New Moral hazard paper

[H simmens]

I find this research - see below- to be almost entirely useless as the degree to which employing cooling will slow emission reductions will depend upon the outcomes of the information war that will occur between proponents and opponents of cooling. 

Useful research in my view would be to examine scenarios illustrating the propaganda to be used against cooling - most of which is likely to be focused on blaming cooling for most every example of extreme weather - and the counter measures that can be taken to neutralize this bad faith propaganda. 

“In aggregate, we find little evidence for the moral-hazard concern in our social dilemma

experiment, which is consistent with previous studies using controlled experiments (e.g.,

Cherry et al. 2023a).”

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

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Thanks Herb

 

Typically, the paper opens with a factually incorrect ideological assertion, driven more by groupthink than by observation. They state: “Driving down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is the necessary long-term solution to climate change.”  No.  The long term solution is driving down GHG concentrations.  That is different.  Cutting emissions is of course helpful, but it only slows the speed at which concentrations increase, so calling it “the” solution is just wrong.  Committed warming from past emissions is roughly forty times greater than warming from new annual emissions. This is basic arithmetic, but unfortunately climate ideologues routinely show themselves incapable of adding up.  Such mythological thinking reflects the psychological triumph of hope over evidence.   Decarbonisation is marginal compared to the scale of removals needed

 

This false statement appears to be designed to encourage social polarisation, and with no prospect of stabilising the climate.  When such error gets through peer review, it shows how compromised and corrupted the academic thinking really is.  We need a paradigm shift.

 

Then they make the confused statement that “the emergence of SGE [solar geoengineering] may weaken the resolve for reducing GHG emissions, commonly referred to as “moral hazard” but more accurately described as crowding out or mitigation deterrence.  I say this is confused mainly because ‘mitigation deterrence’ is a wholly inaccurate term, which they wrongly call “more accurate”.  Mitigating climate change means lessening its risk.  Cutting emissions does not lessen climate risk.  SGE does lessen climate risk.  Therefore SGE/SRM mitigates climate change and cutting emissions does not.  So we have the Orwellian doublespeak assertion that “mitigation deterrence” involves expanding something that does mitigate climate risk (SRM) at the expense of something that does not.  Furthermore, the reality is that advocacy for decarbonisation now totally crowds out SRM, so to spread alarm about an imaginary reverse process is baseless.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of H simmens
Sent: Sunday, 29 March 2026 3:33 AM
To: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [HPAC] New Moral hazard paper

 

 

I find this research - see below- to be almost entirely useless as the degree to which employing cooling will slow emission reductions will depend upon the outcomes of the information war that will occur between proponents and opponents of cooling. 

 

Useful research in my view would be to examine scenarios illustrating the propaganda to be used against cooling - most of which is likely to be focused on blaming cooling for most every example of extreme weather - and the counter measures that can be taken to neutralize this bad faith propaganda. 

 

“In aggregate, we find little evidence for the moral-hazard concern in our social dilemma

experiment, which is consistent with previous studies using controlled experiments (e.g.,

Cherry et al. 2023a).”

 

 

s10640-026-01072-7 PDF Document · 1.4 MB

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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[robert...@gmail.com]

The moral hazard discourse is riven with this drivel dressed up as science.  It is all based on the totally unsubstantiated assumption that in the real world, if, or perhaps when, RSASoR (see below) starts being deployed, actors will respond in line with these abstract set-ups entirely devoid of the real world pressures that would dominate the ether at the time.  These papers started with Duncan MacLaren more than a decade ago and they've always suffered from the same fatal methodological flaw.  Whatever research you do about how an imaginary issue that has never arisen and for which there is, by definition, no observable evidence, can only be a compilation of conjectures; imagined responses to an imagined problem.

Although totally devoid of scientific substance, this research has come to have a significant impact in creating resistance to vital climate action amongst those who imagine that it addresses a real threat, as opposed to an imagined one.  Moreover, while the MH discourse is entirely focussed on whether or not it's a real threat, virtually no consideration is given to how it could be overcome if it were to emerge as a real one.  Counteracting it would require little more than a simple policy intervention in circumstances that would not prevail unless some very much more significant policy interventions, whose success depended on MH not being a problem, had been instituted.  MH is not a threat worth worrying about; either it'll never arise, or if it does, it can be easily stopped from interfering with parallel policy action considered to be important.

The case for it being 'easily stopped' is that alongside the policies needed to promote effective climate action, policymakers also enact regulations that require energy producers to retire their fossil fuel production on some agreed schedule that is consistent with the overall climate objectives.  These regulations can be tweaked along the way in the event that evidence emerges that emissions reductions are proceeding unnecessarily or insufficiently quickly.  Policymakers would have little difficulty in setting up such a regulatory framework if they are simultaneously instituting the investments and processes to reduce climate risk.  Not to do so would mean that their commitment to climate risk reduction isn't serious.  If it isn't serious, that'll be the problem, not the MH.

We need to remember that MH only exists where there is a choice of whether to act or not.  If an actor doesn't have the choice, then MH can't be a problem.  In brief, A can't be deterred from doing X by B doing Y, if C has the power to stop B from choosing to do Y.  If C has that power and chooses not to use it, then the problem is C's fickleness not the MH.  In the case with we are concerned, A and C are likely to be governments or supra-government institutions and in many cases A and C may be the same entity.  Don't blame for-profit fossil fuel producers for seeking to maximise profits from producing fossil fuels to meet market demand for their products.  That's what they're there to do.  Blame the authorities for failing to correct a market failure.  This has nothing to do with MH and everything to do with incompetent government.

On RASoR, I know I'm trying to get water to flow uphill, but it would be good adopt my new acronym RASoR, replacing SRM.  RASoR stands for Reduced Absorbed Solar Radiation.  It is the most generic description for all the various interventions we routinely discuss.  It also includes space based reflectors as well as Earth based albedo enhancement.  By losing the 'M: it also removes the reference to interference with natural systems - their 'modification' or 'management' - that so many find objectionable.  It's a straightforward value-free reference to the Earth system metric that needs to be tweaked.

Regards

RobertC

[John Nissen]

I am always trying to find a good reason why people have fallen into the trap of thinking that emissions reduction can be a solution to climate change: the emissions reduction alone (ERA) strategy.  The climate experts who advocate this strategy seem to genuinely believe it. This reminds me of a saying: that salesmen are the greatest believers of their own propaganda. But that's not a good reason for ERA in the first place. 

I wonder whether people instinctively want to join a battle between good and evil. The fossil fuel companies have been portrayed as the evil people who we are fighting with our green policies. Green is good. If we see the moral hazard argument in the context of this fight, it makes a kind of sense.

The fight for albedo can be portrayed as a separate fight, but with no enemy except the Earth System itself.

More satisfactory is to imagine a fight for a better future, in we are fighting everyone who says that ERA is satisfactory.  Refreezing the Arctic is a prerequisite for that better future, as is reducing temperature elsewhere to old norms and lowering the level of CO2e nearer to a preindustrial value*.

Please join us in this fight.

Cheers John 

obo PRAG 

* increasing life and biomass in soils and oceans, from where the excess atmospheric CO2 originated in fossilised form.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/6f3d9461-756e-49a5-8fff-c82690007bfa%40gmail.com.

[Clive Elsworth]

Yes, I said long ago that every good story (including every good movie) has clear goodies and baddies. That’s how most people see the world.

 

But science doesn’t work that way – by measuring good or evil.

 

E.g. there is no e = mc² + good,  or distance = velocity x time / evil

 

So, it seems less a fight than education. I fear there’ll be a lot of funerals before such education is achieved.

 

Clive

s10640-026-01072-7 PDF Document · 1.4 MB

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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