Hi Ron: A provocative headline asking the reader to take a side of 2 non MECE (Mutually exclusive, cumulative exhaustive) options, i.e. leaving a lot of other options out there.
I recently joined and am listening in to a few groups, including HPAC, NOAH and PRAG (apologies for tonight, cannot make it). As part of the google group discussion I had also come across Luke’s posts about Making Sunset. I applaud their actions, as it is a first example that I have come across that connects the drive for cooling with a revenue stream, the cooling credits (please point out if there are others I missed). This is by far the best tool that gives this a chance of success, the same way Carbon Credits do for CDR. Given the urgency we are looking at, we need engagement from all sides: industry, governments, ideally global institutions, such as the UN. How do you create attention and make people act and more importantly spend money to support large scale projects? In my view the answer lies with solutions that have a business model, an income stream as no funder (private, commercial, or governmental) wants to be left alone carrying this through, especially given the scale and the free rider problem. You will create attention and interest when you build a sustainable business case for cooling tech. If there is no such solution out there, or ideally a set of solutions, no regulatory authority will start looking into this. Chicken and Egg. Good science publications will only get you so far and will be very slow to create momentum. The answer to this is (in my view) not necessarily the most precise science (VHS beat Betamax and I am giving my age away here) and it does not help that scientists/engineers who are all on the same side, i.e. have the same goal of helping the planet and even agree on the fact that cooling is necessary, fight each other. These groups are already a minority subset of those who want to help, and we need to stick together as there are plenty of opponents of cooling/geoengineering activities out there in addition to the many, many uninformed who are not even aware of this solution. We need to define the joint goals, identify joint tools that help promote/enable all of this and work together and accept 1. There is not just one cooling solution. 2. Nobody active in this space intentionally wants to harm the planet. Risk assessments and mitigation strategies are standard tools in business, you don’t get funding if you cannot present that. 3. Mistakes will be made – accept that and learn from it. If you are not making mistakes, something is wrong, you are certainly going too slow. Some educated guesses and calculation/theoretical predictions must be made, hypotheses made and then action needs to be taken to test these. Theory and practice will always differ, you will never be able to fully predict all outcomes and side effects, you will have a few surprises from experimental work that will drive science forward – guaranteed! 4. These mistakes will not be made at global/massive scale from the start. 5. What we cannot do, is NOT to take action. Beware of “Paralysis through Analysis” – there is balance that needs to be found and at the moment the balance is more on the analysis side than the action side (IMHO). 6. There are a number of lessons to be learned from the Start-up space and from others who have transitioned science from academia successfully into the real world. Silicon valley and digital start-ups can teach a few things as well, keeping in mind that we need “hard tech” here which is a lot harder to fund and commercialise, but there are still lesson about MVPs, expect/accept and plan for mistakes, reach out early to ‘customers’ (to be defined), Blitzscaling, etc. From my own experience in this space, we will need industrial/big corporate engagement on this, given the urgency, otherwise the hard-tech timeline will be too slow. We need to learn from the COVID vaccine development lessons, where a process that takes many years was compressed into under 9 months through collaboration between start-ups, Academia, corporates and governments. Hope I did not step on too many toes. Achim [cid:[email protected]] Dr Achim Hoffmann Founder/Director, www.woxon.com<http://www.woxon.com/> Mobile: +44 (0) 7768 022 805 [cid:[email protected]] linkedin.com/in/achimhoffmann/<https://www.linkedin.com/in/achimhoffmann/> From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Ron Baiman Sent: 16 January 2023 00:09 To: healthy-planet-action-coalition <[email protected]>; 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings <[email protected]>; Planetary Restoration <[email protected]>; geoengineering <[email protected]>; Healthy Climate Alliance <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>; Jesse Reynolds <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: Make Sunsets - useful act of civil disobedience or irresponsible and like counter-productive silicon valley hubris? Dear Colleagues, For those wondering what this is all about see: https://makesunsets.com/ and links and existing thread cited below. I'm opening up another thread on this as I don't feel comfortable sharing the comments on the existing thread (please view at: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>) with the other google groups added to this post. I too have numerous natural and social science issues with the representations made by Make Sunsets. Most salient for me on the scientific side is comparing potential one year of radiative forcing with with a ton of CO2 removal - as Pete and Jesse repeatedly emphasize here:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/27-luke-iseman-on-his-for-profit-solar-geoengineering/id1593211714?i=1000593365923 this is nonsense - as the radiative forcing regime would have to be continued for hundreds or thousands of years to obtain even rough equivalence turning the $10 for 1 ton CO2 removal into more like the NPV of what Make Sunsets is offering a $1,000 - $10,000 or more per ton offset that is not really an offset as the other effects of the increased CO2 like ocean acidification etc. would remain in place. Also of course the lack of the most elementary MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification) for the two launches made - albeit before the for-profit company was formed - emphasized by Andrew here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/important-pioneers-or-pirates-make-sunsets-sell-launch-sai/id1529459393?i=1000591767167 and here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-you-stop-srm-viviani-galpern/id1529459393?i=1000594246859 . On the social science side (as I've mentioned in a NOAC thread on cooling credits), unlike CO2 (or CO2 equivalent) GHG removal, Direct Climate Cooling (DCC) broadly (not just SRM, see: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TowThwi6j6cX3iLGBRrj22D30cYhKa_9/edit ) is not a pure global public good. That is, it DOES matter where and when you do it. This is even true of SAI as experts on the lists above can testify ( see for example SAI discussion and footnote 95 here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TowThwi6j6cX3iLGBRrj22D30cYhKa_9/edit and https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wYxY8V_XLjwkbOBtgGXV92wUnUgjriP_ ). So the details of setting up even an SAI private radiative forcing, or even carefully designed and regulated, public, radiative forcing, decentralized offset system (if desirable) would be much more complicated than existing decentralized GHG offset systems - as GHG offset is a pure global public good. It seems that it would be much more efficient, responsible, and effective (especially as SAI costs are minimal compared to GHG reduction and drawdown - per Gurnot Wagner's "free driver" point) to fund and implement this publicly - as Luke and Andrew (Make Sunsets founders) themselves emphasize in the podcasts above. However, having said this (perhaps because I feel more free to do this as I am not (like Jesse, Pete, and Andrew and others in the prior thread) a prominent player in this space, I'm going to go out on a personal limb on this ( though I am a member of the HPAC SC my views below have not been discussed with my HPAC colleagues). My thinking is that what Luke and Andrew have done may prove to be an act of civil disobedience that may indeed move the ball forward on Direct Climate Cooling and particularly on SAI. Luke's statements at the end of Climate Challenge podcast with Pete and Jesse resonated with me as the cry of very conscious and aware young people who are (within the space that he and Andrew are most familiar with - Silicon Valley startups) making a statement to the world - and to us more responsible and cautious "elders" that something drastic has to be done, and if responsible parties like governments, non-profits, and academics, are unwilling or unable, to move cooling forward quickly, other agencies (individuals and for-profit startups) will try to do something in whatever way they can. My hope is that instead of this turning into a OIF Russ George CBD (perceived) prohibition on geoengineering (per Jesse's point at the end of the Challenging Climate podcast) - this and other similar actions will be the impetus that lights a fire for public authorities demonstrating that if responsible action on DCC and SAI is not rapidly expedited - individuals and nations may act irresponsibly. Hopefully the analogy will be more like Robinson's Ministry of the Future Uttar Pradesh wet bulb event leading to unilateral Indian SAI than the George OIF debacle! Best, Ron Baiman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NOAC Meetings" 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/noac-meetings/CAPhUB9A7Q%2BF0yOWbKA%3DvMr5vh4nCuLTD_KchjStw_KHWbuhrBg%40mail.gmail.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/CAPhUB9A7Q%2BF0yOWbKA%3DvMr5vh4nCuLTD_KchjStw_KHWbuhrBg%40mail.gmail.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/LO6P123MB6613CC813E124A71C1578A99BAC19%40LO6P123MB6613.GBRP123.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.
