.
3. Too expensive, misallocating trillions in hope-based solutions.
4. Too contested, politically and globally.
5. Too difficult, requiring an overhaul of civilisation without consensus, technology, or time.

 

The Real Heresy: Cooling First

The real climate heresy is to say: Cooling the planet directly must come first.

Before confessing carbon, we must restore the albedo—the Earth’s mirror that once kept it cool. Through marine cloud brightening and other albedo interventions, we can reduce incoming solar heat and buy time to:

• Remove legacy greenhouse gases from the atmosphere at trillion-tonne scale,
• Redesign the energy system for human needs, not climate absolution.

This is a paradigm shift: from emission guilt to planetary repair.

 

Who Benefits? Cui Bono?

The moral hazard argument, widely used to suppress discussion of solar geoengineering, masks commercial interest behind ethical rhetoric. It serves the renewable energy industry, whose profits and political power depend on the fiction that decarbonisation alone is salvation.

 

This is the real inversion:  The doctrine of net zero poses as virtue, while blocking the only interventions that could cool the planet in time.  We have been led to believe that climate change is a moral failure, and that if only we cease the sins of emission, we will be saved. But the truth is harder: climate change is a thermodynamic crisis, not a spiritual one. And salvation will not come through guilt, sacrifice, or green virtue—but through courage, realism, and action grounded in the physics of heat. It’s time to stop worshipping the false carbon gods—and start healing the Earth.

 

Sins of Emission are acts of commission: active wrongdoing through polluting behaviors, most notably the burning of fossil fuels. In the mainstream climate narrative, these are framed as humanity’s cardinal sins:

• Driving emissions that cause global warming
• Deforestation, industrial agriculture, and overconsumption
• Supporting fossil fuel industries or failing to transition to renewables

These are the alleged "original sins" of climate change. Policies focused on decarbonisation attempt to bring about repentance and redemption through emission reduction, carbon taxes, and renewable energy adoption.

 

Sins of Omission are failures to act—neglecting what should have been done. In the climate context, sins of omission include:

• Failure to deploy effective cooling strategies, like albedo restoration
• Delays in developing large-scale carbon removal technologies
• Refusal to rethink climate policy assumptions despite new evidence
• Silencing or ignoring alternative solutions due to ideology or vested interest

 

The IPCC’s refusal to seriously consider solar geoengineering, despite overwhelming evidence of accelerating feedbacks, is a sin of omission. So is the global failure to prioritize cooling the planet directly, when it is clear that emissions cuts alone will not suffice.

 

Theological and Moral Analogy

Type	Sin of Emission	Sin of Omission
Moral Frame	Pollution, greed, excess	Neglect, cowardice, blindness
Ethical Action	Stop doing harm	Start doing good
Climate Policy	Net zero, decarbonisation	Albedo restoration, CDR, adaptation
Root Problem	Active contribution to damage	Passive failure to prevent greater harm

 

In traditional theology, omission is often seen as the more insidious sin—knowing what ought to be done, and refusing to do it. The Book of James says: "Anyone who knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." (James 4:17)

 

Reframing Climate Ethics

We are now in a moment where the sins of omission outweigh the sins of emission.

• Continuing to burn fossil fuels is bad—but failing to cool the Earth when we know how is worse.
• We cannot plead ignorance anymore. The tools for planetary repair are within reach.
• Failing to act on them—out of fear, inertia or ideology—is a grave omission.

 

The Problem: Science Settled, Policy Stalled

We are in a historically unique situation where:

• The science of climate change—its causes, mechanisms, and escalating dangers—is overwhelmingly settled, supported by decades of peer-reviewed data, satellite observation, and robust modeling.
• Yet the policy response remains fractured, politicized, and ineffective.

This mismatch creates a dangerous illusion: that understanding the problem is equivalent to solving it.

 

Why the Science Is Settled

1. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet.
2. Feedbacks—especially from albedo loss, permafrost thaw, and ocean heat uptake—are amplifying that warming.
3. Dangerous tipping points are being crossed, including coral reef collapse, Arctic sea ice loss, and extreme weather intensification.

This consensus is embedded in every IPCC report and reinforced by leading research institutions globally. There is no serious scientific debate about whether the Earth is dangerously heating—only about how fast and how far it will go.

 

Why Policy Is Not Settled

1. Competing Interests and Narratives
   Climate policy is shaped more by economic lobbies, ideological commitments, and geopolitical rivalries than by scientific facts. Fossil fuel, renewable, and financial sectors all push for policies that serve their interests.
2. Inadequate Frameworks
   The dominant policy paradigm—focused narrowly on emission reductions—ignores the role of feedbacks, energy imbalance, and albedo loss. This leads to targets that sound impressive (e.g. net zero by 2050) but do not materially change the trajectory of warming.
3. Suppression of Alternatives
   Proposals for solar radiation management or massive carbon removal are marginalized as dangerous or immoral, not because the science is unsound, but because they challenge existing political and commercial narratives.
4. Psychological and Cultural Blockages
   The public—and many policymakers—cling to comforting illusions: that green consumerism, renewables and net-zero goals can suffice. Real solutions, which may involve planetary-scale engineering and geopolitical cooperation, are too disruptive for the prevailing imagination.

 

The Result: Paralysis by Consensus

We face the paradox that the more solid the science becomes, the less flexible the policy response seems to be. The mantra that "the science is settled" has become a shield for unsettled, inadequate, and sometimes misleading policy.

This is not a failure of knowledge—it is a failure of courage, imagination, and systems thinking.

 

What’s Needed

1. Admit the gap between science and policy, and stop pretending that current plans are sufficient.
2. Reframe the problem from moral narratives about emissions to physical realities about energy imbalance and feedbacks.
3. Elevate neglected options—like albedo restoration and large-scale carbon removal—into the policy mainstream.
4. Develop a clear, engineering-based critical path from warming to cooling.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

[Tim Foresman]

Spot on and brilliant. Makes me nostalgic of the Berlin coffee shops in the late 1930s when life was so much simpler.

Thanks Robert. Cheers, Tim

Dr. Tim Foresman

6219 Rockburn Hill Road

Elkridge, Maryland 21075

410-707-7352

www.earthparty.org

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Subject: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Here is an 800 word summary I have written in op-ed form.  Sadly unpublishable in this state, as the argument is too heretical and complicated.

 

The Big Lie of Decarbonisation: Why Cooling Must Come First
By Robert Tulip

The propaganda tactic called the Big Lie is a falsehood so colossal and impudent that ordinary people could not imagine anyone would dare invent it. For climate change, the Big Lie is that decarbonising the world economy could prevent dangerous warming.

Support for decarbonising speaks to moral responsibility and technological optimism, good versus evil, the promise that clean energy can atone for past pollution and build a better world. 

But the chant of net zero by 2050, for all these good intentions, collapses under the weight of physical reality. This seductive goal is comforting, profitable and endlessly repeated, but lacks plausible evidence.  Carbon action can do nothing about short-term heat. Refusal to face this fact constitutes a Big Lie.

The Albedo Layer

The main carbon problem is not new emissions but rather the 2.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 already added to the atmosphere. Removing this immense carbon stock will take decades. Meanwhile, the accumulated heat from past emissions is destroying the ‘albedo layer’, the bright clouds and ice that cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight to space. Albedo loss now causes an estimated 80% of current warming, with new emissions only causing 20%. 

Before we can tackle carbon, we must restore the planet’s mirror—its reflective albedo shield. Reflecting sunlight can remove excess heat, with immense benefits for the world economy, international security and global ecology. Cooling methods are not techno-fantasies. They are tools that can rapidly be tested and deployed to buy us time.

Satellite evidence shows the world is getting darker. The Big Lie ignores this reality. Instead, the decarbonisation narrative persists as if emissions reduction alone can fix a system already spinning out of control. It cannot.

Decarbonisation is too small, too slow, too expensive, too contested, too difficult

Too Small: Carbon cuts alone can’t cool the climate. Their effect is swamped by the growing heating from loss of clouds and ice. A trillion-tonne problem is not affected by million tonne responses.

Too Slow: Decarbonisation does nothing about effects of warming happening now, such as extreme weather and the loss of ice, permafrost and coral. Emission reduction still matters over the long term, but it cannot serve as the first line of defence in an overheating world.

Too Expensive: Trillions of dollars are being poured into an ineffective solution. Reflecting sunlight back into space would cool the planet at a tiny fraction of the cost.

Too Contested: Net-zero needs global unity. But fossil fuel demand is still rising, especially in the developing world. Geopolitical fragmentation makes coordinated decarbonisation a fantasy, not a plan.

Too Difficult: Transforming energy, transport, agriculture and industrial systems of every nation is a political and logistical impossibility, facing intense opposition. Pretending otherwise is wishful thinking.

Cui Bono?

Despite these flaws, the Big Lie survives because it serves powerful interests.  We must ask cui bono - who benefits?  The renewable energy sector, now worth trillions, depends on the alleged moral clarity of net-zero emissions to justify public subsidy. To question this narrative is dismissed as climate heresy.  But the scientific and moral reality is that cooling must come first.

From Sin to System

Climate policy must pivot from sin to system, from false morality to thermodynamics, from guilt to action. The Big Lie labels carbon emissions the original sin, with renewables the path to repentance and salvation through net zero.

But the physics doesn’t care. The planet doesn’t respond to virtue signalling. It responds to energy flows.

The deeper ethical failure than any “sin of emission” is the sin of omission, the failure to act on scientific knowledge. We know that restoring Earth’s reflectivity can cool the planet, that emission cuts won’t reverse climate feedbacks, and that time is running out. Yet we delay.

This is a failure of courage, imagination and systems thinking.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges the severity of warming and the dangers of tipping points, but its strategy, calling to halve world emissions by 2030, remains rooted in the Big Lie. The IPCC ignores sunlight reflection, not because it can’t work, but because it doesn’t fit their story.  The resulting policy paralysis cloaked in scientific consensus is allowing the world to cook.  In our time of profound danger and historic opportunity, the question is not whether climate change is real but whether our response is real. The answer, so far, is no.

The Bible condemns those who know what is right but fail to do it. In climate terms, failing to cool the Earth is the primary sin of omission. The urgent need is to establish an Albedo Accord charged to cool the planet now, and to start to heal it over time. We must abandon the false gods of carbon virtue. It is time to stop believing the Big Lie.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

[Tim Foresman]

Bravo zulu.

Sent from my T-Mobile 5G Device
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Subject: RE: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

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[Robert Chris]

Robert

I really like this Big Lie narrative but a few details trouble me.

First, of the 2.5TtCO2 emitted, less than half remains in the atmosphere ((428ppm-277ppm)x7.8GtCO2/ppm). 

Second, I don't like the 'first this then that' approach. Decarbonisation and albedo enhancement have to be done in parallel.  We can discuss their respective weights, but to argue, as I think you do, that there's no need to reduce emissions until we've got surface temperature under control with SRM, is not a sensible policy regime.  Both/and has to be the way forward.

Third, I think the religious framing dilutes the message and will reduce its impact for many.  I know this is important to you, but as a piece of rhetoric, I think it would be much more effective if you stick to the physics.

Fourth, a detail I like and that would fit well here is to explain that decarbonisation is challenging because CO2 is such an inefficient forcing agent - you need a vast amount more or less of it to make a significant impact on surface temperature. 

Its radiative efficiency is 1.8Wm^-2kg^-1E-15.  That means you need 570Gt of atmospheric CO2 to change RF by just 1Wm^-2.  But because of outgassing from C reservoirs in the ocean and on land as atmospheric CO2 is reduced, you need to take about double that out of the atmosphere.  And 1Wm^-2 will have an equilibrium surface temperature impact of about 1^oC of which a third will arise within 5 years, a third in the next century and the final third over millennia (this value is critically dependent on the correct value of ECS for a doubling of CO2 - I'm assuming the conventional 3^oC).  To get that modest cooling, implies reducing atmospheric CO2 to about 350ppm, last seen in 1988, and that is a long way beyond net zero.

That's the physics behind why decarbonisation is such a problem.  Being so radiatively inefficient, it makes it really expensive to do at the necessary scale.

Regards

Robert

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[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Robert and all,

The concept that cooling and decarbonization must occur, that has been fostered by scenario interpretation of removal expense and feasibility, does not consider the great time and expense that cooling must occur in the absence of removals, nor does it consider the vast damage to our oceans, where direct cooling does little to mitigate for acidification. Collapse of our ocean systems or large parts, seems to be now foregone with the identification of activation of this tipping element in Findlay 2025. If we do not consider the outsized risks of unabated ocean acidification and activation of this tipping element, without removals, cooling must occur until humankind can decarbonize. Our track record is not encouraging for this in this century. After 30 years of the smartest people in the world telling us we must reduce emissions substantially, emissions have instead doubled. What would be the cost of cooling for centuries? What would be the risks?

The Climate Triad -- the reason the HPAC list exists, is to advance all three aspects of the triad: cool, reduce, remove. This is our mission. We as a group have determined this mission is the appropriate path, not cooling and decarb alone. To leave out any of the three tasks does not support our mission. Further thought reveals that cooling itself is a much heavier lift than removals when considering political will and feasibility. Removals are proven over the last century of intensive utilization of processes that are neither nascent nor expensive (See the History of Carbon Dioxide Removal). I have never heard the cost of centuries of cooling - the cost in money, and the cost in collapse of our oceans, where this tipping element is now active, and once the degradation that marks tipping activation begins, it does not stop until the thing that caused the degradation to begin is removed. Timelines for cooling are poorly represented in literature and the discussion in general. What then, is the reality of the centuries of cooling needed in the absence of removals? What are the realities of the fact that cooling and decarbonization alone cannot reverse ongoing ocean acidity increases that now are a part of the activated tipping conundrum?

Our mission then, is to advance all three: cooling, reduction, and removals - regardless of political will, feasibility and costs. We have decided this as a group, because without all three, the mission of restoration to eliminate tipping risks fails.

MeltOn

Findlay, June 9, 2025 - Ocean Acidification - Another Planetary Boundary Crossed… Once a system’s degradation begins, in general it does not stop unless the thing that caused it to begin is removed. In this case, warming has caused the crossing of the ocean acidification threshold. There are scenarios where if warming is halted, natural buffering and ocean circulation could restore ocean acidification with time, but generally, a system does not self restore once degradation begins, unless the warming or warming effects that caused the degradation to begin are removed.
Abstract, “Ocean acidification has been identified in the Planetary Boundary Framework as a planetary process approaching a boundary that could lead to unacceptable environmental change. Using revised estimates of pre-industrial aragonite saturation state, state-of-the-art data-model products, including uncertainties and assessing impact on ecological indicators, we improve upon the ocean acidification planetary boundary assessment and demonstrate that by 2020, the average global ocean conditions had already crossed into the uncertainty range of the ocean acidification boundary. This analysis was further extended to the  subsurface ocean, revealing that up to 60% of the global subsurface ocean (down to 200m) had crossed that boundary, compared to over 40% of the global surface ocean. These changes result in significant declines in suitable habitats for important calcifying species, including 43% reduction in habitat for tropical and subtropical coral reefs, up to 61% for polar pteropods, and 13% for coastal bivalves. By including these additional considerations, we suggest a revised boundary of 10% reduction from pre-industrial conditions more adequately prevents risk to marine ecosystems and their services; a benchmark which was surpassed by year 2000 across the entire surface ocean.”
Findlay et al., Ocean Acidification - Another Planetary Boundary Crossed, Global Change Biology, June 9, 2025.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gcb.70238

Oxy's Stratos facility in the Permian Basin. Phase 1 is 125 times the size of Climeworks' Orca in Iceland. On track to begin operations in Q3, 2025.

History of Carbon Dioxide Removal
https://climatediscovery.org/History_of_Carbon_Dioxide_Removal_Draft.docx

 

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
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The Band Climate Change
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[Robin Collins]

The "first this, then that" approach, or prioritizing where all options are required or mutually reinforcing, is not uncommon. Perhaps helpful is this piece authored by the late Dr. Adele Buckley where she makes a basic electrical/physics argument to show why pursuing projects in parallel rather than in strict sequence (series), can significantly lower resistance. It's a useful analogy that makes a lot of practical sense.

Robin

attached is her argument (replace "nuclear disarmament" with "climate mitigation efforts"...)

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[John Nissen]

Hi Dana and Robert,

Dana, 

The mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is 3240 gigatonnes, abbreviated as 3,240 GtCO2.  That's just over three trillion tonnes.  As CO2 reached 420 ppm recently, we had added 50% since the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.  That means a third of the current mass has been added through anthropogenic emissions: 1,080 GtCO2.  This amount gives us about 2.0 W/m2 of heating power according to IPCC figures.  (Robert C says 570 GtCO2 corresponds to 1.0 W/m2.)   2.0 W/m2 multiplied by the area of the planet gives 1.0 petawatts.  This is heating from the greenhouse effect, i.e. the reduction in outgoing long-wave radiation (thermal radiation) from the planet.

Albedo loss may have an even greater heating effect; and it is growing alarmingly.  Emissions reduction has no effect on this except to make matters worse by SO2 reduction.

As for CDR, an important factor to consider is that about half of emissions are quickly absorbed by land and oceans to maintain equilibrium.  Conversely one has to remove two tons of CO2 for every one ton of CO2 reduction in the atmosphere.  To get back to 280 ppm, we would have to remove not 1080 GtCO2 but about twice this amount: roughly 2 trillion tonnes, just for today's legacy CO2 which is giving 2.0 W/m2 of heating.  Meanwhile around 37 GtCO2 is being emitted which would have to be removed each year.

Compare this with a few million tons of SO2 per year to generate 2.0 W/m2 of cooling power through SAI.  

Robert, 

I find your explanation of the Emissions Reduction Alone (ERA) as a secular religion quite compelling.  It explains the religious fervour with which ERA is defended.  And it explains the strong anti-SRM sentiment among ERA advocates as a heresy against the religion.

Who gains?  ERA serves the interests of the renewables lobby.  It must also serve the anti-interference, technophobe lobby (such as Hands Off Mother Earth).  But, most crucially, it serves to keep the climate elite ("high priests") in power as the climate experts to whom the media in the West go for information and judgements.  Thus there is a social feedback loop to keep the ERA going.  Feedback has, if anything, intensified the ERA belief system in the past decade, despite the growing evidence that ERA is unworkable for the reasons you give, Robert.

However the fossil fuel industry must surely be against ERA.  They won't be bought into the religion.  They will not be thinking of SRM as heresy.  So they could potentially be powerful allies for direct cooling.  And there must be many scientists and engineers who realise that ERA is unworkable and will be seeking an alternative.  So the situation isn't hopeless.

Furthermore there are positive considerations.  With SAI, it should be possible to avoid tipping point catastrophe, reverse climate change, reduce extremes, refreeze the Arctic and slow sea level rise: all with major benefits to society and the ecosphere.  This vision might even appeal to some ERA evangelists!

Cheers, John

On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 9:37 PM Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com> wrote:

I find this helpful Robert T, for understanding both "decarbonization only" people and also anthropcentric climate deniers , the second group of which I interact with or have interacted with more one one one in person with  lately , where I live in rural America, though there is definitely a mix of people here too. I've met a few people who think chemtrails and /or cloud seeding (Thanks Marjorie Taylot Greene !) are responsible for weather events and heating and it may be that in this geographical area most Anthropocentric GHG climate deniers do believe global warming and severe weather events are being caused on purpose via cloud seeding (which doesn't have that power , or srm, which isn't happening or....some kind of nefarious weather modification. 

I think group think plays a big part too /not sure how and/if "the big lie" relates to group think . Perhaps if you think /feel the group you associate with is incapable of "The Big LIe" that's part of group think?

Robert F I wish I understood the physics & math language !!  I would like /need to be able to explain the specifics of the science better . If you have time could you kindly translate ? 

(re CO2)  "Its radiative efficiency is 1.8Wm^-2kg^-1E-15.  That means you need 570Gt of atmospheric CO2 to change RF by just 1Wm^-2"

^{Also what is ECS?} 

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[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Hi Bruce,

 

excellent thoughts!

 

I have one small comment. IMHO, rather than “CDR” we should use the term “GGR” (Greenhouse Gas Removal) to include all warming gases.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

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 Dana,

One distinguishing feature between PRAG and HPAC is the urgency we feel for cooling intervention.  (Yes, I'm being provocative!)  The urgency is summed up in a chart we produced several years ago; see attached.  The last update was in May 2023.  The trends it shows without SRM have been vindicated by observation and theory from Hansen (see brown trend lines with slopes doubling).  It shows SRM cooling starting this year, in order to minimise all the damage, and risks of damage, which arise from excess temperatures, both globally (see purple target trajectory) and in the Arctic (see blue target trajectory).  There is also a target for bringing down the level of CO2e to the 1980 figure of around 380 ppm CO2e, see red target trajectory.  A satisfactory level of planetary restoration could be achieved in 50 years, i.e. by 2075.  Such restoration remains our overall objective: PRAG's mission!

Cheers, John

On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 6:19 PM Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm confused about the length of time folks think we'd have to implement cooling /SRM . I remember an 80 ish year timeline people in HPAC /PRAG (and I *think* Doug McMartin were citing not too long ago, but now we're talking about "centuries?" Not that that can't be done if it needs to be , given the motivation and finicaning 

By the way, I think my biggest fear about SRM (or more specifically SAI) though I see now way around it, is that, because we do live with a capitalist system involving, too, payoffs /election financing for politicians who support given industries, is that we would possibly not be able to stop SAI when we ought and need to and that would obviously cause a serious mes /problem were it the case . As I recall that's among that concerns Yes Tao has and that was expressed in the paper he encouraged /encourages people to read. Does anyone recall the author or name of that paper?

Anyone else have thoughts on that ? 

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[Alan Kerstein]

John,

Here's another way to express this. Assume a nominal 33% efficiency of the capture process. Then the entire mass of the atmosphere would have to undergo the process.

Alan

[Robert Chris]

Hi Dana

Radiative efficiency refers to the change in radiative forcing caused by an additional 1kg of CO₂ in the atmosphere.  Radiative forcing is measured in terms of Watts per square meter (Wm^-2) at the top of the atmosphere (TOA).  The TOA has an area of 510 million million m²; that's 510 followed by 12 zeros.  That's shown in mathematical notation as 510E12, or 5.1E14, or 510x10¹² or 5.1x 10¹⁴.  Sometimes, to avoid having to show the superscript, that's written as 5.1x10^14 or even 5.1x10**14.

The radiative efficiency of CO₂ is 1.8x10^-15Wkg^-1.  Read that as 1.8W divided by (because of the minus sign) a thousand million million (15 zeros) for each 1kg of atmospheric CO₂.

If you invert that, it's equivalent to 1Wm^-2 requiring 556 million million kg of CO2 or 556 GtCO₂.  (My previous 570 is the correct figure because the radiative efficiency is very slightly less than 1.8Wm^-2.)

I hope that makes it clearer.

The bottom line is that to make a significant difference to surface temperature you have to reduce atmospheric CO₂ by one helluva lot, and the sheer scale of the change needed is what makes it challenging and costly.

Remember that atmospheric CO₂ can be reduced both by physically removing it and permanently sequestering it elsewhere, and by natural processes by which it is removed from the atmosphere.  Emissions reductions do not reduce atmospheric CO₂ unless the remaining emissions are less than the amount by which atmospheric CO2 naturally decays. In a zero emissions world, atmospheric CO₂ will decline but for there to be a significant surface temperature impact, there has to be substantial net negative emissions.

When you realise that we're emitting about 40GtCO₂/yr, it is obvious that to reduce atmospheric CO₂ by hundreds of tonnes quickly enough to prevent surface temperature from reaching system collapse levels,, is, to put it mildly, a non-trivial task.

I hope that make it clearer.

ECS refers to Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity.  This is a metric that relates warming in Wm^-2 to changes in CO₂.  In effect, this takes the radiative efficiency and translates it into temperature.  It is a much argued about metric.  Conventionally it's been thought to be about 3^oC for a doubling of CO₂ (equivalent to 0.75^oC(Wm^-2)^-1 - read that 0.75 degrees C for each Watt per square metre).  Recently Hansen has argued that it's closer to 4.5 or even 4.8.  This makes a massive difference to future temperature projections.

Note that 'Equilibrium' refers to the eventual temperature change, once it's all emerged.  It doesn't all happen immediately after the change in CO₂.  About one third arises within 5 years; another third over the next century; and the final third over centuries and millennia.

Regards

Robert

---

From: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2025 21:10
To: Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>
Cc: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peterw...@gmail.com>; Herbert Huppert <he...@cam.ac.uk>; Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>; Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>; Garrity, Dennis (ICRAF) <D.GA...@cifor-icraf.org>; Rebecca Bishop <rebe...@gmail.com>; Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Oswald,

True, GGR is much more appropriate than CDR, but do Joe and Karen Sixpack know what either of these are? Why would we want to remove greenhouse gases when they make plants grow so wonderfully in a greenhouse?

Years ago before covid, I had a long standing behavior (or misbehavior) of, when I was checking out at the supermarket, asking people what they thought about climate change. This is in deep blue Austin now, not flaming red podunk Texess. At least 99 percent of the time, the respondent would reply cheerfully.  Ten or twenty percent of the time the accostees response would be related to the changing of the seasons, seriously. Half of these would be bold deniers, the other half were completely unaware of what climate change was. Another 20 percent of the time the response would be about emissions reductions, renewables, or the increasing Texas heat, drought and flooding. More than half the time though, folks were confused about things that climate change-aware folks take for granted.

This, and the large body of psychology on climate change awareness, is why I suggest we call greenhouse gases climate pollution. Folks don't have any trouble understanding pollution.

And I want to add some fuel to Robbie's draft on the Big Lie of Decarbonization. This title rubs me the wrong way because of present context in the U.S. Here, the Big Lie is a construct of the fascists illegitimately elected to run our country, because of uncountable lies created by the Russians, their bots and their allies in the States and abroad. I am more comfortable with  "The Dangerous Momentum." Here I refer to "The Momentum of Ignorance" a song I wrote for the band in 2010 (lyrics and link below). This is what I believe is happening now with our climate culture, as it was happening fifteen years ago. The momentum of the consensus of the vast majority of science on Earth is an enormously powerful thing. The trouble is that it is reticent to go beyond the consensus opinion, and that it is as slow as molasses after a blue norther.

Another thing that may be more useful to the concept of the Big Decarbonization Lie, is the challenge of hard to decarbonize sectors. This, and pulling back overshoot to 1.5 C, are the reasons the consensus requires removals and emissions reductions.

What few realize however, is that hard to decarbonize sectors make up 55 percent of all of human emissions including ag, forestry and land abuses. The following is from my Introduction to Advanced Climate Change:

And btw - no  more flood watches or warnings in Central Texas - yay!

Case Study – Hard to Decarbonize Sectors

Fifty-five percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions are from hard to decarbonize sectors meaning, we must offset these sectors through CDR because they will not be decarbonzied in time frames that matter. Industry and refining account for 40 percent of emissions from fossil fuel where these processes require high heat and use fossil fuels to supply carbon to chemical reactions. To achieve net zero then, there must be negative emissions to take the place of hard to decarbonize sectors. Smokestack capture can at best achieve 90 percent removal, but ten percent still needs to be offset. Agricultural emissions accounting for about a quarter of all emissions globally are also very hard  to decarbonize. Because natural systems are already degraded and some emitting, we cannot generally rely upon natural systems offsets, so we must rely upon proven atmospheric removal technology that has been in operation for a hundred years or more.

CASE STUDY - HARD TO DECARBONIZE SECTORS

Emissions from fossil fuels are 75% of total global emissions, and hard to decarbonize sectors are 40% of fossil fuel use (Brooking Institute 2021) or 18 Gt (considering a simplified 60 Gt CO2eq total annual emissions including ag, forestry and other land uses - AFOLU). It is quite likely that these hard to decarbonize sectors will very significantly not be decarbonized in time frames that matter to climate tipping that are far shorter than the standard 2100 time frame for climate stabilization at 1.5 C. Considering that AFOLU is 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions (15 Gt) that are also hard to decarbonize sectors, this means that up to 33 Gt (55%) of total annual global greenhouse gas emissions are hard to decarbonize and will likely not be decarbonized in time frames that matter to tipping. 

 

Brookings Institute 2021… "Heavy industry makes products that are central to our modern way of life but is also responsible for nearly 40% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Steel, cement, and chemicals are the top three emitting industries and are among the most difficult to decarbonize, owing to technical factors like the need for very high heat and process emissions of carbon dioxide, and economic factors including low profit margins, capital intensity, long asset life, and trade exposure.“

Excerpts from the Executive Summary:

Steelmaking uses coal both as a source of heat and as part of the chemical process of converting iron ore to elemental iron. Both of these uses produce carbon dioxide. Eliminating CO2 emissions from steelmaking requires a change in process. Using hydrogen as the heat source and the chemical reducing agent can eliminate CO2 emissions, or carbon capture can remove them.

Cement production also releases CO2 as part of the chemical process, in this case when limestone is heated to very high temperature to produce calcium oxide “clinker,” the cement’s primary component. Other substances can be mixed with clinker while still maintaining cement quality, but the primary method of decarbonizing the sector is to capture the CO2 and store or find a use for it.

The chemical industry is different from the other two, encompassing many thousands of processes and products. However, more than 90% of “organic,” or carbon-containing, chemicals are derived from just a few building blocks, which are produced in large quantities and traded internationally. The chemical industry is also unique in that it uses coal, oil, and natural gas as feedstocks that are transformed into final products, not just sources of energy. Fossil fuels will likely still be feedstocks in a zero-carbon world, with process electrification and zero-carbon hydrogen as methods of removing CO2 emissions. Ammonia is crucial for fertilizer and although it does not contain carbon, hydrogen needed for its production is today made from natural gas, with carbon dioxide as a by-product.

Despite their emissions and energy intensity, the steel, cement, and chemical industries are with us to stay. Much of the infrastructure needed to build a low-carbon economy will be made of steel and cement. Policy will be crucial to achieving industrial decarbonization, since it will require large capital investments in low-margin industries, not something that most companies will be able to do on their own.

Gross, The Challenge of Decarbonizing Heavy Industry, Brookings Institute, 2021.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/FP_20210623_industrial_gross_v2.pdf

Emissions from Agriculture are 24% of total global emissions from all sources… "However, changes in land use can be important: estimates indicate that net global greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land use were over 8 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent,[2] or about 24% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.[3]
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#:~:text=However%2C%20changes%20in%20land%20use,total%20global%20greenhouse%20gas%20emissions.

Food, growth, behavior, technical barriers – Impossible to decarbonize AFOLU to net zero… "The direct relationship between the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and food brings us to the first challenge along the way to abate emissions in this sector; population growth is generally associated with higher demand for agricultural products, and GDP growth correlates with an increased consumption of animal products. Dietary changes would change this relationship, but involve barriers associated with consumer behaviour, marketing and the cultural position of food. Besides problems on the demand side, a second challenge concerns technological solutions (examples are given below) that target the same emissions and thus lead to diminishing returns when implemented simultaneously. In fact, it has been found technically impossible to reduce agricultural emissions to zero, even if all identified measures are applied."

Edelenbosch et al., Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Hard to Abate Sectors, Utrecht University, Netherlands Enviro Assess Agency, July 2022.

https://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/downloads/pbl-2022-mitigating-greenhouse-gas-emissions-in-hard-to-abate-sectors-4901.pdf

The Momentum of Ignorance

(https://climatediscovery.org/climate-change-band/)

(Intro – begin with drum march – Drums and acoustic only first line, then the band joins solemn and slow)

E             D                 E     EADAE (3X)

A             /                   /                 /

 

       G                   D                           A                  /

The threshold is upon us,        the barriers are down

G                   D                       A               /

Ecosystems  collapsing,          without a sound

                G                            D                       A                           /                           

We have crossed the great divide    and traveled to another place

G                       D                    A                            /

Not one we are familiar with, (devastated without grace -  all sing)

G                       D                    A                            /

Not one we are familiar with, (devastated without grace - all sing)

G                        D                   A                           /

 

(Chorus – harmony plus double time march drums)

 

E              D              E     EADAE

After the trees are gone

After the trees are gone

E              D             A      /

After the trees are gone

 

It’s a little hard to see from here, but not when you are there

What does it mean to us,      do we care?

What is it that we don’t see,          what have we become?

When the trees begin to fall you see, (the trouble has just begun – all sing)

When the trees begin to fall you see, (the trouble has just begun – all sing)

 

(Guitar solo: 3-line intro vamp)

 

It takes cold to kill the pine beetle, cold like it was before

The Arctic and the high mountains warm and feed back to the core

Extreme insect infestations, we didn’t know what they meant

The beetle will kill the trees in our land, (without sacrament – all sing)

The beetle will kill the trees in our land, (without sacrament – all sing)

 

(Chorus)

 

(Interlude – Acoustic and light background: sparse drums and base, swell slide, shaker…)

Without the trees the water retreats, the earth bakes and crumbles away

Trees are the cloud machines you see, when they are gone,               few will stay

As the tall ones fall the fuel load rises             like never before seen

In the aftermath of the firestorms        (nothing in the spring – all sing)

In the aftermath of the firestorms        (nothing in the spring – all sing)

G                        D                   A                            /

The sterilized soil will be like nothing the scientists have ever seen,

They tell me this with there own voices, wide-eyed and obscene

(Bring in the band)

The results are that nothing will live, they don’t know for how long

The feedback will rule the clouds you see, (the forest will be gone – all sing)

The feedback will rule the clouds you see, (the forest will be gone – all sing)

The feedback will rule the clouds you see, (the forest will be gone – all sing)

The feedback will rule the clouds you see, (the forest will be gone – all sing)

 

 

G                        D                   A                            /  

G                        D                   A                            /  

 

(Pregnant Pause)

(Break Strain – Stacato British Invasion. Sparse and clean)

C               /             /               G             /       /        /

Dead trees don’t store any carbon

Dead trees emit CO2

Dead trees are not so beautiful

What,       can we do?

What,       can we do?

What,       can we do?

C    /    /    /    G    /    /    /

(Increase intensity add guitar solo, blend with previous rock beat)

C    /    /    /    G    /    /    /

C    /    /    /    G    /    /    / (five more times – total 8 lines)

 

(Calm way down for the first line – acoustic only)

G             D                           A                              /

Money, motivation and innocence are the keys

(Bring in the band)

How can we fix a problem       that we can barely see

The momentum of ignorance      is a ship on an endless sea

The momentum of ignorance      is a ship on an endless sea

The momentum of ignorance      is a ship on an endless sea

After the trees are gone

After the trees are gone

After the trees are gone

(Speed up)

The momentum of ignorance                (ship on an endless sea)

The momentum of ignorance                (ship on an endless sea)

The momentum of ignorance                (ship on an endless sea)

The momentum of ignorance                (ship on an endless sea)

The momentum of ignorance                (ship on an endless sea)

G                             D                    A                           /             (ship on an endless sea)

G                             D                    A                           /             (ship on an endless sea)

G                             D                    A                           /             (ship on an endless sea)

 

(Finale 8 bars – speed up to ridiculous tempo, then burn the instruments)

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
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Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/000001dbf75f%245a475660%240ed60320%24%40hispeed.ch.

[Robert Chris]

Hi Dana

A further comment on my earlier explanation.

A detail often overlooked is that the radiative efficiency of CO₂ decreases as the atmospheric concentration increases.  Right now, with CO₂ at 428ppm, a change of 1ppm would have a radiative efficiency of about 1.6x10^-15Wm^-2kg^-1.  At 350ppm a change of 1ppm would have a radiative efficiency of 2x10^-15Wm^-2kg^-1; i.e. you'd have needed much less CO₂ to have the same warming effect.  Similarly, with 600ppm, it would be about 1.1x10^-15Wm^-2kg^-1, implying that you'd need to remove vastly more CO₂ to get the same cooling impact at this higher concentration.  In essence, as the hole gets deeper, the effort required to dig ourselves out gets disproportionately greater.

Regards

Robert

---

From: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2025 23:20
To: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>
Cc: Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peterw...@gmail.com>; Herbert Huppert <he...@cam.ac.uk>; Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>; Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>; Garrity, Dennis (ICRAF) <D.GA...@cifor-icraf.org>; Rebecca Bishop <rebe...@gmail.com>; Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>

[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Hi Bruce,

 

I do not think that Joe and Karen Bloggs have any relevance in this debate. They neither know nor understand it and will not be asked. It is all about science, IPCC and maybe some Chinese government department, which is also deeply entangled with IPCC…

 

IPCC is actually quite positive about CDR but they also use CDR as a term for all GGR. I really think that’s a confusing mistake, because the lowest hanging fruit to pick is not CO₂, but methane.

 

Reducing methane to preindustrial level is, AFAIK, the safest, easiest and cheapest way to avert further global warming. We need atmospheric scientists and oceanographers to work on it. Some do already, which is great, but we need hundreds more.

 

The biggest hurdle is Moral Hazard. To me MH is like telling a patient who is sick of liver-cancer that he cannot have the drug that would heal him because doctors are afraid he might go back drinking.

 

It is a weird situation. We have a problem and we have a key to its solution. But we are not allowed to use it.  

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/07568562-930f-4b8a-a07c-03876f79d5c8%40earthlink.net.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Robert C, much appreciated.  Let me go through your points in order.  But first, I think Bruce Melton has misunderstood my comments.  As I have explained numerous times, I support decarbonisation, but argue it should be aligned to environmental and economic needs. We can’t treat a heart attack with diet advice.  Many thanks all.

 

RC: “First, of the 2.5TtCO2 emitted, less than half remains in the atmosphere ((428ppm-277ppm)x7.8GtCO2/ppm).” 

• True, but it remains reasonable to compare annual and total emissions because less than half of new annual emissions will remain in the atmosphere, on a similar decay rate as past emissions, possibly increased for new feedbacks that reduce the decay rate.

 

RC: “Second, I don't like the 'first this then that' approach. Decarbonisation and albedo enhancement have to be done in parallel.  We can discuss their respective weights, but to argue, as I think you do, that there's no need to reduce emissions until we've got surface temperature under control with SRM, is not a sensible policy regime.  Both/and has to be the way forward.”

1. This need for albedo restoration to precede carbon stabilisation is both a political and a scientific argument.  First the science.
2. Albedo restoration must come first—not only because it can deliver cooling at planetary scale within years, but because no amount of decarbonisation can stop the current feedback-driven warming in time. As in emergency medicine, the order of operations matters: stabilize first, heal second.
3. The critique of the Big Lie of Emission Reduction Alone (ERA) involves recognition that nothing we do today about carbon can have much effect on heat in the short term, ie for the next decade, except for trivial local examples such as growing trees to reduce heat islands. 
4. Annual emissions add less than 2% to the carbon stock, the residue of the 2.5 trillion tonnes of historical emissions causing committed warming.  Worsening direct ongoing radiative forcing by 2% per year is serious but requires a systems perspective to understand what can be done about it. 
5. A heroic fall in world emissions of 10% (4 GtCO2/y) would be hailed a great success in the green spinomat (the repetitive laundromat of IPCC eco-spin, where failure is rinsed, spun and rebranded as progress). 
6. That would mean an annual result where instead of emissions increasing the GHG stock by 2% they only increase it by 1.8%.  That 0.2% heat impact would come at massive expense, difficulty and opportunity cost.
7. Note also that this major 0.2% achievement (although highly unlikely) is only the low hanging fruit, with no path to scaling up to address more intractable emissions or create the necessary large negative emissions. 
8. The Big Lie is essentially the claim that this 0.2% annual result could be significant for removing heat.  In fact, it would only allow heat to worsen including the grave risk of unpredictable escalation through tipping points. 
9. Recall that albedo has collapsed by 1.7% this century, with everything in place for this rate of collapse to increase due to accelerating feedbacks between heat and evaporation of clouds and melting of snow and ice.
10. By contrast to the impotence of ERA, SRM could chop two degrees out of world temperature this century. Discussing their respective weight is to compare a whale (SRM) with a minnow (ERA).
11. You call for parallel rather than sequential action on emissions and albedo.  My interest in comparing parallel and serial processes arose in my work on logical frameworks (logframes) in project design in international development, from my 28 years with the Australian Agency for International Development. 
12. Logframes are based on the engineering principle of a critical path in project design and construction that recognises sequential dependencies between activities, such as the need for house foundations before a roof.  Logframes seek to explain the theory of change and program logic of the causal processes involved in accomplishing a goal.
13. As well, the logframe systematically describes cascading logics: inputs generate outputs, outcomes and impacts, and components coordinate to achieve a project purpose and goal.
14. Major faults of the implicit ERA logframe supported by the IPCC include that the components do not support the goal of cooling, and that concealed dependencies on albedo restoration are emerging. ERA has no coherent theory of change.  You must lay a stable base (albedo restoration) before installing the finishing elements (decarbonisation).
15. The ERA policy regime fails the logic test of any sound project design. It cannot achieve its required purpose—cooling the planet—because its outputs (emissions reductions) are too slow and too small to affect the outcome (heat). By contrast, a sequential logframe that puts SRM first and decarbonisation second follows both engineering logic and planetary need.
16. Renewables add to fossil fuels rather than substituting. So in practice they do nothing to slow warming.
17. Albedo dependency is the big unseen problem.  The evaporation of tropical clouds is emerging as a primary heating feedback that is not slowed in the slightest by carbon action.  And yet if allowed to escalate, the extra heat from cloud loss will vastly overwhelm any possible cooling from ERA.  
18. The climate situation is analogous to a person who has had a heart attack.  The immediate need is surgery (SRM).  Better diet and exercise (carbon action) can wait until the surgery result is stable.  This sequential dependency of surgery then recovery shows that simple science supports a policy pivot to put maximum immediate climate focus on albedo. 
19. The political problem only enhances the urgency of this policy pivot.  President Trump’s destruction of US government climate science is direct payback for the futile ERA attack on the immensely powerful and influential fossil fuel industry.  Trump noted this futility in his 2017 speech leaving the Paris Accord. 
20. A climate voice is needed that accepts emission reduction as only a long-term objective, to be achieved by market forces in line with economic and environmental needs.  That is a reasonable interpretation of the HPAC Climate Triad.
21. In any case, the heavy lifting on carbon must be done by removals, not reductions.  As I said in the draft article, you don’t solve a trillion-tonne problem with million tonne solutions.  Research is needed to find carbon conversion technologies at the hundred billion tonne scale, such as marine permaculture transforming CO2 into valuable commodities. I use the 7F formulation of fuel, food, feed, fabric, fertilizer, fish and forests.  7F technologies could more than balance ongoing emissions if scaled to 100 Gt/y.  This is a key point in critiquing the theory of change of ERA.  For example, coal emissions could become feedstock for algae production as a major new industry.
22. The left say scale up decarbonisation while the right say do nothing (to oversimplify), creating an impasse.  An Albedo Accord can cut through that Gordian Knot, as long as the agreement has a narrow focus like the Montreal Protocol.
23. My assessment is that gaining support from the commercial world for an Albedo Accord will require the sequential approach as I have explained. 
24. Industries such as insurance, agriculture, tourism and energy stand to gain strong commercial benefits from SRM and should lobby governments to support it, but they will not do so while decarbonisation dominates climate policy.
25. According to Hansen, roughly 80% of current excess heat is driven by albedo-related feedbacks. So as Pareto might ask: why devote all our energy to the least effective 20%, while ignoring the 80% that could actually cool the planet?
26. The both/and parallel approach that you describe is primarily intended to save face for the decarbonisation lobby in the absence of scientific argument.  It does not matter much to the climate in the next decade what we do about carbon, except to research large scale removal/conversion technologies, whereas it matters immensely what we do about albedo.

 

“Third, I think the religious framing dilutes the message and will reduce its impact for many.  I know this is important to you, but as a piece of rhetoric, I think it would be much more effective if you stick to the physics.”

• Fair enough, I just liked the pun of sins of emission, and the force of the argument that sins of omission, failing to restore albedo, are much worse.  I get that the secular world finds the concept of sin to be sinful, so happy to fight one less battle in this article.

 

“Fourth, a detail I like and that would fit well here is to explain that decarbonisation is challenging because CO2 is such an inefficient forcing agent - you need a vast amount more or less of it to make a significant impact on surface temperature.” 

• That is implicit in my explanation that decarbonisation is too small and too slow to affect temperature.    Given that 2.5 trillion tonnes of emissions have worsened RF by 2 w/m2, that is the scale of removals that will eventually be needed, possibly less once temperature and climate are regulated by SRM optimised by AI.  And as I said, you don’t solve a trillion-tonne problem with million tonne solutions.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/VI1P194MB0398E3BB9B51A2D2D6E7E6ABFC56A%40VI1P194MB0398.EURP194.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Robert Chris]

Hi Dana

'Doubling' refers to any doubling of atmospheric CO2.  Because the relationship between the warming and the concentration is broadly logarithmic (sorry, more maths!) it means that wherever you start, if you double it, you get the same amount of warming.  So, going from pre-industrial 280ppm to 560ppm generates the same equilibrium warming as going from 500 to 1000ppm, even though that is a much bigger increase in ppm.  In effect, the higher the concentration, the less efficient CO2 is as a warming agent, so the more of it you need to get any given amount of warming.  This operates in reverse, as you cool CO2 becomes more efficient.

Regards

Robert

---

From: Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2025 04:57
To: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Cc: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peterw...@gmail.com>; Herbert Huppert <he...@cam.ac.uk>; Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>; Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>; Garrity, Dennis (ICRAF) <D.GA...@cifor-icraf.org>; Rebecca Bishop <rebe...@gmail.com>; Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

Thank you Robert , and John , for taking the time to explain. Wow, I soooo  don't have a math (or physics) background . I have to admit I'm going to have to go back over what Robert said a few  times, ask a few questions, and am still not likely to understand all of that . "Mornings" (which for me right now are afternoons) my mind is much fresher so I stopped even trying tonight 

One question though , you say  "ECS refers to Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity.  This is a metric that relates warming in Wm^-2 to changes in CO₂.  In effect, this takes the radiative efficiency and translates it into temperature.  It is a much argued about metric.  Conventionally it's been thought to be about 3^oC for a doubling of CO₂ (equivalent to 0.75^oC(Wm^-2)^-1 - read that 0.75 degrees C for each Watt per square metre).  Recently Hansen has argued that it's closer to 4.5 or even 4.8."

By a doubling of C02 do you mean for the doubling that's already occurred since the pre-industrial baseline ?, or if not , a doubling from what amount /when of Co2 ? (please excuse me of that should be clear from what you wrote or what John wrote. 

John I don't know if PRAG sees cooling as more urgent than HPAC, possibly , I'm not even sure who's in PRAG other than you, Robert T and , as I recall, Rebecca .There are a LOT of people even on the steering committee of HPAC according to its internet page and lots more who post in the email group (At least for now, by the way , I still can only read, not respond  nor make a new post to HPAC unless I include names of people (who may not also be in PRAG ) and I have the impression that at least some think it's very urgent. 

I'm still reading/going to read  your second post Bruce 

Regards, Dana 

[John Nissen]

Hi everyone,

A major misconception arising from the Big Lie is that emissions reduction is essential and urgent.  It is neither.  Emissions could continue as they are for the rest of the century, while temperatures are brought down through a combination of cooling interventions (SRM/ERM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR).  Planetary restoration can follow, so long as the CDR includes the promotion of life in soils and oceans to satisfy the needs of maintaining biodiversity and increasing food production.  Thus HPAC's three-legged stool does not require a reduction leg!  

The whole issue of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) is moot, if salvation is through CDR and SRM/ERM.  These can proceed in parallel; but the immediate urgency for SRM/ERM is hugely greater for a number of reasons including:

     1.  The planet is already too hot, e.g. for corals and for many human populations.

     2.  Sea level rise due to ocean expansion is already an existential threat for some islands and low-lying regions.

     3.  Weather extremes are already causing severe hardship and deaths in many parts of the world.

     4.  Trends are observed for accelerated warming, sea level rise and weather extremes (frequency, severity and extent).

     5.  The risks from tipping element catastrophe (abrupt climate change, sudden sea level rise, methane outburst from permafrost, disruption of AMOC, etc.) are increasing by the day, especially in the Arctic.

     6.  SAI is the only immediately available technique with enough cooling power to refreeze the Arctic, but success is not guaranteed: delaying its deployment increases the chances of failure with catastrophic consequences as above.

     7. The window of opportunity for planetary restoration is closing rapidly; if the opportunity is not taken quickly, the young people of today could be faced with a planet heading for an alien and inhospitable state later this century.  

     8. But if SAI is ramped up to full strength over the next five years to start refreezing the Arctic, there are excellent prospects for the continued flourishing of our civilisation on this amazing planet.

We urgently require high-level support for emergency SAI deployment.  I am not sure where it could come from, given that there is so much momentum behind the Big Lie and so much opposition to SAI in principle.  However this phenomenon is mainly in the West, aka Global North.  SAI seems to be more acceptible in the Global South and among less wealthy people who are already seeing the consequences of climate change, extreme weather and sea level rise.  Perhaps an Albedo Accord could start here.

Cheers, John

[Robert Chris]

Hi John

Numbers please!

If we maintain emissions at their current level, what is the profile of annual CDR/GGR that has to be done in its place, and is it feasible?

That's just one of an infinite number of scenarios but it's a good place to start to consider whether your two-legged stool would defy gravity and remain standing!

These narrative statements are very annoying because they give no sense of practicality.  You might as well say that we don't need SAI because we could reduce population by 80% or consumption per capita by a similar percent.  There are lots of 'solutions' that would work in a spreadsheet but make no practical sense in the real world.

Regards

RobertC

---

From: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Sent: 18 July 2025 16:32
To: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Cc: Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peterw...@gmail.com>; Herbert Huppert <he...@cam.ac.uk>; Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>; Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>; Garrity, Dennis (ICRAF) <D.GA...@cifor-icraf.org>; Rebecca Bishop <rebe...@gmail.com>; Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>

[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Hi Dana,

 

you are right it does matter in general what the public thinks.

 

However this discussion is highly specialized stuff which hardly anybody understands, let alone cares. Only scientists and SIG like HPAC look into this question “GGR or CDR, which term is favourable”. CDR is of course the original word, because for many years there was nothing but CO₂ being removed. But the times are changin…

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

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

 

Von: Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com>
Gesendet: Freitag, 18. Juli 2025 19:24
An: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Cc: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peterw...@gmail.com>; Herbert Huppert <he...@cam.ac.uk>; Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>; Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>; Garrity, Dennis (ICRAF) <D.GA...@cifor-icraf.org>; Rebecca Bishop <rebe...@gmail.com>; Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>; Oswald Petersen <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Betreff: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

Oswald and ALL (I have yet to catch up on everything else)

But it DOES matter what the public thinks, imo, comtray to what you said to Bruce. I'm pretty sure you typically agree (eg in your argument that SAI won't ever be done because you think the public as well as policy makers have too  much of an aversion to it - Correct me if I'm wrong. So I don't understand why you'd say this )

To get elected and stay in office politicians - who are going to HAVE to be the ones to both approve and fund field trials for SRM and then possibly  implementation. or EAMO trials and implementation - *have to please their voters at least to a significant extent* 

Too, some of the people blocking even small scale testing of both MCB and SAi are members of the general public.though some may be on city councils , active members of the Democratic o Republican party or any other party 

Moreover, I maintain that *if* "we" could reach the public by getting the right scientists and /or engineers interviewed by the media , especially mainstream media and/or get enough signatures on a petition (and/or letters)  asking for field trials and possibly implementation for given technologies we'd be WAY closer to having things actually happen. Look at the effect that petition in the UK , by everyday (and in that case including some seriously misinformed or paranoid people - ie people who want ALL geoengineering made illegal and people who believe on chemtrails) had on some or all MPs, as seen in the video of that meeting about it ! 

Cheers, Dana 

[John Nissen]

Hi Robert,

Numbers certainly matter!  Suppose we removed CO2 twice as fast as being steadily emitted, i.e. CDR at 80 GtCO2 per year.  How long before we'd halved the excess CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 ppm?  We have to remove 1080 GtCO2 of legacy CO2 to get back to 350 ppm, see figures from my email to Dana.  This allows for an equal amount being re-emitted from land and oceans.   40 into 1080 gives 27 years to obtain 350 ppm and twice as long to get down to 280 ppm.  10 tonnes of CO2 removal per person per year, with 8 billion people, would be sufficient for a removal rate of 80 GtCO2 per year, e.g. with biochar for putting the carbon in the soil.

As for the cooling power for refreezing the Arctic, I have estimated that it must overcome heating of 0.5 to 1.0 petawatt in order to bring down the temperature.  This cooling power can be produced with SAI, injecting a few megatons of SO2 at 50N to 60N into the lower stratosphere, according to experts such as Doug MacMartin and Wake Smith.  This might need to be kept up for several decades to refreeze the Arctic back to its 1980 condition.  Meanwhile global cooling would need to persist at least until 350 ppm CO2 (and 380 ppm CO2e) had been reached, global mean surface temperature back below 0.5C and the Earth's Energy Imbalance EEI more than halved.

The two-legged stool is workable!  But you might appreciate a third leg for Resilience, since things will get worse for a decade or two before they get better.

Cheers, John

[H simmens]





Hi Dana,

A huge part of the reason why SRM whether SAI, MCB or other modalities are not gaining traction is that there are no large well funded advocacy groups whose mission is to give them traction! 

Here’s a real life example. I just posted a wonderful talk by Pete Irvine presenting a risk risk assessment of SAI in language that would be accessible to many if not most Climate aware individuals. 

His organization SRM360 appears to be very well funded and yet has only 51 subscribers on their YouTube channel and has only 35 views of his talk in two days - with not one comment except by me. 

Even though SRM 360 has been around for at least a year and their mission is to educate the public!  That is crazy.

The Climate Emergency Forum which has essentially almost no budget and was started and run by two wonderfully dedicated individuals Charles Gregoire and Heidi Brault has been able to achieve over 18,000 subscribers in four years with one of our recent videos reaching as many as 89,000 people. My recent interview with Johan Rockstrom which was just posted Sunday has been viewed by over 6,000 folks. 

The CEF videos have collectively reached over 1.6 million views. 

CEF has been able to highlight many of the modalities and individuals who are working on a variety of nature and technology based cooling methods giving these modalities and individuals a platform to reach thousands of people. 

For example the ground breaking paper written by Graeme Taylor and colleagues making the case why cooling must be added to our current Climate strategy has been seen by over 11,000 people. 

This number is on the order of 10 times as many viewers as have seen the sum total of all of the videos produced by HPAC over the past three years. The 44 HPAC videos have been seen a total of 718 times on YouTube even though they feature some of the most important conversations imaginable. 

CEF interviewed Shaun Fitzgerald and Hugh Hunt from Cambridge CCR in Baku, highlighted the work that our own Bru Pearce is doing on biosphere restoration, and featured Soumitra Das’s wonderful work at his organization the Healthy Climate Initiative to over 8000 viewers. 

If a handful of volunteers can attract audiences this size imagine what a well funded professional sophisticated organization could achieve in the way of promoting the need for cooling and the necessity for climate restoration. 

As I have pointed out numerous times the single most effective action that our communities could take would be to come together and focus our efforts on finding a benefactor who could fund a new international NGO committed to triad based climate restoration. 

But with one or two exceptions no one here has expressed much interest - yet- in doing that. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

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

On Jul 18, 2025, at 1:24 PM, Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com> wrote:



Oswald and ALL (I have yet to catch up on everything else)

But it DOES matter what the public thinks, imo, comtray to what you said to Bruce. I'm pretty sure you typically agree (eg in your argument that SAI won't ever be done because you think the public as well as policy makers have too  much of an aversion to it - Correct me if I'm wrong. So I don't understand why you'd say this )

To get elected and stay in office politicians - who are going to HAVE to be the ones to both approve and fund field trials for SRM and then possibly  implementation. or EAMO trials and implementation - *have to please their voters at least to a significant extent* 

Too, some of the people blocking even small scale testing of both MCB and SAi are members of the general public.though some may be on city councils , active members of the Democratic o Republican party or any other party 

Moreover, I maintain that *if* "we" could reach the public by getting the right scientists and /or engineers interviewed by the media , especially mainstream media and/or get enough signatures on a petition (and/or letters)  asking for field trials and possibly implementation for given technologies we'd be WAY closer to having things actually happen. Look at the effect that petition in the UK , by everyday (and in that case including some seriously misinformed or paranoid people - ie people who want ALL geoengineering made illegal and people who believe on chemtrails) had on some or all MPs, as seen in the video of that meeting about it ! 

Cheers, Dana 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CAKum48sR7Gx2Xo-JiCqjaPhMK_u4F6q8V8Ew%2BZ8fM1ohoRgaVQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Tom Goreau]

Please stop using the term “Big Lie” for nonstop political lies, it confuses more than enlightens.

 

The Economist just posted this:

Linwood Lacy in Virginia, America, asked us why we, and governments, don’t promote geoengineering as a solution to heatwaves, as “screening out a bit of the sun would allow a temporary relief.” I can’t speak for governments but, as a publication, we have called for more research on solar geoengineering. We are not promoting its use because not enough is known about the consequences yet. But we absolutely are in favour of figuring out what those might be because we recognise that—if safe—solar geoengineering may become a crucial tool in the world’s fight to keep temperatures down. Please see here, here, here and here. I also recently covered Britain’s foray into funding such research. 

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/C3007BEF-E680-4858-9A26-A76DD5EE6E59%40gmail.com.

[Alan Kerstein]

Herb,

The points you mention raise the question of what is the secret sauce that gains so much more visibility for CEF. Could it be that the title Climate Emergency Forum makes the focus of the organization unmistakably clear. SRM360 is meaningless jargon to the uninitiated. Healthy Planet Action Coalition could be a movement to encourage better health practices such as exercise and nutritious diets.

Alan

[H simmens]

Hi Alan,

Since the sauce is secret I’m not allowed to tell you. 

Actually I’m not sure there is a secret sauce. 

But I doubt that the name of the group would have much to do with it viewership - but who knows? 

The larger point that an effective large scale international NGO focused on triad based restoration is absolutely essential to begin to even the lopsided political imbalance that exists between pro and anti-cooling advocates. Actually there are virtually no pro cooling advocates anywhere, mostly at best “we need more research to determine whether we should be pro cooling” advocates. 

Just today one of the most prominent anti Geo engineering networks the Hands-off Mother Earth Alliance issued a press release -see below - indicating that the African countries at a environmental meeting in Nairobi voted against supporting any kind of Geo engineering. I wonder if there were any pro cooling lobby groups even in attendance at the meeting to counteract the influence of these large coalitions. 

From the press release:

🟢 African Ministers sent a powerful message to the world saying, “We reiterate our position that such technologies pose significant and uncertain environmental, ethical and geopolitical risks, and must not be considered as viable options within the multilateral environmental agenda.”

🟢 African countries have explicitly called for “the establishment of a solar geoengineering non-use agreement”  which would ban any efforts to normalise these technologies. They have also called for a United Nations General Assembly resolution to advance the call for a global governance mechanism for the non-use of solar radiation modification.

🟢 The decisions at AMCEN20 are hugely significant, sending a clear signal to the international community towards rejection of solar geoengineering and exposing the forces that are trying to make these dangerous technologies appear like an option. “ 

While we endlessly debate year after year the merits of various cooling approaches or what the latest estimate of climate sensitivity is and similar issues over and over again climate chaos is accelerating, temperatures and impacts are worsening and the opposition to cooling the planet remains as strong if not stronger than ever.

As others have said the obstacles are political and social and not technological. 

This is evidenced by the position of the tipping point community as I have recounted, the 32 US states that have introduced bills to limit or ban engineering, the absence of any elected official anywhere on the planet as far as I know who publicly supports cooling, (does anyone know of a public official anywhere in support of cooling?) the continued opposition of the leaders of the entire African continent and on and on. 

From my review of the several hundred events at London Climate week my 10 minute opening talk at the MEER event may have been the only pro cooling message presented the entire week. 

Similarly the pro cooling events that I organized for the DC climate week with the help and participationof Mike Maccracken and Soumitra Das appear to have been the only pro cooling events. 

As was the event I took the lead in organizing with Dennis, Phoebe Barnard and Julian Cribb that linked the climate triad to addressing the polycrisis at last year’s NY Climate Week. 

We are losing and losing badly. And it’s not most of us who will feel the losses. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

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

On Jul 18, 2025, at 4:17 PM, Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CAH-gPYG_52hYkw%3DHeJ4OLpDyoiGstWgOH%2B5QYD3enhDGqb1RQw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Alan Kerstein]

Hi Herb,

Starting with your last point, it is in the nature of revolutions to lose badly until they win. Think Valley Forge. Of course revolutions also lose badly until they are quashed, so there’s plenty of reason to be pessimistic.

My approach is low expectations. If we ultimately accelerate the adoption of SRM, even if only by months rather than years, and/or direct it along an incrementally better path, then the harm reduction will be minuscule relative to overall harms but on an absolute basis of lives saved or improved, it could be huge - far beyond what historical heroes have accomplished.

An NGO needs people, in particular leadership, and you lament the lack of public officials who support cooling. The closest I’ve seen to such a person is Andrew Yang, who said in a 2016 Democratic primary debate that geoengineering might need to be considered, or something to that effect. It’s worth noting that he is both tech-savvy and iconoclastic, the ideal qualities for appreciation of geoengineering. Even so, he couldn’t get out over his skis in terms of commitment because he doesn’t have either the time to develop an informed opinion or credible expert advice to lean on. In fact, even today I doubt that credible experts (Jim Hansen?) would advise him to express more commitment than in his 2016 public position.

Though it pains me to say this, Elon Musk could be ahead of all of us in terms of his perception of global trends. Based on his assessment of the situation, he’s given up on planet Earth and its inhabitants and launched a headlong rush to get a few of us to Mars for a fresh start. Regardless of his diagnosis, his remedy is nuts but presumably he’s having fun pursuing it.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are in the garbage compactor on the Death Star hoping for someone to press the pause button. I would settle for shifting it into lower gear so that we get a few more generations of a livable planet, by which time the plummeting birth rate might greatly reduce the ultimate totality of human suffering. This is what optimism looks like in the 21st century.

Alan

[Clive Elsworth]

Herb

 

All this reminds me of the UK’s Red Flag Act: The historical movement requiring a person with a flag to walk in front of vehicles was related to the Locomotive Act of 1865. This act regulated early self-propelled vehicles, including the first automobiles, and mandated that a person walk in front of the vehicle, carrying a red flag or lantern, to warn others of its approach. 

 

• Speed restrictions:

In addition to the flag-bearing requirement, the act imposed strict speed limits: 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in rural areas and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in urban areas. 

• Repeal:

The act was eventually repealed in 1896,  allowing the automobile industry to develop more freely. 

 

Our problem is we don’t have 31 years.

 

But once again, follow the money. Who stands to lose if the climate is cooled? Who is funding the anti-cooling advocates? Participants in the so-called energy transition are now a juggernaut. And Arctic oil deposits beckon..

 

Fortunately, there have been several articles in recent weeks on the cooling effects of pollution.

 

 

One helpful thing I forgot to mention about Pete Irvine’s talk (which I’ve been wondering for months): He said raised temperatures likely damage corals (and a lot of other sea life) far more than the current level of ocean acidification. So, lowering temperatures should be the priority for now at least.

 

Clive

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of H simmens
Sent: 19 July 2025 01:11
To: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>
Cc: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com>; Chris Robert <robert...@gmail.com>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Bruce Melton Austin Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peterw...@gmail.com>; Herbert Huppert <he...@cam.ac.uk>; Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>; Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>; Dennis Garrity <D.GA...@cifor-icraf.org>; Rebecca Bishop <rebe...@gmail.com>; Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>; Oswald Petersen <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] Re: Everyday political lies about climate

 

Hi Alan,

 

Since the sauce is secret I’m not allowed to tell you. 

 

Actually I’m not sure there is a secret sauce. 

 

But I doubt that the name of the group would have much to do with it viewership - but who knows? 

 

The larger point that an effective large scale international NGO focused on triad based restoration is absolutely essential to begin to even the lopsided political imbalance that exists between pro and anti-cooling advocates. Actually there are virtually no pro cooling advocates anywhere, mostly at best “we need more research to determine whether we should be pro cooling” advocates. 

 

Just today one of the most prominent anti Geo engineering networks the Hands-off Mother Earth Alliance issued a press release -see below - indicating that the African countries at a environmental meeting in Nairobi voted against supporting any kind of Geo engineering. I wonder if there were any pro cooling lobby groups even in attendance at the meeting to counteract the influence of these large coalitions. 

 

From the press release:

 

🟢 African Ministers sent a powerful message to the world saying, “We reiterate our position that such technologies pose significant and uncertain environmental, ethical and geopolitical risks, and must not be considered as viable options within the multilateral environmental agenda.”

 

🟢 African countries have explicitly called for “the establishment of a solar geoengineering non-use agreement”  which would ban any efforts to normalise these technologies. They have also called for a United Nations General Assembly resolution to advance the call for a global governance mechanism for the non-use of solar radiation modification.

 

🟢 The decisions at AMCEN20 are hugely significant, sending a clear signal to the international community towards rejection of solar geoengineering and exposing the forces that are trying to make these dangerous technologies appear like an option. “ 

 

While we endlessly debate year after year the merits of various cooling approaches or what the latest estimate of climate sensitivity is and similar issues over and over again climate chaos is accelerating, temperatures and impacts are worsening and the opposition to cooling the planet remains as strong if not stronger than ever.

 

As others have said the obstacles are political and social and not technological. 

 

This is evidenced by the position of the tipping point community as I have recounted, the 32 US states that have introduced bills to limit or ban engineering, the absence of any elected official anywhere on the planet as far as I know who publicly supports cooling, (does anyone know of a public official anywhere in support of cooling?) the continued opposition of the leaders of the entire African continent and on and on. 

 

From my review of the several hundred events at London Climate week my 10 minute opening talk at the MEER event may have been the only pro cooling message presented the entire week. 

 

Similarly the pro cooling events that I organized for the DC climate week with the help and participationof Mike Maccracken and Soumitra Das appear to have been the only pro cooling events. 

 

As was the event I took the lead in organizing with Dennis, Phoebe Barnard and Julian Cribb that linked the climate triad to addressing the polycrisis at last year’s NY Climate Week. 

 

We are losing and losing badly. And it’s not most of us who will feel the losses. 

 

Herb

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/A713B707-216D-4193-AD61-CF7E1B92EE12%40gmail.com.

[Doug Grandt]

Herb, Alan et al,

Very interesting banter here.

This particular paragraph ⬇️ triggered a thought: human handprints are all over every square cm/inch of Mother Earth with geo-transformative tweaking and degrading of her “original unblemished nature.” 

As Hanson recently said, we’ve geo-transformed Earth.

Just today one of the most prominent anti Geo engineering networks the Hands-off Mother Earth Alliance issued a press release -see below - indicating that the African countries at a environmental meeting in Nairobi voted against supporting any kind of Geo engineering. I wonder if there were any pro cooling lobby groups even in attendance at the meeting to counteract the influence of these large coalitions. 

To name a few in the niche of CH4 release: “from solid waste landfill, liquud waste runoff from factory farms (e.g., hogs, cattle and other animals, sewage treatment facilities, septic fields of all sizes (from single household to entire community), agricultural (e.g., rice), and other manmade / engineered operations.” (See below ⬇️)

If the anti-groengineering lot want to ban groengineering, let’s turn the other cheek and argue for the extreme end to all human interference, including that which has given rise to global and oceanic heat.

FAT CHANCE! But a clever judo-esque public debate could ensue, and raise the conundrum to the transparent level we seek. Ponder 🤔 

So as a trial balloon, I posted on my Facebook page the following to see what response it gets ⬇️

Cheers,

Doug Grandt (way outside the box 🤣)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In view of U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s failure under the leadership of Lisa Murkowski and ranking member Senator Joe Manchin III durung the Trump 45 Adminustration (2016-2019), U.S. has failed to stabilize and reduce its contribution to the steadily rising global temperature, specifically the release of methane, which has a near-term global warming force two orders of magnitude (80 to 120+) greater than CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. It can be argued that the warming attributed to U.S. CO2 emissions exacerbates methane emissions from the melting Arctic tundra and subsea clathrates—both being uncontrollable positive feedback loops.

Therefore, to remediate the transformation the U.S. is responsible  for, a Methane Release Un-Bridled Emissions Remediation Act of 2025 is warranted (aka MR UBER Act of 2025) which would command a downward trend to zero CH4 release from solid waste landfill, liquid waste runoff from factory farms (e.g., hogs, cattle and other animals, sewage treatment facilities, septic fields of all sizes (from single household to entire community), agricultural (e.g., rice), and other manmade / engineered operations.

A brief summary of Murkowski’s Energy Act:

The Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015

Introduced by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), then-Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, along with Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member, the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 (S. 2012) sought to update and modernize U.S. energy policy.  

Key provisions

• Efficiency: The bill included provisions aimed at promoting energy efficiency in buildings, manufacturing, and vehicles, including reauthorizing the weatherization and state energy programs.

• Infrastructure: It focused on modernizing the nation's electrical grid, enhancing cybersecurity measures, maintaining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, streamlining natural gas export projects, and developing a skilled energy workforce.

• Supply: The legislation promoted the development of diverse energy sources, including hydropower, geothermal energy, bioenergy, and critical minerals.

• Accountability: It included reforms for the Department of Energy's loan programs, aimed to improve electric reliability, and repealed outdated provisions in the U.S. Code.

• Conservation: The bill sought to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund, and also established a National Park Maintenance and Revitalization Fund to address infrastructure backlogs in national parks. 

Legislative history and status

Senator Murkowski introduced the bill to the Senate Energy Committee on September 9, 2015. It passed the Senate Energy Committee with strong bipartisan support (18-4). On April 20, 2016, the Senate passed the bill with an 85-12 vote. The House of Representatives passed a version of the bill on May 25, 2016, by a vote of 241-178. However, the House version contained amendments that raised concerns among some environmental groups, who argued it favored fossil fuels and potentially undermined environmental reviews. 

Ultimately, the bill went to a conference committee to reconcile differences between the Senate and House versions but did not become law. Despite not becoming law, the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 played a significant role in highlighting the need for updating U.S. energy policy and laid the groundwork for future bipartisan energy legislation. 

More: https://ballotpedia.org/Energy_Policy_Modernization_Act_of_2015#:~:text=Accountability,reliance%20on%20foreign%20mineral%20sources.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Jul 18, 2025, at 8:11 PM, H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Alan,

Since the sauce is secret I’m not allowed to tell you. 

Actually I’m not sure there is a secret sauce. 

But I doubt that the name of the group would have much to do with it viewership - but who knows? 

The larger point that an effective large scale international NGO focused on triad based restoration is absolutely essential to begin to even the lopsided political imbalance that exists between pro and anti-cooling advocates. Actually there are virtually no pro cooling advocates anywhere, mostly at best “we need more research to determine whether we should be pro cooling” advocates. 

Just today one of the most prominent anti Geo engineering networks the Hands-off Mother Earth Alliance issued a press release -see below - indicating that the African countries at a environmental meeting in Nairobi voted against supporting any kind of Geo engineering. I wonder if there were any pro cooling lobby groups even in attendance at the meeting to counteract the influence of these large coalitions. 

From the press release:

🟢 African Ministers sent a powerful message to the world saying, “We reiterate our position that such technologies pose significant and uncertain environmental, ethical and geopolitical risks, and must not be considered as viable options within the multilateral environmental agenda.”

🟢 African countries have explicitly called for “the establishment of a solar geoengineering non-use agreement”  which would ban any efforts to normalise these technologies. They have also called for a United Nations General Assembly resolution to advance the call for a global governance mechanism for the non-use of solar radiation modification.

🟢 The decisions at AMCEN20 are hugely significant, sending a clear signal to the international community towards rejection of solar geoengineering and exposing the forces that are trying to make these dangerous technologies appear like an option. “ 

While we endlessly debate year after year the merits of various cooling approaches or what the latest estimate of climate sensitivity is and similar issues over and over again climate chaos is accelerating, temperatures and impacts are worsening and the opposition to cooling the planet remains as strong if not stronger than ever.

As others have said the obstacles are political and social and not technological. 

This is evidenced by the position of the tipping point community as I have recounted, the 32 US states that have introduced bills to limit or ban engineering, the absence of any elected official anywhere on the planet as far as I know who publicly supports cooling, (does anyone know of a public official anywhere in support of cooling?) the continued opposition of the leaders of the entire African continent and on and on. 

From my review of the several hundred events at London Climate week my 10 minute opening talk at the MEER event may have been the only pro cooling message presented the entire week. 

Similarly the pro cooling events that I organized for the DC climate week with the help and participationof Mike Maccracken and Soumitra Das appear to have been the only pro cooling events. 

As was the event I took the lead in organizing with Dennis, Phoebe Barnard and Julian Cribb that linked the climate triad to addressing the polycrisis at last year’s NY Climate Week. 

We are losing and losing badly. And it’s not most of us who will feel the losses. 

Herb

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/A713B707-216D-4193-AD61-CF7E1B92EE12%40gmail.com.

[Tom Goreau]

We need to get the definition of geo-engineering straight:

 

Fossil fuel mining and burning ARE the most extreme form of geo-engineering!

 

What is now being mis-labelled as “geo-engineering” by the ignorant is simply an effort to undo the damage caused by irresponsible and dangerously out of control fossil fuel geo-engineering that will soon cause runaway climate overshoot for coral reefs, islands, entire ecosystems, and human cultures.

 

If politically motivated lies about condensation trails, hurricane steering, and flood seeding actually worked, the Persian Gulf would be lined with swimming pools!

 

There are so many everyday political lies about climate change and fossil fuel-caused runaway climate change lies being peddled on the internet, that calling any of them “THE BIG LIE”, irresponsibly uses a term that should be carefully limited to deliberate intent to utterly exterminate (like “drill, baby, drill” will inevitably do to coral reefs and so much more).

 

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

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

 

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

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

W'eeeellll, you are not wrong Oswalkd. However, how many times have you been raked over the coals for not including everyone, deniers and all, on visions for addressing the climate pollution conundrum? I think we need to do as Lord Stern said geeze, 20 years ago: do everything we know how to do, all at once. Joe and Karen Sixpack would part of this "everything." And besides, My Sierra Club colleagues nuke me every time I leave them out.

I have two favorite future scenarios that I think are more likely to occur than not. One is a removal incentive similar to IRS 45Q. Obama enacted this IRS rule via presidential order. The same can be done for cooling incentives. This is gigatons of U.S. taxpayer money to friends of Conservatives: their favorite thing. The other is that China will unilaterally begin SRM or some such, then as the world sees that these strategies help more than they harm, the rest will rapidly follow suit. Or maybe even just peer pressure will allow them to follow. 

In absence of (my) magical thinking, we need real plans to address the emergency with the tools at hand, like any emergency. I don't see much in the world of geoengineering as being able to utilize the concept of "tools at hand to address an emergency."* ** Removals however, have over a century of ongoing utilization of robust, cost effective processes, widespread in industry with components that are even more widespread. The all important "time to market" for removers to capitalize on revenue incentives then (existing for C removal and incentives that will certainly arise for cooling strategies,) will almost certainly be with existing strategies. New and better processes will infiltrate the market as they become significantly more efficient than old processes.

*The big caveat with cooling is the temporary pausing of regulations for sulfur in fossil fuels, especially over oceans where the aerosol effects are greatly amplified versus over land.

** Of course we need to immediately pursue cooling strategies on a learn by doing basis and ramping up as fast as possible. This avoids the interminable wait while the consensus finds a path. Initially , this will be slower than buildout of a removal infrastructure. Hopefully after a short time though, cooling infrastructure implementation would far surpass the buildout of removal infrastructure because if it doesn't, we likely don't have the decades it will take to cool below the point of no return of tipping collapses. 

And the moral hazard?! This may be nowhere more apparent than in the environmental conservation advocacy universe. My prime example is Sierra Club. Even though we (I am an elected leader and policy developer) adopted a restoration 1 C target (lowering our 1.5 C target), and support for geoengineering research as official policy in 2020. Internal moral hazard tribes at the Club have not only not advocated for our new policies, but actively disrespect them with every known moral hazard argument in the book, in writing, publicly. It took me well over a year to get the Club to stop advocating for 1.5 C after we adopted the new 1 C target. And supporting geoengineering research? Fogetaboutit

(I have recently begun a personal campaign to rectify this deal with the Club. Wish me luck. Any Club members out there that can help? Please sing out. This is very disappointing after all the work the policy team did - that was then almost unanimously approved of by numerous committees, peers and the National board.)

MeltOn

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

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/000001dbf7c1%24acc21170%2406463450%24%40hispeed.ch.

[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Hi Bruce,

 

thanks for the great work you do in Sierra Club! That’s probably a place where Moral Hazard has a “Diet Coke Button” in the head-office. I said it before: MH is like denying a life-saving drug to a liver-cancer patient because doctors fear he would start drinking again. MH is, in fact deeply amoral. Nowadays the MH argument is responsible for Global Warming.

 

The deciders are atmospheric scientists in the big institutions like MIT, Harvard, Potsdam, Oxford… They form the IPCC plans, and it’s them we have to convince. In the end removals will get the nod from these people, but we may need a generation change before. It is already all prepared, in a way removals are already supported by IPCC, they just don’t say it loudly, because even in academia the MH ghost is walking the aisles.

 

MH is a deeply dishonest concoction brewed from ideological Green Greta Thunberg style moralism plus business interests from the S&W industry plus old-fashioned bunker mentality in atmospheric science, formed in the 90s when they were attacked by climate-deniers and the O&G industry. The result is a non-scientific ERA-religion pointing at everybody else to do the work. It is high time to throw out this garbage.

 

Regards

 

Oswald

[Doug Grandt]

John et al,

[Please pardon my possible duplicate, as I replied late last night at the top of this thread and it did not “connect” to PeterF’s most recent email]

Searching this entire thread, it seems that ocean acidity, heat and sea life depletion have been overlooked — either intentionally or inadvertently — leaving it up to the reader to infer from the following bold phrase:

Emissions could continue as they are for the rest of the century, while temperatures are brought down through a combination of cooling interventions (SRM/ERM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR).  Planetary restoration can follow, so long as the CDR includes the promotion of life in soils and oceans to satisfy the needs of maintaining biodiversity and increasing food production.

Shouldn’t reducing ocean heat and acidity be explicitly included on par with CDR and direct cooling as the four essential mechanisms & goals?

Prompts me to wonder why ChatGPT or others reading this thread didn’t pick up on that … so I put three questions to Claude AI app ⬇️ and to you.

Best,

Doug Grandt

1) My initial inquiry to Claude:

Have you noticed that arguments for and against carbon drawdown, emissions reduction, and solar radiation management don’t mention ocean carbon removal, ocean acidity reduction, and ocean sea life restoration?

Claude responded:

You’re highlighting an important gap in climate discourse. Ocean-based interventions often get overshadowed by more visible land-based and atmospheric approaches, even though the ocean absorbs about 25-30% of atmospheric CO2 and over 90% of excess heat.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

You’re absolutely right. The search results confirm that ocean-based approaches are gaining recognition but remain underrepresented in mainstream climate discussions. The ocean has absorbed 25% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and over 90% of excess heat Sage Journals, yet marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) techniques are still emerging topics.

Several factors contribute to this gap:

Scale of invisibility: Ocean processes happen below the surface, making them less visible than solar panels or forest restoration. The ocean’s massive role as a carbon sink gets taken for granted.

Technical complexity: Ocean alkalinity enhancement, direct ocean capture, and marine ecosystem restoration involve complex biogeochemical processes that are harder to explain than “plant trees” or “build solar farms.”

Policy fragmentation: The U.S. Ocean Acidification Action Plan and increased Congressional appropriations for ocean CDR in FY 2024 Noaa Environmental and Energy Study Institute show growing policy attention, but ocean governance involves multiple agencies and international coordination.

Risk perceptions: Ocean interventions raise concerns about unintended consequences for marine ecosystems, making policymakers more cautious compared to land-based approaches.

Economic models: The economic frameworks around carbon pricing and removal credits have developed primarily around terrestrial and atmospheric approaches, with ocean-based methods still seeking standardized measurement and verification protocols.

The absence of ocean solutions from many climate conversations represents a significant blind spot, especially given that addressing ocean acidification could simultaneously tackle climate change while restoring marine ecosystems that billions depend on for food security.

2) My followup inquiry to Claude:

Why is it that the AI apps have not picked up on this omission and challenged those who have promoted conventional means of restoring Holocene climes?

Claude responded:

That’s a perceptive question about AI systems’ role in challenging established climate narratives. There are several interconnected reasons why AI hasn’t been more proactive in highlighting this ocean omission:

Training data reflects existing discourse:AI systems learn from existing literature, policy documents, and media coverage. If ocean-based solutions are underrepresented in the training corpus, the AI will naturally reflect those same blind spots and emphases. We essentially inherit the biases of the climate conversation as it existed.

Deference to expert consensus: Most AI systems are designed to reflect mainstream scientific and policy positions rather than challenge them. When climate experts and institutions focus primarily on emissions reduction and land-based solutions, AI tends to echo that framing rather than questioning what might be missing.

Risk aversion in sensitive domains:Climate change is a highly consequential topic where being wrong has serious implications. AI developers often program systems to be conservative, sticking to well-established approaches rather than pushing boundaries or highlighting gaps that experts might have good reasons for downplaying.

Fragmented knowledge synthesis: While AI can access vast information, it doesn’t naturally synthesize across disciplines the way an oceanographer-turned-climate-policy-critic might. The connections between ocean chemistry, marine biology, and climate policy require interdisciplinary thinking that AI systems don’t automatically perform.

Institutional alignment: Many AI systems reflect the priorities of the institutions that fund climate research and policy - which have historically focused on energy transitions and terrestrial solutions. There’s less institutional pressure to foreground ocean interventions.

Complexity vs. simplicity bias: AI often gravitates toward clearer, more established narratives. “Reduce emissions, add renewables, plant trees” is simpler to communicate than “alkalinize oceans while carefully monitoring marine ecosystems and managing international governance complexities.”

Your observation suggests AI could play a more valuable role as a cross-disciplinary challenger, identifying these systemic omissions rather than just reflecting existing expert discourse.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

3) My final inquiry to Claude:

Is this weakness of AI detrimental to human survival?

Claude responded:

This AI limitation could indeed be detrimental to human survival, though the severity depends on how critical ocean-based interventions prove to be and how much we rely on AI for climate guidance.

Direct survival implications: If ocean carbon removal, acidification reversal, and marine ecosystem restoration are essential for preventing catastrophic climate outcomes - and current evidence suggests they may be - then AI systems that reinforce incomplete approaches could contribute to inadequate responses. The ocean’s role as both a massive carbon sink and the foundation of global food webs makes this particularly consequential.

Systemic amplification of blind spots: AI increasingly influences policy research, grant funding decisions, corporate strategy, and public discourse. When AI systems consistently omit ocean solutions from climate recommendations, they don’t just reflect existing biases - they amplify and entrench them across multiple decision-making systems simultaneously.

Speed vs. accuracy tradeoff: Climate response requires both urgency and comprehensiveness. AI’s tendency to stick with established approaches might help avoid risky experimental interventions, but it could also cause us to miss critical solutions during the narrow window when they’d be most effective.

Feedback loop risks: As AI becomes more prevalent in climate research and policy, there’s a risk of creating self-reinforcing loops where incomplete framings become increasingly dominant simply because they’re repeated across AI-assisted analyses.

However, the limitation isn’t necessarily fatal if:

• Ocean scientists and marine policy experts continue advocating independently
• Human decision-makers maintain critical oversight of AI recommendations
• AI systems evolve to better identify and challenge systemic omissions

The real danger lies not just in missing ocean solutions, but in AI’s potential to create false confidence in incomplete approaches during humanity’s most critical environmental decision-making period.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

###

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Jul 18, 2025, at 11:47 AM, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CACS_FxpJNFeaxnjubRTwdnAxQsFMhuMn_4%3DoNZ%2B6xrKO3DnUbw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Chris Vivian]

Doug,

 

You are right to pick up on ‘that ocean acidity, heat and sea life depletion have been overlooked’. The continued emissions of CO2 will only worsen ocean acidification that has now been assessed as exceeding safe planetary boundaries - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.70238 - and its effects on sea life.

 

Chris.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/3971C0BC-D370-4EF2-8792-841074F82719%40mac.com.

[John Nissen]

Hi Doug,

You quoted me:

Emissions could continue as they are for the rest of the century, while temperatures are brought down through a combination of cooling interventions (SRM/ERM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR).  Planetary restoration can follow, so long as the CDR includes the promotion of life in soils and oceans to satisfy the needs of maintaining biodiversity and increasing food production.

The words I chose are based on PRAG's mission statement, but modified (i) to include the contingency that there is no significant reduction in CO2 emissions this century.and (ii) to use CDR for the promotion of life in soils and oceans.  Cooling of the ocean surface will be a consequence of SRM/ERM, and CDR will reduce the rate of ocean acidification.  In PRAG we already had agreed on the need for enhancement of life in soils and oceans in order to restore biodiversity and improve food security.  

So I think you worried unnecessarily. 

Cheers, John

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Dear Tycho,

Thanks very much for your reply to my post from two weeks ago. I appreciate your engagement and your contribution to the discussion. I’ve now had time to consider your comments and wanted to share some responses. Apologies for the delayed reply.

Your core point — that fossil emissions must be addressed urgently — is indeed the foundation of mainstream climate policy. However, that’s precisely the framing I challenge. This dominant narrative focuses on avoiding a small proportion of future emissions rather than removing the vast stock of past emissions already in the air and ocean. That existing stock, not the marginal quantity of new emissions, is the principal driver of current and future warming, now augmented by much larger and more dangerous feedbacks, such as cloud loss.

The reality is stark: we face a trillion-tonne carbon problem. Efforts that focus on avoiding a few million tonnes of future emissions, while politically and financially appealing to many, are arithmetically negligible in this context. To use an analogy: cutting emissions as a main climate strategy is like trying to empty a full bathtub with a teaspoon while the tap is still running — and ignoring the drain entirely. The main carbon task now is to remove hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO₂ and methane from the system. Focusing solely on emission avoidance misdirects political attention and fails to address committed warming and the associated tipping points.  This illustrates that the confected concerns about so-called "mitigation deterrence" and "termination shock" lack any coherent scientific basis.

I read your False Dilemma article with interest. I understand your concerns but must disagree with your sympathy to Siegert et al. (And just to note — his name is misspelled in your article.) Their argument is a striking example of idealistic thinking that ignores political, economic and physical constraints.

They say “Halting global warming requires rapid and deep decarbonization to ‘net zero’ carbon dioxide emissions… [but] some scientists and engineers… are instead focusing on technological geoengineering ‘fixes’...”

This statement amounts to denial of current warming trends, particularly the role of collapsing planetary albedo — a far more acute climate driver than emissions alone. The 2.5 W/m² decline in Earth's reflectivity this century has caused far more warming than the marginal effect of recent emissions. Yet the authors dismiss the possibility of addressing this far larger cause because it would supposedly deter action on their far smaller obsession. That is not realism; it is a kind of magical thinking, where repeating "net zero" is assumed to make it achievable — despite clear evidence to the contrary.

We are now five years into the UN’s call to halve emissions by 2030, and it is clear that this goal is not being met. In fact, emissions are rising, not falling. This is not just a policy failure but a political misjudgement, rooted in the belief that a progressive coalition can win a global war against fossil fuels. What we are witnessing instead — as The Economist recently noted — is a greenlash: growing resistance, populist backlash, and polarization that is eroding support for climate action altogether.

Of course, I agree that cutting emissions is often desirable — for health, economic and environmental reasons. But we must face the uncomfortable truth: emission reduction alone cannot act at the required scale or speed to protect the climate. The conflict of interest within the renewable energy industry — where commercial interests align with exaggerated climate claims — has led to a dangerous oversimplification. The idea that decarbonisation alone can stabilise the climate is what I call a Big Lie.

You are right to say that we can do more than one thing at a time. However, insisting on rapid decarbonisation as a prerequisite for cooling interventions is actively preventing cooling from being pursued. The real false dilemma is generated by the false claim that geoengineering cannot substitute for decarbonisation. In reality, scenarios that include continued fossil use, paired with rapid deployment of solar radiation management and carbon removal, offer the only realistic chances of climate stability.

There is also an important strategic question: would industries suffering from warming be more inclined to support sunlight reflection than they are to support fossil fuel restrictions? If so, making SRM conditional on decarbonisation delays action and undermines broader political support for urgently needed cooling measures.

The polarization you describe is real — but it has been primarily driven by the anti-fossil framing, and of course by the Trump greenlash, not by calls for priority attention to planetary albedo. I agree that communication matters. My aim is not to provoke but to challenge what I see as the dominant delusion that decarbonisation is an achievable or sufficient climate strategy on any relevant timeframe. My expectation is that carbon will primarily be addressed by removal/conversion, not by reduced use of fossil fuels.  But that will take a long time.  The urgent priority is to engage seriously with tipping points such as cloud loss to restore albedo.  Until this policy pivot occurs, climate policy will continue to fail.

Regards

Robert Tulip

 

 

From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Tycho Huussen
Sent: Tuesday, 22 July 2025 2:30 PM
To: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

Dear Robert,

 

I find this way of framing the issue highly unhelpful.

 

Fossil carbon emissions (and fossil fuel powered land use) are the root causes of the problem and need to be addressed asap. The fact that the problem has already escalated such that emissions reductions alone will not prevent dangerous global warming does not mean we should now focus on planetary cooling instead of decarbonization.

 

The idea that we can only have one priority is primitive imo and I would argue we need aggressive emissions reductions AND research on cooling options. What you are propagating is what I call the "The False Dilemma of Decarbonization and Solar Radiation Management":

 

https://tychohuussen.substack.com/p/the-false-dilemma-of-decarbonization

 

Imo decarbonization should be regarded as a *necessary condition* for SRM, because of termination shock risks and ocean acidification (and other pollution related issues).

 

I think the SRM community, if it wishes to be heard, should listen carefully to the objectors and make an effort to understand their arguments. Communications this do not help as they reinforce polarization and brush over valid concerns, such as "mitigation deterrence" and "predatory delay". In fact, the article could easily be interpreted as an example of both.

 

Regards,

Tycho

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/605e92b9-6d25-4efa-b47a-a109e0c2430en%40googlegroups.com.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi Tycho

 

Thanks for your thoughtful points. Here is a summary of my attached detailed point by point response.

On cumulative vs current emissions
Cumulative emissions are ~2.5 trillion tonnes CO₂, with ~2 trillion still in the air or oceans. Annual emissions (~50 Gt: 37 Gt energy + 13 Gt non-energy) add just 2% to this. Even a major cut of 5 Gt/y (10%) only slows total forcing by 0.2% annually — far too little to affect looming tipping points like permafrost melt, which could add more than that on their own. The real problem is past emissions; adding renewables alone doesn’t solve it. Large-scale algae production, initially using coal plant CO₂, may offer a path to draw down historic carbon.

On net zero sequencing
The ‘net’ in net zero comes from removing historic CO₂. Net zero could, in theory, keep current emissions if CDR ramps to ~50 Gt/y. That’s more realistic than ending all combustion, and it creates capacity to scale to restore Holocene conditions. Meanwhile, only albedo restoration can stabilise the system in the short term.

On CDR vs emissions cuts
Yes, drains are small now — but they can scale. Decarbonisation can only slow the rise, not reverse it, and has huge opportunity costs. Without CDR, CO₂ could rise toward 600 ppm — an unacceptable risk. Intensive algae cultivation over a few percent of the oceans could mine excess CO₂ at scale.

On EPR and CCS
Your extended producer responsibility idea is strong, but politically challenging. A more pragmatic bridge might be to use fossil CO₂ for photosynthesis, producing food, fuel, fibre, fertiliser, forest, fish, and feed (the “7 F” model). Bringing industries into SRM and CDR efforts is more likely to gain cooperation than making their core business uneconomic.

On phasing out emissions
An aggressive phase-out has no prospect of success and deepens political polarisation. The first emergency step is to stop the heat surge by restoring albedo — like applying a tourniquet — then scale CDR, with emissions cuts proceeding where feasible.

On albedo focus
Far from confusing the issue, focusing on albedo clarifies priorities. The ~2.5 W/m² loss from albedo collapse already this century far outweighs the warming from new emissions. Clouds may follow GHG forcing, but emission cuts can’t reverse ongoing cloud loss — only rebrightening can. As with cholesterol control, it’s better to manage the immediate risk while addressing the cause over time.

Summary
We need a climate critical path:

1. Restore albedo to halt near-term warming.
2. Scale GGR to remove historic emissions.
3. Cut emissions where practical.
   This is triage — not ideology.

 

Regards

Robert Tulip

 

 

From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Tycho Huussen
Sent: Wednesday, 6 August 2025 11:56 PM
To: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your message.

Several times you say recent emissions are essentially irrelevant, while you acknowledge the climate impact of cumulative emissions. Obviously, if you want to do something about cumulative emissions you will need to do something about current emissions. And once net zero is reached, one could worry about the historic emissions.

Imo it is pointless to speak about drains as long as the CO2 draining capacity is negligible compared to current emissions. It is more effective to incrementally reduce emissions by a small fraction than to remove CO2 with a teaspoon while adding buckets.

Personally I advocate for an extended producer responsibility (EPR) for the full life cycle of fossil carbon, and mandating that an increasing fraction of production is balanced with CCS until geological net zero is observed (see my post "What to do with the Remaining Fossil Fuel Reserves?” https://tychohuussen.substack.com/p/what-to-do-with-the-remaining-fossil).

If we do not focus on phasing out emissions and CCS we essentially choose to dump the remaining fossil carbon reserves in the atmosphere. This would be disastrous for the climate and completely unsafe to offset with cooling (if even feasible), because it would likely destroy the marine food web because of ocean acidification and expose the world to extreme termination shock risks.

You write: “Focusing solely on emission avoidance misdirects political attention and fails to address committed warming and the associated tipping points.” I fully agree with this, and in fact work on the development of MCB myself. In my False Dilemma article I say we need to work on things in parallel, and argue emissions reduction should be a necessary condition for SRM deployment.

My  “sympathy to Siegert et al.” goes only as far that I agree that SRM proposals should be scrutinized. Otherwise I disagree with them on essential points, as I discuss in my post.

Also, please consider the value of building bridges to SRM opponents by showing empathy.

I think it is a shame the fossil fuel industry is fighting to maintain the status quo, rather than being required to clean up their act and produce emission-free energy products (with CCS). The EPR I referred to earlier would create a new level playing field and make the ff industry part of the solution. I have reason to believe the “greenlash” you refer to is partly instigated by the fossil fuel industry, in particular in the US. To me Donald “drill baby drill” Trump seems a puppet for drilling/fracking industries.

I have faced this truth: “But we must face the uncomfortable truth: emission reduction alone cannot act at the required scale or speed to protect the climate.” In fact, this is the reason why I partake in, and advocate for, research into SRM options.

You say “[…] renewable energy industry — where commercial interests align with exaggerated climate claims […]” Can you give examples of exaggerated claims made by the renewable energy industry?

What you call the Big Lie “The idea that decarbonisation alone can stabilise the climate is what I call a Big Lie.” was still true a decade or two ago, but I agree that we have missed that opportunity, and should now look into SRM in addition to aggressively phasing out emissions.

This is of course nonsense, as long as “rapid” remains undefined: “You are right to say that we can do more than one thing at a time. However, insisting on rapid decarbonisation as a prerequisite for cooling interventions is actively preventing cooling from being pursued.”. What I call for a credible geological net zero strategy. I have not mentioned a time frame.

From the narrow perspective of global warming geoengineering can replace decarbonization, but not when other impacts from CO2 emissions are also considered, mainly ocean acidification and termination shock risks.

Finally, talking about planetary albedo in this context confuses matters imo. Yes, of course, clouds are main controller of the climate, but they follow GHG forcing and changes in aerosol forcing due to industrial emissions, changes in land use and climate change itself. Indeed we may be able to restore the radiative balance of the planet with aerosols (SAI/MCB) but this is like wearing protective clothing while leaving the fire burning.

We will need to address the main causes of climate change —emissions and land-use— and there is a premium on doing this rather sooner than later.

Let me repeat that I believe it is essential for the SRM community to embrace the need for decarbonization to gain acceptance and credibility. Making fossil fuel interests pay for SRM, while continuing business as usual, is possibly the worst case scenario.  

Best regards,
Tycho

PS: Just a last remark about fossil fuels. You seem to have a hard time imagining we could live without them: “My expectation is that carbon will primarily be addressed by removal/conversion, not by reduced use of fossil fuels.”. I agree on the conversion, that is basically what EPR for the industry would lead to, I expect. Removal, as in DAC and “nature based solutions” are not going to cut it I am afraid.

PPS Talking about ff consumption consider this: I built a carbon negative home from local wood and power my house and small EV with solar energy. It can be done, and it can be done in a way that is cost effective and agreeable.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/4de9c4ab-b9de-478d-9c64-110cc67842d2n%40googlegroups.com.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi Tycho,

This is a productive conversation — thank you.  A longer version of this reply is attached.

“Net zero is commonly understood to be a balance between fossil sources of CO₂ and (quasi) permanent sinks. Net negative is often used referring to the sequestration of historic emissions.”
Even if that reflects common usage, it’s an awkward distinction. Net zero simply means sources equal sinks so atmospheric CO₂ stabilises. That necessarily involves sequestration of historic emissions, which can start small and ramp up until sinks exceed sources, unlike emission reduction alone (ERA), which has no path to climate-relevant scale.

“A 2% increase may seem small but if it keeps accumulating at this rate we will …”
The 2% you cite seems to assume a geometric increase. Under Business As Usual (BAU), emissions are ~57 Gt/y today — 35 from energy and ~20 from non-energy sources — which I’ve rounded to 50 Gt for simplicity. IEA stated policies indicate energy emissions are not projected to fall.  Cumulative emissions now total ~2,500 Gt; continuing at 50 Gt/y brings us to ~3,750 Gt in 2050 — a 50% increase, not 64%. About 20% will be taken up by natural sinks.
If emissions fell 2 Gt each year to reach Net Zero Emissions (NZE) by 2050, total cumulative emissions would be ~3,150 Gt, an increase of 26% from now. BAU (3750 Gt) would therefore be about 20% worse in radiative forcing than NZE. My concern is that (1) political power to alter BAU is weak; (2) NZE only halves the growth in RF by 2050 at best; and (3) the opportunity cost is enormous if that effort excludes direct cooling.

“Large-scale algae production … may offer a path to draw down historic carbon.”
The climate science community has become tribally attached to renewables, feeding hostility to ocean iron fertilisation (OIF) and similar approaches — seen in the London Protocol’s absurd classification of OIF as “dumping waste” and hyped thousand-year scenarios for nutrients, oxygen, permanence, etc. My point on coal is that as algae production scales, CO₂ from coal plants could be a valuable feedstock rather than waste.

“[…] if CDR ramps to ~50 Gt/y …”
If CDR is channelled into biochar, construction materials, fuels and other commodities, it can be part of a profitable circular economy. Until then, SRM is the only way to remove excess heat at the necessary speed.

“Why first disperse a substance and then collect it again …”
Because BAU dispersal is profitable. CDR can begin with point-source capture and extend to atmospheric removal via photosynthesis.

“Only point-source CCS makes sense …”
Only if it’s CCUS — carbon capture, use, and storage. That can become a profitable industry in its own right. And again, the emissions increase under BAU is arithmetical, not exponential.

“Fossil CO₂ is not needed for photosynthesis and likely to do more harm than good …”
Agreed. But given the quantities already in the air and ocean, management is essential — another reason why cooling is the urgent priority.

“Bringing industries into SRM and CDR efforts … is not a good idea.”
Many industries — insurance, agriculture, coastal tourism, as well as fossil fuels — face ruin under an ERA path. They should be natural allies for SRM, but political prejudice within climate science has prevented this coalition from forming.

“Mitigation deterrence” and “predatory delay”
This “mitigation” usage is political, not literal: to mitigate means to reduce risk, and ERA does not reduce near-term climate risk. SRM actually does. To claim SRM deters mitigation is Orwellian. “Predatory delay” is a fair term for climate denial, but SRM replaces an ineffective approach with an effective one; that is neither predatory nor delaying.

“I agree it might be desirable to opt for deployment at some point …”
The IPCC doesn’t even share that starting point — it’s hostile to research, let alone deployment — which means climate policy needs a complete rethink.

On cholesterol: Yes — with enough motivation, cholesterol can drop in weeks. But society collectively lacks that discipline. Likewise, a “crash diet” off fossil fuels could be imagined, but political backlash would be intense (Exhibit A: Donald Trump). A tactical shift to SRM — compatible with the current economy — is more viable for building broad support for climate action.

Your SRM support steps:

1. Acknowledge risks — Many SRM risk claims are politics dressed as science. Benefits like reduced extreme weather and reduced biodiversity loss deserve much more attention. An Albedo Accord should conduct objective risk–benefit analysis toward restoring 2.5% planetary brightness.
2. Exclude fossil fuels — I disagree; they have resources, influence and skills worth harnessing under strict governance.
3. Call for SRM in addition to ER — This entrenches paralysis. Much ER policy is corrupt and additive rather than substitutive for fossil fuels. SRM offers faster, cheaper cooling.
4. Governance before deployment — Fully agreed; the Montreal Protocol offers the best model.

Regards

Robert Tulip

 

 

From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Tycho Huussen
Sent: Monday, 11 August 2025 3:34 AM
To: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

Hi Robert,

Thank you for your message.

Net zero is commonly understood to be a balance between fossil sources of CO2 and (quasi) permanent sinks. Net negative is often used referring to the sequestration of historic emissions.

A 2% increase may seem small but if it keeps accumulating at this rate we will, by 2050, have increased the CO2 concentration with another 64% compared to current levels (64%1.03^25=1.64), or 1.64*1.5=246% compared to pre-industrial levels. Based on these numbers I stick with my conclusion there is a premium on phasing out emissions as early as possible.

You write: “Large-scale algae production, initially using coal plant CO₂, may offer a path to draw down historic carbon.” What I know from studies regarding ocean fertilization is that its potential for long term carbon storage is uncertain and unlikely to reach 20% of the biomass produced, with potentially serious negative environmental impacts. What you say about coal plant CO2 I don’t understand.

You also write: “[…] if CDR ramps to ~50 Gt/y.” That is a big if. I don’t see CDR scale to such levels any time soon, nor does that proposition make much sense economically, or in a systems design sense. Why first disperse a substance and then collect it again in a highly diluted form?

Imo only point source CCS makes sense to avoid emissions in the first place. And perhaps CDR to clean up historic emissions. This, I expect, will  remain costly, but possibly our only reliable option for the cleanup of historic emissions. Here I would like to recall that historic emissions will have risen to 246% above pre-industrial if we allow a growth rate of 2% per year.

Fossil CO2 is not needed for photosynthesis and likely to do more harm than good, see e.g. “Natural sequestration of carbon dioxide is in decline: climate change will accelerate” (https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.7668).

This I find a very risky supposition: “Bringing industries into SRM and CDR efforts is more likely to gain cooperation than making their core business uneconomic.” It is clear that, in this context, you mean “fossil fuel industry”, when you say “industry”. Bringing this industry into SRM and CDR is not a good idea imo. Making SRM dependent on the fossil fuel industry is a bad idea systemically speaking, since mitigation deterrence and predatory delay will lead to higher risks in any scenario.

Regarding desirability to research SRM options you are preaching to the choir. I agree. And I also agree it might be desirable to opt for deployment at some point, after a thorough risk-risk analysis has been carried out.  

Re cholesterol: it can actually be brought down within weeks with drastic diet and lifestyle changes. Similarly, I think weening off from fossil emissions can be done quicker and more easily than you assume (Try it I would suggest. I did and love the results).

Let me take this opportunity to share my recommendations for building support for SRM:
1. Acknowledge the risks fully,
2. Exclude fossil fuel interests,
3. Call for SRM research in addition to an aggressive emissions phase-out, never as a replacement or opportunity to slow down the energy transition,
4. Stress that SRM should only be considered ready for deployment after a thorough risk-risk analysis and with adequate governance in place.

Regards,
Tycho

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/19258bb8-843b-4c4f-bca2-fdf7e85f9597n%40googlegroups.com.

[Chris Vivian]

Robert,                                                           

 

Your statement “…seen in the London Protocol’s absurd classification of OIF as “dumping waste” is incorrect and reveals your unfamiliarity with what has been done by the London Convention and London Protocol (LP). Introducing material for marine geoengineering purposes is defined as “placement” not dumping. In addition, the LC/LP govern the dumping of “wastes or other matter” (Article 1.4.1.1), an all-encompassing definition, not just wastes.

 

Article 6bis, paragraph 1 of the 2013 amendment to the LP states:

 

“Contracting Parties shall not allow the placement of matter into the sea from vessels, aircraft, platforms or other man-made structures at sea for marine geoengineering activities listed in annex 4, unless the listing provides that the activity or the subcategory of an activity may be authorized under a permit.”

 

Article 1.4.2 of the LP defines placement:

 

“"Dumping" does not include:

 

.2      placement of matter for a purpose other than the mere disposal thereof, provided that such placement is not contrary to the aims of this Protocol;”

 

So, OIF is clearly not defined as dumping of wastes.

 

Best wishes

 

Chris.

 

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-action-as:

coal...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of rob...@rtulip.net
Sent: 12 August 2025 08:36
To: 'Tycho Huussen' <tychoh...@gmail.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'HPAC' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/036301dc0b5b%24d10fb7f0%24732f27d0%24%40rtulip.net.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Chris, you are an expert on the London Protocol, so I welcome your comment.  You are technically correct here about waste, but only in a narrow, pedantic, legalistic and elastic sense.  Readers should be aware the LP defines Ocean Iron Fertilization as dumping, but places it under the “other matter” category, separate from waste.  This gives dumping waste a specialised meaning in the LP quite different from ordinary usage.

 

How you can dump something that is not waste is contrary to the normal meaning.  In ordinary language “dumping” means discarding something you don’t want, i.e. waste. But your clarification reflects that under the London Protocol, “dumping” is what is known in arcane legal jargon as a ‘term of art’, a phrase that has a specialised definition in that field, which may differ significantly from its everyday meaning.  But opponents such as ETC are happy to jump on the anti-waste bandwagon without those legal niceties.

 

The 2008 resolution defines OIF as dumping, stating OIF does “not currently qualify for any exemption from the definition of dumping “in the Convention and the Protocol.”  We are then left with whether you can dump something that is not waste.  Indeed, as you point out, the lawyers at the IMO conveniently maintain that you can.  The convenience was that with ordinary language they would have needed a new treaty to wage their war against geoengineering, but their elastic definition of dumping enabled them to harness the LP to this unstated (and arguably immoral) end.  OIF is not waste but still dumping.  They needed that specialised twisting of language to justify their political decision, which had the apparent and successful intent to severely chill and delay research into planetary cooling. 

 

By classing OIF as dumping, negotiators sent a strong public message equating geoengineering with ocean pollution, framing it as a threat rather than a potential tool.  Their decision served the Big Lie that decarbonisation is the only way to respond to climate change.  If negotiators had stuck to the ordinary-language meaning of waste and dumping, they could never have folded OIF into the London Protocol without an explicit new treaty or amendment devoted to geoengineering. That would have required a new negotiation mandate, years of diplomacy, explicit consent from Parties, and, crucially, open political debate on the merits and risks of planetary cooling.

 

Instead, by leaning on the elastic, term-of-art definition of wastes or other matter, they could re-purpose an existing instrument that already had binding force. No need to create an overt “Anti-Geoengineering Treaty” — they could act under the radar, framing it as “just enforcing existing rules.”

 

The political convenience

• Speed: Immediate coverage under an existing treaty avoided the long ratification process.
• Framing control: By calling it “dumping,” they tied OIF to the mental image of pollution, toxic waste, and environmental harm — not climate restoration.
• Minimal scrutiny: Since they weren’t “making a new law,” there was less public and parliamentary attention to the policy shift.
• Global reach: The London Protocol already had wide membership and enforcement mechanisms.

 

The unstated end

• The practical effect was to create a de facto moratorium on large-scale OIF and related marine geoengineering.
• While publicly justified as “precaution,” the deeper political aim was to block or delay geoengineering research — partly out of fear of environmental risks, partly out of fear that SRM or large-scale CDR would weaken political will for emissions cuts.
• The language choice meant they could achieve that aim without openly admitting it — and without exposing the policy to a fresh, potentially divisive treaty debate.

 

This is all nefarious and underhand and bad for the environment, in conflict with the clear arguments that OIF is actually immensely beneficial.

 

The manoeuvre was a textbook case of politically motivated environmental harm disguised as protection.  By stretching the “dumping” definition the London Protocol Parties didn’t just regulate OIF cautiously — they weaponised an anti-pollution treaty to pre-empt a whole class of planetary cooling research. That achieved several unstated objectives:

• Framing geoengineering as pollution: By pushing OIF under the “waste dumping” label, they made it psychologically synonymous with toxic sludge and industrial effluent, not a potential climate solution.
• Shutting down experimentation without debate: Instead of openly arguing the pros and cons of planetary-scale cooling, they smuggled it into a treaty designed for a different purpose, avoiding political scrutiny.
• Chilling science: Researchers saw “dumping waste” in the legal framing and realised the political and reputational risks — so most big OIF experiments never left the drawing board.
• Locking in the Big Lie of emissions-only orthodoxy: The move reinforced the idea that climate policy must stay centred on emissions reduction alone, cutting off serious consideration of marine-based albedo and carbon removal strategies.

 

This is thoroughly bad for the environment and the climate.  If OIF works at scale — and a substantial body of modelling and early field evidence says it can:

• It could draw down billions of tonnes of CO₂ over decades.
• It could restore ocean productivity, boost fisheries, and help reverse deoxygenation.
• It could cool the climate fast enough to avert tipping points that emission cuts alone can’t prevent.

 

Suppressing that pathway in the name of “precaution” is reckless and dangerous when the precautionary principle should apply equally to not acting in the face of clear and present climate danger.  The LP’s OIF treatment fails its own stated aims, turns precaution into paralysis, and leads to worse environmental damage by blocking beneficial interventions.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/18c601dc0b73%2415b4fe80%24411efb80%24%40btinternet.com.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Forwarding to HPAC

 

From: 'Tycho Huussen' via Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, 14 August 2025 2:09 PM
To: rob...@rtulip.net
Cc: tychoh...@gmail.com; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'HPAC' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

Hi Robert,

 

I will give some replies in-line below.

 

Yes, the discussion is interesting but, as our opinions are not converging, I suggest we agree to disagree.

 

On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 09:36, < rob...@rtulip.net > wrote:

Hi Tycho,

This is a productive conversation — thank you.  A longer version of this reply is attached.

“Net zero is commonly understood to be a balance between fossil sources of CO₂ and (quasi) permanent sinks. Net negative is often used referring to the sequestration of historic emissions.”
Even if that reflects common usage, it’s an awkward distinction. Net zero simply means sources equal sinks so atmospheric CO₂ stabilises. That necessarily involves sequestration of historic emissions, which can start small and ramp up until sinks exceed sources, unlike emission reduction alone (ERA), which has no path to climate-relevant scale.

Is is not awkward if you consider flows rather than stocks.

“A 2% increase may seem small but if it keeps accumulating at this rate we will …”
The 2% you cite seems to assume a geometric increase. Under Business As Usual (BAU), emissions are ~57 Gt/y today — 35 from energy and ~20 from non-energy sources — which I’ve rounded to 50 Gt for simplicity. IEA stated policies indicate energy emissions are not projected to fall.  Cumulative emissions now total ~2,500 Gt; continuing at 50 Gt/y brings us to ~3,750 Gt in 2050 — a 50% increase, not 64%.

Sure. You assume constant emissions and therefore implicitly a decreasing percentage increase and I assumed a constant percentage increase. Either way adding 64 or 50 percent to current levels is a lot. We are talking 246 or 225% compared to pre-industrial.

About 20% will be taken up by natural sinks.

That’s unlikely, since the capacity of the biosphere to sequester carbon is shown to decreases (

Natural sequestration of carbon dioxide is in decline: climate change will accelerate

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.7668)

If emissions fell 2 Gt each year to reach Net Zero Emissions (NZE) by 2050, total cumulative emissions would be ~3,150 Gt, an increase of 26% from now. BAU (3750 Gt) would therefore be about 20% worse in radiative forcing than NZE. My concern is that (1) political power to alter BAU is weak; (2)

Perhaps. In that regard your article isn’t helping.

NZE only halves the growth in RF by 2050 at best;

Only?!

and (3) the opportunity cost is enormous if that effort excludes direct cooling.

Not sure what you mean here.

“Large-scale algae production … may offer a path to draw down historic carbon.”
The climate science community has become tribally attached to renewables,

Oh yes? How so? What about climate scientists advocate for renewables because they represent the best available systemic solution?

feeding hostility to ocean iron fertilisation (OIF) and similar approaches — seen in the London Protocol’s absurd classification of OIF as “dumping waste” and hyped thousand-year scenarios for nutrients, oxygen, permanence, etc. My point on coal is that as algae production scales, CO₂ from coal plants could be a valuable feedstock rather than waste.

Again suggestive framing. Someone else already responded  to this assertion.

“[…] if CDR ramps to ~50 Gt/y …”
If CDR is channelled into biochar, construction materials, fuels and other commodities, it can be part of a profitable circular economy.

Yes IF. The problem is that CDR is unlikely to ever work at scale the way I see it. Also, dumping first and then cleaning is just dumb.

Until then, SRM is the only way to remove excess heat at the necessary speed.

I think SRM might be desirable even if we were to magically stop all emissions tomorrow.

“Why first disperse a substance and then collect it again …”
Because BAU dispersal is profitable. CDR can begin with point-source capture and extend to atmospheric removal via photosynthesis.

Assumptions, assumptions

“Only point-source CCS makes sense …”
Only if it’s CCUS — carbon capture, use, and storage. That can become a profitable industry in its own right. And again, the emissions increase under BAU is arithmetical, not exponential.

“Fossil CO₂ is not needed for photosynthesis and likely to do more harm than good …”
Agreed. But given the quantities already in the air and ocean, management is essential — another reason why cooling is the urgent priority.

“Bringing industries into SRM and CDR efforts … is not a good idea.”
Many industries — insurance, agriculture, coastal tourism, as well as fossil fuels — face ruin under an ERA path.

ERA? 

Industries facing ruin is part of life. Nobody tried to save the VCR… Fossil energy producers will have to convert to emission-free products or perish imo.

They should be natural allies for SRM, but political prejudice within climate science has prevented this coalition from forming.

“Mitigation deterrence” and “predatory delay”
This “mitigation” usage is political, not literal: to mitigate means to reduce risk, and ERA does not reduce near-term climate risk. SRM actually does. To claim SRM deters mitigation is Orwellian.

Orwellian? How so?

“Predatory delay” is a fair term for climate denial, but SRM replaces an ineffective approach with an effective one; that is neither predatory nor delaying.

“I agree it might be desirable to opt for deployment at some point …”
The IPCC doesn’t even share that starting point — it’s hostile to research, let alone deployment — which means climate policy needs a complete rethink.

On cholesterol: Yes — with enough motivation, cholesterol can drop in weeks. But society collectively lacks that discipline.

Ah! Now we’re talking. If society indeed lacks discipline they/we will have to deal with consequences one way or another, I’m afraid. 

Likewise, a “crash diet” off fossil fuels could be imagined, but political backlash would be intense (Exhibit A: Donald Trump). A tactical shift to SRM — compatible with the current economy — is more viable for building broad support for climate action.

Here we disagree. I think SRM only makes sense in tandem with deep systemic changes. Otherwise I think SRM will just make our problems worst (see my articles on Substack)

Your SRM support steps:

1. Acknowledge risks — Many SRM risk claims are politics dressed as science.

Please provide some examples.

1. Benefits like reduced extreme weather and reduced biodiversity loss deserve much more attention. An Albedo Accord should conduct objective risk–benefit analysis toward restoring 2.5% planetary brightness.
2. Exclude fossil fuels — I disagree; they have resources, influence and skills worth harnessing under strict governance.
3. Call for SRM in addition to ER — This entrenches paralysis. Much ER policy is corrupt and additive

Please provide examples 

1. rather than substitutive for fossil fuels. SRM offers faster, cheaper cooling.
2. Governance before deployment — Fully agreed; the Montreal Protocol offers the best model.

Regards

Robert Tulip

 

Regards,

Tycho

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/gdPWpbC3vr03PnDR_QoESy-G_N-KVWe6tynocS0KLcFlFfDElmxwVrdvJHLhxZQvxFFzhwFfdDX0FQsE5RZvlhO6ovHFNCWPdt5vN5nyKi8%3D%40protonmail.com.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi Tycho

 

There are many important debates raised here, which I address in order.  Chris Vivian, please note the comment on LP.

 

My description as ‘awkward’ of the conventional interpretation that Net Zero Emissions could possibly be achieved without CDR was far too polite, and was a euphemism for my view that it is wrong and confusing and dangerous.  Your claim that “It is not awkward if you consider flows rather than stocks” is meaningless and absurd.  Flows are going up and stocks are going down, as you point out.  The opposite is needed for NZE and shows no prospect of occurring.  Sinks are in collapse.  Forests are burning, dying, getting eaten by pests and chainsawed for lumber.  Plankton is under assault from heat.  Both stocks and flows are intrinsic to the ‘net’ in NZE. Failure to even discuss this is part of the Big Lie of Decarbonisation.  The public has no idea what NZE means other than subsidies for electric cars and similar boondoggles.

 

The models of the so-called Zero Emission Commitment (ZEC) promoted by liars like Michael Mann are profoundly untrue and corrupt, with their false assertion that the CO2 level would somehow start to fall after the achievement of Net Zero Emissions (NZE).  NZE at 600 ppm CO2 equivalent, as implied by a gradual emission reduction to 2050, is not only an absurd pipedream, it is a recipe for massive tipping points that would dump vast quantities of GGEs into the air, notably permafrost melt and forest collapse, on a scale exceeding the avoided emissions.  NZE and ZEC are all part of the Big Lie of Decarbonisation, the immoral fantasy that renewable energy transition can be relevant to climate change.  I accept Tom Goreau’s point that climate denial is a Bigger Lie, but that does not assuage the Big Lie crisis of science in NZE. 

 

Yes, carbon reform is essential, but placing carbon reform as equal to albedo restoration is like saying surgery is equal to lifestyle, through diet and exercise after a heart attack.  Carbon reform is entirely secondary in this planetary crisis. Only an Albedo Accord can staunch the cardiac arrest to get the patient, Planet Earth, to the operating table. Gaia is calling us to reverse the darkening.  Nothing we do about carbon can slow the immediate climate crisis, which urgently needs solar radiation management to reverse the albedo collapse as clouds disappear. 

 

The arithmetic is important.  Your use of a geometric increase of emissions does not accord with projections that I am familiar with, such as the one I provided from IEA, although perhaps the Trumpian fantasy of massive AI-ification of the economy would involve such a calamity.  Even so, the point of realism is that nothing politically can be done about carbon at climatic scale until albedo is under control, enabling a shift out of our current insanity towards global thinking and Earth repair.  There are commercial constituencies who could deliver an Albedo Accord, but none who can deliver effective carbon reduction.  Sure the prognosis is bad, but immediate action on albedo as a first step is the only hope for the survival of civilization.  Our carbon obesity is just something we have to live with for a while, given the fat, dumb and rich scale of human stupidity.

 

My assumption of 20% of future emissions being taken up by sinks was just a rough working projection, which as you point out is unlikely.  But as I noted, your point here totally undermines your theory of NZE based only on flows.

 

You note that my views don’t help with the political attack on Business As Usual.  That is true.  My assessment of the balance of political and economic forces is that BAU vastly outweighs the influence of its scientific opponents.  This is a question of realism in negotiation.  Bleating in an imaginary fantasy world of emission cuts is a surefire recipe for collapse.  Humans are not capable of emission cuts in this ‘ride the tiger’ context of the Great Acceleration.  A major technological paradigm shift is required, turning on a dime, to address the key precautionary problem that our planet could be far more fragile and sensitive than scientific models assume.  Life is an extraordinary thing and we barely comprehend its complexity, or the systemic risks.  The prime observed risk causing the growth of radiative forcing is the loss of marine clouds due to the warming of their inversion layer.  Hansen calculates that cloud loss alone causes twice as much warming as new emissions, and it is not even on the political radar, despite being the number one planetary security threat.

 

You mock my observation that NZE only halves the growth in RF by 2050 at best.  The context is that NZE is only likely through large scale CDR, and this “at best” has no real prospect of occurring, so is a purely hypothetical Gedank, a thought experiment with no relevance to planetary reality.

 

What I mean by my observation that “the opportunity cost is enormous if that effort excludes direct cooling” is that the UN call to halve emissions by 2030 requires the moral hazard argument that all action that could reduce political focus on cutting emissions must be banned.  Let me explain that.  Opportunity cost is an economic concept meaning an opportunity foregone because we choose one path.  The UN calls us to choose the path of emission reduction, operating at breakneck pace.  This is like Stalin’s famous ‘dizzy with success’ mass collectivisation of the USSR in the 1930s.  The UN and its backers observe that a decision to support direct cooling, such as by sunlight reflection, would help enable a slower rate of decarbonisation.  Like Stalin, today’s neo-communists in the decarbonista community insist that rightist deviation, seen in the heresy that we allow research on rebrightening the planet, must be crushed, if not sent to the gulag.  Today’s liquidation of the kulaks as a class involves the complete removal of geoengineering from discourse in polite society. 

 

The opportunity cost of that political vision is a failure to take any effective climate cooling action, instead placing an impossible ideological fantasy in its place.  As with the collapse of the USSR, the implication of this dangerous and false vision is the collapse of human civilization.  As Dan Miller recently noted, growing renewable energy does not cut emissions.  But that elision (a fallacious leap of illogic) rests at the heart of the UN vision.

Your claim that “climate scientists advocate for renewables because they represent the best available systemic solution” only shows the total collapse of scientific rigor under the tribal assault of groupthink.  In no way are renewables a systemic solution.  They do nothing about the primary drivers of warming, namely the loss of clouds, ice, snow and aerosols.  Advocacy of emission reduction alone is a feeble moral and intellectual capitulation to the commercial interests of wind and solar energy manufacturers.  A new paradigm is needed that decouples climate and energy, to enable us to actually develop the global thinking needed to stabilise and repair Earth systems.

 

On the London Protocol, Chris Vivian made a totally untrue claim.  He wrongly stated that “Introducing material for marine geoengineering purposes is defined as “placement” not dumping”.  In fact, as I explained at length in my reply to Chris, placement is a subset of dumping under the LP.  Chris was right to clarify that ocean iron fertilization placement is classed as “other matter” rather than “waste”, but both these categories are explicitly defined as dumping in LP documents that I cited.  The fact that Chris as a leading LP expert could get it so wrong illustrates the nefarious confusion surrounding this thoroughly bad international agreement that has been a primary political weapon in preventing cooling action.

 

Your opinion that “CDR is unlikely to ever work at scale” is not a sound basis for policy.  I agree that DAC and BECCS are futile diversions, perhaps rather like phlogiston in chemistry, but ocean photosynthesis is likely to be an effective CDR strategy.  And in any case, suggesting that CDR could not work means nothing can be done to bring GHG levels back to Holocene norms, condemning the world to eventual catastrophe.  Recall, the last time the planet had the current GHG level, seas were 10 or 20 metres higher and the world was four degrees C hotter, conditions not conducive to human happiness.

 

You say “dumping first and then cleaning is just dumb.” Be that as it may, dumping of CO2 is what is happening and there is no prospect of limiting it in a way that could prevent climate catastrophe.  Castigating people as “dumb” is of no help in forming an alternative workable strategy.  What is needed is negotiation with states.  They have demonstrated no interest in carbon action beyond lip service and futile fantasy gestures, so an alternative path, focusing on albedo, is required.

ERA is a term that Herb Simmens of HPAC coined to describe the dominant climate ideology of Emission Reduction Alone, the systemic exclusion of effective strategies to remove GHGs and cool the earth based on the futile fallacy of preventing so-called ‘mitigation deterrence’. 

 

How sanguine of you to note, in line with Schumpeter’s celebration of creative destruction as a core principle of capitalist markets, that “Industries facing ruin is part of life. Nobody tried to save the VCR… Fossil energy producers will have to convert to emission-free products or perish imo.”   I’m sorry Tycho, but your opinion here would result in vast and unnecessary human suffering.  It is not only fossil fuels, but also insurance, agriculture, ports and many other industries who face ruin under the baleful glare of ERA.  You may not be familiar with Simon Michaux’s proofs that conversion to emission free products is not compatible with modern economies.  So you seem to advocate a doomist line of collapse, that there is nothing we can do to save the world, so should allow and even encourage ruin. 

You ask why I said it is Orwellian to claim SRM deters mitigation.  1984 describes the systemic lying by the modern state.  Mitigating climate change, by definition, means reducing climate risk.  However, the Big Brothers in the UN have taken a ‘war is peace’ axe to the literal meaning of mitigation.  In service to the Big Lie of Decarbonisation, the UN has misdefined mitigation as emission reduction alone.  Unfortunately, as has been abundantly proved, ERA cannot mitigate climate change, being far too small, slow, contested, expensive and difficult to have more than marginal impacts on heat.  By contrast, SRM can actually mitigate climate change.  One paper by MacMartin et al calculated that feasible SAI deployment, alongside Business As Usual, could restore Holocene average temperature this century.  That is real mitigation, unlike the Orwellian deceptions and delusions of the IPCC. 

You say “If society indeed lacks discipline they/we will have to deal with consequences one way or another, I’m afraid.”  This is like saying we are all such miserable sinners that we deserve damnation.  I prefer the Christian line of forgiveness, that despite the possibility we deserve collapse, there is a possibility of averting that calamity.  My sense of the critical path required in both politics and engineering is that the first step must be action that can engage with the profoundly undisciplined mentality of our species.   It has been abundantly shown that the carbon strategy is effectively deflected by denial.  Trump’s shutdown of US climate science reflects the fury felt by the undisciplined toward the political attack on the fossil fuel industry.   Doubling down on this attack is a path to failure.  Instead, the major industries who face climate ruin should call for an Albedo Accord as a new strategy to help us ‘deal with the consequences’.

Your view that “SRM only makes sense in tandem with deep systemic changes” reflects an orthodoxy that I challenge. As I have explained, I fully support deep systemic changes.  However, the critical path of political engagement requires that these be seen as secondary and subsequent to the deployment of SRM, not as in tandem.  Political agreement to restore planetary albedo is the immediate crisis priority, the single problem that if not solved will cascade into system collapse. Therefore, in order to reach agreement on an Albedo Accord, on the model of the Montreal Protocol, all other concerns must be left aside in pursuit of a single minded effort to successfully negotiate action to rebrighten the planet.  If the Montreal Protocol had made action on ozone depleting substances conditional on climate justice, hot countries would now be frying from the collapse of the ozone layer.  But that false conditionality is the implication of the neo-Marxist mentality that rules climate activism.

 

You say “Otherwise I think SRM will just make our problems worst (see my articles on Substack).” Perhaps you meant worse, but in any case, that is morally equivalent to saying surgery should be denied to obese people because their condition is their own fault. Medicine does not take that immoral stance, and nor should climate science.  SRM will open the door toward systemic change, but while that door is firmly shut, banging loudly on it is of no avail.

You ask for examples of my view that many SRM risk claims are politics dressed as science.

 

A lot of the risks claimed for solar radiation management (SRM) are presented as if they are objective, science-driven conclusions — but when you unpack them, you find they’re really political narratives framed in scientific language.  As this post is already too long, I have attached an AI document detailing this problem. In summary, the politicisation of SRM risk is seen in a series of connected false alarms, including:

1. The “Moral Hazard” Argument

2. “We Don’t Know the Regional Impacts”

3. “It’s Geo-Colonialism”

4. The “Termination Shock” Fear

5. “It’s Unnatural and Therefore Unacceptable”

6. Weaponisation of Uncertainty

You ask for examples of how much ER policy is corrupt and additive.  See the attached detailed AI response, covering the following points.

 

1. Renewable Energy Credits as Double-Counting

2. Subsidies as Political Payoffs

3. Carbon Credit Laundering

4. Renewables-Plus-Fossils Lock-In

5. Green Industrial Protectionism

6. Overstated Efficiency Gains

7. “Net Zero” as Accounting Trickery

Thanks very much Tycho for these fascinating and illuminating challenges.  I would very much welcome further discussion on any of the matters raised here.

 

Best Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

 

From: 'Tycho Huussen' via Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Thursday, 14 August 2025 2:09 PM
To: rob...@rtulip.net
Cc: tychoh...@gmail.com; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'HPAC' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: RE: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

Hi Robert,

 

I will give some replies in-line below.

 

Yes, the discussion is interesting but, as our opinions are not converging, I suggest we agree to disagree.

 

On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 09:36, < rob...@rtulip.net > wrote:

Hi Tycho,

This is a productive conversation — thank you.  A longer version of this reply is attached.

“Net zero is commonly understood to be a balance between fossil sources of CO₂ and (quasi) permanent sinks. Net negative is often used referring to the sequestration of historic emissions.”
Even if that reflects common usage, it’s an awkward distinction. Net zero simply means sources equal sinks so atmospheric CO₂ stabilises. That necessarily involves sequestration of historic emissions, which can start small and ramp up until sinks exceed sources, unlike emission reduction alone (ERA), which has no path to climate-relevant scale.

Is is not awkward if you consider flows rather than stocks.

“A 2% increase may seem small but if it keeps accumulating at this rate we will …”
The 2% you cite seems to assume a geometric increase. Under Business As Usual (BAU), emissions are ~57 Gt/y today — 35 from energy and ~20 from non-energy sources — which I’ve rounded to 50 Gt for simplicity. IEA stated policies indicate energy emissions are not projected to fall.  Cumulative emissions now total ~2,500 Gt; continuing at 50 Gt/y brings us to ~3,750 Gt in 2050 — a 50% increase, not 64%.

Sure. You assume constant emissions and therefore implicitly a decreasing percentage increase and I assumed a constant percentage increase. Either way adding 64 or 50 percent to current levels is a lot. We are talking 246 or 225% compared to pre-industrial.

About 20% will be taken up by natural sinks.

That’s unlikely, since the capacity of the biosphere to sequester carbon is shown to decreases (

Natural sequestration of carbon dioxide is in decline: climate change will accelerate

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.7668)

If emissions fell 2 Gt each year to reach Net Zero Emissions (NZE) by 2050, total cumulative emissions would be ~3,150 Gt, an increase of 26% from now. BAU (3750 Gt) would therefore be about 20% worse in radiative forcing than NZE. My concern is that (1) political power to alter BAU is weak; (2)

Perhaps. In that regard your article isn’t helping.

NZE only halves the growth in RF by 2050 at best;

Only?!

and (3) the opportunity cost is enormous if that effort excludes direct cooling.

Not sure what you mean here.

“Large-scale algae production … may offer a path to draw down historic carbon.”
The climate science community has become tribally attached to renewables,

Oh yes? How so? What about climate scientists advocate for renewables because they represent the best available systemic solution?

feeding hostility to ocean iron fertilisation (OIF) and similar approaches — seen in the London Protocol’s absurd classification of OIF as “dumping waste” and hyped thousand-year scenarios for nutrients, oxygen, permanence, etc. My point on coal is that as algae production scales, CO₂ from coal plants could be a valuable feedstock rather than waste.

Again suggestive framing. Someone else already responded  to this assertion.

“[…] if CDR ramps to ~50 Gt/y …”
If CDR is channelled into biochar, construction materials, fuels and other commodities, it can be part of a profitable circular economy.

Yes IF. The problem is that CDR is unlikely to ever work at scale the way I see it. Also, dumping first and then cleaning is just dumb.

Until then, SRM is the only way to remove excess heat at the necessary speed.

I think SRM might be desirable even if we were to magically stop all emissions tomorrow.

“Why first disperse a substance and then collect it again …”
Because BAU dispersal is profitable. CDR can begin with point-source capture and extend to atmospheric removal via photosynthesis.

Assumptions, assumptions

“Only point-source CCS makes sense …”
Only if it’s CCUS — carbon capture, use, and storage. That can become a profitable industry in its own right. And again, the emissions increase under BAU is arithmetical, not exponential.

“Fossil CO₂ is not needed for photosynthesis and likely to do more harm than good …”
Agreed. But given the quantities already in the air and ocean, management is essential — another reason why cooling is the urgent priority.

“Bringing industries into SRM and CDR efforts … is not a good idea.”
Many industries — insurance, agriculture, coastal tourism, as well as fossil fuels — face ruin under an ERA path.

ERA? 

Industries facing ruin is part of life. Nobody tried to save the VCR… Fossil energy producers will have to convert to emission-free products or perish imo.

They should be natural allies for SRM, but political prejudice within climate science has prevented this coalition from forming.

“Mitigation deterrence” and “predatory delay”
This “mitigation” usage is political, not literal: to mitigate means to reduce risk, and ERA does not reduce near-term climate risk. SRM actually does. To claim SRM deters mitigation is Orwellian.

Orwellian? How so?

“Predatory delay” is a fair term for climate denial, but SRM replaces an ineffective approach with an effective one; that is neither predatory nor delaying.

“I agree it might be desirable to opt for deployment at some point …”
The IPCC doesn’t even share that starting point — it’s hostile to research, let alone deployment — which means climate policy needs a complete rethink.

On cholesterol: Yes — with enough motivation, cholesterol can drop in weeks. But society collectively lacks that discipline.

Ah! Now we’re talking. If society indeed lacks discipline they/we will have to deal with consequences one way or another, I’m afraid. 

Likewise, a “crash diet” off fossil fuels could be imagined, but political backlash would be intense (Exhibit A: Donald Trump). A tactical shift to SRM — compatible with the current economy — is more viable for building broad support for climate action.

Here we disagree. I think SRM only makes sense in tandem with deep systemic changes. Otherwise I think SRM will just make our problems worst (see my articles on Substack)

Your SRM support steps:

1. Acknowledge risks — Many SRM risk claims are politics dressed as science.

Please provide some examples.

1. Benefits like reduced extreme weather and reduced biodiversity loss deserve much more attention. An Albedo Accord should conduct objective risk–benefit analysis toward restoring 2.5% planetary brightness.
2. Exclude fossil fuels — I disagree; they have resources, influence and skills worth harnessing under strict governance.
3. Call for SRM in addition to ER — This entrenches paralysis. Much ER policy is corrupt and additive

Please provide examples 

1. rather than substitutive for fossil fuels. SRM offers faster, cheaper cooling.
2. Governance before deployment — Fully agreed; the Montreal Protocol offers the best model.

Regards

Robert Tulip

 

Regards,

Tycho

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/gdPWpbC3vr03PnDR_QoESy-G_N-KVWe6tynocS0KLcFlFfDElmxwVrdvJHLhxZQvxFFzhwFfdDX0FQsE5RZvlhO6ovHFNCWPdt5vN5nyKi8%3D%40protonmail.com.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Tycho, I know I use strong language, but none of my comments are unreasonable.   Apologies for such extended engagement, I hope some people find this discussion helpful.

 

If you get antagonised by having your assumptions disproved that is all to the good. And Chris Vivian can speak for himself as to whether I am antagonising him by pointing out his mistake.  This should be a collegiate scientific discussion, while recognising the massive moral stakes in the failure of humanity, including the climate science community, to engage on climate change.

 

James Hansen has rightly accused Michael Mann of being part of a clique of false experts who “are able to control the climate research conversation” and thereby prevent sound analysis of the climate crisis from entering the public debate.  Mann is alleged to often block people who disagree with him on social media. A court found that his legal team lied substantially in a recent case, resulting in overturning of a large damages award.  Mann’s categorical rejection of sunlight reflection is ethically negligent, because it disregards compelling evidence of albedo-driven warming and the urgent duty to explore safe cooling methods for the sake of vulnerable populations. More on this is attached

 

So my criticism of him is reasonable, and not at all ad hominem.  Sure it is unpleasant, but that is our reality.  Human lives, ecosystems and global stability are imperilled. With albedo loss causing the accelerating of warming faster than CO₂ reduction can counteract, Mann’s rejection of research into safe reflection methods is morally indefensible.  He rejected Hansen’s major Global Warming in the Pipeline paper the day it came out, without engagement or apparently even reading it, strongly influencing negative media coverage.  More detail is attached.  When a scientist knowingly suppresses or dismisses evidence that could protect vulnerable people, that could be described as intellectual or moral corruption. The broad ethical sense of the term ‘corrupt’ is a deviation from integrity, honesty or duty of care.  That, combined with his legal deception, is the sense in which I described Mann as a corrupt liar. I am not claiming he has any financial conflict of interest in his vacuous anti-cooling campaign.

 

My comments in response to Chris Vivian rebutting his false claim that the London Protocol does not define Ocean Fertilization as dumping were entirely correct.  He should retract his false claim.  The LP does not define OF as waste, but it does define it as dumping.  This is an important point of fact.  Chris is an influential and highly respected voice and it is bad to see him making a false claim that waters down the noxious nature of this anti-cooling agreement.  Especially in the context of correcting a minor error of mine, as I acknowledged, it is important that a correction is accurate.  Anyone can read my reply to Chris and look through to the links that prove my case. 

 

I entirely support renewable energy where it has a solid economic and environmental case.  I just don’t think that people should claim it will have much relevance to climate change in the short term.  This is an entirely fact-based opinion, even if it sticks in some people’s craw, and goes counter to the Orwellian groupthink of bien pensants.  If you think differently, please go into detail to rebut my observation that energy transition is too small, slow, difficult, contested and expensive to be a feasible main cooling factor.  There is abundant evidence for this claim.  You might also like to rebut the Royal Society’s estimate that emission reduction is one thousand times worse value for money than geoengineering as a climate response.

 

You talk about “unquestionable benefits of emissions reductions”.  They would be unquestionable if they happened, but since emissions remain stubbornly high, and are projected to remain so, it is quite reasonable to question them, especially when these illusory benefits come at the direct expense of blocking feasible cooling action. I suppose exporting pollution is a benefit for air quality in rich countries, if morally dubious overalle.

 

There is a big difference between your allegation that I support Business As Usual and my view, which is to accept that in large measure BAU is our inevitable reality so should provide the context for negotiating climate responses.  My view is that the most important thing is to construct a broad political alliance to support an Albedo Accord.  That needs to include industries who support BAU, as well as a range of climate change constituencies.  Every effort should be made to include Indigenous people under principles of free prior and informed consent, but insisting on extreme policies as a precondition for political cooperation is a recipe for failure.

 

If you really think “there is no risk that the economic system will collapse”, I don’t believe you are studying the data very carefully.  See attached AI commentary on this central point.

 

I am not making deep state conspiracy claims as you wrongly allege.  The dominance of emission reduction as the accepted climate solution doesn’t require a hidden “deep state” conspiracy. It’s better explained by structural bias, political economy, industry lobbying and narrative lock-in. That looks like deep-state behaviour—entrenched, resistant to challenge, and serving vested interests—but it arises primarily from open institutional processes shaped by power, with no clear evidence of secret collusion.

 

Your discussion of world per-capita CO₂ emissions is misleading. The data you reference actually shows per-capita emissions flatlining in recent years, not significantly declining, down only 4% from a peak of 4.85 tonnes per person in 2011. But that modest dip masks the deeper reality of increase:

• Per-capita growth this century: Global per-capita emissions rose 13% from 2000 to 2023, rising from 4.13 to 4.67 tonnes per person.
• Total emissions still rising: Population growth has driven aggregate global emissions to record highs, even while per-capita values plateau.
• Accounting distortions: Reported “falls” in OECD per-capita emissions largely reflect the offshoring of industrial production to China under IPCC accounting rules, not genuine decarbonisation. Just looking at the rich country data you included gives a wrong impression. 
• China’s surge: China’s per-capita emissions have nearly tripled since 2000, as it became the manufacturing hub for outsourced Western consumption.
• Policy distortions: The picture is further skewed by extreme subsidies for wind and solar, which remain heavily dependent on taxpayer support while being credited with emissions cuts that ignore supply-chain impacts.
• End-use reality: If emissions were allocated to final consumers rather than to countries of production, the OECD’s apparent “progress” would evaporate, and the global trend would look far less flattering.

So yes, world per-capita emissions have flatlined since 2011—but not because humanity has discovered a credible pathway to deep emissions cuts. Instead, the flatline reflects statistical artifacts of outsourcing, subsidies, and accounting conventions. To infer from this data that people are “capable of cutting emissions” is exactly the kind of tendentious spin decarbonisation boosters rely on: stretching weak signals into evidence for a narrative that does not match physical reality.

 

You make the following claim: “This is nonsense: “In no way are renewables a systemic solution. They do nothing about the primary drivers of warming, namely the loss of clouds, ice, snow and aerosols.” Short term you are right but GHGs are the ultimate driver and the rest follows / has followed.”  

 

What you ignore here Tycho is the nature of tipping processes.  The drastic collapse in cloud cover is increasing radiative forcing far beyond the capacity of emission reduction to counterbalance.   It is true that carbon removal is essential for system stability.  But renewable transition does not remove carbon, it only marginally slows the rate of increase.  Your statement “the rest follows” reminds me of this cartoon.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

 

From: Tycho Huussen <tychoh...@protonmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, 16 August 2025 2:33 PM
To: rob...@rtulip.net
Cc: tychoh...@gmail.com; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'HPAC' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

Robert,

 

I am going to wind down  my contributions to the discussion as it is becoming increasingly more unreasonable and unpleasant.

 

Re the carbon balance: I distinguish between the natural carbon balance, which is more or less in balance without the fossil carbon flux, and a fossil carbon cycle that should observe *geological net zero* if we don’t want to mess up the system. Trying to make nature mop up fossil carbon emissions is imo unlikely to work fast enough on the required scale. Therefore I support point source  CCS and a phase out of distributed emissions.

 

A phase out is a process of decades allowing economic systems to adapt. So there is no risk that the economic system will collapse.

 

We agree that some cooling until GHG concentrations have been brought down might be desirable.

 

Your writing is laced with deep state conspiracy claims, strong opinions and personal attacks. 

 

Although the crossing of planetary boundaries and tipping is now probably inevitable with emissions reductions alone, these (and other) statements are over the top:

 

-“by liars like Michael Mann are profoundly untrue and corrupt”

 

-“the immoral fantasy that renewable energy transition can be relevant to climate change.”

 

Many of your statements ignore or even deny the unquestionable benefits of emissions reductions.

 

Regarding emissions projections the point is rather immaterial, as 225% and 246% CO2 compared to preindustrial are both very problematic.

 

This is where we differ fundamentally: “My assessment of the balance of political and economic forces is that BAU vastly outweighs the influence of its scientific opponents.” Change is already happening. 

 

This is simply not true: “Humans are not capable of emission cuts”. The data tell a different story: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

 

I know about the role of clouds in the climate and already told you I am working on the development of MCB as a physicist and project manager.

 

This is nonsense: “In no way are renewables a systemic solution. They do nothing about the primary drivers of warming, namely the loss of clouds, ice, snow and aerosols.” Short term you are right but GHGs are the ultimate driver and the rest follows / has followed.

 

We agree that emissions cuts alone are not sufficient anymore. It should be clear by now I don’t oppose, and in fact partake in research into cooling options. 

 

This is a toxic opinion that leaves the impression that renewables are no good  “Advocacy of emission reduction alone is a feeble moral and intellectual capitulation to the commercial interests of wind and solar energy manufacturers.” Why don’t you say “renewables are great but probably not enough to avoid dangerous global warming”.

 

In case you don’t recognize it, you are positioning yourself as a warrior for BAU. And you are antagonizing people like Chris and myself who make the effort of talking with you.

 

Personally I choose to double down my personal advocacy for the phase out of emissions, despite the political backlash. In my opinion your piece contributes to the backlash. 

 

Please look at the per capita emissions (see link above) and note they are actually going down in most parts of the world and that global emissions are flattening. Clear signs that energy and climate can in fact be decoupled.

 

Best regards,

Tycho 

 

Sent from Proton Mail for iOS

[Chris Vivian]

Robert,

Unfortunately, you have not taken into account much of what I said in my previous email, particularly about the 2013 LP amendment. You have also introduced a load of speculative, ficticious nonsense around the 2008 resolution that makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist. See my comments in blue annotating your email below on specific points.

 

I was involved in all the LC/LP meetings about ocean fertilisation/marine geoengineering from 2007 up until I retired in 2016 and so I can confidently say that I am aware of all the discussions that took place.

 

Let’s start from the beginning of the LC/LP’s involvement with ocean fertilisation/marine geoengineering mentioning the key points:

• In early 2007 Russ George announced that his company Planktos was planning to carry out an ocean iron fertilisation (OIF) experiment in the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands covering an area of 10,000 km². After much adverse publicity, Planktos moved their vessel to the Canary Islands to carry out the OIF experiment in that area. However, the Spanish authorities prevented that from happening.
• At the LC/LP Scientific Groups meeting in June 2007, a Statement of Concern, was agreed “…taking the view that knowledge about the effectiveness and potential environmental impacts of ocean iron fertilization currently was insufficient to justify large-scale operations and that this could have negative impacts on the marine environment and human health”. The Governing Bodies endorsed this statement in December 2007.
• Subsequently in December 2008, the Governing Bodies adopted Resolution LC LP.1 (2008) on the regulation of ocean fertilization. This resolution was non-binding and was a holding position until the Governing Bodies could agree an approach to a legally binding measure. Note the following statements in the resolution that give the lie to your arguments;
• AGREE that in order to provide for legitimate scientific research, such research should be regarded as placement of matter for a purpose other than the mere disposal thereof under Article III.1(b)(ii) of the London Convention and Article 1.4.2.2 of the London Protocol;
• AGREE that until specific guidance is available, Contracting Parties should be urged to use utmost caution and the best available guidance  to evaluate the scientific research proposals to ensure protection of the marine environment consistent with the Convention and Protocol;
• The non-binding Ocean Fertilization Assessment Framework was agreed in 2010.
• After many inter-sessional and regular meetings, the 2013 amendment to the LP was agreed unanimously in October 2013 in Resolution LP.4(8). This measure essentially overtook the 2008 resolution, your focus on the 2008 resolution is misguided as the approach to governing OIF now is that in the 2013 LP amendment.
• As I said previously, introducing material for marine geoengineering purposes is defined as “placement” not dumping. Article 6bis, paragraph 1 of the 2013 amendment to the LP states:

• “Contracting Parties shall not allow the placement of matter into the sea from vessels, aircraft, platforms or other man-made structures at sea for marine geoengineering activities listed in annex 4, unless the listing provides that the activity or the subcategory of an activity may be authorized under a permit.”

• Under the 2013 LP amendment as it currently stands, only legitimate scientific research for ocean fertilization is permitted and any other type of ocean fertilization activities is not permitted i.e. banned BUT NOT DEFINED AS DUMPING!!!

• Article 1.4.2 of the LP defines placement:
• “"Dumping" does not include:
• .2      placement of matter for a purpose other than the mere disposal thereof, provided that such placement is not contrary to the aims of this Protocol;”

• Contrary to your statement in your email to Tycho Huusen on Friday that “placement is a subset of dumping”, placement and dumping are opposites. If an activity is categorised as placement it cannot be dumping and vice versa. Placement covers a wide variety of beneficial uses of the marine environment that are clearly not dumping e.g.,
• Constructions of piers/jetties, coastal defence structures, wind turbine foundations and artificial reefs.
• Laying of pipelines and cables
• Use of chemicals to deal with oil spills
• Use of liquid dye tracers to investigate dispersal of discharges from outfalls or other structures
• Use of fluorescent sediment tracers to understand sediment movement
• In the email to Tycho on Friday, you also said:
• “Chris was right to clarify that ocean iron fertilization placement is classed as “other matter” rather than “waste” “. I did no such thing!
• “The fact that Chris as a leading LP expert could get it so wrong illustrates the nefarious confusion surrounding this thoroughly bad international agreement that has been a primary political weapon in preventing cooling action.” I did not get it so wrong. Also, the LC and the LP are definitely NOT a thoroughly bad international instruments as they have successfully phased out a number of dumping activities that raised concerns over the years that you are obviously oblivious to. In addition, there has not been any use of the LP as a primary political weapon to prevent cooling action.
• In conclusion, OIF/ocean fertilization is clearly not defined as dumping of wastes but it is defined as placement.

 

Chris.

 

From: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>
Sent: 12 August 2025 15:17
To: 'Chris Vivian' <chris....@btinternet.com>; 'Tycho Huussen' <tychoh...@gmail.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'HPAC' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: The Big Lie of Decarbonisation: OIF in the London Protocol

 

Chris, you are an expert on the London Protocol, so I welcome your comment.  You are technically correct here about waste, but only in a narrow, pedantic, legalistic and elastic sense [ This is not so!].  Readers should be aware the LP defines Ocean Iron Fertilization as dumping, but places it under the “other matter” category, separate from waste [ Not true!].  This gives dumping waste a specialised meaning in the LP quite different from ordinary usage [ Not true!].

 

How you can dump something that is not waste is contrary to the normal meaning.  In ordinary language “dumping” means discarding something you don’t want, i.e. waste. But your clarification reflects that under the London Protocol, “dumping” is what is known in arcane legal jargon as a ‘term of art’, a phrase that has a specialised definition in that field, which may differ significantly from its everyday meaning [ Not true!] .  But opponents such as ETC are happy to jump on the anti-waste bandwagon without those legal niceties. [ETC have not had any involvement with the LC/LP as they are not recognised observers.]

 

The 2008 resolution defines OIF as dumping, stating OIF does “not currently qualify for any exemption from the definition of dumping “in the Convention and the Protocol.” [ See the comments in my email above.]  We are then left with whether you can dump something that is not waste. [I looked up a number of dictionaries and most said something like “Dumping has multiple meanings, but it most commonly refers to the act of getting rid of something unwanted” and only a few referred to wastes. So, ‘dumping’ does not have to refer to wastes.] Indeed, as you point out, the lawyers at the IMO conveniently maintain that you can. [I did not say that.] The convenience was that with ordinary language they would have needed a new treaty to wage their war against geoengineering, [There was no war being waged against marine geoengineering but a concern to regulate the activity to avoid harm to the marine environment. Also, a new treaty was not needed but instead an amendment to the existing LP] but their elastic definition of dumping enabled them to harness the LP to this unstated (and arguably immoral) end [This is rubbish].  OIF is not waste but still dumping. [ Not so!] They needed that specialised twisting of language to justify their political decision, which had the apparent and successful intent to severely chill and delay research into planetary cooling [Completely untrue!]. , the act of getting rid of something that is not wanted;

 

By classing OIF as dumping, negotiators sent a strong public message equating geoengineering with ocean pollution, framing it as a threat rather than a potential tool [No. Marine geoengineering  could potentially be useful tool but also potentially could cause marine pollution].  Their decision served the Big Lie that decarbonisation is the only way to respond to climate change [This statement is the Big Lie! There was, as far as I can remember, no discussion at all that decarbonisation was the only way to respond to climate change.].  If negotiators had stuck to the ordinary-language meaning of waste and dumping, they could never have folded OIF into the London Protocol without an explicit new treaty or amendment devoted to geoengineering. [They did go for an amendment after many meetings over 5 years to discuss the options!]That would have required a new negotiation mandate, years of diplomacy, explicit consent from Parties, [That’s what happened!] and, crucially, open political debate on the merits and risks of planetary cooling.

 

Instead, by leaning on the elastic, term-of-art definition of wastes or other matter, they could re-purpose an existing instrument that already had binding force. No need to create an overt “Anti-Geoengineering Treaty” — they could act under the radar, framing it as “just enforcing existing rules.” [Utter nonsense!]

 

The political convenience

• Speed: Immediate coverage under an existing treaty avoided the long ratification process. [The 2013 LP amendment does require ratification!}

• Framing control: By calling it “dumping,” they tied OIF to the mental image of pollution, toxic waste, and environmental harm — not climate restoration. [Not true]
• Minimal scrutiny: Since they weren’t “making a new law,” there was less public and parliamentary attention to the policy shift. [Not true}
• Global reach: The London Protocol already had wide membership and enforcement mechanisms. [The LP currently has 55 parties so not a very wide membership as yet.]

 

The unstated end

• The practical effect was to create a de facto moratorium on large-scale OIF and related marine geoengineering. [That may have been the perception of some people but not the reality. The 2008 resolution included the following text “AGREE that until specific guidance is available, Contracting Parties should be urged to use utmost caution and the best available guidance  to evaluate the scientific research proposals to ensure protection of the marine environment consistent with the Convention and Protocol” i.e., No moratorium! ]
• While publicly justified as “precaution,” the deeper political aim was to block or delay geoengineering research [Not true]— partly out of fear of environmental risks, partly out of fear that SRM or large-scale CDR would weaken political will for emissions cuts[Not true. There was no discussion about “fear that SRM or large-scale CDR would weaken political will for emissions cuts] .
• The language choice meant they could achieve that aim without openly admitting it — and without exposing the policy to a fresh, potentially divisive treaty debate. [Not true.]

 

This is all nefarious and underhand [This is nonsense.] and bad for the environment, in conflict with the clear arguments that OIF is actually immensely beneficial. [More research still needs to be done before such a statement could be justified.]

 

The manoeuvre was a textbook case of politically motivated environmental harm disguised as protection. [It was no such thing.] By stretching the “dumping” definition [Untrue] the London Protocol Parties didn’t just regulate OIF cautiously — they weaponised an anti-pollution treaty to pre-empt a whole class of planetary cooling research [Untrue] That achieved several unstated objectives:

• Framing geoengineering as pollution: [Untrue] By pushing OIF under the “waste dumping” label, [Untrue] they made it psychologically synonymous with toxic sludge and industrial effluent, [Untrue] not a potential climate solution.
• Shutting down experimentation without debate: [Untrue – see 1^st bullet above under ‘The unstated end’] Instead of openly arguing the pros and cons of planetary-scale cooling, they smuggled it into a treaty designed for a different purpose, avoiding political scrutiny. [Untrue]

• Chilling science: Researchers saw “dumping waste” in the legal framing and realised the political and reputational risks — so most big OIF experiments never left the drawing board. []

• Locking in the Big Lie of emissions-only orthodoxy: [Not an issue that was discussed.] The move reinforced the idea that climate policy must stay centred on emissions reduction alone, cutting off serious consideration of marine-based albedo and carbon removal strategies. [Untrue]

 

This is thoroughly bad for the environment and the climate.  If OIF works at scale — and a substantial body of modelling [I don’t think there is a substantial body of modelling of OIF] and early field evidence says it can: [More research still needs to be done before such a statement could be justified.]

• It could draw down billions of tonnes of CO₂ over decades. [Possibly so once further research has provided relevant information to understand the pros and cons and design appropriate MRV.]
• It could restore ocean productivity, boost fisheries, [Both of these are speculative.] would and help reverse deoxygenation. [On the contrary, higher productivity in surface waters will increase the amounts of organic matter sinking into the mid-depths and further decrease oxygen levels in those waters.]  
• It could cool the climate fast enough to avert tipping points that emission cuts alone can’t prevent. [Evidence? I don’t believe Peter Fiekowshy’s concept has any chance of working.]

 

Suppressing that pathway in the name of “precaution” is reckless and dangerous [That is not happening as there are a number of proposals to carry out OIF experiments and I understand Peter F is in discussion with the USEPA about getting a permit for such an experiment. So, the LC/LP’s actions have not suppressed the OIF pathway.] when the precautionary principle should apply equally to not acting in the face of clear and present climate danger. [I agree with this point!]  The LP’s OIF treatment fails its own stated aims, turns precaution into paralysis, and leads to worse environmental damage by blocking beneficial interventions. [Untrue]

[Robert Chris]

Tycho - spot on!  No one outside the climate science community is going to show any serious interest in developing any cooling technology until they've bought into the idea that it's risk mitigating and that the unmitigated risks are unacceptably high.  That's where the effort needs to be focussed.

What HPAC needs to do if it is to be effective in its quest to get the triad embedded in global policy, is embrace the need to establish the relative benefits of cooling and disbenefits of not cooling, and recognise that it will not do this merely by going on about all the potential SRM technofixes.

Regards

Robert

---

From: 'Tycho Huussen' via Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: 16 August 2025 14:59
To: tychoh...@protonmail.com <tychoh...@protonmail.com>
Cc: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; tychoh...@gmail.com <tychoh...@gmail.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'HPAC' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: RE: [prag] Re: [HPAC] The Big Lie of Decarbonisation

 

PS As I said in my original reply to “The Big Lie” I think *not* recognizing the need for decarbonization will hurt the public acceptance of SRM. 

PPS Personally I would call for feasibility studies and risk-risk analysis rather than pushing for SRM deployment.

Sent from Proton Mail for iOS

On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 15:24, Tycho Huussen < tychoh...@protonmail.com> wrote:

Robert, you are fighting an ally. I am not blocking cooling and in fact working on MCB, as I stated various times. Thanks for sharing your viewpoints. I will continue with my dual mission of advocacy for the phase out of emissions and research into aerosols for MCB. 

Wishing you and the rest of the HPAC and Planetary Restoration community a nice day.

Tycho

Sent from Proton Mail for iOS

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/QoYQKnXBe7zAVO86n9iIAwXWpPgeicgx6cKKQKJyi5nsebQ2g17dYWXWyvb7x15RURVlwiMkuFwWEbBdHr-oqgWoH6aHsKIPWboOCpWdV10%3D%40protonmail.com.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Chris,

Thank you for setting out the history and definitions so clearly. I apologise for imputing nefarious motives and for failing to understand the 2013 extension of the LP mission that you explain. You have well explained the LP’s revised language on dumping vs placement that I failed to appreciate, and I apologise for that mistake. I also regret implying bad faith to negotiators — I respect your long experience in the process, and I should have avoided phrasing that might suggest otherwise.

My intention was to highlight the unintended consequence, that the way OIF was originally categorised and regulated has made research politically and reputationally harder, undermining the urgent need to explore all cooling pathways. I hope we can continue discussing that policy dimension constructively.

My misunderstanding — assuming that the LP continues to define OIF as dumping — reflects several sources: the unchanged LP title and goal, the 2008 resolution (which did treat OIF as dumping), and the continued public denigration by NGOs of OIF as dumping. Taken together, these led me into drawing conspiratorial inferences which, as your reply makes clear, lack a solid basis.

The LP has not changed its stated title or goal to cover its expansion into regulating non-dumping activities. Its title remains “The 1996 Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, 1972.”   The extension to placement of OIF is not mentioned on the LC Wikipedia Page.

Article 2 backs up this purpose:  “Contracting Parties shall … protect and preserve the marine environment from all sources of pollution and take effective measures … to prevent, reduce and where practicable eliminate pollution caused by dumping or incineration at sea of wastes or other matter.”

Nothing in the title or goal refers to non-dumping activities.  That helps to explain my assumption that the 2008 definition of OIF as dumping still reflected the LP stance. I had not appreciated your point that the 2013 amendment revised this dumping language explicitly in the annex (though not in the title or Article 2), making placement and dumping opposite categories, and placing OIF under placement rather than dumping. I acknowledge this correction and apologise for overstating my case.

My underlying concern is not with the technical definitions but with the policy consequences. I have long believed that OIF at scale is essential to repair and restore the climate. It is one of the few approaches with genuine climate-relevant potential, yet unlike renewable energy it has encountered severe regulatory hostility. As such, I remain mystified that scientific organisations could reject OIF solely for technical rather than political reasons.

From 2008 to 2013, the LP treated OIF as dumping, and that framing carried strong connotations of waste and pollution. Even though the 2013 amendment changed the terminology, the political effect was to regulate OIF under a treaty whose title and purpose remain exclusively about “dumping of wastes and other matter.” This is where my confusion lies: extending the LP to regulate placement activities like OIF looks like mission creep. If the intent was to build a framework for marine geoengineering, I would have expected the LP to amend not only its annexes but also its title and stated goal, to match its expanded scope. Without that, the optics still tie OIF to “dumping” in the public understanding, even if legally it has been re-categorised.

I take your point that this was not done with nefarious intent, but as a pragmatic way to act within an existing legal instrument, in a climate of scientific caution. Still, I worry that the conceptual ambiguity between the title and annex has contributed to the widespread hostility and suspicion surrounding OIF research. I agree with you that precaution is essential — but I also believe precaution should apply equally, and even more urgently, to inaction in the face of escalating climate risks.

NGOs have strongly campaigned against OIF as dumping, and the technical change you describe has not filtered into the public debate. In 2007, groups like Greenpeace, ETC Group, and Friends of the Earth quickly framed OIF proposals as “ocean dumping.” ETC called it “dumping iron into the ocean” and urged governments to stop “rogue geoengineering.” Greenpeace ran slogans like “Stop Ocean Dumping Experiments,” equating OIF with pollution. These groups seized on the 2008 LP language to reinforce their narrative, saying that even the IMO treated OIF as dumping. ETC declared the LP resolution “confirms that ocean fertilization is dumping and must be prohibited,” and Greenpeace used similar phrasing in press releases, treating it as a legal endorsement. I don’t recall any headlines in 2013 noting that OIF was no longer legally classed as dumping. That suited the rhetorical strategy of NGOs, and the stigma has persisted: researchers fear being tarred as “ocean dumpers.” The “dumping” frame has stuck in public and NGO discourse long after the LP shifted to “placement.”

Thank you again, Chris, for clarifying these points. I appreciate learning about the policy detail, which helps me revise my assumptions — distinguishing between the legal history, where I now accept your correction, and the policy outcomes, where I remain concerned that the LP’s approach has failed to apply the precautionary principle in a coherent way.

With respect,
Robert

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/00b701dc101f%2480605620%2481210260%24%40btinternet.com.

[Chris Vivian]

Robert,

 

You still have not got it right about the 2008 resolution despite my comments in my last email that the 2008 resolution defined ocean fertilisation as placement. See comments below in blue.

 

Best wishes

 

Chris.

 

From: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>
Sent: 18 August 2025 14:40
To: 'Chris Vivian' <chris....@btinternet.com>; 'Tycho Huussen' <tychoh...@gmail.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'HPAC' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [HPAC] RE: The Big Lie of Decarbonisation: OIF in the London Protocol

 

Chris,

Thank you for setting out the history and definitions so clearly. I apologise for imputing nefarious motives and for failing to understand the 2013 extension of the LP mission that you explain. You have well explained the LP’s revised language on dumping vs placement that I failed to appreciate, and I apologise for that mistake. I also regret implying bad faith to negotiators — I respect your long experience in the process, and I should have avoided phrasing that might suggest otherwise.

My intention was to highlight the unintended consequence, that the way OIF was originally categorised and regulated has made research politically and reputationally harder, undermining the urgent need to explore all cooling pathways. I hope we can continue discussing that policy dimension constructively.

My misunderstanding — assuming that the LP continues to define OIF as dumping — reflects several sources: the unchanged LP title and goal, the 2008 resolution (which did treat OIF as dumping), and the continued public denigration by NGOs of OIF as dumping. Taken together, these led me into drawing conspiratorial inferences which, as your reply makes clear, lack a solid basis.

The LP has not changed its stated title or goal to cover its expansion into regulating non-dumping activities. [The LP has done so under Article 2 ‘Objectives’] Its title remains “The 1996 Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, 1972.”  [I am not sure that it is possible to change the title of a treaty once it has been agreed.] The extension to placement of OIF is not mentioned on the LC Wikipedia Page. [Needs updating]

Article 2 backs up this purpose:  “Contracting Parties shall … protect and preserve the marine environment from all sources of pollution and take effective measures … to prevent, reduce and where practicable eliminate pollution caused by dumping or incineration at sea of wastes or other matter.” [The important word in this text is “and” so that the first part of the text is not limited to just covering the second part of the text dealing with dumping or incineration of wastes or other matter. Note that footnote 1 in the 2008 resolution quoting the equivalent text from the London Convention is clearer in this regard.]

Nothing in the title or goal refers to non-dumping activities.  [I am not sure that it is possible to change the title of a treaty once it has been agreed. See also my comment above about LP article 2. In addition, the qualification to the definition of placement “…provided that such placement is not contrary to the aims of this Protocol” provides a mechanism to exert control over non-dumping activities.] That helps to explain my assumption that the 2008 definition of OIF as dumping [It did not – see above.] still reflected the LP stance. I had not appreciated your point that the 2013 amendment revised this dumping language explicitly in the annex (though not in the title or Article 2), making placement and dumping opposite categories [They always have been.], and placing OIF under placement rather than dumping. I acknowledge this correction and apologise for overstating my case.

My underlying concern is not with the technical definitions but with the policy consequences. I have long believed that OIF at scale is essential to repair and restore the climate. It is one of the few approaches with genuine climate-relevant potential, yet unlike renewable energy it has encountered severe regulatory hostility. As such, I remain mystified that scientific organisations could reject OIF solely for technical rather than political reasons.

From 2008 to 2013, the LP treated OIF as dumping, [Not so, see above.]and that framing carried strong connotations of waste and pollution. Even though the 2013 amendment changed the terminology, the political effect was to regulate OIF under a treaty whose title and purpose remain exclusively about “dumping of wastes and other matter.” This is where my confusion lies: extending the LP to regulate placement activities like OIF looks like mission creep. If the intent was to build a framework for marine geoengineering, I would have expected the LP to amend not only its annexes but also its title and stated goal, to match its expanded scope. Without that, the optics still tie OIF to “dumping” in the public understanding, even if legally it has been re-categorised.

I take your point that this was not done with nefarious intent, but as a pragmatic way to act within an existing legal instrument, in a climate of scientific caution. Still, I worry that the conceptual ambiguity between the title and annex has contributed to the widespread hostility and suspicion surrounding OIF research. I agree with you that precaution is essential — but I also believe precaution should apply equally, and even more urgently, to inaction in the face of escalating climate risks. [Agreed!]

NGOs have strongly campaigned against OIF as dumping, and the technical change you describe has not filtered into the public debate. In 2007, groups like Greenpeace, ETC Group, and Friends of the Earth quickly framed OIF proposals as “ocean dumping.” [This was prior to the 2007 Scientific Groups meeting in June 2007] ETC called it “dumping iron into the ocean” and urged governments to stop “rogue geoengineering.” Greenpeace ran slogans like “Stop Ocean Dumping Experiments,” equating OIF with pollution. These groups seized on the 2008 LP language to reinforce their narrative, saying that even the IMO treated OIF as dumping. ETC declared the LP resolution “confirms that ocean fertilization is dumping and must be prohibited,” and Greenpeace used similar phrasing in press releases, treating it as a legal endorsement. I don’t recall any headlines in 2013 noting that OIF was no longer legally classed as dumping. [See above]That suited the rhetorical strategy of NGOs, and the stigma has persisted: researchers fear being tarred as “ocean dumpers.” The “dumping” frame has stuck in public and NGO discourse long after the LP shifted to “placement.” [I must point out that despite what is said above, Greenpeace International as observers at the LC/LP have engaged constructively in discussions about ocean fertilisation/marine geoengineering since 2007. I don’t think they have said that ocean fertilization is dumping since 2007. However, bear in mind that Greenpeace and some other environmental NGOs have independent national organisations that may not have entirely consistent views on issues such as ocean fertilisation.]