HPAC Direct Climate Cooling pre-print is up - please share widely!
Ron Baiman
Understanding the Urgent Need for Direct Climate Cooling
Ron Baiman1, Sev Clarke2, Clive Elsworth3, Leslie Field4, Grant Gower5, Achim Hoffmann6 Michael MacCracken7, John Macdonald8, David Mitchell9, Franz Dietrich Oeste10, Suzanne Reed11, Stephen Salter12, Herb Simmens13, Ye Tao14, Robert Tulip15
Draft: 02/09/2023
Abstract
The long-term average global temperature increase inadequately predicts the harm from regional or local extreme precipitation and heat events. Climate change, especially polar amplification, has already caused enormous damage and is likely to abruptly accelerate the risk of further catastrophic harm to humans and other species in the absence of urgent direct climate cooling efforts to slow or reverse it. At least nineteen potential direct climate cooling methods have been identified with the potential to address such climate disruptions. A precautionary approach would be to evaluate such direct climate cooling methods for their capacity to return our planetary trajectory towards known and healthy climate conditions. An evaluation framework could test and monitor small scale deployments under constrained conditions. This paper includes short summaries of nineteen of these methods, almost all written or reviewed by climate cooling experts from among those cited in the footnotes.
Given multiple potential methods to directly cool the climate, relying exclusively on GHG emissions reductions and removal seems incompatible with responsible stewardship of the planet. With direct cooling of the Earth having the potential to dramatically reduce harm, preserve ecosystems and save lives, including it as a policy opportunity in the development of a climate restoration plan that would return global warming to well below 1° C would seem to be an urgent imperative for world leaders. The tragic example of Pakistani floods this year induced by excessive Himalayan melt and extreme monsoon events underscores the compelling
1 Corresponding author: Benedictine University, Lisle, IL, USA, email: rba...@ben.edu
2 Winwick Business Solutions P/L, Australia
3 Citizens Climate Lobby, UK
4 Bright Ice Initiative, USA
5 Climate Restoration Technologies, USA
6 WOXON, The Ocean Enabled Climate Repair Company, UK
7 Climate Institute, USA
8 Climate Foundation, Australia 9 Desert Research Institute, USA 10 gM-Ingenieurbüro, Germany
11 The Collaboration Connection, USA
12 University of Edinburgh, UK
13 Planetphilia, USA
14 MEER Framework, USA
15 Iron Salt Aerosol Australia Pty Ltd, Australia
evidence that even 1° C of warming is too much. With such increasing impacts from human- induced global warming, an effective restoration plan would then seem to focus on three key components: a) deploying a direct cooling influence, at least initially particularly focused on cooling the polar regions and the Himalayas, b) reducing GHG emissions, including an early focus on methane and other short-lived warming agents, and c) removing legacy CO2, methane and other GHGs from the atmosphere and oceans. With indications that the rate of warming is accelerating, it will be vital over the next few decades to keep the climate from spiraling out of control. Only the application of emergency cooling “tourniquets”, applied immediately or as soon as is reasonably advisable, has the potential to slow or reverse ongoing climate disruption and worsening climate impacts. While reducing emissions of GHGs and removing GHGs from the atmosphere and ocean are both essential for limiting warming, both approaches will require decades to be effective and neither seems capable of returning global warming to below 1° C during this century. And with polar warming leading to accelerating sea level rise, only direct climate cooling can potentially slow or reverse loss of Arctic sea ice that may lead ultimately to the total loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet, with its potential for up to 7 meters of sea level rise.
These are the imperatives, challenges and opportunities of our epoch to which we must immediately and urgently respond. Humanity has never faced an existential threat so critical for the survival of human civilization and our fellow living species on this planet.
