Hi Hugh & Shaun
Just listened to the first two podcasts (for
HPAC readers, the links are below). Very good. Well done. I
hope they get lots of hits.
As a confirmed catastrophist, the message
that struck, me most particularly from Trish, was the optimism
bias. At the very end Hugh asks her how she thinks the
technologies will evolve. She answers:
What gives me confidence is that the
people engaging with this issue all have the world's best
interests at heart.
She then highlights the significance of the
democratisation of this policy space and concludes that 'This is
how we will get to a just and equitable decision on this
technology'.
If only!
What neither Dan nor Trish addresses is the
question of urgency. Dan talks eloquently and with great
clarity about what he considers plausible with regard to
international governance and collaboration and the challenges
and limitations constrain progress. But nowhere does either
reflect on the physical inertia of Earth systems and the
demands placed on the decision
making process by the time from
intervention to effect. If it takes m years to make the
decision to research in earnest, n years to do the
research and take the intervention to TRL9 or 10, and p years
for the intervention to be deployed at sufficient scale, and q years
for the Earth system effects to emerge, what is the climate
system doing in m+n+p+q years?
It seems to me that everyone is too focussed
on the practicalities of taking the next step and they've lost
sight of the big picture. That is not how to respond
effectively to an emergency. Indeed, that mindset is tantamount
to saying 'Emergency, what emergency?'
Until folk grasp that global warming IS
ALREADY an emergency, the responses will continue to be
well-meaning and insufficient. Having the world's best
interests at heart is sweet, but pathetically inadequate. There's already literature that
addresses the (in)ability of climate interventions to stop
tipping events that are already in train, even if theoretically
still reversible. The idea that we'll wake up and act when the
evidence of harm is inescapably realised all around us, is to
completely ignore the limitations of human agency.
Today's catastrophic glacier collapse in
Nepal is a perfect illustration. It's a perfect illustration
not because it was a surprise, but because most people not in
Nepal won't join the dots. They won't get that today Nepal,
tomorrow wherever they are. What makes catastrophes a surprise
is not that they happen, but that happen on your doorstep when you're looking the other way.
Another great illustration of this problem
is the IPCC Special Report on 1.5oC that I've just been rereading. I hadn't previously realised how useless it
was as guidance for policymakers. I lost count of the number of
times it remarks, in different contexts, how things would be
worse at 2oC than at 1.5oC. That's
blindingly obvious and hardly needs saying. But whether 1.5oC is 'safe' and 2oC isn't, is
simply not addressed. There is the burning embers chart. But
this would be challenging for most to understand because in the
interests of scientific 'accuracy' it has been complexified,
such that a lay reader would be most unlikely to extract an
answer to the simple question 'What level of warming would be
OK?'. It is also interesting to see how the burning embers
chart was changed for AR6, just a couple of years later. The
red and purple areas now begin at lower temperature thresholds.
That is consistent with the long term trend in things being
worse than previously thought. Where might they begin when they
reappear in AR7?
It might be worthwhile finding a credible
speaker to address these questions in a future podcast.
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Hello Robert,
"We're a very adaptable species. That's why
we're in this
mess."
That’s a quote from Dr Trish
Lavery in
our first
podcast
episode,
recorded at
the beginning
of what became
a long, hot,
deadly summer.
As wildfires
raged,
conversations
here turned to
air
conditioning,
closing
windows, and
new prime
ministers - often without any mention of
climate change.
“A few decades ago,” she continued, “when I
started out in
environmental
policy, if you
had told me
that we’d get
to a situation
where our
insurance
premiums are
doubling and
doubling again
on our house
because of
extreme
climate
events, that
we’re
experiencing
at least tens
of thousands
of deaths due
to heat every
year… I would
have said as a
naive
policymaker,
well, at that
stage, we’ll
do something
about it.
We’ll pull up
our socks and
really get
stuck into
mitigation.”
Can we help make that
happen before
it really is
too late?
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We know climate repair (or interventions, or
geoengineering,
or its myriad
other names…)
can be
confusing, and
that
conversations
can feel
limited to the
big debates.
We wanted to
create a place
to chat with
leading
experts
visiting us in
Cambridge over
the summer.
The goal: that we and our listeners can learn
from them
about climate
repair - the
science, the
governance,
the history,
and more.
During a hot July, we recorded a limited
series
in-person in
our city.
These aren’t
video calls
with big names
(though those
are valuable)
- these are
conversations
after lunch or
over coffee
between
experts in
different
parts of the
field. And
you’re
invited.
Listen to the first two episodes
out now!
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New papers out this month:
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Maps showing the
distribution
of the cooling
in the four
models. The
hatching
represents
where the
changes aren’t
statistically
significant.
From paper by
William
McFarlane
Smith.
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A Cambridge Engineering student has
developed a
drone to fly
above clouds
and measure
droplets with
a camera.
Luca Lin, who graduated this summer from the
Department of
Engineering,
built the
drone and
camera system
as his
fourth-year
project with
the Centre for
Climate
Repair. The
Centre is
researching
marine cloud
brightening, a
proposed
climate
intervention
that would
help low-lying
marine clouds
reflect more
sunlight. The
idea is to
spray seawater
droplets of a
particular
size, as
smaller
droplets
scatter more
light back
into space.
The approach is being tested in models and
small-scale
trials, but
Luca’s project
addresses a
fundamental
problem: how
do you check,
in the field,
whether cloud
droplets have
actually got
smaller?
Flying the drone in
first-person
view, Luca
wears goggles
fed by a live
video
transmission
from two
bug-like
antennas
mounted on the
aircraft.
Through them,
he looks for a
specific
optical effect
known as the
“cloudbow” - a
faint,
rainbow-like
ring produced
by light
scattering.
The diameter
of the ring
corresponds to
the size of
the droplets
producing it;
a wider ring
means larger
droplets,
while a
tighter one
means smaller
droplets.
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