Note: I wrote a much better version of this as a medium post, but I continue to edit this one from time to time, and I don't update Medium, because it's not that type of medium :). Wikis are so much better.

 

I'm writing this to explain how I ultimately broke through my climate change pessimism and have become hopeful.

 

The axioms of climate pessimism:

 

By now, I think a lot of lay people who follow climate science, like me, take these as axioms:

 

• By farming animals, harvesting trees, and burning fossil fuels, our species has been modifying the climate for thousands of years, causing several positive feedback loops (ice albedo, methane release, etc) to kick in that increase global warming.
• It is not reasonable to believe that, as a society, we will change our behaviors quickly.  As a group, people will continue to engineer the climate at current rates (population adjusted), by the same methods they are currently doing it, until they physically cannot.  Gotta drive to work and get a burger on the way.
• Even if we could reduce emissions drastically (switching to 100% renewable energy in a generation, etc.), in a few years time, the positive climate change feedback loops we have kicked off will cause enough warming to sustain themselves.
• If the climate continues to warm, then resources like food, water, and housing will become increasingly scarce.  
• When resources become scarce, people go to war over them.  
• In wartime, society will use all of its resources to solve for security.  No resources will remain to apply to reverting climate change.

 

Once you get there, the next question you have is:

 

Q: How much time do we have?

 

The short answer, with no other context, is: not much. 

 

At the current melt rate, we will lose all of our arctic sea ice within a few years, most likely, and that will start a downward spiral that we probably can't get out of.  Follow this link to read about that arctic catastrophe.  Update: we already did that.

 

Whatever we are going to do, we need to implement it within a few years to mitigate that and avoid huge suffering.  Update: too late for that.  Now we have to think of some way to REVERSE climate change even though we are UNABLE TO RESPONSIBLY GOVERN in the context of the global climate for the benefit of the human species and all life on earth.

 

The latest IPCC report was optimistic - and it assumes we will be doing some climate engineering (BECCS of all things) - and it doesn't take into account some of the latest research on methane.   UPDATE: Newer reports are the same - just with more dire data as 2 deg C above pre-industrial rapidly approaches.

 

One thing is certain - the longer we wait to act, the more warming we will see, and the more people who will die.

 

If I stopped there (which I did, for a while) I would have stayed purrrrty darn pessimistic.

 

What are we going to do? 

 

I break that down into two sets of questions:

 

Can we change our behaviors as a society to reduce carbon emissions quickly? And, if we do reduce emissions quickly, will the positive feedback loops cease causing us to avoid the hothouse pathway to another PETM-type scenario?

 

My answer to those questions is: probably no.

 

If we cannot subtract from our current climate engineering behaviors, then, can we add one or more climate engineering behaviors to delay global warming?  If so, can we implement anything at all before conflict gets so serious that we cannot implement anything at all?

 

My answer to both of those questions is: probably yes.

 

The time to accept our role as engineers of the earths climate is now.  We have been in that role - we are in that role - and we will remain in that role for the duration of our species existence, whether we like it or not.

 

Accepting that is the breakthrough that society as a whole needs to make if we are to survive.  It is hugely liberating. 

 

Climate engineering is a huge can of worms and the biggest problem we have encountered as a species.  We can do something with our stone knives and bearskins today, but in the future, we need to get to warp drive.  That is motivating to me.

 

Update: this section held up.  The barriers to changing fossil fuel use and to implementing SRM are even higher than when this was first written.  That equation has not changed, but hopium is still available here, for free!  Read on.

 

The problem with the solution

 

We are going to have to play our best hand without knowing the odds.  Time's up and we have to bet our lives.

 

We didn't do the research before we started clearing forests and farming animals.   We didn't do the research before we started burning fossil fuels.  We didn't know we were gambling with our climate (with a few exceptions).  

 

Today, at least we know we are gambling - today we are officially engineers of the climate.  To have any idea of the odds before we have to play our hand, we are in a race against time - we must perform research that has been discouraged by both sides of the climate debate. 

 

Here are the most promising prospects, in my estimation, for buying our species a bit more time.  I'm interested in learning more about these and any other projects that could be implemented quickly:

 

Solar Radiation Management

1) Stratospheric Aerosol injection - Do this first.  Injecting a tiny fraction of the sulfur dioxide that we currently inject into the lower atmosphere, but (ultimately) into the stratosphere. This could cool the planet.  This is the fastest and most likely effective method of reducing global temperature that I've heard of.  The primary credible risk is ozone layer damage - that threat is being tested in 2019, I hope.  Further delay of this research is a potential threat to our species.  If this can be implemented without damaging the ozone layer, and if we can avoid ozone layer damage from other pollutants (we have shown that we can regulate CFCs in the past) then we could implement this, and it might be our most effective weapon.  Read David Keiths book on the topic for an intro.

 

2) Marine Cloud Brightening Project - Do this second.  enhancing the albedo of clouds to lower global temp.  IMHO, one of the more reasonable approaches, given enough time to implement it.  If it doesn't work, then we can stop it, and we return to our previous state fairly quickly.  We would have to build a huge network of ocean fan platforms and some really intelligent control systems to turn them off and on strategically to manage cloud brightness without too many negative side effects.  That would take a long while to implement.  Still, a good candidate for future work.

 

Carbon Capture

 

1) Ocean Iron Fertilization - Update: This might not work, but research is ongoing and we should know more in 2026.  Theoretically, f we implement this on a massive scale, we could get some carbon capture and cooling out of this.  And...it's fast to implement.  It will most definitely cause chaos in the oceans (sorry most marine life, we already signed your death warrant a few times before we did this).  The most prominent experiment in iron fertilization was successful and promising, but it apparently embarrassed and upset a few people.  Research has been slow but we're learning.  It needs to be accelerated.  COP banned iron fertilization, but that is probably unenforceable pragmatic advisement. 

 

2) Simply planting trees at unheard of scale, and engineering environments to green deserts and other areas, could work.  Do this second.  It would take a long time, though, dozens of years, and it will be expensive, so this is tied for my third favorite.  There are a few programs out there that want to plant a billion trees, but none that aim to plant a trillion - so there really isn't anyone with the ambition and the realistic plan required.  I assume we would cut trees down faster than we could plant them anyway, but it makes sense to try to keep trees in protected areas, and to ultimately plant as many as we can.  Update: there is far more to it than just planting trees, as engineering environments to store more water and build more canopy can have huge impacts on not only carbon sequestration but the liveability of regions.

 

Everything Else

 

 

I don't see us scaling anything else up in time to do much good in the short term (Carbon Capture machinery, BECCS tech that the IPCC report suggests will work, using synthetic biology to accelerate CO2 absorption, etc.).  Something might pop up, though.  We probably need to do something about the insect apocalypse, and I don't have any good ideas on that -  other than just reducing global temperatures and switching to renewable agriculture.

 

UPDATES on Everything Else:

 

• Awesome people are starting to make impacts through planting, so we have to give them props and support them.  Check out Andrew Millisons channel to see how they are doing it.  
• Since resistance to the most effective measures (SRM primarily) is simply solidifying and strengthening without new data, we are probably doomed, but the best thing we can do is to support those that may not work but are at least not villified and can maybe slow the inevitable.  
• Tech is advancing, in general, super-rapidly right now - AI just made research way faster and we should, theoretically, see new projects in renewable energy generation, energy storage, and even carbon capture advance at a much faster pace than previously thought.  Will that match the exponential pace of climate change?  Tough call - probably not because implementing most things at scale is still going to be time consuming, unless you are doing something like SRM, which we can't do.

 

Becoming a climate engineering optimist:

 

There is a lot there to be hopeful about.  There are real possibilities.

 

The mission to understand and take control of the climate to the extent possible is life or death and as big as it gets.   

 

For my part, I'm looking for ways to directly support research into Stratospheric Aerosol injection and Ocean Iron Fertilization this year.  I hope that the research comes back positive and that these strategies can be implemented in less than two years.  I will support efforts to implement them when I am satisfied with my understanding of the research. 

Those two projects could buy us time to implement cloud brightening systems, plant a whole bunch of trees, build some carbon capture machinery, and maybe even change our behaviors as a species - switching to renewable energy and agriculture, perhaps.

 

I don't intend to protest anywhere.  I do intend to write letters, make phone calls, donate time and money to these causes, study governance issues, and encourage others to do so as well.  It would be awesome if I could help more directly in a hands-on way, but I haven't found a way, yet.

 

That's my journey to optimism and mission orientation.  It feels GREAT.  I hope this helps someone.  Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss this stuff.

 

Post-Script

 

If you are new to this topic, then I recommend reading up:  

 

Paul Beckwith is awesome!:

 

Most of what I know about climate systems I have learned by absorbing the works of Paul Beckwith (his twitter and youtube channels). 

 

Through Paul Beckwith's channels I have found most of the tools I use to educate myself on climate science, from research tools to relatable visualizations.  Paul is the best guy to start with, IMHO.  Here is the last ten minutes of an interview in which Paul is asked about the climate engineering methods I find most interesting.  And a frank and honest debate between Paul and a couple other climate scientists that might give you an idea of what scientists are discussing in an unfiltered way.

 

Climate Engineering is o.k. to talk about (sometimes)!

 

We've come a long way.

 

I've been talking about climate engineering since at least 2012 when I read a paper by Latham and Salter on the topic.  I think that was around the time it became o.k. to discuss it with anyone but a scientist. 

 

It used to be that if you mentioned this climate engineering stuff, both academia and industry would ban you for life.  Nowadays, you will see climate engineering strategies featured in your run of the mill IPCC reports.

 

Update: Talking about changing the climate is still not approved of.  Talk about it and you will still be ostracized from the average group of environmentalists and scientists.  But you can, today, find serious scientists who are not being ostracized from EVERY group, and can do some work, and there is a tiny and growing audience of people who want to help their research along.