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| 00:08 | foreign good morning how are you I was just looking at the uh the Lee paper and it says it's only about pure water it doesn't say anything about salt water is this the thing about uh from France yes okay okay all right well let's see if he still wants to talk about it then well maybe it'll work with salt water as well I haven't had any further feedback on the uh on my uh statement so we'll we'll drop it I think it's it's probably too difficult Oh I thought we were getting somewhere |
| 01:05 | with that well I've had no feedback on it so so well people might be expecting to us to just go through it some more today it's well I think it's a good idea to look for consensus I I thought it was but well would you ask them whether they want to do any more of it or not yeah yeah I will do yeah I was expecting us to spend another kind of half an hour on it I think it's useful to actually discuss where you know we've discussed all these things round and round now it's time to seems it makes sense to me |
| 01:37 | just to start saying well which which is the best one and what do we think you know thanks for that I think we're we're reasonably one on most things yeah I'm happy you know uh Chris and that is have made lots of useful suggestions and other people won't go for everything but we seem to be a fairly unified group on it yeah I think so yeah so it's been my friends paper seems to say it's got to be pure water so possibly sea water wouldn't work why shouldn't it shouldn't work |
| 02:23 | I don't know it just the the paper says pure water uh yes they did it with pure water but maybe it works also with ocean water possibly yeah do we know the right it's it's known that clouds contain H2O2 right they they are made of small droplets okay do we know what proportion is it very small is it smaller the droplets the the more extra to good we've got done we've got five times I I'll I'm just looking at my screen because I want to get the uh link up for the consensus so please talk among yourselves I can't |
| 03:20 | see anybody I'm looking at my screen I'm going to go off for a second here I need to okay Doug uh well hopefully we'll see you see a little bit later then I'll just be walking around I need to do something okay uh I sent you that link that I sent you the link didn't I uh Sev you sent sent me the paper oh you're sorry The the you've got the thing in the uh um the documents uh whatever it is Google Docs Google Docs yes John do you want the link if you've got it to hand yeah yeah I'll send it to you yeah oops |
| 04:01 | how do I get uh chat and come the bingo I've got it all right brilliant so if you if you can put that in the chat and it's good morning Robert hi Claude hi Robert Hello friends but I've been appreciating your comments again Robert well I was uh pleased to see that article in the uh MIT technology review yeah I think I think it it as uh Brands actually emailed me about it privately to to just say that um he he found it constructive as well yeah that was nice to hear from Friends yeah and uh they spoke to I mean James |
| 05:00 | Temple interviewed France yes two or three times huh hi yeah so they're doing the doing the research properly so it was and they quoted you properly didn't they friends they didn't misquote you no no they didn't miss even uh put some sense which I said in the in the paper they made some sense out of what you said yeah but they worked some things out I said something uh do it like nature does okay right right hi Brian good morning sorry Robert yeah uh James Temple had uh uh James Temple had written that's uh |
| 05:53 | article about the Mike sunsets um startup in Mexico and um which was uh very negative about that but I think reflecting the dismay that a lot of the geoengineering Community felt about that about that activity so I suppose you know one of the uh one of the controversies around iron sold aerosol begins from uh the the fact that that Franz has has patented uh technology and so the whole commercial approach to it is uh is highly controversial so uh yeah anyway I mean I think that that's something that we should have on our |
| 06:42 | agenda today to uh to just uh have a think about that conversation on on the iron sold aerosol okay yeah I'd quite like to do that earthquake as well um and certainly can say some things about patentsync right so agenda and by the way I saw thanks for putting the link up for Robert for that meeting with Luke whatever his name is from sorry Luke Bossman Iceman right yeah who seemed pretty much in fact I was going to invite him to this um think about it um but I mean yeah he seems to have the same kind of thoughts as we do you've got something |
| 07:31 | needs to be done what can I do to get something done and it was it's good to see it's always good for me I always like to see the person behind you know we've got Andrew lockley on the call now so Andrew disagrees quite strongly with what you've just said but you don't want to see people or you don't uh he doesn't he doesn't agree with Luke Iceman's approach okay well that's all right it takes awesome no I don't um because I think that they I mean it's not just me I mean if you look at the |
| 08:00 | criticism that they got from challenging climate um Jesse Reynolds and Pete Irvin then who are you know quite sort of throw SRM at least Pro SRM research they take it seriously they wear as much as the same criticisms as I raised about their um you know Cavalier approach to regulation and their lack of respect for um much more experienced professional colleagues in the field um they've been heavily criticized by a lot of people I respect and regardless very intelligent and able commentators so I don't want to elevate my own |
| 08:33 | opinions but um you know they're certainly shared by other people well to me they what do they release a couple of teaspoons of sulfur dioxide so it was a publicity stunt it was to raise awareness yeah well it wasn't it was to raise money um they're raising money from basically selling carbon credits to the public um and you know I I don't think the actual experiment itself was something I had a problem with particularly I think that it was Reckless to do it without Telemetry because they don't know where |
| 09:05 | the balloon went I mean Telemetry can fail but you know to deliberately release a balloon without Telemetry and my view is reckless particularly when it contains toxic substances and I don't think they should be selling carbon um uh offsets or whatever they're calling them to the public who are not well equipped to make a decision about either the um the direct physical risks or the geopolitical risks that arise you know in the same way you can't go into a corner shop and buy a shotgun in most jurisdictions then you shouldn't be able |
| 09:35 | to do this uh surely it's not on the same level as buying a shotgun I mean this is couldn't kill anybody or could it if it might kill something let me let me explain like if you've got a a I'll tell you what Andrew let's let's make this a an item of discussion shall we let's put it on the agenda well we're in it now so if you make it item one all right I'm zero then we can get it out the way well everyone's focused yeah yeah yeah no I don't need to shut you up um making |
| 10:03 | sunsets uh yeah so uh and just just to answer the question you directly asked me a moment ago if you I mean this is something I raised I've raised separately with them but I've also raised um uh in the call that we had last time and I've also raised it in the open letter that one of primary concerns of these particularly when you start doing them at scale is a risk of a hot Landing so let's say for example if you're working um uh in uh you you're working in your double garage and um you one of these balloons starts to |
| 10:36 | deflate when it's being launched and it gets heavier than air and it descends and it Buffs its way into your double garage where you're working and then you burst it as you knock against it then that's not an unfeasible thing that might happen once you start releasing them at scale and then you'd have a garage full of sulfur dioxide now sulfur dioxide is pretty risky in that situation you'd likely survive it if they did the same thing with hydrogen and sulfide and they might start launching the hydrogen sulfide it'll be |
| 11:03 | likely faithful you've only have one lung flu hydrogen sulfide and that's it it's going on yeah right yeah so the point of making is that none of these risks have been adequately documented they haven't been put in the front of regulators there's no strategy that's been published for mitigating them they haven't done anything that would um might take reasonable steps to mitigate the risk there's no cost label or equivalent um has Hazmat label on the balloon so that people don't know how to |
| 11:27 | treat it when it lands okay there's a whole bunch of stuff that they could and should do to domesticate the risk to people on the grounds now that's entirely separate from the idea of provoking members of the public to invest or you know purse or something which um has got geopolitical risks of which the members of the public might not not be aware hmm yeah yeah okay um right so you've answered that part of it thank you Andrew so um let's see if there's anything else we want to say about it because I think |
| 11:59 | I I don't I haven't but yeah okay so let's come back to that so and also friends wants to talk uh mention that um uh lee paper yeah yeah the paper uh thank you so it's uh we don't see um Stephen Salter here because that would apply to him are you there Stephen no oh yeah hi manager uh um 100 so to produce uh to produce Irish radicals uh even from MCB let's put that there should make the point um and I was just saying with Sev uh I would I would say chlorine radicals even chlorine radicals yes radicals |
| 13:03 | we will get those but that last for me saying depletion is air chlorine better okay right even from MCB right uh so this is uh no it consensus I mean it's not terribly sexy to watch people going through the painful process of um uh you know trying to agree on the wording of a document so um but I do think it's a good idea of what so what saves put forward because we we're now starting to we've had a lot of discussion in the last two years we're now starting to go around and around a little bit over the same things again so |
| 13:45 | it's it and as I points out there's a lot of things that we rather agree on on the whole um not everything but a lot of things and so it perhaps it'd be quite useful actually um to to us in particular but also more publicly to have uh this consensus document uh as if we can agree on that as well uh the the okay so that makes it rather more accessible um anything else for anyone let's talk about uh on salt aerosol oh yeah so I I I'm Gonna Leave This to the end again sir but um yeah that's fine but |
| 14:26 | but please um I'm happy to be prompted uh because like anyone else I get carried away so I don't mind if somebody says Hey time to look at document we probably want at least 20 minutes at the end so okay so this is uh yeah iron salt aerosol again a bit of a buzz from the MIT so this is the MIT um article is there any was there anything else about it Robert uh we'll talk about it when we get there basically that yeah okay and um anything else yeah yeah I'd like to respond to Andrews oh sorry with |
| 15:04 | somebody else speaking uh nope okay I'd like to respond to Andrew's uh comments about the making sunsets right okay I just want to make sure there's nothing else I think four things maybe that's good enough for us uh manager you're welcome to suggest something you're a very regular attendee um and Brian also so Clive since you're waiting for them I'll just tell you I'm only here to I was expecting John Nissen to come on we've been working the last three or four days on an updated version of the |
| 15:39 | temperature diagram and I thought he might be here to explain that so I'm just going to sit and wait and see if he comes on you could prompt him send him an email I mean he often turns up a little bit later oh does he okay uh yeah so uh yeah we're down to the final final okay that's good okay um let's leave it as that then um please Robert thank you all right so um Andrew has uh expressed some quite reasonable criticisms of the uh the process that making sunsets group has uh has taken to uh to apply what what is it uh there's |
| 16:27 | this question about what the what's the purpose is it a a publicity stunt is it to make money uh I I think we had a long conversation with Luke Iceman which uh Andrew joined um at the Healthy Planet Action Coalition uh last week and uh I think uh the publicity stunt uh purpose of it is uh is very clear at the same time but the hope that uh eventually it would become a a commercial operation but I think Andrew's right that they're starting off in quite a Cavalier way but the question is what are the balance of |
| 17:09 | risks and uh I think what they're seeking to do is to get attention to the uh the general lack of attention to uh solar radiation management as uh as something that is uh that is needed to uh to address climate change and so they're quite deliberately uh being uh uh breaking the rules now uh that then raises the question of what's the risk of uh of the sort of scenario that that Andrew described of a hot landing and uh my sense is that the risk of that is really quite minuscule and um that's in in that context the uh the |
| 17:54 | ability of amateurs in this way to uh to draw our attention to the the policy failings of climate change um justifies uh that sort of a risk as a as a first step like qualification point of clarification minimum minuscule risk over how many Landings one uh one launch ten launches 100 launches ten thousand launches I think the expectation is that they should learn for from the criticism that that they've received and that they should take steps to uh to minimize risk uh while uh like I suppose you know you're you're describing |
| 18:40 | um sulfur dioxide as a toxic substance now how uh how toxic actually are these balloons and um you know what what what is the risk I just my uh sense is that you are blowing the risk here and uh it's it's better to uh I suppose stand back from this sort of thing and say okay uh you know they are um in involved in a Extinction Rebellion type stunt but in this case for solar radiation management and so um so this sort of this sort of activity uh does well they're not they're involved in a profit-making company and |
| 19:25 | and Extinction Rebellion is not a profit making company well that's I suppose that's part of the uh transgressive nature of it just that the uh you know climate Community uh is so much uh linked to uh I suppose ideologies of of hostility to profit but um that uh whether that's uh that that's a legitimate debate you know is uh is it legitimate to uh to patent and profit from cooling Technologies you you referred to their credits Pro uh process Andrew which uh they've called cooling credits and uh I see that as a really |
| 20:09 | valuable uh step I've been advocating for what I call radiated forcing credits as a as a better way to measure the climate impact I don't have a problem with the principle of radiative forcing credits my criticism was not and never has been about that my criticism has been that um they've been using a methodology which is been in my view comprehensively debunked and still selling it to unsuspected members of the public without making it clear that the methodology that they're using has been debunked by experts |
| 20:39 | um it's likely to be somewhere between two and ten times over claimed from what I understand so they're misleading the public and getting them to part with their money for a product that basically doesn't work and they're doing it in a manner which um you know I understand the risks are very small when they have a very small number of launches but it's a reckless approach to safety um in the same way that I can drink drive and I'll get away with it most of the time but occasionally I'll run over |
| 21:05 | a small child and it's the Reckless approach to safety that brings the whole sector into distribute because it's not just that they're taking a measured calculated risk it's they're being Cavalier and Reckless and not seeking neither regulatory approval or the approval of their peers that's where I have the problem yeah that's a reasonable criticisms and uh I I suppose I'm just commenting that there's another way of looking at it so like that's really all I wanted to say |
| 21:35 | about it yeah fair enough for Robert thanks amount I I can't disagree with I've got nothing to add basically but um so any other question uh comments on that I mean to me it's like yeah yeah I only wanted to comment to the toxicity of H2S and the SO2 sr2 is by far not so toxic like Edge stress um yeah but uh how do they get the balloons up SO2 is a rather Heavy Gas yeah that with a helium France uh well that's why it makes it a stunts you know the use of helium is not uh it's not practical and I would suggest that the |
| 22:28 | uh the fundraising is more going to be around advertising and publicity than actual cooling so I think you know Andrew's uh questions about order of magnitude uh you know they're exactly what what people will study once it's uh once it's looked into but that's actually just a really valuable publicity question you know because it raises the question of what's the order of magnitude cooling impact for example between one of these balloons and an electric car and uh you know so they're |
| 23:03 | just the whole cost benefit analysis of different approaches to cooling uh can become a matter for public debate um yeah Andrew when you say it's roundly debunked what do you mean do you mean that stratospheric aerosol injection is not unworkable or something about what these guys making a specific claim for the amount of cooling that they get per unit of um of emitted gases into the stratosphere and there was a pretty extensive debate um on the Google um geoengineering group and uh a number of experts weighed in people who've got |
| 23:39 | much more expertise on the matter than I have are not you know it's certainly something that I would consider publishing on so no idiot when it comes to this sort of stuff but there are people who who's thinking a lot and knowledge on the subject is much more advanced than mine and the view was you know pretty comprehensively held that they were over claiming now overclaiming okay and the issue the issue is that you know it's it is important in and of itself that an overclaim is being made because I don't think that they I don't |
| 24:09 | think commercially they would lose a great deal from just making their credit slightly more expensive um uh by you know more conservatively claiming but the point is that it adds to a general real approach of being Cavalier in a number of different respects right which which serves to bring the whole sector into distribution not only they're conning people but they're also making everybody else look bad okay all right thank you for that so I would say that the uh the conning that comes from electric vehicles is far |
| 24:41 | worse because like for example it's the Australian government's policy that's switching to Electric can help to keep um uh warming below 1.5 degrees and I I just find that uh you know a scam on on massive scale so uh yeah I would I I would say that the the potential for uh this activity to lead people to to say well what are the relative benefits of of different approaches and you know to see someone like Daniel visioni or Pete Irvine uh way in uh on on this it's it's just a very constructive public debate |
| 25:19 | as as I said hmm well I think you should ask Danielle and um uh he what their opinion would make Sunset says I mean from as far as I can believe I'm talking about yeah I saw it there I saw their comments on on Mike sunsets especially Danielle and um and like I could understand where they were coming from but uh I suppose I I just think that there's there's there are other perspectives that uh that also have Merit well there might well be but the point I'm making is that it's not just a kind of gentle disagreement |
| 25:52 | between academics of equal status I mean this is as far as I interpreted robust I mean but Pete Irvin's not a very forthright individual he's quite circumspecting British but I don't think I've ever heard him be as critical of anything ever as he was about Mike sunsets well but uh but isn't it time he was critical about electric vehicles then as well it's not his dream what is it I mean I don't work on electric vehicles academically and neither they say and you know nobody's selling cooling |
| 26:23 | credits for electric vehicles they might say that no but yeah okay but Roberts I totally agree with Robert's uh stance which is that you know it's it's okay it's Cavalier it could have been dangerous and he's uh over claiming for his credits and everything um uh but it's a public it was a Mania you know it was it the benefit is a publicity stunt um and it raises awareness of other mechanisms not just Net Zero um and in a grand scheme of things it it's it's not anything like as damage I |
| 26:54 | mean it's just it's just no we're on the scale of the damage of you know uh electric vehicles which isn't isn't going to happen anyway because there are the amount of mining did anyone see that that video at Norway has already got I mean over 50 electric vehicles but the point I'm making is that that's because they sell so much oil I can afford them well yeah I mean I just think this old electric vehicles thing is just a diversion for the main purpose of this meeting really I'm I'm not really well |
| 27:22 | okay I'm not going to stick around if we're not going to stay on topic but the the point that I'm making is that that electric vehicles are not um being sold for on the basis of cooling credits and people have spent 10 years in this field at least trying to get a social license to operate um and even in an edge case um of where that social license to operate lies now make sunsets have breached all of the norms and have set back the field in terms of the public acceptability uh of uh of a style of |
| 27:50 | experimentation that's been difficult enough for scopex to launch and you know will be difficult also to to get other experiments off the ground uh of similar style and even responsible conduct um let's see so let's see I mean that if that's true then then that it is rather damaging um you know if it's put them back puts back uh serious you know efforts then then that's that is rather damaging but let's see so let's see um okay let's let's move on uh and stay on topic as you're saying okay friends |
| 28:28 | um you want to say talk about this Lee paper and okay so I think everyone would have seen that yes I I found it uh interesting because they found that small droplets smaller than 30 micrometers uh contain H2O2 and the smaller they become the more it's true or to they produce and it's well known that H2O2 splits a big construed by the Sunshine radiation to oh radicals and if you have sea water as droplets then you would produce chlorine radicals by this oh radicals because they displaced this the CL |
| 29:34 | uh yes they they displace chlorine ions by producing taking away an electron and produce chlorine atoms yes and these escape from the uh from the hardest phase and uh meet methane and they are much more go into the gas phase where they meet me 10 and they are much more uh reactive to museums and oh extra electrons is that because they they stay in the they they tend to stay in the in the gas phase whereas the oh radical yes tends to go back to the particle back to the droplet not not there that's a reason and the the main reason |
| 30:41 | is they they uh are much more reactive to uh to methane but to me then then a witch anyway anyway yeah this comes on top of this okay okay that's that's what I mean if Stephen Slaughter produces his chlorine nebula nebulization it's a sea water nebulization yeah this should also if if this is right what I said this should also produce chlorine radicals and so he would not only produce clouds he also would uh make me centiped it um yeah that's it yeah you said small droplets 330 microns 30 microns and and |
| 31:41 | the smaller they are the more the more concentrated is the H2O right the the H2O2 the peroxide yeah yeah and the uh is it also true this the smaller the droplets that the uh the more acidic they become as well uh this seems yeah they uh explain the process of H2O to production I buy a producing an excavated electron and a water electron IC salvation it's uh initial solvent cage in the droplet okay right and hydronium iron and uh we know |
| 32:47 | I wouldn't wouldn't breaking waves produce a lot of those 30 Micron or less Shoppers anyway should also because that might mean that the atmosphere is already um yes fully saturated with the H2O to it should be should be but it's well known clouds contain H2O2 clouds in the atmosphere this should be measurable it it should be easy measurable if it this happens or not why do Cloud drivers I wanted to give it to discussion yeah yeah thank you friends it's interesting why do Cloud droplets uh get hydrogen peroxide in |
| 33:39 | them is it because of the sunshine on the droplets no no no uh this job is do this also in the dark okay is it the just from oxygen in the air that does it it's a small this is a job let's become is it smaller it's a tendency it produces electrons and this protons and this H2O2 right this is the smaller the droplet so the bigger the droplet the the more the more it splits it's it's well known that uh small droplets have a have a an acidic coat on the outside yeah and maybe this is the same phenomenon the |
| 34:30 | electrons should sit in the center okay and the uh the the protons or the hydronium yeah is on the outside it's on the outside it's acidic on the outside so you're saying it it's more likely to make oh radicals if the particular particle is smaller or or if you're smaller the smaller the particles the higher the concentration of edge show always uh so also the the higher the concentrations of uh electrons yeah okay and if the if the positive iron sits on the outside of the droplet the negative must sit in there yeah yeah |
| 35:20 | the inside right so you've got the sort of acidic on the outside it's true is neutral it's everywhere right so so this H2O2 gets produced so uh Sev is saying why don't you get this in just you know droplets that come off the waves of the wind and the white I don't know I don't know they didn't research this this okay we are interested in right okay so we just have to speculate why this where this hydrogen peroxide comes from where does it come from we don't know we know where it comes from water yeah |
| 36:03 | but but what makes it go into the droplet that isn't in the you don't have the ocean full of hydrogen peroxide so no it doesn't when it's in the air it is a chemical reaction yeah from the water that happens in the air it happens in the droplet it happens and the droplets not in there well okay in the droplet but it doesn't happen in the water in the ocean it has to be a droplet in the air too yes that's what I mean the droplet size is a key indicator here because it's showing that the surface |
| 36:37 | tension effects or the surface effects are dominant in that they're prevalent in droplets that are learning microns and smaller and um thus you can expect some of the surface tension effects and other surface effects to be creating unbalanced states that lead to the peroxide production uh that can be both mechanical surface tension but also surface reactions that can cause the increase in concentration and peroxide and perhaps Associated ionic chemistry whether it's chlorine and sodium or other other ions |
| 37:14 | okay but I would expect most of these droplets to actually have uh you know some moderate salinities in a marine environment and as you go smaller the rate of evaporation goes way up so your salinities and your total alkalinity within the droplet will increase because the evaporation rate is proportional to the surface area divided by the volume ratio and thus you get Extreme More extreme states of water as the droplet size gets smaller and this can precipitate peroxide reactions Etc yeah yeah very very it's also the the increase of |
| 37:50 | positive loadings outside yeah correct because outside on the surface yes right when you say charge loadings uh do you mean you don't mean we're not talking about the acidic the acidity anymore friends what are you talking about acidity yeah the inner inner part is so you get the hydronium on the outside and the and yes and the wage or electrons are inside yeah and it's a little bit remarkable because seawater is more than pH eight and what Francis uh Brian is saying is it water evaporates the total alkalinity goes up |
| 38:37 | but it's still acidic on the outside even though this it comes from water that's alkaline a little bit but only yeah it's all part of this is that you can get very high states of charge in the droplet as exemplified by the creation of lightning in other words lightning has likely driven by the charge transport of these small water droplets and thus we have good evidence for charge and a giant Van de Graaff generator uh by the the transport of these droplets vertically and in other directions and thus it's quite likely |
| 39:12 | that you have states of charge within the droplet and immediately around the droplet trying to neutralize the charge and that can create these ionic states that can support peroxide production yes and 30 micrometers is rather a rather thick darkness in our um we would like to make 0.1 micrometer droplets hmm 100 nanometers yeah yeah probably an exacerbated effect of that smaller scale so very significant yeah yeah good news for Stephen we'd we thought we hoped we might see him here today but I think he's don't see him |
| 39:58 | here and never mind hopefully you'll get to watch the video thank you friends anything else from anyone else or from you friends about that no that's that's it yeah Ah that's another paper I'll have to read friends oh and we'll have to talk about that as well that's just too good to just forget that isn't it yeah we should uh look what happens with it uh if if someone will will research on this yeah get the methane uh measure methane depletion yeah yeah that's right yeah more more uh money needed okay |
| 40:43 | let's move on um yeah uh Robert you wanted us to talk about this yeah so um I thought it was a very good article by James temple in MIT technology to review I hope people have have seen it and uh quite extensive discussion of it on various email lists and one of the discussion areas that came up and uh Andrew lockley has uh pursued this further today in the question of uh how do we assess the balance of effects of of iron salt aerosol and uh so is it primarily a solid geoengineering or a greenhouse gas removal technology just for disclosure I |
| 41:41 | interviewed Peter at length today for reviewer two and I've got the uh audio for that um ready to edit and uh I'll try and get along within about the next 24 to 48 hours so the people are interested in listening to or Pete has got to say for himself yeah it's a very critical interview is in a difficult position because he's trying to start or is running this um committee that is posing as a sort of pseudo-regulator of the industry but yet he's an investor in one of the companies that he's supposedly regulating so okay |
| 42:18 | it's uh he's putting himself in a very complicated complicated and compromised position in my opinion and I don't view that as tenable but other people can form their own opinions after listening to the podcast so anyway hop back out and that other people continue right oh well that'll be uh worth listening to you know I mean Peter fikovski certainly um uh well it expresses himself in a way that's uh uh the the article from MIT uh called his opinions grandiose and um so um yeah I'll look forward to uh to |
| 42:55 | hearing your your interview uh Andrew um and uh yeah so uh I I think um this uh uh this article has provided some uh useful publicity the uh the areas where um where I found I found it uh one of the things that I found most interesting in it was um the argument that the Marine Cloud brightening effect of iron salt aerosol uh would be perceived politically as uh as a negative and uh I think that that's uh just illustrates the um uh I I suppose challenged um a level of understanding um within the general public about these topics |
| 43:47 | and the point I was making on the Google group today was that no one really knows what I saw aerosol's does because um depending on the weather conditions it'll either end up in the ocean and become more of a fertilization technology it can end up um uh adjusting clouds and being a SRM technology or it can end up floating around and being persistent and being a greenhouse gas removal technology and uh the the the complexity of this approach has been um argued as being a positive thing by The Advocates of iron salt aerosols but |
| 44:22 | I think that the scientific political aspects of this uh complexity are absolute pain and it'd be far easy to have a much cleaner technology without all of these complicated side effects and that is you know no one really knows what the main effect is using what's a side effect is perfectly possible that it might end up being you know the side effect might be the main effect depending on the weather conditions and how the science works out so um what that illustrates is that uh only through field tests uh and um uh |
| 44:59 | possibly small scale deployment uh is it possible to uh to answer these questions and so the argument from various scientists that was well that's sure no hold on no there certainly doesn't make sense I mean like they're trying to do this um by field tests I mean you're working in a noisy non-ideal environment um and and you just don't do environmental experiments in the first place by just sticking a load of chemicals into the open environment the way that you do it properly would be to have some modeling done which is how |
| 45:28 | environmental experiments are done normally so you'd use a chemistry column model coupled with a cloud micro physics model coupled with a general circulation model for the ocean iron fertilization with it with a biogeochemical circulation um uh a module in you that's that's how you would do the experiment you certainly wouldn't go and Float around on a ship and try and detect the signal that might come thousands of miles away it'd be impossibly expensive and not a particularly good way of doing it let |
| 45:58 | alone the geopolitical risks that come from that well I'd be interested in France's thoughts on that question I think uh and nature does it in a similar way when does Von Sahara goes into there and uh I always my my motto is uh do it like nature does yeah that's it and nature is complicated yeah yeah the people have been measuring the effect of of desert dust in the atmosphere they've been doing that yeah um and seeing that it does actually remove methane they're having trouble getting their paper published because people don't |
| 46:47 | like geoengineering um but I mean I'd also say that you know phytoplankton um Andrew you think about fighter Plankton you know how how inconvenient they are because look they they uh increase biomass in the ocean they uh lower the partial pressure of CO2 in the surface of the ocean drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere I mean they released dimethyl sulfide which becomes sulfuric acid it it nucleates Cloud Marine clouds I mean can't they make up their mind what they want to do natural processes are complex yeah |
| 47:23 | natural prices are complicated and that's why people have opposed to fiddling with them and the idea that you can use deliberate uh intervention experiments as opposed to Natural experiments or modeling to go and monitor these faces I mean how many meaningful effects you're going to have to do them at huge scale and that means huge expense and you're going to also have to be huge levels of instrumentation to find out what's going on and you know the idea of getting out how do you know it's huge how do you how |
| 47:49 | do you know I mean because it's dilute in the open ocean if you take a ship out in the ocean open ocean and then you're trying to work out what happens to Plankton where your particles land and the particles that land hundreds or thousands of miles away from your ship I mean it's it's impractical to do that and that's why you have to do it a large scale because if those particles get diluted on the Wind as they will do then they're going to have a dilute effect over a large but you can take a small |
| 48:15 | amount of a sort of mesocosm a small amount of ocean surface a very small amount of ocean surface and and put a very tiny amount of uh of iron aerosol over it so I mean it's less than a milligram of iron per meter Square yeah but that look you can do that but then teasing out the second and third order effect is extremely difficult because if you're trying to work out the effect on clouds right Cloud even correctly execute Marine Cloud brightening is indetectable to the human eye right so you're going to have to instrument your |
| 48:47 | clouds you're gonna have to do a lot of clouds over a big areas looking like for marine car block you can probably look at square miles of ocean the satellites satellites measure satellites certainly can do that but you have to be able to you have to be able to perturb square miles of ocean to to be able to get it over background you know just just glibly saying that we can just do all this stuff and it's all going to be fine doing the open air it just it just just shows a complete uh you know either |
| 49:13 | ignorance of or disregard for the actual physical processes in the engineering associated with it I just don't well no it's not it's not it's not glib because the uh what like I think that the floor and what you're saying Andrew is that we have here a chemistry process which has the potential to have uh multiple cooling effects and uh you're saying that having multiple effects is a negative whereas uh what I'm saying is multiple effects make it hard to measure and the point is that and let me clarify |
| 49:46 | because if you get a quote me I'm just going to want to make sure that you quote me correct so the the problem I've got with this is that some of this guy the the effects might be short-term and small scale and make them relatively easy to measure oh right so the direct methane effect might be quite quick of the order of seconds right but then the Plankton fertilization might work on order of months and scales of thousands of kilometers but it's the mismatch of scales that make this hard to engineer |
| 50:14 | as a as an experiment um you know among among other things it's one of the principal issues with it that it becomes it's so physically hard to engineer um a system which has affects all of these different scales and where the side effects might actually turn out to be the main effect none of the work that I've seen on this field Andrew has ever managed to quantify it effectively Andrew please tell me one a measure which is very simple and has no side reactions please tell me if you have an example of carbon dioxide |
| 50:54 | removed for example is pretty simple from a geophysical point of view no no no this is really not you remove it but you must look through the hole life a cycle of this carbon you must put it in in the ground or where else and there you have second reactions it's yeah you're mineralizing in the ground it's relatively insulated from the biceps put it down you know 3000 meters down in the Earth's crust then you know it's not going to make a lot of difference to plaster the point I'm making is I saw aerosols is being |
| 51:32 | actively marketed by its proponents as being this kind of multi sort of Swiss army knife of geo-engineering interventions but the point is that any experimental proposal needs to take that into account and monitor all those effects Each of which might turn out to be the wrong sign right so if the wrong size saw you as in it might be a negative effect so they don't sign it right yeah well I mean negative effects are you are you imagining with iron what I'm saying is that it may be for example that although |
| 52:08 | um I saw aerosols are expected to reduce methane levels it might be that they um destroy hydroxyl radicals for example which have a knock-on effect hydroxide radicals process it it does uh deplete hydroxy really I'm not making it I'm not making the case that they are not offering a chemical pathway I'm saying that the complexity exists in atmospheric chemistry such that it's possible that we we have to at least consider that any one of these Pathways might actually be the opposite sign to that which we |
| 52:45 | expect now I'm not saying that that it's likely or certain that that will be the case but I read something in the last couple of days saying that um iron salt aerosols uh potentially would have a negative effect I can't remember the the chemical pathway um and it might be for example that the chemical effects of RSO aerosols actually affect the cloud Effects by for example degrading dimethyl sulfide so there's a lot of different ways that these things could interact and the the more complex the effects the less likely |
| 53:16 | it is that the whole system is going to be fully traceable and the fact that it's that it's operating in such a range of different chemical and geographical scales makes it an absolute nightmare to do Opening Our experiments with I mean because you have to huge perturbations and you'd have to instrument thousands of kilometers it's completely impractical it's just not an effective way of testing that technology it's far better to do it with modeling and einstalls just does not have the |
| 53:41 | background of modeling that something like SRM has has got and that's the proper way to do it in modern geophysics is to test it in the lab first to test it in a silicone we're not saying we don't we want to go straight to doing field tests and don't want to do any chemical tests and don't want to do any modeling tests Andrew we're not saying that we're not saying we reject any kind of modeling we reject any kind of chemical we'd rather do those first and we'd rather have funding to do those |
| 54:06 | types The Advocates of this of these tests that have been trying to go straight to live action tests now it's fine to test an engineering this these Advocates are me and Franz and Robert and and others but I'm going by what was quoted in the uh in the James Temple article I read uh um and the people have been making proposals to do it in the straight between Tasmania and Australia right so the point I'm making is that that you know there is a movement as far as I'm aware from what I've read in the |
| 54:37 | media um to go and do live testing on this kind of stuff now I'm not saying that that precludes any further in silica experiment but the solar radiation management has had a decade of in silicone testing before anyone's done opening experiments now I'm not saying that that's necessarily the right approach and personally I I quite like the idea of small scale and Engineering tests as opposed to a science tests which are different matter but I I think that it's completely the wrong time for doing this |
| 55:05 | open-air system tests at the moment and I think the time is not not upon us when that is a reasonable strategy I think that you know I would expect to be you know we're probably 100 papers off where we need to be before we can start considering open-air experiments for anything other than you know just testing the basic Delivery Systems to find out if we can make them work we could probably use the Sahara and dust as a natural experiment and see whether the methane concentration goes down because of that that's been done they've they've seen |
| 55:43 | the methane concentration go down oh well that sounds like a a pretty good good test at the open air open air things does work without without any obvious adverse effects yeah I think I think it's what we we can't we're finding it hard to imagine I mean I I I'm trying to think of something that iron salt aerosol might do that would not be so great one thing I think of is is if it rain if it cords cloud seeding it gets clouds to rain sooner than they would otherwise um we don't particularly well if we want |
| 56:17 | to uh wear them off but then you know if you if people modify the weather more and more these days especially in India I hear in China so it's a question of learning how to use it best and then uh so I'm not saying go straight to field test though without doing any uh other tests and Peter fakowski has been doing his own tests in his own place in his own office he did some chemical tests um to me if it's potentially makes can make a huge difference you know positive beneficial difference to The Climate without |
| 56:54 | ruining the oxidative capacity of the troposphere you know uh without without and being something that can be stopped within a few weeks instead of having to wait two years for the droughts to clear up you know it seems to me it's a rather long time to have to wait for funding for you know for 100 papers to be written when we just can't see much in the way of of negative side effects Andrew can't see negative side effects not not that's because you haven't done a research well if it's a natural process this is |
| 57:30 | happening with dust in over the ocean all the time anyway and what damage is that doing iron chloride is it iron chloride is not being released by Sahara and dust in general yes it is it is [Music] please let me let me explain you have uh in the air over the oceans or over the Atlantic you have uh orange or case it reacts with dimitrusified oxidation product sulfuric acid and this release is HCl and this is HCl reacts with Saharan dust and makes a a coat off uh iron 3 chloride that's the same chemical we use also okay now that's |
| 58:31 | interesting I didn't know that um but the point about clouds is really important I mean clouds are really really poorly understood though one of the most poorly understood areas of flyback right uh Cloud uncertainties are a huge factor and uh I don't think it's a done deal we know exactly how I mean I posted I posted um on my Twitter feed a while ago a really complicated process involving the chemistry of DMS and how it affects clouds um and there was a there was a really long complex series I think 10 separate |
| 59:02 | equations um that I tracked down from some paper or other showing that um that there was an effect on Cloud brightening from a chemical pathway that hadn't previously been considered so I think it's perfectly possible it will end up you know potentially with a good methane effect but a reverse Cloud effect and we could easily end up you know with a technique everyone dances around and prays it is and then we find it actually takes us backwards now I'm not saying that's that's true what I'm saying is it's not |
| 59:30 | my job to know whether it's true or not it's the techniques Advocates job to prove that it works before they go and start messing around with the climate and doing it at a scale and that's why you need 100 modeling papers before you go and start doing anything at Skype well I was responsible for the best Straight proposal and as as I said to James Temple and was he included in the article we had uh two reasons that we uh didn't continue with that uh proposal and they were the monitoring and attribution Challenge and uh the |
| 1:00:08 | political governance uh challenge so I think you're absolutely right uh Andrew but uh where we are not yet in a position to conduct field tests but it still remains my view that uh if uh that we would be better off doing the field tests and learning by doing because I think that the risks of the field tests are actually very low and the learnings from the field tests are going to be very high and uh so uh like yes well that's perfectly reasonable look I'm not saying you're wrong objectively on that |
| 1:00:43 | point what I'm saying is that that I'm I'm not saying that the tests are directly harmful what I'm saying is that there's a social expectation that before you start doing perturbative experiments in the open environment that are potentially quite large in geographical scale even though they're small in effect there's a a an expectation that the scientific understanding behind them will be taken as far as can reasonably be taken without doing those experiments that's a social Norm that has been |
| 1:01:15 | established in due engineering over a long period of time and it's not necessarily that I think that people are going to start dropping dead around your experiment I think it'd be quite a foolish to argue that that's going to happen what I'm saying is that people are quite rightly expecting that scientists have a very high degree of confidence as far as they can before they start meddling around with open Earth Systems now you can argue about whether that is a principle which is retrograde in terms of hampering |
| 1:01:41 | scientific progress but it's a a set of norms that scientists ordinarily do adhere to in in their work in this field now you know I'm not here to you know defend the status quo but I'm just noting and observing it and I think that your your caution and your pause was quite reasonable given the circumstances um for precisely the reasons of both you and I are arguing for there's extensive commentary that modeling has failed in in the ipcc context and that we need to be looking to uh to different approaches now I |
| 1:02:20 | think that this problem of of social norms that you're describing uh it reflects in my view the sort of bullying that the moral hazard logic has applied to the geoengineering Community where what we should be seeing is uh governments collaborating on global scale to uh to implement uh these field tests in view of the massive security risk of tipping points and so it it's that's the sort of context of urgency that I think is just missing from uh from much of the debate it's fine to a point but you just gotta |
| 1:03:03 | recognize that there is a very significant risk of backlash which affects not you but all of your professional colleagues and proceeding cautiously I'm not saying you know being utterly timid and not doing anything but proceeding with a defensible degree of caution is an appropriate response and the Tipping points argument is not foolish but you know it just hasn't won the day in a battle of ideas well we we do the best we can to to to to try and get people interested Andrew and and so far there hasn't been really |
| 1:03:34 | any money for for doing well there was there was from from uh franz's uh business partner going back nearly 10 years he provided money for the chemical tests to be done in Germany more than 10 years more than 10 years ago and uh he hasn't seen anything back from it at all and since then yeah and there's been an enormous amount of research there's an almost Amanda saying we put the information out and most people I think don't read it or most people aren't chemists or you know methane action |
| 1:04:03 | people they're not chemists they're they're trying to they're trying to get the public interested in in this stuff and and we're trying to get people to fund even the smaller you know to continue to reproduce the experiments done in Germany and and so we've got have we had a whole load more ideas since then uh about yeah I think you must have seen um to make it safe for using it where there's ice we wouldn't want to use iron where near where there's ice so you have to you have to |
| 1:04:31 | kind of talk it up a bit to get anyone because at the moment it's all just Net Zero isn't it it's just like you know Net Zero by 2050 forget about the Tipping points everything is going to be fine technology this isn't it zero technology yeah the net zero co2e and that again was a discussion that was had on the Geo engineering yeah yeah carbon dioxide removal groups over the last few days yeah Net Zero okay yeah okay but equally it's about Net Zero heating uh and uh setting Net Zero heating as a more important climate goal |
| 1:05:07 | than that zero emissions yeah and uh yeah so uh the and this gets back to the radiator forcing credit idea that um if I insult aerosol has got uh you know a major Albedo effect then uh that uh could uh prove more significant than its uh carbon dioxide removal effect in the in the context that even methane and uh and carbon dioxide are very slow in their actual effect on on temperature and climate and weather yep yeah thanks everyone any more any other comments at all on that appreciate you joining these meetings |
| 1:05:50 | Andrew and putting your case I don't think we're that far apart you know I think you know what's it um Impressions may be deceiving or something what's a term um well I'm very much and I know France is as well I think every all people here in doing proper tests not being Cavalier I mean um the sunset people I mean that's Cavalier but how are you going to get the word out you know and is it really going to destroy everyone else's uh plans I mean there needs to be lots and lots of discussion this is the way |
| 1:06:27 | democracy Works isn't it you have lots of discussion lots of argue you know lots of this and that and and if there's a strong enough need for something then you know the government's having to set up in this and they have to start doing great sorry um because nobody sorry Andrew I didn't I missed that you said you were saying something sorry yeah my headphones just started messing up um yeah no one can experiment in Mexico anymore so yeah yeah okay we do what we can we make mistakes I think we need to move on actually |
| 1:07:10 | um so uh I think we've done that one to Dad's now so let's move on uh to uh well unless there's anything else to say about einstop the the article itself even um right so the uh consensus document so let's get to that again it's a second uh URL I've put up a second URL uh a second one right so can I can can people see us seeking no no at consensus document it's called it's in the Google Docs yeah I mean I've got my screen being shared so people should hopefully see that let's |
| 1:07:56 | do it do it again share screen you should be seeing that now there we go yeah well I think we've done the first five haven't we yeah uh it might have been a bit more than that but let's let's go so once again um so for anyone that's new this this document is a working paper from which it's hope to climate intervention strategy with broad consensus might be forthcoming it'll consist of a series of statements or strategies um okay taken on board some of the suggestions to improve the first draft |
| 1:08:31 | as Chris have you noticed several statements below are either untested or contested might have suggest that folk with additional statements for consideration have these ready in a okay so statements carefully constructed climate inventions are needed immediately to avert the worst results warming grounds gas emission reduction even the achievement at zero are insufficient to avert the escalation uh some well-respected climate interventions uh even taken together I should say are insufficient to prevent looming |
| 1:09:01 | tipping points the better Albedo enhancement methods are likely to be among the best 20K uh candidates for a benign climate for Humanity average global terms will need to be reduced to no less than one degree over pre-industrial right so do you mind if I put spaces between these in between these um it's probably a better way of doing that but let's do it like that for now so we need to become good careful and active stewards of our planet and its life forms it's hard to disagree with that okay so so this is now for that I don't |
| 1:09:37 | remember doing that one so let's start with number six as you said then um uh Sev so any any uh adverse comments on on six it's a bit of a motherhood thing but I think it needs to be stated the idea of the idea of active stewardship implies that you can competently execute that many people would instead such Sami argue for a lack of intervention and I'm not saying that uh I'm not saying I disagree with what you've written uh in fact I'm quite sympathetic to it but I think the idea of presenting it that no |
| 1:10:10 | one could disagree with it is fallacious okay I was talking about this this group the world in general okay yeah there is massive disagreement because we're talking about a paradigm shift to regulate the planetary atmosphere and so I mean to shift like it's an evolutionary step for our species uh from our current you know tribal conflict to uh a a form of Global Peace So it's got quite a utopian uh Dimension to it but there's a an urgency in that uh in that call for a shift so like this this 0.6 it it covers over a whole pile |
| 1:10:55 | of philosophical political and even religious Concepts that uh that that have been the subject of massive debate going back to uh James lovelock's bio hypothesis Etc hmm yeah how can you um put all that I mean this is a nice pity statement here with good careful and active stewards of our planet and its life forms um we want to keep keep it reasonably succinct this these points I think so um uh is there any way to moderate active stewards that stewards that uh uh Robert Chris you've got your hand up yeah I mean I I this sentence troubled |
| 1:11:40 | me I mean it is a mother of another pie and and uh the problem with it really is it doesn't it doesn't actually mean much I mean you know so so what what does it mean what does that mean you have to do uh and as I'm sitting here looking at this uh for the first time I wonder whether what we're really pointing to here is something like brundlins um sustainability definition of definition of sustainability I can't remember the exact wording um in her report back back in the day but it was something along the lines of |
| 1:12:10 | leaving the uh leaving the resources for the future Generations much the same as as we inherited or something along those lines and it's about not depleting uh the the planet's resources I'm not quite sure what being an actor I mean you could be an active Steward and um you know what does that mean what does it mean I would say it means different things by taking corrective action rather than than non-interference which a lot of people uh seem to think will solve uh the problem but it won't well you can solve the problem is by |
| 1:12:46 | active stewardship and maybe say that takes corrective action uh you know focused on taking corrective action if that's what you mean Sev right I mean active students I'm happy with it as it is yeah it's good enough for me and I think it'll mean different things to different people I'm just I'm just looking up exactly what the word Steward means many different things to different people is the exact opposite of what you would want any rational document to do okay Andrew but how can you define something that's |
| 1:13:30 | that's you know unassailably you know that's that can't be argued against I don't think it's I don't think you'd ever really quite get there with anything well look I think that this .6 is a very good placeholder for a major debate so and I I think that we have consensus on it within our community while recognizing that like I would think that what you could add to it would be a criticism of the unsustainable trajectory of uh of our dominant civilization uh but uh I think that that's implicit and uh uh some and |
| 1:14:09 | perhaps for for a later point so I'd I'd rather that we just move on all right okay let's move on uh okay we're interested in climate and ocean intervention methods that provide a net benefit as almost all interventions will have at least one adverse effect uh while whilst those of a business as usual have both many hang on and gives rise to into existential net harm determining I'm getting a bit lost here uh instead of gives should be give uh singular and give rise thank you all right I don't I don't think it's helpful to |
| 1:14:53 | have acronyms here like I've never seen a COI as an acronym and if even uh BAU if it's not if it's not used as an acronym later in the paper then uh then there's no yeah okay we are interested in climate intervention that provide a net benefit okay as almost all such as measures have at least one adverse effect whilst there's a business you don't have many both both many and give us the essential harm okay determining that benefit is sometimes No Easy Task particularly when different communities generation |
| 1:15:34 | occurrence different communities Generations occurrence situations what's that and concatenations are involved effect so so so the the the uh okay occurrence durations yeah I mean it doesn't really you have to read that I have to read that several times if you can't get a 12 year old kid to read it and explain it back to you you've written it wrong okay well maybe you need some needs a bit of uh work on the the English thing but uh should I put something here good but make it but make it easier to read |
| 1:16:20 | something like that well yeah it has to be radically simplified so simplify yeah okay yep and then move on yep okay uh we have a preference for nature-based ocean atmospheric Solutions as these tend to be more cost effective more scalable less disruptive have more co-benefits and often should we say are more socially acceptable uh none of that is true or at least not defined it's not it's not accepted to be true no but I believe it is true well the socialism you're entitled to your belief but you're not entitled to |
| 1:17:00 | present it as consensus or fact when it's neither a lot of these things will be opinions uh Andrew it's simply to get what this group's opinion of a certain thing is nature-based Solutions are more benign deliverable efficacious Etc because I think that you have to take into account the difficulties of um political delivery and of sustenance and um monitoring reporting and verification when you're evaluating a socio-technical system and it's extremely difficult to guarantee performance of nature-based |
| 1:17:41 | solutions and indeed they've got a long multi-decador history of Fraud and misclaim and so I certainly don't support them uh in an advantageous position over uh mechanical technological interventions that is say that we have a preference with database an atmospheric Solutions where these tend to be more cost effective more stateable blah blah blah yeah okay okay we're not saying that they all they all are they said where they are better we have a preference for them yeah we could say that are that that uh which |
| 1:18:28 | just reduce that to that are oh just that out no because where is much better because all right implies uncertainty okay well I think it's it's important to delete the claim that they are often more socially acceptable because as Andrew pointed out that's not true uh at this point like we would like it to become true in the future um uh and it's the question is more socially acceptable than what are they more socially acceptable than just uh continuing a meeting and trying to address climate change through |
| 1:19:07 | decarbonization acceptable than uh stratospheric aerosol injection it's so I think um uh and uh I would prefer a full stop after uh co-benefits I totally I totally agree and uh I think people have expressed an opinion that nature-based solutions they prefer are better but I'm happy enough to have the full stop after co-benefits to drop this lot drop that bit yep okay and uh Brian you've got your hand up maybe Brian had yeah yeah I do have my hand up um I just want to say that there are a few guarantees in life so we should not |
| 1:19:58 | I mean the risk-free rate of return is exceedingly low uh we need to take measured risks particularly when we have to consider the Alternatives and uh like it or not I mean there are a number of robust methodologies that utilize uh ranges when it comes to identifying um you know the the amount of carbon benefits or the amount of you know that the metrics what is significant about many nature-based solutions is that they've been around for eons and we know the environmental conditions in which they're robust so it is possible to |
| 1:20:32 | produce a range of benefits and you know a scientific method and procedure can be utilized and in many ways we get better social acceptance for nature-based Solutions than we do for mechanistic ones that don't always quantify some of the side effects so I think uh you know I think we need to take a good look on the alternative is not do nothing we're not comparing let's say nature-based solutions to nothing we're comparing nature-based solutions to business as usual which is basically driving off the |
| 1:21:04 | edge of a cliff in the next few years or decades and so that we're in an age of triage let's behave appropriately yeah thank you yeah thank you very much Brian I was also going to say Andrew that because people have made fraudulent claims against them is not a reason to just reject them then and say oh forget the nature base because someone made a fraudulent claim didn't say that what I said was that they are inherently prone to fortunate clowns and therefore putting a framework of preference around |
| 1:21:35 | them ignoring their inherent tendency to fraudulent climbing is uh to place them on a pedestal wholly unjustifiably you've got to look at the socio-technical aspects of a system and not just the technical aspects and it's the nature of a system is that it's inherently prone to fraud then you have to consider that okay okay let's let's clarify something here I I don't think Andrew is trying to say that all nature-based solutions are inherently prone to fraud okay is that what you're |
| 1:22:06 | saying that's that's what I heard when you when you were speaking earlier you gave a whole what I'm saying a bunch of reasons why it was a bad idea well let me explain what I'm saying my reading wasn't clear that the nature-based solutions such as they have existed such as Forest protection or afforestation have been fraught like the recent um Vera study showed I think a 95 fraud rate or a 95 non-delivery rate let's not uh create uh criminal offenses where we don't need to but 95 non-delivery that's |
| 1:22:38 | not an error that's systemic if that was 10 it would be a problem it would be something that needs to be managed 95 percent is a systemic failure the whole thing is the best but but Andrew in this context um it includes ocean and Atmospheric and uh so that's something that this group has been gussing whereas you're pointing about uh how carbon credits from forestry uh are more how the public understands nature-based Solutions so what I'm saying is that look look what I'm saying is simply the nature-based |
| 1:23:11 | solution because they're so fuzzy around the edges and they're impermanent and they need to stay they need to be sustained and because they have um uh knock-on effects outside the boundary in a way that something like um geological DAC doesn't have they they create a lot of problems in terms of mrv and those problems turn into opportunities for fraud and misclaim and that is something which is systemic it's not an accident it's not a uh it's a it's not a bug it's feature it's |
| 1:23:39 | inherent it's widespread it's ubiquitous and it fundamentally undermines it doesn't mean that no nature-based solution can ever be useful obviously that's nonsense but to say that we you know prefer them when they have such systemic problems is you know just happy clappy and naive yeah how about putting something in here about um you know bearing in mind the uh the risk of fraudulent you know the the increased risk of fraudulent of claims I think you're cluttering things up let's keep it simple okay yeah I just want to |
| 1:24:15 | cap this to some extent there are 100 ways of not making a light bulb and there are two or three ways of making a light bulb all that's happened is some historic methodology had some flaws in it and yeah that wasn't great but um you know I don't think we should say that it's fundamental because fundamental implies that it's inherent in all nature-based solutions which I don't believe for a minute I bet you're a kidney that we come back continue to time and um the fraud is still there I |
| 1:24:45 | scale to the point of undermining the whole system delivery there's a hundred ways of not being completely successful and mistakes will be made that doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bath water and there are a lot of benefits to nature-based Solutions and it's about improving the robustness and the scientific validity and the delivery of these Natures it's not a baby in bath water it's a baby in a thimble full of water that's the problem the mass of water that you're trying to Chuck out |
| 1:25:14 | should is you know you've got your ratios reversed the 95 of it is nonsense well that's that happened in one case for one methodology right I mean we we do want something that's accurate um but you know to say that it's fundamental I think is overreaching and and there's plenty of room I mean we wouldn't have had the Regeneration book from Paul Hawkins if there wasn't any validity to nature-based Solutions we just need better methodologies let's get to it happy to work on those and |
| 1:25:43 | collaborate with others to build more robust methodologies as we have for the ocean uh kelp forest actually so happy to go through those in detail and go through some very detailed and robust academic reviews of those methodologies that are yet to be fully verified introducing This noac Acronym at 0.8 uh reflects a structural uh change needed in the document to say you know what it's what its scope is because uh this concept of nature-based ocean and Atmospheric Solutions should be defined in the introduction rather than |
| 1:26:20 | um just raised here where it's uh uh open to uh to misinterpretation and misunderstanding okay uh so I just put up here then say something about Define noack something yeah okay so all right uh okay I think we're done with that and so we prefer not to preference any solution that has strong military or conflict potential such as space-based mirrors or Shield so can you just say we prefer we uh okay we don't prefer how was something that's at L1 going to cause conflict I mean how are you going to go over to L1 and have a fight |
| 1:27:15 | um you may find for instance that um nations with a lot of uh uh Northerly land like Russia may want to warn the world and may therefore uh not want to uh have anything in at the L5 and therefore May shoot down Rockets trying to stuff up there that's just manual that's just manufactured nonsense there's nothing about space-based geoengineering that makes that particular form of conflict more likely if Rush once cause trouble for geo engineering program it can do so with anyone anywhere in the world it doesn't |
| 1:27:54 | need to be at L5 the point I'm making is that you're drawing a specific conflict risk for space-based geoengineering it's literally the first time I've heard anyone mention that and to my immediate first pass assessment of it is absolute twiddle out into space I can fry any City I don't like that's got a fairly strong nobody is proposing building a mirror out in space now you can use to if I could finish the sentence that'd be helpful nobody is proposing building a mirror in space |
| 1:28:31 | which could usefully be repurposed as a death ray I've seen no such design or proposal I would support something that said you know with all geoengineering techniques we would um encourage consideration of the geopolitical um and potential weaponization of the Technologies and we urge caution in terms of any Technologies which have the potential to become direct or indirect contributors to conflict I mean that's you know you're saying basically the same thing but just without the Sci-Fi outlandish nonsense |
| 1:29:05 | I think there's a problem here with this with this uh entire paragraph because it implies an ability to have some foresight as to how technologies will be used in the future I mean even benign apparently benign Technologies could be used by malevolent horses for military purposes uh you know I mean people could you know we're not going to build we're not going to build a dam because the dam might be uh you know somebody might bomb the dam and it'll be a problem I mean I think that's not a very good example but I |
| 1:29:37 | think that trying to impute into this document um you know what does strong military or conflict what a strong mean who's making the judgment about strong of uh security and uh like I I think that the the whole debate about the relationship between Geo engineering and peace and security is really important and I think that this uh starts to open that what I would prefer to say because there are many people who are saying that uh and you know science fiction novels and so on saying that uh you know creating climate dystopias where uh |
| 1:30:16 | geoengineering leads to war um but uh I would prefer to see uh geoengineering as a force for peace as something that can be managed uh through uh strong International governance I think the model of the Bretton Woods conference is uh is a very good one to uh the world back and the IMF and uh so the uh to reframe this in terms of say saying that cooling solutions can can support peace and development and prosperity is is more I suppose a a positive uh way of putting it than constructing alarmist uh you know what was that movie that came |
| 1:31:04 | out about five years ago with the uh the space mirrors collapsing and uh so you know that's that's where these sorts of scenarios that seb's describing um I think it was golden eye by James Bond the James Bond franchise but it might have been a different one but the problem is that calling solutions could also be used to support but you know War I mean the problem is you can't you can talk about I think you're right Robert to talk about the fact that there should be good governance but you can't you can't in a document of |
| 1:31:38 | this sword say that you're only going to support um Technologies um that can't be or that can't be user or are unlikely Used military purposes because almost any technology could be diverted to military purposes if you don't have adequate governance so my point is that is that the uh yeah it's the adequate governance that's the key and uh definitely so let's focus that these Technologies should be deployed in uh through International cooperation well that's just that just doesn't |
| 1:32:11 | recognize the inherent differences in different Technologies it's far easier to weaponize and nice than is to weaponize a dish cloth you know there are some things that are just prone to being weaponized even if they're not designed for that purpose well you can use a digital to gag someone yeah just think of it great minds think alike Robert yeah you can of course use it for that but in terms of deaths and injuries caused they're hardly comparable to knife into it that's what I'm saying is that some |
| 1:32:42 | technologies are just inherently recognizable yeah even though they might be made for cutting Sprouts yeah more easily yeah there's a lot of dead a lot of dead black kids in London who see them you're being used in a very different way yeah but on the other hand you know there's a lot of kitchens in London that will be a bit stuck without a knife yeah no sir what are you saying don't have knives you know I mean no what I'm saying is that you put in place a regulatory regime and a choice of |
| 1:33:09 | technology is that determines that there are no more or less yeah I agree for example but not one that is technology specific you know you don't need to mention the specific technology that's an exact point we don't need to mention space mirrors in terms of in terms of the point what I'm saying is that where there's a technology that has a capacity to be weaponized we need to be mindful of the fact that it can be weaponized and put in place a regulatory regime and we need to recognize by doing so that not all |
| 1:33:41 | Technologies are equally vulnerable to being weaponized and that's that's one that's what my point is and that's why I think it's stupid to point out space mirror is which in my view don't I mean the one that I think is Mindless recognizes Marine Cloud brightening because it allows you to have quite specific control over the weather over a certain area and you can potentially turn off people lose Reigns where you can steer a hurricane onto them and you know that's much more risky than space |
| 1:34:06 | mirrors now I don't think we need to have a debate about which Technologies are and are not most vulnerable to recognization we just need to note the risk for weaponization and geopolitical instability and then leave it up to Future users as the document to make their own judgments okay we can say something like you know noting the the the possibility of any intervention being uh having military potential these need the governance of these needs to be uh you know uh looked at well the the issue is that technology |
| 1:34:44 | should be deployed under uh International uh governance agreements rather than unilaterally I that's what that's one of my views um now uh and I think that that enables that this whole area to be a force for security and and peace it's through the international cooperation Dimension so uh yeah uh like if Marine Cloud brightening were only deployed under uh a uh a global agreement framework then uh it would uh you wouldn't have that same uh potential for you know unilateral misuse could someone tell me dictate to me what |
| 1:35:30 | to type here because we've got so much stuff here and then I think we better call it a day after let's get this one done I think we've kind of got it between us I I would prefer to delete the I would say International governance of cooling solutions and that no delay stop uh just then just delete the next bit and go down to cooling solutions okay yeah I kind of like that uh like that yeah and uh like I I think that that's sort of reframing what Sev has uh was getting at with the and I don't find this next |
| 1:36:21 | sentence uh really helpful because it's it's more it's casting things in a negative way where we want to be positive yeah okay just like that yeah I would just uh I would yeah that's I'd be happy with that and any objections to that at this stage I just might add uh instead of support Ensure and so I can Ensure enhance it's another word enhance is better you're happy with that manager yes I'm fine thank you you've been listening all the way along we didn't we forgot you were there |
| 1:37:09 | and you've surfaced right at the end that's really great we haven't heard from run Bayman either oh Ron's been there yeah hi Ron um yeah okay all right so uh do you know I'm I'm actually kind of in awe of how how clever people are on the on this call um quicker thinkers than me and uh think the same sort of things as me but anyway there we go thank you everybody for coming along again um as usual you'll you'll get the recording if you want to um uh watch that uh or listen to it or |
| 1:37:45 | send it to colleagues and so forth um see you in two weeks anything else to say for anyone any anything else at all okay look forward to emails and seeing you again in two weeks two weeks eat well everybody everybody bye everyone I'm in the car so I I couldn't I couldn't uh participate but good good conversation thank you sure class could we speak yep okay friends I'll hang around did you want to talk to us Andrew you there Andrew yeah I am I'm not I wasn't I kind of thought that someone would end the call |
| 1:38:33 | when it was time for everyone to live yeah friends wants to talk to me so we're just going to hang out okay I'll log out fine chat thanks thanks Andrew see you soon good I'm gonna turn off the recording |