Dear Robert,
You assert "Cooling technologies such as Marine Cloud Brightening are
quick, safe and cheap." None of these claims is supported by evidence.
Quick: The technology does not exist, so to even try it is impossible.
We don't even know if it would work. And even if it did and we could
develop the technology in a decade, it would work on ocean temperatures,
which would be slow to respond.
Safe: No evidence for this. There are many potential problems,
including impacts on ocean biosphere, and remote impacts, including
precipitation reduction over the Amazon.
Cheap: We don't have any technology, so how can you calculate how much
it would cost? And those are just the direct costs. What about all the
potential damages?
Don't you think we need a lot more research so we can quantify these issues?
Alan Robock
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University E-mail:
[email protected]
14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 ☮ https://twitter.com/AlanRobock
Signature
On 9/21/2022 6:43 PM, 'Robert Tulip' via geoengineering wrote:
Friends
Here is commentary I have written on current climate policy.
Robert Tulip
Why Increasing Albedo is More Urgent than Cutting Emissions
<https://www.booktalk.org/https-youtu-be-mzzddjhyank-t33608.html>
11 Aug 2022 <https://www.booktalk.org/post179705.html#p179705>
I have made a YouTube Video – 16 minutes -
https://youtu.be/MzZDDjHYAnk <https://youtu.be/MzZDDjHYAnk> -
explaining this topic.
The Problem
Cutting emissions and removing greenhouse gases can’t stop climate
tipping points
Politics and economics make cutting emissions difficult, expensive and
slow.
The world situation is like a canoe headed for a waterfall
Viable cooling technologies lack funds, publicity and political support
The Solution
Reverse the IPCC priority order and put increasing albedo first
A brighter planet can avoid the climate danger zone.
Cooling technologies such as Marine Cloud Brightening are quick, safe
and cheap
Fund large scale solar geoengineering research
Governments must cooperate to implement direct cooling measures.
20 Sep 2022 <https://www.booktalk.org/post179885.html#p179885>
Climate change shows that political psychology in mass movements is
primarily mythological. Deniers and decarbonisers form opposing
climate tribes with conflicting myths, bifurcating climate policy into
two conflicting worldviews. Both denialists and decarbonists are
equally guilty of reliance on what President John F. Kennedy called
“the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought”.
Arctic refreezing must become the top priority for climate policy,
through international cooperation between governments to make directly
cooling the planet, removing greenhouse gases and cutting emissions
three co-equal priorities, as proposed by the Healthy Planet Action
Coalition <https://www.healthyplanetaction.org/>.
Counterpunch magazine <https://www.counterpunch.org/> published a
recent article on this healthy planet vision of climate repair and
restoration - Monumental Plans to Fix the Planet
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/16/monumental-plans-to-fix-the-planet/>,
showing how this approach to climate change is gaining an audience.
Three actions – cooling, removing and reducing - can be equal in
priority while having different time horizons. The problem with
current policy is that emission reduction is marginal to climate
stability and security, due to the urgency of the tipping point
problem. The likelihood and impact of a dangerous climate phase shift
due to Arctic tipping points is an extreme planetary security risk.
Warming can only be mitigated if the world community institutes direct
immediate measures to increase planetary albedo. This is a challenge
to the prevailing political orthodoxy in climate policy, proposing an
evolutionary shift in planetary management. Our planet has to reflect
more sunlight as a primary public policy priority. As ecological
stewards, global humanity must manage and guide and regulate the
planetary atmosphere, ocean and temperature toward optimum conditions
for the abundant flourishing of life.
Making the three legs of the climate policy stool – cool, remove,
reduce - equal in priority would involve a shift of funding from
decarbonisation to new cooling technology. That would require new
funding for climate policy earmarked to planetary brightening. Once
brightening is accepted as a legitimate and central goal of the world
climate conversation, the rapid potential, low cost, safety, and
security and biodiversity benefits of measures to increase albedo will
become obvious.
President Kennedy told Yale University in 1962
<https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/yale-university-19620611> that
“the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate,
contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and
unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears.
We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We
enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
This description of the role of myth in politics speaks well to
climate policy and science, as a political and philosophical insight
into psychology, neuroscience and culture. Political psychology in
mass movements is primarily mythological in character, due to our
neural tribal instincts of loyalty and belonging. As already noted,
climate policy is now bifurcated into two conflicting mythological
tribes, the denialists and the decarbonists. President Kennedy's
description of “the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of
thought” shows the difficulty of scientific policy, the high inertia
of politics and society when confronted with calls to change.
Both sides of the climate debate are equally guilty of reliance on
beliefs that conflict with evidence. There is an element of lying, but
the majority of participants in climate discussion are sincere.
However, sincerely held but empirically wrong ideas are a form of
fantasy. Denial that climate change is real and dangerous is a
fantasy, as is the false belief that emission reduction alone could
prevent dangerous climate change. Good faith acceptance of sincerity
enables scientific policy conversation based on logic and evidence. We
can rise above the tyranny of myth, asking how we can transition from
our current destructive planetary trajectory to find a path toward
universal flourishing.
An analogy to the climate policy situation comes from /Eat Fat Get
Thin/, a nutrition book where author Dr Mark Hyman challenges the high
carbohydrate diet paradigm of the USDA Food Pyramid of 1992
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_%28nutrition%29#/media/File:USDA_Food_Pyramid.gif> promoted
strongly for decades by government dietary authorities. Carbohydrate
as main staple food has been questioned over the last thirty years by
the view that a diet high in fat and low in carbohydrate delivers
better health outcomes, but this scientific discovery has confronted
indifference and denial. Meanwhile, the Standard American Diet has
produced the obesity epidemic, mainly from sugar, with impacts on
cancer, dementia, sloth, heart disease and stroke. The bad health
impacts of sugar have been widely ignored, as have the dangers of
carbon dioxide and methane for global warming.
Upton Sinclair explained in /The Jungle/, his study of the Chicago
meatworks a century ago, that a man will not accept a fact when his
income requires him to deny it. This syndrome applies to the food
industry today. Climate policy contains an equivalent level of error.
An equivalent paradigm shift is needed in climate as in nutrition. And
yet climate policy change faces an equal or greater level of
entrenched and intransigent opposition as nutrition – including from
many who maintain they support good outcomes. It shows how people’s
beliefs that their own views are true and rational can be wrong on a
massive scale. We construct social myths, especially when conflict of
interest influences the discussion.
The 27th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change needs a paradigm shift, prioritising albedo to make the
planet brighter and more reflective, to immediately cool and stabilise
the climate.
https://planetaryrestoration.net/
*http://rtulip.net <http://rtulip.net/>*
--
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/049001d8ce0b%2488a7a580%2499f6f080%24%40yahoo.com.au
<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/049001d8ce0b%2488a7a580%2499f6f080%24%40yahoo.com.au?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/2705dd36-7bad-ad04-2c0b-08e54f7634d0%40envsci.rutgers.edu.
