1 June Reply to Robert Chris, dot points below Robert Tulip
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Robert Chris Sent: Tuesday, 31 May 2022 10:52 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: [geo] Re: [CDR] Climate Security Timeline Hi Robert Nothing snide about my comments. I was merely noting that your focus is a climate change policy regime that addresses the property rights of the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to an industrial policy that responds to the needs of climate change. * You are still distorting my view, perhaps understandably as my perspective is counter cultural and I have only explained it briefly. The entire point of the house analogy is to construct an industrial policy that responds to the needs of climate change, so how you could say otherwise is surprising. The “needs of climate change” are for action that stops dangerous warming. GGR and emission reduction can’t achieve that on relevant timeframes (effect within decades), so we need to research the only method that could, solar radiation management, which for convenience and simplicity I call albedo enhancement, although it does also include radiation methods like cirrus brightening that do not involve albedo. It's a subtle distinction but it establishes the order of priority. It may be that that the two are not in conflict and therefore the distinction is irrelevant, but if they are, your positioning puts the property rights first. * The order of priority should flow from defining a critical engineering path that can stop dangerous warming. As in building a house, we start with the foundations and then build the walls and roof. We can identify the analogy in climate by looking at the triage process. In any emergency, triage requires the identification of the third of cases where action can make most difference. If we triage climate change, looking at albedo, GGR and emission reduction, the situation is that delaying action on emission cuts would make little different to temperature and tipping points, whereas delaying action on albedo would make an enormous difference to temperature and tipping points. And GGR cannot have much effect for several decades but needs immediate investment in order to scale up when needed. So the rule of triage indicates that albedo should be our priority. * It just so happens that this analysis can align with the commercial interests of fossil fuel companies to preserve their business model. Please note I have never had any direct contact with the fossil fuel industry, except for a few incidental conversations while I ran AusAID’s mining for development program ten years ago that went nowhere. My point is not to shill but to understand policy that can actually work. Far from putting property rights first, I am simply observing that a policy of expropriating the expropriators, despite its revolutionary ring, will inevitably create reaction and conflict (Trumpism), and is physically unable to achieve key climate objectives. The expropriation line of seeking to strand fossil assets only deals with future emissions, not the much bigger problem of past emissions. Happily, a policy that sidesteps this conflict is available, promoting cooperation on albedo with the fossil fuel industry, and with others who stand to benefit from the prevention of extreme weather and sea level rise such as insurance and shipping. An issue that you'll need to address when promoting an albedo management (AM) driven climate policy regime is the substantial body of research that suggests that a climate cooled by AM is a quite different climate from one cooled by lower atmospheric GHG concentrations and quite different from the one we have now. * I just don’t think the climate policy regimes based on GGR, let alone decarbonisation models, properly factor in just how politically difficult it would be for those scenarios to produce genuine cooling. The high risk, identified in scientific papers such as Trajectories for the Anthropocene by Steffen et al, is that a phase shift would make any scenario driven by lowers GHGs irrelevant. That does not apply for albedo driven approaches which are designed to minimise the risk of phase shift. * I read The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert and would like to read her Under a White Sky, although the reviews I have read suggest she does not quite get the strategic problem that indicates the urgent need for albedo increase. AM entrains environmental impacts that are different from those from unrestrained warming, but not necessarily less impactful. * How could AM have worse impactful than business as usual? Higher albedo would directly reverse warming, mitigating coral bleaching, poleward migration and numerous other harmful environmental impacts. In addition, AM does nothing for ocean acidification, which would accelerate in your scenario. * My friend Stephen Salter explained that his work on marine cloud brightening has been no-platformed by the British Government for this bizarre reasoning. Nothing will help stop acidification until GGR ramps up to a bigger scale than total emissions. Global work on albedo can provide a governance framework that will help to optimise work on deacidification through GGR. In the meantime, we should address the immediate climate crisis by brightening the planet. Emissions make almost no difference. * To illustrate the hypocritical absence of logic and evidence among those whose ritual incantation is to follow the science, the Australian Greens have a slogan “Stop Adani Save the Reef”. While it is true there are some direct reef impacts, the emissions from a single mine have basically zero impact on climate change. The total emissions from Adani would worsen warming by about one part in a thousand. If warming without Adani would be four degrees, warming with Adani would be about 3.99 degrees, a rounding error. Your comments about the availability and economics of renewables are interesting. There is certainly not enough of them available today but new renewables are already generally cheaper than new fossil fuels, and even more so if the imbalance in subsidies were addressed. * If so, fossil fuels can be allowed to die a natural death without government help to smooth the dying pillow. The political backlash from increasing fuel prices is high, and in my view is not worth it as a way to save the planet. I tend to be suspicious of all such projections on price as there is a large element of motivated reasoning involved. But much the same could be said about AM. That doesn't yet exist as a deliverable technology at scale, so there's an equal timing problem about its availability. * Your “much the same” here is unclear. A global moonshot approach could establish a major albedo industry in this decade, largely stabilising the climate by 2030. That is not the case for carbon based solutions. Research funding can ensure any AM deployments are rapid, safe, cheap and effective, once the implicit UN fatwa is removed. Also, the accounting for carbon credits needs to change to instead be based on radiative forcing, directing investment to the activities that are most effective to cool the planet. Refreezing the Arctic is a great idea and some people are thinking about it. But no one is doing it. There's no sense of urgency outside of a few academics waving their arms frantically, and ignored by most everyone else. * I am working quite closely with groups on refreezing the Arctic. Given that Trump’s Secretary Pompeo trumpeted the benefits for shipping and mining of an ice-free pole, alongside the rather distracted situation at the moment in Moscow, getting geopolitical agreement is tough. I think the quid pro quo to bring China into play is likely to be ice canals between the Pacific and Atlantic. * Antarctica is likely to be easier, with Australia well positioned to mobilise a coalition of nations to test marine cloud brightening for the Southern Ocean, building upon its research for the Great Barrier Reef. This would reduce sea ice melt, glacial collapse, biodiversity loss, sea level rise and warming of ocean currents, bringing major benefits and providing the governance cooperation model that could then be applied in the Arctic where the methane emergency really has to be addressed quickly. The resources are available to promote either or both AM and renewables to get to climatically significant scale within a couple of decades. It's a choice. * I dispute that renewables can achieve climatically significant scale. Total annual emissions are 10-15 GtC against a climate problem approaching 1000 GtC <https://www.globalwarmingindex.org/> . Projections are that emissions will barely fall by 2050 <https://climateactiontracker.org/data-portal/> , despite much banging of heads against brick walls and corrupt Borisian spin about the wonders of net zero long after current politicians have left office. And there is the slight problem that accelerating the renewable shift antagonises some rich and powerful interests, making it more difficult and risky. * By contrast, intensive AM could stabilise the climate in this decade, and its main opponents are uninformed green activists. Scientists are certainly worried, but can be brought on board by rigorous assessment such as proposed by GESAMP <http://www.gesamp.org/site/assets/files/1723/rs98e.pdf> . * Better to just chill out about the evils of the current energy system and put effort into activities that have a prospect of being climatically significant. The carbon-based activity with most cooling promise may be converting CO2 into useful commodities like soil. The earth has a billion hectares of arable land. To just toss around an order of magnitude illustration, adding ten tonnes of carbon per hectare as biochar (1 kg per square metre) to all agricultural soils would address 1% of the carbon problem while increasing food production, and could probably be scaled up beyond that level. Will the fossil fuel industry now start putting some serious money into AM to realise the future climate management you envisage? Or are they expecting that this will be funded by the public purse? If so, it'll raise an interesting debate about which is more deserving of public funds, renewables or AM. * Before private investment can scale up, governments need to give regulatory permissions. I think marine cloud brightening for Antarctica could proceed as a public private partnership, with industries chipping in to improve their public image and to develop the concept of radiative forcing credits. I cannot for the life of me understand why the insurance industry has not yet realised that MCB can prevent or mitigate Atlantic hurricanes, with all their immense destruction. It shows there are some strange psychological blockages at work in this space. Renewable energy does not deserve public subsidy and should be driven by market economics. Securing social licence for extensive AM is also likely to be significant challenge, quite apart from the technology aspects . * It is essential to integrate the technological and social analysis, for example showing how cooling the planet can benefit indigenous and other marginalised people and prevent ecological damage. It is a shame that the great benefits of AM have not been properly publicised, and that scurrilous fear campaigns have misinformed the public. I am fully aware that 80% of energy is currently provided from fossil fuels. Indeed, that defines the scale of the problem we face. * No, the scale of the problem we face is defined by the total amount of carbon in the air, not the pace at which we are increasing it. I share your scepticism about our capacity to invert that percentage, the historical record going back more than 200 years demonstrates the unprecedented nature of the challenge. I have no illusions about the likelihood of it being achieved. While I have never doubted that we have the wherewithal to do so, that doesn't mean that we can organise ourselves to actually make it happen. * I did not suggest cutting fossil energy to 20%, but rather targeting that 80% of climate investment should be in geoengineering, based on the Pareto 80/20 Principle that 20% of work delivers 80% of results. Human history is littered with such failures. The systems point I was making is that not doing everything we can to retire fossil fuels at the earliest opportunity, is a good indicator of the likelihood of success (or failure!). * “Doing everything we can to retire fossil fuels at the earliest opportunity” means supporting investments with high opportunity cost, where that money could be better used elsewhere to cool the planet more effectively. The system we should be most worried about is the earth system equilibrium, and that can best be protected by albedo management. I rather like your comment about the 'popular tribal myth that emission reduction is enough to fix the climate'. I'm not sure what 'fixing the climate' actually means and how you can know in advance that any policy will 'fix' it. It's more likely to be a continuing process of trial and error, like almost all public policy interventions. * Fixing the climate means treading a path back toward Holocene stability, removing the drivers of tipping points, stepping back from the current hothouse precipice. Do people really believe that emissions reductions are enough? I'm not sure about that. * The popular media narrative on climate gives almost no space to the scientific recognition that emission reduction is not enough, let alone to the central role of albedo in warming. When I explained this to the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, they asked me to keep my view to myself as it conflicted with their simple narrative on climate action. I think that most informed commentators would argue that the evidence strongly suggests that emissions reductions are an important part of the mix, yet might still not be enough. * Yes, the IPCC scientific consensus recognises the need for GGR, but not albedo management. Your weasel word “might” is rather like saying the earth “might” orbit the sun. However, that they might not be enough is not a reason not to do as much of them as possible. * I do admire your valiant defence of a failed paradigm here Robert. Remember Einstein’s purported definition of insanity <https://www.professorbuzzkill.com/einstein-insanity-qnq/> ? I also think that most informed commentators would argue that the evidence strongly suggests that more emissions are not likely to 'fix' the climate. * That is pretty obvious, but more emissions alongside a global albedo program could prevent dangerous tipping points. World emissions have such a marginal total system effect at annual scale that it is not worth expending precious political energy trying to stop them. If people want to burn stuff and can pay for it, just let them, within the boundaries of local environmental rules. Burning fossil fuels that emit GHGs and then paying to have them sucked out of the air and disposed of, or using AM to mask their warming effects, is much like burying banknotes and then paying someone to dig them up. * No. Burying banknotes has no value, whereas there are massive global industries that find immense value in combustion. Incidentally, this banknote metaphor shows why BECCS is a really bad idea. Rather than storing CO2 underground, what is needed is to find ways to convert CO2 into useful commodities. I call it the 7F strategy – fuel, food, feed, fish, fertilizer, fabric and forests. This could be done with large scale ocean based algae production, once a strategic vision gains political traction. Robert Chris On 31/05/2022 10:40, Robert Tulip wrote: Further response to Robert Chris, dot points in email below. From: Robert Chris <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 31 May 2022 4:42 PM To: Robert Tulip <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> Cc: 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]>; 'Planetary Restoration' <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]>; 'geoengineering' <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]>; [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ; 'Healthy Climate Alliance' <mailto:[email protected]> <[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. 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. “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. 7. 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]> . To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/061801d8741a%240aecc350%2420c649f0%24%40yahoo.com.au <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/061801d8741a%240aecc350%2420c649f0%24%40yahoo.com.au?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . -- 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]> . To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/a952e272-a15f-0f50-00a5-01c9c19d0186%40gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/a952e272-a15f-0f50-00a5-01c9c19d0186%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/cc8faa14-7324-b0bf-27c8-d9aaac83bf55%40gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/cc8faa14-7324-b0bf-27c8-d9aaac83bf55%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/08d001d875b6%24ec43e5c0%24c4cbb140%24%40yahoo.com.au.
