Dangerous climate change is already affecting hundreds of millions in MENA alone, and it's escalating!

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John Nissen

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Jul 3, 2025, 9:19:24 AM7/3/25
to Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Wake Smith, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
The IPCC has patently failed to prevent dangerous climate change which was its mandate. There is no time to lose for deployment of powerful cooling intervention to reverse the trend towards more frequent and intense extremes, as witnessed in this article.

Cheers, John 

hhtps://www.arabnews.com/node/2606660 

Tom Goreau

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Jul 3, 2025, 9:26:32 AM7/3/25
to John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Wake Smith, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Governments have failed to follow IPCC’s badly flawed and incomplete advice, but IPCC can’t be blamed for manipulation of IPCC reports by lying governments.

 

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rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 3, 2025, 6:01:31 PM7/3/25
to Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

David and Tim

 

You misunderstand John Nissen’s point about the failure of the IPCC. 

 

As David states, “the objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.”

 

By systematically ignoring albedo, due to the corrupting influence of the renewable energy industry, the IPCC has failed in this essential mandate.

 

An Albedo Accord is now needed to recognise and reverse the primary existential threat of the darkening of the planet.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5357702-albedo-loss-global-warming/

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Tim Foresman
Sent: Friday, 4 July 2025 2:06 AM
To: David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] Dangerous climate change is already affecting hundreds of millions in MENA alone, and it's escalating!

 

Thanks David. As the former chief scientist for UNEP (2000-2003) it was good to see you correct this misunderstanding of our colleague.  However, there is the semi-fatal flaw in the IPCC associated with the conundrum of collegial consensus. Nations officially dilute the extremes for outlier opinions or assessments in the work, which lags behind science understanding by approximately five years. So, if the current administration in the USA doesn't approve, then the US scientists will not contribute. The remit of IPCC is not force or enforce policy.  Just the facts ma'am.

Peace, Tim

 

Dr. Tim Foresman

6219 Rockburn Hill Road

Elkridge, Maryland 21075


From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>
Sent: Thursday, July 3, 2025 11:49 AM
To: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] Dangerous climate change is already affecting hundreds of millions in MENA alone, and it's escalating!

 

John

 

This is a completely inaccurate assessment of what the IPCC is expected to do, and has been trying to do, ever since it was set up: From the IPCC website:

 

Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC reports are also a key input into international climate change negotiations. The IPCC is an organization of governments that are members of the United Nations or WMO. 

 

 

The “failures” are entirely on the part of governments in the IPCC membership: failures in their individual and collective policies to mitigate GHG emissions and implement significant adaptation strategies, and in many cases, efforts to dismiss, sideline, manipulate or ignore the findings of the scientific research community that has contributed uncountable person years of effort!

 

David 

From my cellphone

 

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



On Jul 3, 2025, at 6:19am, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:



The IPCC has patently failed to prevent dangerous climate change which was its mandate. There is no time to lose for deployment of powerful cooling intervention to reverse the trend towards more frequent and intense extremes, as witnessed in this article.

 

Cheers, John 

 

hhtps://www.arabnews.com/node/2606660 

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Doug Grandt

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Jul 4, 2025, 8:32:43 AM7/4/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Oswald,

To a small extent albedo is in fact a cause. That’s when we find that ice has shrunk and therefore the poles are less white. In this case albedo is a cause, at least within a chain auf causes and consequences.


Isn’t this saying albedo loss due to ice loss is a positive feedback … and thereby totally relevancy in accelerating global warming—and its disastrous effects—and thus begs our attention?

Best,
Doug Grandt

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Jul 4, 2025, at 3:47 AM, oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Hi Alan,

 

that’s an interesting widening of the conversation, but I do not think it is correct.

 

Global warming is not caused by diminishing albedo, neither efficient nor material in Aristoteles’ definition. Diminishing albedo is a mere symptom, not a cause. In your patient-allegory it would be red blisters forming from a sunburn. Saying that global warming is caused by lower albedo is almost like saying global warming was caused by higher temperatures.

 

Albedo would be a cause if for example the sun had come closer to earth. But it has not.

 

To a small extent albedo is in fact a cause. That’s when we find that ice has shrunk and therefore the poles are less white. In this case albedo is a cause, at least within a chain auf causes and consequences.

 

The other discussion is the question of treatment. In cancer treatment you have the tumour and its metastases. Treatment concentrates first on the tumour, even though patients often die from the metastases. A successful treatment eradicates the tumour, and then thereafter the metastases. In our case we must eradicate the GHG, then most of the radiation problem will go away with it.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

Von: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>
Gesendet: Freitag, 4. Juli 2025 09:16
An: oswald....@hispeed.ch
Cc: rob...@rtulip.net; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Betreff: Re: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

 

Let's calm down guys: You're talking about the efficient cause Oswald, while Robert is talking about the material cause. See below.

 

The material cause of a person needing medical attention might be injury or disease. The efficient cause might be that the person's parachute didn't open or that the person contracted tuberculosis. This example shows that whether the efficient cause or the material cause is more relevant to determining the remedy is case dependent, while the efficient cause is more relevant for assigning blame.

 

Alan

 

Four Causes

Aristotle's theory of causation identifies four distinct causes that contribute to the existence and nature of an object or event. Each case offers a unique perspective on why something exists or occurs. Let's explore them:

Material Cause

  1. Definition and explanation: The material cause refers to the physical substance or matter from which an object is composed.
  2. Example: In the case of a sculpture, the material cause would be the marble or clay used to create it.

Formal Cause

  1. Definition and explanation: The formal cause relates to the essential form or structure that gives an object its specific identity.
  2. Example: In the context of a building, the formal cause would be the architectural plans and design that determine its shape and purpose.

Efficient Cause

  1. Definition and explanation: The efficient cause represents the external agent or force that brings about the transformation or change in an object or event.
  2. Example: When a seed grows into a plant, the efficient cause would be the sunlight, water, and nutrients that enable its growth.

Final Cause

  1. Definition and explanation: The final cause refers to the ultimate purpose, goal, or end towards which an object or action is directed.
  2. Example: The final cause of studying may be acquiring knowledge and achieving personal growth.

 

On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 10:37PM oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear Robert,

 

Global Warming is caused by rising Greenhouse Gases, not by diminishing albedo. IPCC did not fail in this respect.

 

Keep to the facts.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

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Tom Goreau

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Jul 4, 2025, 8:40:46 AM7/4/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

It’s absurd to claim that IPCC scientists do not understand the fundamental role of albedo in planetary temperature, with GHG being a feedback on top of that. That is such fundamental physics that they don’t need to repeat it every time.

 

David Price

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Jul 4, 2025, 11:29:17 AM7/4/25
to John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
John

This is a completely inaccurate assessment of what the IPCC is expected to do, and has been trying to do, ever since it was set up: From the IPCC website:

Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC reports are also a key input into international climate change negotiations. The IPCC is an organization of governments that are members of the United Nations or WMO. 


The “failures” are entirely on the part of governments in the IPCC membership: failures in their individual and collective policies to mitigate GHG emissions and implement significant adaptation strategies, and in many cases, efforts to dismiss, sideline, manipulate or ignore the findings of the scientific research community that has contributed uncountable person years of effort!

David 
From my cellphone

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

On Jul 3, 2025, at 6:19 am, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:


The IPCC has patently failed to prevent dangerous climate change which was its mandate. There is no time to lose for deployment of powerful cooling intervention to reverse the trend towards more frequent and intense extremes, as witnessed in this article.

Cheers, John 

hhtps://www.arabnews.com/node/2606660 

--

Tim Foresman

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Jul 4, 2025, 11:30:00 AM7/4/25
to David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Thanks David. As the former chief scientist for UNEP (2000-2003) it was good to see you correct this misunderstanding of our colleague.  However, there is the semi-fatal flaw in the IPCC associated with the conundrum of collegial consensus. Nations officially dilute the extremes for outlier opinions or assessments in the work, which lags behind science understanding by approximately five years. So, if the current administration in the USA doesn't approve, then the US scientists will not contribute. The remit of IPCC is not force or enforce policy.  Just the facts ma'am.
Peace, Tim

Dr. Tim Foresman
6219 Rockburn Hill Road
Elkridge, Maryland 21075

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>
Sent: Thursday, July 3, 2025 11:49 AM
To: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] Dangerous climate change is already affecting hundreds of millions in MENA alone, and it's escalating!
 

John Nissen

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Jul 4, 2025, 1:14:32 PM7/4/25
to Tim Foresman, David Price, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Tim,

Did you think that David was correcting a mistake I made about the IPCC's mandate?  The aims of both the IPCC and the UNFCCC are to avoid dangerous climate change, or strictly "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" which comes to the same thing.  Here's an AI summary and another quote:

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) both aim to prevent "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". The FCCC, through Article 2, sets the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that avoids such interference. The IPCC provides scientific assessments to inform this goal, emphasizing the need for rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requires governments to avoid dangerous climate change (UNFCCC, 1992)

The point of my starting this thread is that we already have dangerous climate change, which is sometimes forgotten when we talk about the climate crisis as if in the future. Emissions reduction as a strategy has failed. And as Robert Tulip points out, addressing the climate crisis requires addressing the loss of albedo. most urgently in the Arctic.  Cooling intervention can not only reduce the risk of global catastrophes but also help the people already suffering from dangerous climate change in the form of weather extremes and sea level rise.

Cheers, John



Smith, Wake

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Jul 4, 2025, 4:24:58 PM7/4/25
to Tim Foresman, John Nissen, David Price, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Gents — I appreciate these emails and the passion for saving the planet that they express, but please drop me from this string. Thanks. 

Wake Smith
Research Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Lecturer, Yale School of the Environment


From: Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>
Sent: Friday, July 4, 2025 6:45 PM
To: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith, Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [HPAC] Dangerous climate change is already affecting hundreds of millions in MENA alone, and it's escalating!
 
Dear John et al: Thanks for your inquiry. I find it tiring to see the adamant stances within our community that speak more about their love of pedantry than stepping back and seeking common pathways to raise consciousness and potential collective action to repair, restore, and resane our approach to the future. I am personally very depressed by all that I see in the slow march towards cooperation and the increasingly rapidly declining set of Earth systems.
I met many fine folks in IPCC and UNFCC , however, not many are passionate for fixing or improving the structural flaws I witnessed in the UN organization.  The ego is satisfied to be selected into the august committees of the UN with a privileged 'world view" of how things are. The perks and reputation of being on the IPCC keeps people from expressing their real feelings. My German colleagues, and myself, were always aghast at the timidness of the IPCC projections. And the conundrum of collegial consensus succeeded in keeping peace for peace sake as we (my UNEP team) continued to carefully measured the unraveling of the Earth systems. We did not emphasize climate change in the Global Environmental Outlook-3 as the remaining categories (oceans, forests, coral reefs, agriculture, biodiversity, et cetera) guaranteed a rapidly diminishing planet Earth. The running joke was that we did not have to worry, because the nations only sent their minsters of the environment; a job at the bottom of the ranking for national importance. So, no worry. Not much is going to happen. The IPCC and meetings of the ministers are simply for show, not action. 
My only consolation is that I am child-free. I have lost faith in the future of the UN and the other organizations that have little or no clout against the financial vested organizations that support their national leaders. The game is terribly rigged and we pretend that harsh words by the IPCC or Greta Thunberg will move the needle. I still have great respect for the ideals and actions that you and others continue to share. 
Peace, Tim


Dr. Tim Foresman
6219 Rockburn Hill Road
Elkridge, Maryland 21075

From: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 4, 2025 1:04 PM
To: Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>
Cc: David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Tim Foresman

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Jul 4, 2025, 4:25:18 PM7/4/25
to John Nissen, David Price, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Dear John et al: Thanks for your inquiry. I find it tiring to see the adamant stances within our community that speak more about their love of pedantry than stepping back and seeking common pathways to raise consciousness and potential collective action to repair, restore, and resane our approach to the future. I am personally very depressed by all that I see in the slow march towards cooperation and the increasingly rapidly declining set of Earth systems.
I met many fine folks in IPCC and UNFCC , however, not many are passionate for fixing or improving the structural flaws I witnessed in the UN organization.  The ego is satisfied to be selected into the august committees of the UN with a privileged 'world view" of how things are. The perks and reputation of being on the IPCC keeps people from expressing their real feelings. My German colleagues, and myself, were always aghast at the timidness of the IPCC projections. And the conundrum of collegial consensus succeeded in keeping peace for peace sake as we (my UNEP team) continued to carefully measured the unraveling of the Earth systems. We did not emphasize climate change in the Global Environmental Outlook-3 as the remaining categories (oceans, forests, coral reefs, agriculture, biodiversity, et cetera) guaranteed a rapidly diminishing planet Earth. The running joke was that we did not have to worry, because the nations only sent their minsters of the environment; a job at the bottom of the ranking for national importance. So, no worry. Not much is going to happen. The IPCC and meetings of the ministers are simply for show, not action. 
My only consolation is that I am child-free. I have lost faith in the future of the UN and the other organizations that have little or no clout against the financial vested organizations that support their national leaders. The game is terribly rigged and we pretend that harsh words by the IPCC or Greta Thunberg will move the needle. I still have great respect for the ideals and actions that you and others continue to share. 
Peace, Tim


Dr. Tim Foresman
6219 Rockburn Hill Road
Elkridge, Maryland 21075

From: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 4, 2025 1:04 PM
To: Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>
Cc: David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 5, 2025, 12:13:18 AM7/5/25
to Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Oswald

 

Your comment helps me to understand why many people find climate change so hard to understand.  Gene is exactly right that in the ice ages albedo change drove CO2 change.  And yet the policy implications of this are just ignored in the current sole fixation on emissions in the IPCC.

 

A primary example of albedo loss is the evaporation of tropical marine clouds due to warming.  Less clouds means less reflection of sunlight to space and more sunlight getting through to the surface of the Earth. That extra sunlight not reflected is absorbed.  That warms the Earth.  Albedo loss causes warming.

 

The fact that the albedo loss was originally caused by GHGs does not mean the albedo loss does not cause warming as you assert, or that it can be reversed by cutting GHGs.  The physical processes don’t work that way.  Accelerating albedo loss causes far more warming than can be prevented by cutting GHGs.  Without an Albedo Accord the climate will collapse.

 

James Hansen has calculated that the warming effect of albedo loss over the last decade has been four times greater than the immediate warming effect of CO2 emissions. 

 

Let me repeat that in case readers skipped over it: James Hansen has calculated that the warming effect of albedo loss over the last  decade has been four times greater than the immediate warming effect of CO2 emissions.

 

I have noticed that people who are fixated on carbon appear unable to respond to this point and just prefer to ignore it.  It seems it is because it destroys their theory of change.  As Paul Simon said in The Boxer, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.  Upton Sinclair made a similar comment, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” These observations of the psychology of inner fragmentation reveal the pervasive unwillingness to integrate dissonant truths, often out of fear, pride, or pain.

 

That proud unwillingness is what is happening with the false theory that cutting emissions could be a primary factor in reversing warming.  Yes it is important to cut emissions, but let’s not pretend it will do anything to slow tipping points or minimise dangerous climate change.

 

The situation is that climate and energy need to be decoupled to overcome the extreme confusion that surrounds climate policy.

 

Some helpful AI discussion of these psychological barriers to effective climate action is attached.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Gene Fry
Sent: Saturday, 5 July 2025 10:00 AM
To: oswald....@hispeed.ch
Cc: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; rob...@rtulip.net; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

I think of coming out of ice ages.

Milankovich cycles are important, of course.

But, as I understand it, albedo change drives warming, drives greenhouse gas concentrations in that case.

An oversimplification of course.

 

I think of GHG emissions as the trigger and of albedo as the main cause of further warming.

They both cause warming.

              But over the last 25 years, the forcing from albedo change is 2.20 / 1.00 Watts / sq meter

as much as from GHG change.

 

              The top graph is from Jim Hansen’s Acceleration of Global Warming press conference.

The bottom one has a graph I pulled off the internet, plus my interpretation.

 

 

              It explains pretty well to me why

today’s CO2 levels will send Earth to 5°C equilibrium warming for 427 ppm CO2.

More actually, when other GHGs are factored in.

 

 

              The above graph is based on the pair below:

 

              Of course, that’s a thought experiment,

because several feedback processes add CO2 (& CH4 and probably N2O) to the air as Earth warms.

So 427 ppm CO2 is not stable, even if humans stopped GHG emissions cold turkey.

 

 

Gene Fry

 

 

 

An: 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Betreff: RE: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

David and Tim

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The Boxer.docx

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 5, 2025, 1:19:13 AM7/5/25
to Tom Goreau, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Tom – who ever said climate scientists don’t understand albedo?  Not me.  But I would say they don’t understand the role of albedo in climate policy.  This discussion is about climate policy, not climate science. My comment that IPCC ignores albedo was in the context of climate policy.

 

The IPCC's Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate discussed albedo loss—particularly the ice–albedo feedback—as a significant driver of Arctic amplification. However, the IPCC has never called for action to reverse albedo loss, in this report or elsewhere.

 

Some might draw the absurd and unscientific inference from IPCC statements that action on carbon could restore albedo, but this has no basis.  So we are just allowing the world to steadily darken, and keeping this fact out of the public eye.  Mustn’t worry people about our primary security risks, after all.

 

It is worth clarifying your comment that GHGs are a feedback on top of albedo.  GHG emissions are primarily a forcing, not a feedback.  GHG feedbacks from albedo loss such as permafrost melt, forest fires, ocean circulation change and heating of wetlands are only estimated to total less than 10% of the total GHG rise.  Of course these feedbacks will explode if the IPCC ostrich continues to keep its head in the sand about albedo.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

Tom Goreau

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Jul 5, 2025, 6:25:32 AM7/5/25
to Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

This exact point was made immediately after the first IPCC projections:

 

T. J. Goreau, 1990, Balancing atmospheric carbon dioxide, AMBIO, 19: 230-236

 

And has been made by every paloeclimatologist who has looked at the real world data, as opposed to those who use models of what they think might happen in a simple world.

 

An: 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Betreff: RE: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

David and Tim

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Tom Goreau

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Jul 5, 2025, 6:41:02 AM7/5/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Robert, you seem to be saying IPCC as a whole is completely witless about albedo?

 

All planetary physicists start from albedo, then add on GHG feedbacks.

 

Others start from what they think they know, and ignore the rest, as you say……….

 

It’s important to realize that temperature, albedo, and CO2 are so intimately linked by positive feedbacks in a non-linear system, and covary so tightly, that you can’t call any one of them the sole cause or driving force.

Tom Goreau

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Jul 5, 2025, 6:44:21 AM7/5/25
to Alan Kerstein, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

IPCC Mandate is climate science, NOT policy. Governments have clearly let the scientific community know they don’t want policy recommendations from low level servants, and will make decisions based on the usual back-stabbing beggar-your-neighbour criteria regardless of the facts.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, July 5, 2025 at 2:21
AM
To: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>
Cc: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>, Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>, David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>, Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>, Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>, Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>, Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>, Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

Robert,

 

I don't think that such a profoundly consequential fact can be proactively kept out of the public eye. High quality investigative journalism by any of the top media outlets could likely bring this to the forefront of awareness in some influential segment of public opinion. With backup from James Hansen or a similarly prominent expert on the science, a story on the theme of Climate Change: Incorrect Diagnosis Leading to Incorrect Treatment or something to that effect seems likely to get traction somewhere in the world. Sometimes stuff doesn't happen simply because nobody has stepped up to try to make it happen. I appreciate that you have been making the effort.

 

Alan

 

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Clive Elsworth

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Jul 5, 2025, 7:34:57 AM7/5/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Rosie Seville

Everyone seems to be forgetting that the largest climate feedback is water vapour, at least according to Jim Hansen.

 

In his 13 May 2025 communication Large Cloud Feedback Confirms High Climate Sensitivity: https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2025/CloudFeedback.13May2025.pdf Hansen proposed the following feedback ‘gains’:

  • Water vapour:             0.4
  • Clouds:                        0.25
  • Sea Ice:                        0.1

 

We can’t do anything about the water vapour feedback directly, but possibly can on the other two, with Marine Cloud Brightening and Ice Shields.

 

Water vapour adds about 1.5 W/m2 of warming for each 1°C rise in temperature. So, what worries me is the declining cloud fraction over the tropical ocean where the surface air temperature is becoming warmer and thus more humid. The additional water vapour then traps more heat in a double-whammy that warms the ocean faster. (i.e. increased shortwave heating from cloud loss + resulting increased water vapour heating.)

 

 

How those climate feedback gains multiply the global average temperature

In the above communication Hansen provides a simple feedback calculation for those feedback gains.

 

Feedback multiplier:

            = 1 / (1 – feedback gains)

 

For just water vapour and clouds the multiplier is:

= 1 / (1 – (0.4 + 0.25) )

            = 1 / 0.35

            = 2.86

 

Including sea ice, the feedback multiplier becomes:

= 1 / (1 – (0.4 + 0.25 + 0.1) )

= 1 (1 – 0.75)

= 1 / 0.25

= 4

 

That’s a big change of feedback multiplier for the inclusion of the smallest gain (sea ice). This illustrates the power of interacting feedbacks, and why it’s so difficult to predict the rate of future temperature rise. The difficulty comes from a small error in a feedback gain producing a big error in the feedback multiplier.

 

 

How Hansen calculates his Climate Sensitivity of 4.8°C

Equilibrium temperature Teq is calculated as:

 

Teq  =  Feedback multiplier  x  expected temperature produced by GHG-only forcing, i.e. without feedbacks

 

The GHG-only temperature (no feedbacks) for a doubling of CO2 is thought to be about 1.2°C

 

Climate sensitivity is the equilibrium temperature (Teq) for a doubling of CO2.

 

So, Hansen’s equilibrium climate sensitivity (for a doubling of CO2) of 4.8°C comes from: 4 x 1.2°C

 

In his case, he and his team back up that claim by the analysis of the paleoclimate record and recent observations. So, it’s a mystery that the media’s favourite climate pundits prefer the claims of scientists who rely on modelling only.

 

 

Why the oceans need to be cooled

The last Forster measurements (in 2024) of total climate forcing (all GHGs + aerosols) add up to 3.3 W/m2. Since a doubling of CO2 produces 3.7 W/m2 we are almost 90% there. Both water vapour and clouds are instant ‘fast feedbacks’, so as Hansen said long ago the only thing holding back a sudden rise to >4°C is the enormous amount of energy needed to heat up the oceans. But as we know, sea surface temperatures are rising fast. (His BFD – big deal.)

 

IMHO that is why especially the tropical and subtropical oceans need to be cooled back down. That would (should – all else being equal) naturally reverse the current loss of cloud albedo there. Time is running short. Removing both the cloud feedback and water vapour feedback would buy us a lot more time.

 

Clive

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Tom Goreau

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Jul 5, 2025, 7:49:53 AM7/5/25
to Cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Rosie Seville

We can’t affect evaporation of water vapour from the ocean because we can’t control the winds and waves, but we greatly affect the release of water to the atmosphere on land, which is more than 90% due to plant transpiration.

 

Destruction of Biomass greatly reduces transpiration sources of atmospheric moisture over land, causing drought and forest fires that turn entire forest ecosystems from carbon sinks into carbon sources.

 

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rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 5, 2025, 8:03:42 AM7/5/25
to Tom Goreau, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

But Tom, the IPCC fail to adequately fulfil their defined mandate to “provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies”.

 

It reminds me of a famous Australian lecture by WEH Stanner, on The Great Australian Silence, in which he observed that Aboriginal people had been systematically written out of Australian history as though they did not exist.  Governments could not form decent policies when the supposed experts failed to provide essential information due to prejudice.

 

The same thing is happening in climate policy.  IPCC are failing to provide governments with scientific information about the reality and consequences of the collapse of albedo, or about the real potential of possible remedies.  When James Hansen tries to get these facts into reports he gets censored and ignored.  IPCC scientists are a dismal pack of cowards, placing our planetary future in severe jeopardy for apparent motives of careerism and to protect the commercial interests of the renewable energy industry.

H simmens

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Jul 5, 2025, 8:31:48 AM7/5/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Tom Goreau, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Robert,

As I understand it for better or worse the IPCC relies almost exclusively on summarizing and synthesizing peer reviewed academic data with the addition of a limited amount of so-called “grey literature”. 

Given that constraint what academic or gray literature do you believe the IPCC should have included in their analysis and synthesis for AR six that they presumably chose not to include on the relationship of albedo to global heating, recognizing that the literature publication cut off date was roughly around the end of 2020. 

I think it’s important to be more specific to back up your claim that the IPCC scientists are “a dismal pack of cowards.”

You have also - not for the first time - claimed that IPCC scientists are motivated - at least in part - by a desire to “ protect the commercial interests of the renewable energy industry“.

That is an extremely extremely serious charge and I would ask that you provide explicit documentation to support that charge or withdraw that assertion. 

Thank you

Herb


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


On Jul 5, 2025, at 8:03 AM, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:



Clive Elsworth

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Jul 5, 2025, 8:33:48 AM7/5/25
to Tom Goreau, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Rosie Seville

Tom

 

Isn’t evaporation of water vapour from the ocean also a function of sea surface temperature and surface air temperature?

 

Destruction of Biomass also reduces its terpene emissions that produce secondary organic aerosols. With less aerosol over thinned out forests there’s less cloud albedo to keep them cool. (I know you know that.)

 

Clive

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Tom Goreau

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Jul 5, 2025, 8:53:00 AM7/5/25
to Cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Rosie Seville

Yes of course, but the flux depends on winds, waves, and currents.

 

From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Clive Elsworth <Cl...@EndorphinSoftware.co.uk>
Date: Saturday, July 5, 2025 at 8:33
AM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>, rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>, 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>, oswald....@hispeed.ch <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>, 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>, 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>, 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>, 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>, 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>, 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>, 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>, 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>, 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>, 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, 'Rosie Seville' <Rosie....@dft.gov.uk>
Subject: RE: [prag] RE: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

Tom

 

Isn’t evaporation of water vapour from the ocea.n also a function of sea surface temperature and surface air temperature?

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 5, 2025, 10:24:32 AM7/5/25
to H simmens, Tom Goreau, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Herb, thanks.  Hansen has written extensively in criticism of the IPCC.  He states “Seth Borenstein, the climate science writer for the Associated Press was told by his go-to climate experts that he should not even write about our paper “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise, and Superstorms;” thus he did not. The paper was also blackballed by the IPCC AR6 report; not a single mention in the several-thousand-page report.”  Hansen’s 2007 paper, Scientific reticence and sea level rise, provided an early exploration of this broad problem of IPCC failure.

 

Do you really think that AR6 adequately discussed peer reviewed geoengineering research papers?  I have not seen IPCC discussion of the Royal Society’s 2009 estimate that solar geoengineering is 1000 times better value for money than decarbonisation as a climate response.

 

The policy priorities of many IPCC scientists reflect their acceptance of the moral hazard fallacy.  This serves to prevent solar geoengineering research for fear of undermining momentum for decarbonisation. This reasoning, though framed as ethical caution, sustains a policy narrative in which the renewable energy transition is treated as the sole credible path to climate mitigation. In practice, this narrative serves the commercial interests of the renewable sector by marginalising sunlight reflection, ignoring mounting evidence that decarbonisation alone is insufficient to reverse warming.   Properly factoring in planetary albedo loss would destroy the theory of change required to justify renewable energy subsidies.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

Tom Goreau

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Jul 5, 2025, 11:35:04 AM7/5/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, H simmens, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Because Hansen’s model contains more variables and feedbacks it is both more realistic than the herd, and also an “outlier” that is rejected for that reason alone……

 

In any case, the real world data trumps any model……….

Robert Chris

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Jul 5, 2025, 4:35:13 PM7/5/25
to Anton Alferness, Oswald Petersen, Alan Kerstein, Robert Tulip, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
I don't really understand what this thread is all about.  Why is there so much interest in what causes global warming, and virtually none on what to do about it?  The assumption that the only way to avoid a harm is to do the opposite of what causes the harm displays a certain childlike naivete.  It might be endearing in a child, but here it is somewhat misplaced.
The extent to which albedo may or may not contribute to global warming may be of interest to the climate science nerds, but the fact that it has a key role to play in what to do about it, should be of interest to everyone.
Regards
RobertC

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Anton Alferness <an...@paradigmclimate.com>
Sent: 05 July 2025 21:00
To: Oswald Petersen <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Cc: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] IPCC Failure
 
Oswald, 

You seemed to ignore the contribution feedback loops have on effects like temperature when you said global warming is not caused by albedo loss, and yet albedo loss does contribute to global warming. 





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Cc: 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Betreff: RE: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

David and Tim

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Sev Clarke

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Jul 5, 2025, 8:07:15 PM7/5/25
to Dr. Thomas Goreau, Clive Elsworth, Robert Tulip, Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Professor Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun D Fitzgerald, Herb Simmens, Douglas Graham MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Rosie Seville
Tom,

Whilst we cannot control the winds or waves, there are some ways that we can influence ocean water evaporation. Amongst these I would include MCB measures, such as my Seawater Atomisers using wind power, and my two ways of generating reflective and refractive nanobubbles in the sea surface microlayer (SSML).  Sunlight and heat refracted partly horizontally, then absorbed by material, would have the effect of increasing the temperature of the SSML at the expense of deeper water and thus of increasing the evaporation rate. It might also increase the rate of production of cloud condensation nuclei from organics in the SSML, as would dissemination of my Buoyant Flakes via the additional DMS they released. More nuclei would tend to reduce atmospheric water vapour concentrations.
MCB moisture blown inland and captured by plants would allow greater transpiration from terrestrial vegetation. 

Cheers,
Sev

In his case, he and his team back up that claim by the analysis of the paleoclimate record and recent observations. So, it’s a mystery thatthe media’s favourite climate pundits prefer the claims of scientists who rely on modelling only.
<image001.png>
<image002.png>
 
              It explains pretty well to me why
today’s CO2 levels will send Earth to 5°C equilibrium warming for 427 ppm CO2.
More actually, when other GHGs are factored in.
 
<image003.png>
 
              The above graph is based on the pair below:
<image004.png>

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 6, 2025, 9:35:56 AM7/6/25
to Tom Goreau, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Yes Tom, IPCC as a whole is completely witless about albedo. 

 

This failure was highlighted in the attached 2021 Economist article about the IPCC and geoengineering that I linked in my article in The Hill. 

 

The witlessness is shown in these comments on the IPCC 2021 Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).

 

“this time round there is no discussion [of geoengineering] in the Summary for Policy Makers. Asked why, the authors say, reasonably, that there is not room for everything: the draft report stretches to almost 4,000 pages. What is more, the second and third parts of the assessment, which deal with impacts, adaptation and mitigation, will also look at the question when they are released next year. Only after they are published will it be possible to take a view in the round.”

 

This is equivalent to a review of the Solar System that omits all discussion of the Sun.  For the AR6 Summary for Policy Makers to omit all discussion of geoengineering reflects a basic failure to understand that restoring lost planetary albedo is absolutely necessary to reverse climate change. That failure is witless.

 

And their lame excuses – oh there are lots of things to cover, and we will talk about it later – do not cut the mustard. 

 

The second and third parts of the assessment only offer incoherent dismissals.  WG2 failed to model any scenarios involving SRM in the impacts projections.  WG3 explicitly excluded SRM from mitigation scenarios due to alleged lack of robust modelling and deep ethical and political disagreement.  In fact these ethical and political disagreements are incredibly shallow.  They are all about protecting the commercial interests of the renewable energy industry, as I explained in my recent reply to Herb, while ignoring practical responses to our planetary existential crisis.  That is thoroughly immoral and incompetent.  Witless.

 

With your focus on the extinction of coral reefs at 1.5 degrees, you should appreciate that only rebrightening of the planet, globally and locally, offers any hope of preventing this catastrophe.  But the IPCC is a lost cause.  An Albedo Accord may need to be developed against their active opposition, in alliance with industries who face collapse from climate change.

 

The flood of data since AR6, notably the Loeb et al 2021 finding of significant albedo decline from 2001–2019, removes any future excuse.  This paper used CERES satellite data over two decades to measure the statistically significant drop in Earth's albedo, equivalent to an increase of 0.5 W/m² in net absorbed solar radiation, observing that marine cloud loss in the eastern Pacific was a major cause.

 

Thanks very much Tom for your engagement on this.  On your point about a single warming driver, it seems clear that emissions are the forcing while albedo loss is a feedback.  But that feedback is a waking climate giant that threatens to totally swamp everything we could do about carbon.

 

On the witlessness of IPCC, an incident that made this clear to me was the reply of IPCC author Professor Mark Howden, Climate Change leader at the ANU, to a question at a public forum from HPAC member Peter Lindenmayer, dismissing all discussion of geoengineering by reference to the Harvey Weinstein movie Snow Piercer

Economist 2021 Geoengineering is conspicuously absent from the IPCC.pdf

Tom Goreau

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Jul 6, 2025, 9:47:43 AM7/6/25
to Sev Clarke, Clive Elsworth, Robert Tulip, Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Professor Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun D Fitzgerald, Herb Simmens, Douglas Graham MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Rosie Seville

Thanks, Sev, good points! One needs to affect air-sea gas-exchange significantly to have desired effects, implying energy inputs similar to what solar energy does every day to drive the planet’s winds, waves, and currents. That’s a vast amount, very hard to do, takes a very big whipping spoon to stir up all that reflective froth, bubbles, spume, and aerosols needed to do the job. Good luck, I hope it works as hoped!

 

Humans do indeed affect ocean-atmosphere heat and water vapour transport but only on very local scales. For example, since sewage pumped into the ocean is fresh water, it floats right to the surface and in calm conditions forms very shallow surface rivers of floating nutrient rich surface water that I have tracked across entire Maldivian atolls from the floating grease slick on top, punctuated with little organic lumps and bright floating plastic, like raisins in a cake. For sure this alters the surface gradients greatly, but ephemerally. In general though, these organic rich sewage and ship oil surfactants will act to IMPEDE ocean-atmosphere fluxes rather than accentuate them.

Tom Goreau

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Jul 6, 2025, 10:47:03 AM7/6/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

A couple clarifications.

 

I do NOT support 1.5C: it is a death sentence for coral reefs and low coasts. Preindustrial levels need to be reached as fast as possible.

 

The highly interdependent processes controlling temperature, water, CO2, and other feedbacks means that these variables have to managed AS A GROUP, not in isolation (systems versus linear thinking).

 

With regard to albedo modification: the very recent paper on the potential of high stratosphere SAI to increase Top of the Atmosphere radiation, by locally heating  the uppermost CO2 that is not in thermal contact with lower layers and should not alter them much. The concept seems physically sound but needs urgent exploration.

 

The interesting heat balance satellite studies are unfortunately too short for much confidence in long term trends, as in some exponential extrapolations being circulated! That inadequate data is because of failure of both Bushes to fund NOAA satellites needed for long term data.

 

With your view of IPCC being “witless, immoral, and incompetent”, I suspect omission more than commission, they were just trying to foist the entire problem on to another Working Group, and with enough shuffling, the issue might vanish entirely by falling between the cracks!

 

This almost inevitably happens with large groups were everyone touts their favourite personal simple answer! See Mancur Olson where everybody speaks about their pet obsessions at such length that nothing ever gets decided because they run out of time! Wikipedia:

In his first book, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965), he theorized that what stimulates people to act in groups is incentive; members of large groups do not act in accordance with a common interest unless motivated by personal gain (economic, social, etc.). While small groups can act on shared objectives, large groups will not work towards shared objectives unless their individual members are sufficiently motivated.[7]

 

Indeterminate bumbling by special interests who won’t look at alternatives guarantees paralysis, and is perhaps more likely than your claim that “They (IPCC) are all about protecting the commercial interests of the renewable energy industry ……. while ignoring practical responses to our planetary existential crisis.  

 

This an inversion of Orwellian magnitude! Not only does it confuse IPCC and Government roles in making UNCCC policy decisions, UNCCC polices set by the dominant governments aims solely to protect the commercial interests of the oil, coal, and gas industries. despite all the facts, that’s why they ignore IPCC’s incomplete and flawed analysis, and refuse any effective action on climate change, even the misguided and ineffective ones!

Robert Chris

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Jul 6, 2025, 11:11:57 AM7/6/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Thanks Oswald.  That makes your position very clear.  Could i ask you to justify the middle statement. Numbers please.  How much GGR by when?  Reducing emissions to what by when?  With what impact on GSAT by when?
Regards
RobertC



Sent from my Galaxy


-------- Original message --------
From: "oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 06/07/2025 16:03 (GMT+00:00)
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>, 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>, 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>, 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>, 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>, 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>, 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>, 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>, 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>, 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>, 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: AW: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

Hello Robert,

 

  • Emission Reduction Alone will not fix global warming.
  • GHG Removal + Emission Reduction would fix global warming.
  • GHG Removal + Emission Reduction would also fix albedo loss.

 

Regards

 

Oswald

Von: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>
Gesendet: Samstag, 5. Juli 2025 06:13
An: 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>; oswald....@hispeed.ch
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>; 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Betreff: RE: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

Oswald

 

Your comment helps me to understand why many people find climate change so hard to understand.  Gene is exactly right that in the ice ages albedo change drove CO2 change.  And yet the policy implications of this are just ignored in the current sole fixation on emissions in the IPCC.

 

A primary example of albedo loss is the evaporation of tropical marine clouds due to warming.  Less clouds means less reflection of sunlight to space and more sunlight getting through to the surface of the Earth. That extra sunlight not reflected is absorbed.  That warms the Earth.  Albedo loss causes warming.

 

The fact that the albedo loss was originally caused by GHGs does not mean the albedo loss does not cause warming as you assert, or that it can be reversed by cutting GHGs.  The physical processes don’t work that way.  Accelerating albedo loss causes far more warming than can be prevented by cutting GHGs.  Without an Albedo Accord the climate will collapse.

 

James Hansen has calculated that the warming effect of albedo loss over the last decade has been four times greater than the immediate warming effect of CO2 emissions. 

 

Let me repeat that in case readers skipped over it: James Hansen has calculated that the warming effect of albedo loss over the last  decade has been four times greater than the immediate warming effect of CO2 emissions.

 

I have noticed that people who are fixated on carbon appear unable to respond to this point and just prefer to ignore it.  It seems it is because it destroys their theory of change.  As Paul Simon said in The Boxer, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.  Upton Sinclair made a similar comment, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” These observations of the psychology of inner fragmentation reveal the pervasive unwillingness to integrate dissonant truths, often out of fear, pride, or pain.

 

That proud unwillingness is what is happening with the false theory that cutting emissions could be a primary factor in reversing warming.  Yes it is important to cut emissions, but let’s not pretend it will do anything to slow tipping points or minimise dangerous climate change.

 

The situation is that climate and energy need to be decoupled to overcome the extreme confusion that surrounds climate policy.

 

Some helpful AI discussion of these psychological barriers to effective climate action is attached.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 


Sent: Saturday, 5 July 2025 10:00 AM
To: oswald....@hispeed.ch

Cc: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; rob...@rtulip.net; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

I think of coming out of ice ages.

Milankovich cycles are important, of course.

But, as I understand it, albedo change drives warming, drives greenhouse gas concentrations in that case.

An oversimplification of course.

 

I think of GHG emissions as the trigger and of albedo as the main cause of further warming.

They both cause warming.

              But over the last 25 years, the forcing from albedo change is 2.20 / 1.00 Watts / sq meter

as much as from GHG change.

 

              The top graph is from Jim Hansen’s Acceleration of Global Warming press conference.

The bottom one has a graph I pulled off the internet, plus my interpretation.

 

 

              It explains pretty well to me why

today’s CO2 levels will send Earth to 5°C equilibrium warming for 427 ppm CO2.

More actually, when other GHGs are factored in.

 

 

              The above graph is based on the pair below:

 

 

Gene Fry

 

 

 

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Doug Grandt

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Jul 6, 2025, 1:09:11 PM7/6/25
to Chris Robert, oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, simmens Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Robert and Oswald,

Since time is of the essence 🤔 may I remind you of an old sage’s wisdom, which may qualify as an appropriate metaphor:

Candy* is dandy, but 
Liquor^ is quicker        

*Sweet, alluring, acceptable, but deadly
^Quick but taboo, socially unacceptable
~~~~~~~~~~
* ERA is candy for the masses
^ SRM is quick, effective triage, CPR
+ GGR is necessary liposuction (MIA)

Cheers 😁
Doug Grandt

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Jul 6, 2025, at 11:30 AM, oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Hi Robert,

  • Remove GHG to pre-industrial level. Doable within 30 years.
  • Reduce GHG emissions to pre-industrial level. Doable within 100 years.

Albedo loss in form of lost ice cover will take hundreds of years to get fixed. But that’s a minor issue in the great climate picture.

 

I leave the number crunching to people who know better how to do it.

 

Regards

 

Oswald

 

<image001.png>

<image002.png>

 

              It explains pretty well to me why

today’s CO2 levels will send Earth to 5°C equilibrium warming for 427 ppm CO2.

More actually, when other GHGs are factored in.

 

<image003.png>

 

              The above graph is based on the pair below:

<image004.png>

Robert Chris

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Jul 6, 2025, 2:02:53 PM7/6/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Oswald
That does indeed fix global warming.  By my calculations it reduces the warming to 1oC by 2055, it continues to fall to 0.5oC by 2063 and then slowly rises, stabilising at around 0.7oC by 2100.  Problem solved.  Well done!  (I can change these figures a bit by fiddling with some of the parameters like the value of ECS, but they don't make a material difference - the programme you outline fixes global warming.)
Now let's look at what has to be done to get there.
Preindustrial emissions were 0.01GtCO2/yr.  That's effectively zero.  So, you're asking for emissions, not net emissions but gross emissions, to be totally eliminated within 75 years. 
In addition to that, to reduce GHG to preindustrial, by which I assume you mean returning atmospheric CO2 to 277ppm, would require CDR starting in 2027 to reach 164GtCO2/yr by 2060 (I've allowed an extra 3 years beyond your 30 years because of the slightly delayed start), after which it would be abruptly switched off. 
(Before you ask, I should also add that this calculation also assumes that non-CO2 emissions will be reduced alongside the CO2.  If anthropogenic methane emissions were brought back to preindustrial faster that CO2, this would accelerate the process marginally but not make a material difference to the rate at which CDR would have to grow or emissions would have to fall.)
You are absolutely right that you don't need SRM to fix global warming.  All you have to do now is explain how emissions will be eliminated within 75 years and CDR scaled to 164GtCO2/yr between 2027 and 2060 and then abruptly stopped.  If you can do that convincingly and support the implicit assumption that it is so certain that this can be done without any help from SRM, then you'll make an awful lot of people, including me, very happy.
Oh yes, and when you're explaining this, don't just focus on the technology RD&D, you also have to explain how it can actually be made to happen within the context of national and international politics.
I look forward to discovering more.
The stakes are high, so this gamble has to have very very high probability of being won.  You're the one that doesn't want to gamble on SRM.  Convince us that we don't have to gamble on decarbonisation.
Regards
Robert



From: oswald....@hispeed.ch <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2025 16:30
To: 'Robert Chris' <robert...@gmail.com>; rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>; 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: AW: AW: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

Hi Robert,

  • Remove GHG to pre-industrial level. Doable within 30 years.
  • Reduce GHG emissions to pre-industrial level. Doable within 100 years.

Albedo loss in form of lost ice cover will take hundreds of years to get fixed. But that’s a minor issue in the great climate picture.

 

I leave the number crunching to people who know better how to do it.

 

Regards

 

Oswald

 

 

Von: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Gesendet: Sonntag, 6. Juli 2025 17:12

Robert Chris

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Jul 6, 2025, 2:05:50 PM7/6/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Oswald,
Apologies, I misread your email.  I thought you'd proposed eliminating emissions by 2100, when, in fact, you said in 100 years.  Give me a15 minutes and I'll recalculate.
Regards
Robert



From: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2025 19:02
To: oswald....@hispeed.ch <oswald....@hispeed.ch>; rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>

Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>; 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: AW: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

Robert Chris

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Jul 6, 2025, 2:09:45 PM7/6/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Oswald,
It didn't take 15 minutes.
Extending the elimination of CO2 emissions by 25 years means that the CDR requirement increases slightly to 170GtCO2/yr.  Everything else remains much the same.
Regards
Robert

From: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Sent: 06 July 2025 19:05

Robert Chris

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Jul 6, 2025, 2:24:00 PM7/6/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Oswald
You might also be interested to know that much the same temperature profile could be achieved by following your prescription of eliminating CO2 emissions by 2125 but rather than doing any CDR, just do SRM starting in 2035 and building to 1W/m-2 by 2050 and then gradually reducing it to 0.75 by 2200.
Increasing albedo by 1Wm-2 represents an increase in albedo of 0.3%.  The recent changes in cloud cover, loss of ice cover and shipping bunker fuel have had a bigger impact than that in the opposite direction.  The sky didn't fall in.  The world just got hotter.  You might also try to explain exactly what your problem is with such a minor change in albedo alongside the elimination of CO2 emissions.
Do you think there might be a lot less risk associated cooling by trivial amounts of albedo change than by gargantuan amounts of CDR?
Might there also be some benefit in expending all the effort and cost that would have been devoted to building CDR, to accelerating the elimination of CO2?
Regards
Robert

From: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Sent: 06 July 2025 19:09

Gene Fry

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Jul 6, 2025, 4:41:12 PM7/6/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
I think of coming out of ice ages.
Milankovich cycles are important, of course.
But, as I understand it, albedo change drives warming, drives greenhouse gas concentrations in that case.
An oversimplification of course.

I think of GHG emissions as the trigger and of albedo as the main cause of further warming.
They both cause warming.
But over the last 25 years, the forcing from albedo change is 2.20 / 1.00 Watts / sq meter
as much as from GHG change.

The top graph is from Jim Hansen’s Acceleration of Global Warming press conference.
The bottom one has a graph I pulled off the internet, plus my interpretation.

Screenshot 2025-07-04 at 7.50.25 PM.png
Screenshot 2025-07-04 at 7.50.57 PM.png

It explains pretty well to me why
today’s CO2 levels will send Earth to 5°C equilibrium warming for 427 ppm CO2.
More actually, when other GHGs are factored in.

Screenshot 2025-07-04 at 7.57.08 PM.png

The above graph is based on the pair below:
Screenshot 2025-07-04 at 7.58.32 PM.png

Alan Kerstein

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Jul 6, 2025, 4:44:11 PM7/6/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Tom Goreau, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Robert,

I don't think that such a profoundly consequential fact can be proactively kept out of the public eye. High quality investigative journalism by any of the top media outlets could likely bring this to the forefront of awareness in some influential segment of public opinion. With backup from James Hansen or a similarly prominent expert on the science, a story on the theme of Climate Change: Incorrect Diagnosis Leading to Incorrect Treatment or something to that effect seems likely to get traction somewhere in the world. Sometimes stuff doesn't happen simply because nobody has stepped up to try to make it happen. I appreciate that you have been making the effort.

Alan

On Fri, Jul 4, 2025 at 10:19 PM <rob...@rtulip.net> wrote:

Anton Alferness

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Jul 6, 2025, 4:45:14 PM7/6/25
to Oswald Petersen, Alan Kerstein, Robert Tulip, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Oswald, 

You seemed to ignore the contribution feedback loops have on effects like temperature when you said global warming is not caused by albedo loss, and yet albedo loss does contribute to global warming. 





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Smith, Wake

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Jul 6, 2025, 4:45:24 PM7/6/25
to Robert Chris, Anton Alferness, Oswald Petersen, Alan Kerstein, Robert Tulip, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Folks — Kindly remove me from this string please.

Wake Smith
Research Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Lecturer, Yale School of the Environment


From: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 5, 2025 9:35 PM
To: Anton Alferness <an...@paradigmclimate.com>; Oswald Petersen <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Cc: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith, Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Robert Chris

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Jul 6, 2025, 5:45:29 PM7/6/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Oswald
A great story that's full of potential but it's a long way from being reality and therefore, by definition, there's a lot of uncertainty that it'll become reality at the speed and scale necessary.  In your words, it's a gamble.
You didn't put any numbers on the plan.  I find it hard to believe that it could remove GHGs at the scale and speed your top line proposal implied.  Note that my figures did assume that non-CO2 emissions would be run down alongside CO2 emissions and since methane is short-lived, what's up there already would quickly be oxidised.
You say that the oceans can take up all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere.  That may be true in principle, but the numbers suggest that if it were to happen it would take a very long time.  The total marine biomass is only about 6GtC so to sequester the 320GtC in excess of the preindustrial atmospheric 277ppm would require marine biomass to grow fiftyfold.  I need some convincing that that is going to happen at a rate that will be sufficiently fast to keep GSAT within safe limits.
Your argument will not be convincing unless it is accompanied by some numbers that you can justify with some empirical evidence.  The narrative is nice but it's not enough.
Nothing you've said here suggests to me that prudence does not demand SRM as an additional measure.  We need to run both horses at the same time.  It isn't a race between them; it's a collaboration because they can do the heavy lifting better together.
Do what you're doing but please don't overclaim its certainty, and recognise that SRM is there to help by making the entire effort less risky.  Whatever risks may be associated with SRM they are most likely to be considerably smaller than the risks without it.
Regards
Robert

From: oswald....@hispeed.ch <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Sent: 06 July 2025 20:36

To: 'Robert Chris' <robert...@gmail.com>; rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>; 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: AW: AW: [HPAC] IPCC Failure
 

Dear Robert,

 

thanks a lot!

 

  1. For taking my proposal seriously, I really appreciate it.
  2. For accepting the proposal to the extent that you admit it would work if the GHG removal part works.

 

Now regarding the task:

 

GHG Removal (I do not use the term CDR here because it does not include all GHG) means mainly removing methane and CO2. It also helps if tropospheric ozone levels are reduced, which is the case when methane levels sink. Another important variable is SO2 and NOx levels, which should be maintained at current levels.

 

Methane:

 

According to our calculations the process of methane removal takes around 20 years. I said 10 years more because we need to develop technology, run field tests, do more research and build the technology and infrastructure. Methane removal is done via EAMO, it is all described on our websites and in a number of scientific papers …

 

CO2:

 

Tropospheric Ferric Chloride Dispersion (TFCD) is the dispersion method for methane removal, but it also causes Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF). We are not yet sure about the efficiency of the TFCD/OIF process, but it does not really matter. OIF is the method for CDR. The oceans have the capacity to take up all excess CO2 from the atmosphere, and they can be triggered to do so with OIF. Some of that will be done via TFCD, and the rest, if any, can be done with additional iron dispersal.  

 

TFCD also contributes to Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB).

 

These methods need to be researched, verified and proposed by universities and atmospheric chemistry institutes from all over the world. In the end we need IPCC to support this program. To that end it would be helpful if atmospheric chemists, biologists and oceanographers (…) stop pointing their fingers at politicians and start doing their homework. We need their help here.

 

Solving the climate crisis is a task which requires scientists to meddle with the atmosphere and find ways to get it right. As long as they have something like a moral hazard or similar restriction in their minds, they are unable to do this work. They need to get their hands dirty and manage the climate. Urgently.

 

I am currently writing a book on the subject. It will come out later this year. It is a complex matter, but the remedies are not very expensive, they are safe, and they are natural. The main blockage is not technical, not financial and not political. The main blockage is in our minds. We need to understand, that the global climate is something we can and have to manage.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 6, 2025, 8:36:44 PM7/6/25
to Tom Goreau, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Tom

 

I hope you don’t think anyone in these discussions has misunderstood your observation that 1.5 is a death sentence for coral.  You are a true prophet who the world needs to hear.

 

Your analysis of systems and linear thinking does however appear to show some confusion.   Climate change is both a systems problem and a linear problem.  The systems problem is to understand the multiple interacting lines of causation that are causing warming and related dangerous impacts.  The linear problem is how to get from here to there, from heating to cooling, finding the critical path that can enable a steady reduction in heat, the sequence of steps that can reverse our planetary trajectory from warming to cooling. 

 

The sequence proposed by IPCC is

1. Cut Emissions;

2. Remove GHGs;

3. Consider sunlight reflection in the distant future. 

 

This sequence has no prospect of success for reasons of physics, politics, economics, materials, time and psychology.  The latest conversation between Dan Miller and Leon Simons published today demonstrates this failure convincingly. The IPCC consensus sequence must be reversed to prevent collapse. 

 

Reversing the sequence requires the following steps:

1. Establish an Albedo Accord to restore planetary reflectivity;

2. Work out how to convert GHGs into non-warming forms at trillion tonne scale;   

3. Reform the energy sector based on economic and environmental needs.

 

This reversed sequence reflects how marginal fossil fuel reduction is to stopping climate collapse.  It is a paradigm shift that is urgently needed.  A linear engineering critical path is needed to define the required dependencies between steps in effective climate action.  Actually making things happen means agreeing to the Gannt Chart.

 

In case Herb Simmens is reading, I want to again emphasis that he is totally wrong in his criticism of my critique of the IPCC.  The moral hazard logic accepted by IPCC boils down to supporting the commercial interests of the renewable energy lobby.  For Herb to call this factual observation “an extremely serious charge” is an argument that reflects capture by this lobby.  Accepting the moral hazard argument is solely justified by the desire to increase the spend on decarbonisation. 

 

We must ask cui bono?  This Latin phrase meaning "Who benefits?" or "To whose advantage?" is used to suggest that the party who gains the most from a situation is likely to be the one behind it, or at least has a strong motive in its occurrence.  The main financial interest in promoting the moral hazard argument is in the renewable energy industry. Again, anyone interested in this argument should read the attached AI commentary.

 

Back to Tom, far from an “Orwellian inversion”, my point is that the politics of decarbonisation is not between good and evil, but rather reflects degraded motives on both sides. You are right that “UNFCCC policies set by the dominant governments aim solely to protect the commercial interests of the oil, coal, and gas industries. despite all the facts.”  But that does not somehow justify the IPCC scientists who support the moral hazard fallacy.  Leaving aside such ‘what about them’ arguments, what is needed is to cut through this futile debate by establishing an Albedo Accord.

 

I question your claim that “the interesting heat balance satellite studies are unfortunately too short for much confidence in long term trends.”  The underlying driver of the evaporation of marine clouds is heat.  As heat increases, more clouds will vaporise, in an accelerating feedback.  That shows a simple trend that is hard to challenge.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

Cui bono.docx

Sev Clarke

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Jul 6, 2025, 8:38:25 PM7/6/25
to Dr. Thomas Goreau, Clive Elsworth, Robert Tulip, Gene Fry, oswald....@hispeed.ch, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Professor Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun D Fitzgerald, Herb Simmens, Douglas Graham MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Rosie Seville
Tom,
Your point about oil slicks is well taken. They would indeed impede the ocean-atmosphere gas fluxes. However, I surmise that the SSML usually has different characteristics. In particular, because the surfactant material is not all hydrophobic and because a substantial portion of the surface in contact with the atmosphere consists of seawater which can thus readily evaporate, particularly if warmed and subject to bubble bursting, raindrop or wave splashing, biogenic droplet formation, and similar disturbances. 

I have not done the calculations, modelling or experiments, but again I surmise that spraying seawater finely into the air would effectively increase the saltwater-air surface area there, and therefore what is subject to evaporation, by many orders of magnitude over the average time (perhaps hours or days) it took for most of the resulting brine to return to the ocean. The lower two sets of my Seatomiser nozzles are designed to humidify the air at high and lower wind speeds (returning brine to the ocean before it reaches land), whilst the upper set and the ISA sublimators are designed to generate CCNs and/or photocatalytically to destroy atmospheric methane and smog.   

It has been calculated by Stephen Salter, that the negative radiative forcing energy return on generating reflective bubbles is also many orders of magnitude - the more so if those bubbles are long-lived (months) nanobubbles at the sea surface. Furthermore, I surmise that the energy cost of making the low micron/nanobubbles via my spinning-disc variation of Anzai Kantetsu’s carbon-ceramic diffusers would be much cheaper than using a 'whipping spoon’ or its industrial equivalents. Carried by ocean surface currents or gyres, the nanobubbles might well spread (preferably thinly and reasonably evenly) over much of the high seas, thereby regenerating planetary albedo at the same time as oxygenating surface waters and providing dissolved nitrogen to diazotrophs. 

Tom Goreau

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Jul 6, 2025, 9:05:11 PM7/6/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Steps 1-3 are necessary anyway in the long run, though insufficient in the short run.

 

The radiation balance and cloud stories provide very important short term messages that have multiple causes, but they can’t be extrapolated into the future yet with confidence. One graph someone posted here fitted an exponential rise in radiation imbalance into the far future! It is urgent to reverse it quickly, but that doesn’t mean all other slower steps aren’t needed too. Their proponents mean well, they need more education than they have.

 

IPCC “experts” produce exhaustive documents, turned into cartoon “executive summaries”, prepared by Government-selected editors who bowdlerize IPCC Working Group Scientist reports into caricatures, with serious omissions (such as processes too complex for their supreme leader to understand, even if he actually reads, thinks, and learns. All nonlinear interactive recursive feedback systems are banned, ipso facto). Many of these “editors” appointed by governments are consultants for the fossil fuel industry that pays for politicians campaigns, and sets energy policy, in almost all countries, even very poor ones!

 

You can cover this by just substituting “UNCCC government policy decisions” for “IPCC scientist recommendations based on reading out of date literature”. Governments, not scientists, are to blame, mostly in order to maintain the fossil fuel industry, not renewables.

Dana Woods

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Jul 6, 2025, 10:08:34 PM7/6/25
to Tom Goreau, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Tom I don't understand, even the IPCC executive summaries certainly don't recommend continuing to use fossil fuels willy nilly , do they?

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Dana Woods

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Jul 6, 2025, 10:19:33 PM7/6/25
to Tom Goreau, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Alan you said 


" Robert,

I don't think that such a profoundly consequential fact can be proactively kept out of the public eye. High quality investigative journalism by any of the top media outlets could likely bring this to the forefront of awareness in some influential segment of public opinion. With backup from James Hansen or a similarly prominent expert on the science, a story on the theme of Climate Change: Incorrect Diagnosis Leading to Incorrect Treatment or something to that effect seems likely to get traction somewhere in the world. Sometimes stuff doesn't happen simply because nobody has stepped up to try to make it happen. I appreciate that you have been making the effort."

Alan
Haven't we all been thinking or saying this "forever" now?  Robert I'd love to know what you're doing to try to make that happen and where (I have missed 100s of threads I'm sure) And Alan and all shouldn't we try to make that happen in the US , as US citizens ? Asking anyone who knows, again , does James Hansen support field trials for SAI at least ? 

Dana Woods

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Jul 6, 2025, 10:25:17 PM7/6/25
to Robert Chris, oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
I'm trying to absorb this conversation and the numbers etc. 

Who has webpages for Methane Oxidation and /or OIF and can you provide links Oswald or Franz or anyone ? 
Too , what about the age old worry that fertilizing with iron could fertilize the wrong thing (eg toxic algae) as has, I think, happened in the past . If I could have that question answered I;d probably be a lot more promotive of OIF

~ Dana

~ Dana

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Tom Goreau

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Jul 7, 2025, 6:37:58 AM7/7/25
to Dana Woods, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

 

Blaming IPCC scientists instead of governments who ignore their recommendations is just a deliberate diversion. You need to look at what UNCCC actually does, not what IPCC recommends, which is only window-dressing to make it seem public consultation affects decisions that are really made by governments behind closed doors.

 

They admit there is a climate problem, and think that CO2 is the basically the sole cause, so they recommend emissions reductions (balanced by imaginary sinks to be pulled out of a hypothetical hat later), but the fossil fuel producing countries have used weasel words to systematically block any meaningful agreement to reduce emissions at every single COP since 1992 (33 years!).

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 7, 2025, 8:45:21 AM7/7/25
to Tom Goreau, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

“In the scenarios we assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030.”
IPCC AR6, 2022

 

This statement is the cornerstone of the IPCC’s mitigation modelling—and it is scientifically unworkable, politically delusional, and strategically counterproductive.

To claim that the world can rapidly cut emissions by nearly half within a few years—amid global inequality, rising energy demand, and entrenched infrastructure—is a fantasy divorced from thermodynamic, economic and geopolitical reality. It is not a plan. It is a ritual incantation of hope.

Worse, this framing crowds out the more effective and feasible strategy of restoring planetary albedo to cool the Earth directly. Any scientist who endorses this timeline without simultaneously advocating for solar reflection technologies is complicit in perpetuating a dangerous illusion—one that fails to prevent collapse, and leaves ecosystems like coral reefs to die.

This kind of detached modelling and moral theatre has consequences. It helps fuel the backlash. Leaders like Trump do not reject climate action because they oppose science—they reject a politicised science establishment that issues impossible demands, then blames others when reality doesn’t comply.

Far from being “a deliberate diversion,” criticising the IPCC’s framing is central to any serious climate strategy. These 2030 targets are not government-imposed; they are driven by a scientific consensus that has walled itself off from real-world constraints.

I’m shocked, Tom Goreau, that you continue to defend this farce. The IPCC has done nothing concrete to protect coral reefs—only repeated pious recommendations that have zero chance of implementation.

Tom Goreau

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Jul 7, 2025, 8:50:33 AM7/7/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Wrong! GOVERNMENTS have done NOTHING to protect coral reefs despite IPCC’s constant findings that they have been imperiled by global warming.

 

You can’t blame scientists because ignorant and incompetent politicians won’t read, think, or learn!

 

That is a BIG lie!

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 7, 2025, 9:19:39 AM7/7/25
to Tom Goreau, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

But Tom, almost the only action the official climate science establishment has seriously proposed to protect coral reefs is to cut emissions—a policy that, in practice, has about as much effect as pushing on a string.

 

This is not merely a policy failure; it is a failure of scientific imagination and responsibility. The continued warming of oceans and collapse of reef systems—despite decades of warnings—shows that emission reduction alone, or even combined with greenhouse gas removal, is incapable of delivering timely or sufficient cooling.  The only effective action, albedo restoration, is largely censored out of view, with scientific complicity.

 

We can and should hold scientists accountable for this failure. The IPCC and its networks have not produced a serious, practical, engineering-based strategy to reverse global warming. Instead, they have promoted politically palatable modelling targets divorced from real-world feasibility, while dismissing or sidelining the main viable options for albedo restoration and planetary reflectivity management.

 

When ecosystems are dying, when time is running out, and when the tools for direct intervention exist, it is not enough to say “we must do less harm.” The scientific community must step up with solutions that can actually reduce heat, not just emissions.

Robert Chris

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Jul 7, 2025, 9:36:19 AM7/7/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Oswald
As your story unfolds more uncertainties are emerging. 
Now you tell us that we can live with excess GHGs for 'a while'.  How much excess?  For how long a while?  What will be the surface temperature impact during that while?
In addition, now we just need to avoid future warming.  Does that include the warming in the pipeline that has yet to emerge from past emissions? 
You say that we can avoid future warming 'no doubt' (that means 'with certainty') by methane and ozone removal.  Where's the evidence and numbers to support those two claims: a) that methane and ozone removal could avoid future warming; and b) that it's certain?  What's happening to emissions while all this is going on?
Next you say that OIF is to take the excess CO2 to the seabed but apparently this can be done without creating huge amounts of additional biomass.  I thought that OIF was all about fertilising the ocean to generate more biomass.  If the C that's going to the seabed isn't coming from more biomass, what is the OIF fertilising?
Why is SAI a showstopper?  Why are people 'right' to fear SAI?  In what way are these statements not merely unsubstantiated opinions?  You will be aware that there is a lot of scientific literature that refutes these claims.  On what basis do you summarily dismiss it all?  Why do you assume that whatever harms may arise from SAI could not be effectively mitigated by further RD&D and by intelligent deployment strategies?
It's looks like your 'solution' is unproven and replete with delivery risks, and that your objections to SAI are incoherent and not based on evidence.
What am I misunderstanding?
Regards
Robert



From: oswald....@hispeed.ch <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2025 04:37

To: 'Robert Chris' <robert...@gmail.com>; rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>; 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: AW: AW: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

Hi Robert,

 

removing all excess GHG is indeed a great ask, but then: We have lived with excess GHG for a while now, and we can continue to do so for another while. The task on hand is, really, to avoid future warming. That’s possible, no doubt, with methane/ozone removal, provided that SO2/NOx levels are not declining any further.

 

OIF: The trick is to bring CO2 down to the seabed. You do not need the huge amounts of biomass you quote. It is entirely possible to do this, but it may take longer than thirty years.

 

SRM: I have nothing against cloud creation, actually it is part of the plan.

 

SAI: That’s really a showstopper. It is important to always exclude SAI, because otherwise the whole idea collapses. People are, rightfully, afraid of SAI, and the tendency in the press is to throw out all GeoEngineering with it. Keep the stratosphere out of this and convince IPCC to become part of the plan, then we will go forward.

 

All in all I am quite happy about this conversation. Thanks again.

Tom Goreau

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Jul 7, 2025, 9:45:43 AM7/7/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Ray Hayes

Small Island coral scientists have always insisted that climate change itself has to be tackled from all approaches simultaneously, but we’re just ignorant natives, while Australian and American coral scientists who get all the press and have no deep understanding of integrated climate science, have never moved beyond hoping emissions reductions alone are sufficient, a simple “solution” that is inadequate, even though it is also necessary.

 

Saying as you do that emissions reductions are NOT necessary in the long run, even if insufficient in the short run, is a monumental error, designed to let the fossil fuel industry off the hook for responsibility for their actions.

 

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

Chief Scientist, Biorock Technology Inc., Blue Regeneration SL

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

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

 

Books:

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

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

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

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

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Robert Chris

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Jul 7, 2025, 10:46:31 AM7/7/25
to Tom Goreau, rob...@rtulip.net, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Ray Hayes
Robert
First, I couldn't agree more with Tom's response to your comment about emissions reductions not being necessary.  There is no doubt in my mind that unless emissions are largely eliminated within the next 100 years, or preferably sooner, there is next to no chance of avoiding climate catastrophe, whether we do SRM or not.
Second, in your final paragraph you make an important category error, one that Tom has been trying to get you to acknowledge, but so far failed to do.  Scientists are not only not responsible for policy but crucially, they don't want to be.  That's why they're scientists and not politicians.  The scientific community has come up with solutions.  The problem is that it is not a homogenous community and there are plenty of scientists, who for their own reasons, come up with solutions we wouldn't regard as solutions.  It's the politicians who make the choices about which scientists to listen to and they do that by applying all the bias and prejudice that they can muster to preserve their positions of power. 
You're right that there are a lot of rubbish scientists out there, but there are also a lot of good ones.  Making sweeping generalisations obscures the underlying truths.
Regards
Robert

From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Sent: 07 July 2025 14:45
To: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; 'Dana Woods' <danaj...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Ray Hayes <haye...@gmail.com>

alb...@thefarm.org

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Jul 7, 2025, 10:55:26 AM7/7/25
to Tom Goreau, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Ray Hayes

On 7/7/25 8:45 AM, Tom Goreau wrote:

Saying as you do that emissions reductions are NOT necessary in the long run, even if insufficient in the short run, is a monumental error, designed to let the fossil fuel industry off the hook for responsibility for their actions.
Those most concerned with termination shock should also be the most concerned about the need for steep emissions reductions during any sunlight intervention.

Most of the interventions contemplated are by their nature short-lived unless sustained by human activity. Termination is a foregone conclusion, given the effort required. Absent emissions reductions, a shock event can accrue. The two strategies are a coupled pair.

-Albert

--
Albert Bates
Global Village Institute / GVIx.org
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The Global Ecovillage Network has a YouTube channel.

Please consider helping migrants along The Green Road: Refugees from the conflict in Ukraine are being assisted, resettled and fed by more than 300 ecovillages and permaculture projects. See this piece in Mother Jones. You can grow a garden, buy a mattress or help a schoolteacher purchase more workbooks by donating to The Green Road, sponsored by Global Village Institute. Your donations are tax-deductible in the USA.

A similar initiative is getting underway for Gazan refugees.

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My latest book, Retropopulationism, is free to subscribers to Kindle Unlimited. You can order the print edition from Amazon.com worldwide.

Robert Chris

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Jul 7, 2025, 11:30:50 AM7/7/25
to oswald....@hispeed.ch, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Hi Oswald,
There's no need to apologise to me.  But now we all know the basis of your claims, we can treat them accordingly.
Quite why you believe these unsubstantiated claims help your ability to raise funds, which, as investors, is what I assume you are trying to do, is a mystery to me.  But if it works for you and people are lining up to invest on the back of these stories, then go for it. 
But I'm afraid it doesn't work me.  I just have a tedious desire for my beliefs to be grounded in some credible evidence.
Regards
Robert

From: oswald....@hispeed.ch <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Sent: 07 July 2025 15:50

To: 'Robert Chris' <robert...@gmail.com>; rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>; 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: AW: AW: [HPAC] IPCC Failure
 

Dear Robert,

 

we are investors. We ask:

 

Is a solution safe?

Is it efficient?

Is it natural?

Is there a chance that the world agrees to do this?

 

TFCD we say: Yes

SAI we say: No

 

That’s an opinion - right. I am sorry if that does not fulfil your expectations.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

Tom Goreau

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Jul 7, 2025, 12:06:40 PM7/7/25
to Robert Chris, rob...@rtulip.net, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Ray Hayes

I fully agree with Robert Tulip that some sort of emergency SRM is the only hope of preventing runaway overshoot because the rest won’t work fast enough to do the job in time, but that all of them are needed for long term stability.

 

But why attack scientists proposing (partial) solutions and alienate your best potential friends by telling them they are worthless, corrupt, dimwits? The scientific community will be the strongest allies once they come around, because they best understand the complexity of climate as an intricately multifactorial system (or at least infinitesimal selected portions of it, like the Hindu parable of the blind men and the elephant).

 

Many or most of them already have, but it takes 5 years for IPCC review of old papers to catch up to their slow learning curve, and events outpace models!

 

Thanks, Robert Chris, for turning me on to Mancur Olson’s insights into back-stabbing PR-grubbing mass meetings that don’t make decisions because they are full of loudmouths who won’t listen or learn until the clock runs out.

 

When the UNCCC was deadlocked over carbon accounting in the final drafts prepared prior to being submitted to Governments in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 I was in the audience in the final negotiating session in the UN Headquarters when time ran out for the agreement deadline. They stopped the clock a bit before midnight, for hours until they could announce any conclusion at all. After 1AM the US (Bush) delegate suddenly proposed that countries should get carbon credits for photosynthesis (with no demerits for respiration)! Nobody objected, and I seemed to be the only person in the room who understood the fraudulent accounting that was proposed, but as a UN staffer was powerless to speak, however other countries didn’t care enough to actually measure photosynthesis and rewrite anything, so the proposal lapsed out of boredom and the need to go the bathroom.

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 7, 2025, 6:35:04 PM7/7/25
to Tom Goreau, Robert Chris, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Ray Hayes

Tom Goreau claims I argued that long-term emission reductions are unnecessary—a misrepresentation echoed by Robert Chris. This paraphrase is inaccurate and misleading.

What I actually said is that, in the long run, the world must reform the energy sector, guided by both environmental imperatives and economic realities. That clearly includes reducing emissions over time. However, as I’ve argued repeatedly, emission reduction alone cannot solve the climate crisis. You don’t take a million-tonne solution to fix a trillion-tonne problem.

The real challenge we face is removing trillions of tonnes of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Climate mitigation efforts must prioritize carbon drawdown and planetary cooling. That includes developing technologies such as large-scale algae production that can recycle fossil emissions into useful products, building the foundations of a circular carbon economy. In that context, continued use of fossil fuels may become compatible with long-term climate stability—if paired with effective drawdown and albedo restoration.

Tom asks why I would “attack scientists proposing (partial) solutions” and risk alienating allies. But this assumes those scientists are aligned with the full scope of what’s required. Many continue to marginalize or dismiss the scale of drawdown and albedo restoration needed to avoid catastrophe. That’s not collaboration—it’s obstruction.

To be clear, I have never used the terms “worthless, corrupt, dimwits” that Tom attributes to me. I don’t question the personal integrity of most IPCC scientists. But I do argue that they have been misled and constrained by institutional narratives—particularly the moral hazard fallacy, which claims that acknowledging solar or albedo-based geoengineering would undermine decarbonisation. This has served the commercial interests of the renewable industry while sidelining essential tools for planetary cooling.

Tom may well be right that the scientific community could eventually become our strongest ally—once it recognises that emissions cuts alone will not reverse dangerous warming. But that transition will take time and pressure. We need to build coalitions now that understand the full problem and can mobilise resources to support real, scalable solutions.

Climate change is not a morality play between good and evil. It is a deeply confused and politicised mess, in which well-intentioned people have often backed inadequate strategies. The path forward demands intellectual honesty, systems thinking, and the courage to challenge failing orthodoxies.

Finally, Robert Chris suggests that scientists don’t want to shape policy. But the IPCC’s AR6 press release that I already cited says otherwise, calling explicitly for global emissions to be halved by 2030. That’s not neutral analysis—it’s policy advocacy. If scientists choose to enter that space, they must also accept public scrutiny of their assumptions and conclusions.

Robert Chris

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Jul 7, 2025, 7:33:20 PM7/7/25
to rob...@rtulip.net, Tom Goreau, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Ray Hayes
Hi Robert
A couple of (not so) quick comments.  A key paragraph in your post below is:
The real challenge we face is removing trillions of tonnes of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Climate mitigation efforts must prioritize carbon drawdown and planetary cooling. That includes developing technologies such as large-scale algae production that can recycle fossil emissions into useful products, building the foundations of a circular carbon economy. In that context, continued use of fossil fuels may become compatible with long-term climate stability—if paired with effective drawdown and albedo restoration.
In essence what you're proposing is that continued ff emissions be offset by large-scale CDR.  This could obviously lead to net zero, or even net negative emissions.  My working assumption has hitherto been that it not a feasible solution because CDR at that scale is unrealistic for both technical and economic reasons.   Obviously, my opinions on these matters don't count for much, but it would be good if someone could do a back of the envelope calculation to see what it would imply in terms of resource management and the scale of cooling that would be needed to shave off the excess warming.
My gut feeling is that this is a Promethean future that will serve some very well but for most will dig the hole even deeper.
The idea of using CDR to offset ff emissions is akin to Keynes' suggestion to beat the 1930s Depression.  He proposed the following (for those of you not familiar with British humour, I think he was joking!):
If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.
It would be more sensible to retire ff by using the money that would otherwise be spent of continuous CDR, on accelerating the provision of renewables and reducing energy consumption/$GDP.  But if that's not possible, extracting the ff and then capturing and sequestering its CO2 emissions makes as much sense as burying bottles full of banknotes and charging for them to be recovered.
The problem with all these ideas is that no one is assessing their comparative risks.  What is the likelihood that CDR could be delivered at the necessary scale and speed to keep the requirement for SRM at an acceptable level.  What do 'necessary' and 'acceptable' even mean in this context?
These are the problems that make me a doomster!
Robert, you also make the mistake of reading your own biases into a text.  The IPCC press release you cite does not make any policy pronouncements and does not call for emissions to be halved by 2030.  On a close reading you'll see that it says that if what you want is to max out at 1.5oC of warming then that's what you have to do, and it's still possible.  They do not say that that's what we ought to do.  The words 'ought', 'should' and 'must' do not appear in this text.  The quote from Skea is “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C".  It isn't "It's now or never, we must limit global warming to 1.5°C".  Throughout, the text says 'If you do this, that will happen.  If you don't do this, this will happen.'  Weasel words to make you think they're making policy pronouncements when they're not doing anything of the sort.
Regards
Robert

From: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>
Sent: 07 July 2025 23:34
To: 'Tom Goreau' <gor...@globalcoral.org>; 'Robert Chris' <robert...@gmail.com>; 'Dana Woods' <danaj...@gmail.com>

Cc: 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Ray Hayes' <haye...@gmail.com>

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jul 8, 2025, 3:07:16 AM7/8/25
to Robert Chris, Tom Goreau, Dana Woods, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Ray Hayes

Hi Robert,

Thanks again for your wide-ranging response. I always appreciate the historical and analytic depth you bring, and your Keynes reference is apt—though in this case the humour may obscure more than it clarifies. Unlike burying money, burning fossil fuels is not optional behaviour easily curbed by policy; it is rational, entrenched and driven by unmatched energy density and convenience. The real challenge isn’t suppressing fossil use, but offsetting and converting its emissions—after first stabilising planetary heating through sunlight reflection.

You mention Prometheus, the Titan condemned for bringing fire to humanity. He has long symbolised the double-edged sword of technology—from Shelley’s Frankenstein to our present planetary condition. Today’s Promethean reality—feeding eight billion, preserving ecosystems, and managing cascading risks—offers no way back. The choice is not whether to manage the Earth system, but whether we do so wisely or blindly. That requires a policy pivot from emissions control to full-spectrum planetary stewardship. Far from the horror of Boris Karloff’s monster, this is our existential context.  I believe John Milton had it right in Paradise Lost: we should meet this moment with humility, reason and dialogue, not fear.

Let me note a few points that are mostly well known to us in HPAC but which seem incomprehensible to the IPCC, where mainstream climate policy is profoundly mistaken.

1. IPCC Language is Directive

The IPCC’s framing suggests that halving emissions by 2030 offers a viable path to keeping warming within 1.5°C. This is flatly wrong.  You’re right that the IPCC technically uses conditional language, but “Halve emissions by 2030 or it’s game over” is read—and intended—as a normative directive, regardless of whether it says “must”. This selective emphasis on one strategy—emissions reduction—has suppressed serious debate about more scalable, effective options. That’s a political failure dressed up as science.

The IPCC knows that these statements will be used to shape policy and public investment. That is not neutral reporting of scientific possibility; it is agenda-setting. And if scientists choose to enter the policy arena with such language, even trickily veiled as you note with weasel words to avoid political and moral responsibility, their assumptions—especially about what is necessary and feasible—deserve critical scrutiny.

2. The real choice is whether to reverse the imbalance
The IPCC vision rests on a false assumption: that halting or reducing current emissions will be enough to stop warming. That assumption ignores the exponential trajectory of Earth’s current energy imbalance. As James Hansen and others have shown, the primary driver of recent acceleration in warming is the loss of planetary albedo—especially marine stratocumulus cloud cover. This feedback is now generating more additional immediate heat than current emissions.

Cutting emissions may marginally slow the rate of future forcing, but it does not remove the committed warming from the accumulated greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere—or halt the cascading feedbacks now in motion to darken and heat the world. That means the planet would keep heating even in the unlikely event that President Trump has a humble epiphany and converts to the IPCC 2030 vision. Stability simply cannot be restored by emissions reduction alone, or even by all carbon methods, without restored albedo.  I remain agog that such a towering intellect as Johan Rockstrom cannot understand this simple point, as Herb Simmens revealed in his important interview.

We are no longer in a position to prevent climate disruption—we must now reverse it. That means two large-scale strategies: cooling the planet through solar reflection (e.g. marine cloud brightening) and removing carbon at the scale of the legacy load—trillions of tonnes. This is not utopianism; it is what the laws of physics demand.

3. Kelp and algae show real promise at planetary scale
You rightly point to the need for feasibility. I believe it exists, and that we already have models to build from. In Sunlight and Seaweed, Tim Flannery cites analysis that kelp farming on 9% of the world ocean could significantly reduce atmospheric CO₂ by turning it into stable biomass. Our own Brian von Herzen is helping to deliver this vision with his work on marine permaculture. That’s a powerful and underappreciated demonstration of natural system leverage.

In my own work (Large-Scale Ocean-Based Algae Production and the Arithmetic of Climate Stability), I propose a complementary and potentially more efficient strategy: cultivating intensive microalgae systems on just 1% of the world ocean. These systems can be engineered for high-yield carbon conversion, fuel production, nutrient cycling, and marine ecosystem regeneration. While still early-stage, this model may offer a technically feasible pathway to industrial-scale carbon capture and recycling. CO₂ becomes a feedstock, not a pollutant—supporting a circular carbon economy that aligns with ecological regeneration.

4. The economics of reality, not of analogy
Your Keynes reference of governments burying money imagines CDR as pointless make-work, like digging up buried banknotes. But that analogy fails in the face of fossil energy's real-world utility. Fossil fuels are too cheap, abundant and energy-dense to be replaced globally in time to meet our climate targets. People will continue to burn them—not because they’re irrational, but because they work. That’s not defeatism, it’s realism. The challenge is not to ban fossil fuels outright, but to offset and convert their emissions, closing the carbon cycle.

5. Comparative risk must be our framework
Ultimately, the issue isn’t ideology or tribal allegiance. It’s risk. The risk of relying solely on emissions cuts is now far greater than the risk of investing in large-scale drawdown and solar reflection. And yet these options remain marginalised in both funding and policy. That’s what I want to change—not because I believe in silver bullets, but because the physics of the crisis demands we use the whole toolkit.

The IPCC should stop pretending this is a moral choice between good and evil. It’s a practical challenge of engineering, systems design and planetary flourishing.

Alan Kerstein

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Jul 17, 2025, 5:25:45 PM7/17/25
to Robert Chris, Anton Alferness, Oswald Petersen, Robert Tulip, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Okay Robert, to get back on track per your observations, here's a straw-man pathway from science to policy impact. Suppose that some scientifically well-grounded approach such as Jim Hansen's multi-feedback model were applied to a scenario with impossibly rapid CO2 reduction such as linear decrease attaining pre-industrial concentration at, say, 2050 followed by steady concentration. If the albedo-temperature feedback nevertheless drives ongoing temperature rise, this would indicate that the earth system had crossed a tipping point that could only be counteracted by albedo intervention. In addition to making the substantive case for albedo intervention, it would quash the moral hazard trope. It might not be quite the magic wand that this suggests, but it could be a useful step in the right direction.

Herb's post about moves to impose a federal ban on geoengineering could signal a pending recurrence of the Streisand effect, so it would be timely to marshal all forms of evidence and support in preparation for the brouhaha.

Alan

On Sat, Jul 5, 2025 at 1:35 PM Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't really understand what this thread is all about.  Why is there so much interest in what causes global warming, and virtually none on what to do about it?  The assumption that the only way to avoid a harm is to do the opposite of what causes the harm displays a certain childlike naivete.  It might be endearing in a child, but here it is somewhat misplaced.
The extent to which albedo may or may not contribute to global warming may be of interest to the climate science nerds, but the fact that it has a key role to play in what to do about it, should be of interest to everyone.
Regards
RobertC
From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Anton Alferness <an...@paradigmclimate.com>
Sent: 05 July 2025 21:00
To: Oswald Petersen <oswald....@hispeed.ch>
Cc: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; Robert Tulip <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Jul 17, 2025, 5:31:10 PM7/17/25
to Robert Chris, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Dear Robert,

 

thanks a lot!

 

  1. For taking my proposal seriously, I really appreciate it.
  2. For accepting the proposal to the extent that you admit it would work if the GHG removal part works.

 

Now regarding the task:

 

GHG Removal (I do not use the term CDR here because it does not include all GHG) means mainly removing methane and CO2. It also helps if tropospheric ozone levels are reduced, which is the case when methane levels sink. Another important variable is SO2 and NOx levels, which should be maintained at current levels.

 

Methane:

 

According to our calculations the process of methane removal takes around 20 years. I said 10 years more because we need to develop technology, run field tests, do more research and build the technology and infrastructure. Methane removal is done via EAMO, it is all described on our websites and in a number of scientific papers …

 

CO2:

 

Tropospheric Ferric Chloride Dispersion (TFCD) is the dispersion method for methane removal, but it also causes Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF). We are not yet sure about the efficiency of the TFCD/OIF process, but it does not really matter. OIF is the method for CDR. The oceans have the capacity to take up all excess CO2 from the atmosphere, and they can be triggered to do so with OIF. Some of that will be done via TFCD, and the rest, if any, can be done with additional iron dispersal.  

 

TFCD also contributes to Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB).

 

These methods need to be researched, verified and proposed by universities and atmospheric chemistry institutes from all over the world. In the end we need IPCC to support this program. To that end it would be helpful if atmospheric chemists, biologists and oceanographers (…) stop pointing their fingers at politicians and start doing their homework. We need their help here.

 

Solving the climate crisis is a task which requires scientists to meddle with the atmosphere and find ways to get it right. As long as they have something like a moral hazard or similar restriction in their minds, they are unable to do this work. They need to get their hands dirty and manage the climate. Urgently.

 

I am currently writing a book on the subject. It will come out later this year. It is a complex matter, but the remedies are not very expensive, they are safe, and they are natural. The main blockage is not technical, not financial and not political. The main blockage is in our minds. We need to understand, that the global climate is something we can and have to manage.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

An: 'Gene Fry' <gene...@rcn.com>; oswald....@hispeed.ch
Cc: 'Alan Kerstein' <alan.k...@gmail.com>; 'Tim Foresman' <fore...@earthparty.org>; 'David Price' <da...@pricenet.ca>; 'John Nissen' <johnnis...@gmail.com>; 'Peter Wadhams' <peter....@gmail.com>; 'Sir David King' <d...@camkas.co.uk>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Herb simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Douglas MacMartin' <dgm...@cornell.edu>; 'Smith Wake' <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Betreff: RE: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

Oswald

 

Your comment helps me to understand why many people find climate change so hard to understand.  Gene is exactly right that in the ice ages albedo change drove CO2 change.  And yet the policy implications of this are just ignored in the current sole fixation on emissions in the IPCC.

 

A primary example of albedo loss is the evaporation of tropical marine clouds due to warming.  Less clouds means less reflection of sunlight to space and more sunlight getting through to the surface of the Earth. That extra sunlight not reflected is absorbed.  That warms the Earth.  Albedo loss causes warming.

 

The fact that the albedo loss was originally caused by GHGs does not mean the albedo loss does not cause warming as you assert, or that it can be reversed by cutting GHGs.  The physical processes don’t work that way.  Accelerating albedo loss causes far more warming than can be prevented by cutting GHGs.  Without an Albedo Accord the climate will collapse.

 

James Hansen has calculated that the warming effect of albedo loss over the last decade has been four times greater than the immediate warming effect of CO2 emissions. 

 

Let me repeat that in case readers skipped over it: James Hansen has calculated that the warming effect of albedo loss over the last  decade has been four times greater than the immediate warming effect of CO2 emissions.

 

I have noticed that people who are fixated on carbon appear unable to respond to this point and just prefer to ignore it.  It seems it is because it destroys their theory of change.  As Paul Simon said in The Boxer, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.  Upton Sinclair made a similar comment, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” These observations of the psychology of inner fragmentation reveal the pervasive unwillingness to integrate dissonant truths, often out of fear, pride, or pain.

 

That proud unwillingness is what is happening with the false theory that cutting emissions could be a primary factor in reversing warming.  Yes it is important to cut emissions, but let’s not pretend it will do anything to slow tipping points or minimise dangerous climate change.

 

The situation is that climate and energy need to be decoupled to overcome the extreme confusion that surrounds climate policy.

 

Some helpful AI discussion of these psychological barriers to effective climate action is attached.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Gene Fry
Sent: Saturday, 5 July 2025 10:00 AM
To: oswald....@hispeed.ch
Cc: Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com>; rob...@rtulip.net; Tim Foresman <fore...@earthparty.org>; David Price <da...@pricenet.ca>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>; Sir David King <d...@camkas.co.uk>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Herb simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>; Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Smith Wake <wake...@hks.harvard.edu>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] IPCC Failure

 

I think of coming out of ice ages.

Milankovich cycles are important, of course.

But, as I understand it, albedo change drives warming, drives greenhouse gas concentrations in that case.

An oversimplification of course.

 

I think of GHG emissions as the trigger and of albedo as the main cause of further warming.

They both cause warming.

              But over the last 25 years, the forcing from albedo change is 2.20 / 1.00 Watts / sq meter

as much as from GHG change.

 

              The top graph is from Jim Hansen’s Acceleration of Global Warming press conference.

The bottom one has a graph I pulled off the internet, plus my interpretation.

 

 

              It explains pretty well to me why

today’s CO2 levels will send Earth to 5°C equilibrium warming for 427 ppm CO2.

More actually, when other GHGs are factored in.

 

 

              The above graph is based on the pair below:

 

              Of course, that’s a thought experiment,

because several feedback processes add CO2 (& CH4 and probably N2O) to the air as Earth warms.

So 427 ppm CO2 is not stable, even if humans stopped GHG emissions cold turkey.

 

 

Gene Fry

 

 

 

 

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oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Jul 17, 2025, 5:32:04 PM7/17/25
to Robert Chris, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Hi Robert,

 

removing all excess GHG is indeed a great ask, but then: We have lived with excess GHG for a while now, and we can continue to do so for another while. The task on hand is, really, to avoid future warming. That’s possible, no doubt, with methane/ozone removal, provided that SO2/NOx levels are not declining any further.

 

OIF: The trick is to bring CO2 down to the seabed. You do not need the huge amounts of biomass you quote. It is entirely possible to do this, but it may take longer than thirty years.

 

SRM: I have nothing against cloud creation, actually it is part of the plan.

 

SAI: That’s really a showstopper. It is important to always exclude SAI, because otherwise the whole idea collapses. People are, rightfully, afraid of SAI, and the tendency in the press is to throw out all GeoEngineering with it. Keep the stratosphere out of this and convince IPCC to become part of the plan, then we will go forward.

 

All in all I am quite happy about this conversation. Thanks again.

 

Regards

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Alan Kerstein

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Jul 17, 2025, 5:33:06 PM7/17/25
to Dana Woods, Tom Goreau, rob...@rtulip.net, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb, Douglas MacMartin, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition
Dana,

Although I and others have suggested various approaches to doing something impactful, I'm not aware of anything that has generated much interest in terms of a collective effort. Hopefully the group developing the strategic plan is making progress towards a good match-up of HPAC capabilities and goals.

Alan

oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Jul 17, 2025, 5:33:27 PM7/17/25
to Dana Woods, Robert Chris, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Hi Dana,

 

our webpages compare below are full of information on EAMO.

 

On OIF this one may help

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095758201200119X

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

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oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Jul 17, 2025, 5:34:08 PM7/17/25
to Robert Chris, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Dear Robert,

 

we are investors. We ask:

 

Is a solution safe?

Is it efficient?

Is it natural?

Is there a chance that the world agrees to do this?

 

TFCD we say: Yes

SAI we say: No

 

That’s an opinion - right. I am sorry if that does not fulfil your expectations.

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

 

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oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Jul 17, 2025, 5:35:40 PM7/17/25
to Robert Chris, rob...@rtulip.net, Gene Fry, Alan Kerstein, Tim Foresman, David Price, John Nissen, Peter Wadhams, Sir David King, Shaun Fitzgerald, Herb simmens, Douglas MacMartin, Smith Wake, Planetary Restoration, healthy-planet-action-coalition

Hi Robert,

 

EAMO is described in detail on our websites.

OIF is a method from the 90s, it is all described in many articles, which I will not quote here. It is a huge discussion.

MCB is being done in Australia, as you well know.

 

I had assumed that you know these well known facts. If you don’t, I would ask you to go back and read. If you do, I would ask you to refrain from the comments you make.

 

We should cooperate for the common goal to cool the climate.

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