PRAG meeting to discuss a group submission on EU Arctic policy: Monday 9th March, 9 pm UK time

[John Nissen]

Hi everyone,

Note that 9 pm UK time is 5 pm EDT and 2 pm PST, as clocks have changed in the US, but not yet in the UK.  It will be 8 am AEDT.  All are welcome.  The main agenda item is approval of text for submission to the EU on behalf of PRAG.  But personal submissions are encouraged.

I am currently trying to restructure our submission to have a paragraph or two on each of the four tipping points.  But this is what Claude has produced so far, working on my original text:

The EU needs a fundamental rethink of its Arctic policy. The Arctic is the primary driver of the immediate climate crisis and the coming sea level crisis, yet current policy prioritises exploitation over protection. This is a strategic failure of historic proportions — and the window to act is closing fast.

The paleo record is unambiguous: at the end of the Younger Dryas, 11,700 years ago, Arctic temperatures leapt 7–10°C over a few decades. Sea levels rose 20 metres in 400 years. Megatsunamis followed the collapse of the Hudson Bay ice dome.  Global climate was transformed within a human lifetime. What is now unfolding is human-driven, faster, and starting from a higher base temperature — with 8 billion people in the path of consequences our ancestors never faced.

Since 1980, the Arctic has warmed at four times the global rate, now tracking at 0.35°C per decade — meaning 2°C globally by 2040 and 4°C by 2100, with 8°C and 16°C respectively in the Arctic. The Greenland Ice Sheet holds enough ice to raise sea levels by at least 7 metres. A partial collapse could begin without warning, triggering megatsunamis and sudden irreversible sea level rise, and promoting the collapse of already-critical Antarctic glaciers. A 2.5 metre sea level rise this century is plausible; a significantly greater rise cannot be ruled out.

Four interlocking tipping processes are accelerating, each capable of passing a point of no return. Glacier discharge is raising sea levels now. Thawing permafrost is releasing methane — far more potent than CO₂ — directly amplifying warming. A narrowing Arctic-to-tropics temperature gradient is destabilising the polar jet stream, locking it into blocking patterns that produce the stuck weather now battering Europe: prolonged droughts, deadly heatwaves, and catastrophic floods. And the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening — its collapse, now considered possible within decades, would permanently alter European weather and devastate continental economies. These processes cascade. Greenland's partial collapse could directly trigger AMOC failure. Once any tipping point is crossed, reversal is impossible. Inaction is not a neutral choice — it is a choice for irreversible systemic collapse.

Every EU coastal state faces inundation from converging sea level rise, storm surges, and extreme precipitation. Coastal defence infrastructure scaled to 2.5 metres or more of sea level rise would be staggering in cost and ultimately futile.  Cooling through Stratospheric Aerosol Injection would cost a fraction of that — while treating the cause, not the symptom.

Meanwhile, major powers are treating the Arctic meltdown as a commercial opportunity, planning shipping routes and resource extraction.  This is folly.  The EU must fight to protect the Arctic from meltdown.

The EU has the scientific capacity and moral authority to lead global Arctic protection through targeted cooling interventions and binding international protections. The alternative — incremental adaptation to accelerating catastrophe — will cost incomparably more, in money and in lives.

The time for cautious language has passed.  The EU must change its policy towards the Arctic and strongly advocate for emergency deployment of cooling intervention at scale to protect the Arctic from catastrophic meltdown.

The only words I've changed are the ones underlined.  Perhaps it doesn't need restructuring - what do you think?

Cheers, John

[Douglas Grandt]

Topic: John's PRAG zoom Meeting

Monday, March 9
9:00 PM London
5;00 PM (EDT)
4;00 PM (CDT)
3;00 PM (MDT)
2;00 PM (PDT)

Tuesday, March 10
8:00 AM (AEDT)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us05web.zoom.us/j/82944981576?pwd=QVuPR2h3YYZfqxjDiH55NJobbCEaPm.1

Meeting ID: 829 4498 1576
Passcode: 7f9mx9

Join instructions
https://us05web.zoom.us/meetings/82944981576/invitations?signature=PUeoB2xdrSQD2lou3fK40M9zknto_uQimL1beB88AtU

~~~~~~~~~~

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CACS_Fxo7VaDMyePRAMXg%3DvMqnuOfOSj2o6Qc3VXG7Mz9JAZiHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Paul Klinkman]

Dear Restorers,

In an argumentative essay, always feature the adversary's best argument first, then counter it.  Save your best arguments for last.  

Your adversary's best argument is that sulfur kills asthmatic people and it creates more asthmatic people.  If you ignore this argument, you allow the adversaries to raise this argument unopposed and then neutral people's perception of your integrity will drop because you weren't fair to all of the arguments.

You have counterarguments.  First, you may prefer salt particles that do the same thing without adding a health risk.  Second, to minimize possible deaths you can release the particles in places where almost nobody lives, such as above Antarctica in the austral Spring when the sun most needs to be screened out.  You might want to quantify the additional number of deaths because that number can be near zero.  Similarly, you can only release particles when they're blowing out toward the open ocean, and you'll cease operation whenever the wind forecast isn't correct.  

I happen to have mister buoys that drive the lifetime costs of creating salt particles way down.  See sketches of my various misters at (or above) https://klinkmansolar.com/knightfog.htm#U4d .   Reassurance of low cost is a useful argument.  What will this all cost, versus the good it does?  That question will be important to readers.  

Yours in Hope,

Paul Klinkman

[John Nissen]

Hi Paul,

Health is a reason for reducing SO2 content in fuels, but it does not apply to the proposed SAI, as the SO2 will fall out of the stratosphere close to the pole harmlessly, or practically so.

The most likely reaction of the EU committee looking into Arctic policy is to ignore our submission altogether.  But we might be able to head off some objections:

• PRAG's authority/credibility: this comes from scientist members (particularly Prof Wadhams) having studied the Arctic situation for decades.  Having estimated cooling power requirements, PRAG has developed a plan for planetary restoration within 50 years which necessarily involves SAI and CDR at sufficient scale to refreeze the Arctic, reduce temperatures elsewhere, and lower CO2e to below 380 ppm as necessary to phase out SAI and avoid termination shock.
• Need for emissions reduction: Emissions reduction cannot have a direct cooling effect on any meaningful timescale, but it can reduce the amount of CDR required for planetary restoration.
• Energy security: Protection of the Arctic is more important than obtaining energy from the Arctic; drilling in the Arctic for oil or gas poses a huge risk of spills.
• Effect on the natural environment: The cooling intervention will help to protect the natural environment and traditional livelihoods for the Arctic and European peoples.
• Governance: The EU could become part of the governance structure to ensure proper application of cooling interventions, e.g. to minimise possible side-effects such as ozone depletion.

Cheers, John

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Planetary Restoration" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to planetary-restor...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/c4ae8ddc-fe29-47b5-bdd8-be881636d62fn%40googlegroups.com.

[Douglas Grandt]

John, Herb, Greg and JohnM,

Based on our zoom discussion, I have run the latest version already in Claude (having had your earlier email suggestions incorporated) with new instructions as I reccall.

Attached is a PDF of the output from Claude.

I have made no attempt to trim the character count from the unconstrained 6,946 (including spaces) to the EU Commission maximum 4,000.

That effort can be done manually or using Claude once we have agreed that the attached text addresses the essence of our zoom deliberation.

Cheers,

Doug

[John Nissen]

Hi all,

We had thought-provoking discussions about how best to present the case for the urgent application of SAI to cool the Arctic and about what exactly we should ask the EU Arctic policy committee to do in this emergency.  The draft, as posted yesterday, falls short on both accounts, saying little about SAI and asking little specifically about what the policy committee should do.   We also agreed that the credibility of our submission must be boosted by referring to names.  Here is some text, inspired by the meeting.

Peter Wadhams and John Nissen have been concerned about protecting the Arctic and pointed out the need for direct cooling to a UK government committee in 2012.  The need for cooling has become ever more urgent as the Arctic warming and melting continues unabated and at least four tipping processes could now be approaching a point of no return. The effect of these processes is already being felt: weather extremes are becoming more extreme; permafrost is thawing, the AMOC is slowing, and the Greenland Ice Sheet is showing signs of disintegration, threatening metres of sea level rise.  This is an unprecedented crisis for humanity; the time for cooling action is now.  

A huge amount of cooling power will be needed to bring down the Arctic temperature and defuse the situation by halting and reversing these processes.  Emissions reduction, even with aggressive CO2 drawdown, simply cannot provide the cooling power required.  Fortunately research has been done by Wake Smith and Doug MacMartin that shows that the temperature could be lowered using Stratospheric Aerosol Injection at reasonable cost.  They have established that, with careful management, SAI could be deployed reasonably safely, producing relatively small and manageable side effects. 

The EU committee should approach the EU parliament to make a resolution about protecting the peoples of the Arctic and Europe by cooling the Arctic, with the promotion of SAI and preparation for testing it. Time is running out to defuse the crisis.

Cheers, John

[Douglas Grandt]

John,

Perhaps this type of transmittal letter/note could be submitted within the <4,000 character window … short and poignant … and attach the longer  3-page “paper” (which now stands at 6,946 including spaces) as a PDF file which is subject to a 5MB size limit.

Doug

BTW, Anton Keskinen is now Head of Strategy OA and Ellen Haaslahti is now Executive Director, so I added cc: Ellen 

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Mar 9, 2026, at 7:45 PM, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:



--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CACS_Fxr26aW%2Bmz3g2vL_zA-5pLDmAo8XyfzdhKRz_5MGr3P9DA%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Nissen]

Hi  Doug,

Thanks for the latest Claude output, picking up on some points from the meeting.

I sent you some text about an hour after the meeting ended, to include some important things we needed to include, such as names of people as sources of information and credibility.  I had previously sent some points to be added under various topics, including governance.  

I suggest we get Claude to put everything above together, regardless of length, to produce a comprehensive document with references and calculations, suitable for an EU climate scientist to examine.  This can go on your web site.  Then do another pass to compress the text, suitable for the lay reader, down to 650 words (or whatever gives a total character count under 4000 with spaces).  This can refer to the fuller document on your website.

Please use the text from the top of this thread as a starting point for the additions, since subsequent outputs from Claude have missed things out.

Thanks again.

Cheers, John (leaving home in 15 minutes for the West Country!)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CACS_Fxo7VaDMyePRAMXg%3DvMqnuOfOSj2o6Qc3VXG7Mz9JAZiHQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Paul Klinkman]

>  "...the SO2 will fall out of the stratosphere close to the pole harmlessly, or practically so. "

I suspect that you have studies showing that climate-driven Arctic jet stream dips will almost never bring SO2 down from the Arctic stratosphere into temperate zones.  Even if the Arctic becomes extra cold from SO2 and equatorial regions become extra hot, this dipping jet stream issue won't tend to happen?  

I'll grant that you might have the goods, but as an outsider I can see how your words sound.  Hand-waving about some real evidence that you claim to possess may not be sufficient to send the SO2 health problem away in the minds of neutral observers.  The world recently removed SO2 from above the Atlantic Ocean for public health reasons, so awareness of SO2 health issues is high.

Yours,

Paul Klinkman