Re: [CDR] James Hansen's Recent Paper: Global Warming in the Pipeline

[H simmens]

Robert,

Following up on your thoughtful comments about the Hansen paper I continue to be puzzled by Hansen and colleagues’ continuing advocacy of carbon pricing and nuclear power in the context of a technical paper on warming in the pipeline. I am not aware that any of the authors have any particular expertise in climate policy.  

That said, to me the most significant and promising part of the paper can be captured in these three separated sentences: (my bolding)

“The basic requirement to preserve shorelines is return to a climate no warmer than the mid-20th century, possibly a bit cooler. This cooler climate will also address other problems such as overheating of low latitudes and increasing regional climate extremes.”

“given that GHG forcing is already 4 W/m2, it may be necessary to temporarily affect EEI via solar radiation management (SRM), if the world is to avoid disastrous consequences, including large sea level rise….

The present decade may be the last opportunity to develop the knowledge, technical capability, and political will for the actions that are needed to save global coastal regions from long-term inundation.”

These unambiguous statements from the world’s best known and perhaps most prescient climate scientist and colleagues is entirely consistent with and supportive of the HPAC mission. Essentially, he is saying that our goal must be to get temperatures back to well below 1° C, SRM must be employed in order to achieve that, and needs to be urgently implemented in this decade.  

We ought to be using these statements as both a sword and shield in our efforts to convince the climate commissariat to urgently determine how SRM can be deployed most effectively and safely in the context of an integrated plan to implement the other two dimensions of the Climate Triad - ER and GHGR -  in order to bring temperature increases back to where they were in the mid-20th century or earlier to restore a safe climate for all life on earth. 

Herb

PS the Steering Circle indicated that we will reopen our two papers - Vision for a Healthy Planet and the Case for Urgent Climate Cooling -  in 2023. Highlighting both papers with these quotes should significantly strengthen our case. 

Herb Simmens

Author A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

@herbsimens

On Dec 24, 2022, at 4:03 PM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:



I'm not sure why Hansen et al would use the word 'geoengineering' in this way.  It was clearly defined as a response to climate change more than a decade ago by The Royal Society, David Keith and others, and an essential part of that definition was that the intervention in the climate system was deliberate and intended to ameliorate the effects of climate change.  The word should probably now be allowed to Rest in Peace as the discourse has moved on and it has been superseded.

My own thoughts on this paper are below.  In brief, it is much like the curate's egg - good in parts.

Comments on Global warming in the pipeline (Hansen et al 2022)

The core message is that both the magnitude and response times of human causes of climate change and responses to it have been seriously misrepresented by the scientific community.  This has been due largely to inadequacy in the manner in which climate models have handled uncertainties relating to both the warming effect of a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases, and the impact of human generated aerosols.  They argue that making ‘much of the planet inhospitable for humanity and [causing] the loss of coastal cities to sea level rise … can still be avoided via a reasoned policy response’.  They prescribe three policies: a) a universal escalating carbon price; b) rapid and deep emissions reductions supported by greenhouse gas removal from the atmosphere, and the possible short-term deployment of albedo enhancement (increasing the amount of sunlight reflected back to outer space); and c) effective global cooperation.

The bulk of this lengthy paper is devoted to a detailed analysis of the history of model-derived estimates of the warming effect of a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases, technically referred to as the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) and the cooling effect of aerosols (pollution associated with the burning of fossil fuels).  They consider ECS to be closer to 5^oC than the generally accepted 3^oC.  They further explain their preferred metric of Earth System Sensitivity (ESS) that includes a wider range of climate factors than ECS and therefore more accurately reflects the likely warming impact of increased atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs).  They assess ESS to be about 10^oC before accounting for aerosols.

The lack of reliable data about aerosols, both historical and current, and considerable uncertainty about their complex interactions with clouds, are, they explain, the reason that their climatic effect has been underestimated in climate models.  From a variety of sources, they estimate that aerosol cooling might reduce GHG warming by about 3^oC, producing a net latent warming of about 7^oC.

The climatic effect of these revised values is much greater warming locked in from historical emissions than previously anticipated.  They estimate that by 2050 surface temperature will have increased by 2^oC and the remainder of the 10^oC would occur within a century assuming current levels of emissions are maintained and the aerosols continue to be reduced and are largely eliminated as part of global public health programmes.

The paper repeatedly refers to lack of data and uncertainties about various climatic effects and response times and makes a number of suggestions for further research.  However, notwithstanding these shortcomings, the authors provide a cogent argument to support their claim that as these knowledge gaps succumb to scientific progress, the extent and rate of climate change will be shown to have been grossly underestimated.

For all the erudition evident in their analysis of climate change, their policy prescription seems disturbingly confused, and perhaps even naïve.  The first two policy proposals are climate focussed, seeking to reduce the atmospheric burden of GHGs by reducing emissions and removal of already emitted GHGs still resident in the atmosphere, and to the extent that these don’t reduce surface temperature fast enough, consideration of albedo enhancement (AE).  They do not explore the different cooling dynamics of reducing atmospheric GHGs and AE but do use five short sentences to highlight the risks associated with AE without any assessment of the risks of not undertaking AE.  The implication is that although reducing atmospheric GHGs may not be sufficient to avert the climate disasters they refer to, AE should only be deployed if it has an acceptable risk profile.  The possibility, even the likelihood, that the risks associated with AE might be considerably less than the risks of not deploying it, is not considered.  This is not a balanced approach to risk analysis.

Their third policy, that the nations of the world collaborate effectively to reduce emissions, must be seen in the context of more than three decades of international negotiations under the aegis of the UNFCCC.  This policy prescription appears to be a case of hope triumphing over experience.  If experience is taken as a more secure guide for future action, it seems unlikely that there will be a radical realignment of geopolitical forces on a timescale short enough to enable the political collaboration necessary to deliver the practical and climatically effective deployments at scale envisaged by these authors.

The rapid climate change now underway may have been accelerated by human behaviour but it has its own momentum that does not respect the political machinations of humans.  The time has long passed when we needed more science, more research, more understanding, to know that climate change poses an existential threat, and that the necessary response was at least to stop exacerbating the situation by allowing our emissions to grow unconstrained.  While these authors have done a great service in highlighting shortcomings in our earlier understanding about the scale and imminence of a climate catastrophe, the policy prescriptions remain the same as they were in 1990 and before, namely, to change our behaviour so as to eliminate the earth’s energy imbalance (EEI).  This task has become more challenging, more costly and considerably more risky as a result of three decades of relative inaction.  While the policy rhetoric may be more compelling today, its practical realisation remains as elusive as ever.  The unanswered question is whether that can change soon enough.  That’s a political rather than scientific question.  My personal view, for what it's worth, is that we are probably at or close to the point where the risks of effective action overwhelm the political appetite for taking them.

Robert Chris

On 24/12/2022 17:56, Mike Biddle wrote:

Great framing Dan.  You beat me to the punch and with a much better reply.  

Best regards,

Dr. Mike Biddle

Partner | Evok Innovations

San Francisco Bay Area Office

c: 925-393-9129

e: mi...@evokinnovations.com 

 

Sign up here to get the latest news from Evok Innovations!

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From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2022 12:19:37 AM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>; carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; Jim Hansen <jimeh...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] James Hansen's Recent Paper: Global Warming in the Pipeline

 

Jim is reframing the term “Geoengineering.”  Geoengineering is currently thought of the intentional interference on the climate to counter global warming. But global warming itself is massive geoengineering on its own and will have devastating consequences. When viewed this way, CDR & SRM are used to counter the geoenginnering we have done and are doing to the Earth.

People today worry that SRM will have negative consequences — as if emitting 2.4 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere doesn’t???  SRM is child’s play compared to what we are doing and we will soon reach “points of no return.”

I like to compare SRM to cancer treatment. If a doctor told you they would irradiate you with dangerous rays and inject you with poison, you would think they were crazy and you would refuse. But if she explains that you will die without the treatment, then those “dangerous” treatments seem a lot more palatable. It’s the cancer that is the main problem, not the treatment.

Dan

On Dec 23, 2022, at 9:35 PM, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

“"human-made geoengineering of Earth’s climate must be rapidly phased out,” i.e., we must stop emitting greenhouse gases, remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and research and implement safe solar radiation management to counter the massive geoengineering experiment we are currently running”

I’m confused, rapidly phase out bad geoengineering (emissions), rapidly phase in good geoengineering (CDR, SRM)? Geoengineering: Villain and/or savior?

Greg

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 21, 2022, at 7:52 PM, Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk> wrote:



Excellent summary, thanks Dan.

 

Clive

On 22/12/2022 02:04 GMT Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com> wrote:

 

 

James Hansen and 14 co-authors recently released a preprint (not yet peer reviewed) paper titled “Global Warming in the Pipeline.”

 

This is an important paper that makes a number of key points, but the bottom line is we must act immediately to address the climate crisis. Hansen uses the framing "human-made geoengineering of Earth’s climate must be rapidly phased out” to call for emissions elimination, CDR and SRM.

 

Hansen Newsletter Summary:

https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-in-the-pipeline?e=a29768a646

 

Full paper PDF:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.04474.pdf

 

Here is a summary of some of the key points of this quite long (48 page) paper:

 

1. The Earth Climate Sensitivity (ECS) — the Earth’s short-term response to a CO2 doubling — is higher than previously assumed. Most scientists said it was ~3ºC, but Hansen et al now say it is 4ºC or more based on paleoclimate data. This means there is more warming “in the pipeline” than previously assumed.

 

2. While humans have increased atmospheric CO2 by 50% since the industrial revolution, the actual climate forcing from all the added greenhouse gases is now ~4W/m^2, which is equivalent to a doubling of CO2 (i.e., CO2e (including all greenhouse gases, not just CO2) is about 560 ppm).

 

3. Part of the current warming has been hidden by human-made particulate air pollution (aerosols), mainly sulfur. When North America and Europe started to reduce emissions after the introduction of clean air acts in the 1970's, regional and global warming became more pronounced. In the past decades China and global shipping slashed sulfur emissions through cleaner fuels and sulfur filter systems ('scrubbers'). There are clear signals from ground, ocean and satellite based observations that the rate of global warming has recently doubled, which needs to be taken into account in risk assessments. 

 

4. Assuming today’s forcing (4 W/m^2) stabilizes and human-made aerosols are eliminated, when all feedbacks — including “long-term” feedbacks — play out, we are on track for about 10ºC warming and 6~7ºC if aerosols stay at today’s levels. This is a “scenario” and we still control our future, though we are on track to increase climate forcing from today’s 4 W/m^2.

 

5. If greenhouse gas forcings keeps growing at the current rate, it could match the level PETM mass extinction within a century. We are increasing climate forcing 20X faster than in the PETM so “long-term” feedbacks won’t take as long as in the paleo record (though some feedbacks will still be much longer than a human lifetime).

 

6. The paper concludes that we must: (a) implement a carbon fee and border duty (Fee and Dividend); (b) "human-made geoengineering of Earth’s climate must be rapidly phased out,” i.e., we must stop emitting greenhouse gases, remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and research and implement safe solar radiation management to counter the massive geoengineering experiment we are currently running; and (c) we must improve international cooperation to allow the developing world to grow using clean energy.

 

7. A companion paper will be coming out that addresses the near-term shutdown of the AMOC and associated “multi-meter” sea level rise on a century timescale. 

 

I did a Clubhouse podcast on this paper that you can listen to in your browser. Leon Simons, a co-author of the paper, was my guest.  It’s a long podcast (2.5 hours)!

 

<MKVLW5Wx.png>

Hansen: We Are Committed to 7ºC Warming! - Climate Chat clubhouse.com

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Best,

Dan

 

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[Douglas Grandt]

Merry Christmas, All -

Just finished the cookies and milk snack with Sandy Claws, and before I retire for the evening, must get this off my chest:

Correct me if I am missing something, but Hansen makes no reference to SAI, and the only reference to sulfur is in context with ocean going vessel’s “sulfur content of fuels." His only reference to SRM occurs only on page 35:

However, given that GHG forcing is already 4 W/m2, it may be necessary to temporarily affect EEI via solar radiation management (SRM), if the world is to avoid disastrous consequences, including large sea level rise. Risks of such intervention must be defined, as well as risks of no intervention. Thus the U.S. National Academy of Sciences recommends research on SRM.151 An example of SRM is injection of atmospheric aerosols at high southern latitudes, which global simulations suggest would cool the Southern Ocean at depth and limit melting of Antarctic ice shelves.15,152 The most innocuous aerosols may be salt or fine salty droplets extracted from the ocean and sprayed into the air by autonomous sailboats.153  

where,

151 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: Reflecting Sunlight: Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research and Research Governance. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25762, 2021.

Excerpt from the description of Reflecting Sunshine states:

Solar geoengineering strategies are designed to cool Earth either by adding small reflective particles to the upper atmosphere, by increasing reflective cloud cover in the lower atmosphere, or by thinning high-altitude clouds that can absorb heat. 

It would be presumptive for me to speak for Jim, but it seems his words speak for themselves. In this context, SRM and SAI are not synonymous.  

Happy Holidays, 

Doug Grandt

On Dec 25, 2022, at 1:23 AM, Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com> wrote:

"The present decade may be the last opportunity to develop the knowledge, technical capability, and political will for the actions that are needed to save global coastal regions from long-term inundation.”

HOW NOT TO INCREASE THE RATE OF SEA LEVEL RISE:

Using SAI will, without a doubt, warm the polar regions as sulfur creates heat trapping polar stratospheric clouds. Relying upon SAI to contribute to stopping or even slowing down sea level rise is not a reliable plan on the face it. Those two dots do not connect.

Moreover, increased CH4 emissions, as we are now seeing, will also increase PSCs. If the affects on the polar regions from of SAI and increased CH4 emissions are combined, polar ice loss will likely go into overdrive. Past abundance of PSCs likely triggered an equitable atmosphere and, in turn, an AMOC collapse along with massive polar ice loss. 

https://groups.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/research/equable/psc.html

Furthermore, grossly eroding the polar 03 layer, an expected byproduct of SAI deployment, over the most biologically productive regions of our ocean would clearly drive many marine species into a rapid extenction spiral and reduce primary production on a global scale. There are a number of other serious biogeochemical and socio-political concerns with SAI as many know. 

Marine Cloud Brightening, on the other hand, does not carry these risks and MCB can be started today with few biogeochemical risk factors and few international policy risk factors. Most importantly, the deployment of SAI has the greatest risk of igniting a war of any mitigation option due to the trans-border nature of SAI. Again, MCB carries no such extream, if not existential, risk factors.

This entire field of climate disruption mitigation is centered upon the concept of risk reduction, deployment of the one mitigation option that clearly has, by far, the maximum risk factors seems to be counter to the end goal of global risk reduction especially in view of the SRM MCB option that carries no such risks. SAI is not fundamentally needed for SRM as MCB is availablr, SAI will more than likely be highly distructive to the environment on many levels as well as short-term and likely long-term international relations. Why go there?

Hanson et al. make no attempt to justify the call for SAI over MCB. Why?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/65a6acf3-1d77-5a15-8f1c-6953e34d9119%40gmail.com.

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[Robert Chris]

[Michael Routh]

Hi Doug,

Merry Christmas to you and the rest of this determined group!

Hansen’s pre-print has attracted much attention, partly for what it said, and partly for what it did not say, and many on this forum have made excellent comments and criticisms.  May I add a few more?  

This paper was not meant to focus on, debate, or prioritize climate restoration solutions.  In 48 pages it mentions EEI (earth energy imbalance) 75 times, aerosols 65 times, cloud 101 times, and model 147 times!  By comparison, it only mentions geoengineering 4x, and SRM (solar radiation management) 3x.  Hansen’s intent is to make the strongest possible case, with compelling supporting evidence as it exists today, that the heat already "baked in” or “in the pipeline” has been woefully underestimated by climate modeling, and will be the dominant force driving EEI over the next decades, notwithstanding efforts in emissions reduction and carbon removal. Perhaps there are others who have made this case before, but 48 pages, by such a prominent voice, at the end of 2022, to make this point, would suggest that this is intended to help accelerate the move from debate to action.  Can this help move political will in a positive way?

I have (perhaps naively) viewed “solar radiation management” as a form of “geoengineering”, but with the distinction that “management” implies thoughtful and purposeful control, and that cooling approaches to combat EEI such as SAI, MCB, and MEER are intended to be managed and controlled "good SRM" and therefore "good geoengineering".  

Hansen's contrasting use of the words “geoengineering" and "solar radiation management"  is telling, and may also be a useful cue. His sparse usage of “geoengineering” in the text is clearly associated with something negative (uncontrolled GHG emissions by humans impacting earth system equilibrium): 

p.1 -  purposeful intervention to rapidly phase down present massive geoengineering of Earth’s climate.

.

p. 36 -  human-made geoengineering of Earth’s climate must be rapidly phased out. The best measure of geoengineering is Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI).

By contrast, his use of “solar radiation management” is clearly associated with something good:

p. 37 - it may be necessary to temporarily affect EEI via solar radiation management (SRM), if the world is to avoid disastrous consequences, including large sea level rise. Risks of such intervention must be defined, as well as risks of no intervention. Thus the U.S. National Academy of Sciences recommends research on SRM.

He provides 2 specific examples of aerosol injection (not limiting it to stratospheric - SAI, or attempting to support one over the other) in the same paragraph:

p. 37 - An example of SRM is injection of atmospheric aerosols at high southern latitudes, which global simulations suggest would cool the Southern Ocean at depth and limit melting of Antarctic ice shelves.   The most innocuous aerosols may be salt or fine salty droplets extracted from the ocean and sprayed into the air by autonomous sailboats.

As others have also concluded, we should use this paper as it was intended…to provide compelling evidence that the heat in the pipeline, and it’s impact on EEI, cannot be addressed by ER and/or GHGR alone, that SRM must be purposely and thoughtfully utilized “if the world is to avoid disastrous consequences”.

Hansen’s weight to this specific conclusion must lend additional credibility to the efforts of many of us on this forum to counter the underestimated heating in the pipeline with optimized and scaled forms of cooling intervention.  As someone else said previously, let’s use it as a sword and shield.

Best wishes to all for the Holidays,

Michael Routh, Ph.D.

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[Herman Gyr]

Dan,

I appreciate your comparison of SRM to cancer treatment. In presentations I use a similar analogy to underscore just how misguided the near exclusive focus on emissions is for the problem we are actually facing.

H.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Herman Gyr

Enterprise Development Group⎢+1 650 464 6419 ⎢930 Roble Ridge Road ⎢ Palo Alto, CA. 94306 ⎢ www.enterprisedevelop.com

[Michael Hayes]

"The present decade may be the last opportunity to develop the knowledge, technical capability, and political will for the actions that are needed to save global coastal regions from long-term inundation.”

HOW NOT TO INCREASE THE RATE OF SEA LEVEL RISE:

Using SAI will, without a doubt, warm the polar regions as sulfur creates heat trapping polar stratospheric clouds. Relying upon SAI to contribute to stopping or even slowing down sea level rise is not a reliable plan on the face it. Those two dots do not connect.

Moreover, increased CH4 emissions, as we are now seeing, will also increase PSCs. If the affects on the polar regions from of SAI and increased CH4 emissions are combined, polar ice loss will likely go into overdrive. Past abundance of PSCs likely triggered an equitable atmosphere and, in turn, an AMOC collapse along with massive polar ice loss. 

https://groups.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/research/equable/psc.html

Furthermore, grossly eroding the polar 03 layer, an expected byproduct of SAI deployment, over the most biologically productive regions of our ocean would clearly drive many marine species into a rapid extenction spiral and reduce primary production on a global scale. There are a number of other serious biogeochemical and socio-political concerns with SAI as many know. 

Marine Cloud Brightening, on the other hand, does not carry these risks and MCB can be started today with few biogeochemical risk factors and few international policy risk factors. Most importantly, the deployment of SAI has the greatest risk of igniting a war of any mitigation option due to the trans-border nature of SAI. Again, MCB carries no such extream, if not existential, risk factors.

This entire field of climate disruption mitigation is centered upon the concept of risk reduction, deployment of the one mitigation option that clearly has, by far, the maximum risk factors seems to be counter to the end goal of global risk reduction especially in view of the SRM MCB option that carries no such risks. SAI is not fundamentally needed for SRM as MCB is availablr, SAI will more than likely be highly distructive to the environment on many levels as well as short-term and likely long-term international relations. Why go there?

Hanson et al. make no attempt to justify the call for SAI over MCB. Why?

On Sat, Dec 24, 2022, 1:03 PM Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[John Nissen]

Hi Herman,

I support your analogy of giving up smoking as a cure to cancer.  But the remedy is actually somewhat different to what you are suggesting.  Hansen is close.

This draft letter on behalf of PRAG is short and to the point.

Dear Jim and colleagues,

 

Thank you for producing a most stimulating paper which exposes the truth on many matters [1].  The current course of FCCC and IPCC, focussed on emissions reduction and the achievement of net zero, is disastrous.  Global and polar temperatures will continue to rise, further aggravating a situation which is already dire for many countries.  Global and regional temperatures need to be reduced sufficiently and sufficiently quickly to avoid tipping points reaching their points of no return which would commit humanity to disastrous climate change and sea level rise.  You make this quite clear.

 

However the clarity with which you express the problem is not matched by your policy recommendations.  Nowhere are tipping points of more concern than in the Arctic as sea ice retreat and the vicious cycle of warming and melting from albedo positive feedback forces Arctic temperatures to rise 4 times faster than global temperatures.  You don’t mention that Arctic amplification is almost certainly the cause of a trend towards ever increasing extremes of weather and climate in the Northern Hemisphere.  The current “bomb cyclone” can be explained by anomalous jet stream behaviour coupled with a “loosening” of the polar vortex.  Thus we believe that refreezing the Arctic must be the prime target for emergency climate action.  Rapid deployment of the most powerful cooling interventions could prove vital.  This should be central to your policy recommendations, in our opinion.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

John Nissen

On behalf of the Planetary Restoration Action Group

[1] Hansen et al. (2022)

Global warming in the pipeline

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2212/2212.04474.pdf

 

Cheers, John

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[Douglas Grandt]

Happy Holidaze, All!

Considering the pragmatic simple-minded audiences we hope to influence (e.g., from Jane & Joe Six Pack and journalists and scientists to President Pro Tempore and Speaker of the House and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and White House OSTP) I’d suggest K.I.S.S. with the analogy: CPR and tourniquet urgent triage intervention to save the dying victim until needed surgery can be performed.

Best,

Doug Grandt 

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 27, 2022, at 9:16 AM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:



Clive

I love challenges like this!  You've made me read up on the differences and similarities between similes, metaphors and analogies.  How do these operate as rhetorical devices to convey deeper understanding?  For any communication, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  That's both an analogy and a metaphor.

The reason I don't like the cancer analogy/metaphor for climate change is that it emphasises the wrong decision attribute and is therefore likely to lead to perverse decisions.  The cancer/climate change comparison is saying that if we can accept that potentially harmful interventions in the one, we can do so in the other.  But we routinely make choices whose negative consequences we accept as the price to pay for whatever benefits we anticipate from the choice.  The idea of no gain without pain (another metaphor) is deeply rooted and I doubt many would challenge it.

The greater issue is to grasp the distinction between necessary and sufficient.  If you have a Stage 4 cancer, its surgical removal is necessary for short term survival.  But the adjuvant chemotherapy is optional because no one can tell you in advance of the treatment how you personally will respond to it, or even whether it's necessary.  But you know that it will never be sufficient because you must have the surgery.  So when you're told that, say 95%, of patients don't suffer serious harm from the chemotherapy and some (but we don't know how many) may reap considerable benefit from it, you throw the dice and say, OK, let's do it, even though you have no way of knowing at that point whether you're in the 95% or the 5% or even whether you need to take the risk at all.

For climate change the situation is radically different.  The AE is necessary.  We know with a high degree of confidence that emissions reductions and GGR at any scale, even if we got to net zero tomorrow and returned to 300ppm CO2 by next week, will not act swiftly enough to stop surface temperature rising sufficiently to tip some irreversible tipping points over the edge. The choice is not between alternative policy packages, all of which are likely to be sufficient.  If you take the AE out of the package you know that the package will no longer be sufficient because the AE is necessary.

The question is no longer whether or not we should do the potentially harmful AE, but how we do it with the least possible harm, and best compensate those who are harmed.  We must stop using the potential harm as an excuse not to do AE because not doing it guarantees an even worse outcome.  (I'm assuming that ways can be found to do the AE with less bad outcomes than from not doing it.  If they can't, we might as well just relax and come to terms with our fate.)

The cancer analogy would be if the doctors told you that without the chemotherapy you'd most probably die within the year.  Then you'd probably take the view that the chemotherapy was also necessary and hope that together with the surgery, your treatment package would be sufficient for a successful outcome.  Accepting the risk is made much easier by knowing that the treatment is necessary.  The necessity comes first.

In summary, the core is issue is not about the harm, it's about the necessity.  If it's necessary, then invest in minimising the harm.  If it's not necessary, then devote your resources to what is.

Finally, knowing what's necessary isn't the same as knowing what's sufficient.  Emissions reduction, GGR, AE and significant human behavioural change, a factor too often ignored, are all necessary but whether they are sufficient depends on a whole stack of operational details that impact scale and timing.  Knowing whether the package is sufficient is like eating the pudding (simile), you don't find out until it comes out of the oven (metaphor).  We only we get one shot at this (metaphor), so we need to do whatever we can to shorten the odds (analogy).

I hope you get as much fun reading this as I've had writing it!

Happy New Year. 

Robert

On 27/12/2022 05:48, Clive Elsworth wrote:

Robert

 

All models are wrong but some are useful, and that goes for analogies.

 

Yes the cancer analogy is imperfect, but in the absence of anything better, isn’t it better than nothing?

 

Clive

On 27/12/2022 00:49 GMT Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

 

 

 

Dan & Herb

The cancer metaphor is not helpful.  In essence it says that we accept the risks of potentially harmful treatments when we believe they will hasten the cure or defer the regrowth of the cancer.  By extension, it is irrational not to accept the risks of potentially harmful climate interventions when we believe they will contribute to avoiding a climate catastrophe.

This is a non sequitur on many levels.  Let’s start with scope, scale and scariness.  On scope, those taking the decisions about cancer therapy are generally the cancer sufferers.  They will rarely be competent to make a medical risk assessment and will tend to follow their medical advisors.  Whereas those taking the decisions about climate interventions are not those who are likely to suffer if it all goes wrong, and they also rely on a wide range of advisors, not just those with climate change knowledge.  There are big transgenerational equity differences at stake here.

On scale, a few deaths not postponed for those unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the potentially harmful risks of cancer therapy is hardly commensurate with the millions, if not billions, of people into the distant future suffering, possibly terminal consequences of a climate intervention (or non-intervention) not working out as intended.

Scariness refers to the nature of the respective risks.  In the case of cancer, the downside is an earlier death than might have been desired.  But for those cancer patients who have the luxury of treatment options, the great likelihood is that they’ll also benefit from high quality palliative care, so their passing will be less painful and hopefully less scary.  Moreover, the risks of cancer treatment failing are well-evidenced so that when making the decision whether to have the treatment or not, there is a vast store of empirical data on which their medical team will base their advice, even if they are unable to personalise that evidential data.  Conversely, for climate change there is no historical data on relevant human timescales, as to what might happen if a proposed climate intervention should go wrong.  Climate modelling data has many valuable uses, but it is not predictive.  The inescapable and unquantifiable uncertainty about how future climate states might unfold in response to any given climate intervention at scale, and how that response might affect people (and other lifeforms) locally and regionally, makes the decision much scarier.

The combination of these differences between our approaches to cancer treatment and climate change make cancer treatment a wholly inappropriate metaphor for climate interventions.

I’m not sure there exists a suitable metaphor for an event that has never occurred in human history.  We must think outside the box.  On the other hand, maybe the capacity for collaboration at global scale over an extended period has simply not emerged as part of our evolution simply because we’ve never before needed to do that.  If, despite a veneer of sophistication, we’re still hunter gatherers at heart, dealing with climate change is going to be a bit of a problem.

BTW, five years ago I was faced with the cancer decision.  After the surgical removal of my Stage 4 cancer, I agreed to the follow on ‘adjuvant chemotherapy’.  The planned eight sessions were stopped after the second almost killed me – the doctors arriving for the morning shift were genuinely surprised to find me alive!  I can say from personal experience that there is almost nothing that the decisions to have a potentially harmful cancer therapy and to undertake a potentially harmful climate intervention have in common.

Robert Chris

 

 

 

On 25/12/2022 20:55, Herman Gyr wrote:

Dan,

 

I appreciate your comparison of SRM to cancer treatment. In presentations I use a similar analogy to underscore just how misguided the near exclusive focus on emissions is for the problem we are actually facing.

 

H.

 

<Parable_Sick_Smoker.png>

Regards

Robert

 

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Regards

Robert

[Michael Routh]

Hi all,

The discussion of how to represent climate action has been stimulating!

Doug’s suggestion is the one I have used frequently - “urgent triage intervention to save the dying victim until needed surgery can be performed “ - largely because it is simple and easy to grasp as Doug points out.  Few who hear “dying victim” disagree with “urgent triage”.

The challenge is bridging between “global warming” and “dying victim”.

Some of my otherwise intelligent acquaintances view “global warming” as “less snow and therefore more golf days” here in Colorado.  Do they not represent the vast majority who are uninformed?

The discussion about the relative merits and risks of the 3 approaches (reduction, removal, cooling) to climate restoration work much better when the listener has already learned a little and accepted that earth’s climate trajectory is analogous to a dying victim.

In which camp do our decision-making leaders reside? 

Happy holidays!

Michael Routh

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 27, 2022, at 8:45 AM, 'Douglas Grandt' via Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



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[Michael Hayes]

Emergency Medical Care is likely the best analogy. Inserting an emergancy chest tube using a pocket knife and ballpoint pen casing is not long-term health care, it's to save the life until proper long-term healthcare can be applied.

On Mon, Dec 26, 2022, 9:48 PM Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk> wrote:

Robert

 

All models are wrong but some are useful, and that goes for analogies.

 

Yes the cancer analogy is imperfect, but in the absence of anything better, isn’t it better than nothing?

 

Clive

On 27/12/2022 00:49 GMT Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

 

 

 

Dan & Herb

The cancer metaphor is not helpful.  In essence it says that we accept the risks of potentially harmful treatments when we believe they will hasten the cure or defer the regrowth of the cancer.  By extension, it is irrational not to accept the risks of potentially harmful climate interventions when we believe they will contribute to avoiding a climate catastrophe.

This is a non sequitur on many levels.  Let’s start with scope, scale and scariness.  On scope, those taking the decisions about cancer therapy are generally the cancer sufferers.  They will rarely be competent to make a medical risk assessment and will tend to follow their medical advisors.  Whereas those taking the decisions about climate interventions are not those who are likely to suffer if it all goes wrong, and they also rely on a wide range of advisors, not just those with climate change knowledge.  There are big transgenerational equity differences at stake here.

On scale, a few deaths not postponed for those unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the potentially harmful risks of cancer therapy is hardly commensurate with the millions, if not billions, of people into the distant future suffering, possibly terminal consequences of a climate intervention (or non-intervention) not working out as intended.

Scariness refers to the nature of the respective risks.  In the case of cancer, the downside is an earlier death than might have been desired.  But for those cancer patients who have the luxury of treatment options, the great likelihood is that they’ll also benefit from high quality palliative care, so their passing will be less painful and hopefully less scary.  Moreover, the risks of cancer treatment failing are well-evidenced so that when making the decision whether to have the treatment or not, there is a vast store of empirical data on which their medical team will base their advice, even if they are unable to personalise that evidential data.  Conversely, for climate change there is no historical data on relevant human timescales, as to what might happen if a proposed climate intervention should go wrong.  Climate modelling data has many valuable uses, but it is not predictive.  The inescapable and unquantifiable uncertainty about how future climate states might unfold in response to any given climate intervention at scale, and how that response might affect people (and other lifeforms) locally and regionally, makes the decision much scarier.

The combination of these differences between our approaches to cancer treatment and climate change make cancer treatment a wholly inappropriate metaphor for climate interventions.

I’m not sure there exists a suitable metaphor for an event that has never occurred in human history.  We must think outside the box.  On the other hand, maybe the capacity for collaboration at global scale over an extended period has simply not emerged as part of our evolution simply because we’ve never before needed to do that.  If, despite a veneer of sophistication, we’re still hunter gatherers at heart, dealing with climate change is going to be a bit of a problem.

BTW, five years ago I was faced with the cancer decision.  After the surgical removal of my Stage 4 cancer, I agreed to the follow on ‘adjuvant chemotherapy’.  The planned eight sessions were stopped after the second almost killed me – the doctors arriving for the morning shift were genuinely surprised to find me alive!  I can say from personal experience that there is almost nothing that the decisions to have a potentially harmful cancer therapy and to undertake a potentially harmful climate intervention have in common.

Robert Chris

 

 

 

On 25/12/2022 20:55, Herman Gyr wrote:

Regards

Robert

 

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[David Hawkins]

For me, using the term "geo-engineering" to describe human release of fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere is grammatically incorrect and is more of a rhetorical device to imply that actions like SAI are not novel.  I don't find applying the geo label to what we are already doing to be a persuasive argument that we should deploy SAI.

I agree that a decision to deploy SAI should be made in a risk-management framework.  I don't think our knowledge of the potential impacts of broad SAI deployment is adequate at present to enable an intelligent risk-management decision.  That is why I support a significant SAI research program to attempt to provide more certainty to our assessment of the downside risks of SAI deployment.  I believe we know enough to assume that deploying SAI would reduce some risks flowing from climate disruption.  But that is only one-half of the risk-management puzzle.

I find it helpful in discussing SAI to state what we think is success or failure.  Success would be doing enough fast enough to protect and restore the climate that we reduce the risks to the point where the additional benefits that SAI would deliver are not worth deployment, given our better informed understanding of its risks.

Air bags are an imperfect analogy.  As a society we made a decision that the well-defined risks of requiring air bags to be put into cars were significantly smaller than the risks of driving without them.  But we still view any deployment as something to be avoided, through better road design, safer driving habits, etc.

The analogy is imperfect because we can equip cars with air bags without unavoidably commiting to the deployment of all the installed air bags.  With SAI, "installation" means some actual deployment.  But we can increase our ability to make rational future decisions about deployment by doing research now.

SAI "advocates" would be wise, in my view, to focus their efforts on creating a social consensus for doing solid SAI research, with specific uncertainty reduction objectives.

David Hawkins

On Mon, Dec 26, 2022 at 7:50 PM Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dan & Herb

The cancer metaphor is not helpful.  In essence it says that we accept the risks of potentially harmful treatments when we believe they will hasten the cure or defer the regrowth of the cancer.  By extension, it is irrational not to accept the risks of potentially harmful climate interventions when we believe they will contribute to avoiding a climate catastrophe.

This is a non sequitur on many levels.  Let’s start with scope, scale and scariness.  On scope, those taking the decisions about cancer therapy are generally the cancer sufferers.  They will rarely be competent to make a medical risk assessment and will tend to follow their medical advisors.  Whereas those taking the decisions about climate interventions are not those who are likely to suffer if it all goes wrong, and they also rely on a wide range of advisors, not just those with climate change knowledge.  There are big transgenerational equity differences at stake here.

On scale, a few deaths not postponed for those unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the potentially harmful risks of cancer therapy is hardly commensurate with the millions, if not billions, of people into the distant future suffering, possibly terminal consequences of a climate intervention (or non-intervention) not working out as intended.

Scariness refers to the nature of the respective risks.  In the case of cancer, the downside is an earlier death than might have been desired.  But for those cancer patients who have the luxury of treatment options, the great likelihood is that they’ll also benefit from high quality palliative care, so their passing will be less painful and hopefully less scary.  Moreover, the risks of cancer treatment failing are well-evidenced so that when making the decision whether to have the treatment or not, there is a vast store of empirical data on which their medical team will base their advice, even if they are unable to personalise that evidential data.  Conversely, for climate change there is no historical data on relevant human timescales, as to what might happen if a proposed climate intervention should go wrong.  Climate modelling data has many valuable uses, but it is not predictive.  The inescapable and unquantifiable uncertainty about how future climate states might unfold in response to any given climate intervention at scale, and how that response might affect people (and other lifeforms) locally and regionally, makes the decision much scarier.

The combination of these differences between our approaches to cancer treatment and climate change make cancer treatment a wholly inappropriate metaphor for climate interventions.

I’m not sure there exists a suitable metaphor for an event that has never occurred in human history.  We must think outside the box.  On the other hand, maybe the capacity for collaboration at global scale over an extended period has simply not emerged as part of our evolution simply because we’ve never before needed to do that.  If, despite a veneer of sophistication, we’re still hunter gatherers at heart, dealing with climate change is going to be a bit of a problem.

BTW, five years ago I was faced with the cancer decision.  After the surgical removal of my Stage 4 cancer, I agreed to the follow on ‘adjuvant chemotherapy’.  The planned eight sessions were stopped after the second almost killed me – the doctors arriving for the morning shift were genuinely surprised to find me alive!  I can say from personal experience that there is almost nothing that the decisions to have a potentially harmful cancer therapy and to undertake a potentially harmful climate intervention have in common.

Robert Chris

On 25/12/2022 20:55, Herman Gyr wrote:

Regards

Robert

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[Clive Elsworth]

Robert

 

All models are wrong but some are useful, and that goes for analogies.

 

Yes the cancer analogy is imperfect, but in the absence of anything better, isn’t it better than nothing?

 

Clive

On 27/12/2022 00:49 GMT Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

 

 

 

Dan & Herb

The cancer metaphor is not helpful.  In essence it says that we accept the risks of potentially harmful treatments when we believe they will hasten the cure or defer the regrowth of the cancer.  By extension, it is irrational not to accept the risks of potentially harmful climate interventions when we believe they will contribute to avoiding a climate catastrophe.

This is a non sequitur on many levels.  Let’s start with scope, scale and scariness.  On scope, those taking the decisions about cancer therapy are generally the cancer sufferers.  They will rarely be competent to make a medical risk assessment and will tend to follow their medical advisors.  Whereas those taking the decisions about climate interventions are not those who are likely to suffer if it all goes wrong, and they also rely on a wide range of advisors, not just those with climate change knowledge.  There are big transgenerational equity differences at stake here.

On scale, a few deaths not postponed for those unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the potentially harmful risks of cancer therapy is hardly commensurate with the millions, if not billions, of people into the distant future suffering, possibly terminal consequences of a climate intervention (or non-intervention) not working out as intended.

Scariness refers to the nature of the respective risks.  In the case of cancer, the downside is an earlier death than might have been desired.  But for those cancer patients who have the luxury of treatment options, the great likelihood is that they’ll also benefit from high quality palliative care, so their passing will be less painful and hopefully less scary.  Moreover, the risks of cancer treatment failing are well-evidenced so that when making the decision whether to have the treatment or not, there is a vast store of empirical data on which their medical team will base their advice, even if they are unable to personalise that evidential data.  Conversely, for climate change there is no historical data on relevant human timescales, as to what might happen if a proposed climate intervention should go wrong.  Climate modelling data has many valuable uses, but it is not predictive.  The inescapable and unquantifiable uncertainty about how future climate states might unfold in response to any given climate intervention at scale, and how that response might affect people (and other lifeforms) locally and regionally, makes the decision much scarier.

The combination of these differences between our approaches to cancer treatment and climate change make cancer treatment a wholly inappropriate metaphor for climate interventions.

I’m not sure there exists a suitable metaphor for an event that has never occurred in human history.  We must think outside the box.  On the other hand, maybe the capacity for collaboration at global scale over an extended period has simply not emerged as part of our evolution simply because we’ve never before needed to do that.  If, despite a veneer of sophistication, we’re still hunter gatherers at heart, dealing with climate change is going to be a bit of a problem.

BTW, five years ago I was faced with the cancer decision.  After the surgical removal of my Stage 4 cancer, I agreed to the follow on ‘adjuvant chemotherapy’.  The planned eight sessions were stopped after the second almost killed me – the doctors arriving for the morning shift were genuinely surprised to find me alive!  I can say from personal experience that there is almost nothing that the decisions to have a potentially harmful cancer therapy and to undertake a potentially harmful climate intervention have in common.

Robert Chris

 

 

 

On 25/12/2022 20:55, Herman Gyr wrote:

Regards

Robert

 

--

[Robert Chris]

Dan & Herb

The cancer metaphor is not helpful.  In essence it says that we accept the risks of potentially harmful treatments when we believe they will hasten the cure or defer the regrowth of the cancer.  By extension, it is irrational not to accept the risks of potentially harmful climate interventions when we believe they will contribute to avoiding a climate catastrophe.

This is a non sequitur on many levels.  Let’s start with scope, scale and scariness.  On scope, those taking the decisions about cancer therapy are generally the cancer sufferers.  They will rarely be competent to make a medical risk assessment and will tend to follow their medical advisors.  Whereas those taking the decisions about climate interventions are not those who are likely to suffer if it all goes wrong, and they also rely on a wide range of advisors, not just those with climate change knowledge.  There are big transgenerational equity differences at stake here.

On scale, a few deaths not postponed for those unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the potentially harmful risks of cancer therapy is hardly commensurate with the millions, if not billions, of people into the distant future suffering, possibly terminal consequences of a climate intervention (or non-intervention) not working out as intended.

Scariness refers to the nature of the respective risks.  In the case of cancer, the downside is an earlier death than might have been desired.  But for those cancer patients who have the luxury of treatment options, the great likelihood is that they’ll also benefit from high quality palliative care, so their passing will be less painful and hopefully less scary.  Moreover, the risks of cancer treatment failing are well-evidenced so that when making the decision whether to have the treatment or not, there is a vast store of empirical data on which their medical team will base their advice, even if they are unable to personalise that evidential data.  Conversely, for climate change there is no historical data on relevant human timescales, as to what might happen if a proposed climate intervention should go wrong.  Climate modelling data has many valuable uses, but it is not predictive.  The inescapable and unquantifiable uncertainty about how future climate states might unfold in response to any given climate intervention at scale, and how that response might affect people (and other lifeforms) locally and regionally, makes the decision much scarier.

The combination of these differences between our approaches to cancer treatment and climate change make cancer treatment a wholly inappropriate metaphor for climate interventions.

I’m not sure there exists a suitable metaphor for an event that has never occurred in human history.  We must think outside the box.  On the other hand, maybe the capacity for collaboration at global scale over an extended period has simply not emerged as part of our evolution simply because we’ve never before needed to do that.  If, despite a veneer of sophistication, we’re still hunter gatherers at heart, dealing with climate change is going to be a bit of a problem.

BTW, five years ago I was faced with the cancer decision.  After the surgical removal of my Stage 4 cancer, I agreed to the follow on ‘adjuvant chemotherapy’.  The planned eight sessions were stopped after the second almost killed me – the doctors arriving for the morning shift were genuinely surprised to find me alive!  I can say from personal experience that there is almost nothing that the decisions to have a potentially harmful cancer therapy and to undertake a potentially harmful climate intervention have in common.

Robert Chris

On 25/12/2022 20:55, Herman Gyr wrote:

Regards

Robert

[Michael Hayes]

SAI has no "specific uncertainty reduction" ability at the biogeochemical, international policy, or sociatal levels. The past decade of dinking around with it clearly proves that point.

[Sarnoff, Joshua]

For the reason you noted, “most people would favor (using the US spelling) postponing death,” I agree with your overall conclusion at the scale we are discussing.  But as I noted some counterexamples, I don’t fully agree – hence “I don’t significantly disagree,” meaning I think your overall point is correct even if it is not fully justified and there are minor details that may either be inaccurate or at least are not adequately shown.  If you prefer “I agree with some minor qualifications” to “I don’t significantly disagree,” then just plug that into the universal translator.:-)

 

Again, please do send any links to (or just) materials that you think are good on metaphor, analogy, etc.   Much appreciated, including your bringing up these topics, which I think are increasingly critical to understanding.  A pleasure engaging, even if slightly off-topic to CDR.

 

Best,

 

Josh

 

From: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at 10:48 AM
To: Joshua Sarnoff <JSAR...@depaul.edu>, Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>, Herman Gyr <g...@enterprisedevelop.com>, "d...@rodagroup.com" <d...@rodagroup.com>
Cc: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>, Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [EXT] Re: [CDR] James Hansen's Recent Paper: Global Warming in the Pipeline

 

Hi Josh

Your comments much appreciated.  I totally agree that what constitutes 'necessary' is subjective.  If there was a single absolute right response to our choices, life would be exceedingly dull.   No diversity.  No creativity.  Humanity would soon become extinct and not be mourned.

Specifically here, I'm assuming that most people would favour postponing death for as long as possible and avoiding runaway global warming.   I accept that some might welcome death but I'm not sure why anyone would welcome runaway global warming, although they might be indifferent to it if it wasn't likely to happen during their lifetime. 

When you next meet someone who has had the misfortune to suffer from cancer and been offered adjuvant chemotherapy, ask them how they reached the decision whether to take up it up or not.  That's when it ceases to be an intellectual construct and becomes a visceral reality.  This is at the heart of the point I made in the original post about agency - is the person making the decision the one who'll suffer the consequences if it goes wrong?  That really matters.

BTW, can I invite you to have a look at your expression 'I don’t significantly disagree', and tell me what I am to understand by it.  Is not disagreeing the same as agreeing?  If it is, why not simply say 'I agree'?  What is the significance of 'significantly' in this expression?  Does this mean that there are some bits you totally agree with and others you totally disagree with, or does it mean that for some bits your not disagreeing (whatever that means)  is nuanced in some  way?  Many people use this expression (usually without the 'significantly') and I've yet to find out what they are trying to communicate by it.  I usually take it to mean that they haven't thought the issue through and are not sure whether they agree or disagree.

The CDR moderators are rather hot on keeping to CDR, so I've deleted that group from the distribution.

Robert

On 27/12/2022 14:49, Sarnoff, Joshua wrote:

Robert:

 

Yes I very much enjoyed this, particularly as I’m writing about analogy in legal thought.  Analogies work by making similarity judgments, which require assessment of which aspects of an issue are to be considered, how to determine whether the facts show similarity or dissimilarity in regard to that aspect, and when things exhibiting those facts are “similar enough” to be grouped together.  (For more on definitions of concepts by necessary and sufficient conditions of meaning – intensional definitions – and by similarity judgments of analogy – extensional and ostensive definitions – see the Wikipedia summaries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions. 

 

The interesting thing about your discussion is the way you make distinctions (i.e., dissimilarity judgments).  You note the “wrong decision attribute.”  Although I don’t significantly disagree with your judgment here, the question is how do you justify what is the “right” decision attribute, to argue that “necessary and sufficient” assessments of outcomes is what matters.  I could argue, e.g., that if there are serious side effects from adjuvant therapy, then you might not roll the dice to see if you are in the 5%.  (Similarly if you are very old and may not attach the same value to continuing to live as someone younger; or if you are depressed; etc.).  Hence, it is not as clear as you may think that your “decision attribute” is in fact the right one – or that predictive outcome alone is the right decision attribute.

 

The key is that there are always disputable factual and valuation premises for the operation of analogies.  Thanks for making your premises clear, even if they may not be persuasive for all people or may only be partially dispositive (to some).

 

(PS for off-line response, please do forward any good literature that you read on these topics; one can never know what he or she has missed).

 

Happy holidays.

 

Josh

 

From: <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at 9:18 AM
To: Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>, Herman Gyr <g...@enterprisedevelop.com>, "d...@rodagroup.com" <d...@rodagroup.com>
Cc: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>, Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>, Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [EXT] Re: [CDR] James Hansen's Recent Paper: Global Warming in the Pipeline

 

Clive

I love challenges like this!  You've made me read up on the differences and similarities between similes, metaphors and analogies.  How do these operate as rhetorical devices to convey deeper understanding?  For any communication, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  That's both an analogy and a metaphor.

The reason I don't like the cancer analogy/metaphor for climate change is that it emphasises the wrong decision attribute and is therefore likely to lead to perverse decisions.  The cancer/climate change comparison is saying that if we can accept that potentially harmful interventions in the one, we can do so in the other.  But we routinely make choices whose negative consequences we accept as the price to pay for whatever benefits we anticipate from the choice.  The idea of no gain without pain (another metaphor) is deeply rooted and I doubt many would challenge it.

The greater issue is to grasp the distinction between necessary and sufficient.  If you have a Stage 4 cancer, its surgical removal is necessary for short term survival.  But the adjuvant chemotherapy is optional because no one can tell you in advance of the treatment how you personally will respond to it, or even whether it's necessary.  But you know that it will never be sufficient because you must have the surgery.  So when you're told that, say 95%, of patients don't suffer serious harm from the chemotherapy and some (but we don't know how many) may reap considerable benefit from it, you throw the dice and say, OK, let's do it, even though you have no way of knowing at that point whether you're in the 95% or the 5% or even whether you need to take the risk at all.

For climate change the situation is radically different.  The AE is necessary.  We know with a high degree of confidence that emissions reductions and GGR at any scale, even if we got to net zero tomorrow and returned to 300ppm CO2 by next week, will not act swiftly enough to stop surface temperature rising sufficiently to tip some irreversible tipping points over the edge. The choice is not between alternative policy packages, all of which are likely to be sufficient.  If you take the AE out of the package you know that the package will no longer be sufficient because the AE is necessary.

The question is no longer whether or not we should do the potentially harmful AE, but how we do it with the least possible harm, and best compensate those who are harmed.  We must stop using the potential harm as an excuse not to do AE because not doing it guarantees an even worse outcome.  (I'm assuming that ways can be found to do the AE with less bad outcomes than from not doing it.  If they can't, we might as well just relax and come to terms with our fate.)

The cancer analogy would be if the doctors told you that without the chemotherapy you'd most probably die within the year.  Then you'd probably take the view that the chemotherapy was also necessary and hope that together with the surgery, your treatment package would be sufficient for a successful outcome.  Accepting the risk is made much easier by knowing that the treatment is necessary.  The necessity comes first.

In summary, the core is issue is not about the harm, it's about the necessity.  If it's necessary, then invest in minimising the harm.  If it's not necessary, then devote your resources to what is.

Finally, knowing what's necessary isn't the same as knowing what's sufficient.  Emissions reduction, GGR, AE and significant human behavioural change, a factor too often ignored, are all necessary but whether they are sufficient depends on a whole stack of operational details that impact scale and timing.  Knowing whether the package is sufficient is like eating the pudding (simile), you don't find out until it comes out of the oven (metaphor).  We only we get one shot at this (metaphor), so we need to do whatever we can to shorten the odds (analogy).

I hope you get as much fun reading this as I've had writing it!

Happy New Year. 

Robert

On 27/12/2022 05:48, Clive Elsworth wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/1739510135.563136.1672120097677%40email.ionos.co.uk.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Regards

Robert

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Regards

Robert

[Robert Chris]

Michael

I'm shocked you even have to ask that question.  At any given moment, our decision makers reside in whatever camp best suits their desire to remain our decision makers.

It all about power.  For our decision makers it's about political power.  For the ecosphere it's all about the manufactured power we need to sustain our lifestyles and power never-ending economic growth.

Robert

Regards

Robert

[Sarnoff, Joshua]

Robert:

 

Yes I very much enjoyed this, particularly as I’m writing about analogy in legal thought.  Analogies work by making similarity judgments, which require assessment of which aspects of an issue are to be considered, how to determine whether the facts show similarity or dissimilarity in regard to that aspect, and when things exhibiting those facts are “similar enough” to be grouped together.  (For more on definitions of concepts by necessary and sufficient conditions of meaning – intensional definitions – and by similarity judgments of analogy – extensional and ostensive definitions – see the Wikipedia summaries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions. 

 

The interesting thing about your discussion is the way you make distinctions (i.e., dissimilarity judgments).  You note the “wrong decision attribute.”  Although I don’t significantly disagree with your judgment here, the question is how do you justify what is the “right” decision attribute, to argue that “necessary and sufficient” assessments of outcomes is what matters.  I could argue, e.g., that if there are serious side effects from adjuvant therapy, then you might not roll the dice to see if you are in the 5%.  (Similarly if you are very old and may not attach the same value to continuing to live as someone younger; or if you are depressed; etc.).  Hence, it is not as clear as you may think that your “decision attribute” is in fact the right one – or that predictive outcome alone is the right decision attribute.

 

The key is that there are always disputable factual and valuation premises for the operation of analogies.  Thanks for making your premises clear, even if they may not be persuasive for all people or may only be partially dispositive (to some).

 

(PS for off-line response, please do forward any good literature that you read on these topics; one can never know what he or she has missed).

 

Happy holidays.

 

Josh

 

From: <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>

Date: Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at 9:18 AM
To: Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>, Herman Gyr <g...@enterprisedevelop.com>, "d...@rodagroup.com" <d...@rodagroup.com>
Cc: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>, Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>, Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [EXT] Re: [CDR] James Hansen's Recent Paper: Global Warming in the Pipeline

 

Clive

I love challenges like this!  You've made me read up on the differences and similarities between similes, metaphors and analogies.  How do these operate as rhetorical devices to convey deeper understanding?  For any communication, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  That's both an analogy and a metaphor.

The reason I don't like the cancer analogy/metaphor for climate change is that it emphasises the wrong decision attribute and is therefore likely to lead to perverse decisions.  The cancer/climate change comparison is saying that if we can accept that potentially harmful interventions in the one, we can do so in the other.  But we routinely make choices whose negative consequences we accept as the price to pay for whatever benefits we anticipate from the choice.  The idea of no gain without pain (another metaphor) is deeply rooted and I doubt many would challenge it.

The greater issue is to grasp the distinction between necessary and sufficient.  If you have a Stage 4 cancer, its surgical removal is necessary for short term survival.  But the adjuvant chemotherapy is optional because no one can tell you in advance of the treatment how you personally will respond to it, or even whether it's necessary.  But you know that it will never be sufficient because you must have the surgery.  So when you're told that, say 95%, of patients don't suffer serious harm from the chemotherapy and some (but we don't know how many) may reap considerable benefit from it, you throw the dice and say, OK, let's do it, even though you have no way of knowing at that point whether you're in the 95% or the 5% or even whether you need to take the risk at all.

For climate change the situation is radically different.  The AE is necessary.  We know with a high degree of confidence that emissions reductions and GGR at any scale, even if we got to net zero tomorrow and returned to 300ppm CO2 by next week, will not act swiftly enough to stop surface temperature rising sufficiently to tip some irreversible tipping points over the edge. The choice is not between alternative policy packages, all of which are likely to be sufficient.  If you take the AE out of the package you know that the package will no longer be sufficient because the AE is necessary.

The question is no longer whether or not we should do the potentially harmful AE, but how we do it with the least possible harm, and best compensate those who are harmed.  We must stop using the potential harm as an excuse not to do AE because not doing it guarantees an even worse outcome.  (I'm assuming that ways can be found to do the AE with less bad outcomes than from not doing it.  If they can't, we might as well just relax and come to terms with our fate.)

The cancer analogy would be if the doctors told you that without the chemotherapy you'd most probably die within the year.  Then you'd probably take the view that the chemotherapy was also necessary and hope that together with the surgery, your treatment package would be sufficient for a successful outcome.  Accepting the risk is made much easier by knowing that the treatment is necessary.  The necessity comes first.

In summary, the core is issue is not about the harm, it's about the necessity.  If it's necessary, then invest in minimising the harm.  If it's not necessary, then devote your resources to what is.

Finally, knowing what's necessary isn't the same as knowing what's sufficient.  Emissions reduction, GGR, AE and significant human behavioural change, a factor too often ignored, are all necessary but whether they are sufficient depends on a whole stack of operational details that impact scale and timing.  Knowing whether the package is sufficient is like eating the pudding (simile), you don't find out until it comes out of the oven (metaphor).  We only we get one shot at this (metaphor), so we need to do whatever we can to shorten the odds (analogy).

I hope you get as much fun reading this as I've had writing it!

Happy New Year. 

Robert

On 27/12/2022 05:48, Clive Elsworth wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/1739510135.563136.1672120097677%40email.ionos.co.uk.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Regards

Robert

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[Robert Chris]

Hi Josh

Your comments much appreciated.  I totally agree that what constitutes 'necessary' is subjective.  If there was a single absolute right response to our choices, life would be exceedingly dull.   No diversity.  No creativity.  Humanity would soon become extinct and not be mourned.

Specifically here, I'm assuming that most people would favour postponing death for as long as possible and avoiding runaway global warming.   I accept that some might welcome death but I'm not sure why anyone would welcome runaway global warming, although they might be indifferent to it if it wasn't likely to happen during their lifetime. 

When you next meet someone who has had the misfortune to suffer from cancer and been offered adjuvant chemotherapy, ask them how they reached the decision whether to take up it up or not.  That's when it ceases to be an intellectual construct and becomes a visceral reality.  This is at the heart of the point I made in the original post about agency - is the person making the decision the one who'll suffer the consequences if it goes wrong?  That really matters.

BTW, can I invite you to have a look at your expression 'I don’t significantly disagree', and tell me what I am to understand by it.  Is not disagreeing the same as agreeing?  If it is, why not simply say 'I agree'?  What is the significance of 'significantly' in this expression?  Does this mean that there are some bits you totally agree with and others you totally disagree with, or does it mean that for some bits your not disagreeing (whatever that means)  is nuanced in some  way?  Many people use this expression (usually without the 'significantly') and I've yet to find out what they are trying to communicate by it.  I usually take it to mean that they haven't thought the issue through and are not sure whether they agree or disagree.

The CDR moderators are rather hot on keeping to CDR, so I've deleted that group from the distribution.

Robert

On 27/12/2022 14:49, Sarnoff, Joshua wrote:

Regards

Robert

[Robert Chris]

Clive

I love challenges like this!  You've made me read up on the differences and similarities between similes, metaphors and analogies.  How do these operate as rhetorical devices to convey deeper understanding?  For any communication, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  That's both an analogy and a metaphor.

The reason I don't like the cancer analogy/metaphor for climate change is that it emphasises the wrong decision attribute and is therefore likely to lead to perverse decisions.  The cancer/climate change comparison is saying that if we can accept that potentially harmful interventions in the one, we can do so in the other.  But we routinely make choices whose negative consequences we accept as the price to pay for whatever benefits we anticipate from the choice.  The idea of no gain without pain (another metaphor) is deeply rooted and I doubt many would challenge it.

The greater issue is to grasp the distinction between necessary and sufficient.  If you have a Stage 4 cancer, its surgical removal is necessary for short term survival.  But the adjuvant chemotherapy is optional because no one can tell you in advance of the treatment how you personally will respond to it, or even whether it's necessary.  But you know that it will never be sufficient because you must have the surgery.  So when you're told that, say 95%, of patients don't suffer serious harm from the chemotherapy and some (but we don't know how many) may reap considerable benefit from it, you throw the dice and say, OK, let's do it, even though you have no way of knowing at that point whether you're in the 95% or the 5% or even whether you need to take the risk at all.

For climate change the situation is radically different.  The AE is necessary.  We know with a high degree of confidence that emissions reductions and GGR at any scale, even if we got to net zero tomorrow and returned to 300ppm CO2 by next week, will not act swiftly enough to stop surface temperature rising sufficiently to tip some irreversible tipping points over the edge. The choice is not between alternative policy packages, all of which are likely to be sufficient.  If you take the AE out of the package you know that the package will no longer be sufficient because the AE is necessary.

The question is no longer whether or not we should do the potentially harmful AE, but how we do it with the least possible harm, and best compensate those who are harmed.  We must stop using the potential harm as an excuse not to do AE because not doing it guarantees an even worse outcome.  (I'm assuming that ways can be found to do the AE with less bad outcomes than from not doing it.  If they can't, we might as well just relax and come to terms with our fate.)

The cancer analogy would be if the doctors told you that without the chemotherapy you'd most probably die within the year.  Then you'd probably take the view that the chemotherapy was also necessary and hope that together with the surgery, your treatment package would be sufficient for a successful outcome.  Accepting the risk is made much easier by knowing that the treatment is necessary.  The necessity comes first.

In summary, the core is issue is not about the harm, it's about the necessity.  If it's necessary, then invest in minimising the harm.  If it's not necessary, then devote your resources to what is.

Finally, knowing what's necessary isn't the same as knowing what's sufficient.  Emissions reduction, GGR, AE and significant human behavioural change, a factor too often ignored, are all necessary but whether they are sufficient depends on a whole stack of operational details that impact scale and timing.  Knowing whether the package is sufficient is like eating the pudding (simile), you don't find out until it comes out of the oven (metaphor).  We only we get one shot at this (metaphor), so we need to do whatever we can to shorten the odds (analogy).

I hope you get as much fun reading this as I've had writing it!

Happy New Year. 

Robert

On 27/12/2022 05:48, Clive Elsworth wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/1739510135.563136.1672120097677%40email.ionos.co.uk.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Regards

Robert

[Clive Elsworth]

Robert

 

The cancer/intervention analogy for me is all about target audience, which is most people. That’s because most people have very little understanding of climate change, little or no understanding of viable solutions, and either a short attention span or lack of time.

 

Those of us with the privilege and luxury of a good education and time to study and debate both the problems and solutions can leave the analogy and related similes and metaphors far behind.

 

I appreciate your rigourous thinking. My fun is more in discussing the solution technicalities. But I recognise the need to use language that our decision-making leaders are familiar with. Here’s another one they understand: zero sum games. I wonder if they would understand that removal of sulphur dioxide from ships flues has ended up being a negative sum game? At least it will be long-term.

 

Clive

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/97ab8624-5b97-8530-71e4-1c6340091a57%40gmail.com.

[H simmens]

Brian,

“To effectively prevent all tipping risks, the global mean temperature increase would need to be limited to no more than one degree – we are currently already at about 1.2 degrees,“ Jonathan Donges, Co-Lead of the FutureLab on Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene at PIK adds.

This quote is from an article by the Potsdam Institute on climate change research, describing a new risk analysis they released this past week that seems to support Robert’s comment. 

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

@herbsimens

On Dec 28, 2022, at 7:46 AM, Brian Cady <brianc...@gmail.com> wrote:



Robert Chris said: "We know with a high degree of confidence that emissions reductions and GGR at any scale, even if we got to net zero tomorrow and returned to 300ppm CO2 by next week, will not act swiftly enough to stop surface temperature rising sufficiently to tip some irreversible tipping points over the edge."

BC: Robert, Could you provide citations on this? In my ignorance, I don't yet know it.

Brian

-

On Tue, Dec 27, 2022 at 9:49 AM Sarnoff, Joshua <JSAR...@depaul.edu> wrote:

Robert:

 

Yes I very much enjoyed this, particularly as I’m writing about analogy in legal thought.  Analogies work by making similarity judgments, which require assessment of which aspects of an issue are to be considered, how to determine whether the facts show similarity or dissimilarity in regard to that aspect, and when things exhibiting those facts are “similar enough” to be grouped together.  (For more on definitions of concepts by necessary and sufficient conditions of meaning – intensional definitions – and by similarity judgments of analogy – extensional and ostensive definitions – see the Wikipedia summaries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions. 

 

The interesting thing about your discussion is the way you make distinctions (i.e., dissimilarity judgments).  You note the “wrong decision attribute.”  Although I don’t significantly disagree with your judgment here, the question is how do you justify what is the “right” decision attribute, to argue that “necessary and sufficient” assessments of outcomes is what matters.  I could argue, e.g., that if there are serious side effects from adjuvant therapy, then you might not roll the dice to see if you are in the 5%.  (Similarly if you are very old and may not attach the same value to continuing to live as someone younger; or if you are depressed; etc.).  Hence, it is not as clear as you may think that your “decision attribute” is in fact the right one – or that predictive outcome alone is the right decision attribute.

 

The key is that there are always disputable factual and valuation premises for the operation of analogies.  Thanks for making your premises clear, even if they may not be persuasive for all people or may only be partially dispositive (to some).

 

(PS for off-line response, please do forward any good literature that you read on these topics; one can never know what he or she has missed).

 

Happy holidays.

 

Josh

 

From: <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>

Date: Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at 9:18 AM
To: Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>, Herman Gyr <g...@enterprisedevelop.com>, "d...@rodagroup.com" <d...@rodagroup.com>
Cc: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>, Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>, Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>

Regards

Robert

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[Brian Cady]

Robert Chris said: "We know with a high degree of confidence that emissions reductions and GGR at any scale, even if we got to net zero tomorrow and returned to 300ppm CO2 by next week, will not act swiftly enough to stop surface temperature rising sufficiently to tip some irreversible tipping points over the edge."

BC: Robert, Could you provide citations on this? In my ignorance, I don't yet know it.

Brian

-

On Tue, Dec 27, 2022 at 9:49 AM Sarnoff, Joshua <JSAR...@depaul.edu> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/91AEAF9D-1294-4780-BE9E-2151F5B18E56%40depaul.edu.

[Robert Chris]

Brian

Hansen's recent paper should be sufficient.

Removal of human-made GHGs from the air will be spurred by a carbon price, but GHG removal sufficient to reduce EEI to zero may require decades, if it is even feasible. Given that GHG forcing is still rising rapidly, highest priority must be given to phasing down emissions. However, given that GHG forcing is already 4W/m2, it may be necessary to temporarily affect EEI via solar radiation management (SRM), if the world is to avoid disastrous consequences, including large sea level rise.

Choosing 'may be necessary' rather than 'will be necessary', I take to be the conventional caution of a seasoned scientist not wishing to over-claim his results.  The substance of this paper is sufficient, in my view, to support 'is' in preference to 'may be'.  There is more in the literature but it requires combining elements from various sources to reach the same conclusion.

Robert

Regards

Robert

[Robert Chris]

Clive

I'm not at all convinced that 'most people' would be in the slightest swayed by the cancer analogy.  Most of 'most people' have not had cancer so the notion of iatrogenic harm will probably not resonate with their lived experience, even if explained in layman's terms. 

What we really need here are some communications specialists, people who know how to reach different publics with messages they can comprehend and that provoke them to act differently.  Knowing that we need to communicate is not the same as knowing how to!  Moreover, not all audiences are equal.  More communications effort needs to be focussed on those with greater power to influence events.  Knowing that, isn't the same as knowing who they are or how best to reach them.

Your comment about sulphur emissions illustrates systemic complexity.  Decision makers find it difficult to cope with complexity because even if they understand it, they don't have the tools necessary to cope with it.  They don't have the tools because like 'most people', they're still constrained by the limits of Cartesian-Baconian reductionism.  von Bertalanffy's the man, but who's heard of him?

Robert

Regards

Robert

[Clive Elsworth]

Robert

 

People don’t have to have had cancer to appreciate the benefits and downsides of cancer therapy, just as they don’t have to have had a leg amputated to appreciate the benefits of preventing the spread of gangrene, and so forth.

 

I think most people including decision-making leaders would appreciate Doug’s analogy (used by others too of course) and how it might apply to proposed climate interventions.

 

Clive

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/5ef8f034-b2e0-3c3d-a402-c38ea47ad561%40gmail.com.

[klin...@cox.net]

> Considering the pragmatic simple-minded audiences we hope to influence

> (eg, from Jane & Joe Six Pack and journalists and scientists to President Pro Tempore

> and Speaker of the House and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and White House OSTP)

> I'd suggest KISS with the analogy: CPR and tourniquet urgent triage intervention

> to save the dying victim until needed surgery can be performed.

> Best,

> Doug Grandt

- - - -

Friends,

We live in a political world where “everybody stay on an ad-agency-generated simple message” has become a shopworn substitute for collective political integrity. I gauge the public's mood to be strongly suspicious these days. If you go in with the triage to save the dying victim ad campaign, your opponents will eat you alive with an already existing question about whether you have proven your particular solution causes least harm, as opposed to your personal promise of such. In recent politics promises have often come cheap.

Yours,

Paul Klinkman

[Michael Routh]

All,

My last comments contributing to this lively conversation before moving forward in 2023…

The triage intervention analogy…to save the dying victim until surgery can be performed…can be helpful for those who are sufficiently informed that they accept the climate situation is as serious as a dying victim.

Hansen’s latest appears to me to be a plea, to those who are already aware and accept the climate situation is as serious as a dying victim, to also accept that the heat already in the pipeline and yet to equilibrate demands a more impactful and timely response (SRM) than ER and GHGR can provide.  For this group no analogy is needed.

For those who are not well informed, at best, climate change impacts seem too far removed from their daily lives to warrant prioritizing any climate intervention solution above the needs that impact them personally.  While this analogy could work for this demographic, it is meaningless unless they understand and accept their lives will be negatively impacted by “business as usual” and are sufficiently persuaded to prioritize this on their “important “ list for the foreseeable future.

That remains the inertia that needs to be overcome if we expect to garner broad support for any impactful climate intervention proposals that move from voluntary (buy an EV) to mandatory (alongside healthcare, heating, and transportation), and require the average taxpayer to pay something significant to fund scaled solutions.

Political leaders do not get elected on a platform of higher taxes for benefits decades in the future.  Until they do, we as scientists, engineers, and activists must continue to remain diligent and creative (if not patient) articulating both the reasons for urgent action and the risk/reward for the actions we propose.

Best to all,

Michael

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 28, 2022, at 9:25 AM, klin...@cox.net wrote:

> Considering the pragmatic simple-minded audiences we hope to influence

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[Robert Chris]

You may well be right.  But what you and I think about what 'most people' think is not necessarily what they do think.  That's why I suggested that we really need to get some communications specialists on board.

BTW, amputation to avoid gangrene is not an iatrogenic harm.  To be iatrogenic, the harm has to be unintentional.  The amputation is necessary to preserve life.  Conversely, with the adjuvant chemotherapy, the treatment may not be necessary, there's no way of knowing in the case of a specific individual.  The negative side effects may or may not afflict that individual, and you won't know until after they've been treated.  It's a very complicated analogy. 

Why not just tell people that doing whatever it is, is necessary, and we'll do our best to minimise any negative side effects and compensate, to the extent possible, should anyone suffer from any?  Is that message so difficult to grasp that it needs an analogy?

Robert

Regards

Robert

[Clive Elsworth]

Robert

 

I think it’s not a message that is difficult to understand, but difficult to accept if they see no precedent. The example of medical intervention provides an analogous precedent, making the overall message perhaps a little easier to trust for many people. Analogies provide a sort of familiar pathway through which people can begin to visualise what is being said, and understand it a little more than just superficially. That’s how I see it.

 

Clive

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/5fcf4b89-1a6f-b3cf-7e63-714cc56514a5%40gmail.com.

[Dan Miller]

Hansen explains why he had to use “may be”:

<image001.png>

Regards

Robert

[Douglas Grandt]

Paul,

I appreciate your perspective, but nobody has ever suggested an “ad campaign” involving a “particular solution” let alone what audiences we might target, general public or specific dignitaries—my choice of words “audiences we hope to influence” probably should have included the word “might” (my error of omission), i.e., “audiences we might hope to influence.”

My suggestion was in the context of the exchange among Dan, Greg, Herman, Robert and Clive in the thread below.

Your thoughts on that context would also be instructive.

Doug

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Dec 28, 2022, at 11:25 AM, klin...@cox.net wrote:

> Considering the pragmatic simple-minded audiences we hope to influence

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[klin...@cox.net]

Hi, planetary restorers,

When possible I prefer to discuss a smoker that has developed COPD/emphysema.  The effect of smoking will be cumulative on COPD.  If a smoker is diagnosed with mild COPD and he/she/they (pronouns) quit smoking now while they have mild COPD, there's a near-100% chance that they can manage the disease pretty well over a long lifespan.  If they keep smoking then there's a near-100% chance that they can have poorly managed COPD and a somewhat shortened lifespan.  If they still keep smoking after that, a hospital bed might keep them alive for now.  Without specifying how far the COPD has progressed, the onus is 100% on the smoker to change her/their/his behavior.  That type of disease progression argument mimics the nature of Arctic permafrost release.  Once a certain number of gigatons of greenhouse gases has migrated from the ground to the atmosphere, it's certainly not going back into the ground by itself for millenia. 

Lung cancer is too much about being lucky.  I've known smokers that have gotten lung cancer early, but I also know a smoker in his sixties.  Millions of smokers have rolled the dice and they at least have been personally lucky, at least so far.  This says something about human risk-taking.

Surgically removing a limb can be equally a dicey argument.  A modern surgeon may have to make a percentage call where sometimes there's a 50% chance that the patient will lose the limb anyway and a 5% extra chance of death for the patient if the limb isn't removed now.  At what percentages does the surgeon choose to save the life or save the limb?

Yours,

Paul Klinkman