Experts call for global moratorium on efforts to geoengineer climate | Geoengineering | The Guardian

[Daniel]

Hi all,

Here we go again...brace yourself: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/14/experts-call-for-global-moratorium-on-efforts-to-geoengineer-climate 

So let's just build our resilience and adapt instead of direct cooling interventions. Who needs to grow food crops anyway? And swimming's great exercise...and fire extinguishers are great for wildfires. There's ONLY 20 - 30 years of continued warming in the pipeline without SRM apparently :) 

Quotes from Mark Maslin and Myles Allen are particularly infuriating I think:

Mark Maslin describes the disruption of polar jetstream and weather patterns fuelled by Arctic Amplification,  but describes this disruption purely as a potential threat posed by SRM. 

Myles Allen says global warming can stop completely within two to three decades (with less warming than has occurred since the year 2000 over that period) just by a combination of carbon reduction and 'take-back obligations'!

Enjoy! 

 

[DV Henkel-Wallace]

I liked that the article both supported and opposed carbon dioxide removal.

-- 

David Henkel-Wallace

Blue Dot Change

dv...@bluedotchange.com

+1 650 269 4534

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[H simmens]



If anyone can bear to watch the Overshoot Commission discuss the report at its press conference at 10 AM EDT here’s a link:

The Guardian must be thrilled that cooling must be subject to a moratorium as they chose to quote only scientists as Daniel pointed out who oppose SRM. 

To be clear, they do support further research, but when the headline is advocacy for a moratorium, then the distinct impression left with the average reader is that SRM it is dangerous, and needs to be kept in a locked box. 

In the meantime, the chair of the commission was quoted as saying that it is not inevitable that the world will cross the 1.5° C as Zeke Hausfather yesterday projected a better than 50% chance that 2023 would have an average temperature increase in excess of 1.5° C. (recognizing that the IPCC apparently defines the temperature as an average of over 20 years.)

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Sep 14, 2023, at 7:23 AM, DV Henkel-Wallace <dv...@bluedotchange.com> wrote:

I liked that the article both supported and opposed carbon dioxide removal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/118D4777-F399-4373-9CEF-27530EC32703%40bluedotchange.com.

[Daniel]

Thanks Herb for the link to the press conference.

Also Barbara (from MEER) just kindly forwarded me the following link for anyone who wants to write a letter to the Guardian regarding their skewed coverage of this matter:

https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/jun/22/how-to-send-a-letter-to-the-guardian?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other


Kind regards,

Daniel

[H simmens]

Here’s the report issued today by the Climate Overshoot Commission 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Sep 14, 2023, at 9:54 AM, Daniel <dki...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

"We" have to adapt. "We," as in our tribe of folks that understand that we need to restore our climate very rapidly so as to eliminate tipping responses.  We must communicate that geoengineering is a last resort "in case emergency cooling is required." The folks that propagate these message of impending doom are not going to change as their responses are based on fear of the unknown and they are wildly afraid without the prospects of something that to them is even more alien that climate change.

As counterintuitive to us as it is, we must accept and support the legacy climate culture these folks are following, and then add to their list of woes with clever words that soothe their nightmares. Logic cannot persuade them. We cannot dismiss their feelings and beliefs. These emotionally based beliefs are the most powerful of any beliefs. Let them be and help assuage them by offering a bandaid for their fears - "research on geoengineering in case emergency cooling is needed."

This is how I changed the policy of the most conservative environmental group every known (to me at least), Sierra Club. The policy team I worked with and the unanimous position of Sierra Club before this policy team was, "Over our dead body - no geoengineering anything, including research." But, as the mayhem mounts, when the concept of geoengineering was addressed to the policy team as "in case emergency cooling is needed," they readily agreed to my great astonishment. Amongst ourselves, in our academic and development settings, we understand the mandate, but to get this emotionally overwhelming fear under control we have to throw them a bone. They need and want assurances that their greatest fear of runaway warming can be tamed. Research on geoengineering "in case emergency cooling is needed" tames these fears.

I mean, unless we simply ignore them and proceed upon a policy path where only votes of policy makers matter. This is how the IRA came to be, adapted from the Green New Deal. It was not a public referendum. The same thing will certainly happen with geoengineering - Biden already started it month before last with the White House message on SRM and MCB. But it does help the global psyche if folks understand the message of "in case emergency cooling is needed," and it does grease the skids and gives hope to those who have succumbed to the fear.

It has finally rained in Austin. Days at 100 degrees or greater stands at 78. At 105 or greater, 42 - beating the old record in 2011 of 26. The 90 day record of 100 or greater from 2011 stands.

B

This peach color is not tannin as we have not had a drop of rain since August 22, and only about a half inch all summer. I believe it is pollen, accumulated over at least the last 3 weeks, probably mostly the summer. It came a roof gutter under asphalt shingles, from a very light rain over tens of minutes, totaling about 0.05 inches. The August 22 event was a 30 second heavy rain event, about the same amount, but raindrop impact washed off lots of accumulated dust resulting in what looked like street runoff. (My original research was in stormwater runoff pollution treatment.)

August 22nd event

Peach water... More like peach beer when in the wild, away from its white bucket home.

Below is not fall color but drought-induced leaf drop. Autumn does not arrive with fall color in Austin until November. This is Zilker Park, the heart and soul of Austin. This should be a palette of green. We have no off-colored forest species in Austin outside of the early spring months. The elms drop their leaves in the fall during extreme drought, with no apparent harm - so far. The oaks and other larger trees may or may not recover and the same with the understory and shrubby species. Junipers do not recover once they turn. This drought impact to forests, in Central Texas at least, is as bad as it was in our new Drought of Record in 2011-2013.

Bruce Melton PE
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

[H simmens]

Bruce,

To those who support the formulation that direct climate cooling is only to be deployed as a last resort, I suggest that we operationalize that position by urging those institutions and entities like the Sierra Club - and more generally the world climate community -  to qualitatively and quantitatively define what conditions would need to be to qualify as last resort. 

Such an analysis should also have to follow the Gretzky rule - skate to where the puck will be, not where it is now - given the decade or more it will likely take to conduct the relevant research, testing, development and governance to be ready for deployment. 

Engaging in such an exercise in good faith will result in making explicit what are now largely poorly communicated consequences of remaining on our current existentially calamitous path. 

It’s far too late for Climate policymakers and scientists to continue to be throwing around such utterly vague terms like safe, dangerous and avoid the worst as justifications for (in)action. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Sep 14, 2023, at 11:12 AM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:



"We" have to adapt. "We," as in our tribe of folks that understand that we need to restore our climate very rapidly so as to eliminate tipping responses.  We must communicate that geoengineering is a last resort "in case emergency cooling is required." The folks that propagate these message of impending doom are not going to change as their responses are based on fear of the unknown and they are wildly afraid without the prospects of something that to them is even more alien that climate change.

As counterintuitive to us as it is, we must accept and support the legacy climate culture these folks are following, and then add to their list of woes with clever words that soothe their nightmares. Logic cannot persuade them. We cannot dismiss their feelings and beliefs. These emotionally based beliefs are the most powerful of any beliefs. Let them be and help assuage them by offering a bandaid for their fears - "research on geoengineering in case emergency cooling is needed."

This is how I changed the policy of the most conservative environmental group every known (to me at least), Sierra Club. The policy team I worked with and the unanimous position of Sierra Club before this policy team was, "Over our dead body - no geoengineering anything, including research." But, as the mayhem mounts, when the concept of geoengineering was addressed to the policy team as "in case emergency cooling is needed," they readily agreed to my great astonishment. Amongst ourselves, in our academic and development settings, we understand the mandate, but to get this emotionally overwhelming fear under control we have to throw them a bone. They need and want assurances that their greatest fear of runaway warming can be tamed. Research on geoengineering "in case emergency cooling is needed" tames these fears.

I mean, unless we simply ignore them and proceed upon a policy path where only votes of policy makers matter. This is how the IRA came to be, adapted from the Green New Deal. It was not a public referendum. The same thing will certainly happen with geoengineering - Biden already started it month before last with the White House message on SRM and MCB. But it does help the global psyche if folks understand the message of "in case emergency cooling is needed," and it does grease the skids and gives hope to those who have succumbed to the fear.

It has finally rained in Austin. Days at 100 degrees or greater stands at 78. At 105 or greater, 42 - beating the old record in 2011 of 26. The 90 day record of 100 or greater from 2011 stands.

B

This peach color is not tannin as we have not had a drop of rain since August 22, and only about a half inch all summer. I believe it is pollen, accumulated over at least the last 3 weeks, probably mostly the summer. It came a roof gutter under asphalt shingles, from a very light rain over tens of minutes, totaling about 0.05 inches. The August 22 event was a 30 second heavy rain event, about the same amount, but raindrop impact washed off lots of accumulated dust resulting in what looked like street runoff. (My original research was in stormwater runoff pollution treatment.)

August 22nd event

Peach water... More like peach beer when in the wild, away from its white bucket home.

Below is not fall color but drought-induced leaf drop. Autumn does not arrive with fall color in Austin until November. This is Zilker Park, the heart and soul of Austin. This should be a palette of green. We have no off-colored forest species in Austin outside of the early spring months. The elms drop their leaves in the fall during extreme drought, with no apparent harm - so far. The oaks and other larger trees may or may not recover and the same with the understory and shrubby species. Junipers do not recover once they turn. This drought impact to forests, in Central Texas at least, is as bad as it was in our new Drought of Record in 2011-2013.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/52374fb2-43dd-ee19-bc0e-7c274509147a%40earthlink.net.

[Michael MacCracken]

I'd argue also that there need to be people out front pulling them along into what the future really is, not get pulled back to the position that we are pulling them from, namely that mitigation only can do what is needed. All uniting behind some common view is not going to get the world to where it needs to be.

Mike

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/B166AAC7-E35E-4DBE-9666-552824A9CE69%40gmail.com.

[Dana Woods]

Not all the scientists quoted seem to have the same perspective , For the ones who are already against ever using SRM show them photos of a few 10s of 1000s of human and animal corpses ,
dead from heat and humidity all  around the world, in various stages of decomposition. (the pics of Austin vegetation would do it for me but I'm apparently an extremist doomer comapred to the

" normal " person

Explain what "wet bulb temperatures are, tell them how little more heat we can have added to the system before THEIR air conditioners stop working and THEY cook to death

Cheers, Dana

PS Bruce , whenever you post the page and all the following posts go outside the margins of my laptop (?)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/c4c23b72-54a8-4d06-6223-10315a5d5618%40comcast.net.

[rob...@rtulip.net]

I have sent this letter to The Guardian.

 

Your article Experts call for global moratorium on efforts to geoengineer climate (14 September) gives a distorted impression of the new report from the Climate Overshoot Commission.  In fact, the report advocates expanded research into the range of geoengineering methods proposed to cool the planet, while also recognising that none of these technologies are yet ready for field deployment.  Solar geoengineering is an essential adjunct to removing greenhouse gases.  Work in this emerging field requires extensive dialogue and cooperation to ensure proper attention to governance, transparency and scientific validation.  Such measured efforts are what the Overshoot Commission has called for.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

 

 

From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Daniel
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2023 11:55 PM
To: H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>
Cc: DV Henkel-Wallace <dv...@bluedotchange.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Experts call for global moratorium on efforts to geoengineer climate | Geoengineering | The Guardian

 

Thanks Herb for the link to the press conference.

 

Also Barbara (from MEER) just kindly forwarded me the following link for anyone who wants to write a letter to the Guardian regarding their skewed coverage of this matter:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/jun/22/how-to-send-a-letter-to-the-guardian?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other


Kind regards,

 

Daniel

 

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 12:39 H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com> wrote:



If anyone can bear to watch the Overshoot Commission discuss the report at its press conference at 10 AM EDT here’s a link:

 

Climate Overshoot Commission overshootcommission.org

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CADtjw38kYeUAv8s-EQs9WMnSbymk%2BjLf92Q1OC_hx8to3Yvycg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Oh - no! I am not suggesting that emergency cooling only be deployed as a last resort. It is very likely that we need to implement direct cooling alongside all other solutions. My point is one of psychology and how to gain acceptance of something that is to many, extremely frightening. The narrative of how the Club changed their position from "over our dead body" to "research..." shows how this psychological strategy is valid.

Accepting the fact that emergency cooling may be needed is step 1. Accepting the fact that this can only be accomplished with geoengineering; step 2. Accepting that research into geoengineering is required; step 3.

It is extremely useful that the Overshoot Report accepts that research is needed and this puts us three steps ahead of the masses.

I am working on the club. I was on a CCS policy team last spring where we accepted that CCS was needed (a very hard pill for the Club to support). A new team is forming to look at sequestration and CO2 pipelines, and I hope to advance the thinking of the strongest Club climate science resources further.

It is unfortunate that such dedicated advocates are so stubbornly addicted to their beliefs, but this is the way it is and the only thing that can effect change otherwise is as I stated previously: We do not need the support of everyone. We only need the votes of leaders - or simply the pen of a president, to implement needed solutions as Biden did with the SRM-MCB position paper last month.

-MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

[H simmens]

Hi Bruce,

I wasn’t suggesting that you support cooling only as a last resort. You’ve done heroic work to get the Sierra Club to acknowledge that there are situations that would justify the use of cooling. 

I was only arguing that the next logical step would be to ask those who do support cooling only on an emergency basis to define and describe quantitatively and qualitatively at what point the world would enter such an emergency situation. 

It’s hard for me to imagine a more important conversation than that one. 

Herb

Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com

On Sep 15, 2023, at 12:39 PM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:



[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

10.4 - gotcha Herb. Yes, quantifying is crucial. This sounds like an excellent conversation for this group. What is the threshold where we must implement geoengineering or direct cooling? Have we truly gone beyond? What can we say to folks like Sierra Club, (like most) that have just recently acknowledged that there may be more to climate mitigation other than decarbonization?

Seems like there are a few more steps in this conundrum. Most folks do not acknowledge the need for restoration and assume further warming is safe. This flies in the face of mandatory geoengineering now. Why would emergency cooling be required if it is safe to warm further to 1.5 C? How do we get beyond this legacy belief threshold?

The jump to supporting research on geoengineering is easy because it is a precautionary action that is vastly limited in scope relative to a "moratorium" on geoengineering. 

What is the "easy button" for this next step?

It seems one solution is tied to restoration. We must restore because tipping collapse responses are active and they do not self-restore unless the perturbation to the systems is removed (restoration to the Holocene, less than 1 C warming). This of course means 1.5 C and tipping becomes irreversible. Time frames are also critical and likely far sooner than the standard 2100 date. But, what pushes this concept over the edge like with "research on geoengineering in case emergency cooling is needed"?

And, I am off filming Sunday in the wee hours and will not be able to keep up with this thread for a couple of weeks. I will jump back in when we return.

-MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

[Dana Woods]

It's already half past the "last resort" people here seem to be ignorant of or in denial about the imminence of catastrophic Arctic and loss of clouds tipping points beyond which there's no return. Meanwhile as I've pointed out , while we sit and type in our climate controlled environments literally 100s of 1000s of people , and other animals  in hot humid climates with no ac are dying from that alone . Are they invisible to these scientists? I guess the standard for action is when white people under 60  in wealthy countries start dying en masse of heat and food shortages and/or  there  is collapse of the international trade so that no one has access to essential prescription medications, or will we be collateral damage also ? (when I don't I will personally be "pulling my (own) plug"

Arctic tipping points, according to people like Arctic expert and Oceanographic physicist Dr Peter Wadhams (in this group but silent to the group at large, probably because he has cognitive dissonance as well ) could happen AT ANY MINUTE (loss of Arctic Summer ice, release of enormous amount of sub-sea Methane , and the loss of Stratospheric decks when we have have ONE THIRD more CO2E in the atmosphere , raising the global temp by 8 degrees C (One reason why fossil fuel use MUST be stopped btw)  ...There wonlt be a world where all or almost the poor brown and black  people are dead heat and then we fix fhe climate and white westerners can repopulate their countries

.And we cannot come back from tipping points!! There's peer reviewed literature backing them all up - I say put that in the faces of "scientists" who don't even want SRM studied and stop acting like you or your own sources don't exist or  are inaccurate 

Again , the above article did not ask for a boycott on the STUDY of anything . There was ONE scientist quoted who wanted that

And the facts about the current horror in poor countries and about  about tipping points , with the info and science cited and sourced , should be put even more so directly  in the faces of politicians making decisions about whether to invest money in *studying"  SRM

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/A9E14C9D-9D3B-4836-8A02-62BE3EEAC8C5%40gmail.com.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Science and facts generally are not going to change opinions of "believers." Until millions or at least hundreds of thousands die from discrete events, facts will not help. Emotionally based beliefs are mostly immune to such lines of reasoning as fact. What changes opinion are personal impacts, authority figures, peers, and then facts, in that order.

To make a difference, we cannot just repeat facts. This has been shown over and over again to be a non-starter with emotionally-based beliefs.

What we need is some kind of logic that speaks to this sensible concept of "in case emergency cooling is needed."

But what is this sensible logic when considering and implementing a threshold for geoengineering?

And personally, I limit my participation in policy issues to spreading the word about global warming psychology on lists such as this, and working at the top on getting votes to support things like the IRA's IRS45Q enhancements. I have tried and tired for literally longer than anyone officially on the payroll - since 2005. It's a very time consuming challenge where time is much better spent in other ways in my opinion.

 !!! And our filmwork of course! Personal impacts are the single most important way to change hard-held beliefs. Filmwork of climate change impacts is second best to personal impacts because "seeing is believing." It is personal when one sees something with their own eyes. So, why don't images of climate catastrophes in the built environment carry more weight? They are weighty, but their reporting is often vague on cause, the old nemesis of ours "that we can't tell yet" is ever present, and then there is catastrophe fatigue. Even tens of thousands of deaths don't seem to move the needle much any more. This is why I say 100s of thousand or a million or more deaths in a discrete event is what it will take to change opinion.

--other than some clever and sensible concept like, "in case emergency cooling is needed."

-MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CAD7Z-DC_tANC%2BcpuzOXtTq5iwRzgUjABwW-fjoduCUnqpfd1hA%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Nissen]

Hi Bruce,

We had a good PRAG meeting on Monday.  The fear of SRM and particularly SAI needs to be dispelled.  It is huge among scientists who are working on the emissions reduction strategy.  We are always being told "by the experts" that SAI is extremely risky, and could have unexpected side effects.

One thing we discussed was having cooling intervention as a parallel strategy, to deal with the "damage" being caused by global warming and the potentially catastrophic "damage" which might come from continued global warming aggravated by tipping point processes.  The present strategy of net zero by 2050 at best lays open the possibility if not probability of an exponentially worse situation for the young people of today to suffer.  Jim Hansen has given us estimates of global warming and sea level rise "in the pipeline" as a result of the delay in reaching net zero.  The only way to avoid these catastrophes is through SRM.  But we can still support the emissions reduction strategy, as it is essential for the long-term sustainability of humanity on this planet.  We can support the existing net zero zealots!

The other way to reduce fear is to do a simple experiment.  For SAI it could be to produce a reflective haze around latitudes such as to produce a slight cooling effect where the heat domes are building up.  Last year there was a number 5 event, when there were five heat domes equally spaced around the planet at a certain range of latitudes.  The haze might initially appear as contrails but as it spread out, one might only be aware of it through sunsets.  I have proposed this experiment to Doug MacMartin and his response was that a lot of SO2 would need to be injected to produce a measurable cooling effect.  But that's not the point: the point would be to demonstrate that SAI could be used without any great risk to anyone, with the potential to have great benefit to huge numbers of people if scaled up.

The deployment could be by a single country, such as the US, wishing to protect its citizens from temperature extremes.  This can be justified by Article 3 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, where paragraph 3 says that lack of scientific certainty should not be a justification for withholding action to protect citizens.  Since the action by one country would benefit other countries, there should not be a problem of governance.

Cheers, John

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/35e2ec34-7f1d-6b67-0951-7b1093749844%40earthlink.net.

[Dana Woods]

John ,

Not to keep the circular conversation going but , as you know, I don't exactly agree,.The fear of TESTING MCB AND SAI DEFINITELY needs to be dispelled. THAT is  something everyone or almost everyone in this group and larger conversation (which I have as much or more respect for) agrees on, Even SAI developer Doug McMartin has said in this group that he  thinks it's inappropriate for you to present SAi as "safe"

I Am *very* glad/thankful you are focussed on getting them studied , if you are

And  the study needs to be as aggressive and expedited as possible, while people,  meanwhile, continue to talk about the social implications and possible social dangers that could lead to physical dangers (though I would hope in less lengthy paragraphs than some of what's been posted here, but that's me) .

One other thing is for sure too : People don't need to and should not purposefully be given misinformation and if they are given that they'll be WAY more mistrusting next time around  (eg "we know that spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere regionally is likely not like to ham other regions of the globe" ) Or , worse, will not do so , unless and until that is somehow proven .

And ,by the way , everyone , when I use the word SRM I personally am including MEER or some kind of use of mirrors to create albedo. At this point I personally need to know more about MEER that's already known and more about SAI that may already be know personally and will strat to do so soon

As I keep screaming I think the Arctic tipping points are imminent and that what's already happening to people and other living things is WAY beyond unacceptable but possibly creating one kind of Hell to replace another one doesn't do much for me either

SAI and MCB and MEER should have been in the field testing stage five years ago ,

Regards, Dana

Regards, Dana

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 6:23 PM Dana Woods <oceans...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oye Vey . Around and around in circles the conversation goes....

Why is this guy the Chair anyway?

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 5:21 PM
Subject: Re: [prag] Experts call for global moratorium on efforts to geoengineer climate | Geoengineering | The Guardian

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CACS_FxoXaCN8ox4FC87Hxks4UnRj3qvby6CyLCdUdPPcVg1OcQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Hi John and all.

Net zero in the common climate culture is a non sequitur to the climate solutions discussion where it is used as a lever to advance emissions eliminations. There is no science that says we must reduce emissions, this is what the scenarios say. The science says we must return forcing to Holocene levels. Emissions eliminations cannot do this in time frames that matter to tipping collapses.

My work documenting Earth system collapses becomes more profound every year. Feedback emissions from Earth systems collapses have begun and will grow far greater than humankind's with no additional warming because once begun, collapses do not stabilize unless their systems boundary conditions are restored before the point of no return.

Emergency cooling is very likely indicated, but as you say, the fear is great. Unfounded or not, it exists. By using the strategic discussion of "geoengineering research is needed in case emergency cooling is required", we can short-circuit this fear and advance deeper thought on geoengineering strategies. This doesn't mean our efforts for emergency cooling are belayed. Prudent engineering addresses the lead up to action where planning and funding sources move ahead in an emergency, while some of the implementation is still being thought out.

Long-term sustainability is what has gotten us into the mess we are in. There have been some successes, but mostly not and delay rules. Like carbon emissions regulations, there are no (few) incentives to sustain. As long as there are no rules, sustainability --like decarbonization-- will not happen in time frames that matter.

An emergency requires we act with the tools at hand. The sustainability challenge must be disconnected from the emergency as further delay is untenable.

MeltOn

This year's summer filming logs are below. Please like, follow and share  - this is how we get posts to show in more feeds and increase awareness.

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Bruce Melton PE
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

[John Nissen]

Hi Bruce,

You say:

Emergency cooling is very likely indicated, but as you say, the fear is great. Unfounded or not, it exists. By using the strategic discussion of "geoengineering research is needed in case emergency cooling is required", we can short-circuit this fear and advance deeper thought on geoengineering strategies. This doesn't mean our efforts for emergency cooling are belayed. Prudent engineering addresses the lead up to action where planning and funding sources move ahead in an emergency, while some of the implementation is still being thought out.

Emergency cooling is required, but the conventional emissions reduction strategy is getting in the way.

The solution I propose is to have parallel projects: one focussing on cooling interventions to bring down temperatures in the Arctic and elsewhere starting ASAP; and one expanding the existing emissions reduction project to include measures to bring down the level of GHGs to a safe level within 50 years, i.e. within the lifetime of the young people of today.

The projects can essentially run independently but be mutually supportive when appropriate. There is no need to change a paradigm, as some have argued, but instead bring in a separate paradigm based on temperature.  In this way there is no need to rubbish the current emissions-based strategists and their net zero project.

I've made this split into parallel projects explicit in my manifestor for the "Albedo enhancement union" which Wouter is setting up. See thread "Plan B explained". I've attached a clean version, i.e. without the mark-up.

SAI now appears to be the only quick and sure way to refreeze the Arctic.  The fear of SAI has to be addressed; see my comments on the Scientific American article on the geoengineering "gamble".

Cheers, John

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

'Sup John and all,

Net zero and future emissions elimination cannot change our future because tipping systems have activated and they do not self-stabilize unless current warming is removed before the point of no return. Elimination of future emissions does not remove current warming in time frames that matter.

The solution I propose is to have parallel projects: one focussing on cooling interventions to bring down temperatures in the Arctic and elsewhere starting ASAP; and one expanding the existing emissions reduction project to include measures to bring down the level of GHGs to a safe level within 50 years, i.e. within the lifetime of the young people of today.

It's likely that 50 years will see passing the irreversible tipping point of no return in many systems as per IPCC, and IPCC is quite understated when it comes to effects.

I agree on emergency cooling with geoengineering, but there is a steep trail here with acceptance on many levels and prudent emergency management says we must act with the tools at hand to save lives. And of course, we must do everything all at once. Emergency cooling is the lead time item but there are even more risks of maintaining geoengineering for long periods rather than just the challenges faced right now of fear from lack of robust understanding. This is why we need to do everything all at once that includes CDR with the tools at hand that can be scaled rapidly, vs. new tech.

Why are the three 100-year old mature CDR process not included in the manifesto (cryseparation, lime-potash and amines)? These processes have over 200, 1 million ton per year units committed right now under the IRA's, IRS 45Q cash pay. They are widespread in industry and individual components are even more widespread with known scaling factors. Because of this widespread nature in industry, the time to completion on these units is far faster than other CDR strategies that are actually nascent.

There is a strong line in a critical path where actions that do not significantly contribute to the project goal are defocused. In addition, net zero emissions accumulated by mid-century are on the order of about 250 Gt CO2, whereas mandatory restoration CDR is more like 1,250 Gt CO2.  What this means is that today we must scale our existing kiloton CDR processes by 100,000 percent to be able to remove 1,250 Gt in 20 years (by mid-century) to prevent tipping completion. Scaling this CDR infrastructure another 20 percent to address future emissions is a simple task. 

Below is my latest favorite discussion starter on the suitability of existing CDR processes to address accumulated climate pollution:

We Can Reverse Climate Change Because of Beer

Cryoseparation of air… Carl Linde was a Nobel Prize Winner in 1913 for his refrigeration invention and advancements in the science of distillation of the constituent components of air (cryoseparation). Linde began working on his ice machine in the early 1870s. In 1879, Carl Linde gave up his professorship at the Technical University of Munich to found "Linde's Ice Machine Company." This company made possible one of the greatest developments of the human culture of all time – summer beer. Historically, summer beer was contaminated by different warm tolerant bacteria that fouled the beer. Because of this contamination, Bavaria banned the warm season brewing of beer. Linde's ice machine made summer beer possible and he had sold 747 of his machines by 1890. In 1892 Guinness Brewing contracted with Linde to build a carbon dioxide liquefaction plant to sell their fermentation waste CO2 as an industrial chemical. Linde accomplished this contract by doubling his refrigeration process to get pressures high enough and temperatures low enough to liquefy air, from which he separated the CO2 through distillation. Linde then focused his company on very low temperature refrigeration and the liquefaction of gases from air. Today, the Linde Group (Air Products) is a leading global industrial gases and engineering company with 2022 sales of $33 billion. In 1897 Linde was knighted as Ritter von Linde for his achievements in Bavarian brewing technology and refrigeration.

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CACS_FxrM2ki0Sf%2BrNyKQOA3izUvOxi4moKJHOOFMs1vz6SryQg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

'Sup John and all,

Net zero and future emissions elimination cannot change our future because tipping systems have activated and they do not self-stabilize unless current warming is removed before the point of no return. Elimination of future emissions does not remove current warming in time frames that matter.

The solution I propose is to have parallel projects: one focussing on cooling interventions to bring down temperatures in the Arctic and elsewhere starting ASAP; and one expanding the existing emissions reduction project to include measures to bring down the level of GHGs to a safe level within 50 years, i.e. within the lifetime of the young people of today.

It's likely that 50 years will see passing the irreversible tipping point of no return in many systems as per IPCC, and IPCC is quite understated when it comes to effects.

I agree on emergency cooling with geoengineering, but there is a steep trail here with acceptance on many levels and prudent emergency management says we must act with the tools at hand to save lives. And of course, we must do everything all at once. Emergency cooling is the lead time item but there are even more risks of maintaining geoengineering for long periods rather than just the challenges faced right now of fear from lack of robust understanding. This is why we need to do everything all at once that includes CDR with the tools at hand that can be scaled rapidly, vs. new tech.

Why are the three 100-year old mature CDR process not included in the manifesto (cryseparation, lime-potash and amines)? These processes have over 200, 1 million ton per year units committed right now under the IRA's, IRS 45Q cash pay. They are widespread in industry and individual components are even more widespread with known scaling factors. Because of this widespread nature in industry, the time to completion on these units is far faster than other CDR strategies that are actually nascent.

There is a strong line in a critical path where actions that do not significantly contribute to the project goal are defocused. In addition, net zero emissions accumulated by mid-century are on the order of about 250 Gt CO2, whereas mandatory restoration CDR is more like 1,250 Gt CO2.  What this means is that today we must scale our existing kiloton CDR processes by 100,000 percent to be able to remove 1,250 Gt in 20 years (by mid-century) to prevent tipping completion. Scaling this CDR infrastructure another 20 percent to address future emissions is a simple task. 

Below is my latest favorite discussion starter on the suitability of existing CDR processes to address accumulated climate pollution:

We Can Reverse Climate Change Because of Beer

Cryoseparation of air… Carl Linde was a Nobel Prize Winner in 1913 for his refrigeration invention and advancements in the science of distillation of the constituent components of air (cryoseparation). Linde began working on his ice machine in the early 1870s. In 1879, Carl Linde gave up his professorship at the Technical University of Munich to found "Linde's Ice Machine Company." This company made possible one of the greatest developments of the human culture of all time – summer beer. Historically, summer beer was contaminated by different warm tolerant bacteria that fouled the beer. Because of this contamination, Bavaria banned the warm season brewing of beer. Linde's ice machine made summer beer possible and he had sold 747 of his machines by 1890. In 1892 Guinness Brewing contracted with Linde to build a carbon dioxide liquefaction plant to sell their fermentation waste CO2 as an industrial chemical. Linde accomplished this contract by doubling his refrigeration process to get pressures high enough and temperatures low enough to liquefy air, from which he separated the CO2 through distillation. Linde then focused his company on very low temperature refrigeration and the liquefaction of gases from air. Today, the Linde Group (Air Products) is a leading global industrial gases and engineering company with 2022 sales of $33 billion. In 1897 Linde was knighted as Ritter von Linde for his achievements in Bavarian brewing technology and refrigeration.

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CACS_FxrM2ki0Sf%2BrNyKQOA3izUvOxi4moKJHOOFMs1vz6SryQg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Terence Harvey]

It is still too early to dismiss SAI, Let's give it the research it deserves., all options should be on the table, Full steam ahead 

Research, research, research

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/bb4862e1-e34a-4afb-a724-367d0d4293ca%40earthlink.net.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

This is why I convinced Sierra Club to change their position on geoengineering from "over our dead body" for anything geoengineering including research, to "Sierra Club supports research into geoengineering in case emergency cooling is needed."

Critically though is the critical path. It's an emergency and any emergency says to act immediately with the tools at hand to save lives. This means moving forward with emissions controls\ but primarily, immediately building a carbon removal infrastructure and doing that critical research in geoengineering, "in case emergency cooling is needed"...  which of course it is needed.

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

[John Nissen]

Hi Bruce,

All the tipping points I know are based on, or related to, temperature.  Temperature is more of a threat to corals than CO2-related ocean acidification; their decline started when 0.5C was reached.  This is why I think that cooling intervention is so vital and urgent.  The most critical tipping processes are in the Arctic; it is particularly urgent to lower the temperatures there.  Refreezing the Arctic is necessary for the recovery of the Arctic ecosystem and renormalisation of jet stream behaviour.

CDR is of much less urgency, but can and should proceed in parallel with cooling. I'm all for investigating some of the neglected means of CO2 removal.  However I'm not sure about the efficiency of cryoseparation as a CDR method, whereas I'm confident about biochar which does the sequestration as well as drawdown with tangible benefits for soil quality and crop yields.

Cheers, John

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/bb4862e1-e34a-4afb-a724-367d0d4293ca%40earthlink.net.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

John,

Industry has told us that the three mature, 100-year old air capture processes are indeed viable, as they are investing hundreds of $billions to capitalize on the IRA's IRS 45Q enhancements. No further understanding of these processes is needed by advocates. It's happening. Over 200, 1 million ton per year units have been committed by 2035.

And yes, emergency cooling should move forward immediately, but how fast can we overcome the fear and lack of robustness of these strategies in the eyes of governing bodies and consensus science organizations upon which policy is based? Obviously as our Earth systems collapses become worse and worse, without even further warming, a tipping threshold in policy and motivation will arise. But what about critical path theory as it applies to emergency response?

Do we belay air capture because of perception created by reticent consensus science reporting? Or do we do as enlightened leaders have decreed via the IRA's bottomless air capture pay -- as industry is now so widely committed? Do we continue to sit idly by while geoengineering gains acceptance, while Earth systems collapses move towards the point of no return? Or do we do what we normally do as a society in any emergency and respond with the tools at hand to save lives?

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

[John Nissen]

Hi Bruce,

How do you change minds?  What facts have changed?  What is the new reality?  Answer: We now clearly have dangerous climate change: it's not imminent, it's here.  And it's going to get a lot worse over the next few years.  So we should now have the means to change minds on solar geoengineering.

In a seminal paper [1], Matthews and Caldeira considered solar geoengineering and argued as follows:

We find that the climate system responds quickly to artificially reduced insolation; hence, there may be little cost to delaying the deployment of geoengineering strategies until such a time as “dangerous” climate change is imminent.

They are clearly referring to stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI).  The time has come for deployment, since dangerous climate change is upon us, and threatens to become irreversible unless cooling is applied promptly, starting with the Arctic because of the tipping points there.  Through experimental injection at around 50N, we should be able to show that SAI can be deployed remarkably safely: firstly for reducing the extremes of heat caused by a sticking jet stream and subsequently for refreezing the Arctic.

We can discuss this tomorrow at the PRAG meeting at the usual time: 9 pm in the UK.

Cheers, John

[1] Matthews and Caldeira (PNAS 2007)

Transient climate-carbon simulations of planetary engineering

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0700419104

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Changing beliefs...

I see you going in two different directions John: trying to convince Me (or our other readers) that geoengineering is now required, and the direction your three initial questions lead (How do you change minds?  What facts have changed?  What is the new reality?), which is basically the mission of my nonprofit.

The mission of my nonprofit is to understand why our culture does not trust climate scientists when we trust almost all other climate scientists implicitly. Based on this understanding, the path towards greater climate change awareness lies through emotionally based outreach (right brain learning to some), not traditional analytical based learning (left brain learning to others).

The first direction; I believe almost all on this list are onboard with the need for emergency cooling. The methods - meh...  This is one of the principle reasons for this list (and many like it), to discuss these methods in a scholarly way and seed further thought. The second direction is the one we all struggle with - "how in the world do we get the message across that we are all toast already because of warming effects currently in motion, that result in untenable scenarios with massive natural feedback emission that dwarf humankind's, unless we restore our climate before the point of no return?"

In the '90s and early 2000s, there was an increase in climate awareness that has been stalled completely ever since. Why did this happen? This was the beginning of the Climate Change Counter Movement (CCCM). George Dubya was one of its primary principals. He promised carbon cap and trade in his platform and two weeks after inauguration in 2001 reneged and decimated early US carbon regulations. Why did this change happen? For a decade, the fossil fuel industrial complex (FFIX) was onboard with emissions limitations, just as they have been onboard with pollutant limiting regulations since the 1970s. I believe the roots of the CCCM were in Reaganomics, but it was a decade before the trickle up philosophy blended with the understanding that the FFIX was big enough, wealthy enough, and influential enough to resist. 

It was during this period that our climate change culture became locked in with a fossil fuel elimination psychology through a systematic program of sustainability strategies that would make our global culture independent of fossil fuels, create agriculture that somehow sequestered more carbon than it emitted, and do away with deforestation. What was missing was simply treating climate pollution like we have treated pollution since its discovery: by treating it so we can be safe.

The combination of this altruistic sustainability quest remains as the mechanism that could so easily result in the demise of modern human culture. The question now is how do we use current knowledge to overcome this momentum of ignorance?

It is quite widespread in the literature that science alone cannot overcome widespread, long-held beliefs. What can overcome these entrenched beliefs is emotionally-based outreach centered on personal experience, authority figures, images and narrative, roughly in that order.

Our outreach should cater to this list  -- how do we do this? 

Personal Experience... This is the most powerful form of awareness. We need to have outreach ready to launch to our outlets for those times when climate catastrophe strikes. Personal outreach also means viewing of catastrophe on the television and in other media. Outreach supplied during these times has a greater opportunity to break through norms and create deep thinking.

Authority Figures... We trust authority figures. This is how the radical right has risen even though their counsel is so very often considered to be wildly dangerous most scholars. We aren't likely to change the opinions of radical right leaders, but we have many other sources of authority figures to work with. Our screen and music celebrities are the greatest resource we have as so many of them are already active in environmental and social causes. From Jane Fonda to Taylor Swift (ohmygosh!), to Leonardo DeCaprio and Sean Penn, these and those like them are our targets.  What they say can be multiplied thousand and million fold. Other lesser authority figures work as well, just not as well.

Images and Narrative... Images alone can make a difference, but when paired with personal experience and authority figures, images and narrative tell the story; the story that is delivered by personal experience (and) or authority figures. Narrative is the tool we use on this list, and the tool traditionally used by analytical science learning. When narrative is combined with images, seeing is believing becomes emotionally based learning. It is important to understand that an analytical narrative is often not a very good learning tool, at least not with the baggage of our climate culture. Traditional narrative needs to be spiced up with tales from the effects of climate change, or tales from the hunt and the performance of the science. Even the bios of scientists or reporters works or mundane relation of blisters on the trail, camp food, interminable airport delays, or equipment failure catastrophes. The goal is to blunt the shear force of dismay with facts about our current climate peril. To much fear and the reader/viewer or listener is lost. One of the most important failures of climate science outreach is that it has not been delivered like anti-climate science outreach with an emphasis on emotional strategies. The fear, doubt, denial and delay propagated by the CCCM is the perfect example of what to do with climate science learning. It has completely destroyed not only climate science awareness, but many other aspects of our culture's trust with scientists. To regain control of awareness, we need to practice what the CCCM practices, and deliver climate science education with emotional-based strategies that are far more effective than the way science has always been learned.

Postscript...

I believe there are about a dozen priority items on our climate awareness list and the Arctic is only one of them. These items are our Earth systems that are now actively in collapse. Most of these are capable of themselves creating natural feedback emissions that dwarf humankind's. About half have feedbacks that increase the speed and intensity of others' activated tipping collapses. The Arctic is one of this half that have dynamic relationships with other tipping collapse systems, but just one. Forests are immensely important to our world with dynamic relationships and teleconnections that rival or surpass those of the Arctic, and they too are in collapse. Ever year I spend several weeks-long periods documenting impacts of climate change effects on forests from insects, water stress and fire across North America. Every year impacts are nonlinearly worse. Part of the solution is emergency cooling, but we cannot implement emergency cooling rapidly enough with our current global appreciation of geoengineering. This will take time. The emergency response critical path I speak of needs to be addressed. We need to do what we can with the tools at hand to address the emergency. Waiting on the global psyche to be ready for geoengineering is like waiting on the global psyche to embrace the failed sustainability strategies we have been attempting for thirty years to address climate pollution, and for 30 years before that to address resource depletion and anthropogenic degradation of ecologies.

The big picture must be addressed, not just a piece of it. And, we must understand the limits of our legacy policy to change the course of activated tipping collapses. This understanding is required so that we do not waste precious resources with actions that cannot change the fate of humanity. The primary mission now is to get a restoration goal accepted by our climate culture. Until this goal is set, the future will be one of further warming to 1.5 C, which of course, will not turn out well. 

Laying out the other parts of the critical path is important too, but if we get too deep into these other parts before a restoration goal is accepted, the other parts work against the primary goal of setting a restoration target. This does not mean that scholarly work on strategies and planning does not continue with the utmost urgency, it means that there are repercussions to the concepts we present. Geoengineering is the worst because of preconceived notions.

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CACS_FxoG%2BtVn%3D4E%2B7OK9Pv1J%2B_ykLB1iH7%2BfLDWbosROT9Piqg%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Nissen]

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your thoughtful contribution. I take most of your points.  But one of them is a council of despair:

Waiting on the global psyche to be ready for geoengineering is like waiting on the global psyche to embrace the failed sustainability strategies we have been attempting for thirty years to address climate pollution, and for 30 years before that to address resource depletion and anthropogenic degradation of ecologies.

We need some trial of SAI to show that it is not the fearful thing that people dread. But we need not only reassurance about SAI but urgency for its deployment.  You say:

Too much fear and the reader/viewer or listener is lost.

But not scaring people with the current situation is hard to achieve when you are arguing for urgent/emergency action.  The battle is between fear for the future and fear for intervention; we need the balance to tip away from fear for intervention, based on rational thinking.

Cheers, John

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/896663da-86cc-454b-8430-20370e9aed4a%40earthlink.net.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

I feel your pain John. I have been in very similar pain since I started the nonprofit in 2005.

What I have developed as an outreach strategy comes directly from the global warming psychology as the mechanisms to overcome the fear, delay, and denial. Limiting fear-inducing words helps, showing images helps but images of impacts to the built environment are pretty mean and require extra effort to keep from creating fear. My work on the Camp Fire in Paradise CA in 2018, where 14,000 homes burned in 6 hours - that's a tough one. But we must limit the frightening aspects or we only feed into the fear that creates the denial and delay. When one has to use impacts to the built environment in their outreach, I find this concept useful: Climate change-caused fire is a horrendous thing to the built environment as fire is horrendous in any circumstance; but in fire there is rebirth.

Hansen uses the good news strategy in his 2008, "Target Atmospheric CO2, where should humanity aim?" (This is the work where Hansen developed the 350 ppm CO2 target.) What Hansen says is, "Paleoclimate evidence and ongoing global changes imply that today’s CO2, about 385 ppm, is already too high to maintain the climate to which humanity, wildlife, and the rest of the biosphere are adapted. Realization that we must reduce the current CO2 amount [  to 350 ppm or below] has a bright side: effects that had begun to seem inevitable, including impacts of ocean acidification, loss of fresh water supplies, and shifting of climatic zones, may be averted."

There is lots and lots of good news, we just need to remember to start including these things in our outreach and cite them often. This is how we keep folks attention and prevent them from clicking on the next article that doesn't scare them so badly.

One of my recent favorites... Climate restoration means not only cooling our atmosphere, but cooling our oceans too. This will happen faster than we warmed them because of negative feedbacks (evaporation and ocean heat burial) that increases the rate of cooling. These two things are also responsible for the fact that our oceans temperature lags atmospheric temperature. When we restore our climate then, and restore our oceans' temperature or at least the upper- and upper mid-oceans that are the easiest and fastest to cool, we actually can regain some of the sea level rise we have experienced because about half of sea level rise has been caused by expansion of warming waters. Cool those waters and we get some of the rise in sea level back.

Effective outreach does not just get the facts of something across in plain and accurate grammar. It compels the reader/viewer or listener to think deeply, and not abandon the content because it is boring or frightening. This is why storytelling is so important. The stories take one's mind off of the menacing facts being presented and momentarily give the brain a rest from all the stress. All these strategies allow the mind to be less cluttered. Fear is a really big clutterer of the mind.

So with your example of needing a trial of SAI to show... Outreach can encourage folks to accept that, yes we do need trials of SAI and other geoengineering strategies. The work that Keith has done on calcite instead of sulfate is promising and has good news in it. Yes there has been subsequent work that shows calcite might not be quite as good as Keith's earliest work, but the good news remains: calcite likely does not nuke stratospheric ozone whereas sulfate likely does. Add to this the reality that the Antarctic ozone hole is nowhere near healed, and actually could go either way - a thing that is not common in popular press but looking at antarctic ozone concentrations and ozone holes size it is obvious; therefore a strategy that both provides direct emergency cooling AND enhances antarctic stratospheric ozone is a really good thing.

The good news tempers the frightening facts. All we have to do is deliver both at the same time.

And as a last resort, we can just get Taylor Swift to deliver our outreach! Ohmygosh!

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
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

[daleanne bourjaily]

Dear all, 

While people may not take science seriously one of the few remaining scientific institutions with high public trust is the national weather service. In the Netherlands that is the KNMI. 

That institution, citing cumulative factors such as the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the accelerated release of methane etc. has chosen the worst case scenario in its 2050 vision paper. In reaction, water lords and their institutions are discussing flooding of large population centers, removal of vital infrastructure to higher ground, giving back land, removing the Westerschelde flood gates to save what can be saved and sacrificing whole villages and farmland.

This in turn is fueling a lively debate in parliament and in the media which seem to be coming on board.   As the message sinks in I think the politicians will be more open to financing SRM research and establishing a governance center for field trials.

May I suggest you all approach the Meteo in your own countries to see what their 2050 scenarios look like.  They could open a door to public understanding.

Best,

Dale Anne

Op di 10 okt. 2023 02:15 schreef Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>:

[John Nissen]

 

Hi Bruce,

 

You are right that fear breeds denial and delay.  This is what we have seen with climate change; but now we need realism and speed of response.  Dangerous climate change is now the reality.  We can’t get speed from net zero, which will take decades.  The only speed we can get is from rapid cooling intervention and the most powerful and fastest to deploy is SAI.

 

A distinguished expert on such intervention, Ken Caldeira wrote in a 2006 paper that delay in deployment was acceptable until dangerous climate change was imminent, since the cooling could be affected very quickly.  But now that dangerous climate change is upon us we find that there is a barrier of fear around the very intervention which could save the day.  This fear needs to be dispelled by simple experimentation to determine whether SAI could be deployed safely or not.  Climate models suggest that injection in the region between 45N and 65N would limit the lifetime of the SO2 to a few months, so the experiment could be quickly halted if there were signs of calamitous effects. Recent research on sub-polar deployment suggests there would be no calamities, even if injection in this region were ramped up sufficiently to start refreezing the Arctic.  Thus SAI has the potential to reverse the trend towards extreme events caused by a sticking jet stream.  By refreezing the Arctic several other tipping processes would be halted, thus forestalling other dangerous trends.  Together with decarbonisation, this can be the first of a number of interventions to return the planet to a safe, sustainable, biodiverse and productive state.

 

I don’t know how much of this I can get into my letter to the Guardian, which was discussed at the PRAG meeting yesterday.

 

Cheers, John

P.S. Thanks for your ideas, Dale Anne.  I will follow them up after I've got my letter to the Guardian sorted.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Dale Anne,

Good to know about KNMI. The US National Weather Service is agnostic on climate change longer than their seasonal outlook. Our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) however, has a pretty aggressive take on sea level rise that is some double to triple IPCC. But, a further warming target is ubiquitous in the States and little heed is given to NOAA's sea level rise projections.

What is the position of the KNMI on restoration vs a further warming 1.5 C target?

Cheers,

B

Bruce Melton PE
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
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[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

John and all,

Public letters and or letters to the editor (LTEs) are extremely important in global warming psychology. They are letters to us from us, our peers. Our peers are deemed authority figures by the psychology. LTEs are the pivotal action of Citizen's Climate Lobby not only because of the outsized influence they have on the public, but elected officials read them to better understand their constituents. This group has an extremely well developed psychology for delivering meaningful outreach. It includes not only hope, but delivery of good news. See CCL's LTE training here.  The Austin American Statesman probably publishes one or two LTEs on climate every week. Probably 95 percent of these are from the local Third Coast CCL Group's LTE campaign.

One thing to remember about emergency restoration cooling is that it delivers the same exact effect on impacts as does atmospheric removal (with the exception of permanence and risk of cessation of course), whereas a further warming target increases extremes nonlinearly. Emergency restoration cooling can be delivered in single digit years, whereas removal will take over a decade and 1.5 C is further warming.  Direct cooling will still take time to cool our oceans and belay many of the extremes we are experiencing, but there is no difference in direct cooling and cooling through atmospheric removal besides the aforementioned. Cooling is cooling. The effects we see in the literature that show direct cooling does not affect extremes or effects global weather patterns adversely, are an artifact of this great warming experiment we have carried out. Of course there will be some effects lingering, or even worsening, when we first cool our atmosphere whether it be from geoengineering or atmospheric removal. These strategies both cause the temperature differential between the atmosphere and oceans to increase if carried out in short enough time frames that matter. This increased temperature differential is responsible for the further changes in weather patters or extremes. But the duration of these different and possibly even more extreme extremes or patterns is short, relative to further warming scenarios.

Oceans both heat and cool with a lag. This lag with geoengineering creates dynamics that are not present in today's warmed world but appear when we cool because of the atmospheric/ocean temperature differential. This is what the models are showing but what they don't show is what happens when both the oceans and atmosphere cool back to the Holocene, which is restoration. There will of course be some hangover with some systems. All sea level rise cannot be restored but some can, vs our current beliefs that sea level rise is locked in and will only increase (of course it only increases with our current further warming target). Collapsing biological systems will take generations to regenerate, but most of them will regenerate. There is lots of good news. It needs to be communicated along with the bad to soften the cycle of bad news and fear.

When the oceans cool, our climate is restored. Impacts are not locked in, we can go back. These are all good news. I have just mentioned at least half dozen or more pieces of good news that the public is either unaware of or has different ideas about because of the way scenarios and modeling works and the poor outreach provided by popular media that knows no better. This information is vital to helping expedite folks getting over their fear of geoengineering.

MeltOn

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Hi Daleanne

 

The Netherlands situation shows the urgency of rebrightening the planet to mitigate sea level rise.  Any delay is culpable, given the expected loss of productive land.

 

We would like help to get an engineer to work with Stephen Salter in Edinburgh, to ensure his vast understanding of marine cloud brightening is properly understood and conveyed.

 

Refreeze the Arctic Foundation and other sympathetic groups could add to the generous support given to Cambridge for MCB by funding the review and construction of Stephen’s wind tunnel aerosol testing design at his workshop in Edinburgh.

 

Thanks

 

Robert Tulip

https://rebrighten.org/

 

From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of daleanne bourjaily
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2023 7:35 PM
To: Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>
Cc: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] Experts call for global moratorium on efforts to geoengineer climate | Geoengineering | The Guardian

 

Dear all, 

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