Fwd: [HPAC] Smoked out

[John Nissen]

Hi PRAGers,

A cartoon is powerful stuff.  I wonder whether we could lampoon those who say SRM isn't necessary.

We could have Trump sitting in his tower watching the Greenland Ice Sheet melt away and denying global warming, while the sea level rises all around the tower.  

Or he could be sitting in a burning tower, Trump tower, denying that nearby fire engines (for cooling intervention) are necessary - though a cartoonist has already done one rather like that.

Or, as a variation on this, he can be saying that climate change is a hoax - therefore geoengineering must be a conspiracy - so geoengineering must be banned and he is sending away the fire engines. This would be a powerful variation on the existing cartoon!

Or we could focus on the Arctic with Trump wanting to exploit it, while meltdown is accelerating four dangerous trends: sea level rise, potent greenhouse gas release from thawing permafrost, AMOC collapse and, via jet stream disruption, the trend towards ever longer stuck weather creating heat domes and wildfires all round the NH (i.e. North America, Europe, Asia and the Arctic itself).  So the Arctic needs to be refrozen, reversing all four of these dangerous trends.  This would be a challenge for a single cartoon but perhaps worth trying.

Your ideas, please.

Cheers, John

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Graeme Taylor <gra...@bestfutures.org>
Date: Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 8:39 AM
Subject: [HPAC] Smoked out
To: HPAC <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

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[Douglas Grandt]

John

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Jul 18, 2026, at 1:36 PM, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Ron Baiman]

😂

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On Jul 18, 2026, at 12:55 PM, 'Douglas Grandt' via Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

John

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

It is important in assessing a cartoon to consider its political message. 

 

The Smoked Out cartoon unfortunately repeats the fallacy of holes, that when you are in a hole the most important thing is to stop digging.  It wrongly implies that expanding wind, solar and electric vehicles could slow global warming.  That is a hoax.

 

The fallacious nature of the alleged ‘law of holes’ is shown by a medical analogy.  When you have chest pains, the most important thing is not to improve your diet and exercise, it is to get medical attention to prevent a heart attack.  Action to stop making the problem worse is a secondary consideration.

 

The same applies with climate, where solar geoengineering is the equivalent of medical attention for chest pains, and decarbonisation is the equivalent of diet and exercise.  Emission reduction is far too small, slow, contested, expensive and difficult to be more than marginal to climate stabilisation. 

 

The fallacy of holes in climate policy is the claim that having added too much GHGs the most important thing is to stop adding more.  That is the failed basis of the Paris Accord and mainstream climate advocacy.  It cannot work.

 

Here is my take on this.

 

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[John Nissen]

Hi Robert,

Of course I agree with you.  And I appreciate your cartoon, though it needs to be a bit more specific if other people are to understand it.

Anyway, my thought was that we have a gift for a cartoon character in Trump, because of his irrational thought processes.  He seriously thinks that geoengineering is a conspiracy and has threatened to ban it in the US.   So we could start the cartoon sequence with "Global warming is a hoax", therefore (in his mind) "geoengineering must be a conspiracy", and so (in his usual style) "lets ban geoengineering".  He can then be shown with the consequences of banning geoengineering: his tower getting flooded while Greenland melts away, or, his tower burning down while the fire engines drive off.

Cheers, John