I did a double check of the nuclear fission energy abundance calculation and was glad to see it align with use of breeder reactors as calculated here by Nick Touran https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html. Apparently you get even more resource when you consider erosion in rivers bringing crustal uranium into the sea for seawater extraction.
I think increasing energy consumption and geoengineering are both inevitable.
One quibble about your point that "the same argument [against SRM] could be applied to the power grid, our water and sewage infrastructure, our agricultural systems, the global supply chain, and pretty much every other system that constitutes industrial civilization" -- even if all those systems failed, the Earth would still be *habitable* by a non-industrial civilisation, whereas with termination shock that's not the case. Depending on your views about how bad total human extinction is vs a (potentially temporary) civilisational collapse, and your probability on there being a civilisational collapse, this might be an important difference.
When the power grid goes out, there are massive problems immediately. If an SRM system stopped working we wouldn't even feel any effects for a months. There would be plenty of time to restart it.
If SRM was broken permanently… I still don't think it would lead to human extinction or even civilizational collapse. Remember, the estimates of the damages of unmitigated climate change are measured in *percentage of world GDP.* It would be a cost and would make us poorer. It wouldn't exterminate us.
If the power grid was suddenly broken permanently, it would be more likely to lead to civilizational collapse than SRM, I expect!
And again, SRM would be really simple! It's just mining sulfur (which we do all the time anyway) and sending it up in balloons. We can have many, independent stations doing this, with no single point of failure and very little in the way of correlated failure modes.
My one quibble is that hydrocarbon combustion has other important negative side effects on human flourishing besides CO2 emissions. The big one is particulate pollution, which as I understand it (there was a recent Our World in Data on this) causes large numbers of premature deaths every year. Whatever the efficient fix for this may be, it is something we should want to fix independently of climate control.
Solar radiation management is wildly under researched. Even assuming we reach net zero by 2050 or so, the effect ls of climate change are already starting to be felt, and we'll be stuck with elevated temperatures for centuries (without widespread deployment of negative emission technologies). If you believe climate change is terrible for humanity, SRM is the only way we can keep temperatures under control until carbon removal is scaled up.
I wrote something explaining this a few years ago:
It's well-researched. Institutional science has created bottlenecks that make it nearly impossible to test ideas in the real world, even when we have strong natural analogs and urgent reasons to move quickly.
For example, despite the clear cooling effects observed from Mt. Pinatubo and Hunga Tonga, we’ve seen decades of government-funded SAI research get stuck in modeling loops. There’s been virtually no field experimentation (except for Make Sunsets), in large part because NIH/NSF and similar bodies tend to fund theoretical work over empirical trials, especially if the topic is politically sensitive.
We're breaking that cycle with field deployments while figuring out a financially sustainable path to cool Earth while institutional science continues to run modeling loops asking for more money to run more modeling.
"we should make a virtue of human agency and the mastery of nature".
I agree with the first part, but I suspect if we take on nature as you propose and try to make it yield to our demands we will lose the battle sooner or later.
Eventually natural and synthetic resources will run out even at the current rate of consumption - which continues to increase around the world.
I believe one viable solution may be to change our thoughts and actions about the way we should live. How we go about this is a completely different topic.
I have been an avid follower of your work and find it deeply influential in shaping my perspectives. I believe it is high time for humanists to engage more directly with environmentalists, but in a manner that avoids the pitfalls of climate denial and anti-scientific rhetoric that characterized much of the anti-environmentalist movement in the 2010s. This approach inadvertently granted environmentalists an aura of scientific legitimacy in the public eye.
Environmentalists often espouse views that are anti-scientific, particularly in areas such as economics and agriculture. Historically, they have been associated with anti-vaccination sentiments and alternative medicine, positions that have since been largely relegated to the radical right. Mainstream criticisms of environmentalism often fail to address its core premises, instead focusing on factual inaccuracies or pragmatic shortcomings. These critiques implicitly accept the environmentalist notion that industrial civilization is a sin against nature and that humanity should feel shame for disrupting the "natural" order.
Eco-modernists, while applying pragmatism and utilitarian logic, do not challenge the foundational beliefs of environmentalism. I propose a more radical approach: a human supremacism movement that explicitly rejects the moral framework of environmentalism. This movement would advocate for the abolition of laws protecting natural habitats, endangered species, and animal rights, viewing plants and animals solely as public or private property, subservient to human needs and desires.
While recognizing the reality of climate change and air pollution, this movement would focus on mitigation through rigorous cost-benefit analyses, not as atonement for past sins, but as a means of asserting human dominance over nature. The concept of ecological harmony is a misnomer; it is merely a temporary equilibrium resulting from stable conditions. The pre-industrial ecological balance is not inherently sacred, and many species will inevitably struggle to adapt to changing circumstances.
In my vision, human destiny lies in ascending to a demigod-like status, where all animals and habitats exist to serve our needs for sustenance, companionship, or entertainment. Regarding climate impacts, a warming scenario of 2.3-2.9 degrees Celsius is more likely than the often-cited 4 degrees, given current technological and demographic trends. Slowing global economic growth from 3% to 1% until 2100 would result in a world approximately 4-4.5 times poorer, akin to the per capita difference between the United States and Argentina. Thus, continuing the use of fossil fuels while allowing green energy to compete on its own merits is a prudent strategy. Moreover, experts frequently underestimate human adaptability, suggesting that the actual costs of climate adaptation will likely be lower than projected.
I would like to get your thoughts on the matter since I deeply respect your work.
This was well-written. My objection is that non-human animals are still conscious and suffer greatly. That needs to be taken into account, but it doesn’t conflict with most of what you’ve written.
For example, I think animal farming is the cheapest suffering to offset at the moment. I cannot find a good moral argument that it is bad if chickens, cows, and other livestock live relatively good lives and are then slaughtered for our consumption. As long as we take measures to internalize the negative externalities (suffering) of our dominion over nature, then we occupy a relatively good place on the moral landscape.
We can’t simply ignore the suffering of other conscious creatures though, as there’s nothing about our own brains that makes us unique in our ability to suffer.
I have never once valued non-human life. I value human life because they can potentially contribute to human civilisation. If you wanna protect animal that's your personal affair. Don't make it the government's problem.
This seems pretty solipsistic, under this rubric it sounds like resources shouldn’t be spent to reduce the suffering of humans that won’t contribute to society in positive-sum ways…
"Anything that matters to humans should be under our control"....and the other millions of species that share the planet with us. Do we control them as well?
Thanks. Not sure we can separate out but will read in depth. I think I can already tell we might have to agree to disagree. The idea of nature as 'red in tooth and claw' as a starting point misses a great deal of the complexity of life which includes a wealth of examples of cooperation and symbiosis etc as well. The model of evolution solely driven solely by survival of fittest as been left behind.
I think mastery over nature is not as aspiration I could ever buy into and will probably result in a dose of humility at some point.
I would be interested to know how much you have looked at the great body of work on systemic perspectives on ecosystems and human governance everything from E.O Wilson to Elinor Ostrom or Wendell Berry to Joanna Macy or Gregory Bateson? There has been loads of debate over the years... I particular the governance aspect of the idea of mastery.
To propose a thermostat for Earth is to risk reaffirming the very separation between humans and nature that led us into crisis. The idea of controlling Earth’s climate as though it were a mechanical system suggests a profound disconnection from the organic complexity and self-regulating patterns of the living planet.
Amazing article. I also wonder what is the impact of using nuclear energy or solar energy on the total flow of energy of earth. If we'll be increasing the energy production/capture by 20-30T Gw in the future, we'll have to account for its direct warming effect.
This is interesting! I had thought of the albedo effect of solar, but hadn’t considered increased warming as a result of pulling energy out of for non-fossil fuel fuel sources like uranium!
I agree climate change is a problem of engineering and economics and these potential solutions merit further investigation as a matter of urgency. However, we should also endeavor to decrease emissions as much as possible and as rapidly as possible within reason and to re-design and create novel technologies and processes to allow us to do so in tandem. Mastering nature is pointless if we kill it in the process!
Thanks for this article. I have been doing a deep dive into solar radiation management, and some of these resources were useful cross-references. I think it could be a great option for a country who has the weather expertise for monitoring its impact and is on track for carbon neutrality.
"a car driving on the highway uses about 80 kW of gasoline" yeah well it burns about 80 kW worth of gasoline, but it *uses* less than 20 kW. Roughly. The rest will abscond as heat. An electric car on the other hand uses those 20 kW directly (more or less).
Climate control is certainly one useful way to live with a varying climate. But mitigation and adaptation are also reasonable approaches, depending on the specific issues being discussed. Consider the way that cars and airplanes react to inclement weather - neither of them will travel during the height of a hurricane, but there's a lot of weather where cars work ok but planes don't, and it's fine, because planes aren't as essential for everyday activities as cars are. Also consider how people in different parts of the US react to different types of weather - cities that get frequent snow invest in city infrastructure for salting and plowing road (allowing things to generally close on the few snowiest days of the year), while places in Texas and the south often just allow things to close on the few light snow days, and in coastal California, many people are fine canceling their plans on the one or two rainiest days of the year since they never have snow days. Trying to fully control these systems so that you never get inconvenienced by them is often a lot more expensive than controlling them just enough that your inconveniences only rise to the level of moderate mitigation.
Some years ago, I read a story in Science News about a study completed immediately after 9/11. Since no jets were flying, there were no condensation trails and therefore a reduced albedo. As I recall, temperatures in the US increased markedly for those several days.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember any more of the details, but the study implies we should fly more jets in the upper atmosphere to produce ice crystals to reflect more sunlight. Better yet, jets spraying water would be even more effective at increasing albedo.
Then you just have to solve the problem of reducing sunlight reaching the surface and reducing plant growth.
I'd love to see the report, but airplane emissions are net warming for the planet. Sulfur dioxide emitted from airplane exhaust initially cools Earth, but since most passenger planes fly in the troposphere, the residence time is weeks, then it falls out, or rain clouds hit the SO2 plumes, and it rains out.
However, since CO2 from the same jet has a longer residence time, hundreds of years, you still have the warming without the constant application of misplaced "sunscreen" in the troposphere. Therefore, you get net warming. Once flights stopped on 9/11, no more SO2 was being applied constantly to keep the albedo up and scientists observed a "termination shock" with higher temp where these flight paths used to exist.
This is the same phenomenon with IMO2020, in which commercial ships reduced SO2 emissions from their exhaust. They didn't bother addressing the GHGs which continue to heat up Earth, just the badly deployed SO2 which was slightly keeping our planet cool.
Water traps heat, and is a greenhouse gas, and does not increase albedo.
This is why we're proposing SO2 in the STRATOSPHERE. Residence time is 1-3 years and is 20x more effective than tropospheric emissions of SO2, meaning you have to apply the sunscreen less in terms of volume and frequency.
Thanks for the mention Jason! If people want to help us scale up to larger deployments of stratospheric aerosol injection, please buy some Cooling Credits: https://makesunsets.com/products/join-the-next-balloon-launch-and-cool-the-planet
I did a double check of the nuclear fission energy abundance calculation and was glad to see it align with use of breeder reactors as calculated here by Nick Touran https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html. Apparently you get even more resource when you consider erosion in rivers bringing crustal uranium into the sea for seawater extraction.
I think increasing energy consumption and geoengineering are both inevitable.
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-we-cant-leave-nature-alone this was one of my favorite articles that helped me realize how the endless loop of environmental fix to unintended consequence has been going on for a long time and will never stop.
Geoengineering is just the grandest scale we’ve ever operated on.
This was an interesting read!
One quibble about your point that "the same argument [against SRM] could be applied to the power grid, our water and sewage infrastructure, our agricultural systems, the global supply chain, and pretty much every other system that constitutes industrial civilization" -- even if all those systems failed, the Earth would still be *habitable* by a non-industrial civilisation, whereas with termination shock that's not the case. Depending on your views about how bad total human extinction is vs a (potentially temporary) civilisational collapse, and your probability on there being a civilisational collapse, this might be an important difference.
When the power grid goes out, there are massive problems immediately. If an SRM system stopped working we wouldn't even feel any effects for a months. There would be plenty of time to restart it.
If SRM was broken permanently… I still don't think it would lead to human extinction or even civilizational collapse. Remember, the estimates of the damages of unmitigated climate change are measured in *percentage of world GDP.* It would be a cost and would make us poorer. It wouldn't exterminate us.
If the power grid was suddenly broken permanently, it would be more likely to lead to civilizational collapse than SRM, I expect!
And again, SRM would be really simple! It's just mining sulfur (which we do all the time anyway) and sending it up in balloons. We can have many, independent stations doing this, with no single point of failure and very little in the way of correlated failure modes.
The geoengineering part was super interesting thank you Jason. I love reading these
My one quibble is that hydrocarbon combustion has other important negative side effects on human flourishing besides CO2 emissions. The big one is particulate pollution, which as I understand it (there was a recent Our World in Data on this) causes large numbers of premature deaths every year. Whatever the efficient fix for this may be, it is something we should want to fix independently of climate control.
Yes, good point. Doesn't natural gas burn pretty cleanly though?
As far as hydrocarbons go, yes.
1/10th the deaths per TWh as coal.
1/6th the deaths per TWh as oil.
1/2 the deaths per TWh as biomass.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
No
Solar radiation management is wildly under researched. Even assuming we reach net zero by 2050 or so, the effect ls of climate change are already starting to be felt, and we'll be stuck with elevated temperatures for centuries (without widespread deployment of negative emission technologies). If you believe climate change is terrible for humanity, SRM is the only way we can keep temperatures under control until carbon removal is scaled up.
I wrote something explaining this a few years ago:
https://jpod.substack.com/p/why-net-zero-is-not-enough-to-avert?r=gsf0v
It's well-researched. Institutional science has created bottlenecks that make it nearly impossible to test ideas in the real world, even when we have strong natural analogs and urgent reasons to move quickly.
For example, despite the clear cooling effects observed from Mt. Pinatubo and Hunga Tonga, we’ve seen decades of government-funded SAI research get stuck in modeling loops. There’s been virtually no field experimentation (except for Make Sunsets), in large part because NIH/NSF and similar bodies tend to fund theoretical work over empirical trials, especially if the topic is politically sensitive.
We're breaking that cycle with field deployments while figuring out a financially sustainable path to cool Earth while institutional science continues to run modeling loops asking for more money to run more modeling.
I had meant real world experiments but I will obviously defer to your superior experience!
Thank you for clarifying. I agree, field studies are wildly under researched!
"we should make a virtue of human agency and the mastery of nature".
I agree with the first part, but I suspect if we take on nature as you propose and try to make it yield to our demands we will lose the battle sooner or later.
Eventually natural and synthetic resources will run out even at the current rate of consumption - which continues to increase around the world.
I believe one viable solution may be to change our thoughts and actions about the way we should live. How we go about this is a completely different topic.
I'll address this in chapter 7!
Great, I look forward to reading it.
**Advocating for a Human Supremacism Movement**
Hello Jason,
I have been an avid follower of your work and find it deeply influential in shaping my perspectives. I believe it is high time for humanists to engage more directly with environmentalists, but in a manner that avoids the pitfalls of climate denial and anti-scientific rhetoric that characterized much of the anti-environmentalist movement in the 2010s. This approach inadvertently granted environmentalists an aura of scientific legitimacy in the public eye.
Environmentalists often espouse views that are anti-scientific, particularly in areas such as economics and agriculture. Historically, they have been associated with anti-vaccination sentiments and alternative medicine, positions that have since been largely relegated to the radical right. Mainstream criticisms of environmentalism often fail to address its core premises, instead focusing on factual inaccuracies or pragmatic shortcomings. These critiques implicitly accept the environmentalist notion that industrial civilization is a sin against nature and that humanity should feel shame for disrupting the "natural" order.
Eco-modernists, while applying pragmatism and utilitarian logic, do not challenge the foundational beliefs of environmentalism. I propose a more radical approach: a human supremacism movement that explicitly rejects the moral framework of environmentalism. This movement would advocate for the abolition of laws protecting natural habitats, endangered species, and animal rights, viewing plants and animals solely as public or private property, subservient to human needs and desires.
While recognizing the reality of climate change and air pollution, this movement would focus on mitigation through rigorous cost-benefit analyses, not as atonement for past sins, but as a means of asserting human dominance over nature. The concept of ecological harmony is a misnomer; it is merely a temporary equilibrium resulting from stable conditions. The pre-industrial ecological balance is not inherently sacred, and many species will inevitably struggle to adapt to changing circumstances.
In my vision, human destiny lies in ascending to a demigod-like status, where all animals and habitats exist to serve our needs for sustenance, companionship, or entertainment. Regarding climate impacts, a warming scenario of 2.3-2.9 degrees Celsius is more likely than the often-cited 4 degrees, given current technological and demographic trends. Slowing global economic growth from 3% to 1% until 2100 would result in a world approximately 4-4.5 times poorer, akin to the per capita difference between the United States and Argentina. Thus, continuing the use of fossil fuels while allowing green energy to compete on its own merits is a prudent strategy. Moreover, experts frequently underestimate human adaptability, suggesting that the actual costs of climate adaptation will likely be lower than projected.
I would like to get your thoughts on the matter since I deeply respect your work.
This was well-written. My objection is that non-human animals are still conscious and suffer greatly. That needs to be taken into account, but it doesn’t conflict with most of what you’ve written.
For example, I think animal farming is the cheapest suffering to offset at the moment. I cannot find a good moral argument that it is bad if chickens, cows, and other livestock live relatively good lives and are then slaughtered for our consumption. As long as we take measures to internalize the negative externalities (suffering) of our dominion over nature, then we occupy a relatively good place on the moral landscape.
We can’t simply ignore the suffering of other conscious creatures though, as there’s nothing about our own brains that makes us unique in our ability to suffer.
I have never once valued non-human life. I value human life because they can potentially contribute to human civilisation. If you wanna protect animal that's your personal affair. Don't make it the government's problem.
This seems pretty solipsistic, under this rubric it sounds like resources shouldn’t be spent to reduce the suffering of humans that won’t contribute to society in positive-sum ways…
It usually works out but theoretically yes.
"Anything that matters to humans should be under our control"....and the other millions of species that share the planet with us. Do we control them as well?
We control the ones that matter to us. See here for my take on our relationship to nature: https://newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/the-surrender-of-the-gods-part-2
Thanks. Not sure we can separate out but will read in depth. I think I can already tell we might have to agree to disagree. The idea of nature as 'red in tooth and claw' as a starting point misses a great deal of the complexity of life which includes a wealth of examples of cooperation and symbiosis etc as well. The model of evolution solely driven solely by survival of fittest as been left behind.
I think mastery over nature is not as aspiration I could ever buy into and will probably result in a dose of humility at some point.
I would be interested to know how much you have looked at the great body of work on systemic perspectives on ecosystems and human governance everything from E.O Wilson to Elinor Ostrom or Wendell Berry to Joanna Macy or Gregory Bateson? There has been loads of debate over the years... I particular the governance aspect of the idea of mastery.
To propose a thermostat for Earth is to risk reaffirming the very separation between humans and nature that led us into crisis. The idea of controlling Earth’s climate as though it were a mechanical system suggests a profound disconnection from the organic complexity and self-regulating patterns of the living planet.
Amazing article. I also wonder what is the impact of using nuclear energy or solar energy on the total flow of energy of earth. If we'll be increasing the energy production/capture by 20-30T Gw in the future, we'll have to account for its direct warming effect.
This is interesting! I had thought of the albedo effect of solar, but hadn’t considered increased warming as a result of pulling energy out of for non-fossil fuel fuel sources like uranium!
I agree climate change is a problem of engineering and economics and these potential solutions merit further investigation as a matter of urgency. However, we should also endeavor to decrease emissions as much as possible and as rapidly as possible within reason and to re-design and create novel technologies and processes to allow us to do so in tandem. Mastering nature is pointless if we kill it in the process!
Thanks for this article. I have been doing a deep dive into solar radiation management, and some of these resources were useful cross-references. I think it could be a great option for a country who has the weather expertise for monitoring its impact and is on track for carbon neutrality.
"a car driving on the highway uses about 80 kW of gasoline" yeah well it burns about 80 kW worth of gasoline, but it *uses* less than 20 kW. Roughly. The rest will abscond as heat. An electric car on the other hand uses those 20 kW directly (more or less).
Sure, almost all applications of energy lose some waste to heat… except for generating heat.
Electric cars are about twice as energy efficient I think? So an EV would use something like 40 kW of electricity in that scenario.
Basically I was talking about final energy and you're talking about useful energy. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-definitions
All valid definitions, as long as you're aware which one you're working with.
Climate control is certainly one useful way to live with a varying climate. But mitigation and adaptation are also reasonable approaches, depending on the specific issues being discussed. Consider the way that cars and airplanes react to inclement weather - neither of them will travel during the height of a hurricane, but there's a lot of weather where cars work ok but planes don't, and it's fine, because planes aren't as essential for everyday activities as cars are. Also consider how people in different parts of the US react to different types of weather - cities that get frequent snow invest in city infrastructure for salting and plowing road (allowing things to generally close on the few snowiest days of the year), while places in Texas and the south often just allow things to close on the few light snow days, and in coastal California, many people are fine canceling their plans on the one or two rainiest days of the year since they never have snow days. Trying to fully control these systems so that you never get inconvenienced by them is often a lot more expensive than controlling them just enough that your inconveniences only rise to the level of moderate mitigation.
Sure, that makes sense, the right overall plan is usually some portfolio of approaches
Some years ago, I read a story in Science News about a study completed immediately after 9/11. Since no jets were flying, there were no condensation trails and therefore a reduced albedo. As I recall, temperatures in the US increased markedly for those several days.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember any more of the details, but the study implies we should fly more jets in the upper atmosphere to produce ice crystals to reflect more sunlight. Better yet, jets spraying water would be even more effective at increasing albedo.
Then you just have to solve the problem of reducing sunlight reaching the surface and reducing plant growth.
SO2 is more efficient I'm pretty sure!
We only need to reflect about 0.2% of incoming sunlight to rebalance the energy flows, so no need to worry about plants.
I'd love to see the report, but airplane emissions are net warming for the planet. Sulfur dioxide emitted from airplane exhaust initially cools Earth, but since most passenger planes fly in the troposphere, the residence time is weeks, then it falls out, or rain clouds hit the SO2 plumes, and it rains out.
However, since CO2 from the same jet has a longer residence time, hundreds of years, you still have the warming without the constant application of misplaced "sunscreen" in the troposphere. Therefore, you get net warming. Once flights stopped on 9/11, no more SO2 was being applied constantly to keep the albedo up and scientists observed a "termination shock" with higher temp where these flight paths used to exist.
This is the same phenomenon with IMO2020, in which commercial ships reduced SO2 emissions from their exhaust. They didn't bother addressing the GHGs which continue to heat up Earth, just the badly deployed SO2 which was slightly keeping our planet cool.
Water traps heat, and is a greenhouse gas, and does not increase albedo.
Here's a handy graph on the differences between GHGs and Aerosols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing#/media/File:Physical_Drivers_of_climate_change.svg
This is why we're proposing SO2 in the STRATOSPHERE. Residence time is 1-3 years and is 20x more effective than tropospheric emissions of SO2, meaning you have to apply the sunscreen less in terms of volume and frequency.
Regarding plant growth, since we're diffusing a small amount of light, and we don't touch CO2 emissions via CO2 fertilization it could increase crop yield: https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/files/tkg/files/fan_et_al_2021_nature_food.pdf?m=1622034220