Thread by @ClimateBen

What if I told you we've got 3+ years left to stop carbon pollution *&* remove it from the atmosphere *&* use geoengineering to reflect sunlight away from Earth’s poles?

And if a Harvard Professor who saved the ozone layer in '87 told you?

[THREAD]

1/13
forbes.com/sites/jeffmcma…

'People have the misapprehension that we can recover from this state just by reducing carbon emissions, Anderson said in an appearance at the University of Chicago.'

2/13

'Recovery is all but impossible, he argued, without a World War II-style transformation of industry — an acceleration of the effort to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth’s poles.'

3/13

'This has do be done, Anderson added, within the next five years.

“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero,” Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.'

4/13

'“Can we lose 75-80 percent of permanent ice and recover? The answer is no.”

The answer is no in part because of what scientists call feedbacks, some of the ways the earth responds to warming.'

5/13

'Among those feedbacks is the release of methane currently trapped in permafrost and under the sea, which will exacerbate warming. Another is the pending collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, which Anderson said will raise sea level by 7 meters (about 23 feet).'

6/13

“People at this point haven’t come to grips with the irreversibility of this sea-level rise problem,” Anderson said, displaying a map that shows the site of Harvard’s new $10 billion Allston campus inundated after 3 meters of sea-level rise.'

7/13

'He followed that map with images of Manhattan shrunken by encroaching waters and Florida missing its southern tip.

“When you look at the irreversibility and you study the numbers, this along with the moral issue is what keeps you up at night,” Anderson said.'

8/13

'he prosecuted a moral argument that implicates university administrators who refuse to divest from fossil fuels, journalists who fail to fact-check false statements made by political candidates, and executives of fossil fuel companies who continue to pursue activities...

9/13

..that are exacerbating climate change—especially those who mislead the public about those effects.

“I don’t understand how these people sit down to dinner with their kids,” Anderson said, “because they’re not stupid people.”'

10/13

The article (by @JeffMcMahon_Chi) was published in Jan 2018.

11/13

Here's @jefftollef Nature Nov 2018:

'If all goes as planned, the Harvard team will be the first in the world to move solar geoengineering out of the lab and into the stratosphere...The first phase...could launch as early as the first half of 2019.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

12/13

My concerns about SRM are that humans cannot be certain of unwanted impacts; that it will be misused under current political-economic systems; and that it could be used *instead* of emergency measures such as slashing greenhouse gas emissions etc.

Looks necessary though...
13/13