The precautionary principle means restoring planetary albedo should be the top climate priority, walking back from the heat precipice of tipping points.
In particular the kind of cloud-aerosol interactions Jim is concerned about. Given the far shorter mean lifetimes of most aerosols, compared to anthropogenic CO2, changes in their forcing could act faster than changes to CO2 emissions, as Quico notes.
I know and respect Jim Hansen. Most people in the climate science community have a lot of respect for him. You can agree or disagree but I would never dismiss Jim's concerns out of hand.
A 5-degree warmer would be a different planet from the one we inhabit now. Consider the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum included a warming of ~5 degrees (estimates vary). That was over a far longer time scale than the current anthropogenic perturbation. Uncertainty "bars" (however derived) have two ends. Prudent risk management should consider the implications of both ends.
Research on how we can reduce warming by increasing cloud albeldo is sorely needed. However at the scale we're looking at, research amounts to 'inject huge amounts of SO2 into the upper atmosphere and see what happens'. Personally I am in favour of going for it, but I see how people might have misgivings about potential unintended consequences
Plan for the worst, and hope for the best. Act as though Hansen is right, and breathe a sigh of relief if it turns out he was wrong. Odds are he’s right, but none of us will be around to rejoice.🤔 for our progeny.
In "Smart Solutions To Climate Change", organized by Lomborg and essentially a limited episode of journal articles, Marine Cloud Brightening had a fantastic benefit to cost ratio, I think 6,000 to 1
They did note that only the direct costs were counted, so if it reduced rainfall in some areas that would likely dominate the total cost. But besides stratospheric reflective particles at 2000-1, I think the next place contender was green innovation at 10-1
I believe the correct spelling of the phrase "nickle and dimed" is "nickEL and dimed". Nickle is a type of woodpecker! Not to worry, I've made the same mistake myself.
Apart from that, I have tons of ideas for how "we" can radically reduce emissions. And by "we" I mean "people other than myself". I literally come up with new ideas every week for how others can reduce their climate impact on the planet. I just don't want to be personally inconvenienced, because I have a busy life, and YOLO, y'know?
Feel free to ask if you want to be included on my mailing list of weekly suggestions.
The precautionary principle means restoring planetary albedo should be the top climate priority, walking back from the heat precipice of tipping points.
Historical contribution of aerosols to radiative forcing remains the largest source of uncertainty in IPCC syntheses. See: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/technical-summary/figure-ts-15/
In particular the kind of cloud-aerosol interactions Jim is concerned about. Given the far shorter mean lifetimes of most aerosols, compared to anthropogenic CO2, changes in their forcing could act faster than changes to CO2 emissions, as Quico notes.
I know and respect Jim Hansen. Most people in the climate science community have a lot of respect for him. You can agree or disagree but I would never dismiss Jim's concerns out of hand.
A 5-degree warmer would be a different planet from the one we inhabit now. Consider the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum included a warming of ~5 degrees (estimates vary). That was over a far longer time scale than the current anthropogenic perturbation. Uncertainty "bars" (however derived) have two ends. Prudent risk management should consider the implications of both ends.
Research on how we can reduce warming by increasing cloud albeldo is sorely needed. However at the scale we're looking at, research amounts to 'inject huge amounts of SO2 into the upper atmosphere and see what happens'. Personally I am in favour of going for it, but I see how people might have misgivings about potential unintended consequences
Plan for the worst, and hope for the best. Act as though Hansen is right, and breathe a sigh of relief if it turns out he was wrong. Odds are he’s right, but none of us will be around to rejoice.🤔 for our progeny.
In "Smart Solutions To Climate Change", organized by Lomborg and essentially a limited episode of journal articles, Marine Cloud Brightening had a fantastic benefit to cost ratio, I think 6,000 to 1
They did note that only the direct costs were counted, so if it reduced rainfall in some areas that would likely dominate the total cost. But besides stratospheric reflective particles at 2000-1, I think the next place contender was green innovation at 10-1
I believe the correct spelling of the phrase "nickle and dimed" is "nickEL and dimed". Nickle is a type of woodpecker! Not to worry, I've made the same mistake myself.
Apart from that, I have tons of ideas for how "we" can radically reduce emissions. And by "we" I mean "people other than myself". I literally come up with new ideas every week for how others can reduce their climate impact on the planet. I just don't want to be personally inconvenienced, because I have a busy life, and YOLO, y'know?
Feel free to ask if you want to be included on my mailing list of weekly suggestions.