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| 00:00 | a film on climate restoration should be a great session Barbara sneeth who's here reminded us that the mirror Group which is you know the the mirrors Folks at Yang Tao and others and Barbara are sponsoring gem Bendel to speak about basically uh sort of how how one can reconcile freedom and collapse at their meeting this Sunday at 2 p.m Eastern 7 P. |
| 00:29 | M a British standard time and this is being recorded today so with that uh I have never met Oliver in in person but I did find out that I when I was at the 100th anniversary celebration for Jim Lovelock in Exeter in 2019 and we were in a full Auditorium listening or participating in a conversation that Tim Lenten wanted the scientists we'd like to get to speak with us actually I was having with with Jim Lovelock and as we neared the ends a question was posed by Oliver and if I could I will simply say he asked Jim whether he had ever used um artificial |
| 01:12 | stimulants the same way that uh Carl Sagan and Stuart brand amongst others did and uh that got lots of laughter and I won't tell you uh Jim's response but unfortunately I was the one who had to go next to ask the last question and you were tough to follow that day Oliver and and it's up to you whether you want to indicate what Jim's answer was when you get to speak um and and the bit and then I also had the opportunity uh just a few days ago uh Oliver gets around he was in California at the annual meeting and |
| 01:45 | Retreat of the Breakthrough Institute which is the California breakthrough not the Australian breakthrough and a very provocative set of sessions on what they called the the metabolic Rift and I won't even begin to take any time to explain that except there was some discussion about how the weight loss drug of zembic fits into the metabolic Rift and I'll leave it up to Oliver whether he wants to say anything about that uh uh today I also want to thank you Oliver because uh the book I recently published a climate vocabulary |
| 02:17 | of the future has two of the words that I got from your book um one is a termination shutter as opposed to termination shock and the other is is is veilmaker so thanks for that and I yes you know I'm just assuming that you've all read the description of of our burst background and his book so I don't want to go through that except to say I often find that it's it's really useful to get a sense of a book by is to look at the index and I looked at the index um of of our Oliver's book and uh uh |
| 02:53 | basically what um uh what I saw was some interesting names there and it shows the breadth of of his uh thinking and his uh analysis uh very holistic so I saw Edmund Burke and then I saw Johnny Carson uh I saw Lord Byron and then I saw Leonard Cohen I saw Sigmund Freud and then I saw Elon Musk and I saw William James and then I saw Kurt Vonnegut so that gives you some sense of the and those are just a small sampling of the many people uh in the index two of the other folks in the index included Peter eisenberger and |
| 03:34 | David Keith and however just want you to know that both of those they're still around 15 years later as you know and both of them spoke at our at meetings that we've had over the last year and finally before I turn it over to you you also mentioned two other folks who are very active members of our group I don't see them here right now one is Mike McCracken and the other is Stephen Salter and Mike is on our steering Circle and uh I was I was intrigued and amused to see you describe the fact that |
| 04:06 | that you and Mike apparently uh shared a glass of wine uh High over the high in the hills in Sicily some years ago talking about the possibility of of asteroids destroying the world or some sets thing so yeah go ahead yeah that was what that was it it was uh it wasn't it was a meeting organized by um the Strategic Defense Initiative back then or maybe it was already the ballistic missile defense organization I think it may have been bmdo by then to talk about asteroids um and Comet setting the Earth and one of the notable |
| 04:42 | things about it other than a lovely afternoon spent um chatting with Mike while other people went off to see some ruins was um uh getting to see uh upfront uh close and personal um the fact that Edward Teller really did believe that that really really big nuclear weapons were a solution to almost everything um so yes that that and there was some interesting I go into this a little bit in uh in my book The Planet remade there were some interesting um analogies to draw between uh but planetary defense Community um which seeks to defend the world |
| 05:23 | against asteroid impacts and um the sort of people who are interested in solar geoengineering not least the fact that there's at least one person who's absolutely in the intersection in the Venn diagram which is uh which is a little wood um at Livermore um who was the subject of among other things I mean it's a bit mentioned in my book but I think Jeff Goodall did a did a profile of him for Rolling Stone back in the fairly early days of reporting on solar geoengineering so yeah just to say a little bit about where I am and what |
| 05:55 | where I'm coming from I'm uh I'm a senior editor at The Economist newspaper which is a magazine um and I'm also someone who wrote a book about solar geoengineering and other forms of geoengineering including some non-climate geoengineering in 20 that was published in 2015 uh called the planet remade um about which people said kind things um and well most of my books I sort of like right and then I sort of like move on to something else um something about geoengineering made me stick around and so I've been part of the part of |
| 06:32 | discussions and public meetings and things on the subject ever since and I'm also On The Board of Trustees of the degrees initiative which is a British charity which funds um uh solo geoengineering research in developing countries not with uh an eye to advocacy but with an eye to uh simultaneously building up capacity in those countries so that those countries can can have an informed voice in future debates and also um answering questions about solar geoengineering which are partic are particular importance to researchers in |
| 07:08 | those countries um so I although my day job is a is as a an editor who has no particular Links of geoengineering or even increasingly to climate discourse um that's still a large part of how I sort of like self-identify and so hope just asked me to say a little bit um oh and I should also tell you I'll tell you later um but uh but I hope that I should um say a little bit about where what my thinking how I think thinking might be pertinent to what you're talking about um at the moment and I was recently on a little |
| 07:46 | discussion with Ken Caldera on this subject with a nut with another group and Ken was stressing something which he and others put into a recent sort of like unap um micro report on solo geoengineering which is something that you do that I think everyone needs to remember and is still very missing from mainstream climate discourse which is that solar geoengineering does seem to offer a way of promptly cooling the Earth or slowing the warming of the earth um and current evidence suggests that it that there are ways of implementing it |
| 08:26 | which um if pursued would have very few if any real losers there's a study there are various Studies by Pete Irvin and colleagues um along these lines and they find that only very small numbers of face moral um parts of the Continental surface are um actively worse off under solar Geo engineering under greenhouse warming plus early geoengineering than they what are under greenhouse warming alone and those are almost I think those are all in fact areas where the impact of um uh greenhouse warming is it in itself |
| 09:11 | very low um and so you get a minor um detriment to people who aren't at the moment are at much risk but this is so like four to eight percent of the land surface area so the biogeophysical biogeochemical um situation with respect to grn solar geoengineering sort of what are we now the best almost 20 years on from when Paul cutson really re-opened the discussion on this subject in 2006 with his provocative papers suggesting that um solar geoengineer stratospheric aerosol um injection might be used as a replacement for the aerosols being |
| 09:55 | phased out by sulfate controls in the troposphere um so a paper that I think the importance of which it is impossible I think to overstate in this field um people kept thinking that there would be really nasty Show Stoppers to come as research went on and in my analysis and I think that pretty much everyone in the field those showstoppers really haven't turned up um and that may be and I think we should take very seriously the possibility that there's a level of group think a level a lack of red teaming |
| 10:31 | um that lot might lie behind that but at the moment if you look at the best available evidence as as well as saying we should have more evidence available you have to say that biogeochemically biogeophysically um this does not look like a particularly bad idea and it looks like something which in terms of prompt harm some climate change both to humans and to non-human um ecos non-human parts of the ecosystem uh could be uh quite um harm preventative uh that said increasingly and I think this is I think this is the tone of my book from 2015 |
| 11:12 | but it's certainly been the tone of my comments since um there is a real sense in which the big issues with solar geoengineering are not the biogeophysical ones about the budget physical ones that would be associated with an optimal or wise or beneficient beneficient um uh solo geoengineering climate cooling sort of policy they are the structural worries both in terms of collective action and in terms of geopolitical conflict there is a real issue that um if you think that you can cool the planet um with solid your engineering you will |
| 11:54 | be less Keen to take the DraStic um economic and Industrial steps uh that are associated with um producing um emissions and that's very important I think for a group like you who have this um estimable notion of the climate Triad is how much those two legs um push together and how much they they they push in different directions uh so there's an issue of moral hazard when when I first started thinking about solar Geo engineering it was thought to be a particularly solar geoengineering um particularly person for solo |
| 12:33 | geoengineering I think since Paris we've seen really really clearly that it applies to um carbon geoengineering right carbon dioxide reduction from the atmosphere uh as well and possibly more clearly um because the degree to which um emissions now um and uh reductions in the future are fungible is actually much clearer than the way much more obvious than the way that um omissions now and solar geoengineering in the future might or might not be trade-offs the sheer drama of the idea of solar geoengineering puts |
| 13:09 | a sort of like threshold level um on it that slightly I think mitigates the issue of um moral hazard whereas carbon Dio engineering the moral has it is absolutely clear and plain that people say well we'll have a bit more Mission now and we'll have a bit more reduction later and so you see uh and thus the only ways you have of keeping up um uh ideas about keeping to to two degrees total warming is to have large amounts of carbon dioxide reduction in the second half of the century I know that you know this because again that is |
| 13:46 | another leg of your Triad um I'm not sure whether at the moment I think solar geoengineering or carbon Dio engineering has more of a moral hazard effect on um emissions reduction but I think they both do have such an effect and it's kind of fruitless to suggest they don't so any solar geoengineering program has to address that to some way and to some extent um it may be that it has to address that by saying yes um we do need uh less fast emissions reduction um either less fasten would be optimal or even less faster than is now going |
| 14:24 | ahead that's a very difficult problem and a very hard one a hard discussion to have on a global level um the other thing about geopolitical risk that I just say at this at this early stage in in our discussion is that solar geoengineering as I'm sure many of you you know one of the early reasons for thinking it wouldn't work would be that it doesn't um it doesn't map in an equal and opposite way onto climate forcing by greenhouse gases uh climate forcing by greenhouse gases um happens all the time solar |
| 14:59 | geoengineering only cools by day um solar Geo engineering has different latitudinal effects to greenhouse gas warming Etc it turns out that to a possibly surprising degree most of this comes out in the wash and I think that's mainly because most of climate is the ocean um and it doesn't really care whether it's morning or whether it's daylight or not but everything gets get gets um everything comes out in the wash once you get to the fact that ocean heating is is the big thing but it's absolutely the case that when |
| 15:32 | you come to geopolitics um the match between solar geoengineering and I'm thinking prototypically here with stratospheric aerosol injection the the match between that and greenhouse gas warming in terms of politics is actually very poor they look actually almost the opposite of each other politically in that um in and we could debate um how how reasonable this is but in uh greenhouse gas warming without greenhouse gas emissions reduction the worry is always one of Free Riders who will get the benefits of other people |
| 16:11 | reducing without reducing themselves uh as Marty Weitzman and Garnet Wagner who I think is already talked in this group before have pointed out for solar geoengineering you have a free driver problem um which is that because it's a relatively cheap thing to undertake or appears to be at Suddenly at the front end if you don't don't properly account for long-term costs um the person who gets the the amount of geoengineering you get is the amount that the person who wants geoengineering the most um is willing to put up or more |
| 16:48 | specifically so if you imagine I put up um a what per square meter of um sulfates in the atmosphere if someone else wants two and a half two watts per square meter they just have to add to what I'm doing and if I stop doing what I'm doing they just have to increase their amount to provide the full um to what's themselves there's no way through solar geoengineering that I can counter that what I could do might be um well in some I think rather far-fetched um scenarios I might counter Geo engineer by introducing short-lived |
| 17:23 | um High potency greenhouse gases or I might just sort of like shoot down their planes or do something like that so there is this problem that in if you imagine the Dynamics of a solar geoengineered World there is a lot of a lot rests on the amount of solar geoengineering that the non-geo engineering powers are willing to acquiesce to um that's almost takes us red the uh one of the other differences which is you get need to get a lot of the world's most powerful countries to agree in order to make a big change to greenhouse |
| 17:57 | gas emissions um you can make a big change to stratospheric aerosols with a relatively small uh number of parties though um I think in Practical terms you would be well advised to have at least the um tacit approval of at least one uh major power and the third thing that makes it very different from greenhouse gas warming is the point that Ken makes and the reason the thing that always makes us a subject worth coming back to which is it can have prompt effects um greenhouse gas reduction will not have pump effects uh emissions reduction |
| 18:33 | effects and carbon dioxide reduction from the atmosphere carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere will not have very pumped effects um solar geoengineering can have effects in our time spans on the order of um years and so in terms of its suddenness in terms of its um unilateral potential and in terms of the fact that it's additive there there are huge differences between solar geoengineering and other forms of climate change because we must be frank about it solitary engineering is a form of climate change it's climate change in |
| 19:10 | response to it would be climate change in response to um uh greenhouse gas warming um and it would not be a it would not be a cessation of climate change it would be a make it would be a way of making climate change more complex but less harmful uh but the politics of this sort of climate change are very different from the politics of climate change that we have at the moment and there might be an argument you could make but since the politics of climate change at the moment are very dysfunctional um that's something that you might |
| 19:41 | almost go so far as to welcome um and I think one should bear in mind the possibility that that would be that would be a response but the idea that if things are really bad now there is no way to make them worse it's not something that recent politics or indeed human history should uh should should lead us to discount so that's more or less where I am um and I'm happy to take part in the discussion from that from from that point on wow the the density of your provocative points is pretty extraordinary |
| 20:14 | um and uh I I know that that many of us will be eager to start engaging with you so I'm rather than asking the first question myself I'm going to turn it over to Robert tulip and uh the floor is yours Robert thanks so much uh that was just awesome so I'm a part of the uh steering committee for for ice pack um the thing that really uh perplexed me in this uh in this time of um cancel culture is that I just feel that our whole uh geoengineering discourse is just thoroughly canceled uh like where where just |
| 20:56 | um excluded from um any uh mainstream media conversation with uh some exception uh from The Economist um but um but more broadly this whole topic just seems to be ignored as a as a legit like the way you've just uh outlined uh the situation I think was ex extremely Lucid uh but uh that summary that you've provided uh the the vast bulk of um the population would be completely unaware of of the points that you were making and uh so I'm really interested in how uh this uh debate can get into the op-eds of uh the New York Times or |
| 21:47 | or other major papers well I'm um well I mean we had a a climate geoengineering op-ed in the New York Times a couple of months ago it wasn't necessary well it certainly wasn't to my satisfaction um because it uh took the line that it was that this was um an evil plot against the developing world when I think any sober analysis of this suggests the developing world has more to gain from this if it can have a just level of influence over the decisions um than most of the rest of the world it's really odd isn't it Robert because |
| 22:26 | um yeah I've been thinking for ages that this debate is really about to erupt and it continuously doesn't and there have been various reasons um I I think for that but the main one is it it it's it imposes an extra load on discussions right um it means that you have to caveat statements like we can no longer hit 1. |
| 22:51 | 5 I mean I think I'm not sure it does that because I'm not sure you can do enough solar Geo engineering quickly enough to guarantee 1.5 and I wouldn't be particularly keen on anyone trying but you know what can be done um that there's this very tricky word that people use um which is possible um which is really like the word we it's a source of an immense number of annexed unexamined um assumptions about the world um you know we we should so people say well we should reduce emissions as quickly as possible and also think about |
| 23:29 | this or and not think about that but no one actually has a sense of what it is that constitutes this possibility what it what these sort of like social and economic constraints on the possible arm I'm sure that they're not widely agreed so given that um I think it's very hard to introduce yet and I'll introduce another source of caveats and people just for reasons of cognitive parsimony um do that I don't think it's a I don't think it's a I mean there are people who are consciously trying to make sure that |
| 24:02 | solar geoengineering isn't part of the discussion but I don't think that particularly influential people I mean you know I think you could go a long way in the corridors of power without actually knowing who Frank Biermann was um but you but in general it's just a you know this isn't what we're talking about and we want to go on having the conversation but we want to go on having um and at some point I suppose I do think that something will crack but it does it must it does make me grin when I read in |
| 24:36 | articles um almost every article on geoengineering that does appear in a sort of like General um for General audience or in a sort of like policy facing way like the the beer Bernard Biermann at our argument about the moratorium say that um solo geoengineering is increasingly discussed in various circles I think really is it I must be no longer getting the invites because it doesn't feel like it's being increasing it's just that one of the ways you justify talking about it is not that you want to talk about it |
| 25:06 | it's that other people are talking about it um and so I think that will eventually I I have to think that will eventually break down uh but I can't say I know exactly how to do that and I'd also again on the basis that you shouldn't we should never underestimate the human proclivity for screwing things up I'm maybe slightly less worried about it than I used to be but there's a there's a phenomenon um that I refer to in my book as the super freak pivot um on based on the extremely um unsatisfactory discussion of solar |
| 25:42 | geoengineering in Levitt and Dubliners super Freakonomics in which they go directly from arguments about maybe global warming isn't actually happening carbon dioxide isn't very much of the atmosphere you're on yawn two saying that if it is happening then of course we should do solar geoengineering and Nathan mirvold will show us how to launch blimps full of um sulfur into the stratosphere and you know that ability to Pivot from this there's no need for climate action to the only climate action that is needed is solid your |
| 26:13 | engineering is something that I don't worry about it maybe as much as I did six or seven years ago but I still think it's a real phenomenon that one should be aware of hmm let me ask Ron if you Ron is on our steering Circle and the floor is yours okay thank you herp and and thank you Oliver for uh for uh your talk um uh I my my questions I have multiple questions but I I uh one is um first of all a hpac as you probably know we we we're proponents of multiple cooling methods called direct climate cooling methods some SRM some not you |
| 26:52 | know cooling the ocean is is among those Etc so just one point uh and that gets to the second point which is this kind of global uh and I'll get to the question uh This Global approach you know that that it's it's either SRM big you know we do 10 years of research and then we do this you know Global SRM and we've had David Keith on uh uh you know talk with us uh to you know and which we really enjoyed his agreeing to do that uh but uh we find ourselves I think um in a in a bit of a uh uh debate |
| 27:27 | between uh waiting for 10 years for more research and uh and that and I think that's all these letters saying you know we should do more research so there have been you know there has been progress I think in that regard uh and uh or you know the alternative proposal is is kind of gradual maybe subpolar Sai with testing uh to to confirm you know to get some data and not just rely on these big models uh and and just kind of you know gradually see you know scale it up gradually and I I agree with I mean I'm |
| 28:04 | from what I I've looked at I don't see any extreme geophysical uh issues right away but you know you never know and and of course then it would you know hopefully uh in the polar regions would fall out more quickly you wouldn't have to wait two years if there was some kind of uh adverse impact but the the the question you know is um uh with David Keith was well you know maybe and and I think he said the quiet stuff out loud really he said maybe 1. |
| 28:33 | 5 and 2.0 are not the correct targets you know maybe we can maybe that's not such an issue if uh if we go beyond that because we were saying well we're in the peak now you know it's not shaved it's the problems are happening right now I mean I'm in Chicago we've had bad air for two days now the worst air we've ever had uh you know this is serious stuff and we need cooling right away and so you know that and and Sai is is something we should we should really start talking about pilot testing and |
| 29:03 | implementing right away and not not wait for 10 years to do research and you know and wait until we can we can be uh you know somehow uh you know get the 95 confidence or whatever I mean it just it just doesn't it doesn't make sense when in my view when you look at the the risk of of you know not cooling uh and and apply all the other methods as well I mean we don't have to just do Sai we can do all kinds of things to try and cool right now so anyway that's that's my my I'm sorry it's kind of a kind of a |
| 29:35 | speech and a question two two thoughts on that one is that um I'm not real crazy about a thousand flowers blooming approaches to this because I think the more forms of climate change you're imposing on the system um the more likely you are to get um strange nonlinear complexities um I think one of the things I like about um Sai is that it does happen and it's a like Global level you're not relying uh as in some of the early Marine Cloud brightness excuse me could someone uh shut off yeah like um so I'm I I I'm not crazy on sort of |
| 30:23 | like lots and lots and lots of different um I mean it works for carbon dioxide removal I think that's absolutely fine because the climb the carbon dioxide really is effectively fungible especially at the fluxes that you're talking about with only realistic carbon dioxide removal program but the but so but a sunlight reflection emotional cooling I'm a little bit worried about synergies but the going back to your we should do it sooner there is this all like perennial problem of who's your Wii |
| 30:54 | you have to make a wee before you can it's like that sounded more toilety than I expected you have to construct a Wii um before you can use it um and uh I always remember um a guy called uh Matthews a anthropologist at UCSC um speaking at the Asilomar um talking to me at the Asylum Geo engineering conference um way back when and was that 2012 2011 um when he was saying people talk about uh providing a select thermostat for the Earth um but the difficulty is creating a hand that you trust to turn the thermostat |
| 31:32 | it's not like there's gonna there's a pre-existing hat so when you say we should start working in the sub optic space I don't know who the Wii is I don't know how you start doing that you don't certainly can't start messing around in the Arctic as a non-state actor because there are three superpowers who take the area very seriously uh you can't go into the Arctic and say specifically and expect it to be unproblematic that your aim is to re-establish um pre-1980s levels of sea ice because |
| 32:06 | there is a large um large nation in the Arctic which is quite invested in the idea of having an ice-free Coast so you don't it's not the technology is not I think the problem the problem is making a group which can legitimately and convincingly Act without counter with Act without being counted in such a way and I just don't see how you I mean I can see how you can build aircraft pretty quickly I don't see how you construct that group pretty quickly and you know and sad to say the fact that it seems necessary and I fully |
| 32:43 | understand that apparent necessity doesn't make it any more possible yeah briefly but briefly okay so so Oliver so one proposal that uh that I've raised and I don't you know the International Space Station analogy so if you had a few countries say Canada the US and uh you know countries that were were con I uh open to the idea start saying we want to save the Arctic and uh it would and you try and build trust that way you say okay you know just like the space station you know anybody who wants to can contribute |
| 33:20 | everything will be transparent we're doing this for the good of saving the Arctic and and and by the way the Antarctic because it's got to be you know symmetrical to if you're actually going to do significant cooling but initially just testing you know and and working on it that way and I think you know so and that relates to your early remarks that again you don't need this for for this kind of intervention you don't really need uh a global governance you know 197 Nations degreeing or whatever you know was in the ipcc no |
| 33:51 | absolutely a group of people that take the initiative and the other nations be willing to let them you know that okay well we're glad to Be Free Riders you know if it helps the Arctic uh right now Russia probably would not participate although they participate in space station uh but you know they're they're that's the kind of mechanism that that I I I mean just you know I'm thinking might might be a way to go here I think that I mean I think I I I see your point and the the the issue I do |
| 34:22 | have there is anything Russia might well go beyond not wanting to take part in it I ain't not really not sure that they would want it to happen um and the other thing is I'm sometimes a little I'm a little bit disturbed by stress on the Arctic because very very few people live there and to me the and so I can see how that works out in a way that says well why don't you care about the tropics why are you so fixated on the empty Arctic and I know that a lot of First Nations and some um set of people in the Arctic in the in |
| 35:02 | the high Arctic but by and large most of the people doing most of the suffering physiology for climate warming are in the tropics um and I would think a tropical um approach would be a more morally defensible early approach but it would have even more political problems um you have to I mean I I don't think there's any desirable Way Forward that doesn't involve um a a certain amount of um governance development especially certainly within a sort of like mini lateral to multilateral sort of framework not in a global framework |
| 35:38 | that's not going to happen um that said I think it's quite likely that the first um the first uses of solar geoengineering will be unilateral ill thought through quite possibly ineffective and quite plausibly um uh based on intentions that aren't primarily climate focused um just like you know a lot of Wars has started not actually to win territory or anything like that but because of domestic conditions other such things I think we I think we do and I think David would probably agree with me but he and |
| 36:14 | I suppose I would then go on and keep doing it absolutely the same would be we overestimate the quest the likelihood or the relevance of an idealized solar geoengineering pathway because the one that we get if we get one at all will not be an idealized one okay um I'm gonna ask brochio and then Robert Chris and then Rebecca and then Robert tulip unless someone who hasn't spoke raises their hand um so go ahead you may need to I think you might be muted you are sorry yes um hi I'm Rocio Herbert I I didn't hear |
| 37:00 | you mention methane removal and I'm wondering what do you think the methane removal from the atmosphere what role would it play in this whole drama uh since it actually does have a prompt reaction to cooling the the atmosphere I think I uh I haven't followed the methane removal debate very closely um I think that methane emissions um suddenly given that they seem to have a certain sort of like power law um characteristic um are to some extent low hanging fruit I think that the thermodynamics of methane removal this the amount of I |
| 37:40 | mean the reaction is obviously much easier reaction than carbon dioxide removal however the sheer air mass you have to move just seems to me extraordinary so I haven't looked at it I I know that various people have talked to me to some extent so like in principle about methane removal I'm not clear how it happens I'm also a little worried I mean if you're doing methane removal I'm a little worried about how you um decouple methane removal from various other aspects of tropospheric chemistry |
| 38:11 | that you might want to preserve but it's not something I've I'm a real expert on if you could magically take out all the or the methane that would be brilliant but I'm I I think in but it's not a complete solution it's a good it's a good it would be a good fix for timing um and it would be quite prompt you're quite right but the amount of air you have to process in order to take out stuff that's present in Parts um in sort of like low parts per million is it's very it's a lot of air |
| 38:40 | processing yeah yeah and uh what do you think in terms of the moral hazard I think the moral hazard of that would probably be less because no because um no one would claim I mean you can't do all the job with methanement before right uh that's right in principle you can do all the job um I mean I don't think you would be remotely well advised to but you could get a forcing from from stratospheric aerosols that was equivalent to the forcing from greenhouse gases so in a sense there you can you can see how the |
| 39:16 | two things might be traded off if you could get a methane removal system then that would be that and and it and it worked and it didn't mess up hydroxyl balances or anything like that then that that I I I'll be fine because I don't think anyone would think that the prom prompts promptly solving the methane problem would not make the main problem go away so I think the moral hazard would not be would not be as as pronounced so do you think politically is positive you know it's a bit easier than |
| 39:46 | politically it's a bit easier I think I mean but you know it's I mean it's been very hard I mean just like you know it was hard for the adaptation people to get around the table it's been hard for the short-lived climate forces people to get around the table um if you had a compelling if you had a compelling relative uh technology technological insight into how to do methane removal I think at the moment um reduced emissions of methane are are obviously a a quite a big thing but you know they're operating at 25 of the |
| 40:17 | issue not 100 thank you I'm muted Robert Chris followed by Rebecca followed by Andrew followed by Clive Robert the floor is yours glad to see you get off all these years so um you were very much around when I started not for this in the back in 2016 as well so anyway that's all history today uh you've made a really interesting uh interesting discussion uh you've spoken interesting discussion I want to make two points versus really just an observation you talk about the issues of refreezing the Arctic and |
| 40:58 | whether that's uh the geopol politics of that one of the things that we all have to remember is that uh just like the knee bone and the thigh bone everything is connected so you could of course re-freeze the Arctic by calling the tropics uh and uh there's more than one way of skinning this cat and if that's something you're familiar with we might want to talk about that but the main point I want the main question I want to ask you is this when you were talking about the Arctic Oliver you you referred to the fact or |
| 41:27 | the your view that if you were going to meddle in the Arctic it would have to be through State actors now it is my supposition which you may or may not agree with that any form of globally uh significant uh solar radiation management of whatever form whatever technology is going to require uh engagement by state actors I just can't see it being undertaken by a private Enterprise all right so so that being the case the state actors need to be engaged now my question is this so far this very active debate about |
| 42:05 | solar radiation management is largely conducted by priests preaching to the choir but almost nothing as far as I can see is percolating through to the politicians who eventually would be responsible for making the key decisions about whether to move this forward or not and I'd be really interested in your views about how you think the the political Community the the decision makers in this could be brought into the debate in a constructive manner well if I thought I had a really compelling answer that I think I'd |
| 42:44 | probably have tried it I mean like how you bring how you like moving Overton window sometimes you get an opportunity um but um other than that it's very hard to say I mean one of the things is that the the body which has the biggest or like investment in solar geoengineering is a small minority of climate researchers they're not necessarily popular um with their own peers in that World um and they don't and they absolutely most of the people who know most about solo Geo engineering absolutely do not |
| 43:22 | wish to be seen as advocates for it the most they will advocate for is more research um and without sort of like a strong a strong voice saying we should be trying this with some sort of constituency that's what we'll get politicians interested but I don't know where you generate that book because it's not something that you can build an entire political movement around and for reasons that I'm sure we're all aware of but we could take we could uh take around the park again um there are real difficulties with |
| 43:57 | people who come to this from um environmentalist mindset getting their heads around the idea of um solo Geo engineering so you know uh things that haven't happened tend not to have happened for a reason and that I think those are the reasons there is one there's something between an opportunity and a teachable moment though um or possibly if we do see as Jim Hansen is talking about and as you would to some extent expect um from quasi first principles if we do see um a significant um change in rate of warming as a result |
| 44:35 | of the removal of sulfur from bunker fuels in um ships on the high seas um that sort of like as you might say termination shock might begin to in an odd way take us back to the one bit of Paul quickson's 2006 article that people tend to forget which was that he was he was suggesting there's a trade-off between stratospheric and tropospheric um sulfur and so if if we do see a significant um increment in warming as a result of the removal of sulfur from bunker fuels that might be the sort of thing that at |
| 45:14 | least gets you into the urine after it will see my own favorite um move would be to um would be for a small number of nations because I think it would only take ten um to convene um a conference of the parties of the end mod treaty which article three of which would be a very good basis for a for moves on a geoengineering protocol but um you know that still requires 10 10 countries and I don't think there were 10 countries at the moment willing to do that so if I take if I just follow up on that if I take what you're saying at face |
| 45:49 | value what we should do those of us that are proselytizing for some kind of calling is we should sit on our hands until the situation climatically becomes so severe that we are welcomed by with open arms by the political Community who are desperate to do something because they realize I think that would be I think to do so would be I mean I don't think there's any reason um to think that um the the suggestion of solar Geo engineering will be any more welcome in 2027 if people go quiet on it in the intervening years I think that that's |
| 46:27 | both uh I don't see any political advantage of that I see a certain amount of moral um problem with it um uh you know waiting on um uh as those of us who had the misfortune to be dealing with trotskyites in the 1980s no just I wait just waiting for the contradictions in the system to become unsupportable it's just yeah it's it's not neither a moral nor practical strategy okay um I'm gonna before I turn it over to Rebecca just to sort of put you on the spot for a minute are you able uh and or |
| 47:01 | willing in a in a public forum since this is being recorded to identify any any potential political leader or you know key advisor uh to a political leader or a head of a major institution um that you have come across that is uh at the very least open to this if not a strong Advocate that we and others may be able to um engage with you know frankly um in what I've been doing recently I haven't been looking and those aren't the circles I'm moving so I I've never seen any statement from anyone that |
| 47:42 | would suggest um but that would be the case if I was looking um I might look in Canada um I might conceivably look in front um I might look in Singapore but I but that's just sort of like um um finger in the air speculation okay well we hope if you do come across someone you'll get back to us because yeah just just to reiterate I mean you know we have four initials or words in our name and one of them is action I mean that's our primary focus is is discussion with the goal of leading to you know real uh measurable and |
| 48:24 | impactful action and with that I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca I'm from Australia and I'm an economist just as a short um if you're ever down this way we'll show you Sydney Harbor Etc thank you um so my question actually relates to the time when you were speaking when you got interrupted by a bit of a noise from exterior about um Marine Cloud brightening compared with uh SRM I'm sorry and um what I'm interested in is your assessment and whether that's on technical grounds for example climate |
| 49:02 | forcing or Cloud Dynamics or Logistics or whether it's more to do with social license and um I'd like to just make a give you some background info that as you can tell I've been doing a lot of work on MCB recently trying to understand it and write it up ready for a funding proposal and um I've also been doing some focus groups here with indigenous people in Australia and so far my sample size is four which is not huge but it's been in-depth conversations and um I know that one of them is a climate activist and does not |
| 49:38 | support Sai in any way shape or form now whether we think that is rational it doesn't really matter what matters is what she thinks and where she's coming from and her own assessment of the science and the climate impacts and things or the ecological and spiritual impacts um but also I know that Brian Von herzen from the climate Foundation is advocating um MCB as a first step because of the appealing nature of it in terms of um in terms of um sorry I've just been interrupted by Aria's comment there the the picture of |
| 50:18 | it in terms of spiritual and ecological um salability among all people of the world Western non-western Etc that's that's in summary why I think the climate Foundation is advocating MCB so I'm really interested in your technical assessment of MCB but I wanted you to have the other info there about what I've been doing thank you very much Rebecca that's that's really interesting and yes there will be people whose worldview does not accept um this this possibility um uh I'm been quite interested when I was |
| 50:51 | talking to people um from New Zealand um about uh the possibility of um the extinction um since New Zealand has quite a lot quite interesting quite recently extinct uh megaphone has indeed does Australia and the degree to which um to which uh the level of interest about it slightly anticipated was just not culturally what was going to happen uh it's only among that group of people so on MCB I think MCB has real promise and one of the things I find very frustrating um is that um although there's been interest in |
| 51:31 | Marie Cloud brightening and actually some money from it in um Silicon Valley um no one's ever actually tried to put a bloody aerosol Misty thing um of the sort that people have been talking about into real operation I know there's been some nesting um over some of the coral reefs but it's not the sort of things that um John Latham and Steve Salter were originally talking about and I would love to see to find out whether you can actually do that because I think it would be a really helpful thing to know I think the |
| 52:05 | MCB is way more sellable in some ways injection because it can be done within a specific uh region and under a specific and recognized Authority so for example if the state of California um came up with a good plan for MCB to increase the amount of mist getting into the coastal redwood forests um if those forests were in difficulty due to a lack of mist I could see that being uh being much much more plausible than that than than a global Sai program the problem with um MCB is that certainly in the sort of like classic Tumi Latham sort of |
| 52:50 | formulation you can't do it everywhere um you have to already have uh stratiform clouds that you can make brighter and longer lived and if you don't have those um you're in a bit of trouble and my impression is that those Cloud Banks don't typically exist over coral reefs um that's not a reason not to see if you can do something with whatever water is in the atmosphere over coral reefs but it's certainly not the sort of situation I mean the the classic sort of situation you'll be looking at |
| 53:23 | um for if you wanted to just get you know like an average um uh a an average uh radiant forcing that's significant at a global scale um you want to be doing it on you know off Chile of Namibia of California those are where you have the really big Banks of um of the sort of like uniform Cloud layers that can really do this but to some extent I think that debate has been overtaken because as a way of providing global cooling um I think that MCB has always been problematic because it to get a global effect from MCB you have to really |
| 54:03 | really cool about what five percent of the Earth's surface and then hope that the weather will move that cooling around to places you care about so you're actively trying to disturb the weather systems not just the climate in order to move your cooling around and I find that an implausible um Global plan of action but as I say I think at a regional to National level the fact that you could do it in your own um uh exclusive economic zone um definitely means that it's something that Nations could experiment with I'm a |
| 54:37 | little disappointed that people haven't done more of it from that point of view but Oliver just on that one hooray Stevens raising his hand Steven has answered mostly Stephen we don't want to turn this into a forum digging into the um technical side of MCB but Stephen in the work he's done along with Cambridge and you know other people as well are working on it has answered some of what you've said about do there need to be clouds there or not and um like maybe we could have it regionally in those three places that |
| 55:09 | you mentioned but I'm saying there's a lot more to it than meets the eye and um we are hoping inverted commas to find some funding to get the first I mean we're still in the scoping stages but um a few people here on this caller have been working actively with Stephen and with also there was a conference in Cambridge recently about it so I'm just basically saying maybe the economist can do an article on it when we're ready sure um I mean I know I'm aware of things as Danny Rosenfeld is very |
| 55:41 | um keen on ideas on some of these ideas um and you know as clearly forgotten far more about ocean aerosols than I will ever know so there may there may be things things to be done but if you're trying to get a Global Effect um working on small places and looking for non-linearities strikes me as being a less appealing overall unless Elegance the wrong word yeah it's it feels to me that going for big effects in some places that's like filter out and I'm aware of some of Stephen's work on this not all of it is |
| 56:19 | is is a slightly disturbing thing I mean you should think about the fact that you know the idea of tele connected um Regional um geoengineering there's a recent paper not that recent couple of years ago by Kate Rickey um if you're changing the climate in one place with and working on the basis there's a teleconnection to somewhere else then already you're getting beyond that area where um MCB might be seen as a local response to a local issues such as um Coastal eridification or um uh the loss of uh the the loss of um |
| 56:55 | uh coral reefs yes well a basically thank you very much Oliver that's lovely yeah Rebecca thanks I I I'm going to turn it over to Andrew but I would like to say that Stephen if if you would like to say something I'm going to make sure that we have some time safe for you before the end it's up to you you're not on the spot but since your method and your and you've been talked about for the past 10 minutes uh please feel free to uh respond at the right time with that I'm going to turn it over to Andrew |
| 57:26 | hi Oliver um I'm okay thank you um I I know you didn't use the words boiling frog but you described um a situation which is perhaps not dissimilar where the debate hasn't really moved on and you're not the first person in the field to commentate that the debate hasn't moved on in the past decade or so um the original ideas have just been refined as opposed to enacted or or revolutionarily changed um and in that situation um when we're all waiting for this kind of uh Global governance ideal to arise |
| 58:00 | um who or what do you think will just get on with it and do it and I'm not talking about you know make sunsets um trivial little subscription thing I'm more talking about you know could you imagine um uh a billionaire or um uh a coalition small countries or Bangladesh or something like that just getting on it and breaking deadlock and just cracking on because to me that the the frog is pretty well cooked and I think as much is going to happen it'll probably have happened by now um and so it's very interesting the fog |
| 58:35 | analogy Jim Fout the great uh American journalist Jim Fallows has had a long campaign um to try and get rid of this um metaphor because uh because it ain't true because you know frogs aren't in fact stupid and mate it's possible that the analogy arises actually from um uh frogs that had their brains um pinned by scientists of the 19th century may have babe like this but most frogs will get out of hot water um the fact that it's not true doesn't mean make people stop using it because it's so obvious that we need a metaphor |
| 59:07 | like that and the fact that frogs aren't willing to play ball with that particular metaphor doesn't sort of like retire it from from from from language I mean you asked if I could imagine it I mean I did imagine it in the in the last chapter the planet we made yes a small coat I mean I think that at the very least for such a coalition you need read um some existentially threatened um countries so probably small island States um to give you um to sort of like move towards the notion of a moral license to operate you |
| 59:42 | probably need some tech and some capital and you know um uh there are a lot of uh a disturbing number of Super empowered individuals around but I think you also absolutely need um if not um officially clearly tacitly approval from um from at least one great power I think that otherwise you really are a bit you really are a bit screwed so I have no idea whether anyone would actually do that and I certainly can't like point to anyone I mean uh I mean there's no evidence that any of the current Co-op of um uh |
| 1:00:21 | there must be a word for Hector billionaires uh death billionaires and Hector billionaires I don't know of any of them that really have any interest in this but you absolutely would need um to get anywhere with such a let's just try and you know better to ask forgiveness than to ask ask permission for that strategy to work at all you absolutely need both the tacit approval of a large country and a small and very threat of the country to be on board with it ignoring it it's a bit more than that um it would be a sort of like a sort of |
| 1:01:04 | a you know it's a sort of thing that you can that would be communicated through um uh tier two tier three into International contacts that sort of thing it wouldn't be it would be abstaining or it would I mean it would get as far as maybe vetoing a security Council resolution um it would not be to say this is something we approve of but it would be to let it be known that um anyone trying to shut it down by force uh might find themselves in in in in a deeper conflict I mean how that would be done I don't |
| 1:01:40 | know I mean the world is full of things where people were full of examples of what sometimes called strategic capacity where you don't make it make it entirely clear where you stand but you give people the impression that they probably don't want to find out exactly where you stand and if you think that sounds terrifying I quite agree with you and that's one of the reasons why I take the threats from solo Geo engineering very seriously and and I worry about them more than the biogeochemical and biogeophysical threat |
| 1:02:08 | okay uh Clive hi uh Oliver thanks for joining us I've been a subscribers The Economist for many years decades and uh I read your book yeah welcome it's it's a good read don't have time to read it all um and uh I I got your book and at least skimmed it I would say and and thank you I remember the thing about the who's who's we um and also um it was very helpful that you said talked about email groups of people talking about climate Solutions because at the time I didn't really know very many |
| 1:02:49 | people I was looking for I could I could see I was involved in climate lobbying for carbon pricing at the time you could see it wasn't really going to go anyway and uh so that's when I started to think about what else could be done technically um so that's what led me to be connected to all these people here so that was very helpful um so I've ended up working closely with a guy called Franz OST you might know he's the pioneer of iron salt aerosol which is methane removal and and other things |
| 1:03:24 | um one thing he's there's a couple of things he's worried about with uh so I'm trying to think if I've got a question in this so sorry I love this is is not really questions two things he's worried about with Sai he says that pretty much any well any surface in the stratosphere is a catalyst for ozone depletion and so you know putting whether it's sulfate or carbonate uh up there is going to reduce the amount of ozone um the other thing he says is even more about is is well if it reduces ozone you |
| 1:04:00 | get more UV UV but uh but uh but if you get less UV I mean most of the sort of control of the climate is does seem to be done in the troposphere apart from of course the occasional volcano so there's a great deal of oxidative capacity there's a great great deal of oxidation reactions that happen in in the troposphere the remove methane and they make they age the soot particles and and other things and of course the the ocean um in the cold periods there was a lot of iron-rich dust that that blew thousands of miles and landed in the |
| 1:04:40 | ocean and and seems as though it would have fertilized large areas of ocean a little bit diffusely but increase the amount of fighter pain of course there was far more whales in and other animals mixing and fertilizing the ocean then as well and we know that um phytoplankton produce dimethyl sulfide which oxidizes and this is one of the main uh nucleations uh nucleation you know Cloud condensation nuclear for marine clouds of course Marine clouds all over a huge area of ocean do provide a big cooling effect so we we're rather more keen on |
| 1:05:14 | tropospheric Cooling in this way to try and as closely as possible um mimic nature so I suppose I should ask try and ask a question do you have an opinion what do you think about about some kind of because let me say one more thing we're we've kind of got aerosol version two um we've benefited enormously from Steven Salter's help with his calculations on Marine Cloud brightening and you know calculating the cooling effects of clouds um we have a another aerosol that can make very small particles the right kind |
| 1:05:46 | of size um really quite easily um which then sort of degenerate into clay in the end they just floatulate and become clear after they rain out and they also deplete methane and do all this as nucleic clouds and deplete methane and enhance the oxidative capacity of the of the troposphere um and they could include iron um can you ask your question it's just because so here's my question what do you think are the chances of being allowed to have a diffuse fertilization of iron on in the ocean sorry problem is that ocean is harder um I |
| 1:06:30 | mean there is a there's a procedure right the um the London convention tells you about how you could do that um and so that's I mean it's not something but it would be very hard to I think you find it much easier to do in the e z of uh of a of a small of a small island nation um I can't see any reason why that would be difficult other than finding a small island nation that wanted to do it um if you're going I mean I think doing it um and I think many people have told me and I can't speak to this with any |
| 1:07:04 | direct Authority I'm not a lawyer and I'm not close to negotiations um a lot of people seem to think that the um constraints on research of that sort in the London protocol are pretty restrictive um and it would be hard and you know it would be a difficult experiment to do you would need a lot of stuff and a lot of monitoring and so you know you're talking about someone who's willing to put um tens of millions of dollars into any sort of experiment like that I'd have thought um and I think that you know if you |
| 1:07:38 | could find someone who could do it you might well be able to find a place you could do it but I wouldn't necessarily Bet On It thank you very much thank you Jonathan floor is yours hey there well I've read most of the first 54 pages of your book and I ordered a hard copy and I really find your writing style delightful uh you know yeah you're using philosophy and figurative imagery um to make the science you know enjoyable um so first of all I want to encourage you to write another book right away and uh but I wanted to ask you know with |
| 1:08:16 | your economics background have you given any musing or thoughts to how we can monetize the activity how we can make people want to invest and how we can reward people for for doing cooling just generally Cooling well I mean for cooling through greenhouse gas removal I can see how you could do it with um some sort of Market mechanism I'm not sure that's the way that I would necessarily want to see it done but that is a way that you could absolutely do it um if you have the right and you know the the ability to |
| 1:09:03 | um quantify biomass quite precisely um remotely it has been growing very quickly over the last few years so the idea that that could be done um that could be monetized I think monetizing radiative forcing um yeah there have been suggestions of sort of like selling rated enforcing as a service but I find that very hard doing I don't particularly I don't particularly want I think that while a profit motive um and Andrew mentioned the unfortunate um people are making sense of well profit motive may get you some of the |
| 1:09:41 | way um and it might sort of like possibly might sort of like bring out some ideas at some point um the political risks in a technology like this really do to me depend on the idea of State action I can see how you can marketize not sure it's the best way but I see how you can marketize carbon dioxide reduction marker diet marketizing the reduction of sunlight I think is really really difficult um not least um because and then you don't see there aren't huge liability issues um uh for the um for carbon dioxide |
| 1:10:22 | reduction but I can see that you could get hit by liability issues in quite a big way and you would not under the degree of um legal jurisdictional risk would be very high and so I don't I don't think it I don't think it's a likely idea and I don't think it's a good idea basically okay well that seems pretty definitive uh before I turn it over to Robert tulip um I wanted to ask I wanted to ask you to sort of put your your Communications media hat on if you will uh in addition to all the other hats uh occupying your |
| 1:10:57 | head um and and sort of have two related questions one is we have had and probably other groups as well these you know continuing discussions about terminology uh both in terms of their scientific accuracy and their ability to be clear and influence people and as you picked up in in reading some of our materials I mean some of the terms we've come up with or things like direct climate cooling rather than SRM for example the climate Triad as an approach to that brings the three together um the goal of getting to well below one |
| 1:11:36 | degree because it's the same construction as well below two except you you just substitute one for two and the term which is controversial among some people of climate restoration so that's sort of one basket of questions whether you have any reaction to those terms either technically or in their ability to be effective ways to communicate and related to that is if you were sort of our consultant and we had a little bit of a retreat and not knowing obviously any more than you know about us right at this minute what kind |
| 1:12:09 | of advice would you give us very you know tangible advice on how we can get articles in the media someone asked that earlier today I think the question then went you know the response went elsewhere uh you know we've tried to some degree but not in any kind of systematic way uh uh so far and and we recognized presumably that we need to you know like every other group so look that's sort of a two-part question if you will okay uh well the first part I think that this area doesn't need new terminology |
| 1:12:45 | um I get pretty tired of being told by Kelly wanza that I should be talking about climate Intervention when I'm talking about solar Duo engineering I've had enough of a background in um uh British nuclear debates to know that changing the name of something um doesn't really help you very much um and and in fact um in some ways it's all like just re-stigmatizes the term that you're changing away from so people say they want to call it climate intervention but it's really solar geogenic or |
| 1:13:19 | geoengineering I think you should try and make I I think trying to I mean it can work you know um uh uh the Republican move towards climate change people say it worked I'm not sure I was in the field at the time I'm not sure how much it worked um I know that you could spend a huge amount of money on Consultants telling you it would work um but I'm not so I don't think we need a new term like direct climate cooling I do quite like the idea of the Triad um uh um it's all like the positive side of |
| 1:13:57 | what's often called a trilemma you know one of those things where you can have any two but not three you're gonna have faster cheaper better um you can't have secure cheap and safe you know uh and secure cheap and clean when it comes to energy that sort of thing um and so I as I understand the climate Triad it's you're saying it's something where you have to have all three legs and I think that's a useful idea that's something I that I like I liked in your literature on a question of placing |
| 1:14:25 | articles um I'm really not sure because it's something which um for reasons of um Professional Pride and courtesy um we tend not to want to do it I mean journalists sell article I generally I I've never worked as an op-ed editor um and so I have no idea how that side of the world really works except that I've occasionally sold our pets and I did that by going to the editor to a relevant op-ed edit and not I mean obviously The Economist I just pictured at an editorial meeting um and I go to an op-ed editor and I say |
| 1:15:03 | I'd like to write about this and sometimes they say yes and sometimes they say no but they know me as a writer I have no idea how you get standing to do something like that um uh from for for from uh to like activist point of view um I would think you either cultivate um or you piggyback on someone who already has the connections so um you know if for instance you're a former British cabinet Scientific Advisor you might find an easier way into this sort of world than um the average civilian would okay well thanks really appreciate that |
| 1:15:43 | uh uh Frank and and uh direct uh response to my questions um I'm gonna ask Stephen penningroth to ask question I also want to just check with you Stephen Salter do you do you want a couple minutes no you know no commitment after see after Stephen speaks uh I'm not muted can you hear me yes uh the first thing is about all of us saying that you can only do that I'm asking all I'm asking now is if you want a little time seeing as Stephen is a scientific contributor pretty please could we have him first because there's |
| 1:16:19 | only eight minutes left and it's really hard to get to the bottom of the science yes that's fine with me good good first of all Oliver said that you can only do Marine cloud buttoning weather or clouds uh do you remember the thing called the beast from the East uh wind is amazingly efficient way of moving temperature along down the wind direction so all you really need to do is to to rely on the wind and maybe the currents to move the heat into another place um oh I quite agree with that Stephen but as I say then you're actively trying |
| 1:16:57 | to not to change specific parts of the weather system um which I think takes you into a in into a different level of course yes you you can add vect um uh temperature change around the place that's I quite agree with that but you have to realize but if you want to take um uh the forcing that you're doing in you know on 10 of the world surface and move it all all around the world you need to actually change weather patterns a lot and I think that's and and I think that's beyond that that in some ways concerns me more than |
| 1:17:34 | um the approximation to changing the solar constant that you get with um stratospheric aerosols and this is only an approximation of that of course removes a lot of chemistry and a lot of Dynamics but right it is an approximation the second thing is a way to to get it sold and I think what you do is you'd get a bunch of governments around the Gulf of Mexico let's say to say that they would like to see these the patterns of sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic and and the Caribbean to be different from what they |
| 1:18:06 | are now and more like what they used to be when the Hurricanes weren't quite severed if you did this after a particularly bad hurricane season I think you'd find uh uh very little objection to it and you'd pay the uh this the spray contractors according to how close they would get to the Sea surface temperatures that the governments around that area ask them to be and that that and how would you I mean but if you look if you're thinking about reproducing the sort of like low hurricane um sea surface temperature distribution |
| 1:18:39 | of the 1980s say uh what are you going to do about the drought and the Sahel that you're also causing I I think I'll just stick to trying to to locate it in the places we know where it's going to affect hurricanes at the moment but yes but the argument the argumentation is pretty strong Stephen that that it was the it was the aerosol cooling of um the Mid-Atlantic that was associated with sulfate in the 1980s that both dampened the um uh dampened the uh hurricane season for the best part of 10 years and also |
| 1:19:18 | caused droughts and sahala I'm not sure that you can necessarily disentangle those two effects and certainly if you cool the surface of the ocean and there's brands of hell even if there is no causative mechanism the fact of that memory from climatologists passed I think would be extremely problematic to you well I would look at the world also by the uh the Norwegians who showed that if we just did an increase of 50 of the condensation nuclei in eight regions where there was low Cloud this did help the uh drought stricken regions in the |
| 1:19:54 | Sahara and in Australia and uh all over the place it was really very benign it's uh worked by Stern I think in I think it's 2018. I think that's that's very interesting and you know as I say I have no problem with um recline brightening and I wish someone would actually um build some kit that would show us the way how how and to what extent it would actually work um and the fact that this the fact that you know sort of like what 14 years after we first met in um uh we first met in Edinburgh we still |
| 1:20:36 | don't have that um proof of principle it's something that I find I'm sure I don't find it as distressing as you do Stephen but I do find it distressing well the the engineering is nearly complete I can show people all the detailed Dimension tolerance drawings uh and we could start making bits really really tomorrow all right well on that positive note I know you have to uh head off Oliver and sorry we won't have time for any more questions I really just if one of thank you so deeply and profoundly that it was |
| 1:21:13 | so stimulating and and uh so knowledgeable as I expected or even it even exceeded my expectations we hope you'll stay in touch with us uh we know you have a day job and books to read and write and conferences to go over the world but uh uh we're an action group and and if we can count on at least some advisory uh supporter assistance that would be great of course awesome questions and Robert and Steven uh Pennington Stephen petting both if you want to email me your questions I'll get to them by email tomorrow okay |
| 1:21:47 | okay thank you very much that's very generous Oliver Morton at economist.com Oliver mortal one word thank you thanks everybody the steering service it was nice talking to you all thanks very much thank you thanks again thank you okay Andrew are you signing off or having a follow-up meeting |
| 1:22:51 | thank you same thing with uh renau okay here we are thoughts comments reaction I was thrilled to hear how much Oliver shares what has been a feeling I keep articulating too of oh my God who's who is going to object to Marine Cloud brightening let's just get this thing engineered and tested and |