Make Sunsets stimulates more debate over "Geoengineering"- PT Barnum further vindicated!

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Colleagues,

I thought that these pieces (shared by someone on one of the lists above) merited wider distribution. These are interesting and in my view further indications that the Making Sunsets “publicity stunt” is working well at stimulating  awareness of the immense problem we are facing and how to address it per Circus owner PT Barnum’s adage that “there is no such thing as bad publicity”! 

Best,

Ron 

[Ron Baiman]

Lol Peter! 

But more seriously, an expert climate scientist colleague has encouraged me to point out some clear points that we both noticed. These are that (especially the George piece, but to some extent all of them and most general debates about "geoengineering") focus on SAI or SRM as though there are no other possibilities (see 19 possible direct climate cooling methods in cooling paper here: www.heathlyplanetaction.org)  and moreover:

a) Neglect to employ a "risk - risk" framework - that is what is risk if we don't deploy direct climate cooling.  Jim Hansen et al (https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474 ) believe that existing legacy GHG's  have put us in "in the pipeline" for 10 degrees C warming by 2100!

b) Like almost all of the "geoengineering"  debates that I've seen or heard, the articles assume a one-off duality of immediate global SAI program or not. That they don't include the possibility of carefully beginning to pilot, test, and SAI in the polar regions in the spring and evaluate and adjust (or cease) as more is learned about the impacts.  There is only so much you can learn from "pure research" and we don't have a lot of time (or ability as much of the learning is inevitably learning by doing) to keep doing "pure research" on SAI and other promising direct climate cooling methods. 

BTW, the two papers without authors etc. in the attachments are:

"This Climate Debate is a lot of Hot Air"  is by Evan George and published in Legal Planet, Feb. 16, 2023

"Should There be a 'Non-Use' Agreement on Solar Geoengineering?" is by Duncan Mclaren and also published in Legal Planet, Feb. 23, 2023.

Best,

Ron Baiman

On Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 2:50 PM peter jenkins <jenkinsb...@gmail.com> wrote:

PT Barnum is also credited with the saying "there's a sucker born every minute". - Peter Jenkins.

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[Robert Chris]

Ron

Hansen et al say that the 10degC is based on 'today's GHG level' and that it has an e-folding time of 100 years.  That implies 6.3degC by 2120 and a bit less by 2100.

Regards

Robert

[Ron Baiman]

Thanks for the correction Robert!

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 26, 2023, at 6:41 PM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Ron Baiman]

Robert,

Do you have a page number or an explanation of how you arrived at your figures?   In the paper(https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474) on p. 31 I'm finding: "The 7-10 C global warming is the eventual response if today's level of GHGs is fixed and the aerosol amount is somewhere between its year 2000 amount and preindustrial amount."  but the key temp Figure 7 on p. 18 doesn't extend beyond 2025.  In the section on Climate response times (p. 32) the paper states that the in 2020 GISS GCM: "...the time required for the model to achieve 63% of its equilibrium response remains about 100 years" which would put the expected temp based on forcing estimated in the paper at 6.3 C (63% or 10) by 2023.  Is this where you're getting your 6.3 C by 2120 from?  Unfortunately, I have not had the time (and probably not the background) to go through the entire paper and understand it well!

Best,

Ron

[Ron Baiman]

*6.3 C (63% of 10) by 2020*

[Robert Chris]

Doug and Ron

Here's how I arrived at my conclusions.

From the extracts below, I conclude, given that by 2020 (or thereabouts) we had already doubled atmospheric GHGs from pre-industrial including non-CO₂ GHGs, that we will eventually warm the surface by 10^oC with a climate response e-folding time of ~100 years provided the offsetting cooling from anthropogenic aerosols continues to decline and is eventually largely eliminated.  That means that by 2050 the warming would be ~2.4^oC less the residual aerosol cooling of, say 0.4^oC, giving their estimate of 2^oC.

·        When all feedbacks, including ice sheets, are allowed to respond to the climate forcing, the equilibrium response is approximately doubled, i.e., ESS is ~ 10°C.

·        Yet the time required for the [improved] model to achieve 63% of its equilibrium response remains about 100 years.  (See Fig 4b – note log x-axis.)

·        With all trace gases included, the increase of GHG effective forcing between 1750 and 2021 is 4.09W/m², which is equivalent to increasing the 1750 CO₂ amount (278 ppm) to 561 ppm (formulae in Supporting Material).  We have already reached the GHG climate forcing level of doubled CO₂.  [Note that they develop a scaling factor of 2.4^oC per W/m² which corresponds to 10^oC for the 4W/m² of current GHG forcing.]

·        Declining aerosol amount implies acceleration of global warming above the 1970-2010 rate.

·        Global temperature responds reliably to climate forcing on decadal time scales, with about 50% of the response in the first decade, with about 15% more in the next 100 years

·        we expect some [aerosol] reduction and a forcing increase of at least +0.1 W/m² per decade [between 2010 and 2050].

·        we estimate that the global warming rate in 2010-2040 will be at least 50% greater than in 1970-2010, i.e., at least 0.27°C per decade.

·        The poster child for warming in the pipeline is Fig. 7, showing that equilibrium warming for today’s GHG level, including slow feedbacks, is about 10°C.  Today’s level of particulate air pollution reduces equilibrium warming to about 7°C.

·       The 7-10°C global warming is the eventual response if today’s level of GHGs is fixed and the aerosol amount is somewhere between its year 2000 amount and preindustrial amount. (emphasis added) [Note that the assumptions here are that ‘today’s level of GHGs is fixed’, which I take to mean that future emissions are ignored, and aerosols are currently lower than they were in 2000.]

Here's a simple graph showing the realisation of 10^oC of warming with an e-folding time of 100 years.  Assume it starts in 2020 or thereabouts (when atmospheric CO₂e reached 556ppmv.). 

Regards

Robert

On 27/02/2023 03:50, Douglas Grandt wrote:

Ron and Robert,

Visually, the shape of the curve is something like this … more or less … as best I can fathom.

This is my interpretation of Hansen's assumptions and conclusions, but I very well could be wrong …

Perhaps somebody has chart generating software that would be more precise than my eyeball.

Doug

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[Robert Chris]

Hi Ye

Thanks for these comments.  The Hansen et al paper is a prepublication draft and I know he is reworking it for final publication.  Would you mind if I shared some of your comments with him as it would be hugely valuable to have him address some of the points you raise, if he is minded to do that. 

One of my problems with this paper is my lack of formation in the underlying climate science and modelling to be able to undertake a proper critical analysis.  Like most others, I am obliged to assume that if Hansen is saying it, it must be true.  But I'm sure that even Hansen would recognise that that's not necessarily a wise move!

Regards

Robert

On 27/02/2023 14:17, Ye Tao wrote:

Dear all,

Thank you for a fascinating discussion.  I believe there is a bit of confusion, which arises from the differing definitions for ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, see p4 of article) vs ESS (Earth System Sensitivity, also p4).   Bottom line: we will most likely NOT have a 6C increase in global average temperature by the end of the century by holding constant the current level of GHG.  A highly probable range is 2.3C-4C.  This is explained below.

ECS is an artificial concept defined to enable computer model development and computational thought experiments.  Its assessment requires holding constant slow-response components (forests and ice cover).   These artificial constraints, which greatly simplify code and speed up calculations, cannot be strictly true in nature; we have seen forests burning up (cut down increasing quickly due to feedbacks in the human system) and we have witness dramatic arctic melting, all within decadal time scales.  Therefore, ECS cannot be used directly to predict reality on and beyond the time scale on which these processes occur.  Hence, Fig. 4 is not a surrogate for reality.

In spite of its artificialness, projections based on a chosen ECS value is useful for describing a range of times (year to a few decades) when the simplifying assumptions of unchanging land surface types can be taken as approximately acceptable.   This is also because some of these changes, when they do happen, can have mutually cancelling effects at the level of radiative forcing.  For example, darkening arctic oceans could be partially compensated for by brighter barren landscape emerging out of clear-cut forests and burnt boreal forests.   Within this short time scale, we can use ECS and the temperature response function of your (favorite) model to semi-quantitatively project future temperature trends.  See Fig. 4 of paper for examples based on the GISS models.    For all intents and purposes, you can trust Fig. 4, at the very most, to Year = 100 on the X axis.

Beyond Year = 100, Fig. 4 is no longer useful for future projections.  All we can say is that paleoclimate data potentially provides a constraint on how bad things could get thereafter.  This is done by Hansen et al in Figure 7.   Reality is most likely between Figures 4 and a scaled version (ESS/ECS).

Regarding ESS, there is one caveat to keep in mind.  The caveat is that the ESS value provided in the paper (10C per doubling of eCO2) is based on historical data at temperature ranges cooler than that of the present and near-future.  And we are obviously heading to hotter, unprecedentedly warm territories for which paleoclimate data do not exist.  In other words, ESS is itself a function of the temperature at which it is evaluated (taking the slope of the tangent point along the temperature axis, theoretically speaking.  Linear fitting to a range of temperature data in practice.). 

There is evidence that ESS is a positive function of temperature: SNYDER, C. W. Revised estimates of paleoclimate sensitivity over the past 800,000 years. 2019. Climatic Change. 156. 121–138.  The implication would be that going forward, ESS could well be larger than the 10C per doubling of eCO2 Hansen suggests.  Oops! Luckily for us mortals, or unluckily since you are a curious person, no one on this list would live long enough, which requires waiting several thousand years, to see experimental verification of the actual value of ESS valid for the hotter end of the temperature range.

Practically, in thinking about a real-world trajectory, one can consider the effective, realized climate sensitivity to morph towards larger values as time passes, from the small Transient climate response (TCR = 2C per doubling), to ECS (4C per doubling), and then to ESS (>10C per doubling).   Discussions about what happens by the end of the century therefore could use values intermediate between ECS and ESS, i.e. somewhere between 4C per doubling of CO2 and somewhat larger than 10C per doubling of CO2.

The implication of the discussion above is that your previous understanding of global warming by the end of the century is still valid. At the current level of GHG, with a rapidly successful decarbonization program that eliminated fossil fuel aerosols, we will likely see warming somewhere between 2.3C (as indicated by Figure 4, and the fact that a ECS of 3.5 was used in its making, in stead of a more likely 4) and 6C (scaled by the ESS/ECS=3 ratio).  The actual value is more likely to be on the lower end of this range, i.e. between 2.3C and 4C.  

Note, importantly, that assumptions also include immediate carbon neutrality and holding constant current GHG levels, which for those of us who really thought deeply and understood the impossibility of meaningful CO2 capture, can readily accept as being compatible with a voluntary or involuntary contraction of the human enterprise, constrained by primary productivity projections and the inevitably increasing cost of energy production (declining EROI) going forward.

Cheers,

Ye

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/2e9fce17-12d2-31c1-d31c-0dfc48ea3737%40gmail.com.

[Ron Baiman]

Thank you Ye! I’m going to have to go over this in more detail and try to understand it but for now I think I’m going to stick with the direct quote from Hansen on p. 31 that I referenced and avoid prognosticating on timing until (or if and when) it appears that you and other experts in the field whom I respect have sorted this out more.

For policy purposes it’s enough to point out that we’re very likely going to be in deep s**t even if get to net-zero GHG (natural and human) very quickly (which appears highly unlikely at this point) so that direct climate cooling is urgent now as Hansen el al. point out on p. 37 of the paper!

Best,
Ron

Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 27, 2023, at 8:17 AM, Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:

[Robert Chris]

Hi Doug

It's only a simple Excel spreadsheet.  The formula is T*(1-e^-λt) where T is the total temperature difference (here 10^oC); λ is the inverse of the e-folding time (here 0.01); t is the number of years from the start. 

Regards

Robert

On 27/02/2023 17:18, Douglas Grandt wrote:

Thanks, Robert!

Wouid you mind sharing the software and equation? It’s exactly as I envisioned.

T = fn (t) = t * (0.063e) * (e^^-(0.01t)) ???

where:

T is temperature °C increase over present

t  is number of years from present time

Is that close? My recollection of “ln” decay is a bit rusty.  This equation matches the endpoints at t = 0 and t = 100 years, and generally has the approximate shape, but I believe the is a more elegant and absolutely correct equation that this.

Plus, another factor may be required to accommodate the asymptotic approach to 10°C at the limit  t = ♾️ 

Doug 

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Feb 27, 2023, at 8:22 AM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:



Doug and Ron

Here's how I arrived at my conclusions.

From the extracts below, I conclude, given that by 2020 (or thereabouts) we had already doubled atmospheric GHGs from pre-industrial including non-CO₂ GHGs, that we will eventually warm the surface by 10^oC with a climate response e-folding time of ~100 years provided the offsetting cooling from anthropogenic aerosols continues to decline and is eventually largely eliminated.  That means that by 2050 the warming would be ~2.4^oC less the residual aerosol cooling of, say 0.4^oC, giving their estimate of 2^oC.

·        When all feedbacks, including ice sheets, are allowed to respond to the climate forcing, the equilibrium response is approximately doubled, i.e., ESS is ~ 10°C.

·        Yet the time required for the [improved] model to achieve 63% of its equilibrium response remains about 100 years.  (See Fig 4b – note log x-axis.)

·        With all trace gases included, the increase of GHG effective forcing between 1750 and 2021 is 4.09W/m², which is equivalent to increasing the 1750 CO₂ amount (278 ppm) to 561 ppm (formulae in Supporting Material).  We have already reached the GHG climate forcing level of doubled CO₂.  [Note that they develop a scaling factor of 2.4^oC per W/m² which corresponds to 10^oC for the 4W/m² of current GHG forcing.]

·        Declining aerosol amount implies acceleration of global warming above the 1970-2010 rate.

·        Global temperature responds reliably to climate forcing on decadal time scales, with about 50% of the response in the first decade, with about 15% more in the next 100 years

·        we expect some [aerosol] reduction and a forcing increase of at least +0.1 W/m² per decade [between 2010 and 2050].

·        we estimate that the global warming rate in 2010-2040 will be at least 50% greater than in 1970-2010, i.e., at least 0.27°C per decade.

·        The poster child for warming in the pipeline is Fig. 7, showing that equilibrium warming for today’s GHG level, including slow feedbacks, is about 10°C.  Today’s level of particulate air pollution reduces equilibrium warming to about 7°C.

·       The 7-10°C global warming is the eventual response if today’s level of GHGs is fixed and the aerosol amount is somewhere between its year 2000 amount and preindustrial amount. (emphasis added) [Note that the assumptions here are that ‘today’s level of GHGs is fixed’, which I take to mean that future emissions are ignored, and aerosols are currently lower than they were in 2000.]

Here's a simple graph showing the realisation of 10^oC of warming with an e-folding time of 100 years.  Assume it starts in 2020 or thereabouts (when atmospheric CO₂e reached 556ppmv.). 

	<FHSZ9j4fwfinBYJV.png>

[Ron Baiman]

Thanks again, Ye.  I wasn't assuming that you were contradicting Hansen et al.  I just realized that I'm in way over my head on this and had best just stick with direct quotes like the one on p. 31:

 "The 7-10 C warming is the eventual response  if today's level of GHG is fixed and the aerosol amount is somewhere between its year 2000 amount and preindustrial amount." 

Which I take to mean that Hansen et al. believe that legacy GHGs and their impacts as of 2020 have already committed us to 7-10 C in the future assuming that 2020 fossil fuel and other human caused aerosols that have a net cooling impact on the climate will be cut back to 2000 to pre-industrial levels during the period after 2020. 

From which I believe that we can draw the policy conclusion (assuming that Hansen et al. are more or less correct or understating warming in the pipeline per Tom's comment) that unless we are able to achieve human and natural net-zero GHG emissions (which realistically is not going to happen for decades at the very least if this will be possible at all) and draw down additional massive amounts of GHG very quickly after that (even less likely to happen within decades at speed and scope) we need to engage in urgent direct climate cooling. 

Or in Hansen et al. speak p. 36-7 going back to the point made at the beginning of this thread on the need for risk-risk comparison:

"Removely of human-made GHGs from the air will be spurred by a carbon price, but GHG removal sufficient to reduce EEI [Earth Energy Imbalance] to zero may require decades, if it is even feasible. Given that GHG forcing is still rising rapidly, highest priority must be given to phasing down emissions. However, given that GHG forcing is already 4 W/m2, it may be necessary to temporarily effect EEI via solar radiation management (SRM), if the world is to avoid disastrous consequences, including large sea level rise. Risks of such intervention must be defined, as well as risks of no intervention." [brackets mine]

Best,

Ron

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 12:36 PM Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:

Dear Ron and Tom,

I think you have misunderstood my comments; they are entirely consistent with Hansen's results.  I simply added some details that Hansen probably did not realize could help avoid confusing people outside of the simulation field.  I suspect some of you were in shock because of the number 10C for ESS in the abstract.  But this doesn't mean heating of 10C anytime soon.  The critical element is time.  ESS applies for thousands of years later.  What this group had been discussing before I chipped in was about what happens by 2100. 

By the way, results in Hansen's paper are nothing new, save minor tweaks to numbers. It is simply the first time that the author group has collected key pieces of the climate puzzle in a comprehensive and cogent fashion.  The fact that ECS could be up to 5C per W/m2 was known, for example, based on results reviewed by Sherwood et al 2020 (ref 28).   I myself, through plotting historical data, was able to reproduce, back in 2019, the result of ESS ~ 7.5C (assuming aerosol was held constant at some average, ill-defined value during 2000-2019).  Compare the following graph I made to Hansen's recent writing: "Today’s level of particulate air pollution reduces equilibrium warming to about 7°C"

@Robert C., please feel free to forward any of my comments to Hansen, though they are basically rephrasing results in his paper.  Perhaps the above figure could help them making the message clearer, that ESS=10C per W/m2 does not imply order 10C warming in our or our children's lifetimes.  It is also worthwhile citing Snyder's work that I included in my previous comments.

Best,

Ye

On 2/27/2023 11:36 AM, Ron Baiman wrote:

Thank you Ye!  I’m going to have to go over this in more detail and try to understand it but for now I think I’m going to stick with the direct quote from Hansen on p. 31 that I referenced and avoid prognosticating on timing until (or if and when) it appears that you and other experts in the field whom I respect have sorted this out more.

For policy purposes it’s enough to point out that we’re very likely going to be in deep s**t  even if get to net-zero GHG (natural and human) very quickly (which appears highly unlikely at this point) so that direct climate cooling is urgent now as Hansen el al.  point out on p. 37 of the paper!

Best,
Ron 

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 27, 2023, at 8:17 AM, Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/b09db825-6075-04fc-f205-8cfdd0c3a7de%40gmail.com.

[Ron Baiman]

Thank you all!  This has been a good discussion. A copy of Tom's paper is attached below.

Best,

Ron

On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 5:50 AM Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:

That is way real scientists need to be in the field, at least one day per week;)

Cheers,

Ye

On 2/28/2023 6:17 AM, Tom Goreau wrote:

That paper, based on empirical climate data was ignored  by model-oriented physicists because it showed their models did not describe the real world changes.

 

IPCC attacked it because it disagreed with their low consensus values based on models that missed most of the feedbacks that we know must operate in the Earth climate system from the paleo-climate data.

 

Eelco Rohling’s later independent analysis had much more data, and the conclusions were very robust.

 

In the 33 years since then the models have gotten much better, especially Hansen’s, but they still can’t incorporate biological feedbacks that physicists don’t understand well enough to model.

 

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

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

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

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

 

 

From: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at 7:34 AM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>, Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>, Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>
Cc: peter jenkins <jenkinsb...@gmail.com>, 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] [HCA-list] Make Sunsets stimulates more debate over "Geoengineering"- PT Barnum further vindicated!

 

Dear Tom,

Thank you for sharing your 1990 paper.  It is inspiring to see how relevant its contents remain 32 years later.

In the paper, you highlight a fitted slope of 0.094C per ppm CO2 (200-280ppm data range).  Linear extrapolation leads to 26C per doubling of CO2.   You correctly pointed out that the extrapolation is not linear, but concave down, as shown also in this more recent piece.  Visual inspection suggests roughly a difference in slow of X2.   So your results are consistent with a ESS, from 280-560 ppm eCO2, of ~10C per doubling.

Your analyses thus appear consistent with those of Hansen et al.   And Hansen's results are not only for short or intermediate timescales.  The 10C per doubling for ESS they advance is for multi-millennia time scales as well.

From human and engineering intervention perspectives, the long-term ESS stops being relevant beyond ESS>8C per doubling, this is because there is no way for civilization to survive past 3-4C.  What is needed is to achieve the capacity to bring EEI<0 within a time frame of years to decades, well before 2.5C is reached.  Within this period, ECS remains relevant for describing reality.

Best,

Ye

On 2/27/2023 1:42 PM, Tom Goreau wrote:

No confusion Ye, the climate record that Eelco and I analyzed reflects the LONG-TERM response, not the short one or intermediate ones which Hansen and IPCC do, as it integrates over the 1.5 thousand year time lag intrinsically caused by ocean mixing.

 

The long term prospect is more frightening, and should not be discounted away by short sighted analyses.

 

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

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

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

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

 

 

From: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Date: Monday, February 27, 2023 at 3:36 PM
To: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>, Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>, Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: peter jenkins <jenkinsb...@gmail.com>, 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] [HCA-list] Make Sunsets stimulates more debate over "Geoengineering"- PT Barnum further vindicated!

 

Dear Ron and Tom,

I think you have misunderstood my comments; they are entirely consistent with Hansen's results.  I simply added some details that Hansen probably did not realize could help avoid confusing people outside of the simulation field.  I suspect some of you were in shock because of the number 10C for ESS in the abstract.  But this doesn't mean heating of 10C anytime soon.  The critical element is time.  ESS applies for thousands of years later.  What this group had been discussing before I chipped in was about what happens by 2100. 

By the way, results in Hansen's paper are nothing new, save minor tweaks to numbers. It is simply the first time that the author group has collected key pieces of the climate puzzle in a comprehensive and cogent fashion.  The fact that ECS could be up to 5C per W/m2 was known, for example, based on results reviewed by Sherwood et al 2020 (ref 28).   I myself, through plotting historical data, was able to reproduce, back in 2019, the result of ESS ~ 7.5C (assuming aerosol was held constant at some average, ill-defined value during 2000-2019).  Compare the following graph I made to Hansen's recent writing: "Today’s level of particulate air pollution reduces equilibrium warming to about 7°C"

@Robert C., please feel free to forward any of my comments to Hansen, though they are basically rephrasing results in his paper.  Perhaps the above figure could help them making the message clearer, that ESS=10C per W/m2 does not imply order 10C warming in our or our children's lifetimes.  It is also worthwhile citing Snyder's work that I included in my previous comments.

Best,

Ye

On 2/27/2023 11:36 AM, Ron Baiman wrote:

Thank you Ye!  I’m going to have to go over this in more detail and try to understand it but for now I think I’m going to stick with the direct quote from Hansen on p. 31 that I referenced and avoid prognosticating on timing until (or if and when) it appears that you and other experts in the field whom I respect have sorted this out more.

For policy purposes it’s enough to point out that we’re very likely going to be in deep s**t  even if get to net-zero GHG (natural and human) very quickly (which appears highly unlikely at this point) so that direct climate cooling is urgent now as Hansen el al.  point out on p. 37 of the paper!

Best,

Ron 

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 27, 2023, at 8:17 AM, Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:

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[Ron Baiman]

BTW, my impetus for launching this thread was to try to avoid making a factual error in this Make Sunsets guest blog post (https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/pricing-cooling-credits ) and this discussion did indeed (I hope!) lead me to correct the sentence and avoid egg on face!

This is the (edited) sentence in question:

"And even more alarmingly, a recent draft paper by James Hansen (the climate scientist who warned the US Senate in 1988 that climate change was happening) and coauthors suggests that 7-10 degrees C may already be in the pipeline even if we were to achieve net-zero today."

Best,

Ron

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Ron

 

We had some discussion on Radiative Forcing Credits at https://groups.google.com/g/planetary-restoration/c/02nphUdUtjU.  This thread includes a link to the ISO 2019 Draft Document ISO/NP 14082

GHG management – Guidance for the quantification and reporting of radiative forcing based climate footprints and mitigation efforts.  This was intended to develop a Standard on Radiative Forcing, but was abandoned.

 

My discussion note https://planetaryrestoration.net/f/radiative-forcing-credits explores some broad parameters for pricing cooling credits. 

 

I was surprised the recent letter supporting SRM Research from 60 scientists claimed that SRM “likely will never be an appropriate candidate for an open market system of credits”.  I disagree with this assertion.  I have not seen any scientific or economic literature to back up this claim, which looks like a political reaction to Making Sunsets.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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[Achim Hoffmann]

Hi Robert:

Fully agree. I cannot find any supporting arguments for why Cooling Credits will not work. I had been in touch with STRIPE – they manage the Frontier Carbon Credit (CC) system (backed by McKinsey, Stripe, Meta, Alphabet, Shopify)- but there was no appetite for this at that time. However, by repeatedly asking that question you chip away and put ideas into heads.

 

The fundamental issue with cooling credits vs carbon credits is that one core element of carbon credits is “Durability”. The fact that CC Suppliers need to show that the Carbon is not coming up again for at least 100s or 1000s of years.  This is different for Cooling as it is only temporarily and needs to be topped up continuously.  A different convincing case needs be made here that does not compromise the CC durability demand. Work to be done.

 

None of the SRM solutions are bankable at the moment and that has to change going forward.

A Cooling Credit system would be (IMHO) the best and easiest way to do that.

 

A

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[Ron Baiman]

Thank you Robert, Achim and Paul,

Needless to say, I agree. As expressed in my Make Sunsets blog, I believe that we need “all hands on deck” on cooling. Public, private, non-profit initiatives all have I think have different strengths that can help move direct climate cooling forward at speed and scope as with CDR and emissions reduction.  

On the cooling credits issue, as I’ve noted in earlier threads, its a bit more complicated than GHG credits as, depending on method, cooling is not generally a pure public good as GHG reduction is. Where, how, and how much is done makes more of a difference. And (as I believe we all agree) there are major risk issues for (effective) high leverage cooling initiatives that need to be carefully studied, monitored and adjusted for gradual ramp up (or down) that clearly require public implementation or very stringent public monitoring and regulation.

  But in my view, for now politically provocative private initiatives (that don’t cause any physical harm) like Make Sunsets can be helpful, and carbon credits allow for larger groups of citizens/customers to make their voices heard that direct climate cooling needs to be Implemented now! 

Best,

Ron 

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 2, 2023, at 4:05 AM, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:



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[Peter Fiekowsky]

Ron-

Pardon me for asking, but:

1. What exactly do you mean by “all hands on deck”? Who? Where? Why? When?
2. If you were successful, what outcome would we see?

 

Nevermind the how. We know a heck of a lot about SAI, MCB, and other techniques. Please explain the who, what, when, where, and why for your call to action.

 

Again, I apologize for asking—it must be annoying.  I hope you agree that getting this clarity is the only way success is possible.

 

Peter

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[Ron Baiman]

Peter,

Thank you for the question. 

Sometimes political provocations are important to stimulate public action (as I expect you well know!).  I also believe that Make Sunsets could morph into a useful and effective private direct climate cooling initiative, either within a carefully publicly regulated SAI regime, or using some other "cloud making" method.

As I said none of us has a crystal ball but we need to support all possible methods and systems (including ownership and institutional within existing economic frameworks)  to move cooling forward. 

Time is fleeting as I probably don't need to remind anyone on these lists!

Best,

Ron

[Peter Fiekowsky]

Ron-

“none of us has a crystal ball”—That’s false in this sense: We know that climate disruptions are going to get worse on today’s path. What else do you need to know about the predictable future? That’s the trajectory we’re on.

 

Are you saying that you don’t know how you want SRM to be implemented?

If that’s true, then now is the time to propose a specific defensible plan.

 

I discuss a plan in my book. If you aren’t going to come up with a specific plan, who will? (and why do you think they might?)

 

Peter

[H simmens]

Peter,

First, let me say that I commend you on everything you have done to bring climate restoration to the attention of decision makers and the public, including through your fine book. 

HPAC is a volunteer group with essentially no budget and is not much more than a year old. In addition to hosting several dozen stimulating presentations and conversations with climate restoration leaders in almost every conceivable endeavor we have also produced two papers which describe in broad strokes our plan for bringing back temperature increases to well below 1° C.

We hope to build upon the information we shared, the connections we made, and the strategies we advocate in the coming year. This includes preparing an updated version of our vision document and perhaps of the cooling document in addition to strengthening our ability to reach out to the public and decision makers alike. 

I have always greatly valued your ability to cut to the chase by raising questions and issues that are often easily ignored or dismissed. And so I welcome you to review these documents and let us know how you feel we can work together to best advance achieving the HPAC mission, which is the same mission as yours - to restore a healthy climate and a healthy planet. 

Thank you again for your leadership and continuing commitment. 

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

@herbsimmens

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