FW: About 'Climate Hope, Doom, Duty'

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rob...@rtulip.net

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Mar 8, 2026, 9:57:06 PM (3 days ago) Mar 8

to healthy-planet-action-coalition, Planetary Restoration

People may have seen recent charts produced by Professor Eliot Jacobson detailing primary data of planetary heating, including polar melt and albedo loss.

Eliot and I had the opportunity to meet two days ago, together with Metta Spencer, to discuss these issues and their implications for hope, doom and duty.

It was a fascinating and profound conversation. I hope you can watch it and share your comments.

Summary is below. You can watch the whole video here: https://projectsavetheworld.substack.com/p/episode-753-climate-hope-doom-duty

Regards

Robert Tulip

From: Project Save the World from Project Save the World's Substack <projectsa...@substack.com>
Sent: Monday, 9 March 2026 7:02 AM
To: rob...@rtulip.net
Subject: About 'Climate Hope, Doom, Duty'

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About 'Climate Hope, Doom, Duty'

Eliot Jacobson thinks the real challenge is to save nature, not human civilization, for we humans are not a uniquely wonderful species. Robert Tulip disagrees, favoring hope as a spiritual asset.

Project Save the World Mar 8 ∙

Quiz

In a recent digital roundtable that spanned the globe—from the Toronto computers of Project Save the World to the Australian base of Robert Tulip, and finally to the tropical backdrop of a former mathematics professor named Eliot Jacobson—a chilling conversation unfolded. It was not the standard environmental discourse we have grown accustomed to, filled with bright promises of green energy and unified global action. Instead, it was a stark, data-driven look into the abyss of climate change, the terrifying mathematics of Earth’s declining reflectivity, and a controversial critique of the very concept of “hope.”

In Gambling, Hope is How to Lose

Eliot Jacobson is not your typical climate commentator. With a fifteen-year tenure as a mathematics professor followed by a decade in computer science, Jacobson brings a cold, calculating eye to global warming. He has also written extensively on casino gambling, a background that perfectly equips him to understand the high-stakes wagers humanity is currently making with the planet. When the odds are stacked against you, Jacobson knows, blind optimism is the fastest way to lose everything.

The conversation began with a concept that is central to our climate crisis yet rarely makes front-page news: the Earth’s albedo. As Robert Tulip explained, albedo is the measure of how much sunlight the Earth reflects back into space. Viewed from the moon, the Earth appears bright, largely because roughly 30 percent of the sunlight that hits it is bounced back by clouds, snow, ice, and atmospheric aerosols. But that brightness is fading.

Using NASA data from the CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) satellite, Tulip pointed out a terrifying trend. At the turn of the century, the Earth’s albedo stood at 29.33 percent. Today, it has dropped to about 28.7 percent. What is most alarming is not just the decline, but the acceleration of that decline. In the first decade of the 21st century, the albedo fell by 0.15 percent. In the second decade, the rate doubled to 0.3 percent. Today, the decadal rate of decline has doubled again to 0.6 percent. Tulip described this acceleration as an “avalanche.”

Eliot Jacobson

Jacobson, a self-proclaimed “data junkie,” explained the mechanics behind this darkening. While melting polar ice contributes to this loss of reflectivity—creating a feedback loop where dark, open ocean absorbs more heat and melts more ice—the primary driver, accounting for roughly 85 percent of the albedo loss, is a change in cloud cover. Specifically, the loss of low-level clouds, which are thick, bright, and excellent at reflecting sunlight.

Why are these clouds disappearing? The answer lies in a bitter irony that climate scientist James Hansen famously dubbed the “Faustian bargain.” For decades, human industrial activity pumped massive amounts of pollutants and aerosols into the atmosphere. These sulfates and particulates were terrible for human health, causing acid rain and respiratory diseases, but they had a secondary effect: they created bright, reflective clouds that masked the true extent of global warming.

As nations have rightly fought to clean up their air—China’s massive and successful push for breathable air ahead of and following the Beijing Olympics, and the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 regulations that drastically reduced the sulfur content of shipping fuels—we have inadvertently stripped away our atmospheric shield. Jacobson noted that the reduction of Chinese aerosols was directly linked to the creation of “the blob,” a massive expanse of hot water off the North American coast that drove severe droughts in California. By cleaning our air, we have unleashed the latent heat that was always lurking in the pipeline.

This brings us to the concept of “doomism,” a label often applied to those who look at these accelerating trends and conclude that societal collapse is inevitable. Tulip offered a basic definition of doomism as the belief that the situation is so serious that there is no hope. Jacobson, however, views the landscape of doomism as much more complex, tracing its roots all the way back to Thomas Malthus.

The data certainly paints a grim picture, one that pushes the boundaries of mainstream scientific discourse. Jacobson pointed out that there is a legitimate, scientifically backed argument that we could hit 3 degrees Celsius of warming by mid-century. Yet, discussing these “tail-end” bell curve events—scenarios with a 20 to 30 percent chance of occurring—is often taboo in polite scientific society.

This is why Jacobson views James Hansen as a hero. It is not necessarily just for his scientific models, some of which feature dire predictions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has sidelined, but for his courage. Hansen opens doors for conversations that many people simply do not want to have. He gives permission to the public and to other scientists to voice their existential fears. This stands in contrast to mainstream figures like Michael Mann, who, while highly respected by Jacobson, has historically attacked those who focus on worst-case scenarios, such as David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth.

Hope Porn?

Perhaps the most provocative part of the roundtable was Jacobson’s critique of “hope.” In modern climate discourse, hope is often peddled as a necessary fuel for action. But Jacobson borrows a term coined by writer George Tsakraklides: “Hope Porn.” This is the phenomenon found in many mainstream climate books that offer ungrounded, feel-good rhetoric about humanity coming together as one family to solve the crisis, completely divorced from the brutal physical realities and the entrenched opposition of the fossil fuel industry.

Jacobson takes his critique of hope even further, tracing the word back to its ancient mythological roots. In the original story of Pandora’s Box, hope was the final evil left inside the jar. In that ancient context, hope translated to “deceptive expectation.” It is the lie a salesman tells you when selling a broken-down car. To Jacobson, much of the climate optimism today is exactly that: a deceptive expectation that numbs the public to the reality of our trajectory. It is an escape, a drug—often referred to by doomers as “hopium.”

If emission reductions are moving too slowly to stop the avalanche, what are the alternatives? The conversation turned to geoengineering, specifically the idea of artificially restoring the Earth’s albedo. Tulip suggested that stabilizing the climate is possible if planetary albedo is restored, but Jacobson was quick to highlight the staggering, almost absurd logistics of such an endeavor.

If we wanted to return to the albedo levels of the year 2000 using the most naive method—building a band of aluminum mirrors around the Earth’s equator—that band would need to be 40,000 kilometers long and a mind-boggling 84 kilometers wide. It is a physical impossibility.

Robert Tulip

Other methods, such as injecting sulfur into the stratosphere to mimic the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, are physically possible but come with massive risks. Sulfur has a short half-life; if we start injecting it and ever have to stop—due to war, economic collapse, or unforeseen side effects—the world would experience a “termination shock,” a sudden, catastrophic spike in global temperatures.

Ultimately, Jacobson challenged the very philosophical foundation of the modern climate movement. Growing up in the 1970s during the birth of modern environmentalism, Jacobson fought for the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the protection of endangered species. The movement was about saving the planet and preserving ecosystems.

Today, Jacobson observes, the movement has undergone a selfish metamorphosis. The frantic push for solar panels, wind turbines, and hypothetical space mirrors is no longer about saving the natural world. The operative question has become: “What do we need to do to save human civilization?”

For Jacobson, if the answer to our crisis requires blotting out the sun or wrapping the Earth in mirrors just to keep the engines of human commerce running, we are asking the wrong question. As we stand in the global casino, watching the roulette wheel of our climate spin out of control, it is time to stop indulging in deceptive expectations. We must face the darkening math of our world with clear eyes, leaving the “hope porn” behind.

You can watch the whole video here: https://projectsavetheworld.substack.com/p/episode-753-climate-hope-doom-duty