Scicomm / Andrew Lockley

[Andrew Lockley]

Hi, 

I've been running a scicomm operation for well over a decade now. It started with the geoengineering Google group, and has expanded to include

 

@geoengineering1 twitter

https://x.com/geoengineering1

@reviewer2Geo podcast 

https://open.spotify.com/show/2KSB1lU18qh5gYIRDYPJMb

Carbon removal updates substack

https://carbonremovalupdates.substack.com/ 

SRM substack

https://solargeoengineeringupdates.substack.com/

YouTube play list

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF8369A27273314D8&si=I6UG42kWNIaSL86h

This is on top of moderating this geoengineering Google group

https://groups.google.com/g/geoengineering 

...and contributing to the CDR Google group. 

While this isn't a marketing post, I'd encourage you to check out these brands. This is both for your personal benefit, and for background information to the below discussions.

This work is currently funded roughly half by me and half by donations. You can donate via substack subscription, or directly here:

patreon.com/Geoengineering

The current situation isn't ideal. I'm paying hundreds of $/mth to subsidise this community service, which employs one approx. full time staff member (contractor). Furthermore, various people in this community seem to dislike variously me, my leadership, or my academic work - for whatever reason. This likely taints their perception of the brands, and their willingness to engage with them - eg some people block @geoengineering1 on twitter (don't worry, we still track all their posts manually). This apparent animosity to the brands is despite the fact that I have I have no direct involvement in ~95pc of editorial decisions, and I don't use the brands for financial gain (far from it!). Interestingly, these twitter blocks are roughly balanced between pro- and anti- factions, so I'm probably achieving a fairly neutral balance. For the avoidance of doubt, these brands aren't an SRM/CDR advocacy service, and rival views are given equal prominence - although disinformation and bad-faith actors aren't amplified alongside good-faith debate. 

Two coincidental issues have made it necessary to reconsider the long-term future of these services. 

Firstly, there's a possible funder available. While I think that crowdfunding is great, it's never been nearly enough to cover basic admin, let alone any outreach, advertising, or public representation at events. Long-term funding would turn this into a proper specialist media operation. Such funding might also suit a different leadership/governance approach.

Secondly, my own involvement henceforth has some complications. On the one hand, the long term funding discussed above might possibly result in an insurmountable conflict of interest with other work I do. On the other, there may be a benefit from having either a less controversial leader, or simply a broader range of views on both governance and media strategy.

So, it's time for your input. Two key questions:

1) what should I/we do 

2) do YOU personally want to be part of it (or can you recommend someone)? This could be for an oversight board, or even a paid CEO/operator - if funding was available.

Additionally, if you know of funding / sponsorship opportunities, pls let me know. We've sought funding for a while, but this kind of thing isn't really on anyone's funding radar - so the funding stream under consideration seems to be the only game in town. 

Please keep all comments constructive and respectful. I don't tolerate ad hom attacks or personal hostility on the geoengineering Google group, and they're not welcome or helpful on this thread. I'm seeking views on the future of the brands I've started, not soliciting abuse for my unrelated work, perceived political views, or personal style. 

Thanks in advance for any constructive contributions. 

Andrew Lockley 

[Michael Hayes]

[...] While this isn't a marketing post, [...]

MH] All of your posts to the CDR list are heavily 'branded' as being part of your personal 'marketing/branding' scheme.

Best wishes, and good luck with your attempted plebiscite to be named ruler of the GE/CDR/SRM space(s). Regrettably, I vote No.

Michael

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[Ron Baiman]

Dear Andrew,

I think what you’re doing is vitally important to our cause(s) and hope that you are able to continue!

 I don’t think you’re “replaceable” even in the strictly utilitarian sense of someone who could sustain all of these projects - certainly not without much more financial and other support. 

As you may know HPAC is now working on joining a financial sponsor and non-profit incubator that might lead to more resources. I appreciate that you probably cannot continue your work indefinitely and we (the broad cooling and carbon removal communities) need to find more sustainable ways  to support our activities.  Hopefully in more concrete ways in the future!

Best,

Ron Baiman

HPAC SC 

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 21, 2023, at 5:59 AM, Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Mary Miller]

I’m a science writer and find this listserve interesting, if not sometimes a bit overwhelming in volume. This issue is something that public-forward climate scientists—Daniel Swain, Katherine Hayhoe— have said makes their scicomm work difficult if not unsustainable. They are constantly being asked to respond to journalists, give talks, etc but the work is not compensated or sometimes even valued by the science institutions, funders or universities for whom they work. I know the main purpose of this listserv is not communicating with the public, but I recognize it's a communications channel for CDR work. I would worry that the funder might have a particular stake in this endeavor, if it’s to be regarded as unbiased there definitely need to be guardrails or separation between church and state (or editorial and business/advertisers in a paper)

[Eric Matzner]

Hi Andrew, hope you are well, saw you briefly at Carbon Unbound London last month but didn't have a chance to say hi. One thing I think might lead to some resistance from the community is that the CDR field in general has collectively worked extremely hard to intentionally distance and separate itself from the term "geoengineering" due to the negative connotations of the word. This is the same with the concept and even the term SRM, which is tightly connected to the term geoengineering. I believe that people (legitimately) fear that if CDR technologies get grouped in with these terms, it can lead to problems that could stymie the deployment of CDR (especially through the efforts of maligned actors).

I think changing the terminology/branding alone would be helpful for a meaningful amount of people, as for example, they are likely blocking the account in order to dissociate with the word "geoengineering." I even find myself not liking or retweeting some great tweets/threads posted by the account due to the name (and instead just bookmark them, which is private)... 

There is a similar issue going on with the term "Carbon Capture" being used as marketing term by the fossil industry for CCS, which is causing risk to diluting the clarity of the term "Carbon Removal." I believe it is a concerted effort to hijack some of the goodwill of the CDR industry. I think many people are also fighting to be clear that CCS is not CDR. I even own the domain and many variations of CCSisnotCDR.com in order to be able to run a campaign if this becomes a bigger problem (if anyone wants to be in charge of that let me know)...

I think many in the community do appreciate the work you do. It might be helpful to provide instructions for those who are new to the group to learn how to select to receive a digest of the feed, so that, as the above commenter mentioned, they don't feel "overwhelm[ed]" by the volume messages. Or even a simple tip on implementing a filter so the emails bypass the inbox and go to a folder that they can then visit more periodically... 

Feel free to privately message me to discuss further. 

[Seth Miller]

I missed the first volley of comments, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to publicly thank Andrew for contributing to the community. For folks who don’t want the volume of emails, it should be easy enough to block the geoengineering address. For folks who do use the links, we all have the options of supporting his work, which is fantastic. 

I would generally observe that it’s a good thing for people to contribute to the community. Some days we may seem too pushy, or not pushy enough, or maybe send a hasty reply when we haven’t gotten enough sleep. It’s ok. We’ve all been through it; we understand. It’s hard enough to just be a human somedays, without trying to change the direction of a planet of 8 billion disparate individuals.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US. And special thanks to everyone for pushing us forward in whatever way you do, no matter where in the world you are.

Best,

Seth

-------

Seth Miller, Ph.D.

www.linkedin.com/in/sethmiller2

Check my blog at: perspicacity.xyz

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[Andrew Lockley]

Replying to all comments

1) Google groups have daily digests for those who are swamped 

2) all our stories are in the weekly substack newsletters (links at the top of the thread), so you don't need to check every Google group post 

3) the geoengineering branding is a decade old, but our users have consistently voted to keep SRM and CDR linked. It's likely that incoming funders will split the service, with specific verticals going to separate funders. 

Thanks for the helpful and appreciative comments. 

Andrew Lockley 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/9C3A3219-F427-474B-8CFE-9445ACAFF503%40gmail.com.