Ten new insights in climate science
John Nissen
Paul Klinkman
Dear Restorers,
I've noticed a serious lack of “so what are we going to do about it?” “Nothing”, expecting rosy scenarios, mumbling and hand-waving probably won't have the beneficial climate effects that in retrospect, we'll have wished for.
Worldwide fossil fuel use continues to drive climate change. Recommendations: store solar heat in hills seasonally for the winter night district heat and for winter night electricity generation that Iceland already has.. Find ways to have solar shave the first 10% off of heat-intensive industries such as steelmaking and glassmaking. When creating cement, capture the CO2 as it gets released, by heated limestone, preferably above basalt rock formations for easy and permanent sequestration. Paying people to reinvent transit and save a lifetime 90% of all kilowatt-hours per passenger-mile would make sense, except God has chosen to make lots and lots of idiots these days.
Much of the world's permafrost is thawing/ Recommendations: Find ways to restore the Arctic Ocean's ice pack on a budget. Find ways to inexpensively enhance the transfer of midwinter coldness into the ground., through the snow layer. Lay down a snow or ice layer on the permafrost in late spring to improve the tundra's reflectivity, to insulate the ground from summer temperatures and to inhibit permafrost fires. Try to use sulfur or other particles in the atmosphere only where it will cause minimal additional asthma deaths – yes we can do this if we choose to think about partial ecological solutions to this problem.
Much of the Antarctica ice has collapsed into the ocean several times in the geologic past, probably aided by massive earthquakes once much of the weight of ice has disappeared and the earth's crust has rebounded upward . All of the world's coastal cities will be abandoned. Recommendation: grow ice hundreds of meters deep if needed, all the way to the sea bottom at critical inlets by pumping seawater on top of the ice, layer by layer, and then keeping the equipment above the new ice.
The Horn of Africa faced a horrific 5 year megadrought 2018-2023. We can't afford a world of chronic and worldwide agricultural failures. Expect more of the same worldwide or give a good reason why not. Add moisture to the atmosphere upwind from sensitive areas. Night fog helps. Plant hundreds of millions of new trees, for example as the nation of Niger has already seen recently. Sculpt landscapes to get more groundwater for the dry season and less flood runoff.
Restore mountain glaciers by sending moist air up mountain slopes, in wide air tubes or loose outside in rather narrow atmospheric rivers that blow over specific mountain tops.
Sev Clarke
- add buoyant, slow-release nutrients to oligotrophic surface waters to brighten and cool the surface, increase biomass & biodiversity, reduce acidity and stratification, and sequester carbon
- generate surfactant-stabilised nanobubbles to the sea surface microlayer to increase its albedo
- spray millimicrodroplets of seawater into the air to increase humidity, then (at a somewhat higher altitude) Aitken-mode nanodroplets to form reflective sea salt aerosols, mist and cloud condensation nuclei, and thus to restart the hydrological cycle in parched lands, and
- spray and flare microdroplets of a slurry of ferric chloride powder and bio-oil into the lower troposphere to oxidise atmospheric pollutants such as methane, ozone, VOCs, PFAS and black carbon photocatalytically, and finally to add iron to surface waters.
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robert...@gmail.com
The time might be approaching when consideration needs to be given to redefining HPAC. Perhaps Hereafter Planetary Action Coalition, or Happy People After Collapse, or Healing Post-Avoidable Catastrophe. The core theme should be clear. I'm sure something more punchy and apposite could be dreamt up.
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was almost certain that a climate induced civilisation collapse was avoidable. That certainty reduces with each passing year of inadequate action. There is no way of knowing in advance where we are on that slippery slope. But we can be certain we're on it and our options for stopping the slide are diminishing. as it accelerates
A legitimate question to ask is whether we make it more or likely that we'll stop the slide by refusing to contemplate how we would cope with not stopping it. Banging on, as we routinely do, about all the things that could be done to avoid the collapse has increasingly little value in a world where what evidence there is, suggests that what is being done is woefully inadequate as a result of which what has to be done is becoming increasingly challenging. The problem isn't a lack of brilliant ideas, there's no shortage of them. The problem is less and less a question of political will, although that's still important. The problem is one of scale. Humanity has yet to come to terms with how puny it is in contrast to the power of Nature. Like any other confrontation, the advantage lies with the side that is most powerful, the one that disposes of greater force. Just run the numbers and you'll quickly grasp, if you haven't already done so, that we're at a major major disadvantage in the power stakes. That means we have to be leverage what force we have to concentrate it where it'll have the most decisive effect. Our record in that regard is lamentable. It would be comforting to see some serious evidence of that changing. Yes, there are green shoots everywhere, but do we have time for them to grow into robust oaks or, when the time comes, will be be cowering behind a sparse forest of saplings?
One has to wonder whether a sober assessment of how our children and grandchildren, and probably some of the younger grown-ups amongst us, would actually cope when the wheels begin to fall off the bus, might be a sufficient wake up call to provoke the deployment of a more robust plan of action soon enough to make a worthwhile difference. Time is short.
Just a thought. A little prod to maybe start thinking outside the box. More research. More learned papers. More open letters. More conferences. More podcasts. Really?
RobertC
To these good suggestions you might include:
- add buoyant, slow-release nutrients to oligotrophic surface waters to brighten and cool the surface, increase biomass & biodiversity, reduce acidity and stratification, and sequester carbon
- generate surfactant-stabilised nanobubbles to the sea surface microlayer to increase its albedo
- spray millimicrodroplets of seawater into the air to increase humidity, then (at a somewhat higher altitude) Aitken-mode nanodroplets to form reflective sea salt aerosols, mist and cloud condensation nuclei, and thus to restart the hydrological cycle in parched lands, and
- spray and flare microdroplets of a slurry of ferric chloride powder and bio-oil into the lower troposphere to oxidise atmospheric pollutants such as methane, ozone, VOCs, PFAS and black carbon photocatalytically, and finally to add iron to surface waters.
Cheers,Sev
On 22 Feb 2026, at 8:53 pm, Paul Klinkman <paulkl...@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Restorers,
I've noticed a serious lack of “so what are we going to do about it?” “Nothing”, expecting rosy scenarios, mumbling and hand-waving probably won't have the beneficial climate effects that in retrospect, we'll have wished for.
Worldwide fossil fuel use continues to drive climate change. Recommendations: store solar heat in hills seasonally for the winter night district heat and for winter night electricity generation that Iceland already has.. Find ways to have solar shave the first 10% off of heat-intensive industries such s steelmaking and glassmaking. When creating cement, capture the CO2 as it gets released, by heated limestone, preferably above basalt rock formations for easy and permanent sequestration. Paying people to reinvent transit and save a lifetime 90% of all kilowatt-hours per passenger-mile would make sense, except God has chosen to make lots and lots of idiots these days.
Much of the world's permafrost is thawing/ Recommendations: Find ways to restore the Arctic Ocean's ice pack on a budget. Find ways to inexpensively enhance the transfer of midwinter coldness into the ground., through the snow layer. Lay down a snow or ice layer on the permafrost in late spring to improve the tundra's reflectivity, to insulate the ground from summer temperatures and to inhibit permafrost fires. Try to use sulfur or other particles in the atmosphere only where it will cause minimal additional asthma deaths – yes we can do this if we choose to think about partial ecological solutions to this problem.
Much of the Antarctica ice has collapsed into the ocean several times in the geologic past, probably aided by massive earthquakes once much of the weight of ice has disappeared and the earth's crust has rebounded upward . All of the world's coastal cities will be abandoned. Recommendation: grow ice hundreds of meters deep if needed, all the way to the sea bottom at critical inlets by pumping seawater on top of the ice, layer by layer, and then keeping the equipment above the new ice.
The Horn of Africa faced a horrific 5 year megadrought 2018-2023. We can't afford a world of chronic and worldwide agricultural failures. Expect more of the same worldwide or give a good reason why not. Add moisture to the atmosphere upwind from sensitive areas. Night fog helps. Plant hundreds of millions of new trees, for example as the nation of Niger has already seen recently. Sculpt landscapes to get more groundwater for the dry season and less flood runoff.
Restore mountain glaciers by sending moist air up mountain slopes, in wide air tubes or loose outside in rather narrow atmospheric rivers that blow over specific mountain tops.
Yours in Hope,Paul KlinkmanOn Friday, February 20, 2026 at 3:44:54 PM UTC-5 johnnissen2003 wrote:
Hi all,
How often do we hear of alarming observations of, and existing suffering from, climate change without any suggestion of the policy implications? Nobody seems prepared to say that the existing policy, relying on emissions reduction and espoused by the acknowledged climate authorities, has failed to prevent dangerous climate change with an unacceptable risk of catastrophic sea level rise to boot.
This example could be mentioned in any missive we produce.
Cheers John from mobileTen new insights in climate science https://share.google/zkWUthbywhnV0rrlo
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Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert C--Just a quick reaction. My sense is that those who talk about the doom have quickly been labeled (pessimistic) doomsters and then ignored and dismissed (even if their arguments may be pretty sound) . HPAC's Triad approach has a chance to offer a bit of potential for hope and at least offers a set of plausible actions to avoid the worst outcomes, or at least slow their onset.
As I've said before about how I respond when, after laying out the situation, I can avoid hopelessness, my response has been that it is just too depressing to be pessimistic. I think that people are more likely to respond when there is a sense they can do something about it.
Best, Mike
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Sev Clarke
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Dana Woods
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robert...@gmail.com
Hi Mike
The problem is not that the doomsters are being ignored but that the good folk, like yourself, are also being ignored. That's why we have doomsters!
This is not pessimism. It's realism. Here's a slightly amended extract from an email I just sent to Herb, also in response to his response to my message yesterday.
Climate change is framed as a climate problem that can be sorted by a better understanding of the physics that will enable suitable responses to emerge. This is another form of denial. Climate change is the result of an unsustainable lifestyle. No one in a position of power talks about this because the implications are too difficult to handle.
As I keep saying, just crunch the numbers and it's hard not to conclude that the mountain is already too high to climb without some serious causalities en route. Everyone assumes a Pareto optimal outcome, not because they really think that's possible, but because they can't come to terms with the wealth redistribution that would be necessary to protect those that are harmed.
We are locked in an addictive selfish cycle of excessive consumption. Like most addicts, we can't face the pain of cold turkey. So we carry on. This only ends in one way. In Goliath's Curse Luke Kemp describes very well how this has happened so often in the past. Why on Earth would we imagine that we're immune? Our 'advances' just mean our collapse will be on a grander scale than ever before. The higher they fly, the harder they fall.
Is this pessimism? Not to me it isn't. I call it realism. Just look at the evidence. Set aside your hopes and desires, and just look at the evidence.
Does the collapse have to be as imminent as I now imagine it most likely is? Certainly not. But where's the evidence that sufficient strides are being taken to avert it? Answer on a postcard, please!
Optimism is that I'm going to win £130m in tomorrow’s UK lottery draw (I have four tickets). Pessimism is that my life will turn to shit if I don't win. Both positions deny the reality that the chances of me winning are remote and I'd be pretty damn stupid to organise my life on the basis that I'm certain to win. This analogy opens up the question as to which is more likely, me winning tomorrow's lottery, or the global community organising itself to avoid widespread societal and ecosystem collapse in the not very distant future. What's needed, and what we don't have, is a comprehensive risk analysis that's routinely updated as the future unfolds. Without that, we're all over the place.
I regard the conventional position you take to have demonstrably failed to date, to show no reasonable signs of imminently succeeding, and being a major reason why we continue along this path to collapse and subsequent renewal. And please, don't forget the subsequent renewal. That'll happen. It always has and almost certainly will again. This is unlikely to be an extinction event. Humans are like rats and cockroaches, we're incredibly versatile, resilient and adaptable. If you're looking for hope, that's where you'll find it. Not in keeping alive a system in terminal decline, but in ushering in a regeneration that has learnt from our mistakes.
All I'm suggesting is that if people really understood that that's the threshold we're currently teetering on the edge of, they might be willing to do what needs to be done to step back from the brink. Do you think that the faux positivity you offer is anything more substantial than the soma of Orwell's 1984? One literary critic observed “Soma allows anyone to get away for a while from reality and return to it without any rebellion. Also it provides the much-needed illusion that [...] everything is as it should be” I think that sums up pretty well your desire to 'offer a bit of potential for hope'. Might it be necessary to frighten the horses to get people to grasp quite how precarious our situation is? And so on ....
RobertC
rob...@rtulip.net
Of their ten insights, none recognised the elephant in the room, the 2% darkening of the planet this century due to the loss of clouds, aerosols, ice and snow, which is now causing more warming than new emissions.
This is a bizarre, unscientific and extinctive psychology, simply ignoring the main solution that could stabilise the planetary predicament.
This is why I suggest that building commercial constituencies of support for an Albedo Accord offers a first step on the mighty Gantt Chart toward planetary restoration.
I will talk more about these issues at the Meertalk this coming Sunday/Monday.
Regards
Robert Tulip
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Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert C--My agreement with your "realistic" view on prospects is why I actually spend much of my time focusing on approaches that have the possibility of doing something more positive than is now going on.
1. In the US, we have plenty of potential solar, wind, and geothermal. The challenge is not installing it--those who want to be the new leading wealthy have the skills and wealth to do it rapidly. The key in the US, in my view and of a good number of others, is putting in a supplementary transmission grid that can take the generated electricity across the country--and we have a plan to do it. This would lead to lower cost renewable electricity across the country and then the pursuit of lower cost options with help carry us to economy-wide decarbonization.
2. A largely untapped renewable energy source is inexpensive electricity from tides and ocean currents. We have a potential approach but due to failures of 200 or so efforts to do this, and so getting financing to prove and do this is, not surprisingly, taking time. Maybe our effort is tilting at windmills, but it is an attempt to actually make a difference rather than sitting and despairing.
3. Then too, I try to make a contribution by communicating about the issue--plus I've done legal declarations in a dozen lawsuits or so, including the plaintiffs science declaration in Massachusetts v. EPA that enabled the Endangerment Finding, so trying to get real attention to the issue. Not generally the most obvious ways, but I'm trying as I can.
Coupled with pushing more forcefully than many others for SRM and methane/short-lived species cutbacks and more [plus encouraging more efforts by others], I think there is a chance of working through our predicament with less than maximal impacts. Just sitting back and pointing out how dire things are just doesn't appeal to me--too depressing, as I indicated.
Best, Mike
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robert...@gmail.com
Hi Mike
I get that and it's why what you do is so important. Our circumstances and backgrounds are very different, so there's good reason for us to be approaching the challenges of climate change differently.
From a systems perspective one of the key determinants of the flourishing of any complex adaptive system is the diversity and independence of its actors and their interactions. Nothing would be worse than everyone being of the same mind. A world full of Mike MacCrackens would be only marginally better than one full of Robert Chris's! It's vital that you and those with your professional skillset and connections do what you're doing. I think it is equally vital that those like me, do what we're doing. You might dismiss my contribution as 'just sitting back and pointing out how dire things are'. I'd express that differently. My take on that is that without a thorough risk analysis, it's not possible to build a credible strategy. For the reasons that I hinted at earlier in this thread, climate change is not, in my view, a problem that's going to get sorted by tweaking, or even overhauling, the energy system. Its roots go much deeper and are systemic. We can build as much renewable energy as you'd like and that would be a good thing, but it won't solve the problem of climate change. That's the point I'm trying to get across. We haven't understood the nature of the problem so we don't have a credible strategy. We're too distracted by our busyness in rearranging the chairs on the deck of this planetary Titanic!
What I find depressing is that so few people seem to have understood this. I'll just keep pointing it out in the (probably vain) hope that the penny drops before it's too late.
And let's remember that neither is the Triad a solution to climate change. The Triad is way of stabilising the ship in troubled waters. Deeper systemic changes will be needed if we want to build the capacity to minimise our exposure to future turbulence and the resilience to withstand it should we nevertheless be threatened by it.
The basic message I want to convey is that until we build societies that can flourish with enough, we will continue to be threatened by the consuming desire for more. That's a tough call.
RobertC
Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert C--I agree on the diversity comments; yes, lots taking different approaches is key. I meant I could have retired and done nothing but just moan about things, but now 23+ years since official retirement and I'm still working best I can.
I once drafted a sort of conceptual --plan and will have to pull it out. Part of it was to "Electrify Everything" and do it with renewables, etc.--maybe that is a strategy instead of a plan (but I did have some sub-elements). And do it as fast as possible. And a lot of what has been going on is headed that way, though is talked about as cutting emissions instead of building for a new electric future.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think electrifying everything will be faster and easier to achieve than getting everyone in world to change their consumption-based lifestyles and the capitalist economic system. Electrifying everything will build new industries and m(b)illionaires that displace the former ones and so use the system we have to achieve the transition.
Best, Mike
robert...@gmail.com
Hi Mike
The unasked question in what you say below is whether 'electrifying everything' will avert a climate induced catastrophe. My understanding of the numbers is that had we started doing that in earnest soon after the Rio Summit, it might well have been sufficient. But now 34 years on and after emitting a further 1200GtCO2 and a bunch of other GHGs, it isn't the same game. My guess is that a thorough risk analysis would show that we've long passed the point where electrifying everything could be done soon enough to be sufficient to stop and reverse the slide towards climate doom, albeit that it might slow the decline a little.
A medical analogy works well here. If you get an infection and deal with it early, the antibiotics will be sufficient for a full recovery. If you delay the intervention, there comes a time when gangrene sets in and then you need surgical interventions to avoid death. In this case the patient will likely suffer life changing injuries from the surgery - organs removed, limbs amputated - but they'll cling on to life. Having delayed treatment, it isn't enough to say the patient needs more antibiotics. Of course he does. But that's no longer enough and ignoring that simple fact is to cause death by denial.
That's where we are with the climate. The past delay in acting now means that the necessary interventions entail serious harm if even more serious harm is to be avoided. To not embrace that incremental harm is to court the even greater harm.
We end up sleep-walking to doom if we keep focussing on the incremental but insufficient good things we're doing, and failing to acknowledge that even more is still needed because we fear that people might be turned off by the likelihood that extra bit might entail some pain.
If a robust comprehensive risk analysis hasn't been done, it is very easy to dismiss all these awkward issues.
For me the ideological challenge is highlighted in your final sentence. You seem to regard the creation of a new generation of billionaires as the gateway to a flourishing future for humanity. That's a whole subject of its own that I'll leave for another occasion. Suffice it to say here that I really don't think it's as simple as that!
RobertC
H simmens
 | |
Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"
Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
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robert...@gmail.com
For those that don't get round to reading this whole piece, here's the final paragraph.
All of which leads to a final speculation. It is plausible that human behavioural dynamics at scale has a role in the curious pattern of growth-to-implosion of large human societies. Most so-called civilizations (‘abnormal’ all) have ended in ignominious decline or collapse often preceded by extreme social hierarchy—wealth, corruption and decadence at the top; poverty, despair and disengagement at the bottom—and ecological destruction all around. Arguably, socially stable, egalitarian, eco-compatible large-scale societies cannot emerge from the ancient human behavioural genome. H. sapiens has simply not had time to evolve the psycho-cognitive capacity to live sustainably or for long in large complex societies.
This is the ultimate expression of the Human Maladaptation Syndrome.
I have been saying for more than a decade that we are not evolutionarily equipped to solve a problem like climate change that requires collaboration at global scale. What Rees is arguing is even more worrying. He suggests that we are not evolutionarily equipped to avoid catastrophic climate change. We are doomed repeatedly to recreate societies that are socially unstable, inequitable and environmentally unsustainable.
If that's the case just be grateful that you got to live during one of the quiet periods and thank those before you that endured the collapses that led to the regenerations that led to those quiet periods.
Thanks Herb. Nice read.
RobertC
Robert Chris
I should have added:
and don't beat yourself up about the imminent collapse. It's an inevitable consequence of our evolutionary maladaptation.
Is that depressing or relieving?
RobertC
Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert--Oh, I agree. I think I had peak shaving SRM as well and CDR as part of an exit strategy.
As to new billionaires, the global energy system has to change to renewables. Fossil fuels now provide 80% of global energy--replacing that much energy infrastructure is a huge investment opportunity and done well can provide enough energy at lower cost. Non-profits can't do it nor really can governments. Private sector drive can potentially make things happen more quickly than other approaches.
Mike
robert...@gmail.com
Hi Mike
Yes, yes, yes. But you're still not focussing on the unasked question posed in my opening sentence below or is that subsumed in your reference to CDR and SRM?
I have spent quite a bit of time playing with different mixes of emissions reductions, CDR and SRM in WTF and if you set the 'safe' threshold at 1.5oC and your objective is to have the minimum aggregate overshoot above that threshold, the challenges of scale and speed for CDR and SRM remain considerable, not least because for practical purposes neither of those has even started yet. If you accept that 1.5oC is a politically set 'safe' threshold but isn't really climatically 'safe', and you want to set it at say, 1oC, the mountain is even higher and steeper (both).
The point I'm making here is that throwaway comments about adding some CDR and SRM into the mix are grossly misleading because they utterly fail to convey how difficult it will be to do them at the scale and speed necessary to avoid the catastrophe. It's why I repeatedly say that any discussion on these topics has to be informed by the numbers.
You make a really important observation about fossil fuels currently accounting for about 80% of energy supply. It's been at or close to that level for a very long time and hasn't really fallen significantly with the recent growth in renewables. A common sleight of hand is when commentators refer to the extent to which power generation, i.e. electricity generation, is increasingly powered by renewables. But they forget to remind people that electricity is still only about 25% of energy consumption. The inroads that renewables are making into the core fossil fuel powered industrial, transport and domestic heating sectors is lagging way behind.
All of this serves to explain why I keep banging on about imminent catastrophe. It doesn't have to be that way but if people don't realise quite how serious the problem is because they're constantly being fed half-truths intended to not upset them, how on Earth are we going to galvanise people to mount the action required? Testing, governance? Oh yes, very important. Of course, we'll get to those in due course. That's where we're at. No understanding of the risks. No understanding of the urgency. Result: increasing likelihood of catastrophe.
With that cheerful note, I'm signing off. I'm going to try and resist engaging in further climate change discussions for the next few days while I am away celebrating reaching 80! I know you did that a while back. It's comforting to know that I'm following a good guide.
Robert
Michael MacCracken
Hi Herb--Interesting paper, sort of Malthusian. A few quick comments:
1. I'm not sure I understand how he justifies humans not moving much and living close to where they were born with the move out of African and then spreading around the world.
2. Most of the attributes for animals, mosquitoes, etc. are inherent in the genes; the human mind comes into the world mostly empty and ends up mostly filled with what is gained through living and education, and there can thus be tremendous change from one generation to the next. In addition they have all sorts of tools and capabilities they can benefit from and don't have to invent each generation. Many animals also have brains that allow them to learn some things--we evolved brains that can learn lots of things.
3. Also many of the tools and capabilities are designed to be easy to use. Look how many people can successfully drive automobiles, cellphones, computers, etc. Learning to do this does not require new genes. Language is learned and there is a tremendous range of possibilities--people learn to speak in second, third, .. languages, etc.
I just don't see the inevitability that the author sees. Babies come into the world without all the biases and hate that later emerges and many carry through to lives go well. The hate many show comes not necessarily from their genes, but from those who raise them or situations they encounter, but also many seem to overcome. It seems to me the question is if we can keep inventing our way past planetary boundaries.
Best, Mike
Michael MacCracken
Dear Robert--HAPPY 80TH BIRTHDAY.
And my suggestion now is to start celebrating each additional month, so you are now 960 months old. These come much more often and so you can the enjoy them more often.
And as a present, I agree with the message that you sent--most people and it is seeming virtually all politicians are not at all aware of the imminent risks, and getting them aware and responding is what is needed to offer hope to future generations.
Best, Mike
robert...@gmail.com
Hi MIle
Today's my big day so I'm not going to respond in detail. I'll get back to this next week because I think there are some important issues here. I also think that you've not done them justice.
Robert
Paul Klinkman
I aim to take ownership, or share that ownership, of all of climate change. This includes the symptoms that get the publicity right now, what's scary down the road and mass species extinction. I see myself as (an unpaid and rather powerless, except for the power of integrity) part of humanity's government.
As such, the best that I can do is invent, invent and invent, nothing else. I'm too old to do much else and the rest of you probably don't have decades of experience in the dark art of inventing. However, I'm aware of the serious disconnect from successful invention to looking for show-stopping counterarguments, soliciting funding for testing and then testing prototypes.
I'd like a full service agency that either gets philanthropy or is self-funding for economic sustainability, that carries through from invention to tiny prototypes to venture angels sniffing their potential, that pays rent money and that pays after the fact for practical merit that has in retrospect been demonstrated on the ground. Right now I'm thinking of the TV show M.A.S.H. At least one doctor would rather be earning big bucks back at Harvard and one guy is desperate to get out of the army, but they keep working effectively at a needed, ugly job.
In this strange world we always have a problem of the messenger's credibility. I'll assume that many people here are skeptical of other people's climate solutions because, who knows, they might not work in the end or there might be a show-stopping bad side effect. The converse happens when I look critically at your proposed solutions; my philosophy is no different from your philosophy. What are the environmental side effects of your solutions? Where are the scientific watchdogs who verify such solutions? Are they honest watchdogs or are they being astroturfed into existence for the sole purpose of rubber-stamping somebody's personal gain and then hand-waving away the alternative solutions?
Putting sea salt particles into the lower atmosphere has the advantage over sulfur and orbital solutions of already being a natural phenomenon at seashores. Plant and animal life has evolved to tolerate sea salt particles in the marine air. We homo sapiens can taste and sense the fresh salty air at the beach, and humans have been eating seafood for eons. We still want to know whether inland plant species will be damaged by microparticles of sea salt. Will tiny salt particles eat microscopic holes in plant leaves, leaving tiny open disease vectors that affect plant life.
Next step: it would help the case of salt particles if somebody set up terrariums in a biology lab and dumped too many microscopic salt particles into the lungs of lab rats. Next, dump these microscopic salt particles onto maple leaves in the wild and see if the trees get sick or stay healthy. I know that in an August of 1976 100% rainless hurricane, great amounts of salt spray flew onto trees near the Connecticut shore and the trees all had to re-leave, but we'd be interested in smaller doses of tinier dried-out particles causing epidemics of plant diseases. So, sea salt advocates, you may want to tap your colleagues.
The sea salt proposal currently requires a fleet of 100s of ships. I have a vastly cheaper array of mist-creating buoys for precisely the same job. Use 1 ship to carry or tow a fleet of 100 mister buoys into position.
I lean toward mechanical solutions that tend to not have earth-scale environmental testing drawbacks. The goal is not the financially “cheapest” solution, where cheapest for who is always a big question, but the most effective solution. Every horse in a technological race deserves good funding until it's proven that we don't want to develop that particular technology, that the cost/benefits will always be too high because some other technology has stolen almost all of that market.
Yours in Hope,
Paul Klinkman