RE: National Academy of Sciences holds up key climate solution
rob...@rtulip.net
Dear Alex, thanks very much for your critique (link) of the NASEM Report on Ocean CDR. I am copying to other interested groups as this raises broad strategic questions about climate politics. As you have said, the scientific questions you raise need answers.
Here is my comment published at your article.
This is an extraordinary article. The opposition to Ocean Pasture Restoration expressed in the NASEM report on Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal illustrates the deep politicisation of climate policy, leading to a failure of scientific method. As Alex Carlin has shown, strong evidence in favour of OPR has been ignored by the Report, showing that the highly prestigious National Academy of Sciences has proved unable to conduct an objective scientific analysis of ocean iron fertilization, and has instead allowed itself to be bullied into a superficial and incorrect view.
My interpretation of the primary reason for this dismissive approach is that a dominant narrative of Emission Reduction Alone has come to intimidate alternative voices within climate science. The NASEM Report fails to adequately explain or analyse its background political context, essential to understand the problem. This context is mentioned in the NASEM Report under the heading “Environmental Justice and Climate Justice” (page 63), using the incoherent and damaging political concept of “mitigation deterrence”. Of course environmental and climate justice are essential, but the analysis of this context by NASEM fails the basic essentials of rigorous research.
To mitigate climate change means to reduce its effects. Ocean CDR is fully intended to mitigate climate change, and therefore cannot be said to deter mitigation, unless mitigation is redefined in political terms to only include emission reduction. That is what has happened in the IPCC. Using this false consensus that only decarbonisation can mitigate climate change, the critics of the Canadian indigenous Haida Salmon Restoration Project saw Russ George as a convenient and weak target to politicise and distort the science, pandering to the prejudices of their funding base.
The power and money of the international NGO movement and progressive media combined to overwhelm the Haida community and their allies. How ironic, as Alex Carlin explains, that the NGOs mounted a neo-colonial program that involved a racist dismissal of the views of indigenous people!
These uninformed critics have massively set back efforts to mitigate climate change, sowing emotional opposition to methods that should be the subject of objective large scale research. The NASEM has allowed its good name to be exploited by these ignorant political interests. The reality, implicitly acknowledged by NASEM, is that decarbonisation is far too small, slow and contested to be the primary strategy to mitigate climate change. Action to cut emissions has to be combined with the far bigger effects of greenhouse gas removal as well as action to brighten the planet by managing solar radiation. By fostering baseless doubts about the merits of ocean pasture restoration, NASEM delays urgent action to stabilise the climate and cool the planet, targeted to mitigate biodiversity loss, sea level rise and extreme weather in this decade. The many benefits of ocean pasture restoration far outweigh the speculative risks, which have been exaggerated and distorted for political motives based on the lowest common denominator of a mass movement.
Far bigger economic and political forces than greenhouse gas removal and solar radiation management are deterring emission reduction. In fact, GGR and SRM foster emission reduction by creating knowledge of the scale of the global predicament. NASEM notes the need for research on mitigation deterrence. This research should prioritise the hypothesis that this concept is baseless and harmful. NASEM needs to change its opinion about ocean pasture restoration, and work to foster active alliance of all the methods needed to prevent dangerous climate change as the primary security risk facing our planet.
Regards
Robert Tulip
From: healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Alex Carlin
Sent: Tuesday, 3 May 2022 12:06 PM
To: Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [HCA-list] National Academy of Sciences holds up key climate solution
Hello All
Eager to hear your comments:
Alex Carlin
Foreign Correspondent on Environment
Center for Media and Democracy
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