Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
H simmens
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Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com
Bru Pearce
Current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and binding long-term or net zero targets are not enough. They still commit the world to ongoing global warming that will likely exceed 2°C before 2100.
What a dangerous understatement!
What a wasted opportunity to galvanise action.
Bru
Pearce
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Sent: 14 November 2025 15:21
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Subject: [HPAC] Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
The global tipping points community prepared this declaration below for sign on.
The declaration advocates getting back to 1° C through aggressive support of a Climate Dyad (my term) rather than the Climate Triad.
But at least it recognizes the need not just to limit the increase in temperatures but to reduce temperatures - which still remains a distinctly minority view amongst the Climate guild.
Recognizing the need to lower temperatures should lead many to realize that doing so will require expanding the dyad into a triad.
Herb
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Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com
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Bru Pearce
Lets hope we can get abetter result out of National Emergency Briefing on climate & nature Kevin Anderson will tell them what for.
Bru
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rob...@rtulip.net
The collective idiocy of this Dartington Declaration is beyond belief. The total exclusion of albedo, the main immediate driver of warming, from their proposed program of climate action condemns it to irrelevance and impotence. It is simply astonishing that so many leading scientists are utterly and wilfully blind to the need to restore planetary albedo as the primary lever of climate action.
Albedo (via insolation) was the primary driver of glaciation and deglaciation in the ice ages, with GHGs a secondary amplifier. That order of action, reducing insolation first by restoring sunlight reflection, is what is needed now.
Instead, the Dartington Declaration states “Global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030 (compared to 2010 levels) and then reach net zero by 2050. This requires an unprecedented acceleration of fossil-fuel phase-out, rapid mitigation of methane emissions and other short-lived climate pollutants, and fast scaling of sustainable carbon removal from the atmosphere, especially through the protection and restoration of forests and other natural carbon sinks.” This ‘halving by 2030’ line was proposed by the UN in 2021, but emissions have gone in the opposite direction. Here we find a real and dangerous example of the Law of Holes, advocating a strategy that has no hope of implementation, generating intense political backlash among far more powerful social and economic forces.
For them to say “To achieve such a radical acceleration of action requires transformations triggering social tipping points that generate self-amplifying change in low-carbon technologies and behaviours, towards zero emissions“ involves a touching naivety. They are proposing a theory of change that is utterly unworkable, with a paralysed and partisan political strategy and with mechanisms that are too small, slow, expensive, contested and difficult to actually mitigate climate change or cut the risk of tipping points.
The science denial in this Dartington Declaration is as bad as right wing climate denial. Its signatories are obstructing effective climate action. By ignoring peer reviewed research indicating that sunlight reflection could restore Holocene temperature in this century alongside ongoing emissions, they are morally culpable and negligent. Far from ‘following the science’, they are ignoring and denying the science.
Regards
Robert Tulip
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Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert T--I agree with your overall point, but have to disagree on your second paragraph. The melting of the glacial ice after the Last Glacial Maximum was mainly driven by the orbital element changes, which, as I understand it, pushed the summertime solar radiation in the NH to something like 6-7% above normal. This radiation struck the glacial ice with its generally higher albedo. Interesting that the Greenland Ice Sheet withstood the higher solar radiation, and it was presumably due to its high altitude and generally high albedo. So, I'd say it was the higher solar radiation that led to the melting, not reduced cloud cover, etc.
Otherwise, I very much agree that the Darlington Declaration is seriously flawed.
Best, Mike
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rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Mike
You seem to miss the point of my comparison to the ice age. The issue I was raising was that it was the change of seasonal light that caused the ice age cycles, with GHGs a secondary feedback. But now we have a climate mainstream that wrongly imagines it can change temperature only by manipulating GHGs while basically ignoring light, in defiance of this primary causation in Earth System history. Light is far more tractable than carbon as a climate forcing factor.
I was not discussing your point about reduced cloud cover as a factor in the ice ages, although there is research on clouds as a feedback amplifier. Hansen estimated in his Global Warming in the Pipeline paper that the end of the last ice age driven by insolation changes involved albedo forcing of ~3.5 W/m². That was 1.5 times the GHG forcing of s: ~2.25 W/m². But now these Dartington scientists propose we just ignore the albedo lever.
Change in solar radiation and change in albedo are two sides of the same coin. Higher northern summer insolation due to orbital cycles (perihelion in June combined with tilt and roundness) led to ice age melting every 100 thousand years over the last million years. This higher summer insolation increased Absorbed Solar Radiation, which is now the converse of lower albedo. Equally, lower summer insolation in the ice ages (perihelion in December) caused expansion of the ice sheets, as less snow that fell in winter melted in summer. This perihelion winter is the equivalent of reduced ASR and higher albedo today.
Insolation and albedo are different doors into the same room—ASR. Orbital cycles used the insolation door; today we can only open the albedo door.
Thanks for the comments.
Regards
Robert Tulip
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rob...@rtulip.net
Tom, Tom, you are blatantly wrong. There is nothing scientifically inaccurate in my comment. You are distorting and ignoring the main argument. My observation that albedo was the primary driver of ice ages is about sequence and scale, recognising CO2-albedo feedback coupling and how CO2 changes lagged albedo changes. There is nothing “ass-backwards” in my analysis, to use your rude and belittling insult.
As is well known, Ice Age inception (entry into glaciation) was all about albedo rise. The Ice Ages began when Northern-Hemisphere summer insolation stayed low enough that winter snow survived. That caused ice sheets to expand, raising surface albedo and reinforcing cooling. This albedo rise was the primary trigger of cooling. The big CO₂ decline followed (centuries–millennia lag) as the ocean/biome responded. For you to call albedo “driven by CO₂” at this stage flips the order of events. You are right that the feedbacks then coupled, but it was albedo first, CO2 second, and albedo bigger, CO2 smaller. That made albedo primary, my key point that you deny.
Deglaciation (termination) similarly started when high summer insolation initiated ice retreat and resulting albedo decrease, darkening the Earth. CO₂ then rose and strengthened the warming. Again, CO₂ was a powerful amplifier of the albedo effect of a darker world.
And your defence of the Dartington Declaration signatories is indefensible. Sure, many of them mean well, and Lysenko may also have meant well. Their rejection of albedo as a primary climate policy instrument is a primary brake on effective climate action.
Finally Tom, I know you refuse to engage on AI, so the attached will be of no interest to you, but for others it provides an informative explanation of why CO2 change lagged albedo change. This is an example of a helpful AI summary that may require further nuance but which provides an accurate simple overview of essential science which many do not understand.
Regards
Robert Tulip
From: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Sent: Saturday, 15 November 2025 9:37 PM
To: rob...@rtulip.net; 'Bru Pearce' <b...@envisionation.org>; 'H simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Climate Alliance Healthy' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] RE: [HPAC] Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
You said “Albedo (via insolation) was the primary driver of glaciation and deglaciation in the ice ages, with GHGs a secondary amplifier”
Unfortunately this gets things ack-basswards, most scientists would say that small changes in insolation due to orbital feedbacks are greatly amplified by biological and cloud feedbacks which cause changes in albedo, which are largely driven by CO2 changes. Albedo feedbacks are effects as well as causes because of tight feedbacks with CO2.
It's important to make the point in a way that is scientifically accurate, which in no way detracts from the great urgency of using albedo modification (so called SRM, although solar radiation itself is not being modified at all, just the internal system feedbacks). It is the only tool of the trident strategy that can act fast enough to prevent catastrophic consequences for our grandchildren.
Albedo modification is NOT the ONLY thing that needs to be done, but it is the one of the 3 essential steps that will act fastest. The others are ALSO ESSENTIAL, but will take longer.
But please stop insulting scientists who are doing their best (despite all the tunnel vision limitations of their individual backgrounds) to make sense of the larger picture. We need their support, and it will come when they are sufficiently informed.
Robert Chris is right that so complex a system needs to be understood as a whole. The author of the textbook on Systems Analytic Thinking, and of The Limits To Growth, Donella Meadows, completely understood the importance of tipping points as very earliest symptoms of systemic collapse. After the first coral bleaching events in the 1980s she called me up and she published an essay on the urgency of heeding the very first warnings before it was too late. She would have endorsed the Trident Strategy!
THE TRIDENT STRATEGY TO KEEP WINDS, WAVES, AIR, AND TEMPERATURE LIVEABLE IS STRONGLY ENDORSED BY VARUNA AND POSEIDON, GODS OF THE SEA:
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Biorock Technology Inc., Blue Regeneration SL
Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org www.globalcoral.org
Phone: (1) 857-523-0807 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
On the Nature of Things: The Scientific Photography of Fritz Goro
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer
“The Earth is not dying, she is being killed” U. Utah Phillips
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies” Noam Chomsky
.
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rob...@rtulip.net
I did not say you defended the Dartington Declaration as you allege, I said you defended its signatories. Once again you show a cavalier indifference to the truth while wrongly maligning me.
You stated “please stop insulting scientists who are doing their best (despite all the tunnel vision limitations of their individual backgrounds) to make sense of the larger picture. We need their support, and it will come when they are sufficiently informed.”
What is that in this context other than a defence of these people?
From: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Sent: Sunday, 16 November 2025 12:10 AM
To: rob...@rtulip.net; 'Bru Pearce' <b...@envisionation.org>; 'H simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Climate Alliance Healthy' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] RE: [HPAC] Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
Yes, very sorry, that was a typo! I meant to say bass-ackward! Apologies!
Your claim that I am defending the Dartington Declaration is a blatant lie!
I’m addressing the science needed for both a safe and fast result, not just one, or the other.
Please stick to the facts and not insults.
Tom Goreau
From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>
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Tom Goreau
Yes, very sorry, that was a typo! I meant to say bass-ackward! Apologies!
Your claim that I am defending the Dartington Declaration is a blatant lie!
I’m addressing the science needed for both a safe and fast result, not just one, or the other.
Please stick to the facts and not insults.
From: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>
Date: Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 07:34
Tom Goreau
The last word is yours, as always, time to leave this list!
Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert T--Agreed, and thanks for the clarifications.
Best, Mike
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Shortcomings aside, I hope you all can endorse. This declaration moves the mission in the correct direction.
Why endorse if one does not agree? When I was able to get Sierra Club to lower their target from 1.5 C to 1 C --AND- support research into geoengineering, I did not withhold my endorsement because the policy team would not go as far as suggesting a mid-century point of no return, and I did not withhold because they only agreed to support geoengineering research rather than adopt it as a critical path action item. The point is to advance the restoration mission.
MeltOn
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
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H simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com
On Nov 15, 2025, at 1:11 PM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:
<image001.png><image002.png>
<image004.jpg>
Bru PearceE-mail b...@envisionation.org
Mobile +44 7740 854713
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From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of H simmens
Sent: 14 November 2025 15:21
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Subject: [HPAC] Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
The global tipping points community prepared this declaration below for sign on.
The declaration advocates getting back to 1° C through aggressive support of a Climate Dyad (my term) rather than the Climate Triad.
But at least it recognizes the need not just to limit the increase in temperatures but to reduce temperatures - which still remains a distinctly minority view amongst the Climate guild.
Recognizing the need to lower temperatures should lead many to realize that doing so will require expanding the dyad into a triad.
Herb
Herb Simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future“A SciencePoem and an Inspiration.” Kim Stanley Robinson
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com
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Tom Goreau
There are SO many forms of tunnel visions into entirely different imaginary universes. One (no names) shouldn’t demonize people for not yet seeing the light when they are constantly distracted by fake crises.
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Robert Chris
Sent: 15 November 2025 20:46
To: Jan Umsonst <j.o.u...@gmail.com>
Cc: H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>; Bruce Melton Austin Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>; Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Bru Pearce <b...@envisionation.org>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Climate Alliance Healthy <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] RE: [HPAC] Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
Hi all,
the system destroys our ability to work respectfully together, especially if we have different opinions.
We have to understand that, reflect it, and try to tread all with respect.
And they have good reasons to be against SRM. It's madness but not to even try it could be even larger madness. The largest madness of them all is to continue as we do as our biophysical system we call our home is now flying apart...
The signs of non-linearity increase now fast inside the Earth system SRM could give us some time to slow down and hopefully to reverse some parts of the tipping cascade we seem here to trigger...
So this declaration is another important step that we understand the gravity of our situation.
The need to deploy SRM will anyhow decide the matter if things deteriorate fast.
So the main argument should be that we need research to understand in how far SRM techniques work as the uncertainty with tipping point cascades is quite high.
All the best
Jan
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Paul Beckwith
rob...@rtulip.net
Thank you Robert, Herb, Jan and Bruce for your considered comments.
I am not a climate scientist myself, but have read widely in climate science for a long time, always eager to learn factual information. If my grasp of facts is wrong I welcome correction. I have formed the view that a dangerous groupthink has come to dominate climate science, lacking in the political realism that is the most important thing to achieve change. Paradoxically, this means a professional background in climate science tends to constrain people’s ability to see the big picture. My background is in philosophy and international development, also theology and astronomy, with a focus on paradigm shift. The scale of change in thinking needed to reverse the planetary trajectory toward collapse is extremely difficult, but could be possible. It requires accepting that cutting emissions cannot make much difference in the short term. This is a counter-cultural argument with a strong basis in evidence that prompts strong emotional hostility. I apologise if people are upset by confrontational language, but I see the criticisms of my views as tactical, not substantial.
Herb, part of the reason for the existence of HPAC is the demonstrable observation that the mainstream climate consensus is wrong, and is complicit in taking our planet on a path to disaster. My comments reflect and extend that shared HPAC view on the moral priority of SRM. As you have regularly pointed out, the HPAC view is totally rejected by the tipping point consensus that prepared the Dartington Declaration. You make the ad populum argument that we should respect these scientific signatories because there are a lot of them and they have authority. That can be countered by the views that firstly, there is a far larger and more powerful political and economic consensus opposed to their view, measured in the billions rather than the thousands, and secondly, by the scientific argument that albedo restoration is an urgent necessity that they reject. This declaration implicitly accuses the whole world economy of idiocy for its acceptance of business as usual. It not only fails to offer any feasible strategy to overcome this march to destruction, but ignores the only feasible strategy, SRM. Calling this declaration idiotic is a way to highlight the moral urgency of this debate and the complacency about looming mass extinctions that can only be countered by a crash SRM program. What you call “the feasibility of reducing temperatures towards 1° C … without the inclusion of direct climate cooling” is nil. You talk about “the almost universally accepted paradigm of focusing primarily on emission reductions.” No. This failed paradigm is only accepted within the echo chamber of the decarbonisation lobby, not in the wider community, who are generally unwilling to sacrifice anything for the sake of vague and unrealistic climate ambitions. By contrast, prioritising SRM can rapidly shift the dial on heat, with a practical program to buy crucial time to transition to a sustainable path for humanity.
I remain astounded by Robert Chris’s assertion that the Dartington call for halving world emissions in the next five years “is demonstrably not a 'stupid' ambition.” It absolutely is a stupid ambition, a dangerous fantasy, imagining that a polarising political movement could defeat the fossil fuel economy. What is needed instead is a realist climate strategy that accepts that decarbonisation will remain marginal to cooling for some time, so that major industries can get on board with the need to restore albedo. It is nonsensical to say “the risks of not delivering these emissions reductions must be avoided at all costs.” That fails to recognise the Pareto optimisation that shows most cooling can come from SRM. Calling for crash decarbonisation is demonstrably idiotic in the face of evidence that all trends are moving in the opposite direction, and its demonisation of the primary sources of world wealth. The UN ambition of halving emissions by 2030 serves to totally crowd out SRM, preventing the needed focus on albedo as the far more important and urgent climate lever required to prevent tipping points and dangerous warming.
Robert, you criticise the view that “SRM becomes the primary policy and emissions reduction is relegated to a secondary status.” That is exactly what is needed in order to bring the big world industries on board, in order to cool the earth quickly and step back from the hothouse precipice, buying time for a practical strategy to accelerate emission reduction. SRM should be our first resort, not the last. Like planting a tree, the best time to start cooling was twenty years ago, and the next best time is now.
Jan, you say “they have good reasons to be against SRM. It's madness but not to even try it could be even larger madness.” No, they do not have good reasons. SRM is the most sane and logical and ethical response to our planetary predicament, and unlike decarbonisation, can be deployed in a way that is compatible with world reality. Calling it madness contradicts your salient point that “SRM could give us some time to slow down and hopefully to reverse some parts of the tipping cascade we seem here to trigger.”
Bruce, the platitudes about one degree do not take the debate in the right direction. They are a thoroughly unrealistic cover for the ridiculous opinion that the planet could be cooled through a policy that actually involves a moratorium on any real practical cooling action.
Regards
Robert Tulip
Robert Chris
It is a fact that 'The scale of change in thinking needed to reverse the planetary trajectory toward collapse is extremely difficult, but could be possible.' It is an opinion that ' It requires accepting that cutting emissions cannot make much difference in the short term.'
If you believe (it is a belief because one cannot know the future for certain) that keeping warming at around 1.5oC would avert collapse, then there is evidence from climate modelling that the scale and speed of emissions reductions proposed in the Dartington Declaration would be sufficient. Admittedly it is not a fact that it would avert a collapse, but it is a fact that the models suggest it would.
To persuade those believing that the models are sufficiently reliable to be a basis for climate policies that are likely to avert a collapse, that they are not, it is necessary to explain convincingly what the models have got so seriously wrong.
In this regard it is not an appropriate argument to show that whether the models are credible or not is irrelevant because in the real-world emissions reductions at the required speed and scale will not be made. It is inappropriate because that is not an argument that the models are wrong and that 'cutting emissions cannot make much difference in the short term', but an argument that we lack the political will to deliver what the models are telling us we need to deliver.
If that is a correct analysis of our situation, we should be railing against the policymakers and those that influence them, not against the scientists responsible for creating the models.
Returning to the question of whether the models are reliable or not, my understanding of your argument is that they are not because that do not adequately account for the accelerating recent changes in albedo. You may be right but to make that claim convincingly you have to show how the models currently account for albedo effects, both forcing and feedbacks, and explain why that is incorrect. It is not a convincing argument merely to assert that there is now a 'scientific argument that albedo restoration is an urgent necessity' and by extension that it is not adequately reflected in the current models. Moreover, you have to show that if it isn't adequately reflected in the models and they were adjusted so that it was, then the models would show a radically different warming trajectory. To make the claims you do without filling in these blanks, your claims amount to little more than polemic.
This all comes together in your remark that you are 'astounded by [my] assertion that the Dartington call for halving world emissions in the next five years “is demonstrably not a 'stupid' ambition.” ' It is demonstrably not a stupid ambition because the models suggest that it would avert the feared collapse. However, you then say 'It absolutely is a stupid ambition, a dangerous fantasy, imagining that a polarising political movement could defeat the fossil fuel economy.' It is your opinion that that the forces of Conservation will prevent that ambition being realised in a timely manner. It is an opinion I share. But it is an opinion, not a fact. We could both be wrong.
You claim that 'Calling for crash decarbonisation is demonstrably idiotic in the face of evidence that all trends are moving in the opposite direction.' It's no more idiotic to call for that paradigm shift than it is for you to call for a paradigm towards promoting albedo to be the primary focus of climate policy.
I also want to refer to your dismissal of my remark to the effect that in climate policy formulation SRM should not be promoted above reducing atmospheric GHGs. I have looked at this quite carefully in WTF and it is quite clear that if atmospheric GHGs are not reduced as a priority, SRM will struggle safely to offset the further warming. Last week I raised this question in a private conversation with Doug MacMartin. He certainly rejected the notion that SRM was some kind of panacea (not his words) for any amount of GHG-induced warming and remarked that:
Some SAI is (IMO) likely to be better than not given where we are today, but it's far from perfect, and the less we need to do the better.
He also said:
I, and basically 100% of the people who work on SAI, think we should decarbonize as fast as is reasonable (that is, we're aware that too fast causes its own human suffering, though given that we're not currently close to that point IMO, we generally don't really even bother to include that caveat).
He closed by commenting that:
I just can't fathom any argument for not doing our best at decarbonization, even as we admit that we didn't do enough. I don't know anyone who runs red lights at 100km/hr because they have seat belts and air bags...
In summary, Robert, it seems to me that you need to go back to philosophy Class 101 that taught how to construct a sound, as opposed to a valid argument.
In the meantime, please moderate your language and stop treating those who do not share your views with such disrespect. You need to learn how to disagree agreeably.
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2025 01:55
To: 'Robert Chris' <robert...@gmail.com>; 'Paul Beckwith' <paulhenr...@gmail.com>; 'Jan Umsonst' <j.o.u...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'H simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Bruce Melton Austin Texas' <bme...@earthlink.net>; 'Tom Goreau' <gor...@globalcoral.org>; 'Bru Pearce' <b...@envisionation.org>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Climate Alliance Healthy' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [prag] RE: [HPAC] Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi again Robert, and thank you for setting out your perspective so clearly. I do get angry when I see what I consider to be patent falsehoods with planetary existential implications, but as you point out, proving that something is wrong is much more difficult than mere intuition.
Alan Kerstein asked about the value of discussing climate policy in terms of morality. My view is that extinction and collapse are primary moral concerns that must be addressed with evidence and logic, aiming to minimise suffering and enable stable change. The Dartington Declaration fails in this moral duty. Moral framing tells a story, which as Metta Spencer argues is the main way to achieve political change.
You say “It is an opinion that ' It requires accepting that cutting emissions cannot make much difference in the short term.'”
I would have thought that Bruce Parker’s proof of the tiny potential temperature impacts of decarbonisation show this is a fact, not just an opinion. Of course, the claimed marginal potential climate impact of emission reduction jars heavily against prevailing policy assumptions, so it is not surprising that you regard it as opinion rather than a fact. I have been heavily criticised for this over the years, including by Sir David King, but I believe the evidence supports my view.
You say “there is evidence from climate modelling that the scale and speed of emissions reductions proposed in the Dartington Declaration would be sufficient [to keep warming at around 1.5oC]”.
This is highly implausible in both scientific and political terms. Herb Simmens has emphasized the scientific doubts over the Zero Emission Commitment concept that supports the modelling you mention. These models suggest a return to lower temperatures after an overshoot, with the return solely achieved through carbon action, and with no albedo action at all, essentially ignoring how albedo change was the dominant driver of temperature change in the ice ages. Given that albedo collapse appears to be generating accelerating warming feedback processes such as the evaporation of marine clouds and melting of ice, these sanguine ZEC model hopes look to be highly unrealistic, suggesting an implausible system stability at +2.5-3oC. If as Hansen calculates the Earth System is more fragile and sensitive than these models predict, the situation is dire, and we are missing the chance to take essential precautions.
You ask how ZEC models account for albedo effects. That is one for AI, which suggests “important albedo changes are only partially captured.” The attached commentary put me on to this article, which notes quite sagely that “the thermal contribution may also be augmented by the effect of climate feedbacks that can amplify the surface warming, such as by decreases in surface albedo or cloud albedo leading to an increase in solar absorption.” Hansen’s calculation that Earth System Sensitivity is far higher than assumed in CMIP models appears compelling, and renders these models highly dubious, especially in view of paleoclimate comparisons.
We are already in planetary fever, and these emission reduction models have an obsolete feeling, rather like treating a medical fever by the application of leeches. Professor Lenton’s excellent leech liqueur, guaranteed to cut temperature and rebalance humours through combination with the magical social tipping points. In medicine, bloodletting for fever felt like decisive action, but it was built on the wrong theory of disease and often made patients weaker. Today’s climate politics risks a similar error. Politicians treat “cutting emissions” as if it were a fast-acting cooling therapy, when in physical terms it is only about making the problem slightly less worse in future. Reducing emissions is helpful, like stopping smoking in a patient with pneumonia – but no doctor would pretend that giving up cigarettes tonight will break the fever tomorrow. To actually lower planetary temperature on a relevant timescale, we must also change the radiative balance directly and, over time, draw down the accumulated greenhouse gases. Otherwise, we risk congratulating ourselves for our moral courage while the planetary fever continues to rise.
Then there is the politics. You may have noticed the aggressive growing reaction against the policy goal of net zero emissions driven by decarbonisation, due to its bad economic and social and environmental impacts. This appears to be a main cause of President Trump’s backlash against US science. There is simply no prospect of rapid emission reduction in view of the power and influence of demands for more energy. I recently saw the attached article which is an example of this emerging right-wing thinking on climate policy, looking at gigawatts as the new currency of great power rivalry, and suggesting that decarbonisation is a form of madness that has descended on the west. I expect these climate denial arguments to gain a growing electoral salience.
So I disagree with your statement that “it is not an appropriate argument to show that whether the models are credible or not is irrelevant because in the real-world emissions reductions at the required speed and scale will not be made.” Firstly, as I explained I do not find the models scientifically credible. I even think they exhibit incredible signs of conflict of interest, designed to boost renewable energy policies in support of the political ambition of halving world emissions by 2030, with no regard for evidence. To say the politics is irrelevant does strike me as strange, in a context where such strong hopes are vested in models that have essentially zero chance of being implemented.
The impossibility is about far more than “political will”. King Canute knew he could not change the tides through political will. There are immense physical reasons why decarbonisation is not going to happen, extending well beyond ideological differences.
I thought of you in listening to Dan Miller’s latest Climate Chat on the melting of Antarctica. His guest dismissed geoengineering for what seemed to me thoroughly spurious and ill-thought reasons, in the face of the need to protect the ‘doomsday glacier’ and other looming polar tipping points, while he accepted that the culture of science is intrinsically conservative. This conservatism suggests that scientists are unlikely to be particularly good at policy advice, which requires integration of a wide range of information within a framework driven more by values, such as social stability, than just by facts.
There is plenty more to discuss, but I want to conclude this instalment by responding to your view that “It's no more idiotic to call for that paradigm shift [emission reduction] than it is for you to call for a paradigm towards promoting albedo to be the primary focus of climate policy.” Touché. I would say here that the difference rests on theories of change. I contend that the forces opposing emission reduction are so strong – physical, political, social and economic - as to make this paradigm shift impossible, with no workable theory of change, creating the real prospect of an empty toolbox in a time of raging heat. By contrast, the forces preventing rebrightening are almost solely ideological, and can be readily conquered by greater political force. The program logic of an Albedo Accord, as I have suggested, would involve getting affected industries to lobby for geoengineering on the basis of their commercial interests. I expect that will overwhelm the combined might of Greenpeace and Marjorie-Taylor Greene and friends in their irrational and immoral rejection of urgent climate action, and will enable the required focus on albedo restoration as the main lever in short term climate policy.
br...@chesdata.com
I think there is a general misconception as to how fast fossil fuel emissions can be mitigated as emissions in 2030 will most likely be unchanged from 2025.
Even a very, very aggressive deployment of wind and solar (20%CAGR) will only reduce CO2 emissions in 2030 by 3GTCO2 (7%).
Wind and solar are currently at about 12%CAGR and IEA expects 10.6%CAGR, which would result in CO2 emissions in 2030 being slightly higher than in 2025.
I’ll provide more details (and a spreadsheet) later.
Bruce Parker
Assumptions:
- Total Primary energy in 2024 was 188,406 TWh and will continue to increase at a rate of 2522 TWh/year (1.3%) (Our World In data)
- “Other” primary energy (other than fossil fuels, wind, and solar) energy in 2024 was 34,351 TWh and will continue to increase at a rate of 211 TWh/year (0.6%) (Our World In data)
- Primary energy from fossil fuel emissions will be mitigated as primary energy from solar and wind can exceed the Total Primary energy growth
- 1 TWh of fossil fuel primary energy is replaced with 0.7 TWh of solar and wind primary energy
- Solar and wind primary energy grows at exponential 20% compound annual growth rate
- CO2 emissions after 2024 are set to 42 * (Fossil Fuel PE in YEAR)/ (Fossil Fuel PE in 2024)
This table shows the primary energy and CO2 emissions from 2024-2030
Year | Primary Energy Consumption |
| ||||||
Total | Other | Fossil Fuels | Solar & Wind | CO2 Emissions | ||||
Installed | Replacement | Net | Pct of Total | |||||
2024 | 188407 | 34351 | 142781 | 11275 | 0 | 11275 | 6% | 42 |
2025 | 189919 | 34561 | 141852 | 13530 | -25 | 13505 | 7% | 42 |
2026 | 192440 | 34772 | 141460 | 16236 | -28 | 16208 | 8% | 41 |
2027 | 194962 | 34983 | 140532 | 19483 | -35 | 19448 | 10% | 41 |
2028 | 197484 | 35193 | 138958 | 23380 | -47 | 23333 | 12% | 41 |
2029 | 200006 | 35404 | 136608 | 28056 | -61 | 27994 | 14% | 40 |
2030 | 202528 | 35614 | 133337 | 33667 | -90 | 33577 | 17% | 39 |
This table shows the CO2 emissions from 2024-2030 for various CAGRs
CAGR | |||||||||
8.0% | 9.0% | 10.0% | 11.0% | 12.0% | 13.0% | 14.0% | 16.0% | 18.0% | 20.0% |
43.21 | 42.91 | 42.71 | 42.28 | 42.15 | 41.59 | 41.62 | 40.82 | 39.95 | 39.01 |
CO2 Emissions in 2030 | |||||||||
Tom Goreau
Physicists will tell you the fundamental difference between SRM cooling and GHG cooling is that the first is instantaneous while the latter is much slower.
However, this is only because most humans manage ecosystems degeneratively instead of regeneratively (Geotherapy), which would turn warming sources into cooling sinks on a much faster scale than most imagine is possible, while reducing the amount of time that SRM (a “bad idea whose time has come” that continues to acidify the ocean), needs to be done.
Changes in GHGs introduce long time lag feedbacks that amplify climate system responses over thousands of years, while changes in SRM don’t. That’s why most physicists regard GHGs as the primary long term climate driver and albedo as a short term response. But the two covary so strongly they can’t be separated easily from climate records, as leads and lags vary enormously.
Alan Kerstein
I agree with your points although I see a risk in couching things in moral terms that could be seen by some as subjective. Competent decision makers prefer to be told the facts, the policy options, and their material consequences and associated uncertainties and then make the value judgments on their own rather than delegating them.
So how might the apocryphal competent decision maker lacking climate science expertise react to the Darlington document or the Biosciences article? That person can’t second guess the science so a good starting point would be to look for contextual clues such as the plausibility of the policy recommendations, which the decision maker ideally has the competence to assess. It doesn’t take exceptional insight to recognize that the policy recommendations in both documents (in the Bioscience article, the last three paragraphs) are utter fantasies. So the main impact of these documents on the audience that matters will be to discredit the authors and by implication reduce the credibility of climate scientists more generally.
In case any of the authors of these documents are potentially open to a contrarian perspective, it might be worth bringing this point to the attention of those people so that they might reflect on the potential consequences of their misadventure. It’s particularly heartrending that the science could thus be discredited just when a broad scientific consensus on the urgency of the situation is developing.
Alan
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/023301dc569c%24217bf150%246473d3f0%24%40rtulip.net.
Robert Chris
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2025 17:23
To: 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Climate Alliance Healthy' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Bruce, thanks, copying to HPAC list.
Your estimates of potential compound annual growth rates for renewable energy show that the idea of halving emissions any time soon is not compatible with projected energy use.
And yet this fantasy remains the basis of this tipping points declaration.
I have attached another new article, published today in the Australian, providing a largely realistic assessment, with a few errors, of the potential for emission reduction.
Regards
Robert Tuip
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/043201dc571d%24b291f410%2417b5dc30%24%40chesdata.com.
H simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com
On Nov 17, 2025, at 8:29 PM, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/01e301dc582a%24bc43c160%2434cb4420%24%40rtulip.net.
<Why the world is moving away from net zero and the Coalition is right.docx>
Tom Goreau
More on feedbacks to run by Robert Chris, who understands systems theory much better than I do.
My understanding is that response time lags are critical for feedbacks, whether positive or negative.
So something that acts instantaneously with no time lag should not cause temporal feedbacks? Is that right?
Reflection at the top of the atmosphere should have no cooling time lag, but is that true of reflection lower down, especially at the ocean or land surface, because resulting temperature change equilibrates via winds and currents?
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Don't forget that SRM cooling creates avoided warming from reduction of feedback emissions. Modeled amounts vary widely, but are not minor, varying on assumed feedback relationships that are generally not represented robustly.
MeltOn
Geoengineering Reduces Cumulative CO2 –
Keith 2017… From Keith’s lead,
“The latest US
National Academy of Science solar geoengineering report1 states
it “does
nothing to reduce the build-up of atmospheric CO2”. This is not
so. Solar
geoengineering reduces the carbon burden, and therefore ocean
acidification,
due to the three pathways explored here: carbon-cycle
feedback, reduced permafrost melting, and reduced energy-sector
emissions.” Abstract,
"Solar geoengineering is no substitute for cutting
emissions, but
could nevertheless help reduce the atmospheric carbon burden. In
the extreme,
if solar geoengineering were used to hold radiative forcing
constant under
RCP8.5, the carbon burden may be reduced by ~100 GTC, equivalent to 12–26% of twenty-first-century
emissions
at a cost of under US$0.5 per tCO2. It
is
also important to note that all other warming related responses
are reduced
like ocean acidification, arctic melt, forest collapse,
non-dynamic sea level
rise, etc.
Keith
et al, Solar geoengineering reduces atmospheric CO2 burden,
Nature Climate
Change, September 2017.
https://davidkeith.earth/publication/solar-geoengineering-reduces-atmospheric-carbon-burden/
Geoengineering Reduces Atmospheric CO2 Burden - Friedlingstein 2006… Reduced natural system sequestration with warmer temperatures causes extra carbon to remain in the sky. Abstract “Eleven coupled climate–carbon cycle models used a common protocol to study the coupling between climate change and the carbon cycle. The models were forced by historical emissions and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 anthropogenic emissions of CO2 for the 1850–2100 time period. For each model, two simulations were performed in order to isolate the impact of climate change on the land and ocean carbon cycle, and therefore the climate feedback on the atmospheric CO2 concentration growth rate. There was unanimous agreement among the models that future climate change will reduce the efficiency of the earth system to absorb the anthropogenic carbon perturbation. A larger fraction of anthropogenic CO2 will stay airborne if climate change is accounted for. By the end of the twenty-first century, this additional CO2 varied between 20 and 200 ppm for the two extreme models, the majority of the models lying between 50 and 100 ppm. The higher CO2 levels led to an additional climate warming ranging between 0.1° and 1.5°C.”
Friedlingstein
et al., Climate–Carbon Cycle Feedback Analysis, Results from the
C4MIP Model
Intercomparison, Journal of Climate, July 15, 2006.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/19/14/jcli3800.1.xml
Carbon removal reduces natural feedback emission - Hansen
2019… shows that reducing atmospheric burden, has a feedback
effect
where natural systems feedback emissions are also reduced by up
to several
hundred Gt C.
Hansen et al., Young people's burden: requirement of negative
CO2 emissions,
Earth Systems Dynamics, July 18, 2017. Figure 10 interpreation
and in the body
defined as reduced natural systems emissions.
https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/8/577/2017/esd-8-577-2017.pdf
Carbon-cycle feedback emissions reduced with reduced warming, Hausfather and Betts 2024 … shows natural feedback emissions with SSP 8.5 can be up to nearly 700 ppm CO2 or about 5,000 Gt CO2, but generally between 100 and 350 ppm CO2 or 780 to 2,700 Gt CO2. See figure, “Change inCO2 concentration when including carbon-cycle feedback undertainties.”
Hausefather
and Betts, How ‘carbon-cycle feedbacks’ could make global
warming worse, Carbon
Brief, 14 April 2020.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-carbon-cycle-feedbacks-could-make-global-warming-worse/
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
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Alan
I briefly mentioned your comments below about the Dartington Declaration and the Bioscience article in my last reply to Robert Chris, but they warrant more attention.
You point out that “the main impact of these documents on the audience that matters will be to discredit the authors.” This rightly highlights the philosophical and practical confusion within the tipping point community and within the climate movement more generally. This confusion is both moral, failing to see good against bad, and epistemic, ignoring essential scientific information. Exploring this confusion helps to explain why their views get dismissed by decision makers.
Your caution about moral subjectivity is well taken, and deserves discussion. I wrote my Master’s thesis in ethical philosophy, so this is a topic I have some interest in. It is essential to couch climate debate in moral terms, even recognising as you say that this can present policy challenges. I recently commented in this discussion that political realism is essential. In the climate context, political realism has to be informed and inspired by moral vision, a sense of the good, of how best to improve the world. As you note, views on this differ, so developing a compelling moral vision remains elusive.
Moral vision is often dismissed by practical policy makers as an abstract ideal, but in the context of global warming the moral problem can no longer remain implicit. The prospect of cascading economic, social and ecological collapse driven by climate change is not just an unfortunate scenario; it is a profound moral evil. Policy makers and their advisers carry a duty of care to minimise that harm as far as is humanly possible. That duty justifies – and in fact requires – a serious discussion of the policy implications of our objective moral situation, including options that may once have been considered politically or emotionally uncomfortable.
Climate change presents a primary existential challenge to humanity. The risks of collapse extend Hamlet’s question – to be or not to be - to planetary scale. We could ask with the melancholic prince whether tis nobler in the mind to allow emotive fallacies to govern our decisions and opinions, or if we should take arms against this sea of troubles by grounding our values in facts and basing our policies in evidence, seeking rigorous examination of all our presuppositions.
The British empiricist tradition in philosophy has failed in formulating a coherent morality, a problem that bleeds across to much scientific culture, including this Dartington statement. Empiricism has a nihilistic streak in its insistence that values cannot be based on facts. This attitude abets the dangerous belief that nothing is intrinsically good – not even the continuation of life on Earth. Against this, we need explicit moral axioms that are minimal and widely shareable.
The axiom that continued human flourishing is intrinsically good as a primary moral goal has roots in Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, the good life, grounded in his idea of entelechy, moral purpose. Support for flourishing should be treated as a basic moral axiom – a minimal, shared assumption that makes coherent ethical discussion possible. A support for flourishing requires a Spinozan analysis – grounded in the moral philosophy of the great logician Benedict Spinoza. This can articulate the conditions required for life to flourish, including the principle of care about the future, the recognition that complex adaptive systems enable flourishing, and analysis of meaning and purpose in terms of the good of the future.
In Spinoza’s terms, flourishing is not an abstract ideal but the concrete increase of a being’s power to act, understood through adequate ideas of the causal network it inhabits. Taken seriously, this demands a principle of care for the future: rational beings must extend their striving across time, recognising that their own power to act depends on the long-term viability of the systems that sustain them. In my master’s thesis I implicitly examined how Heidegger’s maxim that the meaning of being is care extends Spinoza’s ethic of flourishing. That line of thought underpins my view that climate policy cannot be value-neutral: if our being is essentially care, if we are intrinsically relational, then a politics that ignores planetary flourishing is a distortion of who we are.
Modern complexity science, and here Robert Chris might help me out, makes explicit what Spinoza intuited, that flourishing is an emergent property of complex adaptive systems – ecological, social and technological – whose diversity, resilience and capacity for learning enable continued life and creativity. Meaning and purpose can therefore be analysed practically, as orientations toward the good of the future. Actions are justified not by transcendent commands but by the way they enhance or damage the long-run flourishing of the systems of which we are a part.
On this view, if we agree as HPAC believes that planetary stability is now physically impossible without rapid rebrightening action to restore albedo, then such interventions become essential to human flourishing, and therefore to moral purpose. This may sound abstract, but it has sharp practical consequences for the main strands of climate opinion, given that climate physics now indicates that rebrightening of the planet is essential for avoiding catastrophic harm. Doomist resignation, decarbonisation orthodoxy and climate denialism all fail this moral test of coherent support for humanity and nature. They lack a credible account of how people can flourish on a destabilised planet, lacking any path back toward stability. It is also crucial to stress that a commitment to human flourishing today differs from traditional anthropocentrism, since our new understanding of Earth systems makes clear that human wellbeing is inseparable from the health of the wider biosphere.
The decarbonisation orthodoxy in the Dartington Declaration falls outside this moral framework. It rests, as Robert Chris noted, on “little more than a maths puzzle that can be solved by climate models”, with no regard for political realism or moral vision. Their proposed solution, crash decarbonisation, rests on assumptions that are disengaged from practical political reality, given that world emissions are rapidly rising. It is unreasonable and even immoral to propose a rapid fall of emissions as the only viable policy. That is a Tinkerbell policy, wishing makes it so, as if we could wave a magic wand and all would be nice again.
Bismarck famously said politics is the art of the possible. He also said laws are like sausages in that you don’t want to see them being made. Climate policy today is an ugly sausage cobbled from science, spin and special interests. The moral task is to make the art of the possible match what physics demands, and to insist on accurate labels on every climate sausage the world is expected to swallow.
The art of the possible requires that we must use evidence, security framing and moral argument to shift the Overton window so that albedo restoration and GHG conversion move from unthinkable to inevitable. The Dartington Declaration undermines this essential moral task, instead falling into moral and epistemic confusion by treating albedo reform as politically impossible and thereby loading an impossible burden onto carbon reform alone.
An Albedo Accord modelled on the Montreal Protocol would shift the Overton window so that rebrightening the planet moves into the realm of regulated, science-based climate policy. As such, it tells a compelling story of a flourishing planetary future. To get an Albedo Accord in front of a mass audience, we are not really selling a treaty. We are selling a story about what kind of people we are. The physics tells us what must be done. The moral story tells us why we are allowed to do it – and why we must. Without that story, albedo reform just sounds like technocratic meddling with sunlight. With it, rebrightening the planet can become an act of care, repair and justice.
The moral story is central, not optional. Most people don’t live in radiative forcing space. They live in moral space. Their concerns are about fairness, danger, benefit, cost and what this says about us. Right now, the default story around albedo is something like “Rich country pointy heads want to play God with the global thermostat.” That narrative keeps rebrightening outside the Overton window. No amount of white papers will overcome that by itself.
To move the window, you need a counter-story that feels more truthful, more humane and more responsible: “We broke the planet’s reflective shield; now we have a duty to help mend it – carefully, together, under rules everyone can see.” That’s not spin; it’s an ethical interpretation of the same underlying physics. And for a mass audience, the ethical frame is what sticks. An ethical story moves beyond science alone. It speaks at the level of cultural identity, drawing on the moral traditions that shape how communities understand duty, danger and hope. The core moral arc has to shift from sin and denial to repair and guardianship.
We can frame the Albedo Accord as a three-act moral drama.
Act I – Recognition: we darkened the Earth. We didn’t just add CO₂ we dimmed the planet – melted bright ice, thinned clouds, darkened oceans and land. The moral language here is confession: “We have already geoengineered the planet by accident. The question now is whether we repair that damage responsibly or just look away.” This undercuts the “don’t meddle” objection. We already did interfere. Darkening also has a moral dimension, engaging traditional stories about light and darkness. Across religious and cultural traditions, light is associated with truth, blessing and flourishing, while darkness often symbolises ignorance, danger and loss. In that symbolic landscape, the fact that we have literally dimmed the Earth – reduced its reflectivity by 2% and loaded it with heat – is not just a technical finding but a moral diagnosis. Rebrightening the planet can then be understood, not as playing God with sunlight, but as a disciplined act of repair: managing light in a way that protects the vulnerable and honours our duty of care.
Act II – Responsibility: duty to the vulnerable and to the future. Here the story shifts from guilt to obligation. Justice recognises that the people who did least to cause the damage (low-emitters, future generations, non-human life) are facing the greatest risks. Duty of care means if we know how to reduce that risk safely, withholding action becomes an ethical crime, not a neutral action. Against emission reduction alone, we can say, in simple moral language, “If our actions have set a house on fire and the children are still inside, we don’t get moral credit for promising not to light any more matches. We also have to help put the fire out.” That’s the core moral logic of “cooling first”.
Act III – Covenant: governed repair, not technocratic power. The Montreal Protocol analogy lets us tell a story of covenant, not control: Countries came together to protect something invisible but essential (the ozone layer). They listened to the science, shared costs fairly, and stuck with it until the danger receded. An Albedo Accord is the same kind of story: “We agree to good governance with accountable transparency, against secrecy and narrow advantage. We agree to act only under rules that protect the vulnerable first.” That’s the opposite of a Bond-villain thermostat fantasy. It’s collective restraint and disciplined repair.
Reframing geoengineering as honesty, not hubris means the moral story has to flip the usual script, from the old frame: “Solar geoengineering is reckless hubris; virtue lies in refusing to touch it” to the new frame: “We are already in a reckless experiment. Virtue lies in being honest about that, and in exploring every safe way to reduce harm, under shared rules.” So the Albedo Accord can be presented as a moral safety device, not a power grab. Taking the initiative would forestall and prevent any unilateral, secret, or weaponised albedo tinkering. It would require global consent and independent science for any intervention. It would keep carbon action as essential. With an Albedo Accord, we drag the future of planetary reflectivity into the open, where ethics, science and vulnerable nations have a primary say. That’s a story ordinary people can recognise as prudence, not hubris.
Linking to human flourishing, not just survival, gives a mass audience a positive hope, not only “avoiding catastrophe” but “making a decent world”. We already have the ingredients. Eudaimonia / flourishing is the long moral tradition says the good life is one where people and communities can thrive, not merely survive. This tradition stands alongside the new recognition that human flourishing depends on a flourishing biosphere. The story is that rebrightening is not about preserving our current lifestyles at any cost, but rather about buying time to build a civilisation where both people and the living Earth can flourish. Cooling the planet is an essential milestone toward the destination of a stable flourishing planet. It is the emergency stabilisation that makes a good future thinkable and achievable. That shifts the feel from desperate techno-fix to guarding the possibility of a better world.
Narrative contrasts we can use in public help crystallise the moral story in talks and op-eds:
- From “Playing God with the climate”
To “Owning up to what we’ve already done, and governing the repair.” - From “Emission Reduction Alone is the virtuous path”
To “Refusing life-saving cooling options while the vulnerable burn is not virtue, it’s abandonment.” - From “Albedo is a dangerous distraction”
To “Ignoring albedo when it’s driving much of today’s heating is a dangerous denial.” - From “Saying no keeps our hands clean”
To “Our hands are already dirty; the question now is whether we use them to clean up or just walk away.”
Whenever we talk about an Albedo Accord to a broad audience, the story should:
- Name the victims – small-island states, farmers in drying regions, young people, species at the brink.
- Name the cause – not just “emissions” but “darkening the Earth and overloading it with heat”.
- Name the duty – because we did this, we owe repair and protection.
- Name the guardrails – treaty, transparency, equity, not unilateral power.
- Name the hope – a cooler, more stable world where serious climate mitigation and restoration finally have a chance to work.
If those five elements are always present, the Albedo Accord is no longer a technical curiosity. It becomes a moral proposal about how humanity chooses to inhabit a damaged planet. Once people feel it that way, getting it in front of a mass audience becomes much easier. News outlets, faith communities, youth groups, climate-vulnerable nations all trade in moral stories. We’re giving them one that makes sense of the physics and offers a path that isn’t just despair, delusion or denial.
Practical realism requires that we deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. Part of Bismarck’s ‘art of the possible’ sausage for climate is an unsentimental alliance with fossil fuel interests to secure an Albedo Accord. Their capital, platforms, inertia and political leverage are too large simply to ignore or oppose. The point is not to hand them the thermostat, but to bind them under law: an Albedo levy hypothecated to a global cooling fund; use of offshore infrastructure for governed rebrightening; and ongoing effort to accelerate practical carbon action while emissions continue. This kind of alliance uses their capital and engineering without giving them control. The fossil fuel industry can be on tap, not on top – a service provider working under global rules, not the boss of planetary decisions. We can harness the incumbent system to help mend the damage it has done, inside a treaty architecture designed to prevent capture and protect the vulnerable.
Regards
Robert Tulip
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/planetary-restoration/CAH-gPYE37gBOLhPaX2VO_Jmh3we5Ooro2y_UZFo2ghUdJyMQOg%40mail.gmail.com.
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Alan - Si, como no!
Cooling solution opponents, like too many cooling solution proponents, completely miss avoided feedback emissions that are huge. This is why we are here! Sing loud and long ~ ~ ~
The same song also applies to carbon removal as well as emissions reductions. Feedbacks are what makes climate change the dangerous thing it is. Without feedbacks, a little further warming is safe, or at least avoids the worst of the nebulous "dangerous climate change," like our current global climate science consensus suggests.
I don't know about termination shock, as in; I have been interpreting on the subject a bit lately and it's hard for me to say anything but, "our climate is an angry beast when poked," (RIP Wally Broeker.) Like almost every single issue with climate warming effects, we cannot rule out wildly more extreme weather events with termination shock simply because of the rate of change and the corresponding frequency of extreme events that increase nonlinearly with incremental warming. What kind of perverse feedbacks to global weather patterns could occur with abrupt termination of cooling when the rate of warming increases by orders of magnitude greater than today, with an already perturbed overall climate system?
I believe I have seen modelling that shows it's not a huge issue, but modelling is significantly understated at virtually every turn. Common perception that abrupt cooling termination simply returns us to the state of our climate before the cooling is a good sounding idea, but given the unknowns, risks, and modeling understatement, is it truly a good, sound idea? Fluid dynamics tell us that with a steady state system (increasing system attributes can result in a steady state too), a perturbation creates large anomalies in the state of the system. This applies to a decreasing state too and anomalies in the system's flow are larger with larger perturbations, which portends plausibly increasing extremes with rapid cooling, while the perturbation sorts itself out and returns to laminar flow. It's the perturbations that create the extremes. Rapid rewarming with termination shock would create flow anomalies larger than we are experiencing today, because it is very plausible that the warming rate would be larger than today.
Regardless, the point of no return looms and risks of passing these irreversible tipping thresholds are far greater than restoring our climate through cooling, removal and reducing, or fear of termination shock, before our systems become so degraded they cannot self-restore, resulting in collapse cascades that are only just being significantly acknowledged recently.
What remains is a simply concept: if one stops chemotherapy, does their cancer come back worse? The wrong question is being asked here, just like the wrong question is being asked with termination shock.
Have you seen our page, "The Long History of Geoengineering" on the new website yet?
MeltOn
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Bruce,
Your point about avoiding warming implies a simple demonstration that opposition to enhanced sunlight reflection is bonkers. To argue that the enhanced reflection could be a net negative, one must assert in effect that to undergo rather than avert the preventable warming could have been so beneficial on a net basis that averting that warming would have been a tragic mistake.
This additionally highlights the fallacy of termination shock. It's implausible that at any future time the Earth would be warmer than if the sunlight reflection prior to termination had not been done. Regardless of feedbacks, which could be beneficial as you note, any avoided warming has net benefits indefinitely into the future apart from any other considerations.
It would be interesting to solicit the response of geoengineering opponents to these points.
Alan
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/a7fc4f00-68af-4f8a-8a6f-7e98b4001628%40earthlink.net.
Alan Kerstein
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/a7fc4f00-68af-4f8a-8a6f-7e98b4001628%40earthlink.net.
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Alan, thanks for your reply. Sorry that my email was so long! It was a way to explore some of the ethical problems around climate change. As you note, my final paragraph proposes industry alliances. Without such a strategy I see no prospect of the well-funded political messaging you describe that is needed to support deployment of sunlight reflection methods.
Regards
Robert Tulip
From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Alan Kerstein
Sent: Thursday, 27 November 2025 7:26 PM
To: rob...@rtulip.net
Cc: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>; Paul Beckwith <paulhenr...@gmail.com>; Jan Umsonst <j.o.u...@gmail.com>; H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>; Bruce Melton Austin Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Bru Pearce <b...@envisionation.org>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Climate Alliance Healthy <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HPAC] Opportunity to sign on to a tipping points declaration
Hi Robert,
I think that the practical need for unsentimental alliances that you note provides a framework that encompasses our views. You describe your moral perspective as a story to be directed toward a broad audience. I don’t know how broad an audience would be receptive to that, but in the present communication environment it seems that narrowcasting to niche communities is winning the competition for attention and approbation. I have suggested approaches intended to be persuasive among particular groups.
Serious (meaning lavishly funded) political messaging is now a highly specialized discipline. Our perspectives and many others are needed to accomplish the alliance-building task that we face. I don’t consider myself qualified to weigh in on the merits of particular strategies. It seems that HPAC has been struggling with this for some time.
Regards,
Alan
Alan Kerstein
The points you mention are valid and potentially consequential with regard to possible effects of cooling termination. Beyond that, it is seen time and time again that the climate surprises us in ways that are understood only in hindsight. Decisions about cooling deployment are among the most consequential instances of decision-making under uncertainty that humanity has ever encountered.
I’ve run across psychological studies showing that there can be an optimal amount of knowledge for making the best decisions because a greater amount can draw more attention to tangential information than it merits. There’s no rule book for separating the wheat from the chaff, but simply being mindful that not all information is equally relevant to decision making is helpful.
Sometimes a reframing provides clarity. Here’s a reframing to make the point that outcomes matter, not the way they come about (other things being equal). Suppose we knew so much about volcano prediction that we discovered that a volcano would soon erupt and over a span of a few decades would steadily omit enough particulate to materially slow temperature rise without harmful side effects. If it were possible to suppress the eruption, would there be an outpouring of demands to do so? If geoengineering opponents were consistent in their opposition to human intervention to change the climate, they would oppose this intervention, thereby supporting the substantive outcome that SAI and related techniques could deliver.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/8bc25863-4c27-4628-ac8c-b865fecadd9d%40earthlink.net.
Alan Kerstein
I think that the practical need for unsentimental alliances that you note provides a framework that encompasses our views. You describe your moral perspective as a story to be directed toward a broad audience. I don’t know how broad an audience would be receptive to that, but in the present communication environment it seems that narrowcasting to niche communities is winning the competition for attention and approbation. I have suggested approaches intended to be persuasive among particular groups.
Serious (meaning lavishly funded) political messaging is now a highly specialized discipline. Our perspectives and many others are needed to accomplish the alliance-building task that we face. I don’t consider myself qualified to weigh in on the merits of particular strategies. It seems that HPAC has been struggling with this for some time.
Regards,
rob...@rtulip.net
Thanks Alan, always appreciate your perspective. I am now writing a book targeted to the business community to get them on board with the need to restore albedo. The aim is to convince business leaders of the commercial benefits of a brighter world, so they can then influence political decision makers and the general public through what you describe as serious messaging. I will share more about this soon. Regards, Robert
Robert Chris
Hi all
This has been a fascinating thread. Although everyone involved agrees that SRM must now be regarded as an urgent and vital policy response to global warming, the thread displays some significant disagreements.
This started as a short note to address Tom’s questions specifically about the significance of time lags in feedbacks. It has developed into a much longer piece that has almost become a Class 101 in climate science and systems theory. As is the case for most of what I write, its primary purpose is selfishly to allow me to process the various issues under discussion. As one of my fellow PhD candidates memorably remarked ‘I write my thoughts into being.’
For those with the time and inclination, the 23 pages are in the attachment. If you’ve got better things to do than join me on the journey, you can skip to the destination. There’s a succinct list of the 14 take away messages in the Conclusion in Section 8 on page 21, the most important of which is:
12. The need to undertake SRM is not driven by the specific need to offset the recent decrease in Earth’s albedo, but by the extreme radiative inefficiency of CO2 making it incapable of delivering a sufficiently rapid slowing and reversal of global warming to offset the cumulative scale of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
In the 23 pages I seek to dispel some misunderstandings about basic climate science, the difference between a forcing and a feedback, whether SRM really does cool faster than decarbonisation, and if it doesn’t (spoiler alert – it doesn’t) why it doesn’t and why we all think it does, the relationship between decarbonisation and termination shock, and some comments about policymaking.
I start with a short statement about what I think we all agree about and then explore what I think we disagree about, and hopefully by the end bring us all together with a shared understanding of the what we know and don’t know. My basic thinking is that if we, a pretty well-informed group of committed and insightful global citizens can’t agree on some of these important details, how are we going to lead anyone else to the promised land.
I must repeat my customary caveat. I’m not a climate scientist. Anything I say should be accepted with caution. I have found many of the issues I cover here to be challenging and the task of writing this extremely helpful in clarifying things that previously I thought I knew but then realised that I didn’t quite know as clearly as I think I now do. I hope others may get some benefit from sharing this journey with me.
I should also add that I have not responded to RobertT's moral arguments. I'm not sure whether the audiences that matter in terms of getting SRM into the policy mix would be positively moved by these arguments, or the contrary. I suspect mostly the latter.
Robert
Tom Goreau
AAHRGH! I have no time at all to read this properly for at least a week.
Looking forward to reading it, but alas, not now!
Just quickly though, I hope you developed the fascinating time lag feedback issue in more detail than I had time for!
As Scientific Advisor to Yayasan Karang Lestari (Coral Protection Foundation) and to Biorock Indonesia I’m lecturing to Indonesian marine biologists and photographers, diving and repairing underwater electrical gear for growing coral reefs and beach sand, etc.
I’ll talk a little today to Balinese diving photographers about the three prong strategy to stabilize temperature and save coral reefs using the Trident of the Balinese God of the Sea, Baruna, to prevent humans from forking Mother Nature!
Here is a one minute video of a small part of my coral reef projects in Bali, the longest running, largest, and most beautiful in the world, where we’re adding more solar powered reefs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/scubadiving/comments/1mlrxx4/biorock_in_pemuteran_bali_indonesias_largest/
Best wishes,
Tom
rob...@rtulip.net
Hi Robert
I really appreciate you taking the time and effort to analyse and critique this problem of the role of albedo in warming in such detail, which as you have noted is my primary interest. I agree with you that feedbacks now dominate the climate response, but I think you underplay how far that shifts the calculus towards albedo management and SRM. Below I respond point-by-point. Your essay provides some excellent framing, notably the emphasis on Hansen’s calculation of Earth Climate Sensitivity at 4.5 oC, significantly above the IPCC expected value of 3oC. Bringing attention to this crucial work is of the greatest importance.
As you say, Hansen’s findings mean “the direct warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is 1.2oC. The feedbacks add another 2.8oC of warming.” This means “the direct forcing from adding more CO2 to the atmosphere is less than half of the forcing from the feedbacks it drives. The feedbacks have become ‘primary’ forcings because they are more powerful than the direct forcing that caused them.”
- In other words, feedback processes roughly double to triple the direct greenhouse response. Together with CERES and Hansen’s 2025 cloud paper showing ~1.7 W/m² extra absorbed solar since 2000, this strongly suggests that changes in albedo and other feedbacks are the dominant share of the total response. In a Pareto policy frame, that makes albedo a primary lever, even if it was initially triggered by CO₂.
“If the bulk of the recent decrease in albedo is feedback, it is not, by definition, the primary driver of warming.”
- I don’t think this definition is right. A primary driver is the biggest input, not the original cause. Calling albedo loss a feedback tells us what kicked it off, not how big its effect is. A feedback can absolutely become the primary driver of the actual warming if its radiative impact exceeds the original forcing.
- This can be shown from your vivid example of feedback, that leaving an amplifier to keep screeching when it is too close to the microphone can cause the amp to blow up. In this case it makes little sense to assert the feedback has not driven the explosion. The screech is the immediate cause of the damage. Certainly, the main ‘forcing’ is the relative position of mike and amp, but the ‘driver’ is the overall situation, the combination of forcing and feedback.
- I am reminded here of a satire on Ronald Reagan’s theory of murder causality. Where Reagan said “guns don’t kill people, people do”, the satirist suggested “guns don’t kill people, bullets do.” Causality operates at different levels, from bullets to guns to people, each responsible in some way, but differently amenable to control. Similarly, our analysis of the causes of warming has to focus in on the most politically tractable and effective solutions, something that involves complex evaluations of expected impacts of different scenarios.
- This is important to defend my statements about the primacy of albedo in the current warming surge. For convenience, I will respond to specific statements in the order they appear in your essay.
“RT also claimed that albedo was the primary driver of glaciation and deglaciation in the Ice Ages, with GHGs being only secondary.”
- At Ice Age inceptions, lower northern summer insolation caused cooler summers that allowed glaciers to expand. That in turn increased northern albedo, which in turn caused a fall in CO2, which in turn caused the global ice ages, with expanding southern hemisphere glaciers. The primacy of albedo over carbon here is in terms of sequence, not overall forcing.
“Ignoring the potential impact of tipping events…, there is no reason to suppose that climate models significantly misrepresent the climate trajectory”
- Prudent precautions are needed to recognise the potential impact of tipping points, which function rather like a precipice that we should stay well away from to prevent the risk of falling off. I worry that models are too complacent about this high risk. We may be like the turkey the day before Thanksgiving who uses his accurate model of past experience to predict the future.
“If we stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, surface temperature would immediately stabilise at ~1.5oC above pre-industrial.”
- I don’t think that is true, even if it is the ZEC consensus. Hansen’s paleoclimate analysis points out the last time the Earth had the current GHG level the temperature and sea level were much higher. That makes it more likely, absent SRM, that committed warming from past emissions would continue to warm the planet even more for some time, until a new Earth System Equilibrium is reached.
“the cooling from SRM will have similar feedback effects over the similar timing as a like amount of cooling from decarbonisation”
- Here you are asking your “Gedank” thought experiment to do too much work. Comparing a potentially near-realistic SRM program, shaving one degree of warming, to a thoroughly unrealistic CDR program with “a single CDR pulse of 1,100GtCO2 in 2027”, cannot support the conclusion that “it is not true that SRM cools faster than decarbonisation.” The point about feedbacks is that they involve unstable tipping. Stepping back from the cliff edge (SRM) is less risky than teetering over the chasm for a long time (CDR).
“the difference was not rooted in the physics but in their socio-technical differences; Watt for Watt, SRM is just so much easier to do at scale and speed.”
- Yes, this conclusion from your conversations with Mike McCracken and Doug McMartin shows the potential climate impacts of SRM are greater than from carbon action (my preferred term rather than decarbonisation), showing well governed SRM is safer as a primary cooling strategy.
“Our problem today is not so much the 40GtCO2 we’re currently emitting each year, but the 2,500GtCO2 we’ve emitted in the last 275 years, of which more than 1,100Gt remains in the atmosphere. In the CDR example above in which 1,100GtCO2 is removed in one go, the atmosphere is being instantly returned to its pre-industrial state.”
- This statement of the problem of committed warming should also include the ~600 Gt CO2 dissolved in the ocean that would outgas as a result of this large CDR program.
“if the forcings decline or cease, the feedbacks will follow suit and the system will eventually stabilise.”
- We cannot be certain of this, especially regarding a mere decline of forcing. Notably with subtropical marine cloud banks, it may be possible that the forcings have already induced a phase shift, and that even if emissions stopped today, these essential climate stabilisers would continue a remorseless collapse without SRM.
“Hansen observes that ‘the effect of GHGs on Earth’s albedo is negligible’”
- In his May 2025 Cloud paper where this comes from, the sentence continues “as GHG absorption in the solar spectrum is weak.” I don’t think Hansen expressed his point well here, which is just about direct effect. GHGs have a massive indirect effect on albedo due to the induced feedbacks of loss of clouds, ice and snow.
“This suggests that RobertT is overstating it when he refers to albedo as ‘the main immediate driver of warming’.”
- Far from it. If feedbacks cause 2.8 oC of warming against 1.2 oC from the greenhouse effect, the feedbacks are the main immediate driver, in terms of quantity, which is the main concern.
“recent albedo decrease. … didn’t become established until about 2010 after which, … it grew more or less linearly at the rate of ~0.12Wm-2yr-1, accounting for the 1.7Wm-2 by 2025”
- Yes, a key point. This recent acceleration of darkening is an astonishing problem, indicating the grave scale of the albedo crisis. Greenhouse warming from new emissions is only ~0.04Wm-2yr-1, one third of the albedo warming cited here. I have been constantly asking for validation of this comparison to determine if it is actually comparing like to like. I understand from CERES that the real albedo decline this century is 2Wm-2, but this is mitigated to net 1.7 by causing 0.4 Wm-2 more TOA system heat loss.
“RobertT is right that evidence suggests that in many instances albedo change occurred prior to changes in atmospheric CO2. …Where I think he has gone wrong is to apply that historical analogue to our current circumstances.”
- Not just ‘in many instances’, in every 100k cycle of Ice Age start and end, albedo change has preceded and caused CO2 change. Of course we have a reversal today, with the forcing of albedo loss coming from GHGs rather than from orbital change, but the point is the overall centrality of albedo. With feedbacks accelerating, and driving more warming than the greenhouse effect alone, up to 2.5 times more on Hansen’s ECS calculation, there is direct relevance of glaciation feedbacks to global warming today.
“for RobertT to claim that recent albedo decline is not ‘driven by CO2’”
- I have not suggested that recent albedo decline is not ‘driven by CO2’. CO2 remains the driver of albedo decline, understood as the original cause. However, the severe acceleration of darkening since 2010 suggests the feedback processes may have decoupled from GHG forcing, to the extent that nothing we do about carbon can slow them. Especially, the ocean warming caused by cloud loss may be generating an autonomous feedback process that will rapidly reduce cloud cover by destroying the protective inversion layer of air that blankets the large marine cloud banks and keeps them stable and reflective.
“I strongly disagree with RobertT’s claim that albedo change is the primary driver of today’s global warming”
- To square that with Hansen’s calculation that feedbacks are causing 2.5 times as much warming as forcings requires wrongly defining driver as a synonym of forcing.
“RobertT’s error in claiming that albedo is a primary driver of global warming, when it is clear from Hansen and others that it is mostly a feedback.”
- A driver can be either a forcing or a feedback. The primary driver is whichever is bigger. Feedbacks are now bigger than forcings as causes of warming.
“Quite how RobertT’s proposed Albedo Accord would advance the cause of SRM is unclear.”
- On the model of the Montreal Protocol that has successfully protected the ozone layer, an Albedo Accord would establish a narrow technical governance system to restore the albedo layer, to enable transparent international cooperation between business, science and government to fund, explain, study, manage and deploy SRM, motivated by recognition that the accelerating collapse of albedo is a security crisis that must be stopped to prevent cascading impacts, modelled on pharmaceutical methods to ensure safety and efficacy.
“It is too much warming that kills, not too little albedo.”
- Yes, just like guns don’t kill people😊. Albedo collapse is now the biggest cause of warming, and reversing that collapse is the most tractable way to reverse warming.
“The best way to avoid future feedbacks is not to do those things that cause the temperature to increase, like emitting more GHGs.”
- This continues the fallacy of the law of holes that we have discussed before. It is more likely that the best way to avoid future feedbacks is to directly reverse current feedbacks, with carbon action in a secondary slower role.
“Feedbacks typically aggregate to have a greater effect than the direct warming or cooling effect of the forcing that initiated them.”
- I am glad you set this as your first conclusion, as you seem to undermine it in some of your other comments. Pareto optimal policy response should target the greatest effect.
“The magnitude of the recent albedo feedback response strongly suggests that the widely accepted ‘most likely’ value of ECS of 3oC is improbably too low and that it is more likely to be about 4.5oC.”
- Yes, which explains why I think Mann’s dismissal of Hansen’s aerosol and albedo arguments is a serious mistake that risks leaving policymakers under-informed about the acceleration of warming.
“The need to undertake SRM is not driven by the specific need to offset the recent decrease in Earth’s albedo”
- That seems to muddle the causal processes. We need SRM because the world is too hot. In large part, much more than most people are aware, the world is too hot because emissions have caused a collapse of albedo, causing more warming than the greenhouse effect alone. With feedbacks causing 2.5 times as much warming as forcings on Hansen’s analysis, restoring albedo is a security emergency that needs to be explained in simple coherent terms.
“Termination shock is a real risk that must be addressed. The best way to do so is to do the least SRM possible by ensuring that decarbonisation is done to the maximum possible.”
- Assertions about what is best are contestable. “The maximum possible” is as much a political and economic as a scientific calculation. If a coalition to restore albedo requires some trade off to accept slower carbon action, that might be the optimal result, noting that albedo action can itself spur effective carbon action by enabling effective global cooperation on climate, and recognising that carbon mining could prove to be a bigger and more effective carbon action than energy transition. The UN call to halve emissions by 2030 has been deeply polarising, contributing to the Trump/Farage backlash. I think the best way to address the risk of termination shock is to establish an Albedo Accord with the mandate to manage planetary temperature, and have faith that this essential planetary infrastructure will be maintained to enable planetary restoration and repair over the long term.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/5ab2cd49-e069-4406-b726-3f40354c2037%40gmail.com.
Robert Chris
Robert Chris
...
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Veli Albert Kallio
I too could draw out problems in the models and shout at "you stupid". Well think about the Ice Ages that desiccated the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the North Sea, the Arctic Ocean with methane clathrate laden seafloors depressurised with also gas fields gurgitating geological methane and carbon dioxide. There was never going to be enough hydroxyl to oxidise methane in xeric conditions of Pleistocene. Think about Toba (just one supervolcano among many big ones puffing out 3.500 km3 of ash and laying down 1 metre layer of ash. What climate warming effects the dimming, vast quantities of SO2, and H2S did for the cooling climate - and on the other hand what mess CO2, CH4 and H2O propellants of those supereruptions did for the earth's climate. Plus bear in mind that Last Glacial Maximum = Methane Clathrate Depressurization Maximum, and also seafloor gas field venting and explosions maximum with air seeded with carbon-12 from geological and old fossil sources. The golden idea of radiocarbon dating isn't that great as to through out 3,500 km3 as will require many, many times more gas to get it up in air. Methane's property as lighter-than-air gas and its accumulation in upper troposphere (above cloud forming level), stratosphere, mesosphere and its integration in thermosphere while not earth surface-hugging Is big problem in the climate models with the radiocarbon dilution effect.
But let's us roll up our sleeves, and push forward hard. World has idiots like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, forget them and focus on sensible people. The entirety of climate question is a way bigger than the doctrines of different schools exploring holes in our knowledge.
Veli Albert Kallio, FRGS
Vice President, Sea Research Society
Environmental Affairs Department
Ethnoclimatologist
Sent: 05 December 2025 12:42
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Cc: 'Paul Beckwith' <paulhenr...@gmail.com>; 'Jan Umsonst' <j.o.u...@gmail.com>; 'H simmens' <hsim...@gmail.com>; 'Bruce Melton Austin Texas' <bme...@earthlink.net>; 'Tom Goreau' <gor...@globalcoral.org>; 'Bru Pearce' <b...@envisionation.org>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Climate Alliance Healthy' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
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Herman Gyr
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On Dec 5, 2025, at 4:24 AM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
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John Nissen
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rob...@rtulip.net
Hi John, thanks very much, I always enjoy reading your comments.
I must say, I am not even convinced of the point you raise from Gene Fry that net zero emissions would stop the acceleration of warming! Scientists simply don’t know enough about cloud physics to be confident in this prediction. It could be possible that the geological suddenness of what we are inflicting on the planet, combined with fragility and sensitivity greater than assumed, could lead the loss of subtropical ocean cloud banks to cause ongoing acceleration of warming even under net zero emissions – over the precipice into the hothouse. That may be wrong, but a precautionary approach suggests it needs much more investigation. As Herb Simmens has emphasised, net zero is only theoretically possible in a world later this century that has smashed the two degree ceiling, so I really think all bets are off about warming acceleration from feedbacks in such a dangerous situation.
I agree with you that it is wrong to support the tipping points emergency declaration. While these leading climate figures continue their wrongheaded belief that energy reform is more important than cooling the planet, it is better to insist a paradigm shift is needed rather than pretend their solution could work. There is no benefit in building a mass movement on false premises.
Thanks for your comments on the relative warming effects of albedo and emissions. You say “I can believe that total global albedo loss could be around 1.7 W/m2 in 2025. But the forcing from GHGs is much greater: forcing from CO2 is ~2.2 W/m2 and from short-lived GHGs about half as much again. So don't go overboard on albedo!”
All of these numbers require clarification to ensure a comparison of like for like, which is not easy, so I am always eager to find authoritative clear explanations. For example, CERES data shows albedo has fallen by about 2 W/m2 this century, according to Peter Cox from Exeter, but his data does not appear to be published in any authoritative source as far as I can tell, which I find astonishing for one of the most important planetary numbers. I believe the 1.7 figure you mention may be used because darkening also causes a balancing 0.4 W/m2 in heat loss to space, according to Loeb, but the explanation in this paper seems unclear.
Looking at the sudden collapse of albedo since about 2010 in Cox’s chart, it appears that the warming effect of recent darkening exceeds the direct greenhouse warming effect from new emissions, ie that feedbacks, mainly cloud loss, now significantly exceed forcings in warming power. If that is true, then nothing we do about carbon by itself can slow the runaway freight train of darkening of the planet. Solar geoengineering is a security imperative. And yet Lenton et al insist that cloud loss is not a tipping element, seemingly ignoring the real albedo crisis that may now be the main driver of warming.
If anyone can prove me wrong on any of this I would appreciate it.
Regards
Robert Tulip
robert...@gmail.com
Hi John & RobertT
John's rebuttal of my claim that if we stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, surface temperature would immediately stabilise at +1.5oC is interesting not because he might be right and I might be wrong, or vice versa, but because it illustrates a problem about argumentation.
My claim is based on the FaIR climate model. If you enter zero emissions (not net zero) from 2026, no CDR and no SRM, it constructs a future that is a stable +1.5oC at least until 2300. FaIR might be wrong, but given its provenance, it would be remarkable if it were so wrong as to make John's alternative stable (unspecified) arithmetic increase in surface temperature right.
Perhaps, John, you could provide some substance to corroborate your alternative view. The narrative might be appealing, but without numbers to support it, it can't be compelling.
As I have often said, I'm not a climate scientist, so I have no skin in this game. But I do know the difference between a sound and unsound argument. I would be pleased to withdraw my claim if a more credible and authoritative one can be presented. Until then, my judgement is that FaIR is most unlikely to be too far off the mark.
In the next couple of days I shall rerun the FaIR model but with ECS set at 4.5oC as per Hansen, as opposed to FaIR's default of 3.24oC. I wonder if that'll make much difference.
John, the numbers you present on albedo raise a question that I think I have answered elsewhere, but I'm not overly confident on that answer, so I'd welcome your input.
You note that albedo has added 1.7Wm-2 and CO2 ~2.2Wm-2 and SLCPs about half of that, so that's another ~1.1Wm-2. In total that's a positive forcing of ~5Wm-2. However, EEI, according to Hansen is currently ~1.5Wm-2. Where's the negative forcing of 3.5Wm-2 coming from that reconciles these two figures?
I'm also interest in where you get your numbers from in this comment 'We are heading for 2.0C by 2040 and 4.0C by 2100 without massive SRM and massive CDR. What emissions scenario were these based on?
RobertC
Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert C--I'm not intending to get into your discussion except to offer a response to your next to last paragraph and its question to John. I would suggest that the answer about where the difference is (not saying it is 3.5 W/m2--just saying qualitatively) is that the global average temperature has warmed ~1.5C since preindustrial. So, the set of forcings listed is since preindustrial and that the EEI is not this amount would be because the climate has warmed and so offset at least some share of the original forcing.
Best, Mike
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