[HPAC, PRAG, HCA, CDR] HPAC Thursday, July 11, Peter Fiekowsky's Climate Restoration Roadmap

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

HPAC Presentation July 11, 5:30 PM EDT.

Zoom link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88954851189?pwd=WVZoeTBnN3kyZFoyLzYxZ1JNbDFPUT09

Colleagues - Please join the founder of the global climate restoration movement, Peter Fiekowsky, for our presentation this Thursday, the 11th.

The Climate Restoration Roadmap
Peter Fiekowsky

We all want to give our children a safe climate like the one we were given. We know that nature has removed about 1 trillion tons of CO2 before ice ages, so we know that it is theoretically possible. However climate leadership does not yet support or even discuss restoring safe CO2 levels.

In the 1980s, as the UNFCCC and IPCC were developing, the concept of restoring a safe climate made no sense because the climate was still safe. In the last 30 years, though, our planet has moved into climate chaos, and it is clear that we need to shift our goal to restoration.

How will we do it? I'll present an engineering and scientific roadmap to getting CO2 back to safe levels below 300 (or 350 ppm CO2e) by 2050.  It's a fascinating and surprising pathway.

PAC Presentation  - Peter Fiekowsky, author of Climate Restoration: The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race (2022), is an MIT-educated physicist and Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist with 27 patents. He has 30 years’ experience as a citizen lobbyist for poverty and climate issues, and recently has been working to build the organizations required to ensure the survival and flourishing of humanity.  His mission is to leave a world we’re proud of to our children. To that end, he founded the Foundation for Climate Restoration, Methane Action, Stable Planet Alliance, the Climate Restoration Safety & Governance Board, the Humanity Day organization and most recently RestoreTheClimate.

[Ron Baiman]

Thank you Robert!  I'm sorry I missed it but will be reviewing the recording!  When you get a chance, if you could send me and Lucinda a downloadable version for the HPAC website and YouTube channel when you get a chance that would be great!

Best,

Ron

On Fri, Jul 12, 2024 at 9:55 AM <rob...@rtulip.net> wrote:

This is a very informative discussion with Peter, who is one of the most influential advocates for effective climate policies.

 

Link to the recording is at https://youtu.be/lx1vJ7kTfxo?t=1

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

https://www.healthyplanetaction.org/

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Healthy Planet Action Coalition

 

Addressing the Urgent Need for Direct Climate Cooling: Rationale and Options

An Open Letter to the IMO Supporting Maritime Transport that Cools the Atmosphere While Preserving Air Quality Benefits

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Colleagues,

Just finished viewing the video and concur that this was an excellent talk!  I found the summary discussion particularly encouraging as all appeared to agree that both cooling and carbon removal are necessary (along with emissions reductions of course) and urgent. 

One point that I would have liked to hear more about (my bad for not being able to attend!) was a bit more of an attempt to unpack the evidence for and against the view expressed by Peter that trillions of tons of carbon can very rapidly be absorbed in the oceans through OIF.  Mike raised some questions, and as I recall (from NOAC meetings) other concerns have been expressed including an absolute cumulative limit on the amount of iron that can be safely absorbed by the oceans. 

However, I hope Peter and the The Climate Restoration folks are right that OIF can provide enormous carbon removal (and also cooling benefits through methane removal) and I applaud their ability to quickly operationalize their vision so that it can be tested as we definitely need  both cooling and carbon removal (and GHG emissions reductions) to be implemented as soon as is "humanly" possible!

Best,

Ron

On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 12:10 PM Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you Ron and thank you Peter F ,

I haven't had time to view this yet but I definitely intend to do so

Regards, Dana

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[Peter Fiekowsky]

Ron-

 

Thank you for the good review and excellent question: Can OIF remove the required 1000 Gt of CO2 by 2050? (and another 500-1000 Gt from 2050 to 2100). Here is a quick response. Maybe we can write up a longer one together.

 

How does one answer the question, “is it possible?”.  One of the strongest answers to that is, “Yes, it’s been done before.” It is hard to defend a claim of impossibility when the process in question has been done before, especially if it’s been done recently.

 

We know that Earth has ice ages in which 1000 Gt of CO2 get removed into biocarbon dissolved in the deep ocean. That has happened roughly dozen times in the last million years.

The question from the science community is, “Can humans design a process to replicate what nature did randomly, and do it 1000 times faster?” As you know, the majority opinion in science is, “No, we have not proven that we can replicate that CO2 removal, so it’s safest to assume it’s impossible.”

 

There is no arguing with that logic calling for more research. It assumes that our top priority is the same as science’s: Avoid the embarrassment of calling for doing something that’s never been done before and will probably have several failures before success. I suggest we abandon that assumption.

 

Last year we showed that nature removed 20 Gt / year in 1992, following the Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines. This is separate from the half degree of cooling in 1992 from aerosols in the upper atmosphere. CO2 removal is from the gigatons of fine ash that fell into the ocean nearby. This CO2 removal from less than 0.1% of the ocean area is five times faster than current ocean theory says is possible with OIF done on the whole ocean. This CO2 capture rate per square meter is consistent with observed photosynthesis rates in nutrient-rich areas, but over large areas it requires that nitrogen-fixing algae provide the needed nitrates, which I am told, is not part of current theory.

 

There are two approaches to that incongruity between theory and data: Either the theory is insufficient, or the data is wrong. Oceanographers write that cooling from the eruption caused the CO2 level change. This is despite the fact that 4 other eruptions in the last 250 years caused similar cooling, but no significant CO2 impact (see Appendix B of our  white paper), and the fact that the numbers don’t work (footnote 9, p7).  Scientific consensus still dismisses the NASA / NOAA / Scripps Keeling curve interpretation, but that’s shifting.

 

There are a couple oceanographers now supporting the Pinatubo pause replication test we are developing. More scientists will probably switch sides eventually and agree that the theory should be updated to match the 1992 data.

 

Bottom line: CO2 removal at 20 Gt CO2 / year ( 1/3 the rate required to get to 300 ppm by 2050)  was recorded in 1992. It is almost certain that humans can optimize this process and remove CO2 from 1% of the ocean and restore a safe CO2 level by 2050. No attempt to do so has been made in the 30 years since the first 1993 Pinatubo pause report, so it is reasonable to predict that no attempt will be made in the next 30 years.

 

However, we have a group organizing funding and a project to break the log-jam.

The speed and cost of scaling up the Pinatubo pause (3-5 years and less than a billion dollars), plus the fact that Nature has demonstrated the CO2 removal already makes a compelling argument to prioritize the testing.

 

Peter

[Ron Baiman]

Thank you Peter for this detailed explanation of your thinking. Unfortunately I'm not enough of an expert on any of this to be able to confidently evaluate the case you're making.  The bottom line though, is that I do hope that you're able to draw down large quantities of CO2 and this is, needless to say, sorely needed. My main concern (as wthl all of us) is time. As I can't tell with confidence that, even if Pinatubo did lead to a 20 GT drawdown this is something that could be doubled and continued at the same higher rate for multiple years, I favor hedging our bets and making sure we have a direct climate cooling tourniquet in place, even as we're trying our best to reduce and remove as fast as possible!

Best,

Ron

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

A quote from Peter F from the very beginning of the Healthy Climate Alliance in 2013, "First we have to create the mission of restoration, because restoration solutions do not make sense with a mission of only limiting further warming." (and I paraphrase you Peter, this may not be your exact words, but it does reflect the idea that we cannot achieve climate restoration at any cost, if we continue with our current civilization's mission of limiting further warming." I say this because the Triad neglects this fundamental. Without a mission of restoration, in my opinion, the Triad is not very meaningful.

I also want to add another piece of the history of geoengineering that is often overlooked. During post WWII industrial expansion, we emitted an enormous amount of sulfur from burning fossil fuels. These emissions not only cooled Earth by about 0.1 C by the 1970s when air pollution regulations became strong enough to overcome some of the cooling from sulfate emissions, but this cooling period permanently lowered the resulting Earth temperature. Why? Because geoengineering lowers the increase of the load of long-lived warming pollutants in the atmosphere from natural feedback emissions. This is because Earth's natural feedback emissions of climate pollutants increase with increasing temperature. Anything that lowers Earth's temperature then, lowers natural feedback emissions of climate pollutants that are long-lived in our atmosphere. This reduction is semi-permanent, likely in human generational time frames, depending on the warming rate. Net then, aerosol cooling  from WWII to the 1970s was not 0.1 C as the thermometer record indicates. If the warming trend remained linear from prior to WWII, the cooling would have been about 0.5 C by the mid-1970s when warming resumed after air pollution regulations began affecting aerosol emissions enough to matter.

   
(From) How much did aerosols contribute to mid-20th century cooling?
Posted on 16 September 2010 by dana1981 at Skeptical Science
https://skepticalscience.com/How-much-did-aerosols-contribute-to-mid-20th-century-cooling.html

-MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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On 7/17/2024 4:08 AM, John Nissen wrote:

Hi Ron and Dennis,

Ron, you are absolutely right that we need cooling in the short term, and very urgently to deal with the crisis of global overheating.  And Peter is right that we need to bring the CO2 level (and more importantly the CO2e level) towards its pre-industrial level in the long term.  I believe that we should aim for 385 ppm CO2e (as in 1980) within 30 or 40 years or so.  OIF and biochar between them could achieve this by promoting life in soils and the oceans, with the added benefit of feeding an expanding world population.

Peter may or may not be right about Pinatubo ash causing the decline in CO2.  But two facts are clear: OIF has the potential to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere; and cooling the ocean surface will increase its ability to absorb CO2.  About a third of CO2 emitted is absorbed by the ocean (most of that within a decade) and a sixth is absorbed by plants on land; meaning that only about half of emitted CO2 remains in the atmosphere.  A greater proportion of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere as global warming continues.  Cooling intervention helps on the CO2 side.

The other lesson from Pinatubo is that injecting SO2 into the stratosphere has a dramatic cooling effect, without any unmanageable side-effects according to the latest research.   Dennis, you were going to do a documentary on Pinatubo and how it cooled the world.  How is that coming along?  We desperately need people to appreciate the amazing potential for SAI to cool the planet and, even more urgently, to refreeze the Arctic.  Planetary restoration, which is an unalienable right for the young people of today, requires both this cooling and the massive CDR which Peter envisages.

Cheers, John

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CAPhUB9DjF2pv5XyeTE1u58z3hoFVpUs4cbMWH1ee3UKSSaNiYA%40mail.gmail.com.

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[H simmens]

Hi Bruce,

I don’t understand your comment that the Triad neglects restoration. 

The HP policy is clear that the triad is the means - along with enhanced adaptation - to a restored climate as per the HP ‘about us’ statement:

i

Cool, reduce, and remove to restore the climate.

Later is too late!

We advocate the world community urgently come together to carry out an equitable, science-based plan of action that includes what HPAC calls, the Climate Triad:

• directly cooling the climate through sunshine reflection, ecosystem restoration, and other safe and effective means,

• accelerating emission reductions, and

• deploying large scale removal of atmosphere carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.

The goal of these actions, along with enhanced and transformative adaptation and regeneration measures, is to reduce the average global temperature increase to well below 1°C in the coming decades. Doing so will sharply reduce weather extremes, slow or stop the collapse of key ecosystems, and help ensure a livable planet for humanity and the natural world.

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Jul 17, 2024, at 12:49 PM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:



We all want to give our children a safe climate like the one we were given. We know that nature has removed about 1 trillion tons of CO2 before ice ages, so we know that it is theoretically possible. However climate leadership does not yet support or even discuss restoring safe CO2 levels.

In the 1980s, as the UNFCCC and IPCC were developing, the concept of restoring a safe climate made no sense because the climate was still safe. In the last 30 years, though, our planet has moved into climate chaos, and it is clear that we need to shift our goal to restoration.

How will we do it? I'll present an engineering and scientific roadmap to getting CO2 back to safe levels below 300 (or 350 ppm CO2e) by 2050.  It's a fascinating and surprising pathway.

PAC Presentation  - Peter Fiekowsky, author of Climate Restoration: The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race (2022), is an MIT-educated physicist and Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist with 27 patents. He has 30 years’ experience as a citizen lobbyist for poverty and climate issues, and recently has been working to build the organizations required to ensure the survival and flourishing of humanity.  His mission is to leave a world we’re proud of to our children. To that end, he founded the Foundation for Climate Restoration, Methane Action, Stable Planet Alliance, the Climate Restoration Safety & Governance Board, the Humanity Day organization and most recently RestoreTheClimate.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/26c9e449-ed0f-4c07-9084-71abced723c4%40earthlink.net.

[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Bruce--Just a note on the temperature record you are showing (so a separate point than what Herb has made). I've attached the land and the ocean temperature records from NOAA. If you look at the land record, it is quite flat from the 1930s to 1970s, with the years of World War II being slightly high (up an average of say 0.2 F).  Hard to see much cooling, except around the time of the 1963 Agung eruption. And note the scaling goes up to 3.6 F--so, that the temperature was so stable is pretty impressive.

Now look at the ocean record--due to limited areal coverage, the records from the 19th century have pretty large gaps, so a bit more variable due to less good coverage. Note that the scaling is half that of the atmosphere. Note that the WWII years really stand out as different, up by 0.4 F, twice as much as over land. This is really rather strange as land tends to change more than the ocean. It has long been recognized that there were a lot of changes going on in how SST was measured starting in the war years. Aside from different ship routings, different mix of ship types and loading, the way SST was measured was changed from throwing a canvas bucket over board and sticking a thermometer in it as it cooled to measuring the cooling water intake temperature in the engine room (likely of a freighter running its engines hot for fast crossing with heavy load and so drawing water from a different depth than the bucket--or coming back empty and bobbing like a cork on the ocean). Also, instead of taking nighttime air temperature with a seaman holding up a thermometer at the bow of the ship and doing the reading by shining a flashlight, the temperature was taken just outside a wheelhouse door that was opened a crack right next to the ship structure that had been heated by the sun all day; this was done so as to reduce likelihood of the light being spotted by an enemy submarine . While these and other factors are known and surely contributed to a bias in the record, correcting the record has been viewed as near impossible to do. And so, when one now combines the land and ocean records (ocean about twice as much area as the land), one gets the temperature record you are using showing a cooling from the 1940s to 1970s.

What is interesting to do is to put your finger over the WWII years and then look at the ocean record. To me, it doesn't look like there is a cooling--rather a rather steady warming from the 19th century, with GHG loading the likely cause. The land temperature record ends up relatively flat, so perhaps sulfate cooling offsetting GHG warming  until the 1970s when SO2 emissions were reduce and GHG emissions accelerated. Another possible explanation is that the pollution clean up that started in the 1930s or so of not cutting emissions, but emitting them through a tall stack increased the atmospheric lifetime of atmospheric sulfur (it would transform from SO2 to sulfate) and so the cooling offset due to sulfate grew along with the CO2 induced increase in radiative forcing, and they roughly balanced.

In any case, I'd be very cautious about drawing conclusions based on what was happening in the middle of the 20th century. WWII is about the only time in the temperature record where the model simulations don't agree with the observations. Steve Koonin in his book blames the models and so discounts their results; an open-minded physicist would look also at data problems and perhaps suggest it is the data that is problematic and that the models may well have things right.

Best, Mike

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-climate-alliance/3C9418BF-F8BF-4041-AAED-4D525974ED30%40gmail.com.

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Bruce,

Here's a statement of the triad from the plain language summary at the beginning of the HPAC cooling paper: https://essopenarchive.org/users/673263/articles/716465-addressing-the-urgent-need-for-direct-climate-cooling-rationale-and-options, that is repeated several times (basically verbatim in other parts of the paper):

" On a global scale, restoring the relatively beneficial climatic conditions of the 20th Century will require a restoration plan to return global warming to well below 1°C. To be effective, such a plan would need to include: a) researching, field testing, and deploying one or more large-scale cooling influence(s) perhaps initially in polar regions and applying local and regional cooling measures that also support adaptation, b) accelerating emissions reductions with an early prioritization of short-lived climate-drivers, and c) deploying large scale carbon removal to draw down legacy greenhouse gas."

Can you explain why you think this does not include a mission of restoration?

Thank you.

Best,

Ron

[Ron Baiman]

Lol!  I just saw Herb's comment!  Apologies for repeating the question, though the triad formulation above is a more recent updated version of the HPAC triad.

Best,

Ron

[Peter Fiekowsky]

Excellent discussion here.

 

A few points of clarification:

1. CO2 restoration is assumed intuitively--I'm working to make that assumption explicit so that it can be budgeted.   It's independent of cooling.
   
   CO2 restoration and cooling are ‘both-and ‘;not ‘either-or’.  Economics discusses buying decisions as either-or: We either buy a Ford or a Chevy, and their marketing is aimed at influencing that either-or decision. We often hear “CDR vs. Cooling” like an economic choice. It isn’t.
   

CO2 restoration is required, it seems that everyone agrees, at least unconsciously. It's sort of like eating breakfast is required. We don't debate "breakfast or cooling?". We assume that people will eat (and sometimes skip breakfast). independent of advocating cooling. The same is true for CO2 restoration (and the energy transition). Not to restore safe CO2 (and switch to clean energy) is suicidal. And even if we committed that suicide, CO2 would still fall gradually, and fossil fuel use would disappear.   

 

2. Given that we should pursue both CDR at scale and cooling, which deserves HPAC top focus? This is the real question in discussion, right? We want to weigh:

1. Which is most critical to humanity surviving & flourishing? I propose that is CO2 restoration. Cooling just “buys time” for more CDR, if we survive that long, if ‘the ship hasn’t already sunk’.
2. Which is most likely to succeed? Ocean fertilization can be justified by its observed large benefit to certain indigenous (and commercial) fisheries. The anti-geoengineering radicals are unlikely to oppose relatively small scale indigenous fishery restoration projects (which just happen to restore CO2 levels as ‘by-catch’). We already see various forces aligning loudly against MCB and SAI, making their success at scale a long-shot.
3. Which is in the most need of support? Which has roughly zero support now? Again it’s ocean fertilization. There is zero discussion of Pinatubo pause replication in government funding agencies today. ARIA is already proposing several million in funding for MCB, and the White House has done studies on SRM, but not on replicating the 20 Gt CO2 removal from 1992—it’s simply not being considered.
4. OIF is most critical, most likely to succeed, and most in need of support today. I recommend that HPAC put OIF (Pinatubo pause replication) as the top priority for private and government funding for the next few years.
   
   
   

3. We don’t know what caused the Pinatubo pause but there are hypotheses. The concept of ash fertilizing phytoplankton growth in the downwelling eddy just downwind of Pinatubo is by far the most likely explanation. In fact, it is the only testable explanation proposed so far that survives mathematical analysis. That makes it the first pathway to test. The replication test is insanely cheap—2-3 million dollars. If the test shows it’s something other than iron + phosphorus, then that’s the progress we need to make this year.
   
   
4. CO2 removal related to Cooling is tiny, much smaller than you probably think (about 0.1 Mt CO2 per degree of cooling).  It’s important to quantify this claim so that we’re believable, not seen as speculative zealots. If SAI or MCB is used to cool the planet this decade (by a degree, let’s say), that cooled ocean surface would absorb 0.0001 Gt CO2, or 0.00001 ppm. See footnote 9, P7 for the simple calculation. That is 30 minutes of global emissions, insanely small. Please, let’s be at least believable, even rigorous.

 

 

 

On Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 2:09 AM John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Ron and Dennis,

 

Ron, you are absolutely right that we need cooling in the short term, and very urgently to deal with the crisis of global overheating.  And Peter is right that we need to bring the CO2 level (and more importantly the CO2e level) towards its pre-industrial level in the long term.  I believe that we should aim for 385 ppm CO2e (as in 1980) within 30 or 40 years or so.  OIF and biochar between them could achieve this by promoting life in soils and the oceans, with the added benefit of feeding an expanding world population.

 

Peter may or may not be right about Pinatubo ash causing the decline in CO2.  But two facts are clear: OIF has the potential to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere; and cooling the ocean surface will increase its ability to absorb CO2.  About a third of CO2 emitted is absorbed by the ocean (most of that within a decade) and a sixth is absorbed by plants on land; meaning that only about half of emitted CO2 remains in the atmosphere.  A greater proportion of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere as global warming continues.  Cooling intervention helps on the CO2 side.

 

The other lesson from Pinatubo is that injecting SO2 into the stratosphere has a dramatic cooling effect, without any unmanageable side-effects according to the latest research.   Dennis, you were going to do a documentary on Pinatubo and how it cooled the world.  How is that coming along?  We desperately need people to appreciate the amazing potential for SAI to cool the planet and, even more urgently, to refreeze the Arctic.  Planetary restoration, which is an unalienable right for the young people of today, requires both this cooling and the massive CDR which Peter envisages.

 

Cheers, John

 

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CAPhUB9DjF2pv5XyeTE1u58z3hoFVpUs4cbMWH1ee3UKSSaNiYA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Michael Hayes]

Hello, Peter et al.,

Below are a few observations;

PF] "CO2 restoration is assumed intuitively--I'm working to make that assumption explicit so that it can be budgeted.   It's independent of cooling."

MH] Cooling and CDR can be achieved using a single tech such as the Cryogenic Carbon Capture method. The FF industry currently uses CCC as its primary point source CO2 capture tech.

The CCC method is not the only CDR technique that can cool surface water. Reactor-based biotic mCDR, a form of agriculture, would pull cold nutrient rich cold water up into a surface infrastructure. The cooled reactors will cool surface water. Any excess CO2 can be run through a CCC unit and create sea ice as a byproduct of the CCC operations.

The technique known as Thermodynamic Geoengineering, a method which is neither CDR or SRM, can produce sea ice if tasked to do so.

https://energycentral.com/c/ec/energy-solution-boiling-planet

PF] " 

1. Which is most likely to succeed? Ocean fertilization can be justified by its observed large benefit to certain indigenous (and commercial) fisheries. The anti-geoengineering radicals are unlikely to oppose relatively small scale indigenous fishery restoration projects (which just happen to restore CO2 levels as ‘by-catch’). We already see various forces aligning loudly against MCB and SAI, making their success at scale a long-shot.

MH] There is a large distinction between classical OIF and seagrass pasture fertilization. The prior is intended for use in highly isolated marine areas, the latter would be within coastal areas that are already over nutrified. Moreover, a coastal outbreak of microbial toxins that is anywhere near a seagrass pasture fertilization effort would be, legally speaking, rather expensive to deal with, and the operation(s) more than likely shut down, with operators possibly arrested. 

Moreover, work at the small scale that seagrass pastures represent will not move the global C cycle needle. If 10 GtC/y is the CDR goal, that represents a substantially larger C weight than all life in the Ocean, or 6 GtC. Pasture feeding does not go there.

PF] "

1. Which is in the most need of support? Which has roughly zero support now? Again it’s ocean fertilization. There is zero discussion of Pinatubo pause replication in government funding agencies today. ARIA is already proposing several million in funding for MCB, and the White House has done studies on SRM, but not on replicating the 20 Gt CO2 removal from 1992—it’s simply not being considered.

MH] In the USA, the administration has opened up RD&D support for virtual all CDR paths, and mCDR paths in particular. The OIF technology is not being neglected anymore than other methods. As the classical OIF method is used far offshore, not coastally, the advancement of OIF is up to international policy bodies, not one nation state. As such, classical OIF may never get approved or get approved tomorrow.

PF] "OIF is most critical, most likely to succeed, and most in need of support today. I recommend that HPAC put OIF (Pinatubo pause replication) as the top priority for private and government funding for the next few years."

MH] The classical OIF method, not coastal fertilization, is likely the most effecient agricultural method humans will ever develop on this planet. Yet, we get only the reduction in CO2 with zero ability to pay for it without C credits, and the MRV values are low as final storage amounts will always be questioned. However, by containing that water chemistry in reactors, we can realize the benefits of low cost OIF water chem, greatly improve the MRV values as final storage issues can be resolved, and extract C out of the system in the form of food, feed, fertilizer, fuel and pharma, just to name a few downstream products.

To conclude, I would recommend that TG be a primary focus as it can create sea ice and support a number of mCDR methods with the energy it converts.  A second focus would be reactor-based agriculture as both methods can use much of the same physical infrastructure components. Below is an example of such infrastructure components. Reactor-based mCDR can create the needed ethylene to produce such structures, and thus this system of systems would be largely self-replicating at the basic materials level, and would be a C sink itself at a CDR scale. Many other CDR and SRM technologies can piggyback on a TG/Reactor-based biotic mCDR network of instalations. 

https://youtu.be/qXtVQWHgNig?si=57isr56zWWTjWeDe

Best regards 

 

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[Ron Baiman]

Impressive pitch Peter!  

But wouldn’t it be better for us to unite in pushing for a comprehensive (and less risky as not dependent on any single approach being wholly successful) triad approach rather than singling out one approach at the expense of others?  Especially as we all appear to agree that all three legs of the triad are urgently needed and as you point out they are not mutually exclusive (or “substitute goods” in economics parlance)?  

For example, I think the strategy of uniting in a “grand coalition” of potential direct climate cooling approaches as part of comprehensive triad approach to regenerating a healthy climate and ecosystem on Earth for humans has been the ingredient in the modicum of success that HPAC has had in getting the mainstream to contemplate breaking from the “emissions reduction only” (now) fantasy solution to the climate crisis.

In short wouldn’t it make more sense for the climate restoration movement to support the  climate triad rather than posing restoration and cooling as competing strategies? 

Best,

Ron

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 17, 2024, at 8:04 PM, Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com> wrote:



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We all want to give our children a safe climate like the one we were given. We know that nature has removed about 1 trillion tons of CO2 before ice ages, so we know that it is theoretically possible. However climate leadership does not yet support or even discuss restoring safe CO2 levels.

In the 1980s, as the UNFCCC and IPCC were developing, the concept of restoring a safe climate made no sense because the climate was still safe. In the last 30 years, though, our planet has moved into climate chaos, and it is clear that we need to shift our goal to restoration.

How will we do it? I'll present an engineering and scientific roadmap to getting CO2 back to safe levels below 300 (or 350 ppm CO2e) by 2050.  It's a fascinating and surprising pathway.

PAC Presentation  - Peter Fiekowsky, author of Climate Restoration: The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race (2022), is an MIT-educated physicist and Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist with 27 patents. He has 30 years’ experience as a citizen lobbyist for poverty and climate issues, and recently has been working to build the organizations required to ensure the survival and flourishing of humanity.  His mission is to leave a world we’re proud of to our children. To that end, he founded the Foundation for Climate Restoration, Methane Action, Stable Planet Alliance, the Climate Restoration Safety & Governance Board, the Humanity Day organization and most recently RestoreTheClimate.

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[Sev Clarke]

Ron,

Peter’s concept does use something like the triad approach as his version of OIF that includes phosphate would not only restore marine biomass and biodiversity, but would also increase ocean albedo and strengthen the biological pump. Moreover, I do not think that he is against deploying other triad elements and restoration methods. It is just that ocean fertilization can be tested first in many different ocean regions with little of no teleconnection concerns, and be adjusted if necessary, before being rapidly and safely scaled up to near-global scale. His are not competing strategies but complementary ones.

Sev

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/FBA564E4-D7EE-4B5B-A54D-62BD95FAD63B%40gmail.com.

[Peter Fiekowsky]

Ron-

 

A great question: “wouldn’t it make more sense for the climate restoration movement to support the climate triad rather than posing restoration and cooling as competing strategies? “

 

I find that the answer depends on your perspective.

My perspective is that without CO2 restoration, life as we know it is over, period. I get that "life is over" feeling now in talking with my millennial and gen-Z connections. I consider giving them the same climate we were given to be top priority. Don’t you?

 

Reducing emissions faster than we are now produces health and economic benefits but practically no climate impact. Tell me if you don’t believe that, and I’ll show you how to do the modeling yourself with the on-line MAGICC system. Reducing emissions is inevitable and thus necessary, just as dying is necessary—campaigning for the inevitable is a sign of deep resignation.

 

Global cooling and saving ice might reduce suffering, but won’t keep humanity alive, at least not for long. That's physically true, but physical reality is probably not what you're thinking about. 

I think you're asking, "How do we get society to act to preserve ourselves? Don't we need to agree with the UN and scientists who say, "First focus on net-zero emissions. If we make it there, then remove the remaining excess CO2." 

I'm inclined to the approach that won WW II in 4 years and landed a man on the moon in just 8 1/2 years. In that approach national leadership declares a specific goal which seems impossible but deeply meaningful at the time: "Win the war";  "Land a man on the moon and bring him back safely by the end of the decade"; "Restore the climate by 2050".

Later-- "Net-zero by 2030 to restore the climate by 2050"

Do you think anything less bold will work in today's emergency?

Would "Tanks, Planes, and Ships to win the war" have worked better to generate action in 1942?

[Ron Baiman]

Thanks again Peter for the continued dialogue on this.  But your characterization of my view:

"I think you're asking, "How do we get society to act to preserve ourselves? Don't we need to agree with the UN and scientists who say, "First focus on net-zero emissions. If we make it there, then remove the remaining excess CO2." 

 (and the HPAC view as I understand it) is incorrect.

We are saying (what I think is obvious) that all three legs of the triad need to be ramped up as fast as possible as they are essentially (if you'll excuse further economeeze) "complementary not substitute goods". We need them all (plus natural ecosystem regeneration - see attached paper) to get us out of the dire mess that we're in!  To state the obvious we can't have net-CDR if we don't at least get to net-zero emissions.

In terms of the highest priority urgent necessity, I think most in HPAC would say DCC as we don't believe the other legs (on their own) can improve the situation in the "near" future (decades or a Century or more). I understand that you believe that this is not the case but this is not something that I think it's useful for us to quibble about. It's good that you and allies are working on CDR and us on DCC! 

Best,

Ron

[Michael Hayes]

Dear Peter, et al.,

To reduce the entire CDR field of study, particularly the mCDR field, down to a method that has never been discribed in a single peer reviewed paper, a method that has now been rejected by the coastal tribe that was first talked into using it, and to use the title of OIF, which there is no record of actual OIF experts supporting pasture feeding, is not supportable at any level by any CDR expert.

Moreover, mention of commercial fisherman loving pasture feeding was made. I'm an experianced Bering sea, Kodiak, and SE Alaskan commercial fisherman. Dumping Fe in shallow waters is a form of fish chumming, that was the only discovery of the effort. Chumming for fish is illegal in N America and most of the rest of the civilized world.

The origional classical OIF method is a highly respected piece of scientific work, pasture feeding is not, on both counts.

Best regards

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[Peter Fiekowsky]

Ron-

 

Good work together here. Indeed, this is a useful dialog. I’m learning a lot from it.

 

You say that you don’t believe that we can remove CO2 as fast as nature did in 1992, and therefore we (society) should focus first on SRM or direct climate cooling (DCC) to buy us time.  I believed that too, ten years ago, before I studied OIF, and especially before last year where I rediscovered the fact (reported in Nature 1993), hidden in plain view, that nature removed 20 Gt CO2 / year in 1992. (In 1993 it was reported as 1.5 ppm, or 12 Gt CO2 because the impact of the El Nino at the time was unclear).

 

Given your premise that we can’t replicate Nature’s rate of CO2 removal, your Triad conclusion makes perfect sense.

 

On the other hand, I see little evidence that DCC will get implemented. Who specifically might budget the money, and with what justification? It won’t help investors or voters—and in fact the almost certainty of huge lawsuits blaming any bad weather on the DCC perpetrators would dissuade most investors. That thinking is demonstrated in the marine cloud brightening ban in Alameda.

 

What would it take to convince you that we can replicate (and eventually increase) Nature’s 20 Gt CO2 / year removal? Further, since it also produces food for fish and fisheries (indigenous and commercial), it will be hard for environmentalists to block. I acknowledge that the oceanographic community largely denies that the (obvious to most people—see the graph on the cover) removal even happened. I argue that they have professional loyalty reasons for the denial. They defend the denial so far with anger and silence, rather than with data.

 

Plus, the probability of the CDR replication succeeding is significantly higher than DCC / SRM getting implemented. This is demonstrated by the fact that we’re already getting governmental support in Asia to get the permits and ships to make it happen, primarily as fishery restoration, in the next year or so (details are withheld for now).

[H simmens]

Ron and Peter,

Your position Ron and your interpretation of HP’s position is well put and totally consistent with HP policy as represented in the Vision for a Healthy Planet and in the About Us statement, both available on our website. 

Other than stating that DCC is the most urgent of the three legs of the Triad and that Arctic and polar intervention may likely be the most urgent urgent need, HP is not in the business of advocating for particular technologies, modalities or priorities within any of the three legs. 

If we were to do so officially we would become embroiled in endless debates and discussions (sounds like our list!) on the means rather than the end goal. 

That said HP has made a commitment to review and update the Vision, and if a credible argument can be made that the Vision should not privilege DCC, or privilege CDR instead, I’m sure that would be given full and fair consideration by the Steering Circle and the entire HP community. 

The HP goal which is very similar to yours as you know is to bring temperature increases back down to well below 1° C in the coming decades. 

If we can all work together to somehow get the world community to embrace a restoration goal - and much thanks to you for your leadership and bravery in first suggesting the need for and feasibility of a restoration goal - whether expressed in temperature increase or CO2 parts per million or some other metric - it will then be up to world leaders to figure out how to achieve that in the most urgent, comprehensive, and equitable matter possible. 

The Steering Circle created an Advocacy Task Force earlier this year that is now focused on efforts to achieve this goal. We welcome anyone interested in learning more about the task force to reach out to us. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Jul 19, 2024, at 12:37 PM, Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com> wrote:



 

Best,

Ron

 



On Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 2:09 AM John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Ron and Dennis,

 

Ron, you are absolutely right that we need cooling in the short term, and very urgently to deal with the crisis of global overheating.  And Peter is right that we need to bring the CO2 level (and more importantly the CO2e level) towards its pre-industrial level in the long term.  I believe that we should aim for 385 ppm CO2e (as in 1980) within 30 or 40 years or so.  OIF and biochar between them could achieve this by promoting life in soils and the oceans, with the added benefit of feeding an expanding world population.

 

Peter may or may not be right about Pinatubo ash causing the decline in CO2.  But two facts are clear: OIF has the potential to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere; and cooling the ocean surface will increase its ability to absorb CO2.  About a third of CO2 emitted is absorbed by the ocean (most of that within a decade) and a sixth is absorbed by plants on land; meaning that only about half of emitted CO2 remains in the atmosphere.  A greater proportion of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere as global warming continues.  Cooling intervention helps on the CO2 side.

 

The other lesson from Pinatubo is that injecting SO2 into the stratosphere has a dramatic cooling effect, without any unmanageable side-effects according to the latest research.   Dennis, you were going to do a documentary on Pinatubo and how it cooled the world.  How is that coming along?  We desperately need people to appreciate the amazing potential for SAI to cool the planet and, even more urgently, to refreeze the Arctic.  Planetary restoration, which is an unalienable right for the young people of today, requires both this cooling and the massive CDR which Peter envisages.

 

Cheers, John

 

 

On Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 2:22 AM Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you Peter for this detailed explanation of your thinking. Unfortunately I'm not enough of an expert on any of this to be able to confidently evaluate the case you're making.  The bottom line though, is that I do hope that you're able to draw down large quantities of CO2 and this is, needless to say, sorely needed. My main concern (as wthl all of us) is time. As I can't tell with confidence that, even if Pinatubo did lead to a 20 GT drawdown this is something that could be doubled and continued at the same higher rate for multiple years, I favor hedging our bets and making sure we have a direct climate cooling tourniquet in place, even as we're trying our best to reduce and remove as fast as possible!

Best,

Ron

 

 

 

On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 12:02 PM Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ron-

 

Thank you for the good review and excellent question: Can OIF remove the required 1000 Gt of CO2 by 2050? (and another 500-1000 Gt from 2050 to 2100). Here is a quick response. Maybe we can write up a longer one together.

 

How does one answer the question, “is it possible?”.  One of the strongest answers to that is, “Yes, it’s been done before.” It is hard to defend a claim of impossibility when the process in question has been done before, especially if it’s been done recently.

 

We know that Earth has ice ages in which 1000 Gt of CO2 get removed into biocarbon dissolved in the deep ocean. That has happened roughly dozen times in the last million years.

The question from the science community is, “Can humans design a process to replicate what nature did randomly, and do it 1000 times faster?” As you know, the majority opinion in science is, “No, we have not proven that we can replicate that CO2 removal, so it’s safest to assume it’s impossible.”

 

There is no arguing with that logic calling for more research. It assumes that our top priority is the same as science’s: Avoid the embarrassment of calling for doing something that’s never been done before and will probably have several failures before success. I suggest we abandon that assumption.

 

Last year we showed that nature removed 20 Gt / year in 1992, following the Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines. This is separate from the half degree of cooling in 1992 from aerosols in the upper atmosphere. CO2 removal is from the gigatons of fine ash that fell into the ocean nearby. This CO2 removal from less than 0.1% of the ocean area is five times faster than current ocean theory says is possible with OIF done on the whole ocean. This CO2 capture rate per square meter is consistent with observed photosynthesis rates in nutrient-rich areas, but over large areas it requires that nitrogen-fixing algae provide the needed nitrates, which I am told, is not part of current theory.

 

There are two approaches to that incongruity between theory and data: Either the theory is insufficient, or the data is wrong. Oceanographers write that cooling from the eruption caused the CO2 level change. This is despite the fact that 4 other eruptions in the last 250 years caused similar cooling, but no significant CO2 impact (see Appendix B of our  white paper), and the fact that the numbers don’t work (footnote 9, p7).  Scientific consensus still dismisses the NASA / NOAA / Scripps Keeling curve interpretation, but that’s shifting.

 

There are a couple oceanographers now supporting the Pinatubo pause replication test we are developing. More scientists will probably switch sides eventually and agree that the theory should be updated to match the 1992 data.

 

Bottom line: CO2 removal at 20 Gt CO2 / year ( 1/3 the rate required to get to 300 ppm by 2050)  was recorded in 1992. It is almost certain that humans can optimize this process and remove CO2 from 1% of the ocean and restore a safe CO2 level by 2050. No attempt to do so has been made in the 30 years since the first 1993 Pinatubo pause report, so it is reasonable to predict that no attempt will be made in the next 30 years.

 

However, we have a group organizing funding and a project to break the log-jam.

The speed and cost of scaling up the Pinatubo pause (3-5 years and less than a billion dollars), plus the fact that Nature has demonstrated the CO2 removal already makes a compelling argument to prioritize the testing.

 

Peter

 

 

From: Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2024 at 8:58 AM
To: Dana Woods <danaj...@gmail.com

>
Cc: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>, Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>, Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [HPAC] Re: [prag] Recording of Peter Fiekowsky's HPAC Presentation - Climate Restoration Roadmap

Dear Colleagues,

<image001.jpg>

<image002.jpg>

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[Ron Baiman]

Thanks Herb. 

Agreed that when it was first produced we were thinking that the vision document would need to be periodically updated.  Also agree that we’re not in the business of promoting particular DCC methods. 

However, per our  peer reviewed and about to be published cooling paper, I think it is important that we have an (as much as possible) scientifically  grounded approach to DCC approaches (especially the 14 in our paper) that includes their “urgent” rapid scaling potential, where and how they are likely to most effective, costs, potential risks, etc.  

We also have a more developed analysis of potential coordination and governance in the DCC paper that (as you have recently acknowledged) is a key issue for our advocacy and strategy.  

So I think we need to be a bit more nuanced about our positions (than I’m at least) seeing  in your summary, but hopefully we all can work out these issues out as we proceed!

Best,

Ron 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 19, 2024, at 1:44 PM, H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com> wrote:



<Baiman_2022_ Our Two Climate Crises Challenge RRPE print version.pdf>

[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Oswald--There is a rather large international scientific research program on SAI and other approaches. IPCC even held an international workshop on it a decade or so ago. Compared to the impacts of climate change now and lying ahead, SAI, for example, is on net less impactful. I don't disagree that it will take a bit of time to get approval, mostly because of a lot of mischaracterizations being put out to the media such as yours.

In contrast, I'm not even sure that IPCC has been able to cite (it does not do research, it evaluates issues form the literature) any published scientific literature on the approach you are supporting, that any global atmospheric chemistry modeling has been done or published, and so on. Your efforts would, it seems to me, likely to be much more productive doing, writing, getting peer-reviewed the approach that you are so strongly in favor of. Figure out how to demonstrate it would work, that it is safe, that it would have limits, that the change if it works would be slow enough--you have a lot to get done if you are going to get global approval, and, just to note, I think going ahead without such approval would lead to huge objections.

Mike MacCracken

On 7/19/24 2:20 PM, 'Oswald Petersen' via Planetary Restoration wrote:

Hello Herb,

 

thanks for your information.

 

« if a credible argument can be made that the Vision should not privilege DCC «

 

I will try to make such credible arguments. I will confine them to three, even though there are many more.

 

• DCC, as an acronym for SAI / MCB, is a method not acknowledged by IPCC. It will take decades to convince IPCC that SAI is a method to embrace. It is therefore not a method than can be applied within the next decades.
• Even if science would embrace DCC, it is politically not a viable option. Because of its global effect it would need global consent, which is something which cannot even be reached on much simpler global goals, e.g. condemnation of war crimes.
• Finally DCC will not get public support. Darkening the sun causes great anxiety, people instinctively reject it, for many, including religious, reasons.

 

All in all DCC is unfit for fast deployment, and any effort to push for it is counterproductive. If HPAC wants to be heard in the powerful circles of this world, take down DCC.

 

Instead I would ask HPAC to not give any privilege to any cooling effort. HPAC repeats again and again that they are neutral regarding the method, but then give privilege to DCC. This is contradictory and it is not helping the cause HPAC is fighting for.

 

I would ask HPAC to separate GHG removal from GHG emission reduction, because the latter is something that’s already agreed upon and being done, whereas GHG removal is a GeoEngineering method and as such still highly controversial. The “triad” which HPAC proposes is henceforth non-existent, you need at least four if not more legs to this stool.

 

Personally I would recommend GRAP as a preferred method, but I am aware that HPAC would not agree to that, so I don’t ask for it.

 

I do ask for a neutral standpoint of HPAC regarding the different methods,  

 

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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[Peter Fiekowsky]

Ron and Herb and the HPAC steering committee-

It sounds like we're getting on the same page gradually. I see two differences to resolve:

1. HPAC doesn't believe that humans can replicate the natural 20 Gt CO2 / year removal that occurred in 1992, and for that reason logically assigns top priority to global cooling / SRM. I believe that we can replicate and increase what nature demonstrated by adding sufficient iron in a few downwelling eddies to provide the needed nitrates. By 2050 this would restore CO2 below 300 ppm, and warming back to 2000 levels (0.75 C warming). That cooling could be achieved by 2040 if we also accelerated natural methane oxidation, at a cost of about $1B / year.Full-scale Methane Oxidation Implementation to Halve Methane Levels by 2030

I also believe that permission for global cooling is not forthcoming. Any group that permits it has to be prepared for very large lawsuits from anyone who experiences inconvenient weather conditions. Thus no permits or funding is predictable.

2. Decision makers: HPAC implicitly believes that there are global organization decision makers empowered to decide to restore a climate safe for our children, and they need to be convinced.

I have no evidence that there is an organization with authority to decide to restore a safe climate for our children, and thus no decision makers to convince.

If I may, here are four unrequested recommendations to the HPAC steering committee:

1. Re-evaluate the data regarding the probability of replicating Nature's CDR at 20 Gt CO2 / year.  Also re-evaluate the probability of SRM being permitted or funded. For now the UN calls for stabilizing GHG levels, not restoring safe levels for humanity. What would it take to believe that we can do what nature does, and probably far more efficiently in this case of CDR? And do it separately from the UN and its governments, as long as our expressed goals conflict.

2. Figure out the target audience for the HPAC mission. I recommend focusing on the real stakeholders for restoring the climate: Grandchildren (who have little money) and their grandparents (who often have money and care more than the world about their grandkids' well-being). Grandparents (as grandparents, not in their CEO or politician roles) will support restoration if we do the heavy lifting, that is, organizing and running the projects. CEOs and politicians (and non-profit directors) have strong accountability to shareholders and voters but not to our collective grandchildren. For this reason the organizations will continue to do all they can to greenwash rather than restore CO2. Their jobs require that they do so.

3. Decide that HPAC is serious about actually making a safe climate happen. Give up our ideologies and follow the data (not the science, but the data).

4. After deciding to be serious about getting the job done, follow good marketing practices and have a simple, clear, and emotionally compelling message, like "Give our children the same safe climate we were given, by 2050." It needs to be almost impossible (like win the War or land on the moon) or it won't evoke urgent funding and action. This is the exact opposite of how science funding works, so the scientists don't get a say on the message.

Is that useful?
Peter

[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Peter--It seems to me the problem with your suggestion is that it is simply unproven as a way of removing carbon. I was on the executive committee of the Scientific Committee for Oceanic Research (SCOR), which sort of oversees and coordinates virtually all international ocean research, from 2003-11 and for a while I was in charge of looking at the ocean fertilization studies up to that time. None was really convincing even though blooms were created as there were basically no measurements out the bottom of the study zone indicating that the carbon falling down would not dissolve on the way down and so not go down far enough to ensure it would not be recycled to the surface in the following decade or so. Research to get this proof is likely to be expensive--but essential to be convincing; creating blooms is just not enough.

I realize you view the Pinatubo eruption as proof but it is a little strange that is apparently the only eruption that did this, just in the right place and right time for your conclusion, whereas virtually all major volcanic eruptions have caused cooling that is quite coincident with the stratospheric aerosol loading over following months, etc. I sent you a note about a session planned at the upcoming December meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC that is planning a Union session on the subject of potential ocean carbon uptake. This is where your hypothesis needs to be presented and considered. Abstracts are due in by July 31, I think it is, and I do hope you find some speaker who presents the idea for serious consideration, research planning, etc. Just your assertion is not going to be enough to be really convincing. I don't disagree that yours is an interesting hypothesis to be tested, but it needs to be tested.

And then there is this question of how to possibly take advantage of iron fertilization. Thinking that this could be done by fertilizing just a few eddies seems quite remarkable given the hundred of billions of tons of C that will need to be removed to achieve what you are suggesting. Not only is there the amount in the atmosphere, but to keep chemical equilibrium, there will be CO2 being degassed from the the ocean mixed layer and you will have to remove that C as well, and same with C that comes up into the mixed layer and then is degassed.

And it needs to be that the C is taken well down in the ocean, best would be to the sediments, so it is not recycled to the surface. I'm sorry, but it is not at all clear that the approach will work.

So, as indicated above, I'd suggest you make sure your hypothesis is quickly well written up (if not done already)--say a draft scientific paper--and that it is being presented and evaluated at the AGU meeting (all that is needed immediately is an abstract).

Best, Mike

On 7/19/24 8:29 PM, Peter Fiekowsky wrote:

Ron and Herb and the HPAC steering committee-

your

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[Christopher Ede-Calton]

For what it's worth, regarding SRM: major countries (such as China) that have invested in solar farms will oppose it on the basis that it will reduce the efficiency of their solar farms. I have heard this from very credible people within the Chinese policy making apparatus. Geopolitics is now paramount, and we need to find a way to get the largest players to an agreeable solution. 

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[Sev Clarke]

Hi Christopher,

What you say is only relevant to some atmospheric or spatial methods of SRM. Solar farms would be largely unaffected by SRM methods such as ocean fertilization (by ocean brightening), ice thickening, and terrestrial brightening that would have little effect on reducing insolation over solar farms. Furthermore, as MCB methods could largely be restricted to having their main cooling effects over the oceans, these also would have little effect on reducing sunlight to terrestrial solar farms. The largest players will get on board after possibly some of the lesser, and more agile, ones demonstrate effective cooling, marine & forest regeneration, and cryogenic zone net benefits from carefully-gated trials and modelling of these methods. 

Cheers,

Sev 

[Michael Hayes]

'Marine and forest regeneration ' is a meaningless term. No one knows how to either, much less both.

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[Sev Clarke]

Marine regeneration is currently being enthusiastically investigated by five international research labs, see https://www.climaterepair.cam.ac.uk/marine-biomass-regeneration-mbr whilst forest regeneration and the consequential increase to cooling evapotranspiration might be achieved by a large variety of means, including some of those dealing with MCB and what the Chinese have achieved to regenerate the Loess Plateau, see https://eempc.org/environmental-challenges-facing-china-rehabilitation-of-the-loess-plateau/ and other such projects.  

[Peter Fiekowsky]

Mike M-

 

I’m glad you brought up the important point that the correlation between Pinatubo and OIF is unproven.

 

First. You misinterpreted what I wrote. Note that I never say that that the mechanism for the Pinatubo pause is OIF. Yes, OIF is the only explanation so far that fits the data (see my article), and yes it is unproven and is not in the peer review literature.

 

Next, remember that in science, nothing can be proven. Hypotheses can be disproven by evidence, but not proven. This is especially true in the varied and rapidly changing ocean. We will never know what chemistry happened in 1992—the ocean has changed too much since then.

 

By the same token, none of the SRM methods are proven—they’re all hypotheses and always will be until they’re disproven.

 

That leaves the real question: For those of us looking to give our children a safe climate (CO2 like 40, 100 or 200 years ago) while we still can (by 2050), what is the best use of our time and money right now? I propose that it’s the Pinatubo pause replication (already moving forward). I challenge you and others to propose a different first project that gives our children a better chance of a safe climate.

 

The Pinatubo pause replication project will test, in parallel, the most plausible explanations until we experimentally find a method that roughly replicates the net-zero event in 1992. That won’t prove anything, but is likely to get us to net-zero well before 2030.

 

All the hypotheses about carbon falling down are irrelevant to this test, because we know that those hypotheses can only explain about 5% of the CO2 removed in 1992. As the oceanographic community agrees—conventional OIF theory does not apply to the Pinatubo pause. Some other testable theory is needed, and that is discussed in my paper.

 

Regarding writing up the material in a paper, I have been looking for a coauthor to help whittle down my white paper for that. Do you know anyone?

 

Warmly,
Peter

[Michael Hayes]

"Next, remember that in science, nothing can be proven."

I ask that you to further explain that statement.

[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Christopher--While that is mentioned as a concern, it is important to understand the nuances (just in case any major decisions might depend on the nuances). What we have learned from volcanic eruptions that put SO2 that becomes sulfate into the stratosphere, is that the forward-scatter is about 10 times the back-scatter. The estimate is that offsetting a full CO2 doubling would require reflecting back about 2% of solar radiation (so increasing planetary albedo, say, fro 30% to 32%. It the world is serious about mitigation, what would roughly be needed is to do half of this, so reflect 1% of solar radiation. Associated with this would be diversion of 10% of the radiation from downward direct to downward diffuse radiation (so whitening the sky a bit--a concern of astronomers, though much of their work is now done from satellites). Right now roughly half the incoming solar radiation is absorbed at the surface, so this would be decreased by about 1% (which I think is well within the interannual variability caused by the weather).

Now, it turns out that increased diffuse radiation can actually increase plant growth because diffuse radiation reaches down further into the canopy, so providing more abundant light to shadowed exposures and less peak direct radiation, so for forests and agriculture, the reduction in absolute radiation may actually at lease somewhat compensated.

What SRM (and normal air pollution, clouds, etc.) is problematic for is solar thermal power systems as they depend on using mirrors to reflect the direct component of solar radiation to a specific point on a tower to melt something like sodium to carry the heat to a system to make electricity, etc. Back in 1982, Sandia was building one of the first such systems in Barstow, CA with DOE funding. They designed the system to 110% or so, but when they powered it up, it came in at a bit under 90% as I recall. Their solar measuring instrument showed only a 2% reduction in solar due to the recent El Chichon eruption. They came over to our atmospheric science group at Livermore seeking an explanation. We asked them about the instrument and they were using a total sky radiometer. We suggested they pay a bit more and get an instrument that measured direct radiation (actually it measures total sky and then shades out the sun and the difference is direct radiation) and then wait a couple of months for the volcanic aerosol to spread latitudinally (so out of the latitudinal band the aerosol was initially in). They did and the system went on to perform as expected.

So for SRM, as noted above, it is not farmers and foresters who would be affected by the reduction in radiation--and indeed, they would likely benefit from the less hot conditions and from the shift of direct radiation to diffuse radiation. Solar PV uses total sky radiation, so SRM is not a problem, and I think solar PV is becoming generally preferred approach based on economics, so affecting solar thermal installations is not a primary problem.

Best, Mike MacCracken

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Peter--My apologies--change "proven" to "demonstrated."

I'm at a bit of a loss to understanding how you can say that putting sulfate aerosol into the stratosphere is not a demonstrated approach to cooling the climate. And it happens consistently, which does not seem to be the case for the hypothesis that you are proposing. Yes, there is engineering to be done to make it happen, but Nature has consistently demonstrated this for us.

As to what I would propose, see my paper from several years ago. Copy attached. Or consider papers by Doug MacMartin and team at Cornell, or ones on the ARPA funded study by Elizabeth Barnes and team at Colorado State. We can actually get started on the cooling.

Regarding the effect you mention, is there anything written up about what is being proposed to "move forward" on the Pinatubo pause replication? The better done iron fertilization studies required considerable resources and generally ended up not having, especially to effectively measure the C flow out of the bottom of the experimental are. Thus, please do tell us about it so its strengths and weaknesses can be evaluated (and then perhaps improved).

Best, Mike

[Peter Fiekowsky]

"Next, remember that in science, nothing can be proven."

Mathematical theorems can be proven, but not scientific theories.

 

 

A Google search gives this:

Can a theory be proved?

Scientific theories are testable. New evidence should be compatible with a theory. If it isn't, the theory is refined or rejected. The longer the central elements of a theory hold—the more observations it predicts, the more tests it passes, the more facts it explains—the stronger the theory.

 

What Is a Theory? A Scientific Definition | AMNH

American Museum of Natural History

 

Theories get stronger as test data confirms them, but are never proven. The standard OIF theory claims that the maximum CO2 removal is 1-4 Gt CO2 / year. That may be disproven by the 20 Gt / year observed in 1992, and 5 Gt / year removal over 11 years, recorded in ice cores about 15,000 years ago.

 

Thus the standard OIF theory might be considered to be a weak theory, explaining the quality but not the magnitude of CO2 remova.

 

Peter