| (Click on a 'Start Time' to view the video) |
| 00:02 | so I'm just trying to trying to work out friends if the addition of iron will make more methane or less methane in these landfills but I think life you must always have oxygen yeah for the microbes to get the medium oxidized okay so this won't make any difference and normally when you have a mission development in the landfill then you will have no oxygen there okay and so it's it's going to make no difference okay all right I have to ask the question anyway I've heard that landfill can produce |
| 00:49 | enough gas to be commercially viable yes surely I think one of my students is involved with that hmm it's interesting thank you very much for your offer Stephen um for using your spray spray tunnel this is uh very helpful um we don't have any funding um but I'm hoping right okay so that's something to keep in mind you think I've forgotten or don't appreciate it I sent you the drawing and the description yes thanks I had a look at that yeah that makes mostly I understood it I would say um so irritational the circulation keeps |
| 01:41 | everything fairly well mixed uh yeah I don't want things to fall down so I'm having enough turbulence to keep them uh levitated yeah and uh the really expensive thing is how we measure the size and the number of the things that are going around and I've got to try and find an economical way of doing that but the instruments that would do it is cost about forty thousand pounds yeah we've been hearing this sort of thing but is this uh droplet size its size and concentration yes a spray Tech oh that's great cool maybe about a |
| 02:23 | company called Malvern yeah there are quite a lot of developments in this area now and there's rival ones being announced okay so let's hope all right Stephen no yeah please uh friends Stephen uh did you look uh for the uh for the oh radical uh production of your droplets I haven't thought about that at all uh but I'm very keen on making more Edge oh radicals and we can we should be able to do in a number of different experiments if you can tell me how you think we could make them I'll see if we can build that |
| 03:06 | in because um they they uh this effect it comes or also uh a diameters round about one micrometer as as if I remember the papers right well give me the recipe and I'll see if I can yeah I have no other recipe then found in the papers you know [Music] we you know the papers no I don't think I do I I'm Keen very much on getting rid of methane and the half-life of methane does depend on the supply of Rh radicals and it would be awful if something produced that Supply yeah and uh we thought additional |
| 04:11 | uh when when acidifying their droplets we can't even produce chlorine radicals or chlorine atoms so increasing the number of amazing separation yeah yeah so it's all uh anyway we'll come back to that shall we it's it's uh time to start and uh Sev is still with us hi guys back again is if you have a beard now I have a beard now yes yeah are you looking healthy how are you sorry how are you now recovering well it's a quintuple bypass is no small thing but I had a superb surgeon and I've got a good team looking |
| 05:11 | after me good to hear Matt yeah great okay and welcome Anton good to see you too yeah uh who else we got and hi Ursula uh hi hey and uh Chris and Herb yeah I've just been reading that un report that you sent out herb yeah unbelievable except it's not unbelievable that's the sad thing it's not an outlier no no okay there we go so maybe that I don't know right so let's do what we always do here and make the best use of all of your time because that's what you're here for and look at the agenda what do we want |
| 06:01 | to talk about today gave a uh an email on the 6th of August saying um do we want to um limit our purview to things which come under the noack uh you know ocean and Atmospheric uh cooling method or do we want to go go wider I I I'd rather like us to go under under the Norwalk one but are there any other thoughts on that okay so uh that's something we can discuss then so do do you want to discuss that uh Anton yeah yeah so so so what's the scope of uh website a scope of evaluation website evaluation thank you website |
| 06:57 | um so so I'll say noack or wider okay great you're here so you can if you've got something that you'd like to discuss or to see people hear people discuss then you know you're this is equal here I appreciate you asking yeah I'm happy to go along with whatever I haven't got any suggestion at the moment okay thank you for inviting me welcome hopefully we'll see uh since it's Sanjeev yeah I I haven't heard from him but um okay I'm hoping that he will just appear who knows um fingers crossed it'd be |
| 07:43 | great if he did be great wouldn't it okay we have a new person thank you uh Dale Anne yeah hi welcome thanks for joining us oh thank you for asking me to be I'm just going to lurk and listen lurkin listen well I'm afraid we always ask new people to very briefly introduce themselves very very briefly yes my name is Dylan I worked uh at the Royal Tropical Institute on the sustainable development agreements between Benin Bhutan and Costa Rica uh so I've done a lot of chain management projects uh change management |
| 08:23 | is that chain chain management yeah so Commodities like uh mangoes cotton um and supply chain I got it yeah I've changed yeah um then I had a venture capital firm for fair trade Pharma in Brazil with Banco axial uh and uh with Novartis and Sandos which went three rounds uh I've been doing cleantech startups and uh from my father from my earlier life I became acquainted with valta vandira who was a club of her own member um I went to his uh prep meeting for the ipcc about five years ago and got drawn into the |
| 09:11 | urgency of the climate problem and have been working without her and with Jeanette hook and with um with Hans Van Der low and Sandra apamar starting an NGO here for marine Cloud brightening but also talking to talking to the EU and others in Europe about um starting a center for governance of of all different sorts of interventions in climate repair and Recovery and of course as you know the coming out with a paper on that on Wednesday sorry what's coming who's coming up with the paper the EU EU got it yeah yeah yeah |
| 09:53 | yeah to which we hope to respond because their Vision something like that is um is that the UN will organize it all the CBD or the unfccc and our vision is that that's going to be a very long and and and drawn-out process if it's a un organization so perhaps we should think of an alternative being a leaner meaner organization in The Hague okay actually dedicated to this okay are you interested in prevention of hurricanes sorry are you interested in moderation of hurricanes well as part of the big picture yes of course that's awesome I |
| 10:38 | will send you a paper about that very interesting okay great and it's so and your what's your so I'm trying I can tell you you've got it sounds like you've got your fingers in many pies yeah I'm really concentrating on this on the governance side of the um of all the different interventions climate repair Etc because I can't do it all the other one of the other things that I really would like to do more that I've done a bit is connecting with young people's groups who are very concerned |
| 11:13 | about this okay yeah great okay that's feeding them information feeding them information yeah that's that's is on my mind a lot as well yeah um yeah so that's right so it's how do we manage our time best yeah okay thank you very much I got a we've got a very good picture from that um and another new person we haven't seen before but we've seen a lot of your emails Roger uh welcome um I think your camera's gone off we're just asking you people to briefly introduce themselves Roger do you mind |
| 11:52 | uh yeah actually I think I did introduce myself more so far I don't remember seeing you before the other group I'm not sure yeah I think so no I don't distinguish too much between the groups um put your camera on would you is it uh and maybe we'll come back to you then yeah okay um I think it must have been another group um okay and um so is there anyone else I don't think so at the moment um all right so let's go back to the agenda I mean um herb don't you want to have a piece about saying something about the |
| 12:35 | uh this um un report uh yes I'm I'm happy to I'm happy to put your name in front of it even though I suggested it no problem that's fine okay well actually you you send email and thank you for that so what's uh how do we describe this report new human report on it's it's the Human Rights Council advisory committee a report on uh climate intervention techniques or something like that right it is human rights uh yeah on should we just say report on should we just say geoengineering or |
| 13:16 | climate intervention yeah the actual titles impact of new technologies intended for climate protection on the enjoyment of Human Rights okay um as long as we've got um we know what it is on climate division I'm just going to leave it like this for now so and we'll fix the name when we get to it um uh okay anything else what else do we want to talk about foreign I suppose I should I should just put in there that uh I've I've convened a small group uh anyone else who's interested to to work |
| 13:57 | on um uh uh open letter requesting um support for studying the relative costs and benefits of relaxing the bunker fuel regulations and um and also supporting um other kinds of you know uh fossil other kinds of non-fossil fuel aerosol use in Maritime shipping fuel hopefully also non-ghg uh producing so you know a two-part proposal uh many of you have seen it I I can put it up it's very short uh if people are interested yeah we've been discussing this and it's uh you know it's very topical because of this very |
| 14:45 | uh you know they're not exactly off the scale but the huge outlier now uh you know ocean temperature you know sea surface temperatures so I missed the segment so we've got the open letter and relaxing these uh the bunker fuel restrictions um right which which have just been tightened of course uh um and uh and I asked Chris and Chris responded you know I guess many of you will have seen it on emails saying there's been so much investment you know political Capital presumably an actual real investment but |
| 15:16 | it's very difficult to see how they're going to do that but anyway um but um good you know all good for you for trying Ron so what's the other second part of it so so this is this is actually calling for research to evaluate the impact you know so but uh the second part would be also supporting uh transition from uh bunker fuel to uh you know non-non uh GHC emitting uh fuel or zero ghg emitting fuel that would also include uh beneficial aerosols so it's kind of trying to couple the Deep for cooling and make the point that |
| 15:55 | you know yes we do want the transition why don't we use some of the kind of aerosols we're talking about to to substitute for those uh sulfur errors I think you need to run I think you need to distinguish between adding your stuff for putting these different aerosols up from non-ghg emitting fuels because there's a lot of research and alternative fuels and some of them are already going into some ships anyway so there's a lot happening on that front anyway right now there's about at least |
| 16:23 | five different fuels I think that are being pretty actively researched and one or two of them are actually going into ships that are being built right now right well I'd be interested to hear that Chris well yeah I don't have all the details at hand but I can just mention a few of them yeah but I think we I'm sorry we can get to the topic but I think we want to make the connection to uh you know yes we support the other fuels but we would also support some cooling uh yeah okay I think that's the |
| 16:53 | point that you need to focus on rather than alternative fuels because alternative fuels is a big subject already there's nothing new to the industry right I'm just trying to avoid pushback here that oh so you wanna you'd want to go back to the old bunker fuels uh no no no you know yeah yeah that's the point yeah okay there is a problem about these fuels which is that the ships the ship distribution is very uneven they're really all concentrated on the on the the great circle roots and uh if you |
| 17:24 | wanted to have some cooling down to say in the middle of the South Pacific there wouldn't be any ships going there I mean there are maps showing the shipping route intensities around which illustrates to measure them is the SO2 concentration the SO2 in the in the stratosphere will tell you all well the ships are going yeah uh yeah okay so we can get to that um put the agenda together brief mention transition to no no okay uh that's related so um I think that's just about open let's research yeah okay |
| 18:14 | um right and anything else this might be enough uh close yeah I hate to kind of bring this up because it's it's starting to feel a little bit like kicking a dead horse but um I'm quite fascinated with the conversations going on around iron fertilization um yeah so I I'm just gauging if anybody wants to chat about that a little bit more openly um versus what email threads have been fair enough it's that's right very topical um is it that you have some questions about that Anton um you know I probably have more |
| 18:57 | questions than um than we have time for but I I would love to learn more from Chris's point of view um and maybe anybody else that has an opinion on it and okay it's getting to be a bit of a heated certain discussions on so so here should I say here overview uh on Ocean um Iron fertilization like that I don't know like that you'd like to hear an overview I'd love to hear I'd love to be able to just gauge Chris's perspective on it okay okay uh okay here I'm gonna so if you don't |
| 19:41 | mind that because I'm sure Chris doesn't mind um yeah uh Chris the um use on Ocean fertilizer ocean on fertilization okay um all right maybe that's about enough then uh okay so let's start with because this also involves you as well Anton um the websites so we're talking about having a website for these technologies that develops and sort of encourages people to come and take part um do you want to introduce oh no and also Roger um I guess you're struggling with your camera just just tell us briefly about |
| 20:25 | yourself if you don't mind if you're there Roger you're on muted right now tired systems architect and engineer and sort of switch careers from processors microprocessors to now clean energy a right for various blogs and sometimes for energy Central and for gas and transitions uh mostly I just follow the subject and uh when I can I have pretty broad General interests background in physics and math uh and some chemistry uh and uh I comment a lot and that's pretty much it great thanks Roger um I thought you'll comment on uh carbon |
| 21:20 | dioxide you answered one of my questions and it was very very good answer you guys okay thank you very much um by the way are you open to I mean it doesn't matter too much sometimes I struggle I tried to I was trying to solve a quadratic equation a couple of days ago and the sort of thing we did at maths at school I was I could do it then um it took me a long time so someone that's good at math you know that's good anyway let's leave that there okay to you um I hope you don't mind Roger if I ask |
| 21:55 | you things send me an email thank you all right um so Seth please yeah but it's more really Anton's uh put up the the the question um I I am in favor of us doing something which is reasonably bite-sized I don't want to go into all the the decks and the decks and the other things and I think most of the direct climate cooling methods that I've seen do relate either to the ocean or to the atmosphere and therefore I I'd rather like us to to focus on that subset of the total geoengineering uh world to for for this uh for this |
| 22:44 | website and evaluation okay thank you uh Anton uh maybe does that answer your question because you know we don't want to we can move on to the next topic if you're happy with that or there's anything else you want to say about it yeah I mean I think I think the trade-offs in there are as follows if it's limited to a subset of climate interventions then the amount of draw or magnetism that it can create from both future co-collaborators and future funders just becomes less the idea that if you broaden it one |
| 23:23 | elevation above it to include a whole bunch of categories of climate intervention you have the maximum potential of draw of future co-collaborations University Partnerships and funding sources and individuals and I think so just understand the trade-off and I think it would be good to start with a smaller thing like Sevier talking about and see where it can grow so we can always like take the kernel that we evolve it past there but uh let's let's stay with what you want Sev on that and just do the NOAA cooling stuff |
| 24:00 | and and see if we can build that up to be enticing enough of a model and if needed we can evolve it later does that make Fair sense fair trade cool great thank you and so on um and there was a hand which has gone down um ah run yep yeah I'm just I may have missed something Anton but I didn't I didn't quite catch so as I'm I'm thinking uh anyway are you saying could you kind of paraphrase what you said in in because I think I may have misunderstood it yeah why I think there's plenty of people on this call |
| 24:41 | that haven't heard my articulation of where I think the best Target of a website should be at um which can draw a lot of collaborators that are cross-generational and across different skill sets and also in potentially be attractive enough to partner with different universities and to attract funders of varying kinds right philanthropic to venture right um doing just a subset of climate Intervention which is cooling ocean Cooling and Atmospheric Cooling you could think of that as a slice of the Interventional pie right so if the |
| 25:28 | website is just going to focus on that it won't have as much of a draw for collaborators potential Partnerships and funding sources I'm not saying it can't attract those but it won't attract as many yeah so okay to make it go faster and get there on in effect I think we may have the I'm going to put up a website the hpac website that I think you know is a version you're what you're saying so so maybe that that would be an example I've seen the HVAC website okay okay yeah yeah we've been |
| 26:05 | talking about having a website a rather sort of dynamic that's because you haven't turned it either I think there's a lot of noise coming from somewhere it might be you John so I'm going to mute you sorry uh anyway it's gone away sorry John I think you have a lively family so um um but please unmute yourself when you want to speak um um yeah so so that's right so we we have um this um idea of a dynamic active website that's not just a stat not the static pages that people can that's the |
| 26:48 | idea isn't it um but uh anyway we began talking about that I don't know six weeks ago so let's and um I know you've got high Ambitions um but then there's been some you know time has been taken by other things so I think we just got it started with it really haven't we and uh and wait for get I mean we've got to wait for Bruce to come back I thought you know exactly let's get it going and then see we can talk about how it's going to evolve yeah um okay Chris yep I was just gonna say I think uh I |
| 27:22 | think it's all very well what Anton said but if you make it very Broad it may be there to attract other people but you also dilute the expertise of the group I think because you're going to expose the group potentially to being a source of information about a load of things that they're not expert on at all um and so I think that is a that's a sort of uh the other side of the coin to expanding it to make it much broader and at the moment although it um refers just to cooling we do talk of other ocean |
| 27:53 | interventions that aren't necessarily direct cooling they may be indirect things like ocean fertilization would be an example such as of that so I think it is pretty broad for the ocean and atmosphere uh it certainly doesn't try to cover um sort of terrestrial based things like soils and all that sort of stuff and I wouldn't suggest there'd be any sense in us getting into that at all because I think that's just going to expose our lack of expertise yeah thank you very much Chris um okay uh okay so let's move on then |
| 28:32 | um yeah so you wanna um ask Chris about ocean fertilization then um Anton yeah I guess I guess in addition to the things that you've written in response to Peter um I'm curious how you would direct him towards a more plausible sort of research approach like what what does he need to change in his articulations and his program in general that would get him further traction towards his end goal even if his end goal isn't the amount of sequestration he believes it's capable of let's say it could do one gigaton a |
| 29:10 | year Max even that's worth that size that's worth doing even though he wouldn't agree but how would how would you advise him to change his his song think at the minute one of the problems with his his hypothesis is that it is all negative there's no positive information to support his thesis it's all negative in that he doesn't think there's any other alternative I'm not sure he's 100 right and I think there is at least a partial alternative in increasing CO2 solubility in the ocean |
| 29:39 | that explains at least some of what he's talking about but also there is I think pretty solid information that there was no big Fertilization in the South China Sea at the time he says it was to any extent let alone the one he was referring to um so I think I mean also the other thing to be said is that the the scientific sort of consensus about it at the moment is that you could probably do about three and a half gigatons a year through ocean fertilization which is quite a lot more than one um however doing that would necessitate |
| 30:16 | fertilizing quite large areas of the ocean probably and at the moment a lot of people are very unsure about what the impacts of that would be because you are quite likely because the iron fertilization tends to favor certain types of phytoplankton as opposed to the broader Spectrum that's out there you will you will therefore probably change the phytoplankton ecosystem to change the phytoplankton ecosystem you'll probably also change other things as well but some of the things that eat whatever's there |
| 30:50 | normally and it also may have some ramifications for the physical chemistry as well um I'm not saying at the moment for example there's any significant risk of um sort of red tides and that sort of stuff that one or two people have raised I couldn't rule it out completely but at the moment it doesn't seem particularly likely given the experience to date but the experience to date remember is quite modest in size I think the biggest fertilization experiment was about 300 square kilometers if I remember |
| 31:21 | correctly which is of course sounds a lot but in the ocean that's pretty trivial um especially consider if you wanted to do three and a half gigatons you're talking of probably I don't know three four orders of magnitude more than that perhaps even more so very much bigger scales and whether there may be differences if you apply these things at very very big scales I mean of course in practice you would never go from standing start to a massive scale you would scale up just for all sorts of practical reasons as |
| 31:54 | well as reasons of checking out the environmental effects and so on so I think at the moment I think Peter needs to be more realistic about he needs to have positive information to support his case not negative information because that negative information is never going to get him a permit in my view and they need a permit when you say negative information Chris what are you saying is there is he says there is no other explanation other than oif well there's no direct information to support oh yeah so he's just saying |
| 32:27 | because oif is in his view the only alternative explanation that must be it but there's no actual positive information to support that no I don't think having that type of information is ever likely to to sell your case very strongly it's the most permitting authorities yeah okay yeah okay understand that thank you very much I'm quite happy to come back with any um if Anton's got some particular questions uh Anton we've got Roger's got his hand up but uh go on Anton you get one one go |
| 32:58 | no go ahead that was great thank you Roger please just a general comment about oif um at least my understanding of it is that it really doesn't take much iron uh to the nutrition requirements of various organisms are small which is potentially a source of strength uh for oin makes it go a long way but something that hasn't really I haven't seen anybody address is the issue of uh where the fixed biomass uh grown ends up you really have to talk about reservoirs and the uh total by uh biomass reservoir of the |
| 33:39 | ocean is really not very great uh so you can stimulate the growth of phytoplankton they last a day before they're digested uh and die off uh you really if you're serious about using that route you have to kind of address the whole ecology the big ecosystem and explain how this accelerated production of biomass is going to remain in a reservoir it can either be the reservoir of living biomass in the ocean or it can be uh in the ocean floor uh some there but you have to delineate the pathways for getting it sunk before |
| 34:27 | other Critters eat it up basically it all gets digested and turned back into CO2 in the normal course of things and uh I think the the higher overview of everything that's happening and how you modify the ecosystem to have uh larger uh massive fish and other organisms needs to be addressed if you want to be credible about it yeah yeah I mean at least most of it seems to get eaten up but it then depends on where doesn't it if it's you're in the deep ocean then uh then it will 97 or something as a figure I see |
| 35:08 | um um one of the things friends and I talked about this almost endlessly for the last four years uh in the shallower waters doesn't have so far to sink and so there tends to be a lot more in the sediments just just come back to Roger um but sort of normally people um think that you get about something like 10 to 20 percent of the production would actually sink below the surface mix layer the other 80 will be re-minarized and recycled within that surface layer so you get that you've already lost something like a tenth you've only got a |
| 35:45 | tenth it would sink down from that surface layer into the deeper water thanks it is subsequently digested by anaerobic bacteria or other things well it's it's other things eat it as well and it's digested by bacteria and there's various things that happen to it but about two percent one to two percent will actually reach the Deep seabed and be sequestered of that about 10 will be sequestered for the long-term geological period because it gets Incorporated and sediment the rest of it is obviously in this in |
| 36:19 | the waters and depending on the depth of the water system where it is that'll determine how long it takes before it comes back and gets exposed to the atmosphere and that could be anything from 100 years or so if it's in really just beneath the surface mix layer up to of the order of 1500 years or so if it's in the deep deep Waters of the ocean and it varies around the globe it's not the same everywhere because of the global current system determines uh how that would turn out so that's an important thing to bear in |
| 36:49 | mind so from my perspective ocean armed fertilization is inherently inefficient from that point of view and if you compare it with um what Brian's talking about which is sinking of seaweed you can probably uh not quite guarantee perhaps but you can get pretty close to syncing almost all of your production if you wished and get it beneath the surface layer in in a very short order and therefore into the deep sea so you can put probably 90 plus I would guess I don't know Brian be able to tell you more about it |
| 37:20 | um interesting quite quickly and therefore it's a that's a different sort of ball game I'm not saying that's necessarily the solution either but I mean it certainly is I think a contrast with the ocean fertilization case you're seeing very different percentages of the material you grow in the surface waters that would get into the deep sea yeah okay thank you uh let Brian speak and then and then you uh Sev yep foreign spot on there and we need to see what's going on in the area of positive |
| 37:54 | evidence for um pinotubo I'm researching something rather interesting and that is I looked at Fisheries data for the time period in in the Philippines area and in globally and we did not see evidence for an increase in Fisheries after Pinatubo uh which is correlating with your evidence that there really was not a bloom in the South China Sea however globally a very much interesting uh picture has emerged from 1985 to 2000 I looked at Global Fisheries production and it flattened out in the years before pinotubo the |
| 38:33 | actual Fisheries catch the wild catch and then the three years following to pinotubo it increased noticeably and then it flattened out again and if you look at the trophic levels and delay I I would like to conjecture a global distribution of of fine dust and aerosols and maybe some iron uh that could have stimulated um a trophic Cascade if you will over a period of 18 to 36 months um and I wonder if we might find some positive evidence from Global Fisheries catch and Global Fisheries catch normalized to fishing effort |
| 39:14 | yeah that's the only thing I was going to say Brian is you've got to be careful to normalize it a fishing effort because fluctuations in Fisheries can have all sorts of other explanations um yeah and also we need probably needs to take account as El Nino La Nina as well of course within that assessment yeah I think so um I'd love to get some data on the actual fuel consumed by the fishing industry by year I've yet to get that but I think that's a good indication of fishing effort how much fuel they burn |
| 39:43 | but uh anyway I found the the global Fisheries data to be congestive and uh we're looking forward to doing more research and collaborating with folks on that thank you yeah I think there's certainly mileage to uh worth mining that information and just following up if we're just growing seaweed for food security we expect 20 to 40 percent of uh over what we've harvested to actually be falling off the platform during growth um once food security and the ecosystem needs have been met there are possibilities of um you know of you |
| 40:18 | going to to larger number of hectares and and sinking more of it but I think uh from a moral and ethical perspective just recovering some 3 000 square kilometers we've lost in the U.S and Australia alone over the past Century as documented by USGS and other sources represents a clear opportunity I think we've got our work cut out for us just to get the first three thousand kilometers back and then we can explore how to uh you know expand further from there responsibly right and this is kelp for us so you're talking about friends |
| 40:50 | that's correct I know the tropics red seaweeds and green right okay thanks um Sev yeah and just uh on the on that uh sequestration uh argument the um the existence of dahil vertically migrating species such as cruel fish Bristol mouth squid and copepods can in certain oceans and particular the Southern Ocean I believe greatly magnify the amount of biomass which those creatures excrete at depths every day now if you there's 379 odd million tons of Antarctic krill if they excrete a 20th of their body mass of of |
| 41:48 | played it back then they've eaten at night down at a thousand meters that is many millions of tons of carbon-rich material which you're getting down to a a level where it's going to stay sequestered for over a 100 maybe a thousand years so if we can buy by General Ocean fertilization are they not just iron if we can increase the productivity the primary productivity of the ocean as I believe we can you're going to increase the mass of those DVM species and hence in my hypothesis also the amount of carbon sequestration |
| 42:42 | you're going to get every day so while I accept Chris's uh evaluation that under two percent is is the moment um suggested I believe the potential is considerably right Chris do you want to come up back on well I would say first of all I think the dial thing is already taken into account within the figures that I've talked about so I don't think it's anything that's not included already um I think the other factor to bear in mind is fertilizing the ocean if it changes the phytopla and it will benefit |
| 43:19 | some phytoplankton more than others and that depending what the things eat them you will let me buy us again what actually benefits as it were in the bigger creatures and so it's um and also as you've said it may be certain parts in the ocean where this is more significant than others um and so that's something to take into account it's not necessarily going to happen absolutely everywhere and bearing in mind also that not all parts of the ocean actually need Fertilization in terms of being short of nutrients some |
| 43:50 | as we know are quite in Surplus in our coastal regions in some parts um but the other problem there with the Southern Ocean of course is you've got a major legal issue with the Antarctic treaty um yeah which is likely to make it extremely difficult to do things within their uh area yeah uh out out of their area which could be used yeah okay dignitary to the Antarctic treaty is the United States uh yes I believe it is yes right I think there's another point that uh is worth mentioning and it's less about the flux of iron and more about |
| 44:37 | the reservoir of iron and that is we know that iron falls out of of the open surface in a matter of hours and and low latitudes at higher temperatures in a matter of days uh in in higher latitudes and lower temperatures um but what's interesting is to consider the pre-industrial level of Wales in a in a biological cycle that could hold on to iron pretty effectively we we have by good estimates two or three orders of magnitude more whales pre-industrially than we have today the whales poop each summer and that poop contain it would |
| 45:12 | contain a noticeable amounts of iron which of course would get taken up by Plankton and of course then the Plankton would be cycled through trophic levels to Krill and then the Krill would be cycled back through trophic levels to the whales and so it's interesting hypothesis to consider with two or three orders of magnitude more whales pre-industrially what was the reservoir biogenically or biologically stored in that cycle between whales Plankton and krill and how many orders of magnitude higher reservoirs of iron |
| 45:49 | occurred pre-industrially in the Southern Ocean than we see today I think that would be a very interesting question to analyze and then consider you know to what extent our decimation or or um you know enormous reduction of whales over the past three centuries has had a significant ecosystem shift in the Southern Ocean itself and perhaps some polar regions in the Arctic thank you yeah thank you Brian uh friends yes I have two points uh one point is the length the the period length of ocean fertilization with iron |
| 46:30 | because if I have only a short a period of fertilization uh it will do so as a for a long time then a filter plants don't attracts see the the sea life the fish and the whales and all the things including birds come because they smell really yes it's yeah and so you get in a totally different picture because these big animals have another kind of uh |
| 47:36 | devastation defecation yeah yeah the way they excrete what they excrete yeah yes the other point is it doesn't contain only Ireland there are some other uh in in volcanic as ashes are much more elements than than iron which are helpful and nutrition for a federal plant including iron and phosphorus and so on um just one point about the YouTuber one there is good evidence from the South China Sea in that particular case of density currents carrying the ash down because the the asphalt was very heavy so for example |
| 48:30 | they measured um over nine kilos per square meter over six something like 600 kilometers away from Pinatubo they're coming down in three days now that is a massive amount of Ash and and certainly there is evidence for these density currents being formed and carrying the ash therefore if you get a density current it will sing very fast by comparison with a normal sinking of individual particles are you Stokes law doesn't apply in those those situations um in terms of what Fran said um attraction attraction yeah well the other thing is |
| 49:11 | you do not get phytoplankton blooming continuously phytoplankton's Bloom and crash naturally that's how they go they do not bloom all the time and they take up nutrients it's what happens in the in the temperate Waters at least uh in springtime when the the light and the water temperature also the factors when they're suitable and you have the nutrients and they get to the right spot that's when the first Platinum will bloom and you normally then get a and this is these balloons because um when I |
| 49:42 | say that they're not um continuous you tend to get different species or different types of species coming one after another because they so for example you get diatoms blooming and then they've used up a lot of the silicate and then other creatures that don't want silicate can use some of the other nutrients and so on and so and there's some Plankton that are quite good exploiting lower levels of some of these nutrients and they come along at a later stage and so on so you get a variation through that through the |
| 50:10 | season until the summertime when you then get a relatively flat amount of low productivity until Autumn once the stratification gets turned over you get a boom a little boom then before light and temperature shuts everything down for the winter that's in temperate Waters it's not the same in Tropics obviously you have a much more year-round type of system so it is more continuous than in a tropics well it's continuous in the sense you will get a bloom but you won't get a bloom going on full spell all the time you'll get a |
| 50:43 | bloom that'll crash and then you get another Bloom and so on and so on it'd be up and down yeah it's not yes that's that's right but the the trials which has done in the beginning 2010 around they they haven't been as long as a as a half year no no I mean but um some of the blooms were studied after the ships had left for using satellite images and they were found to carry on for quite a long time afterwards through satellite imagery particularly uh the most famous one I think is the Soiree experiment in the |
| 51:22 | Southern Ocean where you see a very nice satellite image but do you think that if if I mean they go there there's haven't been any whales for decades or hardly any and they get a bloom and then they see what happens but wouldn't it be very different if the ocean was full of whales you know well yeah I don't think there's a simple simple way to generate three times three orders and there's a few more whales overnight no but but if the I think your isn't your point friends that if it was |
| 51:50 | if it went on and on and on for years after you know years and years and years that that would you'd get a lot more fish you get a lot more other biomass you get a different so you get a different kind of response than if you've got an ocean that's essentially empty of any any animals surely is there another you'll see it in the regions about upwelling right naturally happens yeah so it's kind of the best fish Grant right so it's kind of saying that oh well we can't do ocean fertilization |
| 52:20 | because we've killed all the fish um if only we'd left in there then it would be working fine yeah um okay Robert tune it please um okay I've uh just put into the chat the link to the new Australian legislation putting the provisions of the London protocol into law and I just wanted to draw attention to this um as uh essentially establishing a process that requires that uh that anybody doing research on Ocean fertilization must obtain a permit to do so in Australian Waters and um uh this is uh it's not |
| 53:00 | necessarily A Bad Thing uh by any means because it uh simply requires that research be with um uh authorized experts so um that's all okay we need to be clear about this it's quite likely that such legislation will have a chilling effect on any kind of innovation or entrepreneurship or investment in Australian Waters um you know it's very sobering to see this uh because fundamentally you know uh it's a it's it's preventing the kind of r d that will be necessary in order to responsibly um you know understand the uh the |
| 53:41 | choices that we have as a civilization to get back to healthy climate in the oceans so I think it is it has a chilling effect on um the finance of these research and development I was very surprised but uh I only heard about the legislation after it had passed uh there was a a period for comment but we find that the Australian media simply don't report on on this topic and so um despite it like I would have thought that my colleagues in government who who are responsible for it uh would have uh perhaps reached out to me knowing my |
| 54:21 | interest in it but no and uh yeah so uh there was a comment period And as as Brian indicates it appears that the uh that the main focus has been on uh generating a chilling effect thank you uh Chris uh yeah and I was gonna say I I don't really see why it has to have a chilling effect frankly I think it's it's probably a matter of perceptions more than reality um because uh this was brought up for example some years ago because of the London convention protocols uh initial um resolutions about ocean fertilization |
| 55:05 | and coming up with a framework for assessing research um but the framework that's used for assessing research is fundamentally very similar to what uh is done in other parts of the London convention and protocol when they regulate things like dredge material or fish waste disposal or after other things and the industry for dredge material is a huge disposal it's a huge one it goes around the globe there's probably about two billion tons of this dumping in the sea every year and those parties are perfectly familiar |
| 55:37 | with that sort of form of guidance but the people who don't understand how it works look at the framework and think oh that looks terrible it looks and they're all regarded as mandatory they don't realize it is guidance they don't realize what the word guidance means quite often um and so I think there's a lot of misperceptions frankly and frankly if the industry thinks that there should be no regulation then they're in Cloud Cuckoo Land because there's no way that people are going to let something that could affect |
| 56:06 | massive ocean areas go through unregulated it's just not going to happen okay thank you very much Chris in feedback to that um government and Academia thrive on regulations however when it comes to the uh small and medium-sized Enterprises um regulation and bureaucratic delay represents death by a Thousand Cuts it doesn't have to do Brian it doesn't have to uh well I'd like to see some examples of it because for example if you want to grow a lowly acre of kelp offshore California you're dealing with 17 state |
| 56:41 | and federal agencies yeah I'm well aware of that in the US the US is a bit of an outlier I think it's frankly well we see the same thing in Australia I mean I've lived here four years now and there's the amount of bureaucracy sometimes is greater than the US yeah so fundamentally but at the same time that doesn't mean regulation per se is wrong I'm not saying it's well in the case when there's a clear and present danger that's an issue but when we've lost you know 3 000 square kilometers of kelp |
| 57:13 | forest when we're watching the coral reefs and the kelp forest die slowly you know the academics and government were stupefied about four years ago when they'd lost 90 percent of the neurocystis kelp forest because of the partial familiar so you would prefer a free-for-all that everyone could go out and do what the hell they like with no regulation at all then no I didn't say that well that's it sounds like pretty much what you suggest the investors would like to do no Chris he isn't suggesting that and when it's |
| 57:40 | my turn I want to comment on this scene yeah um I can see you're waiting um Rebecca um so um yeah before this turns into I was going to say yeah this is reminding reminding me of the the very long brexit discussions we have I'm not going to turn it into that but that is all about how much regulation you know is it too much or not enough um well okay you've yeah um Rebecca please yeah everyone knows I'm wolfglass 50 for full think is that the Australian legislation is really good and John McDonald has |
| 58:15 | been doing some behind the scenes networking with people like the former Chief scientist and so forth but Brian since what you are talking about is very very real and um Ron would know it as well from utility regulation the water pricing reports used to be yay thick like 30 pages or something and when I was doing it in 2015 they were up to 300 pages so it's the same phenomenon um everyone spells everything out in detail and there are multiple stakeholder regulators and all that kind of thing maybe this could be a case |
| 58:50 | study for a business school or an innovation unit something like that to get this particular one small example and work out how to use the same form you know three pages cut and paste with all the different regulators and find a way through this mess because I do agree with Chris we want regulation but the problem is and I've seen this as I said in water that they they multiply and then the public is risk-averse and so the regulator thinks the answer is more and more and more words this is actually a phenomenon that you studied at |
| 59:26 | regulator conferences so anyway my suggestion is Whoever has got an idea links up with a business school or a Innovation unit in a university and says here is a case study can you help find the way through that's a great Point Rebecca and I just want to add a couple one example and that is um we know a seaweed farmer in New South Wales who's facing a quarter million dollar charge to just try to get a permit to grow a fraction of a hectare of seaweed and you know no one's growing seaweed in Australia I mean there's just |
| 59:58 | you know and the fact that she's spending a quarter to a third of her budget dealing with regulatory burden is just um criminal it actually just shuts down the the whole Prospect of uh building this out in in the state you know the need for regulatory reform is compelling here and that that's particularly the case why should we have to deal with 17 state and federal agencies just to have the right to restore and regenerate basic ecosystem Services that's a real Challenge and it the need for streamlining is key but you |
| 1:00:30 | know the problem is when in doubt do nothing now Jacques Cousteau and 170 of the world leaders got together in 1992 and wrote the Rio declaration and in sec section 15 of that declaration it said do not let scientific uncertainty be a cause for an action and yet for 30 years we've had more prevarication when in doubt do nothing the the climate is going to hell in a hand basket and unless we get a little more proactive about trying things at hectare scale where they can be tested with Marine ecologists you know we're going to watch |
| 1:01:04 | the uh the ocean die slowly yeah there's a lot to say your examples May well be perfectly true and valid but that is not Universal so for example in the UK unlike us and things we do not have great big thick regulations we have the initial law and is implemented by an agency we don't generally promulgate hardly anything in terms of regulations at all beneath that almost I think I think what Brian and I are both speaking about is actually different regulations that address a micro aspect of the problem and they |
| 1:01:37 | don't fit into a whole or if they do there's 35 regulations on the subject of for example water pollution and what well I think it does vary by country a lot so that's not necessarily the case uh it doesn't have to be the case either yeah I muted myself what I'm saying is Chris I'd be really surprised if that is the case in the uh UK we're not talking about the passing of one law and one legislation and one regulation it's micro aspects of regulation of different aspects of the same problem like water |
| 1:02:23 | pollution for example there's 35 different laws or regulations by different Regulatory Agencies you know what Chris I'm I'm willing to bet you a million bucks let's say I'm gonna be a couple that's not the case in the UK that you have got over regulation one of my family members is a former Chief scientist there etc etc so anyways over regulation in all areas but I know in the environment area we have literally two regulators I take back my million dollars but I'm still very skeptical but how much are |
| 1:02:58 | you willing to put in then Rebecca I will put in a cup of coffee with Christian yeah well the other thing I'd just like to say on a different subject altogether but related to this when um there are certain things where if you have a family member who dies you used to have to go around every Department of government and agency and fill in forms and do all of that now you do it once only and it goes to everybody and you don't have to and there is some of that happening in the environment area so you can have one application |
| 1:03:26 | that then might have to go to it's not necessarily regulated by other bodies but other bodies have an advisory role and you fill in the thing once and it goes to everybody to comment on so you don't always have to fill in 17 forms or have 17 Regulators at all it isn't necessary and frankly none of that is an argument against regulation per se it's a it's a it's a point about having appropriate and flexible and useful legislation regulation yeah yeah one example of this is for example |
| 1:03:56 | um India where they've got a lot of civil law but you you know it takes 900 days to uh to actually get anything happening and and death by a thousand cats the reality is the regulator is getting a regular salary whereas the small medium-sized Enterprise is not and they're are holding their breath until they either get a permit because they don't get any revenues until after the permit's granted and so it's a waiting game and that's that's the challenge yeah I wonder if this is about |
| 1:04:22 | incentives you know for the person working in the you know the regulator their incentive is to make sure that they don't um you know look bad because some bad thing happens so they make sure that they every eye is dotted every T is crossed to make absolutely sure that that nothing is you know bad happens uh otherwise they're going to be embarrassed and they might lose their job or something but so it's really it seems to me a political thing that the politicians need to say look no it's too much regulation take it away so we've |
| 1:04:50 | had all that going on and you I think to be fair Clive you've just got to look what's happening to the UK of Regulation after the 2010 government came in and saw how massive problems have now come out because of the deregulation that happened fire safety being one particular example a very pertinent one because of grenfell which was directly caused by reducing regulation right yeah very it's difficult so it's a difficult conversation anyway uh thank you Ron yeah I think Chris said I mean you know |
| 1:05:20 | the Texas debacle The California energy meltdown I mean I was I was sort of involved in in all those cases and that was where you you went from so you know regulation like everything else that you could have too much too little you have to have appropriate regulation so I'm you know it this is a it's not something that can be resolved a priori because I think Echo pointed out yeah yeah uh thank you John McDonald I think the problem is when the regulatory Authority has enormous expertise in in the field |
| 1:05:54 | and yet they put the total owner of some Earnest on the uh the applicant to prove their case and they're only a small player and and uh you know there's no acceptance of the urgency and there's absolutely no Spirit of cooperation and you do need to prove your case I'm not Chris you're right it's not but but there's no collaboration in any sense that you know that you know look you will work together to solve this problem it's just you and us and you you get this thing over the line you can and if it takes |
| 1:06:26 | you 10 years and that's that's your problem and that that's that's the difficulty we face I think I think the problem with the urgency though is the whole the whole lack of urgency with government in total if the government's had had got engaged with the urgency that would feed down into all the other areas but they're not politically there is no urgency and that's the problem yes that's that's the issue it's a matter of time but there is a clear and present danger in this case I think it's |
| 1:06:55 | important I think I remember one meeting where I I lost it a bit and I said well you know what if the whole world Community is crying out for this to happen would that change your opinion they said of course not no it's your problem you know yeah yeah for all people yeah yeah I think the problem though is the world Community is crying out for it not to happen as is illustrated by the UN Human Rights report that that herb will speak to uh can I move on Clive yeah yeah thank you I was uh if Anton wants to have further chats |
| 1:07:30 | he's we're willing to have a perhaps a one-to-one perhaps to have further discussions if he wishes yeah okay all right thank you Robert um so yes um herb please um um this new report uh thanks Clive and uh thanks for the uh Segway Robert so I just happened that those of you who know me know that I spend much too much of my time on Twitter and occasionally I learned something interesting but I I guess it's it's no longer I refuse to say x I know I'm gonna be one of the die hards I I have to say the first before I begin I'm |
| 1:08:08 | a little preoccupied and my preoccupation is not irrelevant to this conversation because living here in DC uh any minute literally where uh we're like a set of storms that the National Weather Service said we have not gotten anything at this level of urgency for 10 years now with the hurricane I mean not hurricanes tornadoes uh winds uh and I'm looking out at the windows in my place and the skies are darkening so anyway if I disappear it's because I've lost power uh hopefully that's all it is in any |
| 1:08:44 | case with that uh not uh unusual comment these days um so basically I happened to see this morning many of you may know Pete Irvine who's a geoengineering researcher at University College of London and he posted a link to uh reports and a summary that was done by the summary was done by a staff person at c-i-e-l some of you may know them I think that's the center for international environmental law they're an implacable and very effective opponent of any form of geoengineering and uh uh basically it it came from an |
| 1:09:21 | advisory committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council which is uh located in Geneva it will be apparently on the agenda for discussion at their annual session next month in Geneva I don't know if anybody lives near or or around Geneva or would like to go in person but um and you know from what if you read what I wrote you saw that it was not good news for um for any of us here and I'll just take one minute or two minutes to to read a few of the conclusions as summarized by again an implacable |
| 1:09:55 | opponent but when I looked at the report I didn't see much positive to in opposition to what uh these quotes are so in a nutshell a presumption May apply that all new technologies for climate protection oh and by the way as somebody who keeps track of all the terms used for geoengineering and we're up about to about 12. |
| 1:10:17 | uh they just created a new one or at least talked about it I've never heard of it ntcp new technology for climate protection which they defined also includes some CDR so anyway presumption May apply that all new technologies for climate protection are generally harmful to Human Rights and their deployment would be contrary to existing state obligations States obligations um that era of cascading and irreversible risks posed by geoengineering for a wide range of Rights including a right to life to a healthy environment to public participation to adequate standard of |
| 1:10:53 | living to Food Water Justice and remedies all those things are threatened if you will by geoengineering the discrimination nation that discriminary implications of geoengineering deployment highlighting that it would entail greater risks for Frontline communities indigenous peoples peasants Fisher folks local communities women and people working in rural areas doesn't leave much except probably many of us who were white males or white well not or white males yes the U. |
| 1:11:22 | N advisory committee notes that these Technologies are unproven at large scale and raise a series of wider concerns existing legal obligations require them to take preventative actions to protect against these risks including against the conduct of private actors the report highlights that a rapid phase of phase out of fossil fuels through viable scientifically proven Technologies and approaches is the only Human Rights compliant path for states to mitigate climate change so you got the you know which is basically the termitecoin the |
| 1:11:57 | emission reductions alone that's essentially what they're saying and kind of don't get in our way it's a distraction it's evil it's dangerous you know you name your term uh so that's what this is all about the larger point that I raised in my email uh that this is this may be a more extreme version of what we're seeing from time to time and maybe more uh often than time to time but it's certainly not atypical in representing the interests of vast Wars of the of the planet and seems to me if |
| 1:12:29 | and until there's some kind of international scale NGO with enough Focus commitment resources and energy to provide an alternative view that these perspectives will go largely on unchallenged because when I looked at the at the folks who were I'm not sure what the legal standing but listed in the Human Rights Council reports the agencies and the entities and even the academics I didn't see any who are strong Pro geoengineering proponents and part of the reason is I'm not sure there are any or very few other than folks |
| 1:13:10 | like us but not at the sort of a muscular NGO scale so so I guess I would conclude by simply saying they're the extreme opponents like c-i-e-l um and then there are a lot of groups in the middle or at least a handful like Carnegie for example their efforts to do research uh to on governance but they're not like Pro geoengineering Advocates they're very cautious we need more research we can't take it off the table Etc so if you want to you simplistically have folks on on the left let's say I |
| 1:13:42 | hate to even use left and right on one side who are basically vehemently against folks in the middle that are sort of the moderates and then almost no one on the other side right now and it just seems to me that this report uh and this rhetoric is a symptom of the need to um find some way to build up a mechanism of you know a set of Institutions uh that can challenge this what I would call and you know a severely misguided if not utterly insane uh set of recommendations that they made so I'll stop there thank you herb uh |
| 1:14:19 | Brian please yes this is an example of social justice fundamentalism and it's a serious threat to deliberative democracy fundamentalism has attempted to shut down the conversation on the right and the left and this is uh I can't part of the cancel culture that quite frankly is unacceptable uh to to have deliberative democracy we can have critical culture you know I think Chris and others have brought up some really valid points that we need to discuss in a deliberative democracy if you will but these threats |
| 1:14:51 | of social justice fundamentalism have been pervading our Western institutions and actually compromising deliberative democracy and we need to push back against it because that's the essence of our democracy to to have things shut down and canceled is just um anathema to the deliberative Democratic process and thus I would recommend that we organize and actually say it like it is and that is fundamentalism is an enemy of deliberative democracy and what we need to do is take back our institutions and make sure that deliberative democracy |
| 1:15:25 | can continue in all of our groups and organizations thank you thank you Brian deliberative democracy I'll remember that one uh yeah yes your two websites on this there's an Atlantic article from 12 months ago about uh this um social justice uh fundamentalism I'll put it in the chat and secondly there's one organization here in Brisbane called new vote that is focused on online tools for deliberative democracy I'm very happy that we're partnering with them on many of these efforts yeah thank you |
| 1:15:53 | Ryan that's that's great um Chris yeah I've just had a very quick look at the pro I hadn't had a chance to look at it because I only came across it this evening um I had my family around for a long weekend so I've only very recently catching up with my emails but I just noticed in the conclusions that they say for example that um they advise for a sort of proportional approach and would clap justify the imposition of a moratorium to speculative Technologies as long as something to the uncertainty |
| 1:16:20 | and risk of causing serious extensive and irreversible environmental and human damage remain high well if you have a moratorium how are you going to do the research to find out any of those things about the uncertainties um I think it's just extraordinary um and I suspect as Brian said there are some fairly fundamental people behind some of these things and feel I I seem to remember I think the is it the Henry Henry Bowl Institute in Germany is one of their key Partners yes and I've come across those folks they |
| 1:16:51 | are extreme left-wing and their whole attitude to this I would say is entirely political there is no real science behind their um Approach at all it's all political um very interesting yeah thank you I mean I I what the comments I made I avoid it as you may have heard using a left and right wing because because I anyway it's but be that it may they are certainly extreme and and unamenable to um to logic and and dialogue is as arrogant as that may sound or as arrogant as maybe they would if they would hear me use those words they would |
| 1:17:30 | think they would label what I just said as as arrogant but as Brian said they're basically immune to uh to to dialogue uh and you know whether it comes from from Fear whether it comes from indoctrination of the sort of uh what's uh almost like a religion now of emission reductions we can't be seen as as uh backing off of our emission reductions mantra for 30 years even though it's sadly failed none of us here or are happy that it's failed but it has failed um so and uh as I mean Chris uh Robert Chris |
| 1:18:08 | he's not here today um he's very good at uh writing responses um but he said he wouldn't know where to start with this I mean are we just going to talk about I mean is anyone what about you herb are you thinking of writing to them or and getting the signatories or something is anybody going to do anything about this is my question well I'm I was going to bring it up at our uh hpac meeting on Thursday um because you know hpac is unlike you all we're not as science focused we're we are more focused on the politics and |
| 1:18:41 | the action uh just you know obviously there's a lot of overlap many of you maybe all of you are also part of hbac but uh I'm hoping that ideally there'd be two or three people who would volunteer to uh you know to either prepare response or again my point is more broadly I mean we can prepare a response but who are we I mean there there's a need for a larger organizational and political effort to provide a an alternative perspective you know we can shoot you know little uh you know little water guns in response to |
| 1:19:17 | particular reports that are issued and so forth and that's what we've been doing you know with uh I was you know I assume not much success for obvious reasons so far but again I I think that it's I'm not suggesting it's not worthwhile doing it and just the process of doing it you learn a lot you know you see the sort of the ecosystem of who are the organizations supportive who are opposed how do these institutions run Etc um but ultimately it's going to take a a well in my view anyway a very |
| 1:19:48 | well-funded uh long-term effort not you know it can't be that long term because we don't have the time to do super long term but a well-funded effort at a permanent International NGO or something like that the organization that can systematically uh find out what you know a change provide the information to both the public and the elites who make these decisions that's that's good to hear that that you're going to address that on Thursday um uh if I just um I've got a kind of a dark secret |
| 1:20:22 | which is well that um I I get emails from everybody including uh the what are they called um they used to be called the global warming policy foundation so this was uh the late um Lawson Nigel Lawson yeah um to see what they're saying and I don't I don't disagree with some of the I mean they're fun fundamentally I disagree with they say there's no such thing as climate change so it's obviously complete rubbish but but but they do point out lots of money being wasted you know on you know Renewables |
| 1:20:54 | and things like that so and and I'm in in touch with one person from there who's it um so anyway so that's another possible if we as you're saying shooting with um um water pistols uh herb it's it's describes it well I think that you know what's the point you know if we can't if we don't have any political relevance then we're wasting on so we need to um we've got good advice I think but um and there must be lots of people out there uh we don't seem to have uh Dale and with us |
| 1:21:31 | anymore um but she was talking about talking to the young guys here she is oh I couldn't see oh perhaps I've got a it's a different list okay um thank you Robert yeah um okay let's move on then uh is there any any other things about that oh sorry sorry you've got to hand up um so I think a mapping of the political terrain is is something that's really useful and it's it's really uh quite contested because you know we as as Clive pointed out there's a whole lot of uh right wing |
| 1:22:04 | analysis of the impossibility of the emission reduction alone uh agenda uh but um the uh and then there's just so much confusion in this space uh I think uh Silver Lining is an interesting example of an NGO who is uh Kelly wanza has just written a very good article up in the hill but I think quite a poor article previously on on cooling credits and has refused to engage with any of our uh online discussion groups which is is disappointing so finding out how uh some of the discussions here I think that the |
| 1:22:45 | uh the overall uh politics in the UN is is really quite stalinist in the sense that they have uh formed a party line and uh they uh they view any deviation from uh the uh the party line as um as something that uh warrants persecution and so I think that that sort of uh old uh context of uh you know the nature of united front politics and um lowest common denominator politics uh uh presents uh a formidable challenge to uh to evidence-based policy all right thank you um let's have John again and then you Chris John please John John McDonald |
| 1:23:32 | perhaps if I could just suggest that a way to bring people together is by studying a natural phenomenon yeah something that's replicating natural processes now an approach discussion by asking a question I mean for example there's there's a mystery in the Pacific at the moment this you've probably heard about this massive cold tongue of Ecuador and it's a vast area of the ocean that this cooling not warming and inside is trying to work out why why is this happening is it is it due to old |
| 1:24:01 | wind up willing is it is it due to Antarctic melting and face is melting and so forth now is it due to the ozone depletion and uh greenhouse gases and and winds from Antarctica there's a number of causes but for example if it's due to uphealing and everyone agrees it's pseudo-operly well then the next question is well what would it would it be good to do some more upwelling yeah and and would that cool more you know if everyone's on board suddenly saying yes that's that's what's caused it that's a |
| 1:24:30 | fantastic thing let's have more of them then you're suddenly down the track it's not just it's not them against us we're all talking about the same solution if you go to a solution that is just a thought okay ask it ask a question rather than saying this is it this is the answer and bring people together in a common basis okay thank you John yeah um Chris yep just a couple voice very quickly um I wonder whether this report has been biased in some ways similar to the article 6.4 UNF Triple C report |
| 1:25:02 | where it seems a particular group managed to get the author's attention and therefore that's why the report's been based because a particular group has has managed to sort of get that Focus out to the people writing the report I don't know just a thought um but also um you heard mentioned seal but I didn't see any link to what seal said I wonder if herb could post that in the chat perhaps that might just be helpful and and finally um I don't know how widespread the sort of um social scientists would |
| 1:25:35 | necessarily pick up an and Echo that report and so I know there are some around who have seem to be much more pragmatic um I don't know them very well but for example Holly Jean Buck tends to be somewhat more pragmatic in my experience than many others and so I think having some professional people in that sphere saying things about this would actually be potentially much more influential than the likes of us saying it so that's just something to bear in mind perhaps if we could try and influence the |
| 1:26:03 | relevant people who have influence to influence the report that might be another way of doing it um but that's very very good thank you Chris yeah okay a last word or two yeah uh just I think uh getting Holly Buck would be wonderful we I try I reached out to her a year ago to see if she would speak and I I didn't get a response but if anyone has any contacts with her uh I have great respect for for her and she has as you say great credibility just briefly to respond to your your your thought John McDonald |
| 1:26:35 | um you know what I've tried late I tried various their techniques on Twitter to see if any of them work so far none of them have worked but one lately what I've been posting uh given the fact that we are literally apparently reached 1.5 for a number of days in July so even though that's just temporary that's not the definition of you know we need 10 years apparently to make it official but uh so I've I basically to this sort of emission reductions alone scientists and activists I raised the question if if |
| 1:27:05 | we've achieved well if we're at or near one point 0.5 already or close to it and then I post Tim lenten's uh paper that's that says multiple tipping points are likely at 1.5 and my question is if you're not supportive of geoengineering fine what's your answer you know what do you propose to avoid these you know uh civilization ending potentially ending tipping points and not no one has even bothered or tried has has even attempted to answer so which I I take as a certain Victory if you will because I think they |
| 1:27:39 | recognize that there is no good answer to that question um maybe that's the first step we'll see anyway uh thanks for everybody for listening welcome thank you herb yeah I mean what goes through my head is um well be careful what you wish for are you trying to beat uh uh the combined efforts of Hitler Stalin chairman Mel and Pol Pot you know who didn't even manage 100 million you know between them anyway um so next um we have um yeah Ron uh briefly about this letter let's see if we can have just a couple of minutes run and then |
| 1:28:20 | just be quite good to hear what Chris has to say I think would be interested to hear about these fuels that different um fuels let me let me see if I can just quickly pull this up actually I I have all kinds of things this discussion is just uh it's my life really I'm I'm I came from the left Democratic left and encountered exactly these kind of things but it's much more prevalent on the right these days in the U. |
| 1:28:46 | S I mean they're the the chief Dogma test so it it's you know it but it is a problem Brian's absolutely right you know democracy requires continued conversation and when people start you know doing this kind of fundamentalist dogmatic thing you know religion or whatever it is yeah yeah uh I let me see oh I can't I can't do it can you let me share oh sorry sorry uh yes security yeah go for it try again okay hopefully I can yeah it's just a little short I mean I just wanted to you know get the ball rolling basically uh and by the way I think of |
| 1:29:22 | this as a as a tactic you know it it's it's it's a tactic exactly a hook to get people thinking about cooling I said you know this is this is not just you know I realize that the the chances of the IMO actually you know relaxing's regulations are are fairly slim at this point certainly but you get people thinking about this and that's what we're trying to do you know they sort of emphasize the Practical aspect so the first point is uh you know it's relaxing uh sulfur emissions for high seas Maritime |
| 1:29:53 | transport in ways that as much as possible increase the human and natural global cooling benefits of sulfur radar soles and decrease the human and natural harm of tropospheric sulfuric acid from these Maritime emissions so that's the obvious uh and then I I coupled it in in response to Chris's point because I've gotten pushback already saying oh what are you doing you know you know you you support bunker fuels you know you want to continue with all those horrible dirty old fossil fuels say no we |
| 1:30:21 | actually support absolutely moving to um non-ghg emitting fuels or net non-dhme you know and coupling them with and and that's where I I included you Clive and France and you know everybody I could think of who's working on tropospheric aerosols uh Stephen you know the Marine Cloud brightening people because you know this is where you couple you say look you know we need those aerosols and if we could create non-gm emission fuels that include some of these uh aerosols as part of uh you know their their uh |
| 1:30:56 | when when you when you use those fuels then you you get you get the best of all worlds you know so so I think it's uh I would really hope that you know anybody who's interested please contact me because I I put together a little list but obviously I probably missed a bunch of people um and and Rebecca had made a helpful comment uh that it needs a it needs a preamble it needs a context it needs a lot more work and so uh you know I'm I might take a crack at it I'm trying to finish the our cooling submission which |
| 1:31:29 | I've been working on for over a year now and it's become kind of a joke but but it's really a massive operation to get all those citations and everything so anyway hopefully I'm almost done with that and then if I have time I could I could work on the top I see Brian Brian uh uh please yeah yeah just a quick um addition here and that is that um I read with interest I learned uh from Peter or someone else that um it turns out there there's sulfur just in the bunker fuel anyway that's even going now but they have these |
| 1:32:00 | scrubbers that reduce the the bunker fuel more but would be interesting is let's say they get 500 kilometers or a thousand kilometers offshore they could turn off the scrubber and you could actually get the sulfate you know particles at some level uh the research could continue in fact a huge experiment undone and that is that they you know have these regulations come in uh one phase I guess was around 2015 the other case uh is now in 2023 and so we're seeing a huge experiment and the resulting higher temperatures of the |
| 1:32:31 | globe that would be very interesting to correlate to this uh change in the sulfate policy but there's no reason that we couldn't modify the policy in the future that you have to go x hundred kilometers offshore or do it you know with some weather forecasting and when you've got a situation where those aerosols are going to get rained out before they get to Shore that could then be a responsible way to have Marine Cloud brightening take place in a responsible way with a suitable approach that may be necessary in order to keep |
| 1:33:00 | our temperatures under reasonable control thank you right I mean it does re so specifically the research that I think we want to call for is the cause is the harm benefit analysis you know not just the one-sided impact so and and that scrubber thing uh if anybody knows um uh Leon Simon uh you know he he made that point that it's mostly scrubbers in his talk to mirror that some of you may be interested in uh on this topic uh but he also said he doesn't want to get involved in politics so it's just a |
| 1:33:34 | problem I think you could you know explore this idea of the benefits of turning off the scrubbers thousands of kilometers I'm sure and how it might actually help the marine environment and the global temperature yeah and fighter planes and give off sulfur anyway so I guess last one Stephen please uh you're muted Stephen a very cheap way to do this is to turn off the scrubber and then inject some sea water into the fuel uh it actually can help uh with some engines that water injection is has been used in aircraft |
| 1:34:09 | entrance so that is a very very quick very cheap very reversible solution sounds interesting uh okay well perhaps we'll hear about that next time well that's taken us to our 90 minutes thank you very much just very quickly in a minute or two just come back and and just say very sorry about fuels um two things Herb's thing I think in your second comment I would start it by saying recognizing the work that's already being done moving to New fuels and that would help you because I think as it stands it's a little negative in |
| 1:34:42 | that respect uh then um um then scrubbers um I think the idea of turning scrubbles having the problem is not going to do very much because the vast majority of the industry is already using low sulfur fuels and not using shrubbers there are quite a few scrubbers around it's true but the amount of um high sulfur fuel being used has gone down a lot it's by no means gone yet but it's gone down a lot there was a a graph which seats put in one of his climate action um documents fairly recently I'll see if |
| 1:35:17 | I can find it I haven't found it just yet are you saying there's numbers because I thought there might be a scrubber even with the low sulfur fuels no if you you're allowed a point five percent um sulfur in fuels and there's no scrubbers we've also heard there there are multiple tanks on many of these ships so you could presumably mix and match different kinds I think in practice they're going to remember also the oil industry has invested lots of um money and resources into producing low sulfur fuels uh and reducing the |
| 1:35:49 | production of the or doing something differently perhaps with the uh high sulfur stuff I'm not sure the high staff and stuff is going to be around a long time for people to use certainly long term anyway that's that and the other thing I was going to say yeah that was it really just the scrubbers and the and then the fuels the the low fuels are things like uh or negative ones hydrogen which is being looked at there are some sort of lower ghg ones like LPG LNG um ammonia has been looked at quite seriously uh methanol is another one |
| 1:36:22 | which is a non um sort of um she one um and go into batteries there is a big move for short sea routes they reckon by 20 30 something Norway would have moved all of its ferries to Electric Power wow and there's a lot more happening on that front uh in the industry right as well as various other things which I haven't got time to go into now okay um this economists Robert please first yeah oh just just to mention I've I've linked this economist article which uh provides a fairly heavyweight support for uh for Ron's |
| 1:37:05 | petition great thank you and someone else was trying to speak there's Ron yeah I'm just I'm I'm trying to encourage Chris to to send me all these these these different points and and I do you know I think it is important to to couple because the whole point is is the political leverage by coupling you know we're saying okay we cut off this aerosol we need another aerosol we need something to replace it yeah yeah I don't disagree I'm just saying otherwise it suggested industry you you're not aware that they're |
| 1:37:38 | looking at alternative fuels which of course is completely untrue you've got two massage them a bit Yeah Yeah catch you catch you yeah the fact that they're not using scrubbers Chris tells me that there must be uh nitrogen the nitrogen oxides must be coming out again then um I guess there will be some I don't know the ins and outs of the scrubbers how effective they are for nitrogen oxides or not well certainly there will be not for non-scrubbers low sulfur fuels I guess yeah there'll be some lunchroom no |
| 1:38:11 | idea how much that's that's not a bad thing in the open ocean because it helps to remove methane anyway yeah okay thank you that's wonderful um meeting everybody thank you very much and see you in a couple of weeks and anybody wants to hang around and talk afterwards I'll be here for a couple of minutes but uh otherwise see you in a see you in two weeks thanks very much sure sure lovely to see you again great to see you really interesting thank you okay bye bye for now hello Clive I'm just saying hello |
| 1:38:43 | um hi Rebecca a few minutes late and um I'm actually thought to myself I'm just gonna sleep in and if I wake up that's good and then Paul's alarm went off at six o'clock and I thought I'll get up |