Comments on paper: Climate emergencies do not justify engineering the climate

[rob...@rtulip.net]

At our PRAG meeting this morning, Robert Chris kindly drew attention to an article published by Nature Climate Change in 2015 titled Climate emergencies do not justify engineering the climate.

 

On reading this article, I found that it well articulated arguments that support the dangerous complacency of the mainstream consensus on climate policy.

 

I ended up writing an extensive commentary on the article, attached.  I also included further comments on recent views expressed by one of the co-authors, Dr Tim Lenton.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Robert--If their contention is that SRM is not suitable as an emergency response to a tipping point getting started, we could agree with them, and that is why we are not proposing that as the approach to use, but to instead be starting early and gradually and learning as we go (i.e., doing research simultaneously). This save it as an emergency response option have been a real diversion from the notion of a comprehensive process from the start with recognition of the strengths and weaknesses (i.e., timing, effectiveness of response over time, slowness of mitigation, etc.) of each type of approach. So, it might be easier in responding to agree with parts of their analysis and simply point out that they are aimed at an approach that we also do not advocate, and are proposing for an early start for exactly some of the reasons that they mention.

Best, Mike

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[John Nissen]

Hi Mike,

I don't think there's an argument for delay if a tipping point is looming.  All the tipping points in the Arctic mentioned in the paper by the late Will Steffen and colleagues (PNAS 2018) have been activated - and sea ice retreat has proceeded for over 4 decades.  Thus we certainly need an emergency deployment of SRM to refreeze the Arctic.

I get the impression that Lenton et al are desperate to disparage SRM, when they haven't got a leg to stand on.  They know that they are liable to scupper their credentials if they advocate SRM.  The anti-SRM mafia are very strong, well-funded, and brutal.  Originally they were climate change deniers, as in the Climategate affair.  But they've morphed into an anti-SRM coalition. They decide on IPCC policy to ignore SRM - and the Arctic - despite the well-meaning intentions of many good scientists contributing to IPCC reports. They belittle the effects of climate change with economic models which do not match reality.  They want to maintain the status quo and are happy with the strategy of Net Zero knowing that it may never be achieved.

Cheers, John

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[Michael MacCracken]

Hi John--I apologize for possibly  creating a bit of confusion here. The emergency deployment that the paper was talking about is one that would wait until global average temperature rising rapidly with temperatures much higher--so to prevent a runaway greenhouse effect, so say after 2050, etc. And applying it strongly then to take us quickly back to early 20th century or so. That was the type of last-minute/emergency response that we too we think is not the way to think about it.

I do agree that there is a need to be applying quickly now and not to be thinking about application three or more decades in the future. As you note, this too could be called an emergency response as is needed quickly. I did not mean to disparage this, what I would call early intervention, what you call an emergency response. I don't know if these two different uses of the term 'emergency response" might be causing  confusion in the field and in media, etc. This might be an interesting topic for discussion,

Mike

[John Nissen]

Hi Peter,

Tim Lenton is forever adjusting his position on tipping points. I think he was most sound in coauthoriing the paper from Steffen et al. Sadly Will Steffen has just died, but his contribution with this paper will live on as the most important on climate change since Crutzen showed how to deal with it using SAI in 2006.

We have known that rapid intervention was needed to save the Arctic sea ice since the extraordinary retreat in September 2007. The urgency has increased ever since and we might now be too late. I still hope for averting catastrophic climate change and sea level rise if we pull out all the stops.

Everything seems to be against us.  There is a taboo on SRM.  A number of books, hundreds of articles and thousands of learned papers have been written to persuade us that SRM is a bad idea, and hardly anything to say to how beneficial it would be, besides saving the world from catastrophic climate change and sea level rise if applied to refreezing the Arctic. 

What could still sway public opinion and the politicians is the realisation that extremes of weather are getting worse faster. Hansen has shown that temperatures will continue to rise for decades- see "global warming in the pipeline". The only way to slow and reverse climate change is through cooling intervention and best to start in the Arctic.  That is the message we have to get across somehow.

Cheers John from mobile 

On Wed, 1 Feb 2023, 06:59 Admin, <peterc...@shaw.ca> wrote:

TIm Lenton has done great work. I recall some AMEG correspondence years back

No question with all large source Arctic feedbacks triggered/tipped need to safely field test all possible Arctic interventions 

The other reason is World governments have ruled out emissions mitigation

They have proven they will not mitigate - only continue to support more fossil fuels and more emissions. 

See fossil fuel energy projection to 2050 from IEA - 35% higher than 2000

Best regards

Peter C

Energy projections are 

 

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[Admin]

TIm Lenton has done great work. I recall some AMEG correspondence years back

No question with all large source Arctic feedbacks triggered/tipped need to safely field test all possible Arctic interventions 

The other reason is World governments have ruled out emissions mitigation

They have proven they will not mitigate - only continue to support more fossil fuels and more emissions. 

See fossil fuel energy projection to 2050 from IEA - 35% higher than 2000

Best regards

Peter C

Energy projections are 

 

On Jan 31, 2023, at 2:32 PM, John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Robert Chris]

In the attachment I have added to RobertT’s commentary on (Sillmann et al., 2015) and responded to a point made by Robert.  It's 6 pages.  Sorry, I got a bit carried away.

In brief, Sillman et al is a sloppy piece of work that relies mostly on unsubstantiated conjecture and a miss-framing of geoengineering and a misunderstanding about what constitutes an emergency and responses to it.  However, it is an excellent exposition of the muddled thinking against which we have to fight, and as such it would behove us to treat it with some respect and generate coherent and solid responses.  RobertT has already made a good start on that.  I’ve tried not to repeat those bits of his analysis with which I concur.

Regards

Robert

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[Douglas Grandt]

Robert, brilliantly stated, if I do say so myself … note that it's a G, not a B 🙂

This clarifies and complements the discussion starting at about minute 44:00  (Bit.ly/PRAG30Jan23_2640)

I have initiated a conversation with Bill McKibben on his most recent Substack post and it occurs to me that this section may be appropriate to share with him at some point.  If I do, I will let you know and likely have you review my email before I send it.  Do I have your approval to proceed in that direction?  (See my comment Bit.ly/BillMcK31Jan22)

Cheers,

Doug Grandt

Risk is part of the climate change furniture. It’s there whatever we do or don’t do. The challenge is to minimise it and this is done by making the peril less likely and/or reducing the loss and damage if it happens. The peril is not climate change itself but the loss and damage it causes. If the loss and damage is limited to the occasional extreme weather event such as a flood, drought, wildfire or hurricane, the loss and damage can be mitigated by having well-resourced disaster emergency response services with no need to invest in fixing the climate. But if the frequency and geographic extent of these extreme weather events grows to a point that it overwhelms those services, the loss and damage will be considerable. It's a policy decision as to how much resource to devote to those services and this will depend in large measure on the policymakers’ views on the risks from such events (likelihood and impact). The argument for AE is that those risks are now so great that a robust policy regime must include policies that would ‘perform reasonably well’ in the event that current best efforts to avert a major ecosystem collapse might prove to be insufficient. Crucially, that formulation doesn’t work if you wait until the current policy regime has demonstrably failed because then it’ll be too late.

This is succinctly encapsulated in Doug Grandt’s two aphorisms that I’ve combined here:

We must plan for the worst and hope for the best rather than plan for the best, hoping to escape the worst. 

In closing this section on risk, a central point that is too often ignored is that the question is not whether AE entails unacceptable risks but whether the risk of a climate change induced catastrophe is now sufficiently great that the fact that it can no longer be mitigated by GHG management, warrants the use of AE by one or more of the many methods of brightening the planet. If that is the case, then the imperative is urgently to undertake the research and development necessary to minimise the risks associated with it. 

Robert Chris © 2023 Pages 3 & 4 of 6 - 1 February, 2023

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