Re: AW: [HPAC] Re: Greenhouse gases are the main reason the planet is warming

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John Nissen

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Jul 31, 2025, 10:33:30 AM7/31/25
to PR CARTER, oswald petersen, Gene Fry, Robin Collins, healthy-planet-action-coalition, Peter Wadhams, Planetary Restoration, Jan Umsonst
Hi Peter,

Good question!  The forcing from cryosphere albedo feedback is deliberately missed out of the IPCC diagrams which give the radiative forcings from different sources.  They have a separate diagram for feedback forcing, which rarely gets discussed.  The result is that albedo forcing is assumed to be negligible or only a small part of the total.  A few years ago, Peter Wadhams and I estimated that albedo forcing from the retreat of snow and sea ice in the Arctic could have reached 1.0 W/m2, which is significant.  Our estimate was based on previous work by Mark Flanner and independently by Kristina Pistone.  Flanner gave 0,45 W/m2 loss between 1979 and 2008.  Deposits of soot ("black carbon") on snow and ice from wildfires over the last couple of years could have added to that forcing.  And there has been a record retreat of Antarctic sea ice as well.

BTW, Flanner estimated that albedo loss was equally divided between snow retreat and sea ice retreat.

The CERES satellites should have a record of albedo loss of the poles over a period of about twenty years in this century, but nobody seems to have analysed it, to my knowledge.  But I see that Jan has found a recent paper[1] on sea ice retreat (neglecting snow retreat) suggesting that the estimate from Peter Wadhams and me could be about right or even a bit low (if snow retreat has an equal effect to sea ice retreat).

These estimated values do not seem generally to have been considered as contributing to total radiative forcing, except for Hansen who has a much smaller amount for them. 

Cheers, John

[1] Duspayev, Flanner and Riihelä
Earth's Sea Ice Radiative Effect from 1980 to 2023

From the abstract: 
"Sea ice cools Earth by reducing its absorbed solar energy. We combine radiative transfer modeling with satellite-derived surface albedo, sea ice, and cloud distributions to quantify the top-of-atmosphere sea ice radiative effect (SIRE). Averaged over 1980–2023, Arctic and Antarctic SIREs range from −0.64 to −0.86 W m−2 and −0.85 to −0.98 W m−2, respectively"




On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 7:55 PM PR CARTER <peterc...@shaw.ca> wrote:
Where is Arctic sea ice snow albedo decline forcing?  in total radiative forcing

Please let me know 

Best regards
Peter C 

From: "oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC)" <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
To: "Gene Fry" <gene...@rcn.com>
Cc: "Robin Collins" <robin.w...@gmail.com>, "healthy-planet-action-coalition" <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2025 9:51:00 AM
Subject: AW: [HPAC] Re: Greenhouse gases are the main reason the planet is warming

Hi Gene,

 

albedo feedbacks are in fact strong.

They are caused by GHG, that’s why they are called feedbacks.

The main driver of Global Warming are GHG.

 

Regards

 

Oswald

Von: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> Im Auftrag von Gene Fry
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Juli 2025 18:25
An: oswald....@hispeed.ch
Cc: Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Betreff: [HPAC] Re: Greenhouse gases are the main reason the planet is warming

 

Oswald,

 

               Greenhouse gases were and are the trigger for warming.

but albedo effects are now the main show.

 

               GHGs formerly dominated, but that is no longer so.

However, GHGs still account for substantial ongoing warming:

about 2°C for doubled CO2.

 

Over the past 25 years,

albedo feedbacks accounted for 69% of observed warming.

 

The bulk of that recent albedo feedback was the decline in cloud cover over the oceans.

 

That exceeds the albedo decline (about 0.1°C effect over 2000-25) from fewer sulfate aerosols.

The sulfate decline was mostly over land.

 

Gene Fry

 

 

 

On Jul 29, 2025, at 10:41 AM, oswald.petersen via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

Robin,

 

the sentence 

 

«Greenhouse Gases are no longer the main reason the planet is warming”

 

is wrong. GHG are in fact the main reason the planet is warming. If you read carefully, you will see that the text says “this century”. So the author of the sentence will say, ok, last century GHG were but this century they ain’t. But that’s nonsense. GHG still are the main reason the planet is warming. Maybe the author will then say, right, but the additional warming which happened since year 2000 is mainly caused by SO2 reduction. But that additional warming is some 0.3 °C, whereas the overall warming is 1.5 °C, and out of the 0.3 °C that greater part would be maybe 0.18 °C. 

 

All in all the article is fun to read, and also points to a true fact saying that SO2 is a cooling pollutant which is being reduced massively, but still: The sentence above is wrong.  

 

Regards

 

Oswald Petersen

Atmospheric Methane Removal AG

Lärchenstr. 5

CH-8280 Kreuzlingen

 

Von: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> Im Auftrag von Robin Collins
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Juli 2025 16:03
An: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Betreff: [HPAC] Fwd: Termination Shock Now: Reducing air pollution is accelerating global warming

 

While it seems counterintuitive, is it true enough? Obviously at a certain point, the primary increase will again appear as GHG as the main driver overall. Cleaner air is an interim cause of the spike. 

 

Is this a sane way to market SRM and MCB though? 

 

Robin

 

 

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: One Percent Brighter <franci...@substack.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Subject: Termination Shock Now: Reducing air pollution is accelerating global warming
To: <robi...@gmail.com>

 

Greenhouse gases are no longer the main reason the planet is warming

͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­

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Termination Shock Now: Reducing air pollution is accelerating global warming

Greenhouse gases are no longer the main reason the planet is warming

JUL 29

 

 

 

Two-thirds of global warming this century is the result of cleaning up air pollution. Do not adjust your sets, your screen is not malfunctioning. If Professor Peter Cox, of the University of Exeter, and his colleague Margaux Marchant are right, greenhouse gases are no longer the main driver of global warming. 

The mechanism is well understood. Some portion of the energy that reaches the Earth from the sun bounces back out to space, the rest is absorbed. The balance between them is not fixed. Sulfur pollution in the atmosphere tends to make clouds brighter, meaning they bounce more solar energy back out to space.

The truth that dare not speak its name is that sulfur pollution counteracts global warming, so when you clean it up, the globe warms up faster. Let me be clear, SO₂ in the air sucks: it causes acid rain, it’s bad for your lungs, it messes with terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in all kinds of ways. We have very good reasons to clean it up. But when we do clean it up, we diminish albedo. Less SO₂ means duller clouds, which means less solar energy bounces back out into space, which means more energy gets trapped in the atmosphere.

That this could happen isn’t at all news to climate researchers, but Cox and Marchant’s research shows this effect is possibly quite a lot bigger than we’d grasped. 

To be clear, this isn’t some fringe theory from some internet rando: Professor Cox is one of the most senior climate researchers in the world. He’s a lead author on the 4th, 5th and 6thAssessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a member of the UK Government’s Defra Scientific Advisory Council, as well as leading one of the world’s top centers for Climate Research. 

One Percent Brighter is SO₂-aware.

Guys like Peter Cox don’t imperil reputations built painstakingly over decades on an explosive result like this unless they’re pretty darn sure. You can learn about his research in all its gory details in this podcast he did with Leon Simons. 

This is big news. And yet, I bet you haven’t heard about it. The mainstream media hates to cover this kind of story. There’s a strong bias towards climate stories that are morally tidy. Stories where pollution is bad and kills the earth, and stopping pollution is good and saves the earth. There’s a panicked unwillingness to acknowledge the messy reality the story of SO₂ abatement brings, where we help mother earth by cleaning up a pollutant and it thanks us by kicking us in the groin. 

The reality is, the atmosphere isn’t interested in your morality play. The laws of thermodynamics couldn’t care less if they line up with your NGO’s Vision statement. Sulfur dioxide in the air will keep both acidifying the rain and cooling the planet whether we like it or not.

If we were generally saner about climate change, we’d recognize this story for what it is: a loud, blaring siren telling us we’ve spent decades years actually doing geoengineering, without ever quite acknowledging it to ourselves. Now we’re stopping, and the result is what we always knew it would be: Termination Shock.

You’re a free subscriber to One Percent Brighter. Paid subscribers get extra karma.

 

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Director Climate Emergency Institute
IPCC expert reviewer
Co-author2018 Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival

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