SUNLIGHT REFLECTION DIALOGUE: A Roadmap for Research in Emergency Medicine for Climate
On July 27, 2021, Sam Altman, Chris Sacca, Bill Trenchard, and Rachel Pritzker hosted a private briefing featuring leading research efforts in the most promising approach to rapidly cooling the climate—increasing the reflection of sunlight from the atmosphere, or “solar climate intervention”.
EVENT VIDEO: This unprecedented event reviewed the latest developments in solar climate intervention research with leading researchers from US agencies and labs, academia and commercial laboratories. It also included briefing on a ground-breaking 5-year roadmap to assess and develop the most promising approaches as well as a discussion among attendees on issues and considerations in the space. (Click the links below to navigate to featured parts of the video. Enter password: Silverlining)
Opening: Kelly Wanser, Executive Director, SilverLining
Safe Climate Research Initiative: Alex Wong, Research Director, SilverLining, previously DARPA
Stratospheric Intervention Experimental Research: David Fahey, Director, Chemical Sciences Division, NOAA and Don Bingaman, VPE Aerospace Consulting (“Old Ghosts”), previously, Boeing Phantomworks
Climate Impacts Modeling: Jean-Francois Lamarque , Director, Global Climate Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research and James W. Hurrell, Scott Presidential Chair, Environmental Science and Engineering, CSU, previously, Director, NCAR
Marine Cloud Brightening Research, Sarah Doherty, Program Director Marine Cloud Brightening Project and Adjunct Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Washington; Sean Garner, CEO, Bright Technologies, previously, VP Research, PARC
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Global warming has reached new records with risks of catastrophic changes within a decade or two. The COVID-19 crisis has brought to light our vulnerability to systemic problems which, when unchecked, can grow exponentially. Climate change is this kind of problem, one for which today we lack emergency medicine.
Reducing greenhouse gases is foundational to addressing climate change, but even in the most optimistic projections, emissions reduction and carbon removal efforts require many decades to take effect, leaving us without insurance against near-term catastrophic risks.
Scientific assessments suggest that the most promising way to reduce warming in the near-term is enhancing the natural cooling of Earth’s atmosphere by increasing the reflection of sunlight through scattering particles in the stratosphere or brightening clouds. Such approaches could act on the climate system very quickly—even within a few years. But today, we have very little information on these approaches, and scientists believe it could take 5-10 years of concerted work to assess them. Yet the global level of investment in research is still very small. While this field will ultimately require government and multilateral investment, philanthropic funding today may be critical to put us on track to answer foundational questions and identify options within a decade.
Last year, SilverLining launched a groundbreaking research fund to help accelerate scientific understanding of near-term climate risks and rapid responses. With remarkable success in initiating new programs and catalyzing U.S. federal agency efforts, the Safe climate Research Initiative (SCRI) is poised to help advance a 5-year effort across private and public efforts to assess sunlight reflection approaches and expand the information infrastructure required for managing climate.
Photographs courtesy of Christopher Michel