Nordic Council analysis of AMOC
H simmens
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Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"
Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
Alan Kerstein
Herb,
In addition to the point you noted about communication, I think there is a point to be made about coordination. People who have opinions about SRM tend to be soapbox orators with strong opinions or problem solvers who objectively assess SRM as one of the potential tools in their toolbox, where the Nordic group falls into the latter category. There are other regions such as Pacific islands, Australia, south Asia, etc., with similar pragmatic focus on local concerns and consequent objective assessment of SRM, but without a degree of commitment to SRM that would motivate them to proactively engage in efforts to promote SRM.
The discussion of SRM governance in the Nordic document is consistent with the wide recognition that governance will be a crucial enabler. Since governance must involve global coordination, bringing it about will require such coordination, so whatever group pursues the establishment of governance must perform broad outreach. Is there any such group, and if so, is it performing such outreach?
One beneficial effect of the coordination required by governance would be to draw together the disparate groups that recognize the potential role of SRM in addressing their individual concerns in a way that binds them into a collective voice of balanced if not vociferous advocacy SRM assessment and development. Could HPAC play a role in connecting the dots between the various stakeholders in order to produce the megaphone that will influence public opinion?
Alan
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H simmens
“An HPAC white paper will be published on the governance recommendations for climate cooling research and cooling methods deployment under of the new global climate restoration plan.”
The intention was also to have a governance strategy recommended in concert with the promotion of a Belem Climate Accord - BCA in 2025
Unfortunately the BCA was shelved by the SC and as far as I can tell no successor initiative has yet been proposed for COP 31 in Turkey later this year.
Despite the efforts of close to 20 of our members working for many months in 2024 and early in 2025 it appears that action to adopt and vigorously implement the strategic plan was dropped by the Steering Circle as far as I can tell.
With regard to coordinating other groups to advance a triad based restoration plan with SRM that was a key recommendation of the draft strategic plan. As far as I can tell little progress has been made.
An initial effort led to the signing of a Partnership Agreement with the Healthy Climate initiative in 2024. I am not aware of any other agreements that have been executed by the SC on behalf of HPAC since then or the creation of any SC committee or other institutional structure to ensure ongoing coordination and cooperation with allies and potential allies throughout the world.
Finally as you know a petition has been prepared by members of HPAC to call for testing and piloting of SAI and other potential cooling approaches. This is not an official HPAC petition. Notwithstanding that there is almost nothing - other than the word governance being dropped into the petition - that recognizes the essential role of governance to legitimate such testing, piloting and ultimately deployment.
That is one of the reasons along with the absence of any mention of equity or of climate restoration - all key dimensions of HPAC policy - that I cannot endorse the petition.
This is the petition request which comes after a very long preamble:
“We, the undersigned, therefore, call for the immediate initiation of transparent, applied-science testing and piloting of SAI and support of other promising approaches for exerting a near-term global cooling influence.”
In my judgment I don’t believe such a petition will be well received by key individuals and institutions outside of HPAC.
Herb
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see" Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
On Feb 5, 2026, at 4:54 PM, Alan Kerstein <alan.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
Herb,
In addition to the point you noted about communication, I think there is a point to be made about coordination. People who have opinions about SRM tend to be soapbox orators with strong opinions or problem solvers who objectively assess SRM as one of the potential tools in their toolbox, where the Nordic group falls into the latter category. There are other regions such as Pacific islands, Australia, south Asia, etc., with similar pragmatic focus on local concerns and consequent objective assessment of SRM, but without a degree of commitment to SRM that would motivate them to proactively engage in efforts to promote SRM.
The discussion of SRM governance in the Nordic document is consistent with the wide recognition that governance will be a crucial enabler. Since governance must involve global coordination, bringing it about will require such coordination, so whatever group pursues the establishment of governance must perform broad outreach. Is there any such group, and if so, is it performing such outreach?
One beneficial effect of the coordination required by governance would be to draw together the disparate groups that recognize the potential role of SRM in addressing their individual concerns in a way that binds them into a collective voice of balanced if not vociferous advocacy SRM assessment and development. Could HPAC play a role in connecting the dots between the various stakeholders in order to produce the megaphone that will influence public opinion?
Alan
On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 6:50 AM H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is a well articulated analysis of AMOC including discussion of the role of SRM.What I particularly liked is that they provided two storylines from the year 2087.This is exactly the kind of communication approach that needs to be emulated.I have a 20 page narrative that leads my book looking back from the year 2035 showing how the world came together to successfully address the crisisHerb
Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"
Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
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Alan Kerstein
Hi Herb,
I implicitly assumed that there was no effort to establish a governance architecture beyond discussing what it should be. Of course, if this is not entirely clear then the first step is to identify such an activity if it exists. If so, then further steps would depend on the details of its operation. So let’s assume for now that it does not exist and consider further steps on that basis.
I had been thinking that governance is a way to talk SRM to death but the Nordic Council document triggered a complete turnaround in my perspective. SRM was just a side topic in the document but it was swept along by the tide of the main thrust of the document to gain visibility and an imprimatur of reasonableness at the governmental level.
How can this be leveraged to bypass institutional obstacles to SRM rather than attempting a frontal assault? It seems that governance is a relatively unobjectionable aspect of SRM, so a focus on that could be fruitful.
A good starting point is to be precise about the difference between talking about governance and establishing governance. The establishment of governance requires buy-in from institutions with governmental legitimacy, meaning governments themselves or entities to which governments have delegated some of their decision-making power, such as UN, EU, NATO, IATA, OPEC.
The Nordic Council might also be of this nature. In any case, the Nordic Council document illustrates an important point. Governments focus on problems and turn to outside expertise for guidance on solving them. The document has a clear problem focus and presents a toolkit for addressing it, SRM being one of the tools. This suggests an exemplar of drawing a governmental entity into some degree of involvement in SRM governance. Workshop members with connections to the governmental sponsors of the study could be helpful in enticing those people to participate in, or at least endorse, a process to establish SRM governance.
Given longstanding discussion of SRM governance, why might its establishment have never been pursued? The obvious default explanation is that it’s nobody’s job. Someone or some group simply has to decide to make it happen. Of course, from a standing start it’s a chicken-and-egg problem to conjure up a process out of thin air. Since I’m in the Bay Area, I know about the tried-and-true approach of fake it until you make it. However, it could be viable simply to declare openly that this is an obvious unmet need so we (HPAC) have taken it upon ourselves to initiate the process. I have some preliminary ideas about the nuts and bolts of doing this, but first it’s a question of whether this is worth considering as a matter of principle.
To close the loop on my attraction to governance, its establishment involves people with some ex officio authority approving of a collection of written words. This is not as easy to block, legally or otherwise, as field testing of SRM technology, and also not as easy to portray as sinister or dangerous. A key point is that the establishment of governance is more important than the substance of the governance regime because any such establishment serves to legitimize SRM as a concept. Although universal global approbation would be ideal, the more plausible real-world outcome of approbation by some coalition of the willing would be valuable, especially if the coalition is culturally diverse reflecting the plethora of geographically local effects of climate change.
Alan