Cool, Reduce, Remove: The Emergency Blueprint to Restore the Climate with Dennis Garrity

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: and welcome to climate chat i'm your host dan miller and today our special guest is dennis garrity the chair of the healthy planet action coalition and we're going to find out what that's all about in just a little bit but before we get started please remember to like subscribe hit the notification bell leave a comment do all those things because it helps spread this very important [00:00:38] Speaker 2: message and with that dennis welcome to climate chat thank you dan it's a pleasure to be here [00:00:44] Speaker 1: and let's get started with you giving us a bit of your background sure well dan food security and [00:00:53] Speaker 2: land restoration in the global south were the passions of my career they drove my work on agricultural development in south asia southeast asia and africa i worked on a number of scalable solutions and became a research leader in two global institutions during my 20 years in the philippines 10 years in indonesia and two decades in africa i started out when the threat of a food food security disaster was pending in asia there were major food deficit conditions in india and southeast asia in the 1960s and 70s and i took part in the green revolution which arrived on the scene in the nick of time and has been credited with saving the lives of a hundred million people i learned a big lesson from the green revolution that a minuscule group of dedicated scientists working in obscurity could change the lives of billions of people the new high yielding varieties of rice and wheat and their associated agronomic technologies took india from near famine conditions in the late 1960s to food self-sufficiency by the early 1980s and i learned that science and technology can contribute enormously to the welfare of the poorest and most vulnerable of our fellow humans now later i engaged in the challenge of restoring degraded land in the globe global south and i launched what is now the the evergreening global alliance a coalition of 115 organizations dedicated to re-greening the planet and improving livelihoods and capturing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through agroforestry assisted natural regeneration reforestation and nature protection i've been continuing to work on this and help lead this effort during the last two decades but then i had an epiphany and that was really something i realized that as global temperatures accelerated relentlessly there was no way that emissions or removals on their own were going to stop the rise in temperatures soon enough to avert disastrous situations without another revolution in science and technology the revolution of applying our knowledge to reflect a bit of sunlight away from the planet as an emergency break to give us some time to reduce emissions and remove the vast amounts of legacy greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is necessary to stop the rise in temperatures and permanently cool the planet back down to a safe level well below one degree c higher than pre-industrial levels uh so i began intensively studying the ways we could do that and i joined the healthy planet action coalition a few years ago which i now lead uh it's a group of some 350 scientists engineers and influencers who have been assessing the options for direct cooling the planet [00:04:03] Speaker 1: well actually yeah so i did a uh show on the new york climate week a couple of weeks ago and i mentioned going to a sunlight reflection method or solar geoengineering event and that and there were many many organizations all involved in what's called srm sunlight reflection methods and all of them every single one of them would not say they support srm doing srm they would just say we support doing research because they all wanted to sound neutral and i said there's all organizations are like that with a few exceptions and one of the exceptions is the healthy planet action coalition or hpac and so um so what is hpac's uh position on sunlight reflection methods or solar geoengineering yes we we have a clear and i think uh as you [00:05:05] Speaker 2: mentioned unique uh uh position on this topic uh we advocate that the global community come together and develop and develop and implement a three-pronged strategy a clear new plan for the global climate that includes cooling direct cooling methods as well as emissions reduction and carbon removals [00:05:29] Speaker 1: yeah the triad the climate triad and i'll throw one other in there that you need that we all need and that's adaptation because it's already getting bad and we have no choice but to try to adapt to the impacts that are here now and and coming but um so maybe but you kind of you kind of gave it in your introduction but maybe you can just go into a little more on the path we are on the current path we are on which is really not doing any of the three of the triad right now where do you think the climate is headed in the [00:06:05] Speaker 2: next 20 years to the end of the century let's say yeah yeah uh you know maybe to embellish a little uh you know the healthy planet action coalition has already assessed 15 of the most promising methods for for for direct cooling and the analysis had a very clear result there are only a couple of methods that could be applied immediately to bring global heating to a halt within the next couple of decades but i was fascinated by what scientists had learned from uh the mount pinatubo eruption here in the philippines in 1991. do you know dan i was living here at the time of the eruption as i am now and uh at one point i was actually trapped in the blast and i thought i was a goner yeah i thought i was a goner but i was able to escape uh to the perimeter and uh have lived to tell the tale uh but meanwhile you know how many people were killed by the the the erupting hundreds hundreds yeah yeah many many of the uh villages near the the volcano were were destroyed completely completely buried um yeah yeah um but the thing is that scientists from the u.s geological survey and the philippines institute of volcanology who were observing the effects of the eruption from a safer distance away what they found was absolutely staggering as you know the aerosols that the eruption blasted into the stratosphere spread out evenly over the planet and produced a slight sunshade that reduced the incoming radiation by about one percent and within weeks this sunshade had cooled the earth from its current 0.7 degrees in 1991 back to 2.2 degrees virtually half a degree of cooling yeah half a degree of cooling it took us almost back to pre-industrial levels uh and the temperature stayed there for two more years and then it took another several years until the late 90s when the temperature had worked its way back to 0.7 degrees and uh and of course have continued to rise relentlessly ever since and so this was a revelation you know pinatubo showed us how we could stop global heating and save billions of the most vulnerable people from excessive heat droughts floods accelerated sea level rise etc and uh and and we realized that sunlight reflection doesn't solve the problem over the long run entirely but it can delay the onset of catastrophic events and tipping points and give us some time to work to work through um so again going back to my green revolution days i rediscovered that again a minuscule group of scientists were out there beavering away to figure out how humanity could mimic this phenomenon and develop an approach that could do the job and um and they've shown us that it's entirely feasible to spray a very small aerosol veil in the upper atmosphere uh to cool down the polar regions and excessive temperatures in the tropics uh well since since you teased us with your the study [00:09:19] Speaker 1: is showing only a few ways work i assume one of them is what's uh stratospheric aerosol injection where you put sulfur particles into the stratosphere that's kind of the main one everyone talks about what were the [00:09:31] Speaker 2: other ones that made the cut uh the other major one that made the cut was marine cloud brightening no surprise there you talked about it on many of your podcasts um and that's you know uh spraying uh seawater mist into selected areas of the oceans to reduce the intensity um of super hurricanes for example super typhoons which is something we worry about desperately here in the philippines and uh also to this year you better watch out yeah oh yeah yeah we're watching very closely um and uh and and and and it could also of course protect uh coral reefs that are being destroyed all over the tropics [00:10:12] Speaker 1: a little more regional though when you're talking about marine cod lightning where sai or stratospheric aerosol injection is over the whole globe you can put it over the poles to start with and let it spread from there so they are they do have like sort of different applications in a way and you can do [00:10:31] Speaker 2: we see them you know we see them as complementary and we see a number of other direct cooling methods that could further assist in stabilizing global temperatures um but these methods are not as well developed the other 13 mem methods i referred to um not as well developed as stratospheric aerosol injection or marine cloud brightening but they should receive intensive research attention as soon as possible as well you see yeah yeah well we're going to get back to those later i'm going to like [00:10:59] Speaker 1: challenge you challenge you a little bit on srm like what people say about that and let's see how you answer but before we get into that we're still like on the where we're headed part and and yeah my questions for you do you think we're already on a sort of a path to runaway global heating [00:11:20] Speaker 2: absolutely my conclusion dan is that our planet is already now in runaway global heating mode actually and i'd like to look at a little bit of the most recent evidence that very few people have internalized you know the latest projections of temperature by the most respected temperature scientists globally zeke housefather uh indicate that the annual average temperature will be 1.8 degrees in 2027 1.8 degrees that compares with 1.2 degrees in 2022 and the 1.5 degrees average for the three-year period of 2023 to 25. now that means that we have actually increased the global temperature 0.6 degrees during the last five years 2020 although [00:12:13] Speaker 1: you're talking about having that on top of a super duper el nino which usually raises temperatures like [00:12:19] Speaker 2: 0.2 this case 0.3 or 0.4 actually yeah yeah yeah however we also see that in the most of the several most recent el ninos there's a ratcheting effect the el nino bumps the temperature up 0.2 or 0.3 degrees and it stays very close to that level until the next el nino bumps it up again that's exactly what we're seeing [00:12:45] Speaker 1: it does drop afterwards i mean in the sense of you get a la nina then it goes down but you're saying [00:12:50] Speaker 2: from the baseline where it was it's up higher it is i mean take for example the last el nino you know uh it bumped from 0.2 up to 0.5 and it stayed there roughly at 0.5 for the last three years [00:13:05] Speaker 1: although that one and we don't have leon on with us tonight that leon simon's work showing that a lot of that extra heating was due to the international maritime organization changing the rules for the sulfur uh content of fuels and re require them to reduce sulfur content which is a form of sunlight reflection methods but done in the troposphere where we breathe and get and it's bad for human health down there and it also only lasts for a week instead of a year or two where in the stratosphere so very different but by reducing all that emissions from ships that caused a lot of heating which was really separate from the el nino or you can say it's sort of like created a permanent el nino in the north pacific and north atlantic so yeah yeah um okay but uh so what but what is the evidence [00:13:56] Speaker 2: though for the uh runaway heating uh global heating well okay um you know as you said uh the um the aerosol pollution will gradually decline over time but the um feedbacks that have now been reinforcing themselves and causing the earth energy imbalance to continue to very rapidly accelerate are the countervailing set of conditions that uh i see as being so alarming um to the future trajectory of temperatures so so after all um you know if we if we have actually bumped temperature up 0.6 degrees during the uh during the five years and if it were to continue on that trajectory that's an average of 1.2 degrees per decade so even even if we were to fall back some some fraction of that it's still enormous well i would [00:14:57] Speaker 1: say i mean the jim hansen who says it's twice as much as the ipcc says it is it used to be 0.18 the 0.18 degrees celsius per decade let's call it that up until like 2015 or so 2010 and in since 2015 it looks like it's closer to point twice that and maybe around 0.4 i haven't heard anyone including jim hansen say that we're on a trajectory right now uh for anything above let's say 0.5 maybe but i've never heard point of one degree or or more per decade not that it couldn't happen in the future if we have things like yeah permafrost release and a lot of other things yeah but but and zeke and by the way let's be very clear zeke did not suggest 1.2 you said 1.2 degrees per well no well that that is the actual [00:15:56] Speaker 2: amount that we've seen occur between 2022 and what will happen in 2027 right but that's because of the [00:16:04] Speaker 1: super el nino i mean let's let's be clear about that right i mean the fact that it's going above 1.5 1.6 that that additional amount is almost all due to the el nino well the el nino which is [00:16:21] Speaker 2: intensified by the sea surface temperatures absolutely into the atmosphere uh and sea surface temperatures are the whole name of the game right now right you know um 90 of all the global warming [00:16:33] Speaker 1: heats in the oceans only a few percent in the atmosphere absolutely and so you're you are seeing [00:16:39] Speaker 2: an earth energy imbalance acceleration that is five times as fast as it was accelerating in the early part of the century um and um and and if these feedbacks are in fact a result of warming then it's reasonable to conclude that that warming may reinforce these feedbacks and continue to generate the engine of accelerated temperatures from one el nino to the next and and and then we're then we're into this situation i mean i i'm i'm arguing that these risks are real and they um they haven't been experienced yet so we can argue about whether they will happen but um i'm uh and our our organization is inclined to view that these risks must be addressed because if you if you are not projecting what could happen with a plausible scenario you are avoiding what will you know possibly happen to humanity and we can't afford it [00:17:47] Speaker 1: we just can't afford it well certainly uh if hansen is correct and it's 0.38.4 per decade that that alone is absolutely catastrophic absolutely i mean because we're gonna and it's also we're on path for two degrees of warming around 2037 like 10 years from now right yeah yeah that alone people don't really appreciate that's not just a little bit worse than 1.5 and as we're about to see even when you hit 1.5 you haven't gotten all the impacts yet you just hit that temperature and then these impacts like melting glaciers and antarctica and things like that start to happen so 0.4 i think we can all agree that the if hansen's right 0.4 is catastrophic obviously if it's 1.2 that's catastrophic squared or something but yes so let's just for the purposes of the discussion assume we're on this wrong path yeah and you and the healthy planet action coalition uh not only has a plan but it's also taking action so so again you you mentioned the plan it's the triad cool reduce remove so cool do solar radiation management sunlight reflection method solar geoengineering all the same thing um reduce reduce our emissions and then remove use carbon dioxide removal we just had klaus lachner on last week all about that that it is possible to scale that if the proper policies are in place um so with those three things what so yes we should do let's just say we should do those things yeah we're not doing those things so what what is the healthy planet action coalition doing to move us to action very good well our our [00:19:37] Speaker 2: chief scientist and and others in our group uh chief scientist is is mike mccracken uh who was uh head of the global climate program and uh noah work on modeling the atmosphere etc um he like me believes that we are in a very dangerous situation and that we've got to deploy these cooling solutions um not in this in the distant future but immediately um that that is the only way we're going to be able to cool down this immense acceleration and so uh we've been conducting assessments as i mentioned you know uh where we assess the 15 uh most promising methods for uh sunlight uh reflection and direct cooling and by the way we're not we're not necessarily picking a method we're saying we need many methods we need to we need to put together a plan that includes sunlight reflection from aerosols we need to include marine cloud brightening we need to include many other of these methods along with more vigorous emissions reduction and more vigorous uh carbon removals from the atmosphere so it is an all of the above plan and um we can't simply substitute one for another it's it's no no i agree we'll do all three but then [00:21:00] Speaker 1: again you know knowing that we should do all three i mean yeah anyone watches this program knows we should do all three and i wrote my program on the climate action plan it says let's do all those things but we're not so that's the amazing thing about climate right we know the science tells us we must act immediately totally agree with what you're saying there very urgently dramatic action is needed plus we have all the tools to do it and they're actually cost effective tools i mean you can argue if you want to argue about carbon removal but again i always say it might be expensive but it's way cheaper than not doing it but we have the tools to get started for sure and it'll get cheaper over time so so that's not so we know we have to do it we know we can do it and yet we are not doing it so what are some of the things that healthy planet action coalition are trying to do to change that [00:21:54] Speaker 2: dynamic absolutely um in fact uh we see that uh methods like um stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening are practical and can be cost effective and can be applied nearly immediately if we get started and so uh in addition to our analysis of this we are supporting efforts to motivate climate vulnerable countries the most climate vulnerable countries the global south countries to launch a first movers coalition to develop and implement a comprehensive new climate plan that includes direct climate cooling and uh we are engaged currently in reaching out to influencers all over the world and pushing to launch a dialogue where we these countries come together and they start talking about how they can create a governance system now this is not unique i mean governance systems for environmental problems have been created up and down the last four decades the montreal protocol of course is is a a very uh successful example there are many other examples and so it all starts and our and our diplomatic uh mentors um agree and encourage us because it starts with a few countries who get together and begin to create a voice for such a coalition and then other countries jump in come around the table and start to create the governance momentum to be able to actually implement and deploy uh the plans that are necessary so uh so our affiliated organizations in countries such as india and the philippines are actively pushing their governments to lead in the in creating the coalition it starts with a dialogue you get people around the table they start asking how could we work together to build the momentum around a new comprehensive climate plan and you know one of the major new developments just just very recently is that the climate vulnerable forum of 77 global south countries is now engaging in informing its members about the reflectivity crisis and they just released a publication on reflectivity that said that stratospheric aerosol injection seems to be the only method that can uh practically stop the temperature rise uh enough to to be deployed uh in the near future and so here we have the organization was that again that's the climate vulnerable forum [00:24:42] Speaker 1: okay and uh what kind of countries are in that you mentioned india philippines that kind of thing yeah [00:24:48] Speaker 2: it's all global south countries and um and it was created to create a voice for the global south uh in climate uh negotiations discussions etc the presidency is barbados uh and mia motley prime minister mia motley is the chair of the climate vulnerable forum who you may be familiar she's a bellowing voice on the uh stage of climate change so we are beginning to see the developing countries starting to look at this seriously and [00:25:22] Speaker 1: that's very encouraging dan yeah a lot of people in uh srm world say uh you know they kind of imply that the global south isn't on board i'm thinking that they'll be on board more than anyone else also there's a program called the degrees initiative which i think i mentioned in my climate week discussion that actually has been funding researchers in the global south for the past 15 years to do research on srm just so that they would have sort of native researchers who know about the issue and could talk and have done research have gone to conferences and things like that so that the global south can have uh sort of a research arm that they could rely on that's native to their own countries so that sounds similar though i will say that the degrees initiative does not take a stand on whether we [00:26:17] Speaker 2: should do srm yeah yeah no we we see you know two needed um sort of efforts here one is the research community which degrees is supporting in the global south uh and and scientists you know need to have a degree of uh impartiality when they're doing research on these topics that they need to follow the data and then there's the advocacy which is we have decided we have judged from our analysis of the best science what needs to be done and and that's that's the role of the healthy action uh healthy [00:26:52] Speaker 1: coalition yeah and are there other are there other initiatives besides what you just mentioned about the global south that are pushing any of the other aspects of of your plan that are like meeting with politicians and getting them to by the way has any politician actually said yes let's do this [00:27:12] Speaker 2: no no no we're not there yet no degrees is the big one dan and i actually advise one of the degrees research programs here in the philippines but they have about 45 research teams all across the global south who are doing research on sunlight reflection methods and they just launched a new program which is really close to my heart a million and a half dollar investment in researching the effects of unabated climate change and or sunlight reflection on food security agriculture food production food prices and this is going to you know produce a tremendous amount of important fundamental information about what happens without sunlight reflection and what happens with sunlight reflection and that's important [00:28:06] Speaker 1: there's actually has already been a quite a bit of research done on that and the thing is when you say we're going to block the sun everyone has this vision of cutting off the sunlight and the plants all dying and of course you're only blocking like one percent of the sun and because of it's hazy it's a little more indirect sunlight which is actually better for many plants than direct sunlight so it actually it's not a negative of course not having drought and heat stress and on and on and on flooding and all the other things that destroy plants is also a good thing and also lowering vapor pressure deficit we've done whole programs on that people don't understand that one never heard of it before but basically it's sort of how hot and dry is it those two things combined vapor pressure deficit plants don't like hot and dry and that's what happens with climate change so there's a lot of course yeah in that particular area um but let's talk about the objections though uh well i want to continue to follow up on the initiatives but let's just talk a little bit about whenever you bring up srm people always have some basic objections to it so i'm just wondering how how you respond to those objects the first one is it's going to have negative side effects it might shift the indian monsoon is always the one that's brought up as a possibility so how do you respond [00:29:30] Speaker 2: to to that criticism yeah yeah yeah the indian monsoon and this and the uh african monsoon are critical dimensions of the climate change problem well we have to start off by uh realizing that unabated climate change has an enormous danger in shifting the monsoons further to the south and um and in fact we're watching what's happening in india right now very carefully what's happening in the sahelian region of africa because uh that's that's what may happen with the el nino as a precursor to what may happen uh with general climate change as well so we know uh already that um the monsoons will be very negatively impacted by two and a half three degrees of of of warming within the next 20-25 years uh so then you you add in sunlight reflection and you ask well how will it affect the monsoons well the general cooling of the earth uh would in fact reduce the risk that the monsoons would shift due to global heating and um and and of course there's a lot of work going on in terms of the regional anomalies that may happen with respect to sunlight reflection but the general conclusion from my colleagues in the scientific community who've spent decades working on this is that those side effects are infinitesimal compared to the side effects of actually allowing unabated climate uh change to occur and global heating to continue and now with the most recent data which i just shared with you about how fast it's accelerating um it's it's quite clear that yes we are uh if not in runaway client global heating already [00:31:24] Speaker 1: which i happen to believe we are we are very close to it well run away by the way is a a word that you have to be careful about because it it kind of means certain things to certain people and it kind of implies that you can't stop it it's runaway it's the feedbacks themselves and there's nothing you can do to stop it oh yeah which if you can use i mean run away without global uh cooling yeah yeah that's that's what i'm referring to yeah and uh but the rate is the important thing there and uh i don't know if people would have the greatest phenomenon the science the general science community would agree with 1.2 although i mean jim hansen caused enough uh uh controversy just by saying 0.4 yeah that was that that's controversial and the fact that ecs or equilibrium climate sensitivity is four and a half degrees is what he says and the ipcc says it's three yeah that's that's how much the earth warms for a doubling of co2 yeah big difference if it's four and a half versus three it's how sensitive the earth is to greenhouse gases and jim said 50 more sensitive than the ipcc assumes yeah and and the adjustments are going to [00:32:39] Speaker 2: happen um uh over and over again i mean they're they're going to be adjusting these uh these indicators of for example jim hansen's latest projection from 2015 to 2025 was the data that he had available this was just published in in his uh in his uh newsletter a few months ago uh you've seen the graph was a acceleration of 0.4 degrees per decade that's what he published a few dec now i'm talking about what jim hansen and zeke and other scientists are going to be saying two years from now after we have gone through a 2027 acceleration where we reach we reach uh 1.8 degrees you know 0.3 degrees higher than we are now if and when we do that and that's what they're predicting uh then you run the numbers again from 2023 to 2027 you're going to be way above 0.4 oh you got to be careful that i think when you do that [00:33:42] Speaker 1: you have to run them from the last el nino to the next you know peak to peak el nino that's what jim hansen focuses on yeah yeah but he's going to drop again it the interesting thing is if it has a la nina and only goes down to 1.5 well that should be that's below the trend right so that implies the new trend is somewhere in the 1.6 area whatever we don't know yet we're going to find out we're going to find out soon enough by the way and just the fact that the earth is going to be 1.7 1.8 next year here next year kind of mind-blowing but let's go back to the objections because there's many more like one of the big objections is that uh if we cool the earth we won't have incentive to reduce our emissions anymore how do you how do you respond to that one that's the moral hazard argument the moral hazard [00:34:34] Speaker 2: argument yes of course i mean um that that argument would be valid if we weren't experiencing near runaway temperature acceleration already um but uh we are and um and and there's no getting away from it um as i say i'm talking about the way scientists are going to be discussing this matter in two years from now you know uh jim hansen if if temperatures reach 1.8 in 2027 he will be rerunning his numbers and he will be up to maybe 0.6 or 0.7 degrees per decade because that's what the numbers will say at that point so we're just we're just uh doing some scenario analysis and hpac that just shows us where where we're heading and uh and and and the last two el ninos we did not see that decline uh significant decline from it from the peak you know the peak the peak in the last el nino was 1.6 the other two years were 1.5 so then it bumps up to 1.8 and this is what tom tom harris and jan umsonst are claiming in an excellent uh analysis recently published is a ratcheting effect dan that's what we have to start thinking about [00:36:00] Speaker 1: well because warming warming causes emissions that cause more warming right and by the way the good news is that cooling reduces emissions that actually cause more cooling and when you have uh a doubling of co2 yeah jim hansen says it's 4.5 degrees of warming only 1.2 degrees of that comes from the co2 itself you know it's it's it's a quarter of of the warming and all the other warming comes from yeah water vapor in the atmosphere because that's what co2 the warming from co2 does uh less cloud cover because that's what warming does and all these other feedback effects yeah and so that's that's that's a [00:36:43] Speaker 2: big problem yeah so it's worth it's worth thinking about the moral hazard if you were not facing a problem where you've got the energy imbalance 15 million hiroshima bombs going off every year uh worth of heat that's being absorbed mostly by the oceans and then debouching back into the atmosphere and sea surface temperatures are going wild right now as you know um that they're monitoring them with regard to the el nino and um other scientists are showing us that sea surface temperatures are going to go nowhere but up and they're going to release more and more heat into the atmosphere and that's what global temperature is all about so i really doubt that the evidence shows us anything but after we reach 1.8 with this el nino in 2027 we will decline the temperature more than about 0.1 degree before the next el nino [00:37:41] Speaker 1: expected four years well we have a la nina it's going to go down more well it will go down maybe 0.1 [00:37:46] Speaker 2: degree that's that's what happened in the last two el ninos and then it bumps back up to a much higher level so we we could be at or near two degrees by 2031 2032. um say it again where do you think you're going to be at 20 20 20 31 2032. yeah we have an we have an el nino on the average every four years right and uh so the next el nino would be expected perhaps 2031 and that's what the temperature may bump up to over two degrees because it might have two together it certainly could hit two degrees by [00:38:22] Speaker 1: the way it could hit degrees even before that but that's not the same as the trend the trend is sort of the way i think of the trend is what's the peak with the el nino and the minimum with the la ninas and somewhere in between those two things and you got to throw in sun effects because there is a small sun effect over an 11 year solar cycle but you figure all the you sort of de-trend those factors and you get where sort of where we are which is certainly in the 1.5 degree range and we're about to see what happens with this uh super al nino now since i follow some of the uh email chains of hpack uh where people get into the nitty-gritty of of carbon removal sunlight reflection and less so on the removal side i would say in terms of the what what sort of the research that everyone's touting there my guess is that there's a lot of people who watch this show that might appreciate being part of hpack and and sort of participating in that so there is a link below to uh to hpack in the video description but what would you tell people who are interested in joining hpack how do they go [00:39:36] Speaker 2: about doing that oh yeah they they could uh uh take the link to our website and then uh send a message to the um to the hpack contact um um uh but you they could also email me directly you know because we're we're also very interested in cultivating individuals who have the concerns that we have who have talents and energies that they can contribute so uh uh you know i'd like to share my email address as well because we're always looking for new members so we'll put that in we'll put that and we'll put [00:40:10] Speaker 1: that in the video description as well and any other links you want to uh include yeah so we'll we'll do [00:40:15] Speaker 2: that and then i can get them in touch with people in their own country their own community that are members of hpack and then they can you know develop a relationship and look at how they can contribute because we are advocating for this first movers coalition we're trying to build up movements of influencers in countries across the globe and um and so therefore wherever you live there's an [00:40:42] Speaker 1: opportunity to get involved maybe a better opportunity than being in the united states trying to get things going here right right now it's that's a little difficult but uh yeah it's going to change again dan you know it was definitely going to change in actually a month and then a lot more in about two [00:41:00] Speaker 2: years time yeah and you realize that the last administration published a very good analysis of sunlight reflection methods and recommended you know a big boost in research on sunlight reflection and of course research is the first stage to deploy you need to know what you're doing and a lot more work needs to be done but it needs to be done fast and it needs to be done in a mission oriented approach which is you know coordinated to the extent that you're answering the right questions so you can get these things moving uh immediately uh we tend to believe that unless we are deploying sunlight reflection methods like stratospheric aerosol injection by 2035 we may be unable to stop the rise in temperature um and and that's what's concerning some of our scientists we uh some are even fearful that even now at the rate at which temperature is increasing it will be so high by the time we get started that we can never bring the temperature back down again uh and it will continue to give us this hothouse earth scenario that's that's [00:42:10] Speaker 1: the thing that really keeps me up at night i've heard that the one i've heard about is more that if we obviously pass tipping points by definition it won't matter if you pull the i mean amok is just one example if if the amok begins it passes its tipping point it won't shut down right away but if it passes that tipping point even cooling uh the arctic and stopping the fresh water inflow into the north atlantic it won't matter anymore right uh that you did that so um yeah yeah yeah so there's a reason to do it sooner rather than later and that's one of your uh expressions right what is that about being late yeah [00:42:49] Speaker 2: later is too late it's too late yeah yeah and there's another tipping point that we will be talking about very soon i i predict and that's the tipping point of the earth energy imbalance as a whole i mean you and uh and your team are very familiar with the noah graph of how uh uh earth energy is is is is uh accelerating yeah and uh obviously if we don't turn that around um we are going to be absorbing heat mainly in the oceans at an ever increasing rate and uh you you you either stop that from happening or all the other tipping points are are going to be uh in danger of being uh tipped not when they're currently projected but much earlier than that well i mean they're usually [00:43:43] Speaker 1: they're usually triggered by temperature right that's usually the number that they're given and we've crossed some of them the coral weeds already crossed the other ones are around 1.5 where we are right now and then others too there's a few that are far out there but but again the ones that are near term are bad enough and people just they just don't have a uh a good perspective yeah the dangers of that by the way i'll give a shout out to paul beckwith who i just watched his video today on uh a paper that looked at tipping points and said we pay too much attention to amok and uh maybe it was the greenland melt and there's all these other uh uh tipping points that we don't pay enough attention to in the research research literature yes so the research is sort of geared more for the ones that get most of the attention and yeah and that could cause some problems if we don't pay attention to all of them and and that's the other thing is that uh sunlight reflection also actually cools the earth and can actually we did a whole program on this and how it can prevent tipping points which just reducing emissions only slows how fast the temperature rises it doesn't reduce it right cdr will eventually reduce but it will be uh really decades and decades that's right that's right that's right now even [00:45:09] Speaker 2: the dogs are excited about it oh yeah yeah they're they're worried they're very worried um but you know uh even the german meteorological society in january of this year right formally they informed the german government that there is a very likely possibility that we will be at three degrees by 2050 and and they said you know this has got to be uh fundamental to a country's national security planning uh so so there is there are growing voices out there consistent with what we are talking about from the scientific community the policy community and the national security community um and uh and i believe that things are going to flip very quickly over the next couple of years dan [00:45:57] Speaker 1: and if besides joining hbac do you have any other suggestions for people who are very concerned about all these issues other things other things they can do uh groups they can join or anything like [00:46:09] Speaker 2: that oh yeah sure sure i mean it's very effective to uh to actually put together op-eds for your local newspapers um for and and responses to um articles that come out in the guardian in the um in the economist and and others you know you know the economist just recently said um in an editorial we must make the earth more reflective again that's a direct quote uh of course the editor of uh the economist oliver morton wrote a whole book called the planet remade in which he examined uh the sunlight reflection uh methods so uh so the economist which is normally considered a pretty conservative magazine um is is is saying we must make the earth more reflective again direct quote yeah so the voices are beginning to congeal and uh another thing that people can do is uh work to organize um national dialogues with policy makers in their own country and there's a great model for that the uk national dialogue or national briefing they called it oh the national yeah was was was staged last year and they made a a video of that which has been was shown in hundreds of of communities all over the country so imagine if we had countries throughout the global south in particular uh that were uh arranging national briefings for policy makers of videos that could be shown locally uh or or of course on youtube uh to to uh to inform people of of the dangers that they're facing of course in the uk not all the [00:47:53] Speaker 1: policy makers actually watched the briefing that was part of the problem but it was great and kevin anderson who's been a guest on the program multiple times uh gave part of that and it was uh it's good it was concise yeah point and it really spelled out the dangers that was actually quite good yeah [00:48:12] Speaker 2: and let me give you another example dan um you know here in the philippines people are deadly worried about the super typhoons um we're talking about another category increase not category 5 which is currently the highest rate of intensity of a super type they're creating a category 6 which which puts wind speeds up to like 200 kilometers an hour 150 miles an hour um what what roof what building uh you know what in what structures can withstand that kind of wind speeds and so people in the philippines are really on edge about this and they were watching very carefully every typhoon that develops out there in the central pacific and so um what we're telling them uh through the new organization here in this country called healthy planet action philippines we're telling them that the u.s geological survey has suggested that if you put us a fleet of ships out in the middle of the pacific ocean where typhoons originate then you may be able to cool the surface of that part of the ocean down sufficiently to reduce the intensity of typhoons in the future you know maybe take a category 5 or 6 and reduce it down to a category 2 or 3 which which would be huge in terms of the damage uh the the [00:49:39] Speaker 1: reduction in damage to there's another group uh i saw i saw at a conference that that wants to uh send bubbles down like in the area between the country and where the hurricane might go and you pump air down deep and the bubbles carry cold water from the deep up to the surface and therefore diffuse the hurricane that way by bringing cold water from the deep to the surface yeah so there's a lot of interesting ideas out there yeah that's all really helpful and i and i again i think everyone should check out uh the link to healthy planet action coalition and then if you want to get involved and have the discussion and and be on the email chain where there's a lot of emails by the way so a little warning there but they are interesting and they and i and i participate in them sometimes and yeah yeah and uh it is quite interesting a lot of uh smart people doing that let's bring stacy in and see uh what questions she has there and stacy uh how are you doing i'm great good to see you guys any any cats no and as everyone see it's dark here and this is going to show at 10 o'clock on sunday but we're recording this yeah they're okay yeah [00:50:55] Speaker 3: maybe rocky will join us i see them they're right there but yeah um i thanks so much for being here dennis this was a great discussion um and as i was going through the website it was nice to see some familiar faces um uh brian von hurtzen on your steering committee who is a long time friend of the show and cynthia sharp um i think you had her as a speaker and um she's the closest that i found to um heading the ministry of the future or whatever i yes um so that was that was that was cool and then the the other um we may need to put in the um notes of the show about bruce melton um he has a band climate change band and um just to give you some of those songs from there there's the sky is a time bomb 10 gigatons of carbon listen to the wind um and then my favorite we really did land on the moon because part of your part of your gist is listen to the scientists they can help us um and then i wanted to in lieu of our since we're recording this i want um the you were talking about the climate vulnerable forum and one of our um long time viewers gene is in costa rica and the secretary general of the climate vulnerable forum is their former president carlos alvarado casada so they're so gene you'll have to check in on that if you haven't heard of the climate vulnerable forum um now the the questions well question questions that i had are that this all it's funny because you sound very much to the climate like i am to transportation safety and bikes like i call myself stacy overton because i am always further than what other people think in terms of removing cars and making things safer for people walking biking and improving transit and um some of the things i say might be out there for others do you view yourself as dennis or healthy planet action overton at all [00:53:34] Speaker 2: uh in other words are you asking uh you know is what i'm saying the uh general view of our organization uh or my personal view um and today i made a combination of those two things um i uh i i indicated you know what our um formal position is what we advocate for and i also in my analysis went further from my personal analysis um to indicate that um we are if not in um a runaway situation um very close to it and um and that's not an official position of healthy planet but it's it's becoming increasingly clear to me as a as an analyst uh of the uh of the climate data and the climate literature that that's where we are okay [00:54:30] Speaker 3: and then and and you also um you mentioned zeke a few times the cow's father and i it's funny because i don't view him in that neighborhood so much so well he he's talking about that zeke made a prediction that next [00:54:48] Speaker 1: year would be maybe up to 1.8 because he his error bars are so large that jim hanson actually made a joke about yeah why those error bars were i think jim hanson said even before it was known to be a large el nino he said it's going to be 1.7 with just a regular el nino and i haven't actually heard from jim yeah what he says with a super el nino but you can guess it would be 1.8 but i don't remember hearing zeke make a prediction for 1.8 only that it could be as high as 1.8 right uh and he's usually kind of conservative when it comes to all of this stuff because he's he's a member of the ipcc and he gives that story more than jim does for example [00:55:35] Speaker 2: that's right zeke tends uh you know has been uh fairly conservative but um he was just interviewed in a um an event um that's uh that i that i witnessed a few days ago in which he has revised his his prediction his prediction was uh 1.76 degrees um in 2027 and he has bumped it up to 1.8 degrees in 2027. [00:56:03] Speaker 1: which is mind-boggling i mean that and and i guess the the good news if there is any good news is that getting a chance to see what it's going to be like five or ten years from now next year yeah maybe just maybe might get politicians to pay a little more attention and the public too by the way because the public needs to uh be talking about this i just wish the public would talk about climate change like [00:56:29] Speaker 2: they talk about data centers and that might actually get the it might it might begin to happen um i might be yeah later this year yeah uh at least at least by the end of 2027 we may see um a new momentum that we've never imagined could happen globally i do believe a tipping point of climate action that's [00:56:53] Speaker 1: what everyone is is praying for but we haven't seen it yet even though we've been given quite enough [00:57:00] Speaker 3: ammunition i guess to do it yeah like you were talking about the category six and i feel like was it 2023 and hurricane otis they were talking about that like um i just heard a program on this [00:57:19] Speaker 1: today by the way and the number i i heard was 192 miles an hour would be the break point and there's only five hurricanes ever and Philippines was one of them uh whoever hit above if i'm remembering correctly from today 192 miles an hour that would and there is no uh category six there but not yet opposing to add it because yeah i think category five is 150 miles an hour maybe yeah yeah and 192 is a lot more uh 150 so there should be some way of like warning people maybe and and between the mega and the ultra mega it only happened the five only happened i think in the last 10 or 20 years so it's never it is a a phenomenon of climate change that we can get up that high yeah yeah the oceans are that warm that they can fuel storms that that go to these incredible absolutely devastating and the devastation is the square of the wind speed right so yeah yeah so 192 is a lot more than 150 uh when you do it that way yeah um but anyway we talked gee we talked a lot again i think for people who watch this show who want to dig in deeper want to have sort of a a daily list of emails talking about srm and cbr and and all and not just the science but the social issues how do we get that going and political issues uh check out healthy uh planet action coalition or hpac link in the description we'll have other links and down there as well and uh and dennis thanks for not only coming on the show but for all you're doing to try to get the coalition of the willing to get going on these things because again we know we must we know we can yes but we're choosing not to so far and that's kind of crazy and we need to really figure out ways to to make it happen so thanks for all you're doing there and thanks for working this out you're in the philippines it makes it a little harder to come on the show but we worked [00:59:31] Speaker 2: it out here and i really appreciate it thank you dan it's been great to be with you um and stay tuned stay tuned because we hit 1.8 in 2027 and i do believe that the next el nino which would be around 2031 or so uh we could uh hit two degrees and and stay at two degrees uh because la ninas are not cooling the planet down any longer that's the big news about but be careful about that [01:00:03] Speaker 1: because the la nina didn't cool last time because that was the same time we we did the ship emissions and it hid that fact it looked like nothing happened yeah but what happened was instead of being cooler than it should have been the temperature was on average for la nina that shouldn't happen it should be below average and it turned out that that extra point two was from the ships so the last time we have to be careful you have to look at the whole the whole situation i think we will get cooling from [01:00:29] Speaker 2: i'm arguing that the sea surface temperature acceleration is going to wipe out that tendency for um the uh the the temperature to come back down a significant amount yeah uh and it's bad i mean there's no there's no question about that think think ratcheting you know think ratcheting it moves up and then it stops it may slip a little and then it moves up and then stops and slips a little but la [01:00:57] Speaker 1: niña's are not going to be our salvation any longer no because the average between them is what we're getting is still going up very rapidly yeah yeah yeah and i i think um there there's some very [01:01:11] Speaker 2: interesting people to have um discuss the sea surface temperature acceleration um because that is the key the earth energy imbalance is warming up the sea you know 90 percent of all that additional heat and that you know we got sea surface stratification which is bottling up the heat and it's being um it's being released back into the atmosphere at rates that we've never seen before and so um so i expect that the feedbacks caused by the warming are going to be far far more important than any future depression uh due to aerosol unmasking you know uh and and i think that's that's what will be there'll be a lot of discussion about this over the next couple of years stay tuned that is that's for sure anyway thanks so [01:02:04] Speaker 1: much for joining i really appreciate it and everyone else thank you and let again don't forget to like subscribe hit that notification bell and leave a comment and that helps and share the program with people you think might be interested because that helps us find new uh listeners and that would be great very important message to get out to the world thanks everyone thanks stacy for staying up late and uh dennis thanks again thank you everyone take care bye bye now