IPCC: A one foot levee for a twenty foot flood

[rob...@rtulip.net]

 

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

Donate to HPAC

 

 

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Robert--Wonderfully appropriate cartoon. Just one comment: "IPCC" should really be the "COP" as they are ones who are deciding policies, etc. (and an artistic point--that is not at all the attire of most scientists).

Oh, yes, and I couldn't decipher what was on the back of the clipboard. While perhaps a word too long, but you might replace one of the "Banking" by "Investment" (or even billionaires).

Best, Mike MacCracken

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Planetary Restoration" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to planetary-restor...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/032e01dc7b99%24547356d0%24fd5a0470%24%40rtulip.net.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Thanks Mike and Tom

 

IPCC have a scientific consensus that bans albedo action.  That is culpable negligence.

 

As I mentioned in my last comment to Tom, I tried to get the AI to fix the building names and gave up when it failed repeatedly to change them.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Tom Goreau
Sent: Saturday, 3 January 2026 6:27 AM
To: Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>; rob...@rtulip.net; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [HPAC] Re: [prag] IPCC: A one foot levee for a twenty foot flood

 

The blame for climate overshoot clearly belongs to COP imposing fossil fuel pollution, and not to IPCC and the scientific community who are powerless to impose renewable energy to balance some of it!

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/09f71a4a-810f-4719-9b2d-7536ebb591b7%40comcast.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/BY3PR13MB49947DC6A5A3E7A9DFAB1433DDBBA%40BY3PR13MB4994.namprd13.prod.outlook.com.

[Mark Haubner]

I live in a small town (36k people) which has a good portion of its residences and businesses right on the Peconic River. We spent $1M on a study with the Army Corps of Engineers as part of a Downtown Revitalization Plan to sketch out a 2-foot seawall on the river somewhere. If you look at the article (attached), you will see the Suffolk Theater in the background. It is 300 feet landward and was flooded by 13 feet of tidal surge/full moon/high tide during Hurricane Sandy, a reverse-cyclone (not a hurricane) whose center was 90 miles away. Every business closer to the river had their basements completely filled with river water. We are struggling to get an 'immersible park' put into the plan, with pervious surfaces required for any new business. Kermit warned that it's hard being green.

So the cartoon is really, really funny in a tragically ironic way. I already sent it to our civic association heads.

Mark H.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/032e01dc7b99%24547356d0%24fd5a0470%24%40rtulip.net.

[Robin Collins]

Robert

Can you quote the section of IPCC statements which take that position. It would be useful to have this in back pocket. 

Robin

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/042e01dc7ca6%24a8f0f010%24fad2d030%24%40rtulip.net.

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Robert T--On our comment about saying IPCC should be referring to the COP, and you say no--I'd just note that the COP is in charge of the IPCC by setting the outlines and subject matter of the assessments.

And as I noted, scientists don't dress that way--it is more characteristic of the COP and especially the lobbyists.

Best, Mike

[Tom Goreau]

IPCC is a window-dressing PR exercise that COP first carefully mandates to pretend they are receiving scientific advice, and then ignores.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Mike, I’m not sure that IPCC is primarily a scientific body.    Of course IPCC presents accepted science, but it is under control of governments who actively censor and bully what IPCC can say.  Scientists draft, but governments wield the red pens at the end.   

 

So the primary task of IPCC is to present a politically acceptable climate message.  That is why the “I” stands for “Intergovernmental”. Critical scientists like Hansen are shut out. 

 

Detailed reports acknowledge obliquely that changing albedo is a huge part of the problem – and might need to be managed – while the main political summary carefully avoids telling leaders that reflectivity is a lever at all.

 

That obeisance is part of why SRM was not mentioned in the AR6 Summary for Policy Makers, alongside the extensive disgraceful NGO lobbying and cowardly scientific reticence. 

 

It is therefore entirely appropriate to caricature IPCC as a politician in a suit. 

 

Regards, Robert T

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi Mark,

 

Thank you for sharing this awful experience – and commiserations. Your two-foot seawall overtopped by a 13-foot surge is exactly the kind of bad planning the cartoon is pointing to.

 

As you say, this isn’t abstract. It really happens, and it really damages people’s lives and livelihoods. That is the looming impact of failing to plan for a darker hotter world.

 

I will use this cartoon in my forthcoming book on the Albedo Accord.  If you’re comfortable with it, I’d like to quote your example (anonymised if you prefer).

 

With thanks and best regards,

Robert Tulip

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Planetary Restoration" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to planetary-restor...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CAHVAG3VZ6Ay4dWQteHy2_6bZw3PBs0Jwt_HMYZKDB_7wKswE0w%40mail.gmail.com.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Thanks Robin, I was not referring to an explicit statement from IPCC, but to the practical effect of the consensus opinion of the climate science community and governments that sunlight reflection technologies constitute an unacceptable moral hazard.  Apologies for my slight rhetorical exaggeration, which is in keeping with the ‘one foot levee’ theme here.  Of course there is no ban on such minor local albedo actions as painting rooves white to cut house temperature and cool urban heat islands, but the point of the cartoon is that there is an effective ban on action that would materially reverse the shocking recent 2% decline in planetary reflectivity.

 

In effect, the IPCC/COP system tells us to do nothing serious about albedo in order to protect the politics of mitigation. The 2021 call to halve emissions by 2030 has been interpreted as a mandate to make renewable rollout and carbon accounting the unquestionable centre of climate action, and to treat anything that might cool the planet directly as a moral hazard. A large moral-hazard literature – for example, Duncan McLaren’s work – argues that funding or legitimising geoengineering could undermine political will for renewable energy support. The practical result is that trillions in expected mitigation investment have a strong constituency, while albedo solutions are kept marginal and underfunded. This is not an explicit conspiracy, but it is a damaging imbalance: a belief system that, in order to protect one set of subsidies, leaves the planet’s most direct cooling lever almost untouched.

 

Here is how I propose to discuss this topic in my Sunlight Reflection book.

 

Box: Why the IPCC Doesn’t Talk About Sunlight Reflection

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is often described as “the world’s top climate science body.” That is only half true. It assembles and assesses excellent science – but its most visible messages are filtered through a political process.

The key word in IPCC is Intergovernmental. Governments nominate the authors. Governments approve the all-important Summary for Policymakers (SPM) line by line. Scientists draft the text, but in the final session delegates from 195 countries sit in a room and argue over every sentence until they reach wording everyone can live with.

That approval process has consequences. Anything too sharp, too disruptive to existing narratives, or too hard to explain in a press conference tends to be softened, delayed, or quietly omitted from the SPM – even if it remains in the technical chapters.

Sunlight reflection falls squarely into that category.

Inside the full AR6 reports, the IPCC does describe “solar radiation modification” – deliberate ways to reflect more sunlight, such as stratospheric aerosols or brightening clouds. The reports also explain that changes in reflectivity (albedo) are already a major driver of the planet’s extra heating, as ice and clouds retreat. In other words, the physics of albedo is acknowledged.

But in the Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers – the short document that presidents, ministers and CEOs are most likely to read – sunlight reflection is not mentioned at all. There is no headline message that the Earth is darkening, or that reflectivity is a lever that could be governed.

This silence does not mean albedo is unimportant. It means it is politically radioactive.

Many governments and NGOs fear that even acknowledging sunlight reflection as a policy option could create “moral hazard”: if people believe we can cool the planet directly, they might push less hard for emissions cuts. Campaign groups have lobbied hard to keep “geoengineering” framed as dangerous and illegitimate. Many scientists inside the process are themselves wary, concerned about side-effects and about being seen to endorse a technology that does not fit the familiar “net zero by 2050” narrative.

Faced with these tensions, the easiest compromise in a crowded SPM is simply not to talk about sunlight reflection at all. The detailed science stays in the background; the politically comfortable story – emissions, adaptation, and carbon removal – stays on the front page.

For businesses and risk-managers, this creates a blind spot. The institution that is supposed to inform global climate policy does not give high-level decision-makers a clear signal that planetary brightness is changing fast, or that governing reflectivity may soon be essential to keep the climate insurable and investable.

That is one of the reasons this book argues for an Albedo Accord alongside the existing IPCC/UNFCCC machinery. The IPCC will continue to play a vital role in assessing science. But a dedicated albedo institution, with a narrow mandate to understand and govern sunlight reflection as a public good, is needed to do what the SPM so far cannot: speak plainly about the role of reflectivity in climate risk, and organise a serious, global conversation about how to manage it.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Robin Collins
Sent: Monday, 5 January 2026 2:20 AM
To: rob...@rtulip.net
Cc: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] Re: [prag] IPCC: A one foot levee for a twenty foot flood

 

No takers on my question?

 

Robin 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CAKes%3DnHDTTBvwmW6iPFnvBYo6dfxqCwL3%3DJv88t3zPLn1%3DCyJQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gene Fry]

On Jan 1, 2026, at 11:07 PM, Mark Haubner <mhau...@gmail.com> wrote:

I live in a small town (36k people) which has a good portion of its residences and businesses right on the Peconic River. We spent $1M on a study with the Army Corps of Engineers as part of a Downtown Revitalization Plan to sketch out a 2-foot seawall on the river somewhere. If you look at the article (attached), you will see the Suffolk Theater in the background. It is 300 feet landward and was flooded by 13 feet of tidal surge/full moon/high tide during Hurricane Sandy, a reverse-cyclone (not a hurricane) whose center was 90 miles away. Every business closer to the river had their basements completely filled with river water. We are struggling to get an 'immersible park' put into the plan, with pervious surfaces required for any new business. Kermit warned that it's hard being green.

So the cartoon is really, really funny in a tragically ironic way. I already sent it to our civic association heads.

Mark H.

On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 10:39 PM <rob...@rtulip.net> wrote:

<image001.png>

 

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

Donate to HPAC

 

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/032e01dc7b99%24547356d0%24fd5a0470%24%40rtulip.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to healthy-planet-action...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CAHVAG3VZ6Ay4dWQteHy2_6bZw3PBs0Jwt_HMYZKDB_7wKswE0w%40mail.gmail.com.
<20 foot rise, 1 foot wall.png><Here's a look at the new town square that's coming to downtown Riverhead.pdf>

[Robin Collins]

No takers on my question?

Robin 

On Sat, Jan 3, 2026 at 10:00 AM Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com> wrote: