PRAG meeting Monday 24th April 9 pm UK time
John Nissen
rob...@rtulip.net
The HPAC Meeting with David Spratt was very good. A recording is available at https://youtu.be/SKiUYAJ9yYk
PRAG meeting for this week is at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89101098507?pwd=TlhaVFgvR2RKbk1HRU1wd254cXBSZz09
9pm Monday UK = 1pm Monday California = 6am Tuesday AEST Australia
Robert
Douglas Grandt
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<Paper for AGU 2022 v5.doc>
John Nissen
Hi Doug,
Re stool, I would go back to three legs, corresponding to curves on our temperature trajectory diagram:
- cooling intervention to refreeze the Arctic (in blue);
- cooling intervention in other regions and globally (in purple);
- GHG concentration reduction mainly by restoring soil carbon and ocean life (in red).
The first two can stave off tipping point catastrophe and restore 1980 global conditions of climate and sea level rise (rate). Each of the three has its own positive impact on ecosystems, biodiversity, economies and food security. The third allows long-term sustainability with a phase out of the cooling interventions.
Cheers, John
John Nissen
Breaking news https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/apr/24/supreme-court-oil-climate-lawsuits-state-federal
Soros film is in this article:
https://www.eureporter.co/world/germany/2023/02/16/george-soros-we-must-refreeze-the-arctic-to-save-civilization/
https://www.georgesoros.com/2023/02/16/remarks-delivered-at-the-2023-munich-security-conference/
Excuse me more a moment, my Mum is calling
Apologies for late joining … I got distracted with Sir David Attenborough’s “Our Planet” … watched two episodes .. second one was polar ice …. lost track of time … highly recommend … NetFlix … SDA extraordinary film and stories … underlying climate messages … powerful !!
Hysteresis matters 🙂
Sunscreen reduces cancer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7759112/#:~:text=Use%20of%20sunscreen%20has%20been,melanoma%20and%20nonmelanoma%20skin%20cancers.&text=Both%20the%20Canadian%20Dermatology%20Association,the%20prevention%20of%20skin%20cancer.
https://undark.org/2019/06/12/science-sunscreen-public-trust-cancer/
From ChatGPT
One potential application of AI in this context could be to develop predictive models that can accurately forecast the behavior of the marine environment and its response to cloud brightening. Such models could incorporate data from a variety of sources, including satellite imagery, oceanographic sensors, and climate models, and use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and make predictions.
Another potential application of AI could be to optimize the deployment of cloud brightening equipment. For example, AI algorithms could be used to determine the optimal location and time for deploying the equipment, taking into account factors such as wind speed and direction, wave height, and cloud cover.
Another response from ChatGPT:
Marine cloud brightening: This SRM technique involves spraying fine seawater droplets into the lower atmosphere to increase the reflectivity of marine clouds. AI can be used to optimize the droplet size and dispersion patterns to maximize the cooling effect while minimizing potential side effects. AI can also help identify optimal locations and times for cloud brightening based on meteorological data and climate models.
Stratospheric aerosol injection: Another SRM technique involves releasing reflective aerosols into the stratosphere to scatter sunlight back into space. AI can optimize the selection of aerosol particles and release strategies to minimize environmental and health risks while maximizing the cooling effect. AI can also be used to monitor the distribution and impacts of these aerosols on the atmosphere and climate.
Space-based reflectors: AI can help design and optimize the deployment of space-based reflectors or sunshades, which would block or reflect a portion
Kim Stanley Robinson and David King https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk6qJ8RcmHM&t=6432s
John Nissen
I’m on my flight home from Dubai and just watched the David Spratt session. Very articulate and insightful presentation almost all of which I suspect was not too controversial for those in this group. There were, however, a couple of points I’d like to reflect on.
Global governance
David used the Ministry of the Future to assert that the absence of global governance would not be a bar to the deployment of cooling interventions by one or more nations. There are a couple of points to be made here. First, using a work of fiction as a source in a discussion of this sort is, IMHO, somewhat imprudent. It certainly illustrates one of many plausible futures, but it does so at the expense of ignoring many others. It is also plausible that the delay caused by unsuccessful efforts to reach such an agreement might be such that effective action would require interventions at a scale that would by then not be feasible.
Second, there are significant legal barriers to any state going it alone, or a collaboration between some but not all states acting in the absence of a global agreement. Climatically effective cooling interventions are impossible without cross border impacts. Any state or group of states undertaking cooling would be vulnerable to claims for compensation from any state that considers that it had suffered harms as a result of that intervention. When contemplating such an intervention, states would have to consider how climate impacts might be attributed to their cooling intervention, how they would value those impacts, whether they were positive or negative and whether positive impacts could be set off against negative ones to limit liability. There are a slew of related questions that would keep international lawyers in work for decades, effectively stymying effective deployment.
Third, cooling interventions must be maintained for decades at least. It is plausible, and in my view most probable that no state would take on such a long-term responsibility in the absence of global agreement. There may be some state or consortium R&D activity, but this would probably not be at sufficient scale to deliver sustained significant global cooling. The idea that it could be done by private enterprise is fanciful because of the risk management issues. The idea that a state, or several neighbouring states, could implement a climatically significant cooling programme that only impacted those states, seems implausible.
It might be done at small scale to achieve proof of concept and enable some evidence-based risk assessments, and for this to lead to a global governance regime. The issue here would be the lapsed time before significant global cooling could be achieved.
The point here is that there are many plausible scenarios beyond the one painted in Ministry of the Future and as David remarked in a different context, a credible policy should have a high probability of succeeding in the worst plausible scenario.
The role of markets
David was explicit that in any emergency, effective response is always state led. Relating this to climate change he stated that there was ‘abiding belief that the market can deal with the risks; and it can’t.’ He quoted US economist Spencer (?) that this was not a matter of market risks but the risk of capitalism ending. I suggest that you listen again to what he had to say over a couple of minutes (starting at 1:24:20). He goes on to say that he ‘thinks there’s a disjuncture between the reality on the ground and the way that reality is constructed in policy making political leadership around the world. And when you combine that groupthink with an obsession with the market that cannot calculate or respond to the risks, then you’ve got the sort of failure you have.’
From earlier contributions from others within this group, this analysis is probably not one shared by all. I think it is a topic that merits a lot more careful examination. My own position, often repeated, is that until policymakers stop seeing climate change through an economic lens, there is little likelihood of anything but a grim outcome. The challenge, as David explained, is how to get policymakers to approach climate change as an emergency, as an existential threat, and not as an economic problem that can be solved by the market. If we can crack that, then we have some chance of snatching some kind of modest victory from the jaws of oblivion.
A great session. Thanks for setting it up. The next one with Graeme Taylor should be even more stark. I have not heard of him before but looking at his BEST website and reading some of the materials available there, I’m expecting him to deliver something quite close to my own complex adaptive systems analysis that I presented in my discussion with Robert T a few weeks ago. I don’t think I got many converts then. Let’s see what people think after an hour’s exposure to Graeme.
Before that meeting, I commend you to have a look at his website and in particular these resources (1, 2, and this short video on tipping points 3). Here’s a couple of extracts that might set the tone (they also link to the market issues discussed above):
Driving our unsustainable global economy is an unsustainable culture. The consumer culture creates false needs for power, status and wealth instead of satisfying real needs for meaning, community and survival. Consumer society creates the illusion of scarcity in the rich world, where people try to satisfy their emotional and spiritual needs through consuming things, and real scarcity in the poor world, where the resources do not exist to meet basic human needs for food, shelter, health and education.
Because real human needs cannot be satisfied by a consumer culture, people will never feel that they have enough and there will never be an end to the destruction of the environment. However, our most basic need is to survive, and without a liveable environment we will not survive. A culture based on greed is not just morally wrong, it is unsustainable.
It will be argued that the collapse of contemporary civilization will not happen because governments and businesses will eventually act to avert the developing crises. The reality is that the politicians and business leaders that govern our world will not and can not reallocate the resources of their countries and corporations in order to develop a peaceful, equitable and sustainable civilization.
Much of the BEST material was written some time ago. It'll be interesting to hear his assessment of how we're doing against his earlier expectations.
RegardsRobert C
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John Nissen
Hi David
I agree with all that. However, my point is that the failure of the state in its climate leadership role is because states generally have been captured by a capitalist ethic whose contradictions have become overwhelming. Capitalism has proven itself to be a remarkably protean concept, that's why its imminent collapse has always remained just that, imminent. The question now is whether it can reshape itself soon enough and radically enough to enable states to respond to climate change before the climate takes control of events. Current political strategy is framed in a neo-liberal capitalist context and that is a significant limiting factor. The problem with the 'war-footing' strategy is that states tend to be reluctant to go onto a war-footing and only do so when the dangers are inescapably clear and present. For most people, including political leaders, climate change is not yet a clear and present danger and by the time it is, it'll be too late to do much about it because of the inertia in the climate system.
If that analysis is close to correct, it isn't so much that capitalism is about to collapse but rather that the social structures it serves are about to collapse and then it'll become an economic system without a home. Perhaps an appropriate living systems analogy might be to see the relationship between capitalism and human well-being more like that between a host and a parasitoid rather than a parasite.
The way I have framed the questions you're pondering is to reflect on whether, in principle, there exists an orderly transition from where we are to where we'd rather be. I think we're very close to the answer to that question being a simple 'no'. There are lots of clever people, like John, who have all manner of 'solutions'. But sadly, human society is not in a place where they're going to get a chance to show us their wares.
This might sound like a somewhat depressing analysis. I don't see it that way at all. I think of it more like a timely cleaning of the Augean stables.
RegardsRobert
On 27/04/2023 10:59, David Spratt wrote:
Hi Robert,
I am not saying markets are THE problem. I am simply saying that markets fail on climate risk and cannot be relied upon; the determining leadership role on climate is the state, not the market.Our propositions may not be all that different. As someone who spent a lot of time in anti-capitalist politics when I was young, I don’t have any issues with capitalism being the problem. The problem is political strategy now.
- Capitalism is not about be overthrown by the left, because the revolutionary left is dead for the purposes of revolution.
- Nor is capitalism about to collapse due to its own contradictions. Some people have spent a life prophesying that and died scratching their heads.
- Nor does the de-growth movement have any credible strategy for replacing capitalism. This is something I mentioned in the filozofski-vestnik article, but Boris Frankel makes the case at much greater length.
- Nor is the climate movement in any of its forms advocating in this area.
In the few years (David King several says 2-3 years, as you know) to get transformational action, what should we aim for? All I have ever been able to come up is what we said 15 years ago in Climate Code Red, that this is an emergency that requires a state-led mobilisation similar in scale to a war mobilisation to devote all possible resource to restoring a liveable climate and stopping civilisational collapse. Exploring this was the basic purpose of the recent Reclaiming “Climate Emergency” article.
If there is a better strategy, well and good!
David
On 27 Apr 2023, at 7:42 pm, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi David
Thanks for responding and links to these other resources. On the question about why markets fail, this is a subject to which I have given some thought. I have decided that it's the wrong question! The problem is not with markets, it is with capitalism and in particular with its current incarnation in the neo-liberal Zeitgeist. I'd be very happy to discuss this further with you. To me it is the primary reason why all our efforts to avoid cascading climate and social tipping events are now very likely to fail. To be clear, I'm not anti-capitalist, but no system is perfect and capitalism's imperfections have now become dominant.
RegardsRobert
On 27/04/2023 09:00, David Spratt wrote:
Hello John and Robert,
[Perhaps you could forward it to Google Groups cc’ed in yr email to me, since I can’t post to them?]
Thanks for the discussion. To summarise. My discussion on tipping points is available at:
Faster than forecast, climate impacts trigger tipping points in the Earth system
The longer version is:
Faster, higher, hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022
The MEER talk and the case for cooling is here:
On why damages are beyond quantification and hence why markets cannot calculate the risk and fail is here (from p. 122)
Reclaiming “Climate Emergency”
Also discussed with Nick Breeze here:
[Articulating &] Reclaiming the Climate Emergency
I am working on a longer exposition of the reasons why markets fail. The history of last 30-years shows that primary reliance on markets to solve climate has failed. Markets do not work well in periods of high disruption, they can fail and governments have to intervene. e.g.. banking crises, pandemics. In times of emergency — wars, pandemics, natural disasters — government plays the key role in planning and overseeing the immediate response to the threat, and then the transition. In these cases, markets fail because they cannot adequately assess OR respond to the risks. The question is why?
Markets, like models — including climate-economy models (IAMs) — assume an algorithmic capacity to be able to quantify all the costs and benefits to then establish prices, hence efficient allocation of resources according to consumer needs/demand. But this economic orthodoxy is a mirage: imperfect knowledge, oligopoly, short-termism, discounting the future, and the inability to quantify, to put a number on everything, its probability etc is the reality. Many climate impacts are not quantifiable, they are existential, infinite or beyond calculation, so markets can’t compute future climate damage or establish the risks or the price. Put in “don’t know” or “too high to be able to say” in any model or algorithm and the mathematics breaks down. The same thing goes for the social cost of carbon. It is an artifice of unreasonable assumptions.
And of course markets can’t account for externalities. ie impacts not priced by the buyer or seller, such as pollution. Then it is up to government to intervene, by pricing the damage, making the good more expensive so people will buy less. But again, if the externality causes infinitely high damage, no price is high enough. You simply, in the end, have to ban the good.
These issues and the problems of the global banking system trying to come to grips with climate risks are discussed in:
Degrees of risk: Can the banking system survive climate warming of 3˚C?
On climate intervention governance, if there is ever a reason why all nations won’t agree to anything really efficaccious, surely there is not better case study that the history of the UNFCC and the COPs, which have led us to the brink of civilisation collapse.
Cheers!
David
David Spratt
Research Director
Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration
Melbourne, Australia
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au
+61 417070099
<PRAG Trends and Targets 2023-03-24 (UK spelling).pdf>
Robert Chris
John, the Montreal Protocol is not a good comparator for what we
are now facing. See attached article by Steve Rayner. Climate
change is the mother of all wicked problems.
I don't think that despair is an appropriate reaction. I prefer to focus on the potential for renewal after the correction needed to bring the biosphere, including humanity, back into sustainable equilibrium with planetary resources. Despair comes from impatience, the desire for the correction to happen quickly and without loss or pain. But that isn't how complex systems work. They have their own timescales and trajectories and we have to take the long view. I think it's most improbable that even after the imminent collapse of civilisation as we know it (COCAWKI) there will not be a pretty rapid reorganisation and rebuilding of life systems, including human ones. There's a good argument for this correction to be necessary and the more we allow our sentimentality to hang on to the unsustainable, the greater the pain will be when the collapse comes. A great deal of human knowledge and culture will be lost, but a great deal will be retained. We should celebrate our indomitable spirit, our irrepressible natures. We've been living on resources borrowed from the future. Payback time is at hand. Let's embrace it and move forward.
An effective response to global warming, one that would indefinitely defer triggering cascading tipping points that haven't yet been triggered, requires a complex and wide ranging portfolio of policy responses including both technology innovations and behavioural change. There are multiple combinations of policies that could be effective. However, one specific policy is common to all such combinations and that is the rapid retirement of fossil fuels. There are others, but I want to focus on this one because it involves fundamental changes to the current global economy. Until there is clear evidence that fossil fuels are being retired at pace, there can be no realistic expectation that any combination of other policies can prevent COCAWKI. The continuing rise in emissions is sufficient to show that that retirement is yet to begin. Although we cannot know in advance, it now seems increasingly likely that the window of opportunity for that retirement to happen sufficiently fast to avoid triggering the tipping events, has more or less closed.
Maybe the time is coming for us to start focussing on the
rebuilding that will soon begin. Lots of exciting opportunity
there.
Robert
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Robert C
I would like to challenge your view that the rapid retirement of fossil fuels is necessary to indefinitely defer triggering cascading tipping points.
Let us call this the RR hypothesis, for Rapid Retirement. I appreciate that the RR hypothesis is the scientific consensus, leaving aside David Keith’s unusual view that tipping points are not real. And I know that my challenge to it is the object of derision. However, I think this deserves a serious debate based on earth system numbers rather than politics.
The key problem is the relation between warming from new emissions and the committed warming from past emissions. I know people often find arithmetic challenging, but please bear with me as these sums are fairly simple. The problem is that the Emission Reduction Alone approach that underpins RR just ignores committed warming,
As I show in the attached slide that I have previously circulated, committed warming comes from the 670 Gt C (Gigatonnes of Carbon) already emitted, while new emissions are about 15 Gt C/y, worsening the forcing by 2.5% each year. I use C to incorporate CO2 equivalents.
Realistic projections suggest it will take until about 2060 to double the current anthropogenic load without RR, leaving aside complicating factors such as ocean balance.
Let’s consider the three scenarios shown in this table, Realistic Projection (RP), Rapid Retirement (RR) and Very Rapid Retirement (VRR)
Gigatonnes Carbon - Gt C | RP | RR | VRR |
Emissions to date | 670 | 670 | 671 |
Emissions 2023 to 2060 | 592 | 370 | 185 |
Annual | 16 | 10 | 5 |
Cumulative 2060 Total | 1262 | 1040 | 856 |
Radiative Forcing 2060/2023 | 1.88 | 1.55 | 1.28 |
Realistic Projections are that emissions will average 16 GtC/y for the next few decades, based on Paris pledges. Highly ambitious decarbonisation (RR) might hypothetically cut emissions to about 10 Gt C/y net, with aggressive CDR. The third scenario (VRR) would require carbon storage with something like a million square km of industrial algae production on the ocean, something that seems more in the realm of science fiction than an achievable goal.
The RR scenario has more than 1.5 times current forcing in 2060. That is high risk for tipping points.
For your claim that rapid retirement of fossil fuels is necessary to indefinitely defer triggering cascading tipping points, what is actually needed to achieve that deferment is to cut the 2060 Radiative Forcing (RF) number close to zero. It seems RR could at best deliver about one tenth of the required RF cut from 2 to 0. That is marginal, and highly risky. The heavy lifting has to be done mainly with Albedo Enhancement (AE), supported by Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR), with RR trailing a distant third.
That suggests a realistic deferment of tipping points would be better achieved by a grand bargain with the fossil fuel industry, accepting that emissions will continue while investing heavily in AE. The rationale for this bargain is to get emitters on side with climate science, with a realistic path to stability and security, instead of the grudging and largely illusory acceptance of retirement that we now see. Pushing rapid retirement is a dangerous strategy, essentially making collapse inevitable.
Regards
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Robert Chris
Hi Robert T
I largely agree with you. The distinction to be made here is between necessary and sufficient. In the piece to which you are responding I was simply saying that RR is necessary. I also implied, although perhaps not explicitly enough, that it wasn't sufficient.
The key point here is that RR and AE operate at different rates, with AE having a much faster climate response than RR. However, because RR has a slower response time, it is essential to start it early to ensure that its benefits are delivered as soon as possible, even if that is after AE has achieved a short term cessation of warming. In effect, they must be done in parallel rather than serially. To do them serially would greatly increase the extent and duration of AE which would increase its costs and risks. The future sustainable stable climate is one in which there's little or no AE and little or no GHG emissions. The sooner we get there the better.
A critical point to bear in mind is that climate stabilised by lots of AE and high levels of GHG emissions is not the same climate as one stabilised with less AE and fewer emissions. The global average surface temperature might be the same in both cases, but local climate almost everywhere would be different because the two approaches would generate different local temperature gradients. Local changes drive local social impacts. Global averages tend to ignore people's lived experience.
It is also worth noting that, for me at least, avoiding tipping
points is a short-term objective, but not the ultimate objective.
A sane sustainable climate policy must require an end to the
large-scale human transfer of carbon from the lithosphere to the
atmosphere. One route to that objective is to use AE to avert the
tipping points to buy us the time to re-engineer our economy to
eliminate the emissions. Another is to fail to avoid the tipping
points. In that scenario, nature takes control, the human
population collapses to where it was 100 years or so ago, and with
that our consumption and emissions would follow suit. One way or
another, equilibrium will be restored. The trick is to find a way
to do it in an orderly manner in which what's lost of what we
value is minimised. But that leads us into a deeply philosophical
set of questions about whether we're valuing the right things.
Maybe the time for a correction has come?
Robert
H simmens
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 | |
Is the request that the world community urgently, objectively and comprehensively evaluate the triad of approaches - emission reduction, CDR, and direct climate cooling within the next couple of years with the goal of developing a plan and strategy that could bring temperature increases back down to well below 1° C as quickly as possible.
On Apr 29, 2023, at 6:41 PM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
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rob...@rtulip.net
I agree with Herb and Robert C that emission reduction, greenhouse gas removal and direct cooling should be equal objectives in climate policy.
The problem is what we mean by equal. My view is that gradual retirement of fossil fuels (ie not rapid) presents a more feasible and effective political strategy that better recognises the scientific evidence and shifts to a more equally balanced policy. Gradual retirement is necessary, but rapid retirement is not.
Herb’s points about health damage from fossil fuels are of course correct. But these effects will be swamped by the system collapse impacts of failing to enhance albedo.
Calls to accelerate retirement of fossil fuels offer no prospect of slowing climate change and have the negative effect of entrenching political polarisation.
My view is that political reconciliation between right and left is necessary to stabilise the climate. The right simply has too much power and inertia to be marginalised and defeated. They would prefer military dictatorship to rapid emission reduction. A climate policy that accommodates their plans to continue burning carbon to some extent can create the opening for cooling and removal.
An international climate fund modelled on the IMF with a narrow centrist cooling mandate can deliver core objectives of both right and left.
The basic scientific mistake behind the IPCC call to halve emissions this decade is seen in the false analysis of the Net Zero Commitment (MacDougall et al) which wrongly imagines temperature would fall soon after reaching net zero, even though this would be in a world with about 600 ppm CO2e where we have no idea of cascading interactions. That rapid retirement scenario is wishful political thinking. It builds upon the political error of assuming that rapid retirement is even possible. And then there is the problem of the balance between emission reduction and removal. Too much focus on reduction would create a scenario without the trajectory and momentum needed to continue to the massive removals needed to cut the CO2 level. The net in net zero emissions is primarily from removal offsets, not emission reduction.
Regards
Robert Tulip
From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of H simmens
Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2023 11:36 AM
To: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Cc: rob...@rtulip.net; John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; David Spratt <dsp...@bigpond.net.au>
Subject: Re: Rapid retirement of fossil fuels
I’d like to add two brief points to this discussion.
First, is that the HPAC perspective as articulated in our letter to COP 26 delegates and in the Vision for a Healthy Planet
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and in The Case for Urgent Direct Climate Cooling
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Robert Chris
This thread is bedevilled with imprecision. What do the
following mean? Equal objectives. Gradual vs. rapid. Feasible
and effective. Scientific evidence. Balanced policy. System
collapse. Political stabilisation between left and right.
Burning carbon to some extent. Centrist. Core objectives.
Each of these terms is normative and contestable. We can consume
vast amounts of time and energy debating them to seek some common
ground, or not. But that's all unnecessary. We know enough
already. We don't need to know more to justify urgent action at
scale across a wide range of fronts.
The time has come to enlist the engineers and empower them with the finance and resources they demand to get on with the learning by doing. What are they going to do? Simple. Expand ultra low and zero emissions energy (ULZEE). GGR in all its forms. Cooling in all its forms. Start small to manage the risks. Learn what works. Replicate and enhance that and abandon what doesn't. Do it all in parallel at a pace that recognises that our children's lives depend on it. Don't try to cost justify the overall process but by all means cost justify the most efficient individual approaches as part of the learn by doing process. Stop conjuring up potential risks of acting and ignoring the real risks of not acting.
What's so difficult about that 😉?
Robert C
rob...@rtulip.net
RC, you ask what do the following mean. Here are short answers.
- Equal objectives means that climate policy should recognise the three legs of the climate triad as equally important.
- Gradual vs. rapid means that decarbonisation should be pursued by a shift to a well-regulated energy market, not by ideological subsidy.
- Feasible and effective means a climate policy that is politically and scientifically possible and will enable the continuation of human civilization.
- Scientific evidence includes the observation that increasing albedo is necessary for climate stabilisation and return toward Holocene conditions.
- Balanced policy means that attempts to marginalise one side of politics will not deliver effective results.
- System collapse means collapse of civilization as we know it.
- Political stabilisation between left and right is not what I said. I said political reconciliation between left and right. A model for that is the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
- Burning carbon to some extent means ideological efforts to speed up decarbonisation should be abandoned, with climate policy instead based on cooling return on investment.
- Centrist means that solar geoengineering should be advocated in a way that deliberately seeks bipartisan political support.
- Core objectives of the right include ongoing economic growth and stability, while core objectives of the left include social protection and preventing dangerous climate change. A focus on albedo enhancement can make these compatible.
I don’t agree there is anything like enough discussion of these issues. These strategic policies will be needed to unlock investment and permission for climate cooling. Rather than action on a wide range of fronts, the critical path has to identify the key blockages that now prevent effective action. “Cooling in all its forms” is now banned by the absence of trust generated by political polarisation. Overcoming polarisation is a precondition for preventing dangerous warming.
Regards
Robert Tulip
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Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
When we learned that human sewage pollution was killing millions
in the 19th century, we did not stop emitting human sewage, but we
did learn to be responsible about it and clean it up once we
emitted it. The concept of wasted time and effort is becoming more
and more valid as we progress further towards irreversible points
of no return. Are we now wasting time and effort with our
sustainability quest with fossil fuels and other GHG emissions?
The science that demands we reduce or eliminate emissions is
based on scenarios. It is the IPCC scenarios that demand net zero,
and IPCC is what our climate policies across the globe are based
upon. None of the 1,202 scenarios evaluated in IPCC AR6
include restoration. All are 1.5 C scenarios or warmer. All (other
than business as usual - BAU scenarios) include pathways that
include net zero and or future emissions reductions/elimination.
Like the human sewage pollution analogy, there are other solutions
than cessation of the emissions of human sewage. But, if those
solutions with climate change pollution are not included in the
scenarios upon which our climate policies are based, the concept
that emissions reductions or elimination are demanded as part of
the solution is invalid.
Here a scenario based on a 20-year timeframe to restore our
atmosphere:
* Net zero in 20 years considering 15 Gt C per year emissions, requires the cessation of emissions of 300 Gt C (1100 Gt as CO2) vs restoration removal of 670 Gt C (2457 Gt as CO2).
* But half of all emissions are absorbed by Earth systems so 15 Gt C annual emissions / 2 = 7.5 Gt annual C emissions that must be removed for net zero in 20 years, or 150 Gt C (550 Gt as CO2).
* Restoration removal of what remains in the sky is 412 ppm today
- 280 ppm preindustrial, or 132 ppm CO2, is 280 Gt C (1030 Gt
CO2).
* In the 20-year timeframe, emissions for net zero in lieu of
cessation is half of required atmospheric removal for restoration
to 280 ppm.
* Once we have an infrastructure installed to deal with
restoration of 280 Gt C (1030 Gt CO2), doubling the size of that
infrastructure to deal with annual future emissions is not a big
deal, relatively.
* The big deal is the initial scaling of the infrastructure, from
our kiloton scale demonstrations today to the 50,000 megaton
facilities (or 500, 100 million ton facilities) required to remove
1,000 Gt CO2 in 20 years.
*** After 30 years of trying, the concept of cessation of
emissions (creating an extinction of the most important,
wealthiest and most influential thing in humankind's culture) is
what has gotten us into this mess. Is it time to stop messing
about with sustainability concepts that are light years more
difficult to achieve than simple scaling of known and mature
industrial processes? Humankind gigascales industrial processes at
every turn.
The band has a song about this, "Momentum of Ignorance". The hook
is, "The
Momentum of ignorance is a ship on an endless sea." Do we
need a sea change?
Steep Trails,
B
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1
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Graeme Taylor
Hi Robert,
The catch with making a grand bargain with the fossil fuel industry is that they will demand the right to continue polluting until they have burned the last profitable Gt of carbon. And while AE may be able to control global temperatures, it won't prevent rising atmospheric carbon concentrations from acidifying the oceans and destroying critical marine species and ecosystems.
So we will have to keep pushing for the rapid reduction of
emissions, as part of a credible three part strategy for reducing,
removing and cooling. Perhaps we should be reframing this in terms
of a four-pronged strategy: reducing, removing, cooling and
restoring (the biosphere), which will have to include measures
like reversing desertification, deforestation and ocean
acidification.
Cheers,
Graeme
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rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Graeme
Thank you for engaging on this discussion. The need for a grand bargain with fossil fuel industries is based on the differing time scales for climate action based on albedo and carbon.
Albedo action is urgent, whereas carbon is a medium-term problem. Only brightening the planet can mitigate tipping points. Immediate investment in technologies such as marine cloud brightening could prevent heating rising above 1.5°C, mitigating the major risks of extreme weather, biodiversity collapse, sea level rise and systemic disruption. Carbon based responses are essential over the medium term, but are just too slow to make much difference to this immediate practical global climate crisis.
Stopping tipping points can only be achieved through a new politics, convincing decision makers that rapid emission reduction can make no real difference to climate impacts, whereas brightening the planet offers the only way to prevent catastrophic collapse and shift the world toward a new paradigm.
A new climate approach can be achieved through cooperation with the capitalist system, not through opposition to it. The fossil fuel industry has the resources, skills, contacts, interests and power to support geoengineering research. It lacks the motivation to do so because of a lack of strategic vision, because geoengineering is perceived as part of the progressive campaign to decarbonise the world. Overcoming this polarisation through a political program of reconciliation offers ability to define a critical path toward climate stability, alongside slower work to build a circular economy that will eventually remove the radiative forcing from CO2.
The numbers I provided in my email prove that decarbonising cannot make rapid difference to tipping points. The world has added 670 gigatonnes of carbon. This number will continue to rise regardless of action on carbon, which could at best slow the rate of rise by about one gigatonne per year in the short term. Cutting emissions has major negative climate impacts, crowding out action on albedo. This economic problem of opportunity cost should be central to climate analysis.
Higher albedo can prevent planetary phase shift. This is a question of international security, requiring inter-government cooperation and public private partnership.
Burning carbon has to become part of a circular economy. Large scale conversion of CO2 into hydrocarbons and other useful products can eventually become profitable. If this can be done at larger scale than total emissions, say 50 GtC/y, then ongoing emissions can be compatible with steady reduction in CO2 level. In the meantime, the key climate problem is temperature rise, which can only be mitigated by albedo enhancement.
Regards
Robert Tulip
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Graeme Taylor
Hi Robert,
I agree that there is an urgent need to research and deploy all viable SRM technologies. However, given the long-term costs of GHG emissions, reducing and removing emissions also has to be part of a realistic strategy.
I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about making a grand
bargain with fossil fuel industries. As you say, they oppose
geoengineering because they see it as part of the progressive
campaign to decarbonise the world. In my view, because
decarbonization is our goal, no bargain can be struck that enables
them to continue polluting. However, it is possible to encourage
them to use their assets to produce green energy and products,
e.g., to drill deep wells to produce geothermal energy, and to
combine with solar to produce green hydrogen, green steel, etc. Of
course, the best way to encourage them to invest in a sustainable
future is to put a realistic pollution/carbon price on emissions,
which would level the playing field for green energies as well as
providing funds for geoengineering development. Needless to say,
carbon prices everywhere are ridiculously low due to the
opposition of vested interests (Sweden is an exception: the carbon
price will be €122/tonne this year).
Many leading environmentalists oppose SRM for opposite reasons: the realistic fear that fossil fuel producers will embrace SRM because rapidly lowered temperatures will allow them to claim that the climate crisis is over, and therefore there is no need to transition away from coal, gas and oil. To the extent that fossil fuel producers are interested in striking a grand bargain (through the IPCC, for example), it will take the form of supporting SRM and the development of green energy technologies in exchange for reducing efforts to decarbonize and pushing back net zero timelines. While I agree that prioritizing geoengineering research and deployment will require some degree of political compromise, all efforts need to be made to prevent fossil fuel producers from adding to the already deadly levels of GHG concentrations. It's much less dangerous and cheaper to keep carbon in the ground, than to try to draw it back down from the atmosphere. Don't forget that while SRM will be able to lower temperatures to safe levels, it will not stop the oceans from acidifying and killing off thousands of keystone species.
All suggestions for how we can approach fossil fuel interests will be appreciated! What should a grand bargain with them look like?
I've attached an article I wrote in 2016 on the issue: "A win-win
strategy for fossil-fuel producers and environmentalists".
Cheers,
Graeme
rob...@rtulip.net
Graeme
I consider the issues raised here about the tension between albedo and carbon as rival cooling levers to be the key strategic problem in climate policy.
You say “because decarbonization is our goal, no bargain can be struck that enables [fossil fuel industries] to continue polluting.” This is misconceived at two points.
Firstly, decarbonisation is only a means to the end of climate stability, not an end in itself. As David Spratt recently commented, only Holocene conditions are safe. If we just consider the narrow goal of a return toward Holocene conditions, it is far from clear what contribution decarbonisation should make, as a fast or slow factor. My view is that too much focus on emission reduction actually harms the climate, due to the opportunity cost of crowding out a focus on radiative forcing. From a global systems perspective, slowing the addition of new warming forcing is a small part of the overall picture, compared to the major heat drivers of past emissions and albedo decline. Decarbonising is also a goal in itself for several reasons that are separate from climate, such as health, justice and environment. However, it is important not to pretend that meeting these goals will necessarily advance climate goals. Indeed, tipping points would completely swamp these goals without action on albedo.
Secondly, to say no bargain can be struck ignores actual power relations. Of course a deal can be struck if two sides see it as reflecting mutual interests. As you explain in your paper, people are not prepared to accept lower standards of living or forgo coal, gas and oil revenues and benefits. And as Clive Elsworth noted, the argument from Mark Mills that energy transition is a delusion is compelling. There would be massive benefits in bringing energy industries to support planetary cooling. Agreeing to a slower pace of emission reduction is a price well worth paying in those negotiations. Rejecting such a bargain means agreeing to do nothing about extreme weather, sea level rise, climate induced biodiversity loss and systemic disruption. These are primary global moral questions where the emission reduction lobby is on the wrong side of history.
World security and prosperity depend on cheap hydrocarbons. Renewable energy does not decarbonise, but mainly just adds to fossil fuel use rather than cutting emissions. In this context, pretending that climate scientists and their allies could have the political power to cut fossil fuel use when these products have a ready market and overwhelming economic and cultural support is delusional. I suspect that Australians will regret the grand gestures of destroying coal fired power stations when the harm to grid stability becomes clear. Climate stability is actually in the interests of fossil fuel industries, considering the major economic disruptions of unchecked warming and the improved social licence that would emerge from investment in a brighter world.
In your 2016 paper that you shared, you rightly say “if we continue to burn coal, gas and oil the environmental consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” However, you do not discuss the potential for albedo increase to mitigate these catastrophic results. The albedo alternative is a topic that has received far too little attention. The broader context is that the climate crisis is real. Given that we can’t stop warming by decarbonising, we have to turn to the far more quick, safe, easy, cheap, moral and effective strategy - increasing albedo. Cutting new emissions can only have minimal impact on heat, so the focus has to shift to albedo as a far more tractable cooling lever.
I reject your view that the evidence is clear that to prevent dangerous climate change we must stop emissions. This is a rhetorical statement lacking empirical foundation and viability. The evidence is not clear. It is possible and necessary to prevent dangerous warming mainly by increasing albedo while emissions continue, and while new carbon conversion technologies emerge. As you note in your paper, new technologies could enable products to be made from fossil fuels without generating carbon dioxide and other pollutants. That could include converting all industrial emissions by photosynthesis. Eventual production of carbon based products on larger scale than total emissions would mean we can prevent dangerous climate change while emissions continue.
Your call to reframe action on climate change as a security threat is essential. My view is that this will require agreement that global cooperation to increase albedo should be decoupled from economic reform, abandoning the IPCC plea for rapid decarbonisation. Without this crucial point there is no prospect of major industries supporting this vision, since they see economic reform as a greater security threat than climate change. Then the question for policy activists becomes whether they see economic reform or climate stability as their primary goal.
I endorse your call for comprehensive plans to provide investors and researchers with clear strategic direction and certainty. My view is that a key to this is economic analysis of cooling return on investment, leading to the incorporation of carbon credits into a more coherent policy of radiative forcing credits.
Thanks again Graeme for engaging and for sharing your article.
Best Regards
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