Episode 589 Green Economics

Ulrike Lohmann and Blaz Gasparini are cloud scientists studying the potential climate effects of various geoengineering proposals – especially cirrus cloud thinning, stratospheric aerosol injection, and marine cloud brightening. Adele Buckley asks them whether the Arctic ice could be saved by brightening clouds in a warmer climate.

Mark Winfield is a professor specializing in energy policy; Ronald Baiman is a retired economics professor who promotes climate repair technology now; and Arthur Edelstein is an expert on computer privacy. They discuss the changing public opinion about carbon pricing.

Louis Kriesberg mentioned the protest movement at US universities, and Peter Wadhams commented rom the view in Italy. Bil Leikam and Marilyn Krieger told us about opossums and Alexey Prokhorenko lamented the deteriorating state of affairs in Russia. We talked about how to enforce international law.

Aria McKenna works with the Healthy Planet Action Coalition, a group that endorses a more open exploration of the possibilities of climate repair. Robin Collins and Adele Buckley, both active in the Canadian Pugwash Group, are also now convinced of the necessity of using such technological solutions.

Oswald Petersen is working on an intervention to reduce methane from the atmosphere with iron salt. Peter Fiekowsky, in California, is endorsing this project with enthusiasm. They explain the current plans to climatologist Paul Beckwith and Canadian Pugwashites Adele Buckley and Robin Collins. The new plan is to use airplanes to disseminate the iron instead of their original notion, towers.

In this the Paleocene giant animals roamed the earth. Kate Lyons and Alessandro Mereghetti are scholars studying the extermination of those creatures. Some people believe that a way to protect our climate may be to repopulate our arctic with wooly mammoths and other animals. We discuss this.

On this monthly town hall meeting we discussed human similarities to animals and the nature of mind and the management of nuclear waste. To see the video, audio podcast, transcript, and comments: https://tosavetheworld.ca/episode-596-global-town-hall-mar-2024.

David Mitchell (and his colleague Ehsan Erfani) are pointing out that the high cirrus clouds are like a blanket warming the planet. If we poke holes in the blanket, we release heat. Likewise, by seeding the cirrus clouds in the winter at the poles, we can release excess heat from our world. For the video, audio podcast, transcript and comments: https://tosavetheworld.ca/episode-595-thinning-cirrus-clouds

Gwynne Dyer's new book, Intervention Earth, is really about geoenginering and the urgency of studying the numerous proposals for cooling the planet faster than by simply reducing carbon emissions. For several years, Dyer and his wife Tina Viljoen have been filming numerous interviews with experts on climate, aware earlier than most other people that the only possible way to avert global catastrophe would eventually depend on the application of some such measures at scale. At last, that reality is becoming recognized by scientists, but much more needs to happen to change public opinion in time. Therefore, Dyer devotes the first half of the book to convincing the reader that, like it or not, we must start iimmediately getting ready. An edited transcript of this conversation will appear in the April 2024 issue of Peace Magazine. For the video, audio podcast, transcript, and comments, see https://tosavetheworld.ca/episode-594-its-time-to-geoengineer-climate.

A chat with whale and Arctic experts Edwina Tanner, Krys Chutko, and Joe Roman discuss the impact of the big sea mammals on our environment and the way human activities have decimated them. Surprisingly important is their digestive system, which affects the proliferation of phytoplankton. For the video, audio podcast, transcript and comments: https://tosavetheworld.ca/episode-583-whales-do-poop.