Reply to Robert Chris
Dear Robert, Thanks for these comments. On the thread status, I felt Dan Galpern was unfair in accusing me of calling interlocutors insane. My comment about not repeating mistakes was mainly intended to say the Emission Reduction Alone viewpoint is not scientific. No interlocutors here advance that ERA view. And on his other point about weasel words, you (Robert) accepted that it is a weaselly argument that ERA “might still not be enough” when data shows it definitely will not be enough to stop dangerous warming. Saying ERA might not be enough leaves open the weasibility (weasel possibility) that it might be enough in some unlikely scenario. Modern science shows we need to do far more than ERA to achieve a reasonable climate security timeline. Further responses below as dot points. Robert Tulip From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> On Behalf Of Robert Chris Sent: Saturday, 4 June 2022 4:06 AM To: Kevin Lister [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ; [email protected] >> Robert Tulip [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ; Dan Galpern [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ; 'Planetary Restoration' [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ; 'geoengineering' [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ; [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [geo] Re: [CDR] Climate Security Timeline Hi Kevin Greg Rau has asked us to terminate this thread but since you've re-engaged with its CDR origins, perhaps he'll forgive us. Your take on Robert Tulip's position does not accord with mine. He is certainly implying that 'It's AM or death for us all' (although I'm not keen on the hyperbole) but he is also saying that emissions abatement cannot be sufficient. I take issue with that on the basis that the modelling indicates that net-zero by 2050 is sufficient. * Kevin’s paper <https://www.globalcoral.org/submission-to-the-un-talanoa-dialogue-the-essential-role-and-form-of-integrated-climate-restoration-strategy-the-setting-of-targets-and-timescales-the-methodologies-and-funding-options/> for the Talanoa Dialogue with Mike MacCracken and others including Eelco Rohling and Tom Goreau explains some of the limitations of emission abatement, noting it cannot prevent significant temperature overshoot. They say “increasing planetary albedo through low risk marine cloud brightening … could substantially cancel out the increase in global heating caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from preindustrial levels.” * The paper you referenced, Is there warming in the pipeline? A multi-model analysis of the Zero Emissions Commitment from CO2, by MacDougall et al, Biogeosciences, 17, 2987–3016, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-2987-2020 has as I understand it been accepted as heralding a new consensus by climate heavyweights like David Keith <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-geoengineering.html> , with his claim that ‘average temperatures will stop increasing when emissions stop” and <https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=694563648110274> Michael Mann, who told Sixty Minutes “if you stop burning carbon right now … temperatures remain pretty much flat. We are only committed to the warming that has happened already.” This view has been rebutted by Ye Tao, Brian Von Herzen and others. It is incompatible with Rohling’s analysis of committed warming in The Climate Question <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-climate-question-9780190910877?cc=au&lang=en&;> . Committed warming means the planet would continue to warm after a hypothetical end to emissions because the earth system is not in equilibrium, and temperature and sea level would continue to rise until equilibrium is reached. I expanded on this in another posting in this thread that was skipped below and not sent to all of the listservs on this post. For convenience it's copied here. Hi Robert, The fundamental issue here is the extent to which emissions abatement supported by greenhouse gas removal (GGR) can take us down the 'path back toward Holocene stability, removing the drivers of tipping points, stepping back from the current hothouse precipice' without recourse to AM. * The decision to have no recourse to AM is foolhardy. Albedo was a big driver of ice age temperature reversals <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305> , and can be harnessed to stabilise the climate now. Increasing ocean brightness can give breathing room for the planet, providing more time to lower GHG levels. The UNFCCC process is driven by the notion of net zero by 2050 being sufficient to deliver that objective, and that is based on MacDougall et al (2020) who concluded that at net zero surface temperature quickly (<20 years) stabilises at the level then reached. * UNFCCC analysis has systematically ignored potential of direct cooling methods. A carbon-driven cooling policy is too slow, risky, expensive and contested to remain the immediate climate priority. A new consensus on direct cooling can challenge the flawed science of MacDougall et al. Moreover, even without any help from GGR, within a century, atmospheric CO2 drops by ~100ppmv. The 2050 timeline comes (for example) from IPCC AR6 WGIII that states: Global net zero CO2 emissions are reached in the early 2050s in modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot. * ERA is a bit like balancing plates on sticks in the circus trick and claiming the plates are stable. All they need is ongoing twirling of the sticks. Such a slow drop in CO2, allowing a rise above 600 ppm CO2e without any balancing AM, gives too much impetus for dangerous tipping points to offer a reasonable path to climate stability. Cutting the forcing from albedo and radiation can provide a gradual climate landing path toward restoration of Holocene stability, giving time for GGR to ramp up. In short, net zero by 2050 gives a better than evens chance that by 2100 the temperature increase will not exceed 1.5degC with no or limited (<0.1degC) overshoot. That's the justification for emissions abatement. GGR is necessary to deliver the 'net' because we can't get to 'zero emissions' in the foreseeable future. We don't need AM. So sayeth 'the experts'. * This analysis of whether we need AM begs the question of whether we want AM. Governments should want AM. They should welcome opportunity to prevent climate damage by restoring planetary albedo, as a way to cooperate for international peace and prosperity and stability. Safeguarding biodiversity, and mitigating sea level rise, extreme weather and heat, are objectives that albedo increase will support. GGR is not enough. Perhaps the place to start is to explain what the IPCC and its cadre of scientists have got so wrong. * The politics of the IPCC process began from the assumption that cutting emissions was the best way to mitigate climate change. This presupposition has excluded geoengineering advocacy, such that there has been a scientific failure to analyse or test geoengineering models. It remains difficult to get serious conversation about rival climate paths prioritising albedo in any public forum. For better or worse, the UNFCCC supported by its IPCC inputs, drives global climate policy. * Yes, and this means a UN study of geoengineering, as scotched by Trump and the Saudis <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/18/us-and-saudi-arabia-blocking-regulation-of-geoengineering-sources-say> , is urgent. The irony of this study rejection was that the fossil fuel advocates thought discussion of geoengineering might harm their business model, when in fact it is essential for them to create a feasible transition strategy. Without shifting them from their fixation with net zero by 2050, the prospects of getting governments to get behind AM are probably close to zero. They've only just woken up to the essential role to be played by GGR in the net zero scenario, so getting them to abandon all that in favour of AAM (accelerated albedo management!) is going to be quite a challenge. * People have not woken up to the role of GGR, which has to be the 80 in the 80/20 Pareto balance with decarbonisation as the 20, after AM has taken the edge off the risk. There is widespread disquiet that NZB2050 is unworkable and lacks a critical path. I think it is likely that conservative political parties will come to see a focus on albedo as an attractive alternative climate strategy, enabling a rapid switch away from the current IPCC consensus. How would you feel about a global cancellation of all fossil fuel subsidies throughout the production and consumption chain by, say, 2025? That would put fossil fuels on a level playing field with renewables. This could be done very easily and equitably. The $6tr/yr <https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies> that would be saved could be distributed back to households (on a per household or per capita basis) to compensate them for the likely increase in energy prices, but so as to be revenue neutral for governments. Robert Chris * Cancelling fossil fuel subsidies faces enormous political obstacles and is highly disruptive. Removing subsidies by 2025 has big opportunity cost. Investing this political energy in albedo enhancement would bring far better climate return. And ‘a level playing field with renewables’ would do little to affect the climate for decades, whereas AM can bring near-immediate results, for example by regulating ocean surface temperature. I'd welcome a substantive response to the points made in that post. Also, with regard to the point about governments being led by the IPCC, the next Assessment Report will not be for another 5 years at least, so unless a way can be found to move international policy in line with science emerging after AR6 but before AR7, there's little reason to suppose that there'll be any imminent change from the net zero by 2050 policy. Which means that for the foreseeable future we're stuck with emissions abatement goals that are challenging to meet, an unspecified amount of GGR and no AM. * Great summary of the situation! I don’t think AM needs immediate IPCC endorsement. Governments can agree on field trials such as MCB in the Southern Ocean through processes such as suggested by GESAMP <http://www.gesamp.org/work/groups/41> that will inform the next IPCC assessment. In the meantime, techno-economic analysis of the comparison between climate paths focused on albedo and those focused on emissions and GGR would put the debate on a more quantitative empirical basis. As regards your comments on the probability of reaching a climate change agreement being vanishingly small, why would that not also apply to an agreement to deploy AM at climatic scale, or are you suggesting that those with the capacity to undertake it, just get on with it, without seeking international agreement? * I’m not sure the probability of reaching a climate change agreement is vanishingly small. After all, governments reached a climate agreement in Paris, even if many had little intention of honouring it. * AM can be tested at regional level where interested governments agree. Intergovernmental processes to manage scientific activities in the Southern Ocean are well established and could provide governance for no-regrets MCB field trials. The geopolitics of a focus on cooling Antarctica is attractive, given the difficulty of cooperative action in the Arctic. The idea of AM being a key component of a comprehensive approach to climate change dates back many years. In 1965 it was the only idea on the table (report commissioned by President Johnson). * A Shell blog presents this 1965 report to President Johnson - https://blogs.shell.com/2013/03/22/1965geo/ More recently it has been presented as a means of capping the surface temperature increase while emissions abatement and GGR take effect. * It is not just capping surface temperature increase; AM can refreeze the poles to reduce surface temperature, with numerous co-benefits. How much AM would be needed would clearly depend on how fast and deep the emissions reductions and GGR growth were. * The converse is also partly true: How much emissions reductions and GGR growth would be needed would depend on how fast and deep AM is implemented. But certainly since the Royal Society report in 2009, it has been recognised that AM cannot be a comprehensive 'solution' to climate change. * I agree AM cannot be a comprehensive 'solution' to climate change. Like a tourniquet, AM is an emergency response, requiring follow-up with GHG cuts. Both are needed. The fundamental problem here has little if anything to do with the science and technology. We've known enough about the science for more than three decades and if we'd started acting then, the technologies then available would have been sufficient as a basis from which to get the problem cracked. Procrastination and prevarication, particularly the latter, have meant that the problem is now an order of magnitude greater than it was in 1990 and that means that the remedies have to be commensurately more powerful. That's very scary. * Your comment here is based on flawed arithmetic. Committed warming, not new emissions, has been the main cause of radiative forcing since the Industrial Revolution. Zeroing emissions would stop only the 2% increase in radiative forcing each year, leaving the 98% of past forcing in place. Emission reduction can do little about previously committed warming. In any case, the scale of economic disruption involved in decarbonisation is so great that imagining it could have happened faster is a counterfactual that is open to challenge. * I don’t find it scary that powerful remedies are needed. It is possible to be optimistic about the potential for AM to anchor an effective climate strategy. We can argue about whether we need more emissions reductions or GGR or AM, but at the moment we're doing precious little of any of them and, at least from where I'm sitting, it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon. * Climate politics suffers from a ‘learned helplessness’ due to the view, as noted by Trump in his Paris withdrawal speech <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/02/full-text-of-trumps-speech-draconian-paris-accord-dumped> , that current Paris pledges would barely cut the projected temperature increase. Trump said “Even if the Paris agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100” compared to business as usual. Discussion of albedo modification can be a circuit breaker in this debate, putting options on a better empirical footing. * I will comment later on points below as this post is long enough. 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