“Having no skin in the game” only means that whoever is not a white male emeritus professor (or an NAS member like Michael Mann) would probably think twice before writing in a public mailing list that anyone can read about eugenic proposals that people support for real without a shed of irony. Anybody else in any other more precarious position would probably think “Mmh, would this horrible opinion (or joking about this horrible opinion) make me a persona non grata everywhere? Maybe I should shut up about it”.
Please remember that your personal definition of what’s “fun” or “irony” might not be shared by people who have heard multiple times that their location/race/skin color/gender needs to be exterminated for real. Do you think they would feel welcome in writing in this group (or coming to geoengineering meetings) if they suspected we think the solution to solving the climate crisis is exterminating them? Not to mention the fact that there are probably journalists in this group. I think profs. Mann and Pierrehumbert (and for that matter, Kevin Surprise and prof. Jennie Stephens piece in The Hill) opinion is condescending (and pretty grand in calling other people paternalistic) Not to mention conflating researchers with “geoengineering evangelists”, or claiming that solar geoengineering suppresses BLM. Both things I find incredibly, personally offensive. The solution is not to shock in the other direction, by saying that if people don’t want to discuss SRM or CDR, then we have to resort to neo-malthusian bullcrap. We can do (as a community) way better than that, and keep our head cool. I’m not going to discuss your scientific results right now. We can have that discussion another time, and we most likely agree on the danger of climate change. But this is not what is being discussed here. Daniele > On 23 Apr 2021, at 10:14, SALTER Stephen <s.sal...@ed.ac.uk> wrote: > > Daniele > > I have had Covid myself and so I agree that it is not all funny. My > intention was to shock. > > The problem with having only emission reduction by 2050 is means that > typhoons, floods, droughts, bushfires, sea-level rise, Arctic ice loss and > damage to coral will all be worse, perhaps much worse than at present. If > you think that present conditions are not acceptable you have to conclude > that zero emission is not low enough. As well as reducing emissions we will > have to remove greenhouse gases, probably with help from phytoplankton, and > also do direct cooling a soon as we can and then ramp it down when emissions > are under control. > > To help inform opinions, the graph below shows estimates of the amount of > salt of all sizes thrown up by sea waves plotted against the date of the > estimate. > > <image001.png> > The small blue circle is the mean at 5.4 gigatonne per year. > > The thickening of the black line on the X axis between 1959 and 2020 shows > the mass of sea salt with the mass of 10 ^ -14 grams chosen for a high Kohler > nucleation efficiency which we would need for John Latham’s proposal for > marine cloud brightening. This gives what we hope is enough to cancel > thermal effects since preindustrial times. The size of spray is actually > where there is a gap between the masses of Aitken and accumulation modes of > natural aerosol. > > Spraying can be stopped at the click of a mouse and salt will be washed back > into the sea at the next rainfall. If we can forecast wind speed and > direction a few days ahead we can target hot blobs, El Nino events and the > Indian Ocean dipole which sets the balance between floods and bush fires > between Australia and Africa. Over 20 years we could restore sea level. > > The results below from Stjern et al. show the mean of nine climate models for > temperature and precipitation if we increase the concentration of the right > size of nuclei in cloudy ocean regions by 50%. Note the blue-green increased > precipitation in drought-stricken regions. > > <image002.png> > > Perhaps the people who have blocked research into this possibility will have > uncomfortable thoughts in future. > > I am too old to understand ‘skin in the game’. Please advise. > > Stephen > > > Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design > School of Engineering > Mayfield Road > Edinburgh EH9 3DW > 0131 650 5704 > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBB6WtH_Ni8 > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBB6WtH_Ni8> > > > From: Daniele Visioni <daniele.visi...@gmail.com > <mailto:daniele.visi...@gmail.com>> > Sent: Friday, April 23, 2021 2:07 PM > To: SALTER Stephen <s.sal...@ed.ac.uk <mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk>> > Cc: infogeo...@gmail.com <mailto:infogeo...@gmail.com>; > geoengineering@googlegroups.com <mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com> > Subject: Re: [geo] Some say we can ‘solar-engineer’ ourselves out of the > climate crisis. Don’t buy it Ray Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann > > This email was sent to you by someone outside the University. > You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the > email is genuine and the content is safe. > For my own mental sanity I will assume this is really cheap sarcasm (and I > can assure you this is really not funny). > > In the same spirit I might suggest that if such a virus was engineered to > prevent old academics with no skin in the game from venting their uninformed > opinions on any subject they can think of on international newspapers (or > elsewhere where they’re not peer reviewed, for that matter), the world would > be way better off than with any form of population control. > > Daniele > > > > On 23 Apr 2021, at 08:53, SALTER Stephen <s.sal...@ed.ac.uk > <mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk>> wrote: > > > Hi All > > The root cause of the root cause of the CO2 problem is the excessive > population of humans. The best solution would be genetic engineering of a > virus with high mortality and transmission efficiency. Covid 19 is > pathetically inadequate. We would need to crank up the rate of variant > production, improve the width of age sensitivity and also make it selective > for skin colour, eye shape and perhaps even political attitudes. > > Stephen > > Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design > School of Engineering > Mayfield Road > Edinburgh EH9 3DW > 0131 650 5704 > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBB6WtH_Ni8 > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBB6WtH_Ni8> > > > > From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com > <mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com> <geoengineering@googlegroups.com > <mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com>> On Behalf Of Geoeng Info > Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2021 9:20 PM > To: Geoengineering@googlegroups.com <mailto:Geoengineering@googlegroups.com> > Subject: [geo] Some say we can ‘solar-engineer’ ourselves out of the climate > crisis. Don’t buy it Ray Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann > > This email was sent to you by someone outside the University. > You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the > email is genuine and the content is safe. > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/22/climate-crisis-emergency-earth-day > > <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/22/climate-crisis-emergency-earth-day> > > Some say we can ‘solar-engineer’ ourselves out of the climate crisis. Don’t > buy it > Ray Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann > <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/michael-e-mann> > > > What could go wrong with this idea? Well, quite a lot > <~WRD0000.jpg> > ‘The heating effect of carbon dioxide persists for ten thousand years or > more, absent unproven technologies for scrubbing carbon dioxide out of the > atmosphere.’ Photograph: Phil Noble/ReutersAs we arrive at Earth Day, there > is renewed hope in the battle to avert catastrophic climate change. Under > newly elected president Joe Biden, the US has reasserted global leadership > <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/31/biden-infrastructure-plan-address-climate-crisis> > in this defining challenge of our time, bringing world leaders together in > Washington this week > <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/26/president-biden-invites-40-world-leaders-to-leaders-summit-on-climate/> > to galvanize the global effort to ramp down carbon emissions in the decade > ahead. > > > So there is promise. But there is also great peril looming in the foreground. > > Just as the world, at long last, is getting its act together, an ominous > sun-dimming cloud has appeared on the horizon > <https://michaelmann.net/content/my-comments-new-national-academy-report-geoengineering>, > threatening to derail these nascent efforts. That cloud comes in the form of > technologies whose proponents call – somewhat deceptively – “solar > geoengineering”. > So-called “solar geoengineering” doesn’t actually modify the sun itself. > Instead, it reduces incoming sunlight by other means, such as putting > chemicals in the atmosphere that reflect sunlight to space. It addresses a > symptom of global heating, rather than the root cause, which is human-caused > increase in the atmosphere’s burden of carbon dioxide. > > While it is certainly true that reducing sunlight can cause cooling (we know > that from massive but episodic volcanic eruptions such as Pinatubo in 1991), > it acts on a very different part of the climate system than carbon dioxide. > And efforts to offset carbon dioxide-caused warming with sunlight reduction > would yield <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/064002006> a very > different climate, perhaps one unlike any seen before in Earth’s history, > with massive shifts in atmospheric circulation and rainfall patterns and > possible worsening of droughts. > What could possibly go wrong <https://ncse.ngo/preview-madhouse-effect>? > Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Under a White Sky > <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/26/under-a-white-sky-by-elizabeth-kolbert-review-the-path-to-catastrophe> > documents case after case where supposedly benign environmental > interventions have had unintended consequences requiring layer after layer of > escalating further technological interventions to avert disaster. When the > impacts are local, as in Australia’s struggle to deal with consequences of > deliberate introduction of the cane toad, the spread of catastrophe can be > contained (so far, at least). But what happens when the unintended > consequences afflict the entire planet? > Then there is the mismatch of time scales. The heating effect of carbon > dioxide persists for 10,000 years or more, absent unproven technologies for > scrubbing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In contrast, the sun-dimming > particles in question drop out in a year or less, meaning that if you come to > rely on geoengineering for survival, you need to keep it up essentially > forever. Think of it as climate methadone. > > And if we are ever forced to stop, we are hit with dangerous withdrawal > symptoms – a catastrophic “termination shock” wherein a century of pent-up > global heating emerges within a decade. Some proponents insist we can always > stop if we don’t like the result. Well yes, we can stop. Just like if you’re > being kept alive by a ventilator with no hope of a cure, you can turn it off > – and suffer the consequences. > > Geoengineering evangelists > <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/08/solar-geoengineering-test-flight-plan-under-fire-over-environmental-concerns-aoe> > at Harvard have pushed for expanded consideration of such technology; as > panic over the climate crisis has grown, so too has support for perilous > geoengineering schemes spread well beyond Cambridge, Massachusetts. And the > lines between basic theoretical research (which is worthwhile – climate model > experiments, for example, have revealed > <https://physicsworld.com/a/solar-geoengineering-could-cause-unwanted-changes-in-climate-new-modelling-suggests/> > the potential perils) on the one hand, and field testing and implementation > <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02740-3> on the other, > have increasingly been blurred. > Solar geoengineering has been cited > <https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/geoengineering-house-democrats-climate-plan-2020-1023376/> > in the Democratic Climate Action Plan. MIT’s Maria Zuber, incoming co-chair > of Biden’s president’s council of advisers on science and technology (PCAST) > is on record as favoring > <https://issues.org/solar-radiation-mitigation-research/> an expanded federal > geoengineering research program. And now the other shoe has dropped – the US > National Research Council has recently released a report going well beyond > <https://michaelmann.net/content/my-comments-new-national-academy-report-geoengineering> > the very cautious, tentative recommendations for continued research in the > 2015 NRC report > <https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18988/climate-intervention-reflecting-sunlight-to-cool-earth> > one of us (Pierrehumbert) co-authored. > The new report > <https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25762/reflecting-sunlight-recommendations-for-solar-geoengineering-research-and-research-governance> > pushes for a massive $200m five-year funding program. The growing support is > based on a fundamental misconception, captured in the NRC report’s > justification statement: that we likely won’t achieve the necessary > decarbonization of our economy in time to avoid massive climate damages, so > this technology might be needed. > Such “Plan B” framing is the worst possible justification for developing > solar geoengineering technology. It is laden in moral hazard – providing, as > it does, an excuse for fossil fuel interests and their advocates to continue > with business as usual. Why reduce carbon pollution if there is a cheap > workaround? In The New Climate War, > <https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/the-new-climate-war> > one of us (Mann) argues that geoengineering advocacy is indeed one of the key > delay tactics used by polluters. > -- > 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 togeoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAKSzgpaJVvgBHf4LSdFxJ9K6dOx%2Bm%3DhK-F14zzMumK9pu43K%3DA%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAKSzgpaJVvgBHf4LSdFxJ9K6dOx%2Bm%3DhK-F14zzMumK9pu43K%3DA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, > with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an > Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336. > -- > 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 togeoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/AS8PR05MB796059BD92293D61A0D6E04DA7459%40AS8PR05MB7960.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/AS8PR05MB796059BD92293D61A0D6E04DA7459%40AS8PR05MB7960.eurprd05.prod.outlook.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 geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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