I’m trying very hard to quell my naive optimism and be more worried with you. But doesn’t this mean albedo is a new, as-yet-unexplored, major avenue for fighting climate change?
How ignorant is it to start daydreaming about new tactics like strategic, intentional pollution or cloud seeding to get more, bigger, brighter clouds? Big ole mirrors? Desertification?
I recognize the scary feedback loop potential and that albedo issues seem downstream of carbon issues. But if the albedo fight is in its infancy, shouldn’t we be excited to open a new front in the climate war given the stagnation on greenhouse emissions?
Trey, there are extensive scientific, engineering and policy communities working on albedo, primarily through stratospheric aerosol injection as the most feasible sunlight reflection method, and also analysing other geoengineering options such as marine cloud brightening, space based reflectors, polar ice restoration and ocean biomass. Great point that we should be excited to open a new front. Unfortunately, a fallacious argument known as moral hazard has served to exclude this debate by wrongly arguing that it would undermine efforts to cut emissions as the primary climate strategy.
1) The change in EEI driven by anthropogenic activities (effects on both infrared interception by GHGs and albedo via aerosols etc.) remains challenging to measure directly. My understanding is that estimates of EEI still require a strong contribution of inference from ocean heat content (from datasets like ARGO float profiles).
2) Part of challenge (1) comes from the noisiness imposed by interannual variability of clouds and the fact that EEI remains a relatively small (but persistent and pervasive!) increment on a large "background" energy budget. The gross energy budget, even with declining planetary albedo, remains ~240 watts per meter squared; that's approximately incoming solar energy to earth's surface after whatever is reflected off into space by clouds, ice, etc. is taken into account. This is what we all learned in Meteorology or Climatology 101. The 1.4 W/m^2 remains a small net energy gain, proportional to that gross budget.
3) Anthropogenic changes to albedo remain difficult to estimate, especially for past decades. Phil Duffy rightly points out the magnitude of the contribution of changing albedo to radiative forcing. But it's also the most uncertain, because of uncertainties in the role of aerosols:
I think it would be neat if you had put a disclaimer in your article that it is AI-written or AI-assisted. It comes off that way to me and also flags as 100% AI generated on pangram. Nothing wrong with using AI to be clear (and I think the article is quite good on the merits)! But putting in a disclaimer would help the reader discern what specifically is an article with your arguments/points, versus simply an article that contains arguments/points that you happen to endorse.
Thanks. I have posted my writing methods and use of AI in an essay as well as on my Substack profile. I check and take full responsibility for every word of every essay. I share writing duty to get the message and tone that fits me, that says what I want to say.
I personally view well-managed AI assisted writing like using PowerPoint for a presentation. If it helps me get the points that I want to make across better I see that is goodness. We are going to need to evolve our thinking about use of these tools in many domains.
You cannot properly address climate policy today without cooperating intensively with AI. The issues are far too complex for our unaided brains to present in clear and simple and compelling terms. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.
The climate models do not place much of a weight to the biogenic cloud nucleation aerosols lost in deforestation. Also, the droughts causing further deforestations. The aquifer collapse. The river/ glacial water feeds.
It's important to be clear: sulfur-compounds in the lower atmosphere are a leading hazard to human health. There are people choking to death right now because of sulfur compounds in the air they breathed. It is not permissible to spray the atmosphere with pollution that's harmful to people.
If you want to replace the loss of reflexivity from burning dirty fuels, you're going to have to do it with something non-toxic.
But for ocean-going ships the SuO2 doesn’t actually diffuse into the global atmosphere at low altitudes, where it can affect breathing (except by crew members, who I guess can wear respirators) does it? If we really need to urgently cool down the planet in an emergency, the option of dropping H-bombs into large volcanoes in uninhabited areas to trigger a volcanic winter remains open. Easier to do and less harmful than reintroducing sulphur-heavy bunker fuel to global shipping.
Sure but the cost of refitting ships with two propulsion systems using separate fuel types — low sulfur near land, high sulfur in the high seas — would be prohibitive. At that point you’re much better off releasing salt particles from the back of the ship…
An excellent overview of New York Climate Week is provided by Dan Miller at Climate Chat, explaining more in sadness than in irony, that the only rule of Climate Week is that you are not allowed to talk about climate change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hajvS7nHibU
Dear Quico, we had a good discussion of your post at the Natural Ocean and Atmospheric Cooling group today. Two points where your excellent analysis could be enhanced are
1. The chart you present of albedo decline includes a linear trend line. In fact, an accelerating trend line (polynomial curve) shows better statistical fit to the data. The linear line is a good first approximation, but the darkening of the earth is speeding up, and there is no plausible analysis to say why that acceleration would slow. Excel can fit a quadratic trend curve to the CERES data, showing that the darkening rate is doubling every decade.
2. You say “The startling reality is that the planet is getting hotter due both to increasing GHG concentrations and a sharp decline in planetary reflectivity.” Given that darkening is primarily a feedback from past emissions, with aerosol loss a smaller additional forcing, it is important to recognise that the binary you present has major overlap, in that increasing concentrations are causing darkening, notably cloud and ice loss. My calculation is that short term warming from albedo loss is five times greater than from new emissions. So when you say “The mainstream climate movement continues to act as though the only driver of Earth Energy Imbalance were increasing GHG concentrations,” the situation is that what you call ‘the climate blob’ acts as though new emissions are the only driver, failing to see how rising concentrations are causing albedo feedbacks that now outweigh the warming from new emissions.
You make the excellent point that “failure to grapple with the implications of collapsing Earth reflectivity is quickly becoming its own form of climate denialism.” This is a telling critique of how emotion is a stronger driver of policy than reason. The mythology of emission reduction alone serves to exclude more effective climate stabilisation strategies from public attention, primarily sunlight reflection, but also large scale greenhouse gas removal.
Half of the problem is denied by the non denialists, you write. I don't get the math. The ice cap, the albedo... much of it comes from the global warming, i.e. for one good half at least from GHG concentration, as you admit as well. So, the HUGE factor is GHG.
Francois, the problem is that cooling by reducing GHG concentrations is too slow as a first remedy for heat. Albedo restoration, rebrightening the planet, is a far more tractable and fast and scalable cooling lever than action on carbon.
"It turns out greenhouse gases aren’t the only variable in the Earth Energy Balance equation."
But it is the one we have been creating more of and one that policies to affect CO2 emisions can affect. Of course we need to correctly model the non HGH effects in order to correctly model the CO2 effects and hence to be able to figure out how much reducing a molecule of CO2 emission is worth. Unfortunatley, because reducing emissions is costly, the non-HGH effects may require greater reuctions in CO2 emissions, maybe deeper reductions in CO2 levels, than otherwise.
I’m trying very hard to quell my naive optimism and be more worried with you. But doesn’t this mean albedo is a new, as-yet-unexplored, major avenue for fighting climate change?
How ignorant is it to start daydreaming about new tactics like strategic, intentional pollution or cloud seeding to get more, bigger, brighter clouds? Big ole mirrors? Desertification?
I recognize the scary feedback loop potential and that albedo issues seem downstream of carbon issues. But if the albedo fight is in its infancy, shouldn’t we be excited to open a new front in the climate war given the stagnation on greenhouse emissions?
Trey, there are extensive scientific, engineering and policy communities working on albedo, primarily through stratospheric aerosol injection as the most feasible sunlight reflection method, and also analysing other geoengineering options such as marine cloud brightening, space based reflectors, polar ice restoration and ocean biomass. Great point that we should be excited to open a new front. Unfortunately, a fallacious argument known as moral hazard has served to exclude this debate by wrongly arguing that it would undermine efforts to cut emissions as the primary climate strategy.
A few comments:
1) The change in EEI driven by anthropogenic activities (effects on both infrared interception by GHGs and albedo via aerosols etc.) remains challenging to measure directly. My understanding is that estimates of EEI still require a strong contribution of inference from ocean heat content (from datasets like ARGO float profiles).
2) Part of challenge (1) comes from the noisiness imposed by interannual variability of clouds and the fact that EEI remains a relatively small (but persistent and pervasive!) increment on a large "background" energy budget. The gross energy budget, even with declining planetary albedo, remains ~240 watts per meter squared; that's approximately incoming solar energy to earth's surface after whatever is reflected off into space by clouds, ice, etc. is taken into account. This is what we all learned in Meteorology or Climatology 101. The 1.4 W/m^2 remains a small net energy gain, proportional to that gross budget.
3) Anthropogenic changes to albedo remain difficult to estimate, especially for past decades. Phil Duffy rightly points out the magnitude of the contribution of changing albedo to radiative forcing. But it's also the most uncertain, because of uncertainties in the role of aerosols:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-7/figure-7-6
The role of GHGs is relatively well-constrained through direct atmospheric measurements (Mauna Loa, Cape Grim/Kennaook, etc.) and ice cores.
Facing Facing just posted this interview with Tom Harris that focuses on the Earth’s energy in balance.
https://youtu.be/6tCRnpV7tM8?is=BLYZkAU93S1XRefK.
Excellent piece Quico, thank you. I sense some solar geo-engineering in our future.
https://scottgrout.substack.com/p/solar-geoengineering-by-the-numbers?r=gwg0&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
I think it would be neat if you had put a disclaimer in your article that it is AI-written or AI-assisted. It comes off that way to me and also flags as 100% AI generated on pangram. Nothing wrong with using AI to be clear (and I think the article is quite good on the merits)! But putting in a disclaimer would help the reader discern what specifically is an article with your arguments/points, versus simply an article that contains arguments/points that you happen to endorse.
Thanks. I have posted my writing methods and use of AI in an essay as well as on my Substack profile. I check and take full responsibility for every word of every essay. I share writing duty to get the message and tone that fits me, that says what I want to say.
I personally view well-managed AI assisted writing like using PowerPoint for a presentation. If it helps me get the points that I want to make across better I see that is goodness. We are going to need to evolve our thinking about use of these tools in many domains.
You cannot properly address climate policy today without cooperating intensively with AI. The issues are far too complex for our unaided brains to present in clear and simple and compelling terms. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.
The climate models do not place much of a weight to the biogenic cloud nucleation aerosols lost in deforestation. Also, the droughts causing further deforestations. The aquifer collapse. The river/ glacial water feeds.
Time to get real.
Pending development of better ways of increasing albedo, how about repealing regulatory limits on ship sulfur-compound emission? https://www.onepercentbrighter.com/p/if-james-hansen-is-right?
It's important to be clear: sulfur-compounds in the lower atmosphere are a leading hazard to human health. There are people choking to death right now because of sulfur compounds in the air they breathed. It is not permissible to spray the atmosphere with pollution that's harmful to people.
If you want to replace the loss of reflexivity from burning dirty fuels, you're going to have to do it with something non-toxic.
But for ocean-going ships the SuO2 doesn’t actually diffuse into the global atmosphere at low altitudes, where it can affect breathing (except by crew members, who I guess can wear respirators) does it? If we really need to urgently cool down the planet in an emergency, the option of dropping H-bombs into large volcanoes in uninhabited areas to trigger a volcanic winter remains open. Easier to do and less harmful than reintroducing sulphur-heavy bunker fuel to global shipping.
Sure but the cost of refitting ships with two propulsion systems using separate fuel types — low sulfur near land, high sulfur in the high seas — would be prohibitive. At that point you’re much better off releasing salt particles from the back of the ship…
An excellent overview of New York Climate Week is provided by Dan Miller at Climate Chat, explaining more in sadness than in irony, that the only rule of Climate Week is that you are not allowed to talk about climate change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hajvS7nHibU
Dear Quico, we had a good discussion of your post at the Natural Ocean and Atmospheric Cooling group today. Two points where your excellent analysis could be enhanced are
1. The chart you present of albedo decline includes a linear trend line. In fact, an accelerating trend line (polynomial curve) shows better statistical fit to the data. The linear line is a good first approximation, but the darkening of the earth is speeding up, and there is no plausible analysis to say why that acceleration would slow. Excel can fit a quadratic trend curve to the CERES data, showing that the darkening rate is doubling every decade.
2. You say “The startling reality is that the planet is getting hotter due both to increasing GHG concentrations and a sharp decline in planetary reflectivity.” Given that darkening is primarily a feedback from past emissions, with aerosol loss a smaller additional forcing, it is important to recognise that the binary you present has major overlap, in that increasing concentrations are causing darkening, notably cloud and ice loss. My calculation is that short term warming from albedo loss is five times greater than from new emissions. So when you say “The mainstream climate movement continues to act as though the only driver of Earth Energy Imbalance were increasing GHG concentrations,” the situation is that what you call ‘the climate blob’ acts as though new emissions are the only driver, failing to see how rising concentrations are causing albedo feedbacks that now outweigh the warming from new emissions.
You make the excellent point that “failure to grapple with the implications of collapsing Earth reflectivity is quickly becoming its own form of climate denialism.” This is a telling critique of how emotion is a stronger driver of policy than reason. The mythology of emission reduction alone serves to exclude more effective climate stabilisation strategies from public attention, primarily sunlight reflection, but also large scale greenhouse gas removal.
Half of the problem is denied by the non denialists, you write. I don't get the math. The ice cap, the albedo... much of it comes from the global warming, i.e. for one good half at least from GHG concentration, as you admit as well. So, the HUGE factor is GHG.
Francois, the problem is that cooling by reducing GHG concentrations is too slow as a first remedy for heat. Albedo restoration, rebrightening the planet, is a far more tractable and fast and scalable cooling lever than action on carbon.
"It turns out greenhouse gases aren’t the only variable in the Earth Energy Balance equation."
But it is the one we have been creating more of and one that policies to affect CO2 emisions can affect. Of course we need to correctly model the non HGH effects in order to correctly model the CO2 effects and hence to be able to figure out how much reducing a molecule of CO2 emission is worth. Unfortunatley, because reducing emissions is costly, the non-HGH effects may require greater reuctions in CO2 emissions, maybe deeper reductions in CO2 levels, than otherwise.