Further response to Robert Chris, dot points in email below.
From: Robert Chris <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 31 May 2022 4:42 PM To: Robert Tulip <[email protected]> Cc: 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <[email protected]>; 'Planetary Restoration' <[email protected]>; 'geoengineering' <[email protected]>; [email protected]; 'Healthy Climate Alliance' <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [CDR] Climate Security Timeline Hi Robert I'll leave others better qualified to comment on your numbers and in particular, your statement that 'Albedo management and carbon management could combine to return the planet to 280 ppm CO2 [...]. That could occur alongside ongoing emissions.' I suspect there might be a little push back on that. * Happy to debate numbers. Total emissions by the end of this century will be about one billion gigatonnes of carbon, while annual emissions are about 15 gigatonnes C including equivalents. The yearly amount is roughly 1.5% of the GHG forcing, leaving aside factors like ocean interactions and the additional forcing from albedo feedbacks. I have not seen a peer reviewed statement of the ratio between annual emissions effect and total radiative forcing so this is just my estimate. Another way to calculate the ratio might be to set the proxy for radiative forcing as the CO2e increase since the Holocene, about 200 ppm, and note that the annual 2.3ppm increase is just over 1% of that total. Even rounded up to 5% of RF, cutting emissions is still marginal to climate stability. 280 ppm CO2 is an important target as it represents the stable climate that enabled our current sea level with beaches and ports and fragile coastal ecosystems. These would all be destroyed under current climate policies but could be saved by a rapid shift to an albedo focus. The main constraint to starting SRM and scaling up GGR much bigger than emissions is political understanding. Nevertheless, I am pleased that we've established that the core driver for you is the protection of the fossil fuel industry's property rights. * Excuse me Robert, I appreciate this is a fraught topic, but such wilful distortion does you no credit. The core driver for me is climate security, as clearly stated in this thread. I am simply pointing out that snide dismissal of property rights inevitably causes social conflict. Climate solutions that preserve legal rights are to be preferred when this gives their owners an incentive to cooperate in measures to solve their own and wider problems. That is the situation for fossil fuel industries and geoengineering. An extension of that is that by truly embracing renewable energy the industry could retain its pre-eminent position in supplying the world with plentiful energy and in so doing create a whole new set of property rights to replace those that are causing most of our GHG related the problems. Those new property rights will emerge. Whether the current fossil fuel industry is one of their primary owners depends on the choices they now make. * And an extension of a proposed strategy to rely mainly on transforming the energy sector is a burning earth. Renewable energy potential is far too small, slow, contested and expensive to stop dangerous warming. Framing this as an ideological 'left/right' issue is also interesting. I don't see it that way at all. For me it's about the internal functioning of complex adaptive systems. * The political left largely want to destroy the fossil fuel industry, on the misguided assumption that to do so would stop climate change, while the political right and centre largely want to protect these industries from unjustified attacks. That political divide opens the need for dialogue on how ongoing emissions could be compatible with a path to a stable climate. Too big a topic to deal with here but briefly, such systems always grow and die. Their temporal and spatial extent goes from the tiny to the huge, but they all eventually die. Empires, governments, economic systems, cities, corporations, industries, species, and so on. Sometimes they collapse due to overwhelming external events such as the volcanic destruction of Pompeii. Other times they collapse due to human failure such as Enron and Lehman Bros. Sometimes they collapse because the world just moves on and despite their best efforts, what they offer is no longer required - where are all the farriers, thatchers and candlestick makers? But in every case, the collapse arises due to the failure of the system to adapt to changing circumstances. Sometimes the change is too great or sudden for such adaptation to be possible. Other times it is due to a lack of foresight. * I am pointing out that a good way for the fossil fuel industry to adapt to a changing climate is to support geoengineering. That will solve the warming problem and enable a more gradual tradition away from fuel sources that are less economic. I do need to point out that the world now relies on fossil fuels for over 80% of energy use. Blithe elegies for the main infrastructure of our economy are very premature, and certainly not inevitable in our lifetimes. If we can scale up GGR enough then ongoing emissions will not harm the climate. It is disturbing to revel in predictions of the demise of industries that are central to world prosperity There are probably very few who do not now consider the glory days of the fossil fuel industry to be numbered. What that number is, is an open question, as is the depth of foresight within the industry and in government about how to manage the transition. * “Glory days” could still be ahead if this industry opens a conversation on the potential of geoengineering to salvage its business models. If the oil majors offered to cooperate to refreeze the Arctic Ocean, in exchange for greater social and political licence to operate, it would be a good deal. A frozen Pole would slow down tipping points, whereas a few more gigatonnes of emissions is neither here nor there in the greater scheme of climate stability and security. You frame that as an ideological question, I see it in systemic terms. In systemic terms, there is a sweet spot on one side of which a system can be sustained by continual adaptation, and on the other side of which attempts to preserve elements that undermine the system, hasten its collapse. Where we are right now in relation to that sweet spot can only be known retrospectively. Foresight isn't an exact science but a lack of it is. * Your ‘sweet spot’ analogy does not work in the way you suggest, which seems to imply the precautionary principle requires accelerated decarbonisation. A far more precautionary approach is to shift focus to albedo, as the main urgent global cooperation priority for climate. But the sweet spot does apply to climate policy. What an irony it would be if the main “element that undermines the system” turns out to be the popular tribal myth that emission reduction is enough to fix the climate. Thanks for interesting comments. Regards, Robert Tulip Robert Chris On 31/05/2022 02:55, Robert Tulip wrote: To Robert Chris H Robert, I don’t agree with your comment that the need to manage albedo “has only been because of the fossil fuel industry blocking progress on transitioning to renewables.” Transition to renewable energy was never going to be the main climate solution. Faster progress on cutting emissions would not make much difference to ice melt. Most radiative forcing is from past emissions, with annual emissions worsening the problem by maybe 5%. Cutting emissions in half would slow the worsening annual effect of committed warming by about 2.5% on that measure, marginal to the scale of the climate problem. Albedo management and carbon management could combine to return the planet to 280 ppm CO2, the amount that gave us stable sea level. That could occur alongside ongoing emissions. To blame the fossil fuel industry for not jumping to give up its property rights while still supplying the world with plentiful energy creates a polarised climate debate. It would be better to find a climate strategy that both left and right can agree on. Easing off on emission reduction (~20% of the problem) while expanding geoengineering technologies (~80% of the solution) is the best way to build climate consensus. Regards Robert Tulip https://planetaryrestoration.net/ From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Robert Chris Sent: Tuesday, 31 May 2022 1:00 AM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [CDR] Climate Security Timeline Robert, nothing new here. This was considered and dismissed at least as far back as 2009 (see Royal Society report here <https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2009/geoengineering-climate/> ), and repeatedly since then by those that understand that climate change and global warming are not synonymous. Albedo management is now necessary to refreeze the Arctic, as you note. However, this has only because of the fossil fuel industry blocking progress on transitioning to renewables. Far from making albedo management the priority action, their behaviour has now made both emissions reductions and albedo management more urgent. They have nowhere to hide. Their industries are in their final sunset phase. They have a simple choice, do they get behind the transition and make things better for everyone, or continue to resist and place us all in peril. Their fate is sealed either way. Perhaps you can explain this to me. If I was running a major corporation and I knew that the market for my primary product would more or less disappear in a matter of a few decades, why would I not now do everything in my power to reposition my business to be best placed to capitalise on what will follow it and to minimise the losses from my stranded assets? The fossil fuel sector has the finance, skill set and the global reach to rapidly totally transform the global energy sector. Why don't they do that, instead of paying lip service to the need for change but all the while consigning themselves to a slow and painful death that will hurt countless others in the process? Is it so difficult for them to go from zero to hero? Regards Robert Chris On 30/05/2022 12:40, 'Robert Tulip' via Carbon Dioxide Removal wrote: The attached Climate Security Timeline shows a new suggestion on climate priorities. It calls for a shift away from emission reduction as the main agenda, to instead focus at global level on albedo enhancement. Brightening the planet to reflect more sunlight can stabilise and reverse the movement toward a hotter world as the foundation of a new climate approach. Agreed systems to increase albedo should be in place before 2030. With a brighter planet as the foundation, the direct cooling effects make time available to scale up greenhouse gas conversion and removal to levels well above emissions. By the 2040s, GGC&R can produce steady decline in GHG levels over the second half of this century. Carbon dioxide conversion can store hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon in valuable locations such as soil, biomass, etc, reducing the need to sequester as CO2. Market demand can regulate global emissions, which at annual scale are a minor factor in radiative forcing compared to albedo and GHG concentrations. The critical engineering path suggested for the planetary climate is like building a house. Albedo is the foundation, greenhouse gas conversions and removals are the walls, and decarbonisation caps the roof by a future move away from fossil fuels. You cannot build walls and roof until you have laid the foundation. That creates a timeline whereby global focus on a brighter world in this decade can replace the sole political emphasis on emissions and can give practical support to the recognition that removal of atmospheric carbon is essential. Without higher albedo, GHG effects cannot cool the planet. Higher albedo can only be engineered by peaceful global cooperation on new technologies such as marine cloud brightening. Albedo needs to be addressed first, especially at the poles, where refreezing should be an immediate global priority for climate security. Turning the polar oceans from dark to light by stopping the melting of summer ice will make a critical difference in the planetary energy balance. A main focus on albedo will give time for the slower effects of GHG conversion, removal and reduction to contribute over the next decades to a stable and secure and productive planetary climate. This order of priorities can sustain the biosphere conditions that have enabled humans and all other living species to flourish on our planet Earth. Robert Tulip -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Carbon Dioxide Removal" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . 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