RE: [prag] Re: [geo] Are 1.5 c or 2.0 c thresholds economically realistic in a voluntary NDC regime?

[robert]

Thanks RC, good response.  The challenge for humanity to slow dangerous warming 
is to define and agree a critical path in engineering and politics.

 

This requires firstly agreement that albedo enhancement is the critical 
immediate task. The carbon responses are slower and can be deferred.

 

The political challenges are of course immense, but unless they are engaged 
there is no hope.

 

A critical path is a gradual and incremental program logic based on a theory of 
change.  Each step becomes possible as previous steps are sufficiently 
advanced.  

 

My rough suggestion for a critical path to 2050 is as follows.

 



 

Cutting GHGs, for example by large oceanic industries to make biochar and other 
useful carbon stores from algae, will take much longer to have temperature 
effect than Albedo Enhancement, so CDR can be the subject of research for years 
before implementation.  Brian Von Herzen has already significantly advanced 
marine carbon conversion through his Marine Permaculture project, including 
XPrize funding.

 

A critical path in politics requires that blockages be identified and 
mitigated.  My call for a new Bretton Woods Conference on climate cooling 
through Albedo Enhancement would advance this step by presenting AE as an 
objective that can be agreed by governments.  This requires that AE be 
formulated in a way that does not include unacceptable conditions, such as 
linkage to unwanted economic reform.  The proposal for a system of Radiative 
Forcing Credits can meet this criterion by ensuring compatibility with 
government economic policies.  The main attractive features are that RFCs would 
cost much less than decarbonisation and be far more effective in meeting 
climate goals.

 

Deferring emission reduction would be an incentive for those wishing to reduce 
the cost and upheaval and risk of decarbonisation.  However, justifying this 
against the weight of climate opinion is a major challenge.  The intellectual 
focus should be recognition that emission reduction and CDR cannot replace the 
cooling effect possible with AE.

 

Regards

 

Robert Tulip

 

From: healthy-planet-action-coalit...@googlegroups.com 
 On Behalf Of 'Robert Chris'
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2023 2:11 AM
To: rob...@rtulip.net; 'H simmens' ; da...@desjardins.org
Cc: rpbai...@gmail.com; 'geoengineering' ; 
'healthy-planet-action-coalition' 
; 'via NOAC Meetings' 
; 'Healthy Climate Alliance' 
; 'Planetary Restoration' 

Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [geo] Are 1.5 c or 2.0 c thresholds economically 
realistic in a voluntary NDC regime?

 

Hi RobertT

Your post below is a very helpful summary of what needs to be done.  It also 
puts front and centre the question of political feasibility.  Below are several 
extracts from your post.  I shall not comment on each but the Executive Summary 
is that the nature of the changes you are saying are necessary 'to slow 
dangerous warming' are, to put it mildly, non-trivial.  Some of them run 
counter to the neoliberal Zeitgeist (e.g. state regulation, government 
guarantees that would require increased taxation).  Some require extended 
periods of consistent large scale industrial investment (e.g. building a carbon 
mining industry, ocean technologies, commodifying CO2).  Others require a 
radical change in worldview (e.g. recognising that AE is even necessary, and 
the neoliberal capitalist economy evolving into something that it isn't 
currently).  Almost all require the major economies to move in unison.  Some 
assume new global governance beyond the UNFCCC and a recognition of the 
importance of cooling.  The idea of RF credits assumes the design of such a 
structure for global application.

That's quite a lot of fundamental change.  How long do we have to make those 
changes and scale them to be effective at slowing warming?  My guess is that we 
have a lot less time than almost any single one would require and almost 
certainly not enough time for enough of them to be climatically significant.

One particularly scares me - ocean technologies have massive profitable growth 
potential.  Having screwed the lithosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere and the 
biosphere, you're now expecting us to exploit the hydrosphere at scale and 
speed in some environmentally friendly way that assumes that capitalists will 
not see it as yet another bonanza-like free resource.

There's a stack of commentary in this thread that suggests that worthy as your 
vision is, it is simply unachievable.  Tom Goreau and Mike MacCracken have 
remarked about their experiences with politicians on the front line of climate 
policy.  The video clip from the NYT that Herman Gyr flagged is a brilliant 
(and humorous) explanation of the economic realities.  The simple fact is, as 
Partha Dasgupta explains, that all we need do is to pay for what we use, 
including the cost of righting the environmental degradation our economic 
activities cause.  What he does not say in the clip is that we also have to pay 

RE: [prag] Re: [geo] Are 1.5 c or 2.0 c thresholds economically realistic in a voluntary NDC regime?

[Douglas MacMartin]

Also, of course, the long-term response is only realized if nobody ever 
develops and deploys any CDR over that long-term timeframe.

If you believe that we will eventually get to net-zero and that some level of 
CDR will get deployed to go below net-zero, then it’s the century-scale warming 
that matters, not the millennial-scale.

There are of course millennial-scale processes that are not included in climate 
models, so there’s neither any reason to expect them to match on that 
time-scale, nor any reason to criticize them on that particular basis, or to 
use that particular argument to suggest that the models aren’t policy-relevant. 
 That isn’t what the models are intended to do.

From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com  On 
Behalf Of Michael MacCracken
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2023 1:54 PM
To: Tom Goreau ; Robert Chris 
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalit...@googlegroups.com; Planetary Restoration 
; 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings 
; geoengineering 

Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [geo] Are 1.5 c or 2.0 c thresholds economically 
realistic in a voluntary NDC regime?


Well, in that the climate depends on the radiative forcing and the radiative 
forcing is logarithmic with the CO2 concentration, doing a linear regression of 
CO2 and temperature would give an estimate of the rise in temperature that is 
far from linear, so the 16 C would be way too high.

There is then the issue that the change in temperature in high latitudes is 
well above the global average change in temperature, and so that would be 
another contribution to giving a rate too high for the change in global average 
temperature. So, if regression were to get temperature change in high latitudes 
ad not the global average, one would have a value more than the change in the 
global average temperature.

Mike
On 4/10/23 1:29 PM, Tom Goreau wrote:
It’s just the regression of Antarctic Ice temperature versus CO2 data. The sea 
level regression implies +23 meters.

When I did it in 1990 there was only one glacial cycle of data, but Eelco 
Rohling independently did the same analysis when there was 800,000 years of 
data, and got essentially identical values.

The models must be serious underestimates to fall so far off the actual long 
term climate data.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon 
Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and 
sea level rise wash the beach away

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change



From: Michael MacCracken 
Date: Monday, April 10, 2023 at 4:23 PM
To: Tom Goreau , Robert 
Chris 
Cc: 
"healthy-planet-action-coalit...@googlegroups.com"
 
,
 Planetary Restoration 
,
 'Eelco Rohling' via NOAC Meetings 
, 
geoengineering 

Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [geo] Are 1.5 c or 2.0 c thresholds economically 
realistic in a voluntary NDC regime?


Hi Tom--I'd be interested in seeing your 1990 paper because 16 C would take 
temperatures to much higher than they have ever been, and yet there have been 
periods when the CO2 concentration has apparently been well above 1000 ppm, so 
the 16 C value seems seriously inconsistent with what we know of Earth history.

Best, Mike
On 4/10/23 5:02 AM, Tom Goreau wrote:
BEFORE UNFCCC was signed, it was clear from paleoclimate data that +16 degrees 
C or so is the equilibrium temperature for 400ppm CO2 (Goreau 1990), but all 
governments ignored the real data because they preferred the fictitious claim 
from models that warming would “only” be around 1-4 degrees C, and occur well 
after a new leader emerges from the next election, selection, or coup.

I briefed the Association of Small Island States just before they signed on to 
a treaty that  was an effective death sentence for low coasts and a suicide 
pact for low lying island nations to that effect, but their heads of states 
were told by the rich countries to sign or they would lose their foreign aid, 
something none could 

Re: [prag] Re: [geo] Are 1.5 c or 2.0 c thresholds economically realistic in a voluntary NDC regime?

['Robert Chris']

Hi RobertT

Your post below is a very helpful summary of what needs to be done.  It 
also puts front and centre the question of political feasibility.  Below 
are several extracts from your post.  I shall not comment on each but 
the Executive Summary is that the nature of the changes you are saying 
are necessary 'to slow dangerous warming' are, to put it mildly, 
non-trivial.  Some of them run counter to the neoliberal Zeitgeist (e.g. 
state regulation, government guarantees that would require increased 
taxation). Some require extended periods of consistent large scale 
industrial investment (e.g. building a carbon mining industry, ocean 
technologies, commodifying CO2).  Others require a radical change in 
worldview (e.g. recognising that AE is even necessary, and the 
neoliberal capitalist economy evolving into something that it isn't 
currently).  Almost all require the major economies to move in unison.  
Some assume new global governance beyond the UNFCCC and a recognition of 
the importance of cooling.  The idea of RF credits assumes the design of 
such a structure for global application.


That's quite a lot of fundamental change.  How long do we have to make 
those changes and scale them to be effective at slowing warming?  My 
guess is that we have a lot less time than almost any single one would 
require and almost certainly not enough time for enough of them to be 
climatically significant.


One particularly scares me - ocean technologies have massive profitable 
growth potential.  Having screwed the lithosphere, cryosphere, 
atmosphere and the biosphere, you're now expecting us to exploit the 
hydrosphere at scale and speed in some environmentally friendly way that 
assumes that capitalists will not see it as yet another bonanza-like 
free resource.


There's a stack of commentary in this thread that suggests that worthy 
as your vision is, it is simply unachievable.  Tom Goreau and Mike 
MacCracken have remarked about their experiences with politicians on the 
front line of climate policy.  The video clip from the NYT that Herman 
Gyr flagged is a brilliant (and humorous) explanation of the economic 
realities.  The simple fact is, as Partha Dasgupta explains, that all we 
need do is to pay for what we use, including the cost of righting the 
environmental degradation our economic activities cause.  What he does 
not say in the clip is that we also have to pay for what we've already 
used.  This whole debate comes down to one about the distribution of 
those costs - who is to bear them.  The global warming challenge is how 
to solve that question fast enough.  Sadly, I don't have an answer to 
that and I very much doubt that anyone else has or will have soon enough 
to make a difference.  That's why, to be brutally frank, it's good to be 
in your late 70s.  You see, at heart I'm just another slimy neoliberal 
just concerned mostly about me!


 * well designed state regulation
 * change the law to incentivise action on planetary cooling
 * new albedo industry can be built when governments recognise that
   correcting the planetary heating imbalance by targeting zero RF is a
   main and proper objective of climate policy
 * Investment would then be funded by government guarantee of payment
   for demonstrated albedo increase, or equivalent cooling effect,
   within a context of scientific analysis to guide safe and effective
   implementation
 * government guarantee is the basis of RF credits, which could then
   expand into private finance with a far stronger empirical basis than
   carbon credits
 * Our discussions have amply proved that decarbonisation is a flawed
   strategy with no hope of preventing tipping points
 * That makes climate a world security problem that can only be fixed
   with higher albedo
 * A carbon mining industry could extract a hundred gigatonnes C per year
 * there is enormous scope to commodify CO2 with RF credits in ways
   that will deliver sustained economic growth and climate repair
 * ocean has a billion cubic kilometres of water that our economy has
   barely started to use
 * Ocean technologies have massive profitable growth potential
 * I see no reason except their own prejudices and inertia why the
   neoliberal capitalist community cannot evolve to get on board with
   this vision
 * while recognising that their history of disrespect for conquered
   peoples means their views and actions should be treated with suspicion.
 * The Nationally Determined Commitments approach has failed and needs
   a rethink, through an International Climate Organisation
 * A completely different approach from the Paris Accord, grounded
   instead in Radiative Forcing Credits for albedo enhancement and
   carbon conversion, is the only way to slow dangerous warming.

Regards

Robert


On 10/04/2023 07:42, rob...@rtulip.net wrote:


Robert Chris and other readers,

On neoliberalism, its homo economicus assumptions can only work 
effectively under well designed state 

[geo] WEEKLY SUMMARY (3 APRIL – 9 APRIL 2023)

[Geoengineering News]

*WEEKLY SUMMARY (3 APRIL – 9 APRIL 2023)*

*CONTENTS OF SUMMARY*

1.Deadlines

2.Scientific Papers

3.Thesis

4.Posts

5.Book

6.Discussions

7.Upcoming Events

8.Podcasts

9.YouTube Videos


*DEADLINES*

FUNDING AND SCHOLARSHIPS FOR STUDENTS: HOw To POTentially cool the planet
(HOTPOT) Ref: 4742 | University of Exeter | 14th April 2023.

https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/funding/award/?id=4742


(NEW) Solar Radiation Management research funding | 31 May 2023

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/solar-radiation-management/



*SCIENTIFIC PAPERS*

Preliminary results from global modelling of Cirrus Cloud Thinning in the
Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project

https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU23/EGU23-7402.html


The Impact of Solar Radiation Modification on Earth System Tipping Points
and Threshold Free Feedbacks

https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU23/EGU23-10044.html


Solar geoengineering research programs on national agendas: a comparative
analysis of Germany, China, Australia, and the United States

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-023-03516-1



*THESIS*

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Growth in Aircraft Engine Plumes:
Exploring the Limits of Classical Nucleation Theory and Thermodynamic
Growth in a Dynamic Environment

https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:57936f2c-ea8f-414e-8d0f-5ad59b183ea6



*POSTS*

A passenger aircraft that flies around the world at March 9? Sure, why not

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/a-passenger-aircraft-that-flies-around-the-world-at-mach-9-sure-why-not/


Dave Sprat_IPCC: a gamble on earth system failure

https://johnmenadue.com/ipcc-a-gamble-on-earth-system-and-human-civilisation-failure/



*BOOK*

Technology and Sustainable Development - The Promise and Pitfalls of
Techno-Solutionism

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.1201/9781003325086/technology-sustainable-development-henrik-skaug-s%C3%A6tra



*DISCUSSIONS *

Are 1.5 c or 2.0 c thresholds economically realistic in a voluntary NDC
regime?

https://groups.google.com/g/geoengineering/c/12N5NiO49LU


Are the 1.5 C and 2.0 C purely political thresholds and how important is
Arctic Summer Sea Ice to the Climate

https://groups.google.com/g/geoengineering/c/3jPf73je-hk



*UPCOMING EVENTS*

(NEW) Is Solar Geoengineering a Viable Tool in the Climate Policy Arsenal?
| 19 April 2023

https://web.sas.upenn.edu/pcssm/calendar_event/is-solar-geoengineering-a-viable-tool-in-the-climate-policy-arsenal/


*Solar Climate Intervention Virtual Symposia | Symposium #3 |* 21 April 2023

https://sites.google.com/view/solargeo-symposium/home


*The 21st International Conference on Nucleation & Atmospheric Aerosols
by QUT School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Centre for the
Environment |* 26-30 June 2023

https://www.icnaa2023.com.au/


*The **Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP)*
* 2023 meeting* | 3-7 July 2023

https://sites.google.com/view/geomip-2023/home?pli=1


*Climate Engineering (GRS) |* 17-18 February 2024

https://www.grc.org/climate-engineering-grs-conference/2024/


*GRC Climate Engineering 2024 |* February 18-23, 2024
https://www.grc.org/climate-engineering-conference/2024/



*PODCASTS*

*David Fahey on the Montreal Protocol, ozone depletion and SRM |
Challenging Climate*

https://www.challengingclimate.org/1873533/12580672

"Dr. David Fahey is the Director of the Chemical Sciences Laboratory in the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and he also serves
as a Co-Chair of its the Montreal Protocol’s Scientific Assessment Panel,
which produces the quadrennial assessments of stratospheric ozone
depletion. In this episode, we discuss flying planes into the stratosphere
to conduct experiments on ozone depletion, the success of the Montreal
Protocol, and solar radiation modification (SRM) - potential impacts,
future for research and deployment regulation."



*YOUTUBE VIDEOS*

*Here is the playlist of the interviews conducted by Degrees Modelling Fund
(DMF) on the solar geoengineering topic:*

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLbB-sI257Ay6UFkzjpVBTXESl3T6N56w


*Dr. David Keith's conversation with Healthy Planet Action Coalition on
Solar Geoengineering | Robbie Tulip*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwvlPQWl8Q

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