Pro SRM research article in today’s Guardian

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H simmens

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Jan 6, 2026, 11:51:55 AMJan 6
to healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration

Danielle Visioni of Cornell and Dakota Bruening, Reflexive CEO (who is on the HPAC list) have a very important opinion piece outlining a phased SAI testing program that begins to approach the mission driven model that needs to be adopted by governments and the SRM research community. 

Not surprisingly they still leave open the question of whether safe and effective SRM should be deployed.  

Hat’s off to the Guardian for publishing a piece like this. 

Herb


Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

rob...@rtulip.net

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Jan 7, 2026, 7:54:36 AMJan 7
to H simmens, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration

Hi Herb,

This Guardian piece is an excellent milestone in the legitimisation of SRM advocacy. The Guardian deserves credit for hosting this kind of evidence-based discussion while most mainstream media still ignore it completely.

However, I find two of their framing moves problematic. The line “The world may never need to reflect sunlight” concedes far too much to the bullying and stigma directed at SRM. I understand why they pitch it this cautiously in order to get published at all, but the underlying reality is stark: eight billion people on a planet with collapsing albedo have no feasible path to long-term stability and prosperity without organised, industrial-scale sunlight reflection. The benefits overwhelmingly outweigh the risks. While it is logically possible that field research could prove otherwise, the probability of that outcome is extremely low – and, if it did occur, it would amount to a sentence of unmanaged collapse. The challenge is to make SRM safe, effective and well-governed, not to imply that it may be unnecessary.  I can well imagine some readers reacting that if even the advocates have such doubts it must not be a priority.

Similarly, the line “Outdoor research is not a slippery slope to deployment” may be technically correct, but again gives comfort to unreasoned opposition by suggesting that a sustainable future without sunlight reflection remains a realistic option. In practice, I am certain that sunlight reflection will become a major global industry this century, ramping up far faster than most experts currently expect, with strong private-sector leadership. Academic caution of the sort expressed in this article may be tactically useful for now, but it is likely to open the door to a more focused practical advocacy very soon – not “whether” to deploy, but “how fast can we deploy safely and fairly”.

Daniele Visioni has a consistent history of criticising work that falls outside tightly controlled academic channels, most recently in his comments on Stardust in this paywalled article and in his contribution to the SRM360 collection. I endorse his instinct that commercial work needs robust public governance, but his approach in practice lines up with the tone of this Guardian piece – too wary of entrepreneurial initiative when we urgently need it. To make progress at the speed the physics demands, we will need both strong public governance and a vigorous, innovative private sector.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

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H simmens

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Jan 7, 2026, 8:42:10 AMJan 7
to rob...@rtulip.net, H simmens, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration
Hi Robert,

I wholeheartedly agree with you. 

As I have previously pointed out the SRM research community studiously avoids from what I can tell any effort to describe under what conditions direct climate cooling should be employed. 

Doing so would not compromise what many would believe is their role of not advocating for or against deployment. 

They rarely as far as I have seen address the consequences of deploying later rather than sooner - either the amount of time it would take to actually deploy and have an appreciable difference on the climate, and the additional suffering, death, collapse of Ecosystems, tipping point irreversible activations and derailment risks of deploying later rather than sooner. 

At the Cambridge Arctic repair confidence this past June a representative from Ocean Visions started her presentation by pointing out that they are not in favor of deployment. 

During the Q&A I asked her (and everyone else sitting in the auditorium ) at what point in the progression of the climate crisis would Ocean Visions be prepared to advocate for deployment. 

Her response was to avoid a direct response to my question.  Not once during the three days did I hear any speaker or any member of the audience raise much less attempt to answer the central question of “At what point”. 

This gaping reticence to provide the public and policy makers with rigorous analysis to help guide the world community to be in a position to make well informed decisions borders on the irresponsible. 

You are exactly correct that “ The challenge is to make SRM safe, effective and well-governed.”

This is essentially what the HPAC Mission statement - which was reaffirmed during the strategic planning process last year - articulates. 

“We advocate the world community urgently come together to carry out an equitable science based plan of action that includes what HPAC calls the Climate Triad:

- Directly cooling the climate through sunshine reflection ecosystem restoration and other safe and effective means


- Accelerating emission reductions


- Deploying large scale removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. 


The goal of these actions along with enhanced and transformative adaptation and regeneration measures is to reduce the average global temperature increase to well below 1° C in the coming decades.


 Doing so will sharply reduce weather extremes, slow or stop the collapse of key ecosystems and help ensure a livable planet for humanity and the natural world.”


Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com



Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Jan 7, 2026, at 7:54 AM, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:



robert...@gmail.com

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Jan 7, 2026, 9:43:05 AMJan 7
to planetary-...@googlegroups.com

Hi Herb

You repeat the line “ The challenge is to make SRM safe, effective and well-governed.”.  This is a necessary but not sufficient statement.  As written, it begs the question as to whether the decision to deploy should be held off until it's safe enough, effective enough. and well enough governed.  Who's to say what enough means in respect of each of these?  The statement leaves us open to another interminable debate that will simply keep pushing action further into the future.

This line needs to be understood as referring to action after the decision to deploy has been made.  That's not a decision to deploy now, but a decision to make SRM ready for deployment asap.  The decision to deploy is merely recognising that at some point tbd deployment is very likely to be necessary so we'd better get our ducks in row in good time.  The truth is that to those decision makers of the future the 'enough' condition will be determined in relation to the scale of the catastrophe they're facing.  Enough might not mean much at all if they are responding to an active disaster scenario in which the risks of inaction are palpably high.

The decision to deploy SRM is a risk management decision.  The risks from not deploying SRM are independent of, and unrelated to the risks from deploying it.  The risks from not deploying SRM are now emerging with much greater clarity and less uncertainty than hitherto.  They are considerable.  The risks from deployment will obviously be inversely related to the R&D that has been done by the time it is deployed.

Putting those two things together, the least risky pathway is to keep the pressure on decarbonisation AND enable decision makers in the coming decades to deploy SRM in the safest way available to them.  Our responsibility is to give them as much help as we can in making that safest way, really safe.  If we fail, it doesn't mean they won't use SRM, it just means that when they do, it'll be less safe than it could have been by virtue of our feeble mindedness.

Regards

RobertC


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Alan Kerstein

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Jan 7, 2026, 4:57:08 PMJan 7
to H simmens, Robert Tulip, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration
Herb,

'Safe and effective' could be too high a bar because SRM might fall short of either or both criteria, depending on how they are framed (in itself a minefield) yet still be hugely preferable relative to solely ER and CDR. Hence, anything but the risk versus risk rubric is fraught.

Robert C,

Companies like Anduril are showing that designing, building, and marketing for/to the public sector, in this case specifically the defense sector, is a winning strategy. Private venture capital is quite willing to fund this once they recognize that there is a durable demand on the public sector side. The advantage of this strategy is that it avoids getting the public sector involved in the minutiae of setting detailed requirements. SpaceX is another example.

Alan

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oswald....@hispeed.ch

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Jan 7, 2026, 4:57:37 PMJan 7
to Alan Kerstein, H simmens, Robert Tulip, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration

Alan, Herb,

 

private companies have the edge over public organizations because they are more flexible, more innovative and more risk-oriented. Public organizations have the advantage to be legitimized by democratic mandates but tend to be risk-averse and bureaucratic. Together both can create the necessary infrastructure, where private investors lead and public organizations follow. That’s all fine and not new.

 

However nowadays, int the days of tech monopolies and winner takes all capitalism, we should beware not to get into a situation where a private investor (E.g. E. Musk) can hold the global community at ransom. Any private or public entity in the field of climate cooling should be held responsible for their influencing the global climate. This requirement is more important here than in say the production of some private consumer good.

 

A useful approach would be to e.g. separate the suppliers of material from the operators of the planes and split up the job between a number of companies which specialize in certain areas. This is the case in defence, where armies are the operators and private sector companies supply the weapons and ammunitions. A similar distribution of tasks might help to defuse the situation in GeoEngineering, which is bound to be a highly politicized market.

 

I am however sceptical that a global body for solar geoengineering will form within the next 20 years. Developments of this magnitude do not happen overnight, in the contrary, they take many years form the brain-storming phase (now) to the drawing board, then to field testing and from there to some technical buildup and realization. Solar geoengineering requires global governmental regulation. There exists no adequate organization, at this stage, which would be willing and able to take over the enormous responsibility of the task.

 

All in all I do not think it is likely we will see SAI/SRM happen in our lifetime.

 

Oswald Petersen

Author of „GeoRestoration – Cool the Climate with Natural Technology“

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

Tel: +41-71-6887514

Mob: +49-177-2734245

https://amr.earth

https://georestoration.earth

https://cool-planet.earth

Ron Baiman

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Jan 11, 2026, 5:51:22 PMJan 11
to H simmens, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration, Michael MacCracken
Good catch Herb!  Thanks for sharing. Interestingly this is precisely the discussion that was carried on at the AGU2025 Geoengineering sessions where Daniele, MacMartin, Keith, Waker, Tilmes, Smith, and many others were attending. It appears very close to what Doug MacMartin was proposing that I heartily endorsed at the session and specifically noted the that issue of how long it takes the aerosols to form from gaseous SO2 - referencing an old paper that Mike had mentioned - suggests that  it might take months (so that adequate testing would need to be carried out over a long period of time). Doug replied that this is a key issue for which testing is needed. 

This 1984 paper may be the one that Mike recollected: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JD089iD03p04873  It suggests (if my understanding is correct), using El Chicon volcano data, that forming sulfates from SO2 can take more than 100 days if H2S or some other source of "odd hydrogen" (HOx - OH or OH2 - based on google!) is not available.  

This is from the abstract: "It is found that the chemical lifetime for the volcanic SO2 would be greater than 100 days for a large portion of the cloud if HOSO2 does not regenerate odd hydrogen during conversion to sulfate and if heterogeneous losses of SO2 are not competitive. However, observations of sulfate particle formation and SO2 imply a chemical lifetime of 30–40 days, which is consistent with HOSO2 conversion regenerating odd hydrogen."

A prominent geoengineering expert at the session (not Doug) told me privately (after I had asked this question) that the time it would take to create aerosols would depend on the location of the injection - which I take to be a proxy for other factors - perhaps linked to the presence of "odd hydrogen". 

BTW -  Support for applied science testing near-term global climate cooling methods is the subject of the Open Letter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ShSdXTOe50SVf1L0ZwI5imBhbSG1IItn/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116465941111195452408&rtpof=true&sd=true  (this Jan 3 version is a cleaner copy than the Jan 5 version - linked to in the poster - that is now undergoing a bit of further editing)  that I was promoting at the AGU2025 via this poster: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hvklktEZSciny9JnuMaU4Jn6_2pRN8w6/view?usp=sharing

Best,
Ron

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