What is the Climate Triad?
Cool, Reduce, Remove
For about a decade now, climate science has been telling us something quite different from our climate culture. Delay in climate change action has resulted in what scientists have warned us about for 30 years. We have warmed beyond the evolution of our Earth systems and they are now degrading, with limited, eliminated, or reversed environmental services. The Amazon, ice sheets, permafrost, sea ice, ocean circulations, sea level rise, the hydrologic cycle, corals; almost all effects of climate change are now far ahead of projections. Environmental services are threatened or reversed, and unless we cool our climate to less than 1 degree C (1.8 F) warming above normal, and less than 350 ppm CO2 in our atmosphere, where we are at 1.5 C and 424 ppm CO2 now in 2024. Restoration must happen by about mid-century, or much degradation will occur that the degraded systems can no longer self-restore even if the warming effects are removed. This is ecological and physical collapse of our Earth systems or tipping as it has become known. If we do not restore the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth systems, collapse is foregone results in natural feedback emissions that dwarf humankind’s.
To avoid this point of no return threshold, we must now implement actions that have previously been reserved for the end of the 21st century under the worst-case scenarios. These actions include not only net zero emissions and atmospheric greenhouse gas removal, but temporary emergency engineered cooling solutions as well. This is the climate triad: cool, remove, reduce. All three actions are compulsory and must be implemented simultaneously to achieve climate restoration in time frames that matter to tipping.
We must use engineered direct cooling solutions to buy time, so that climate pollution removal processes can buy time, so that we can create a sustainable fossil fuel emissions culture.
Reduce emissions, Net Zero, Decarbonization – Sustainability… We all know what these things are and we all know that we have not been very successful at achieving them in some regions where overall, the concentration of excess, human caused greenhouse gas emissions in our sky has doubled in the last 30 years. The Climate Triad requires we do everything we know how to do to stop tipping collapses before the point of no return, so we need to redouble our efforts at creating a culture of sustainable future greenhouse gas emissions, so as to complement and enhance direct cooling and removals that are also now imperative.
Engineered Solutions: Atmospheric Removal and Direct Cooling… For 20 years, both direct engineered cooling and cooling through atmospheric removal of greenhouse gases have been associated with one another, even though the carbon removal community has been attempting to distance themselves from direct cooling, or geoengineering as it is known in our climate lexicon. Skepticism has been directed towards engineered direct cooling solutions based on lack of knowledge about regional impacts that the media and scientific publications proliferate. The result is doubt and delay when in reality, engineered solutions are what our global community turns to when in need of solutions to dangerous problems. There are always unknowns early in the identification of a dangerous problem. We trust our engineers to keep us safe, and they do this job admirably. Climate pollution is no different from any other dangerous problem our engineers have successfully overcome. They been keeping us safe from pollution for over a hundred years and there is no reason to believe they will stop keeping us safe now.
The moral hazard plays a role in the negative popular perception of engineered solutions as well. The concept is that it is morally wrong we cool via methods that are not future emissions related because this then gives climate polluters license to continue polluting.right or wrong, the moral hazard stifles consideration of engineered cooling solutions, and right or wrong, the opposite moral hazard exists that it is wrong to not do everything we know how to do in order to prevent Earth systems collapses from completing.
Risk-Risk Analysis… What is missing from our climate culture is evaluation of risks with and without engineered solutions actions. Because it is clear there is now a climate emergency, risks of inaction are now quite likely far in excess of the risks posed by engineered cooling solutions. It is unfortunate we have delayed so long that it has come to this, but we cannot ignore the tremendous risks of natural feedback emissions dwarfing humankind’s.
Research Needed? Emergency Response and Climate Restoration… As climate scientists warned, we have delayed too long and our task is now much different than the sustainable emissions tasks of the past. We can no longer just limit future warming and be safe as once a collapse begins it does not self-restore. This is why our legacy climate culture of 1.5 degrees C warming cannot create a safe future. We must now restore our climate back to within the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth systems at a temperature cooler than today of no more than 1 degree C warming above normal. We have no choice. There are two parts to engineered direct cooling solutions: emergency response and restoration actions. Some need further research, some do not. These are covered in depth in other places on this site. The first demand of our future is the need to implement temporary emergency cooling and greenhouse gas removal, where “emergency” is the key. In any emergency, what we do is use the tools at hand to immediately save lives and property, then once an emergency response is underway, we strive to implement solution to prevent the emergency from recurring. What this means is best considered with the precautionary approach of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit:
“In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Article 15, The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, June 3-14, 1992
Engineers implement solutions to dangerous problems without certainty as a matter of their profession. They base their assumptions on risk analysis, not the classic statistical certainty of science. This risk analysis allows them to use their professional judgment to ensure they keep us safe, where science does not allow professional judgement to enter into consideration.
Preservation of Our Natural World… Climate change is all about our natural world, of which humans are only a part, a part that is as dependent upon the rest of the natural world as any other natural part of this world. Once the boundary conditions of the evolution of our Earth systems are exceeded, nothing can stop collapse and feedback emissions dwarfing humankind’s except climate restoration back to within evolutionary boundaries, or the natural variation of our old climate at no warmer than 1 degree C above normal or 350 ppm CO2. To ensure no undue risk of incurring untenable natural feedback emissions, we must implement all three aspects of the Climate Triad simultaneously and with great robustness because, these risks we face from tipping collapses are far more meaningful than our current slow, understated climate culture’s “a little further warming is safe” strategy.
