PRAG meeting, Monday 7th November 8 pm UK time (GMT)
John Nissen
rob...@rtulip.net
Please join our Planetary Restoration Action Group meeting today/tomorrow.
Link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89101098507?pwd=TlhaVFgvR2RKbk1HRU1wd254cXBSZz09
Time is 8pm Monday 7th UK = 7am Tuesday 8th Eastern Australia = Noon Monday 7th in California.
The recordings of our most recent meetings are at these links
24 October https://youtu.be/xtMQuy3lz2I
10 October https://youtu.be/xsf0WS6Iek4
28 September https://youtu.be/N2Yv8rH1sa4
And the recording of my interview on geoengineering with the ABC Science Show is at https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-science-show/14091532
Best Regards
Robert Tulip
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Mike Clancy
First and foremost, we must accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels and the switch to clean energy and do the other things that are necessary to reduce GHG emissions. That is the fundamental bedrock action needed to deal with the climate crisis.
In addition to that, yes, there may be a place for SRM, particularly SAI. SAI will work and it can be done quite inexpensively compared with the needed global effort to reduce GHG emissions to near zero. The problem is, in my opinion, that sufficient research has not yet been done to establish that the side effects of SAI are benign or at least not as bad as what will happen if we don’t do SAI. In my judgement, establishing this to a level of scientific consensus will require an extensive modeling program done in conjunction with field experiments. Even WITH this scientific consensus it will be very, very difficult to get a majority of nations, or at least the key nations (e.g., the U.N. Security Council) to agree to this intervention. Without such a consensus it will be impossible.
I don’t at all agree with the statements that “the IPCC cannot be trusted for good information and that it has been effectively hijacked by those who put growth in the western economy (and fossil fuel industry) above all else” and that “the IPCC neglects rapid feedbacks in the Arctic in their modelling”. On the first point, the IPCC is certainly no friend of the fossil fuel industry and the information they provide is always very well aligned with the overwhelming global scientific consensus. On the second point, the IPCC doesn’t do modeling. Rather, they simply report the results provided by hundreds of independent climate modelers in many institutions and in many countries all over the world who participate in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). Each of these climate modelers is competing with all the others to make their model the best. Thus, none of them would neglect “rapid feedbacks in the Arctic” if the science has established that such feedbacks exist that are not already accounted for in their model.
In general, it is not a good idea to vilify the IPCC in the name of trying to advocate for SRM/SAI. Rather, we need to get them onboard to join us in advocating for the research program necessary to lay the groundwork for an operational SAI capability.
Mike Clancy
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Ye Tao
Hi Mike,
I mostly agree with your assessment regarding the scientific
portion of the IPCC, except for the handling of locked in warming,
especially in the summary for policy makers. A partial
censorship, evident in self-inconsistencies which I am happy to
explain after COP27, is actual one of the major reasons making SRM
is essential.
I would encourage you to watch Kyle's excellent presentation on
why the scientific content is not everything the IPCC is doing.
We scientists have learned to be trusting of other scientists
because of the rigorous training we go through, and many of us
probably thought economists were scientists until we read their
books and publications.
Best,
Ye
Veli Albert Kallio
However, this appears broadly in line with the First Nations of Americas United Nations General Assembly Ethnoclimatology Motion UNGA101292 which the UN Secretary-General approved for tabling on the floor of the UN General Assembly, stipulating sustained warming of Polar Regions causing their instant losses, this is most likely to occur first in Thwaites and Pine Island regions in the South Pole and Greenland in the North Pole after sea ice.
Sent: 06 November 2022 22:21
To: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Kyle K <kylerk...@gmail.com>; Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Rafe Pomerance <rafe.po...@gmail.com>
Subject: PRAG meeting, Monday 7th November 8 pm UK time (GMT)
Ye Tao
Hi Clive,
Thank you for correctly bringing people's attentions to Earth's Energy Imbalance, the central convergence node that directly setting the zeroth-order asymptote of the climate trajectory.
What I want to caution you against is simplifying the aerosol
lifetime differences to 'shorter is better'. Overly stable is a
shortcoming in the testing phase when impacts are uncertain, and
when fast mixing ensures planetary scale distribution. But
assuming for a moment that the impacts turned out overwhelmingly
positive. Then a long atmospheric residence could turn into an
advantage, as less materials would be needed to maintain a steady
state loading, leading to lower material and energy cost for
implementation.
Have you had a chance to perform a CROI estimate and material scalability LCA for titanium-based tropospheric approaches? I vaguely remember us discussing about it. I am just wondering where you guys are with respect to it. There are so many different parts to the puzzle. I am sharing a paper on the humber plastic cap for your amusement.
Cheers,
Ye
MikeMay I suggest that to a scientist such as John Nissen a term like ‘fundamental bedrock’ means something like basalt. If you could find time to attend a PRAG or a NOAC meeting you would hear people speaking in precise terms such as tipping points and radiative forcing.Obviously for the long term emissions need to be reduced, as do atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. But do you see that happening in time to avoid for example an Arctic tipping point?The only way I and numerous others attending these meetings see of avoiding an Arctic tipping point is to quickly reduce Earth’s energy imbalance, and the quickest way to do that is to reduce radiative forcing by use of aerosols. Aerosols already provide significant negative radiative forcing on aggregate. For example, black carbon particulates have a warming influence, but that is outweighed by stratocumulus clouds. Unfortunately, the negative forcing of tropospheric aerosols is reducing, as for example ships now need to remove sulphur dioxide from their flues.The source of disagreement in the NOAC group each time tends to be over which form of aerosol enhancement would be safer: stratospheric or tropospheric?David Keith and his colleagues have carried out extensive modelling of stratospheric aerosol injection SAI. And then numerous papers have reported modelling exercises of significantly altering tropospheric radiative forcing, better known as marine cloud brightening or MCB.One advantage of MCB is its effects cease within a few weeks of ceasing operation. Another advantage of MCB is, by cooling specific ocean areas it provides more control to avoid negative extreme weather events. The disadvantage is that using seawater to make aerosol particles requires nozzle technology that has not yet been produced, despite proposals being put forward by MCB proponents such as Stephen Salter.In recent months Franz Oeste and I have put forward an alternative mechanism for safely producing nano-sized mineral particles in the troposphere at low cost, called titanium oxide aerosol or TOA. Just like sea salt particles, these get washed out within a few weeks and have a negligible effect on water bodies they enter, by flocculating.You are welcome to join our meetings, where you will find conversations spirited and informative.Clive
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/CACzwOh3n6oSMubL62HZUQ-UrWwbVJJ8x57GRwkw1vk6eH_dfHw%40mail.gmail.com.
Clive Elsworth
On 06/11/2022 23:37 GMT Mike Clancy <mike.cla...@gmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/CACzwOh3n6oSMubL62HZUQ-UrWwbVJJ8x57GRwkw1vk6eH_dfHw%40mail.gmail.com.
Stephen Salter
Hi Ye
The ‘shortage of materials’ argument does not apply to sea salt. Indeed once you have paid for spray vessels it costs nothing to keep them in use. Indeed movement through the water in mid ocean slows the formation of marine growth and continuous operation is like continuous testing to ensure reliability. The wide variation of temperatures suggests that rapid adjustment of cooling might be as desirable as agile steering on a road vehicle. Having rapid braking might be very desirable if there is a surprise cold snap in winter. Spray vessel fleets can stop spraying with a single mouse click.
Stephen
From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Ye Tao
Sent: 07 November 2022 06:27
To: Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>; Mike Clancy <mike.cla...@gmail.com>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Kyle K <kylerk...@gmail.com>;
Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Rafe Pomerance <rafe.po...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: PRAG meeting, Monday 7th November 8 pm UK time (GMT)
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John Nissen
Hi Kyle,
Thank you for an excellent presentation yesterday. This is my take-home message.
There needs to be a strong dose of realism. The climate crisis is upon us and very real; and it is proving very much more costly than expected, even for the wealthiest countries. The prospect for the future under the current strategy, focussed almost entirely on CO2 emissions reduction (ER), is very bleak. You and other young people are beginning to realise it. You were motivated to study the role of the IPCC since it seems to have been ineffective in preventing the growing climate crisis: a crisis which is rapidly getting out of hand. You are very damning of the IPCC, saying that it has been effectively hijacked by people from North America and Europe who are devoted to growing their economies at all costs, even at the cost of future human lives such as your own. These people use a cost model that underestimates the economic consequences of climate change and ignores the human cost, especially in the global south.
Where my colleagues and I can help you is over the scientific reality, which is pretty scary but in fact manageable through climate intervention.
The IPCC has lead people to believe that ER is the only practical possibility to address the climate crisis; and all the news around COP27 reinforces this message. Solar radiation management (SRM) is confined to a single non-committal paragraph in the IPCC report devoted to the subject of keeping anthropogenic global warming (AGW) under 1.5C with respect to the IPCC’s baseline temperature around 1900. We are officially at 1.1C today, though this is probably an underestimate. In reality we will inevitably hit 1.5C by 2040, and probably much sooner, because the planet is currently warming at around 0.25C per decade, driven by the existing excess of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. (The trend is for it to warm even faster as the counteracting cooling effect of SO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels diminishes. Climate activists seem totally unaware of this effect, despite the warning from climate guru, Jim Hansen.)
The focus on a global warming of 1.5C has resulted in the neglect of a much more serious warming in the Arctic at around 1.0C per decade, i.e. four times faster than the global average. Most of the dangerous trends are focussed in the Arctic and are accelerating: retreat of snow and sea ice; disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet; melting and iceberg discharge to raise global sea levels; emissions of methane from thawing permafrost on land and under the sea; disruption of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
Without SRM to cool the Arctic, these trends are likely to continue to the point of catastrophe. Without SRM you and the rest of us are pretty much doomed.
Climate scientists don’t want to be alarmist so they downplay what’s happening in the Arctic. They disparage SRM because it might encourage the fossil fuel companies to emit more CO2 indirectly: through selling more fuel. And they disparage SRM because they want the focus on emissions reduction.
The fossil fuel companies started by denying climate change: therefore there was no need for SRM and why would you do it? They allowed (and possibly promoted) a strong anti-SRM lobby. But now that climate change cannot be denied, they don’t suggest SRM to counter global warming because they would be accused of trying to get out of gaol free and take the focus off emissions reduction. And they certain don’t want the Arctic cooled, which would certainly involve SRM.
Thus, even if SRM were to be perfectly benign (which I think it could prove to be with MCB or SAI), there would be no advocacy from either side of the climate debate. And the anti-SRM lobby is as strong as ever. Furthermore there is no money to be made from SRM.
So we are in a deadlock situation, politically. I think we need three groups to come together for SRM; and you could help us in this, Kyle.
We need young climate activists to come together to demand SRM to reverse climate change and safeguard their own future. We need economists who will argue that SRM is the most cost-effective means to deal with climate change and show that SRM could actually help to grow economies around the world. We need scientists who are honest about what is happening to our climate system and show that, with care and due diligence, SRM can be applied safely to reverse dangerous trends and return the climate system to a sustainable state for everyone’s prosperity.
Cheers, John
PS the PRAG meeting starts in a few hours time: 8 pm GMT
Kyle Kimball
rob...@rtulip.net
The recording of today’s PRAG meeting is at https://youtu.be/D0ScSjIlXXo
Comments are attached.
Here is my response (as bullet points) to emailed comments I received on my ABC Science Show Interview
No question we are in a frightening situation regarding the greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere and the failure to curb these or to really recognise the seriousness of impacts already happening.
- And yet the public debate, including prominent commentary at COP27 so far, ignores the science on committed warming from past emissions by suggesting that cutting new emissions must be the main climate policy response, even though annual emissions only worsen committed warming by a marginal amount.
I’m attaching the link from The Science Show to Robbie's organisation - Planetary Restoration Action Group
https://planetaryrestorationaction.group/ I’m surprised that there is no information on the website about the organisation, its membership etc
- Unfortunately that is the wrong link. It appears a member of our group decided to set up a partial copy of our website without informing the group. Sorry about that. Our website is https://planetaryrestoration.net/. I have now asked the Science Show to change the link, so thanks for the heads up. PRAG is a small informal organisation running solely on volunteer input, so our website is rudimentary, but it links to our very active google group where people can engage in discussion and see the list of our members.
It has a lot of information relating to the dire state of planetary temperature trends, but nothing about the specific geoengineering techniques that Robbie mentioned in the Science Show.....These are illustrated in the attachment (except re-freezing the arctic) So my question for Robbie would be: where is the science that supports the hypothesis that these might work? eg the science supporting SO2 aerosols has been around for decades, but does it exist for refreezing the arctic?
- Gerard mentioned The Conversation. One of the recent geoengineering articles there is by Shaun FitzGerald of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair that I mentioned in my talk. Shaun’s article is titled What Could we do to Cool the Arctic – Specifically? It discusses the need to research both Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Marine Cloud Brightening.
- Our group has extensively discussed the view that not freezing the Arctic is far more dangerous than freezing it. For example the risks of extreme weather, sea level rise and methane release would be mitigated by a frozen Arctic, and unmitigated by a melting Arctic.
As he said, large scale experiments may be required for proof of concept - what is the state of development of such proposals?
- Essentially, the United Nations has placed a fatwa banning any field research. Leading world universities proposed a small scale field study in Sweden last year, but hysterical green NGOs deceived local indigenous communities as a front to prevent this proceeding on the ground that it represented a slippery slope to implementation.
Just as important is has this science been reviewed?
- A recent paper Anthony R. Harding, Mariia Belaia & David W. Keith (2022): The value of information about solar geoengineering and the two-sided cost of bias, Climate Policy, DOI:10.1080/14693062.2022.2091509 presents an excellent starting point for this question. It argues that investment of $2 billion in review of geoengineering science could lead to investment that would save $10 trillion in climate damage, benefits 5000 times greater than the initial review cost.
A great forum for this is The Conversation... it is not designed as a high-level science publication but for articles that are user-friendly and there are often useful discussions in comments. There are many helpful articles there on geoengineering which illustrate a range of issues and perspectives
https://theconversation.com/uk/search?q=geoengineering It would be good to hear Robbie's reflections on this material
- There is a such a vast quantity of new literature that it is impossible to keep up with it, but I try to follow the google groups on geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal. I looked at this link and am very familiar with the positions argued there. I was particularly appalled by the Tang paper on risk, which flatly ignores the risks of not increasing planetary albedo, and exaggerates dubious risks of creating a brighter planet, indicating that the analysis is driven by ideology rather than by evidence.
A much higher level of review is undertaken by contributors to the IPCC reports every 6 years I thought Robbie was a bit misleading when he told The Science Show that the IPCC had been at fault in not considering geoengineering.... the latest IPCC report has a chapter devoted to this.
- My actual comment (transcript) was “the IPCC has been negligent in failing to recognise the urgency of solar radiation management.” There is nothing misleading about this. All the study they have done has begged the question by accepting the prior groupthink assumption that implementation is not urgent.
- Gerard’s link is to AR3 from 2001. AR6 last year issued a Summary For Policy Makers, its key document, that totally ignored geoengineering and albedo, signalling the policy consensus that albedo is not urgent. The mentions of geoengineering are in the attached file. Anyone who disagrees is frozen out, and that includes some serious high level scientists. Scientists in the IPCC network see support for solar geoengineering as a career limiting move.
- Yes, the 5000 page document of Working Group One available at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/ includes Chapter 4: Future global climate: scenario-based projections and near-term information and mentions geoengineering 170 times. However, as PRAG member Kyle Kimball argued in our zoom talk today, scientists defer to economists on climate policy, and the economic policy consensus is driven by the appallingly bad analysis of Nordhaus, savagely critiqued in the attached article by Steve Keen.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/013701d8f23e%2457489ba0%2405d9d2e0%24%40rtulip.net.
Clive Elsworth
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Ye Tao
Hi Clive,
Intuitively I agree that Stephen's salt particles would likely produce a favorable CROI. I am not so certain of your case, though, when industrially produced materials are involved. Let's say the particles stay for 3 days. That is < 1/1000 of the lifetime of mirrors. But I doubt the reflectivity is 1000 higher per projected thickness in 2D. Embodied energies of industrial products are generally within an order of magnitude, from glass, to metals, to plastics, on a per-weight basis. And precursors to titanium-based or aluminum based particles might not fall that much outside of the range.
I do believe that you cannot simply claim that titanium oxide aerosols automatically has CROI similar to that of MCB. Would need to include material mining, chemical synthesis, transportation, and dispersal steps. Stephan's material is directly sourced on the ocean, so does not involve some of these steps.
Best,
Ye
p.s. I think the acronym TOA is potentially confusing, because it
is the established acronym for Top of the Atmosphere.
Ye Tao
Yes Stephen, that is one major advantage of your vision for MCB.
Challenges are spraying nozzle design and realization, wind energy
harvesting, and wind intermittency.
Keep up the excellent work.
Ye
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336. --
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rob...@rtulip.net
Dear Ye
Reading your comments in recent list emails and at https://www.meer.org/firstprinciples, your discussion of Cooling Return On Investment presents an essential way to quantify effective climate action. I think of CROI in terms of Radiative Forcing Credits, measured in watts per square metre, or perhaps milliwatts per square kilometre. This way of thinking means all climate action should be measured and costed by its impact on planetary cooling. Actions with zero or negative net RF impact do not help the climate, and have significant opportunity cost when they are justified and subsidised for contribution to climate action. I would like to see RF credits replace carbon credits as a way to generate investment in albedo enhancement, which is the only tractable climate lever.
Your argument that carbon based actions are not relevant to climate response is extremely interesting, logical and radical, generating significant cognitive dissonance. It means the whole COP process is a farce equivalent to the children’s story of admiring the emperor’s fake new clothes. How I see it is that the climate is at risk of being swamped by tipping points with accelerating feedback, notably excess methane release, and the only thing that makes real difference to that is direct cooling. This is why I see the Methane Action petition and expert statement as totally wrong and delusional for ignoring albedo. It is unethical to place tribal popularity before scientific data as a basis for decisions. Carbon removal is too small and slow and difficult to stabilise the climate. Peter Fiekowsky is wrong about this. However, it is important to recognise that converting carbon dioxide into commodities can become profitable, providing a path to eventually cut GHGs back toward Holocene norms.
I really liked your point that surface mirrors reflecting sunlight to space can be seen as like long lasting aerosol particles. That means if a mirror costs 100 times as much as an equivalent area of reflective aerosol, measured in terms of RF, and operates for 1,000 times as long, then the mirror is ten times better value. Have you calculated the relative CROI of MEER and Solar PV?
I am wondering now about the potential of mirrors to fix urban heat islands. The town of Alice Springs in Central Australia has gone almost totally indoors during summer as daytime temperature now rarely falls much below 35°C. It makes me wonder if a large rooftop mirror program could make the town more liveable. Even if PV is the cheapest electricity source, they might be better off putting mirrors on roofs and have the solar farms outside the town, if just to cut their air conditioning bills.
Regards
Robert Tulip
From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ye Tao
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2022 4:18 PM
To: Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>; Mike Clancy <mike.cla...@gmail.com>; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Cc: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Kyle K <kylerk...@gmail.com>; Shaun Fitzgerald <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; Rafe Pomerance <rafe.po...@gmail.com>
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rob...@rtulip.net
Dear Robert C
You have made a number of comments that can be challenged.
My comments about Methane Action are perfectly reasonable. Methane mitigation requires albedo increase. Saying otherwise is wishful thinking that ignores extensive scientific evidence. But that is what Methane Action and their supporters have done. With all due respect, many scientists disagree with them. It is disingenuous of you to suggest Methane Action are too busy working out how best to remove methane to notice the best way to remove methane.
Nature Communications published the open access article Mitigation of Arctic permafrost carbon loss through stratospheric aerosol geoengineering in 2020. It states “Our results show that the cooling effect of SAI will significantly suppress the temperature rise of permafrost soils, mitigate permafrost carbon-climate feedback, and reduce methane and carbon dioxide emissions from thawing permafrost.” The paper calculates that geoengineering could cut permafrost methane release by 40%, and estimates economic benefit compared to the IPCC’s RCP 4.5 of $8.4 trillion over the next half century, not even counting subsea permafrost or Arctic infrastructure impacts. Did Methane Action not notice this paper? Ignoring this science is political, like the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers (see attached). We need to switch climate priorities to put cooling first.
The Methane Action Civil Society Statement says “Reducing manmade methane emissions is the fastest approach to reducing near-term temperatures.” That is absurd in the absence of efforts to brighten the planet. Their assertion appears in the 2021 UN Global Methane Assessment Report, which similarly ignores albedo. The Guardian cites the UN report to say “Cutting [methane] is the strongest action available to slow global heating in the near term.” As with the whole unhelpful UN groupthink syndrome of placing tribal popularity before scientific data, that UN report ignored the fact that increasing albedo is a stronger available action.
In no way was my comment about Peter Fiekowsky an ad hominem fallacy as you wrongly allege. Readers of this debate this week on these discussion boards would have seen the comment from Ye Tao on 6 Nov calling out Peter’s statement that “climate restoration can happen without SRM” as an example of “wild, baseless claims.” As Ye states “there is zero evidence for a pathway to 400ppm by 2050, let alone 350ppm.” That is what I was referring to. You are wrong to imply my criticism of Peter was not purely about science. For Peter to attack the statement that “climate restoration requires SRM as a stop-gap” as “emotionally true … not technically true” reflects poor grasp of climate science on his part.
My statement that it is unethical to place tribal popularity before scientific data as a basis for decisions is a perfectly sound statement of general moral principle for science-based organisations, especially when it comes to the existential crisis of climate change. As Greta Thunberg says, just follow the science. It would be nice if she and others followed that advice. The only way we will stop dangerous warming is to work resolutely to promote understanding of facts. That means, as Greta said, “hope is telling the truth.”
Regards
Robert Tulip
From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Robert Chris
Sent: Saturday, 12 November 2022 4:18 AM
To: rob...@rtulip.net; 'Ye Tao' <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>; Atmospheric Methane Removal Community <atmospheric-methan...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings' <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; 'Kyle K' <kylerk...@gmail.com>; 'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Mike Clancy' <mike.cla...@gmail.com>; 'Rafe Pomerance' <rafe.po...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: MEER: Cooling Return On Investment
Hi Robert
I think your comments about Methane Action are unduly harsh. Methane Action is, as its name makes pretty clear, an entity that's focussed on methane. They recognise that action on methane is just one of the policies that should be being pursued. Others are championing other policies. They are not ignoring albedo modification, it's just not their primary issue.
Their position is based is based on peer reviewed research that suggests that because of its disproportionately high GWP over short periods - and for managing climate change, we are concerned about what can be done within the next couple of decades - bringing methane back to pre-industrial levels by 2050 could reduce warming by ~0.5degC.
Your remark about placing 'tribal popularity before scientific data' is unhelpful. Not all carbon removal is equal, and even if cooling is increasingly where the smart money should be going, there is still a role for GGR, perhaps more so for SLCPs than CO2. This is especially so if these can be done with minimal resource inputs, and in Ye Tao's terms with a very high CROI. Bear in mind that Ye's methane oxidation numbers are wrong because he assumed that the OH radicals were being manufactured, which for the technology being supported by Methane Action isn't the case. Maybe if they were reworked, methane oxidation would assume much greater significance and even rival MEER.
If you want to criticise PeteF, may I suggest you do so by challenging him to provide the data that supports the positions he takes, rather than making ad hominen swipes at him. I have a lot of issues with Peter but they relate to the science. You'll have to go a long way to find someone who cares more about humanity's fate than Peter. You might want to reflect on the appropriateness of suggesting in a public posting that he's being unethical.
Regards
Robert
On 11/11/2022 13:16, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:
How I see it is that the climate is at risk of being swamped by tipping points with accelerating feedback, notably excess methane release, and the only thing that makes real difference to that is direct cooling. This is why I see the Methane Action petition and expert statement as totally wrong and delusional for ignoring albedo. It is unethical to place tribal popularity before scientific data as a basis for decisions. Carbon removal is too small and slow and difficult to stabilise the climate. Peter Fiekowsky is wrong about this.
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Robert Chris
Hi Robert
I think your comments about Methane Action are unduly harsh. Methane Action is, as its name makes pretty clear, an entity that's focussed on methane. They recognise that action on methane is just one of the policies that should be being pursued. Others are championing other policies. They are not ignoring albedo modification, it's just not their primary issue.
Their position is based is based on peer reviewed research that suggests that because of its disproportionately high GWP over short periods - and for managing climate change, we are concerned about what can be done within the next couple of decades - bringing methane back to pre-industrial levels by 2050 could reduce warming by ~0.5degC.
Your remark about placing 'tribal popularity before scientific data' is unhelpful. Not all carbon removal is equal, and even if cooling is increasingly where the smart money should be going, there is still a role for GGR, perhaps more so for SLCPs than CO2. This is especially so if these can be done with minimal resource inputs, and in Ye Tao's terms with a very high CROI. Bear in mind that Ye's methane oxidation numbers are wrong because he assumed that the OH radicals were being manufactured, which for the technology being supported by Methane Action isn't the case. Maybe if they were reworked, methane oxidation would assume much greater significance and even rival MEER.
If you want to criticise PeteF, may I suggest you
do so by challenging him to provide the data that supports the
positions he takes, rather than making ad hominen swipes
at him. I have a lot of issues with Peter but they relate to
the science. You'll have to go a long way to find someone who
cares more about humanity's fate than Peter. You might want to
reflect on the appropriateness of suggesting in a public posting
that he's being unethical.
Regards
Robert
Ye Tao
Yes, let's tell the truth, the full truth! People are not stupid.
This week at COP, I have talked to many activists, indigenous youth leaders, and social change makers. They are all shocked and furious to learn of the suppression of the discussion on locked-in warming and the doctoring of figures suchas SR15 Figure 1.5. Many are also shocked to learn that the total global afforestation and reforestation potential fall well-under 20% of 800 GtC that we need to remove, and a couple journalists with undergraduate environmental science degrees had Eureka moments when reminded of the albedo forcing of boreal forests. To them, this is only logical, given how our governments have been lying and creating narratives on essentially most of the important things happening around the world.
Ye
Ye Tao
Dear all,
Sorry for not properly contributing to this discussion at the
moment. I am too busy at COP27. Something is different this
time. People are openly discussing the preposterousness of 1.5C
and are admitting that climate disasters are occurring at least 30
years ahead of IPCC projections. Summer of 2022 is still fresh in
people's memories.
Robert C is right about the need to consider the entire life cycle analysis. Indeed, a complete and definitive assessment of CROI is an heroic undertaking, for any concept. However, for the purpose of rejecting concepts, one may stop adding terms to the numerator in the CROI as soon as the ratio fall below 1000. As an example, my slides show in the case of DAC, only considering the running energy costs, without including CO2 transportation and injection costs, puts CROI at 130. This is an upper bound. There is no way for the ratio to grow larger.
Yes, producing a publication-quality manuscript, complete with
its 100-page supplementary material, detailing the calculations is
one of the things on my list of things to do. But I trust at
least a couple of you have been able to reproduce the number to
within a factor of 2. Sorry for the delay, I know, just too busy
running multiple field experiments and establishing collaborations
on several continents at the same time... pls bear with me.
Best,
Ye
Ye
Hi Robert & Ye
I am sorry I was unable to join the meeting last evening. I too have found Ye's CROI concept compelling and discombobulating. My central concern is about determining the numbers for alternative cooling strategies in a reliable and coherently comparable manner.
It seems critical that the energy consumption be measured on a life cycle basis taking into account all the incremental uses of manufactured energy throughout the supply chain to capture all the energy that, but for the cooling strategy under consideration, would not have been consumed. This would benefit passive systems against those that depend on the routine release of materials into the environment or the sequestration of those taken out of it.
It also requires credible ways of assessing the cooling effect and energy input for each option. I have attempted unsuccessfully to reproduce Ye's numbers shown in his presentation to HPAC last April (mostly the first 6 minutes). There are lots of references there but I couldn't derive Ye's figures from them. (That's a comment about my limitations, not any kind of criticism of what Ye is doing.) Ye, it would be very helpful if you could show us in detail how you generated the big numbers in red in that presentation in such a way as we can see how they could be generalised for other cooling methods.
For the reasons that RobertT alludes to, a proposal to divert resources away from CDR/GGR in favour of albedo management (AM) will meet stiff opposition. Overcoming that will require convincing arguments not just about the absolute RF impacts of the alternatives but also about their respective speeds of action. There may also be significant cost advantages to cooling but in the first instance I suspect these will be secondary to the fundamental principle of whether there are AM approaches that are climatically effective and sufficiently low risk to be conscionable.
Regards
Robert
On 11/11/2022 13:16, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:
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Robert Chris
Hi Robert & Ye
I am sorry I was unable to join the meeting last evening. I too have found Ye's CROI concept compelling and discombobulating. My central concern is about determining the numbers for alternative cooling strategies in a reliable and coherently comparable manner.
It seems critical that the energy consumption be measured on a life cycle basis taking into account all the incremental uses of manufactured energy throughout the supply chain to capture all the energy that, but for the cooling strategy under consideration, would not have been consumed. This would benefit passive systems against those that depend on the routine release of materials into the environment or the sequestration of those taken out of it.
It also requires credible ways of assessing the cooling effect and energy input for each option. I have attempted unsuccessfully to reproduce Ye's numbers shown in his presentation to HPAC last April (mostly the first 6 minutes). There are lots of references there but I couldn't derive Ye's figures from them. (That's a comment about my limitations, not any kind of criticism of what Ye is doing.) Ye, it would be very helpful if you could show us in detail how you generated the big numbers in red in that presentation in such a way as we can see how they could be generalised for other cooling methods.
For the reasons that RobertT
alludes to, a proposal to divert resources away from CDR/GGR
in favour of albedo management (AM) will meet stiff
opposition. Overcoming that will require convincing arguments
not just about the absolute RF impacts of the alternatives but
also about their respective speeds of action. There may also
be significant cost advantages to cooling but in the first
instance I suspect these will be secondary to the fundamental
principle of whether there are AM approaches that are
climatically effective and sufficiently low risk to be
conscionable.
Regards
Robert
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Clive Elsworth
All
Re: efficacy of aerosols to cool the Earth, these graphs may be of interest. The first graph is from NASA and shows the declining cooling effect of anthropogenic aerosols expected from reduced pollution. N.B. These are all tropospheric aerosols. Both graphs indicate radiative forcing in Wm-2 (which means Watts per square meter):
This second graph below (from UCSD) shows the radiative forcing (RF) contribution of different aerosols. Black carbon (BC) has a strong warming effect. Sulfate aerosols (which can only be tropospheric and from pollution) levelled off around 1980. This gives a declining “Total Aerosols” contribution (blue line) because black carbon (BC) was still increasing.
My conclusion is that pollution controls:
- Removed the cooling component (Sulfate aerosol)
- Allowed the warming component to increase (BC = black carbon)
Our TOA and TOA-EDARA proposals would:
- Speed up natural removal of Black Carbon particulates
- Reduce total radiative forcing (i.e. provide a cooling influence) by:
- Brightening clouds and increasing low altitude haze
- Removing atmospheric methane
We cannot see any negative environmental effects in our proposals, only beneficial climate effects.
We calculate costs in the small number of $billions, including potentially refreezing the Arctic by increased cloud and haze cover during the summer months.
We are open to financial help.
Clive
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Robert Chris
Hi Robert
I'll let those from Methane Action respond to your comments about the science should they choose to do so. I'll focus on your argumentation.
The Nature Communications paper you refer to is focussed solely on SAI and its potential impact on Arctic warming. It does not comment on any other response to climate change. It does not follow that because this paper supports controlling Arctic warming by SAI that it also claims all other climate responses to be inferior or unnecessary.
You state that 'we need to put cooling first' and 'albedo is a stronger available action'. The problem here is that neither methane oxidation nor albedo management (AM) is yet an 'available action' in any practicable or scalable sense. I have no issue that AM needs greater attention largely because of our epic failure over several decades to rein in emissions. It does not follow that efforts to rein in emissions or remove atmospheric GHGs should now be downgraded in favour of AM. In the absence of any settled safe means of doing either at climatically effective scale, prudence suggests we should pursue both with vigour. It is possible that from a 'both/and' approach a third way might emerge that leverages their respective benefits and minimises their disbenefits.
There is a distinction to be made between
necessary and sufficient. Referring to Ye Tao's remark
rejecting PeterF's claim that “climate restoration
can happen without SRM”, is to claim that SRM is necessary. It
isn't a claim that SRM is sufficient. To claim that our priorities should be switched you
either have to justify the case that SRM is sufficient or
demonstrate that methane oxidation is unnecessary or show that
SRM is, in the round, a more cost-effective, timely and safe
response to climate change than methane oxidation. All you have
done is argued that SRM could be effective. Note that I'm not
making any claims about the soundness of these arguments, all
I'm saying is that you need to be clear about the nature of the
evidence necessary to support your claims. I look forward to
you presenting that because the claims you're making are
important and if others are to recognise them as valid, they'll
need to be comfortable with their construction. In summary, A
being good does not imply B being less good, and A being helpful
does not imply B being unhelpful.
Finally (well, almost), your moral argument is odd. I'd generally agree that 'it is unethical to place tribal popularity before scientific data as a basis for decisions'. But this would only be relevant to this discussion if you could show that those whose conduct you're criticising were doing that. Apart from asserting that to be so, I can't see that you've presented any evidence to support that claim. The fact that PeterF may be wrong about the science may simply be an example of his ignorance. Indeed, PeterF is routinely critical of the UNFCCC, the IPCC and many others in the climate space. It's hard to claim that he is guilty of cleaving to 'tribal popularity'. Indeed, the evidence seems to be that if that's what he is doing, he's a singular failure at it, because he frequently receives criticism, similar to yours, about his grasp of the science (including from me!). And if being wrong about the science amounted to moral turpitude, Peter would be in good and extensive company. In a fast evolving field of knowledge, it's probably true that at some point every informed actor in this space has got something wrong. For example, there are still people (mostly geologists?) who argue from their extensive knowledge of earth systems that the climate change we're now experiencing is not primarily anthropogenic in origin. These people may or may not be wrong about the science, but perhaps with a few exceptions (one must always be careful not to generalise), they are not morally deficient.
All that said, I totally agree with you that more attention must now be given to AM so that it does mature into an available action. But that doesn't mean any less emphasis on emissions abatement and GGR. We need to throw everything at this and until we do, we'll not really know how reliable our models have been in predicting outcomes. We can only progress by learning by doing. Our considerable learning to date has undoubtedly been held back by a want of doing.
I suggest we stick to the science and refrain from moral arguments and criticisms.
Regards
Robert
Rebecca Bishop
"Yes, let's tell the truth, the full truth! People are not stupid.
This week at COP, I have talked to many activists, indigenous youth leaders, and social change makers. They are all shocked and furious to learn of the suppression of the discussion on locked-in warming and the doctoring of figures suchas SR15 Figure 1.5. Many are also shocked to learn that the total global afforestation and reforestation potential fall well-under 20% of 800 GtC that we need to remove, and a couple journalists with undergraduate environmental science degrees had Eureka moments when reminded of the albedo forcing of boreal forests. To them, this is only logical, given how our governments have been lying and creating narratives on essentially most of the important things happening around the world. " end of quote from Ye
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/5df2b481-ea0c-72dd-8547-75d90391fbd3%40rowland.harvard.edu.
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Robert C
I do appreciate your responses here, and feel this conversation is sufficiently important to continue to copy a range of relevant lists.
Advocates of climate action persist in ignoring albedo despite strong evidence that albedo is a more safe, cheap, quick, easy, tractable and effective cooling lever than carbon. The most plausible reason for that attitude is political tactics - geoengineering is so unpopular that people worry they will be cast into the outer darkness and shunned if they go against the tide of ignorant public opinion. Geoengineering is viewed as right wing, and people who focus on climate prefer to be part of the political left. Banning action to brighten the planet amounts to cutting off your nose to spite your face, allowing great harm for no good reason, a destructive attitude motivated by resentment.
You are correct that the Nature Arctic SAI paper does not “claim all other climate responses to be inferior or unnecessary.” That ignores my question of why GHG removal and reduction advocates would totally ignore it, and SRM as a whole. This paper was recently published with open access in a top journal. It proposes a way to prevent 40% of the permafrost methane release that would occur under RCP 4.5 while saving trillions of dollars. Just acknowledging the existence of this important body of research would be the minimum of courtesy and good sense. Even that is too much apparently, when brightening the planet can just be ignored without analysis. I just used that paper as one example of a logic that seems obvious to many scientists but has escaped notice at COP27.
On your question about why priorities should be switched, the reasons include the high moral value of quickly mitigating extreme weather, biodiversity loss, tipping points and other climate impacts to pull back from the brink of the warming precipice. Only albedo increase can do anything fast about those major problems. Climate benefits of GHG reduction are decades away and could be swamped by tipping points, a massive risk to the net zero strategy. In the medium term, problems such as acidification mean we have to reduce GHG levels, but cutting GHGs is no substitute for the immediate cooling available from albedo increase. GHG removal is important, but as Ye Tao says, do the sums and tell the truth. Climate subsidies should be based on impact on radiative forcing.
Your claim that albedo increase is not yet an available action is wrong. MEER and SAI could start the deployment process immediately, beginning with global governance arrangements and field tests. MCB only needs investment to develop salty mist technology to also start operation. That would have immediate benefits such as cutting hurricane intensity. Scaling is a matter of learning by doing to answer the many technical questions arising in a complex global endeavour, and would be far safer than the head-in-sand alternative of continuing to ignore brightening.
The only barrier to scaling SRM is political will, due to the unethical promotion of emotional repugnance, not any scientific reason. The only real criticism is that SRM will enable ongoing fossil fuel use, but politics and economics mean emissions will continue regardless of climate concerns. The grand bargain of brightening the planet to enable economic stability and energy security while ending calls to accelerate emission reduction has high moral value as the best climate policy path. Shifting emphasis from emissions abatement would take political heat out of the climate debate and end the current crowding-out of geoengineering, and would speed up cooling by easing blockages to effective climate action.
MacMartin et al calculate in this chart that adding an average of about 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide to the air each year could cut temperature by two degrees in the next half century compared to the optimistic IPCC projection of 4.5 w/m2 of radiative forcing without SAI. That blows carbon-based cooling out of the water. Any time anyone says 1.5°C is inevitable, just show them this. Geoengineering is urgent.
Fig. 3. D. G. MacMartin, D. Visioni , B. Kravitz, J.H. Richter, T. Felgenhauer, W. R. Lee, D. R. Morrow, E. A. Parson, and M. Sugiyama, Scenarios for modeling solar radiation modification, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, August 2022, Open Access
Regards
Robert Tulip
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oswald....@hispeed.ch
Dear all,
to prevent GW above 2 degrees three measures are necessary asap.
- Stop stopping pollution with SO2 and NO2 for the next 30 years
- Start EAMO for removing methane and CO2 from the air
- Continue emission reductions
Pls note that the first measure does not cost anything, in contrary it saves money, and it can (technically) be realized tomorrow. The second measure will cost around 5 billion / year for 30 years. The third measure is already ongoing, it costs hundreds of billlions and it is the final solution. IPCC makes the mistake to concentrate all their efforts on measure No 3, but they are learning…
Regards
Oswald Petersen
AMR AG
Atmospheric Methane Removal AG
Lärchenstr. 5
CH 8280 Kreuzlingen
Tel: +41-71-6887514
Mob: +49-177-2734245
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Ye Tao
Dear Rebecca,
Thank you for helping to center the group refocus the discussion.
I must admit culpability in being exemplarily deficient at
choosing the right tone in these technical discussions.
The criticism of certain aspects of IPCC reporting that I and others have undertaken is not an attack on the collection of all the colleagues who devoted time and soul to the gigantic undertaking. Rather, the issue is more likely that decisions by a small number of individuals at the top undermined the work of the underlying majority. The exact motivation for what is likely intentional miscommunication is anyone's guess, but the result is clearly one of general confusion and the lack of space and background for discussing real, effective actions.
Today, I will not respond to or contribute further to technical
discussions, but would like to share the highlight of my trip so
far at COP27:
I met a group of Egyptian undergrads and recent grads who were
helping to organize and run the COY (Conference
of Young). Most studied or are studying at the Zewail
City of Science, a relatively new flagship institution of
higher education for the renaissance of Egyptian innovation. I
gave the group a private presentation and was absolutely surprised
by the depth and breadth of their knowledge. Their command of
engineering and scientific concepts, and especially of practical
considerations, were significantly above what I see in our own
students from the likes of Stanford, Caltech, Harvard, and
Cornell. Most of the Egyptian students work fulltime jobs from
junior year on, while studying full course loads. The Egyptian
kids' reactions to MEER was technically accurate. They were able
to detect and voice uncertainties MEER needs to establish in
future research, and recognized that the global perspective MEER
has taken puts individual technologies and projects into
perspective. I rarely get comparable qualities of questions and
criticisms, even from Western faculties.
The other amazing thing is that the female:male ratio in the flagship school stands at a mind-blowing 5:1, in their environmental engineering program. Certainly, a more balanced gender ratio might eventually be more sustainable, but who would have imagined that a country typically portrayed by our media as backward and repressive at worst, and marginally unimportant at best, would be leading the world in females empowerment within STEM at one of its top institutions.
Have a great day!
Ye
Ye Tao
Dear all,
I trust people who have been following the discussion, especially the figure Clive recently shared, immediately recognize that Oswald's bullet point #1 is contrary to scientific understanding.
Those who have followed the discussion on CROI can also appreciate that the statement in point #2 is premature; there currently exist insufficient data to calculate methane oxidation's energy and material costs under atmospherically relevant conditions.
Finally, the bullet point #3 needs to be strengthened to
"Immediately stop all anthropogenic emissions", for a slim chance
of staying below 2.0C in the absence of solar radiation
management.
Best,
Ye
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Stephen Salter
Hi All
The site
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html
says that the CO2 concentration in the ocean is 50 times more than in the atmosphere. While reducing our emissions will stop us making things worse and so is highly desirable, any reduction in atmospheric concentration will allow ocean CO2 to come back out. We need to ask if the removal problem is not 50 times higher than we might initially have thought.
Furthermore it might be sensible to do the removal where concentrations are highest.
Stephen
From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of rob...@rtulip.net
Sent: 13 November 2022 13:03
To: 'Robert Chris' <robert...@gmail.com>; 'Ye Tao' <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>; 'Atmospheric Methane Removal Community' <atmospheric-methan...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings' <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; 'Kyle K' <kylerk...@gmail.com>;
'Shaun Fitzgerald' <sd...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Mike Clancy' <mike.cla...@gmail.com>; 'Rafe Pomerance' <rafe.po...@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: [prag] Re: MEER: Cooling Return On Investment
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Hi Robert C
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Ye Tao
Hi all,
Robert C correctly pointed out that I misread Oswald's point #1
as "Stopping pollution
with SO2 and NO2 for the next 30 years"
Indeed, preserving SO2 and NO2 emissions are necessary. We also need to seriously consider reverting legislations on heavy fuel oil.
Sorry about that!
Ye
greenkni...@gmail.com
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Ye Tao
Hi Stephen,
You are partially right, and the point you bring up has important
implications (depreciation of capture events), which I do not
believe current carbon capture accounting takes into account.
Someone please correct me if depreciation has been taken into
account.
While the ocean indeed is a much larger pool of dissolved
inorganic carbon, the former equilibrium at 280ppm (atmospheric)
involved an even more extreme ratio Ocean:Atmosphere of ~75. The
equilibrium-state ratio does not say how many times of equivalent
CO2(atm) would degas from the ocean when one one unit is removed
by CO2 capture. CO2 release from the ocean (or virtual emission
due to reduced, gradient-driven dissolution) does happen, however:
Capturing a small amount of atmospheric CO2 leads to ocean release or reduced, gradient driven dissolution, following a curve that is the inverse of the impulse response curve of atmospheric concentration due to a new puff. Any capture flux << 40Gton/year of current flux emission flux, such as a 5Gton per year capture, can be considered small.
Let me say this again using numbers to help people understand. Let's say the Icelandic plant captures 4000 kton CO2, certainly small, in 2022. As a result of this capture, the time-averaged atmospheric concentration of CO2 post-2022 will be lower compared to the control scenario. So the gradient that drives dissolution into the ocean will remain lower, just so slightly. But over time, this reduced Atm->Ocean transport means that 2400 kton of CO2 emitted by another source (60% of 4000 kton), which would have dissolved by year 2122, will not have dissolved. So, the net remaining capture benefit from the 2022 efforts in Iceland is reduced to 1600 kton CO2.
Therefore, the climate benefit of capturing 1ton of CO2 decreases
with time, decaying o 60% in 20 years, 50% in 50 years, and 40% in
100 years. I don't believe this is included in carbon capture
accounting to the best of my knowledge. This is not surprising,
since policy for carbon capture preceded an evaluation of climatic
impact, the proper undertaking of which would immediately
invalidate carbon capture as an effective response.
Cheers,
Ye
p.s.
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336. --
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Ye Tao
Yes, indeed! And Robert C writes such nice prose.
I nominate him assistant editor to Ron!
Cheers,
Ye
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Robert Chris
Hi Robert
I am pleased that in your response below you're focussing on the science. However, I'm disappointed that you persist in framing it as a moral issue. It isn't that morality does not pervade this entire discourse, it's just that morality is quintessentially subjective and culturally dependent, whereas the science isn't, or at least, shouldn't be. By mixing the two in this way I fear that you're undermining your own message.
Your 'plausible' speculations about why albedo management is so marginalised are indeed plausible, but they are also speculations and as such, unless your purpose is to re-engineer our social consciences, they don't add anything to the debate other than divert attention from the real question, which is 'What's to be done?'. Below I'll add my plausible speculations and they won't be very helpful either!
Your central message is
clear. Time has run out for management of the greenhouse
effect to reduce temperature quickly enough to be confident
that we can avoid some irreversible and potentially
catastrophic tipping points. Only albedo management can now
reduce temperature fast enough and that won't happen unless we
invest at scale and urgently in research and development of
the most promising albedo management technologies. Ron
Baiman's draft paper sets this out in a clear and concise
manner without hyperbole or emotional pleading. IMHO it needs
a little tweaking to enhance its impact, but the core argument
is there. That paper needs to be finalised and promoted, in
different versions for different audiences, as soon as, and as
widely as possible.
Now for my speculations. We
are all victims of the prevailing orthodoxy of our time and
place, of our parents, our education, our media, both formal
and social, and of many other ties that bind us to our
specific circumstances, our families, our jobs, our health and
so on. Our personal victimhoods drive our emotional responses
to others whose personal victimhoods have led them to
different notions of what's important and how reality really
is and how the future ought to be. Homo sapiens depends for
its very existence and success on the extraordinary vitality
that emerges from this diversity. Blaming others for their moral failures rarely
leads to a happy outcome, it's more likely to lead to more
entrenched positions being taken as each seeks to defend their
sense of what's right. Let philosophers struggle with the moral
questions that all this diversity throws up, those concerned
with confronting climate change just need to take an
instrumental view of how to make it all work so as to reduce
significantly the risks of a climate induced Armageddon.
I see climate change in terms
of complex adaptive systems theory. This suggests to me that
we are either teetering on the edge of the cusp between
conservation and collapse, or have already passed it and are
irretrievably into the collapse phase. This is not a
predictive theory in any practical policymaking sense, but it
does, in my view, identify key trends and their drivers, and
whether these drivers are in positive or negative feedback.
My assessment, for many of the reasons you mention below, and
also extraordinarily well articulated in this
paper from 2021, brought to my attention in the last
few days by Grant Faber and should be mandatory reading for
everyone, is that the forces of conservation have transitioned
to an entrenched positive feedback. This generates
ever-increasing resistance to the adaptations needed to reduce
the risks of climate catastrophe. These forces of resistance
have, through positive feedback, become too strong to be
overwhelmed from within the system (e.g. by enlightened
academics and activists). That being so, the only way forward
is for the system to collapse as external forces overwhelm
it. Systems in positive feedback are brought under control
either by an external agent switching them off, or by
imploding. The global economic system has become an accident
waiting to happen.
The central problem that we
see played out every day is that mostly by ignoring them and
increasingly by arresting them, the global ruling elite
neutralise those seeking to make the changes that would
deliver a sustainable global economy that respects the threats
from climate change. But, and here's the crunch, the global
elites can't negotiate with nature. Nature follows its own
path and only our extraordinary arrogance leads us to believe
that we can control that path. And, for the avoidance of
doubt, there's a world of difference between control and
influence. We know that truth in our daily lives and its
equally true at planetary scale. As a species, we need to
reflect on our responsibilities to Nature entrained by the
extraordinary powers endowed on us by evolution, and find a way to exercise our
influence benignly, refraining from deceiving ourselves about
our putative godly powers of omniscience and omnipotence. A
little humility would go a long way. Sadly, there's scant
evidence of that.
So, my plausible speculation is that despite the valiant attempts of a lot of good people, the next century or so is going to be challenging - what a lovely euphemism that is!
As I said, my plausible
speculations wouldn't be very helpful. As confident as I am
about the course of unfolding events, I'm also very aware
that, heaven forfend, I might be wrong. So I hope that the
practical impact of my speculations is to redouble the efforts
of those attempting to storm the ramparts. They've nothing to
lose and a lot to gain.
Regards
Robert
John Nissen
Hi Stephen,
You might be interested in the research on lightning over sea in the December issue of Scientific American. It seems to be… – humph, it is – an exact repeat of the article in the August issue including the picture [1]. I wondered whether the research might be relevant to cloud brightening.
Cheers, John
[1] Sasha Warren (August 2022)
Salty Sea Spray Keeps Lightning Strikes Away
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/salty-sea-spray-keeps-lightning-strikes-away/
DV Henkel-Wallace
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