Re: [HPAC] RE: UN’s climate crisis vote shows political momentum is growing
John Nissen
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Thanks Graeme,
I am sure many people here share your view on this, and I understand the political concern.
My argument is not about opposing emission reduction. It is about putting emission reduction into the correct empirical framework, and arguing that climate funding should be based on evidence and logic, not on emotional pressure or inherited movement assumptions.
I have written a revised version of my previous comments at Substack here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-199201754
The central point is that emission reduction is not the same thing as climate repair. It is a way to slow the rate at which we keep adding to the atmospheric greenhouse burden. That is worthwhile. But it does not remove the accumulated greenhouse stock, reduce ocean heat, stop committed sea level rise, restore lost albedo or provide a near-term brake on tipping risks. Contrary to a recent New Scientist podcast, cutting emissions does nothing to slow the collapse of glaciers. It does nothing about biodiversity loss such as from the extinction of coral reefs.
Net zero is not the destination for climate repair. At best it is a staging point on the path toward large net negative emissions. The real climate goal requires a paradigm shift from net zero emissions to net zero heating, meaning the restoration of planetary energy balance. That requires a much broader strategy: emissions reduction, durable carbon removal, protection of natural sinks, methane control and active cooling through albedo restoration.
Energy reform by itself does not do much for that net negative goal. It is energy policy, air pollution policy and industrial reform. It only becomes climate policy when it is subordinated to a serious strategy to cool the planet and restore energy balance. The best contribution comes from actions that can scale up to deliver large net negative results. But unfortunately these are now marginalised.
This is why the standard carbon-action consensus involves a major category error. It takes a true scientific premise — CO2 causes warming — and builds upon it a politically attractive but invalid inference: that reducing emissions is therefore the best available way to slow climate breakdown. That inference ignores timing, scale, atmospheric persistence, opportunity cost, political feasibility and the comparative effectiveness of direct cooling.
This is why I am interested in the psychology of mass delusion. It is often the case that social movements take a grain of truth and build a total explanatory structure upon it. When such reasoning gains popular traction, it functions as a myth, protected by moral emotion and group identity. Any challenge is assumed to be morally defective, and the emotional and social power of the myth becomes so great that people become incapable of discussing it rationally.
The excellent article, Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection by Dan M. Kahan, explains that intelligent people can be more biased because their reasoning becomes a tool for maintaining tribal loyalty. That is exactly the danger in climate politics. The problem is not simply that people lack information. It is that intelligent people can become highly skilled defenders of a group myth. In the climate movement, support for decarbonisation has become a badge of moral identity, while interest in SRM is too often treated as betrayal. A rational climate strategy has to break out of that identity trap and ask the empirical question: which interventions can reduce planetary heat risk fastest, safest and most effectively?
Motivated reasoning helps to explain the fallacious assumption that to challenge the primacy of emission reduction is to oppose emission reduction. I do not oppose it. I question the demand to appease its inflated status as the central climate remedy.
It is precisely because emissions are such a large problem that we need responses that can actually work at the required speed. There are many analogies where the direct approach does not work. The fact that overeating contributes to heart disease does not mean dieting is the only medical response. In an emergency, a focus on diet rather than surgery can be highly dangerous. “Okay doc, no need for a bypass, I plan to lose ten kilos”. Similarly, the fact that greenhouse gases cause warming does not prove that energy reform is the best way to slow near-term climate breakdown.
The Paris process itself illustrates the problem. Far from delivering rapid annual emissions cuts of the scale required, the Paris framework accepted nationally determined pledges that left world emissions extremely high and still rising toward 2030. This shows the immense economic and political difficulty of using energy-system transformation as the primary instrument of climate stabilisation.
I think a fantastic climate result for 2050 would be GGR removing 100 Gt CO2e per year, while emission reduction removes 5 Gt, giving a net annual result of about -50 Gt, and the bulk of cooling is delivered by SRM.
I agree with the triad framework if it is understood properly: reduce emissions where practical, remove greenhouse gases at scale and cool the planet rapidly enough to prevent breakdown. But in current politics, the triad is badly unbalanced. Emission reduction receives almost all the money, attention and moral legitimacy, while SRM is treated as a dangerous heresy. That is not rational risk management. It is mythic policy capture.
The moral hazard argument applies far more scientifically in reverse. It is not a moral hazard to imagine that SRM might reduce pressure for emission cuts, when this is based on empirical analysis of cooling impact. It is a moral hazard to block or demonise cooling research while the planet continues to overheat. If opposition to SRM delays the only known intervention that could materially slow near-term tipping risks, then that opposition carries immense moral responsibility, even culpability.
I don’t think we should kowtow to the myths of climate populism. We should communicate carefully, but we should not let movement taboos define what can be discussed. The central question should be empirical: which actions can reduce planetary heat risk fastest, safest and most effectively?
Emission reduction remains valuable, but it is not sufficient, and it is not the main near-term cooling strategy. A credible climate policy has to aim beyond net zero emissions toward net zero heating. That means putting albedo restoration and governed SRM research at the centre of the conversation, not leaving them on the margins for fear of offending people who have mistaken energy reform for climate repair.
Regards,
Robert Tulip
From: Graeme Taylor <gra...@bestfutures.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 26 May 2026 3:28 PM
To: rob...@rtulip.net; HPAC <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Ron Larson <rongre...@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: UN’s climate crisis vote shows political momentum is growing
Hi Robert,
While I agree with much of your analysis regarding the failure of current policies, I think it would be a huge mistake to oppose (or be seen to oppose) emission reductions. Apart from the objective need to slow the growth of atmospheric GHG, dismissing efforts for emissions reductions may be widely perceived by environmentalists and climate activists as an endorsement of right-wing views that emissions are not and have never been a major problem. I'm sure SRM opponents will see any attempt to downplay the importance of emission reductions as vindicating their moral hazard argument.
Let's stick with the climate triad strategy while focusing on the urgent need for cooling interventions.
Graeme
On 25/05/2026 1:05 am, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:
Thanks Ron. My view on the relationship between cutting emissions and climate breakdown challenges the consensus so I appreciate you drawing attention to it.
How can cutting emissions “address climate breakdown” as the Guardian puts it, a view shared by the whole carbon action consensus?
It can’t. My approach is to analyse this scientific claim against planetary arithmetic. Warming is caused by the approx. 2.5 trillion tonnes (tt) of CO2 that industrious humans have emitted, of which about 1.18 tt is still in the air, plus other GHGs. This total is increasing by annual emissions of 0.06 tt CO2e per year (60 gigatonnes) less natural removals.
Considered in practical terms, a highly effective global decarbonisation program might reduce that gross rate of addition to 0.05 tt in twenty five years, or even 0.04 tt. Of course far more aggressive results are discussed, including net zero by 2050, but economic and political realities make such suggestions unlikely, barring collapse of the world economy, at a time when the rate of emissions is increasing.
So lets consider two scenarios over the 25 years to 2050, with annual emissions of 40 and 50 Gt CO2e/y. This is just a simple first approximation model, not a gradual change. IPCC says natural removal leaves 68% of CO2 still airborne after 10 years and 57% after 25 years. I have just used 68% as a rough guide. I have done these calculations fresh so they may have mistakes, but I expect are close to the mark.
In the first scenario, assuming emissions averaging 40 Gt/y from now, the rough 2050 atmospheric CO2 total would be 1.18 + (0.04 x 25 x 0.68) = 1.86tt
That is 24% worse than today.
In the second scenario, assuming emissions averaging 50 Gt/y, the rough 2050 atmospheric CO2e total would be 1.18 + (.05 x 25 ) = 2.03tt.
That is 35% worse than today.
On these figures, each 10 Gt/y added or removed makes a difference of roughly 11% between the cumulative GHG scenarios. A rule of thumb might be that removing one gigatonne of CO2 per year improves the climate by 1%. That is materially significant, and the calculation could be refined, but it shows that in the short run even a large GHG removal is marginal to the vast forces producing climate breakdown.
From Robert Chris’s World Temperature Forecast model, this 10 Gt annual effort would cut 2050 temperature rise by 0.1°C, from 2.08 to 1.97°C, cutting radiative forcing by 0.25 w/m2. That is a small result for a large effort.
But in fact the problem is far worse than that because of the economic problems of opportunity cost and crowding out.
The opportunity cost is that achieving a ten gigatonne GHG reduction is expensive, and will exclude far more effective cooling methods, notably SRM, due to the moral hazard argument. As I have previously mentioned, the UK Royal Society estimated that SRM is one thousand times better value for money than emission reduction as a cooling strategy. That is a big difference.
The opportunity cost problem is closely related to crowding out, in that the real politics require that renewable advocates must demonise SRM in order to justify their false claim that energy reform is a climate strategy. All the oxygen is sucked out of SRM advocacy, crowding it out of public view and investability, by the vast sums devoted to decarbonising the economy, which has negligible proven net climate impact.
But in fact the problem is even worse again because of the problem of tipping points. Cooling from emissions reduction is just noise that will be totally swamped by the Earth System signal. The only action that can materially slow major planetary tipping points in coming decades is planetary rebrightening with SRM. Given that a number of tipping points such as loss of forests, ocean biomass, permafrost and polar methane have the effect of turning carbon sinks into sources, the monomaniacal focus on emissions will be totally swamped by GHGs from these feedbacks unless we take action to rebrighten the planet. The key climate priority should be reversing the 2% darkening this century which is causing more warming than the greenhouse effect from new emissions.
But in fact the problem is even worse again because of political polarisation. Aggressive advocacy of a highly contested carbon plan that on the above figures might slow warming by 0.1°C by 2050 has generated massive backlash, notably the Trump shutdown of climate research. My interpretation is that this shutdown is a direct response to climate scientists falsely extrapolating from their science to the ideological campaign to stop fossil fuel use. This has led to capitalist industries becoming hesitant to engage seriously on climate except as PR, when they should be leading public advocacy for the commercial benefits of a cooler planet. A focus on decarbonisation excludes essential constituencies of support.
Cutting emissions by 10 gigatonnes of CO2e per year would require massive effort, and would barely slow the worsening of the climate. The difficult politics, together with the analyses that suggest renewables are additional rather than replacive, exacerbates the primary risk that decarbonisation simply will not happen, leaving us with no defence against the wrath of Gaia. In climate terms emission reduction is a nice to have, not an immediate critical path element.
I continue to support emission reduction, but this can mainly be accelerated by CDR after the pipe, not by preventing combustion before the pipe. Decarbonisation should be driven mainly by market and environmental concerns, not climate.
This UN climate crisis vote, like the recent anti fossil fuel conference, is a diversion into a fool’s paradise. SRM is the main game for climate stability.
Regards
Robert Tulip
-----Original Message-----
From: 'GRETCHEN & RON LARSON' via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, 24 May 2026 4:26 AM
To: rob...@rtulip.net; gra...@bestfutures.org; HPAC <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [HPAC] UN’s climate crisis vote shows political momentum is growing
Hi all:
1. Graeme: Thanks for your forwarding. I note the US was one of only 8 votes against this welcome resolution. Trump may be losing power in more than the USA.
2. Robert: Your last line needs more explanation (I disagree with it. ) Why is there "prevention"? Why "absurdity" for something new and overwhelmingly approved?
" The absurdity here is that cutting emissions does not address climate breakdown, but instead actively prevents the only action that could slow breakdown, ie restoring albedo."
Ron
> On 05/23/2026 9:08 AM PDT rob...@rtulip.net wrote:
>
>
> Sorry Graeme, the Guardian article shows nothing of the sort. The clamour of groupthink among elites does not constitute political momentum.
>
> The world has polarised into rival camps on energy policy. The political backlash against renewable energy is growing. Momentum against fossil fuels is imaginary.
>
> The Vanuatu Bubble that produced this UN vote against fossil fuels is only sustained by a determined refusal to even discuss conflicting evidence. Someone circulated a claim that "Vanuatu will be wiped from the map unless we stop burning fossil fuels." This is vacuous at many levels. Even if all combustion ended today sea level would continue to rise due to the committed warming from past emissions. Cutting new emissions is marginal to sea level rise. And Vanuatu is 99% volcanic, unlike the coral atolls which the author of this comment seems to have assumed are typical of all Pacific Islands.
>
> The conspiracy theories on both sides of the energy debate are equally vacuous. Deniers insist climate scientists are only in it for the money. Decarbonisers similarly contend that the groundswell of hostility toward renewable energy is entirely based on corporate misinformation.
>
> It would be great to have a serious debate on whether banning fossil fuels is action against the climate crisis as the UN friends of Vanuatu maintain. But in any case, the likelihood and feasibility of rapid carbon action at climate scale is nil, in the absence of popular acceptance of economic collapse. This is why a policy switch is needed to focus on action to rebrighten the planet as the only practical interim transition strategy to a stable climate.
>
> The most absurd line in the Guardian article was "The recognition by states that they have a legal responsibility to address climate breakdown by cutting their greenhouse gas emissions, including tackling fossil fuels, could prove a boost for climate diplomacy and litigation, according to experts." The absurdity here is that cutting emissions does not address climate breakdown, but instead actively prevents the only action that could slow breakdown, ie restoring albedo.
>
> Regards
>
> Robert Tulip
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Graeme Taylor
> Sent: Saturday, 23 May 2026 9:54 AM
> To: HPAC <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [HPAC] UN’s climate crisis vote shows political momentum is growing
>
> FYI:
>
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rob...@rtulip.net
Hi John, thanks.
There are two intertwined mass delusions – the belief that reducing emissions is the best available way to slow climate breakdown and the belief that albedo does not matter.
The most egregious are the supporters of a geoengineering non-use agreement. Their view rests on the delusion that albedo does not matter as an instrument to help manage global warming. Given that sunlight reflection is the only feasible way to restore albedo, the non-use supporters are effectively pro-darkening.
The pro-darkening crowd includes a weird collection of right wing conspiracy kooks and radical NGOs. Their arguments are primarily political, rather than scientific or economic.
My view is that the only way to combat the mass delusion that says albedo does not matter for global warming is to find cashed up constituencies for whom it does matter and get them to fund a lobbying effort.
That means the industries who face the worst prospects of commercial damage from warming need to get behind rebrightening with sunlight reflection. That means convincing them that the 2% darkening so far this century, and the apparent accelerating rate – with CERES recording reflectivity loss doubling each decade – poses serious fiduciary risk that they have a responsibility to mitigate.
Until the constituencies of support for rebrightening the planet include serious industrial sectors able to fund a major advocacy campaign I see no prospect of policy influence.
That means tourism, banking, agriculture, energy, shipping, etc.
The actuarial profession has a good possibility of influencing the insurance industry, but some argue that insurance is now so profitable that they may face a perverse incentive to not care about extreme weather, as they can just jack up premiums and exist disaster-prone regions. If the insurance industry believes that perception is unfair, it is up to them to prove it by helping fund solutions that reduce the hazards of a darkening planet.
I wanted to also share a comment I recently posted on Facebook, so here it is
The climate problem:
Carbon Scenario: Every ten billion tonnes of annual world emission cuts reduces the 2050 temperature by 0.1°C according to accepted models. At a generous cost estimate of $10/tonne of avoided CO2 emissions, that would cost $2.5 trillion by 2050. And it faces bitter economic, political and scientific opposition. Ineffective and not going to happen.
Albedo Scenario: 20 million tonnes of sulphur compounds added to the stratosphere every year to reflect more sunlight would cut 2050 temperature by 1.2 degrees. That is twelve times as much cooling, at a cost by 2050 around $0.5 trillion, one fifth as much. The only opposition is political, not economic or scientific.
On these figures, the Albedo Scenario is sixty times better value for money than the Carbon Scenario, and is far more feasible and effective.
Yet governments totally ignore the Albedo Scenario, and in Australia at least, throw vast sums at the futile Carbon Scenario.
Meanwhile the world burns.
Regard
Robert Tulip
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