News Roundup: New SRM Reports, Managing Risk, and Emotions and SRM

Dr. Pete Irvine: [00:00:00] Welcome to the April 2025 News Roundup of the Climate Reflections Podcast. Each month we release a roundup of news related to sunlight reflection methods, or SRM from the last month. I’m your host, Dr. Pete Irvine, and today I’m joined by two researchers who study the social and legal aspects of SRM. Would you each mind introducing yourself?

Chad Baum: I’m Chad Baum. I’m an Assistant Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, and also a co-investigator on the GENIE and ELEVATE Projects. Genie: GeoEngineering and Negative Emissions in Europe.

Julie Vinders: And I’m Julie Vinders. I’m Senior Research Analyst at Trilateral Research and my background’s in international, in the EU Environmental law, and I’m currently leading a legal analysis of SRM as part of the EU funded co-CREATE projects which looks at defining and identifying conditions for responsible research into SRM.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Great! So let’s start with an article by one of our guests. Julie, you co-authored a new piece, [00:01:00] “Geoengineering, the Precautionary Principle and the Search for Climate Safety,” with Gareth Davies. What is the precautionary principle?

Julie Vinders: So, the precautionary principle is a principle of international and EU law, and it’s, uh, essentially to facilitate decision making or to guide decision making in a risk environment. It enables states to take precautionary measures, whether it’s a threat of serious or irreversible harm to either the environment or to human health. And states essentially have a right to take those measures and in certain circumstances, might even have an obligation to take precautionary measures despite a lack of scientific certainty. So even if the science is not conclusive, states, uh, might be able to take precautionary measures to prevent that risk of harm from materializing.

Dr. Pete Irvine: And is that kind of in contrast to normal legal procedures, I don’t know, where you need to prove that something is harmful to get rid of it?

Julie Vinders: It’s more as a facilitative principle to facilitate the prevention of harm. So [00:02:00] generally environmental harm is about preventing harm to the environment. So, states have an obligation to not harm the environment of other states but in certain circumstances where there’s no conclusive evidence, that that risk will materialize, this principle is essentially enabling states to act as a precaution. So it’s also subject to continuous review of those measures as there might be more clarity around the risk than the science behind it, but is essentially an enabler for states to act from a precautionary ground to prevent possible harm that might otherwise uh, occur.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Now I’ve seen the precautionary principle invoked to argue against SRM, uh, and even against SRM research. Could you give the case for that position?

Julie Vinders: There’s arguments essentially for and against SRM, and then there’s obviously, as you said, the distinction between SRM use or developments and then [00:03:00] research on, on the other side.

So, SRM was originally proposed, ironically, as a measure against catastrophic climate change. It’s seen as a measure that could shave off the peak warming and that’s kind of where the original thinking came from. But obviously SRM has its inherent risks and uncertainties as well so there are calls to restrict SRM on precautionary grounds.

So the risks are in a way, symmetrical. So on the one hand, you’ve got risks of climate change with SRM would be a measure against, you could frame that as a precautionary response or a precautionary thinking. But on the other hand, you could apply precautionary thinking to SRM itself. There have been various calls to restrict SRM use, but also SRM research and the risks or concerns that are being raised when it comes to SRM research are not solely focused on environmental risk, but the [00:04:00] concerns are more around the social and political consequences that SRM research might have in a sense that it could, for example, create a moral hazards, it could legitimize the idea of SRM as a valid climate option and therefore distract from climate mitigations and cutting emissions, et cetera.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So you were saying that the precautionary principle, to some extent, it could be applied symmetrically to this problem. You know, there’s the risks of climate change that could motivate SRM, and then there’s the risks of SRM that could motivate not doing it on precautionary grounds. Has it been applied symmetrically for the most part in the field, or not?

Julie Vinders: What you often see is that the precautionary principle is invoked by both proponents and opponents of SRM, and SRM research more specifically I would say. But pro proponents essentially see it as a necessary evil and something that we should at least prepare for by conducting research and developing a [00:05:00] deeper understanding. Uh, but what you quite often see as well is that it’s applied when talking about the risks of SRM.

So it’s invoked to essentially restrict SRM deployment and SRM research to  some extent as well. But if it’s only applied to SRM, it kind of fails to take into consideration the risks of not considering SRM as an option. So what are essentially the risks of the world, of climate change, where we have not researched SRM or gathered the scientific knowledge to understand if SRM deployment is a viable option at all? And that could come­—arguably comes, with its own risks of ill informants or unilateral deployments or scenarios where we wish we had researched SRM. So I think quite often, uh, SRM is sort of focused [00:06:00] in, uh, in terms of, you know, talking about the risks of SRM, but then that should really be balanced with the risk of not engaging with SRM.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So I guess I take it that the precautionary principle doesn’t provide clear guidance either way, whether we should proceed or whether we should not. But does it give us other suggestions for how to proceed in this field?

Julie Vinders: That’s essentially the point of the precautionary principle. It’s, it’s not prescriptive as a legal principle, it doesn’t lead you to a specific outcome but the point is rather that it’s a procedural requirement. A requirement to consider all types of risks of both action as well as inaction and then the outcome or the measures that are then designed or the policy decisions that are then made are within policy discretion. So it’s up to policy makers and that might be value based, et cetera but[00:07:00] the point of the precautionary principle is that all types of risks and all possible scenarios are essentially considered great.

Dr. Pete Irvine: What’s the one big takeaway then from your article?

Julie Vinders: Well, one of the main findings relates to a recent report by The Scientific Advice Mechanism to the European Union.

This was requested by the College of Commissioners to talk about solar radiation modification and its risks, and it refers to the precautionary principle, but it kind of does that asymmetric application where it applies precaution only to the risks of SRM. And I think what our research paper highlights is that even though the conclusions might still be the same, it is important to apply precaution to both the risks of SRM as well as the risks of not engaging or not researching SRM.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the ideal outcome would be achieving net zero and cutting emissions to a level [00:08:00] where we keep global warming to a minimum, but that fails to acknowledge the risk that we don’t achieve the best-case scenario outcome. So we should, from a precautionary perspective, also plan for the worst-case scenario.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Well, I guess Chad, um, do you pick up on sort of the strands of this precautionary principle or precautionary arguments in your public perception work?

Chad Baum: No, it’s an interesting question. It’s just a complicated one. So there is, I would say it’s a very important paper and it’s one that needs to be emphasized, that oftentimes the precautionary principle is almost used by certain NGOs or actors, you know, as a blunt tool against any kind of research, any kind of deployment, and you see this a bit underlying some of the calls for a non-use moratorium.

I would say as someone who was a science writer and was involved in the SAPEA report, the European Commission Report, that we found it very [00:09:00] important to not just have the precautionary principle applied in this way, but also mention things like a risk-risk framing, which is, I think speaking to what Julie’s talked about, but also mentioning that the precautionary principle by certain actors is also used to highlight that, you know, it can be for the use and deployment, or at least research of SRM as well.

So, as far as how it affects publics, I do think it breaks through, right? If you’re being told that only the risks matter and it’s, you know, that SRM necessarily only has these negative aspects, and that’s something that we’ve seen in the research on public perceptions, uh, does break through and does inform how people view this technology.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Well, speaking of focusing on the negative aspects of SRM, there was a recent report from the Umweltbundesamt, which is the German Environment Agency, it certainly makes this position clear. The key messages are titled, SRM is not Climate Action [00:10:00] and its first bullet point opens with “SRM is to be rejected”. And yeah, their policy recommendations broadly align with the non-use agreements, so it calls for prohibiting not only deployment, but also field experiments and I think explicitly, the normalization of SRM is not a policy option and not a climate solution.

I think something worth noting, Dirk Messner, who’s the head of the Umweltbundesamt, was one of the co-authors of the original non-use agreement which might explain some of this. Chad, what’s your perspective of the findings of this report and their approach to the topic?

Chad Baum: You know, the headlines that you take away in terms of SRM not being climate action recommendations would seem to signal the Umweltbundesamt being very negative when it comes to SRM. But actually the the content of the inner report, if I can use that terminology, it’s fairly balanced. You know, I think it’s chapters one through seven or eight. It’s a pretty fair reading of the literature without any [00:11:00] sort of commentary, so you almost need to take that kind of kernel at the middle and then distinguish it from what comes after. But I would say they play fast and loose with a lot of their conclusions that don’t really reflect their interior findings.

So it is kind of a strange report in that sense. Maybe the main authors wrote one sort of report and then what was decided to be done with it by the higher ups or the people that write the recommendations was maybe a bit of a distinct perspective, and by the way, you see this in a lot of these political reports, right?

Dr. Pete Irvine: What influence do reports the Umweltbundesamt have within Germany? Are these widely read? Does anyone get beyond the first page of key messages? Do you think Germany, the German government, might follow their recommendations?

Chad Baum: So we do know that the Umweltbundesamt is very strongly connected to certain parts, certain environmental NGOs. So there are those parties that will pick up on this, and then will use that for speaking in the [00:12:00] media. And as someone who, while living in Germany, was admittedly a member of the German Greens, I can tell you that some members of that organization will also pick up on it. So, you know, there’s a new coalition coming out. Whether or not the CDU and SPD  are actually going to be making use of it, I would be doubtful. But there will be sections of the German government that form a sort of complex that will, you know, speak out against it in this way.

Dr. Pete Irvine: What was your take, Julie?

Julie Vinders: Yeah, I [have] less [of] this sort of knowledge of how German, government works with German Environment Agency but from what I could understand is that it is Germany’s main environmental protection agency, as you see, kind of fulfilling a similar role as the scientific advice mechanism to the European Union or other environmental in other countries, and they conduct scientific research. They are responsible for the implementation of environmental laws; they provide policy advice. They’re [00:13:00] essentially the go-to for the German government when it comes to requesting scientific advice on these sorts of matters. So I think it will be taken into consideration and it will inform their position to some extent.

Dr. Pete Irvine: I saw they did some legal analysis. Did you look into that?

Julie Vinders: I did, yes. And I thought, I actually agree with, with Chad’s comments on the report. I thought it was quite a comprehensive, um, overview of the, of the current legal, uh, legal framework. I’m currently doing a similar legal analysis for the Co-CREATE project so yeah, looking into very similar legal frameworks and so I thought the legal overview that they provide is quite comprehensive.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Yeah. I guess, um, after reading the, the key messages, I was expecting, uh, the kind of one-sided application of the precautionary principle that we discussed, but, um, I didn’t really see much mention of the precautionary principle in there.

Julie Vinders: No. And then it’s funny to see that in the, um, in the conclusion or the [00:14:00] recommendations at the end, they do rely heavily on the precautionary principle and they invoke the general prohibition on SRM as a precautionary requisite. That’s, I think the, the wording that they use, which is quite interesting because that is then a quite one-sided application of the precautionary principle, in my opinion.

Dr. Pete Irvine: In contrast to the German Environment Agency, the US-based think tank Council on Foreign Relations launched its Climate Realism Initiative, and I’ll just quote from them in their little opening here. “The Climate Realism Initiative charts a novel, pragmatic course for U.S. energy and climate policy that is both realistic in forecasting climate impacts,” Um, and I think getting a sense of US leverage over the world, “as well as realist in assessing that countries will compete and pursue policies to advance their own interests.”

So, being a little more pessimistic perhaps about the prospects for climate. And yeah, I guess they have these three pillars they put forward that they hope [00:15:00] to have in the US incorporate into their policy. So, one is investment in climate adaptation resilience. Two is ramping up US participation in clean energy. And three is averting catastrophic global climate change. They kind of contextualize this by saying we’re on track for something like 2.5 or 3 Celsius of warming, and so we need to think about this problem differently.

And SRM comes into play in this third category, the averting catastrophic global climate change category. That doesn’t just include SRM, it includes other things like using US power to influence other countries to reduce emissions. So this is sort of a broad reframing of climate policy, but one which includes SRM and exploring that option.

So Julie, this is a sharp contrast to the German conclusions, the German Report, which do you think is trending in policy circles? Are we seeing more of this kind of German, it may be a little unfair to call it a German style precaution about this idea, or a US openness?

Julie Vinders: It’s an interesting perspective [00:16:00] and question. I’m getting the feeling that, I mean, this is based on, on what I’ve seen anyway so I could be wrong, but I feel like the Anglo-American world seems to be more open to incorporating in the debate when talking about, uh, climate change and an acknowledgement of the need to do research. So yeah, this would also be in line with the UK area and their funding for their climate cooling program for, for instance. Um, whereas on, you know the German side seems to take this, um, modest approach of advocating for non-use agreements.

Um, I would say that the international arena is, is still quite careful. It hasn’t really touched upon SRM, uh, although we do see that the IPCC will have a chapter on SRM in the next assessment reports. But what remains in base is, for example, also the 2010 decision by the UN Conventional on Biological [00:17:00] Diversity, essentially calling upon all states to refrain from geoengineering until there’s a scientific justification to engage in those activities. And that decision was recently reinforced by the conference of the parties. So there is that carefulness more at the international level, I would say.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Chad, what’s your take on this?

Chad Baum: Well, as an American not living in America at the moment, it becomes difficult to speak about any quote unquote American stance on anything. You know, we have, we have attempts to ban geoengineering or weather modification at the exact same time in certain states. So you do see some openness, um, with strong caveats in parts of the US. I’d say it’s fair that the UK is a much stronger leader on this as well as some other actors that have, you know, networks in Europe and you know, the Degrees Initiative as well.

Germany [00:18:00] in a sense has always been unique when it comes to the precautionary principle. I used to do research on genetic modification in food and precautionary principle featured there as well. In fact, I had written an article calling for a more constructive precautionary principle when it came to that. So it’s almost just something that’s in the DNA of a lot of segments of the German, you know, apparatus at this moment that they wield their trustee precautionary principle tool whenever it comes to a technology that they don’t want to be involved with. So I don’t know how much that’s unique to SRM versus just an extension of this larger pattern.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Well, let’s shift away from policymakers to the public, and there’s been quite a few pieces out this month on public perceptions. And we have one of the authors of one of those pieces here. So Chad, um, you wrote a piece, uh, that was published in March in the journal Risk Analysis called I think, uh, snappily, A New Hope or Phantom Menace? Exploring Climate, Emotions and Public Support for Climate Interventions Across 30 Countries.

You’ve got this [00:19:00] great big study and this is built on a huge data set that you’ve been working on for a couple of years now. Can you describe that unique data set you’ve got?

Chad Baum: Yeah. Cheers. I should say that sometimes I can’t help myself with titles, and this is one that I wanted to use. If I had known that, uh, it would’ve gotten the traction it did, I may have regretted it in some points, but some people like the title. So, um, yeah, the data set is one that we developed a couple years ago for the Genie Project, and actually this is the last paper that should be published out of that, and I, I will also note that, so it’s 30,000 people, a little bit over that from 30 countries across the world. We conducted it in 19 languages, and it looked at 10 different technologies that are climate intervention technologies. So seven of them, carbon removal, three, solar geoengineering. So those would be stratospheric aerosol injection, marine, cloud brightening, and yeah, mirrors in space, space-based geoengineering.

And by the way, that data set is now fully available online through the Genie Knowledge [00:20:00] Hub. So if anyone wants to dig into that and kind of explore that for your own purposes, feel free to do so.

Dr. Pete Irvine: And we will provide a link to that in our show notes.

Chad Baum: Please do. As far as this specific one, emotions had been something that I had been interested in a while, and there’s kind of a longer backstory here that I won’t get too into, but it was kind of looking at the role of emotions in driving intuition, motivation, you know, and also decision making in this way. And there’s been some, uh, discussions about how, for instance, emotions such as fear or hope, um, have this role of changing how we evaluate things. There’s been a lot of work and consumption in these sorts of aspects. And so I wanted to include this and little did I know actually that when we included it in the survey, that there have been very few studies that have looked at climate emotions on the scale that we had done.

There was one that looked at, uh, yeah, young adults, 16 to 25 had done it in 10 countries. And, you know, Yale with their climate communications had done some others as well but actually this is one of the largest. So [00:21:00] when doing the study, I wanted to and fought for looking at the intersection between climate, emotions and climate intervention, but it was also just very important to look at fear, hope, sadness, worry, anger, and to kind of, you know, model the incidents of these climate emotions at a global level.

Dr. Pete Irvine: And I mean, so I guess those earlier studies were focused on how those relate to climate change itself. I mean did your study also look at, I mean, how are people feeling about climate change?

Chad Baum: It’s surprisingly nuanced, right? I mean the one they report most strongly is climate worry and that, you know, tends to map in the ways you might think with strong relationships to where harm is being experienced or you know, the future incidents of that. But then you get into these kind of interesting discussions. So Europe, you would say overall is a bit lower when it comes to worry, but we then found that actually the countries that were the saddest and often [00:22:00] angriest were in Southern Europe; Greece, Spain, Italy. More so than even their global south counterparts.

Um, one other interesting finding that we’re still wrestling with is the role of hope. So quite broadly when you’re looking at hope, you would expect that hope and worry would track each other inversely, right? So that if you are in a country that you’re more worried about climate change, that you’d also have less hope. But then we had three countries that were some of the poorest in the sample, Dominican Republic, Nigeria, and Kenya that were near the top or at the very top when it came to hope about climate change. What this immediately signaled to us was that the way we might understand hope in a Western rich developed democratic context is very different than how hope is understood in other places. And this is a huge gap in the literature and as far as I’ve seen, there are vanishingly few studies that make any sort of cross country comparison between global North and global South on these emotions.

Dr. Pete Irvine: I mean, I’m thinking, you know, being [00:23:00] a 20 something in a developed country with an aging population and a stagnant economy, it’s quite a different situation from being a young person in a, an economy that’s perhaps growing much more rapidly, where things have been changing in a positive direction and yet climate change poses a graver threat. How much do you think these, that other sort of economic and social circumstances shaped these?

Chad Baum: I mean, the answer is obviously hugely so. We did frame the question in terms of how do you feel when it comes to climate change specifically, but of course this was at the end of the broader survey. But you know, there’s something that seems to be going on when it comes to being a part of a younger, um, country. So what’s almost kind of unbelievable given, you know, the experience of where I live and where I look around is a lot of these countries, the median age is 23, 24. So being a young person means you’re one of this growing generation that will get to decide things and of course for African [00:24:00] countries there there’s the discussion of the African century coming up and all of these things as well.

And I still remember from the first paper we had published. Uh, on this topic that there was one thing that, that turned out that age, so being a part of a younger population explained something like 50% of, you know, the differences in support for SRM. It wasn’t the case for CDR, it pointed out for SRM, and you know, this is just an artifact of the survey that we can’t really explain, but we wanted to highlight it, that there’s something specifically almost about having your whole life in front of you as a country, right? Not living with a gerontocracy like in the US where you may not be able to see power or decision making for 20, 30 years, but being in a country where you can be expected to see your generation take the reins. That seems to have a role in terms of how you’re viewing SRM and its potential use.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So I guess turning back to the emotional side of things here, what was the connection you found between, um, people’s emotions towards climate change and, and their feelings towards SRM?

Chad Baum: Yeah, very [00:25:00] important question. So, the two biggest predictors in terms of emotions were hope and worry, and actually hope was more important overall for SRM and some more engineered forms of CDR. So if you want to say the more controversial ones in contrast to, you know, things like aforestation or soil carbon sequestration, then you see hope playing a very big role.

And in fact, we also had some other covariates, basically just other factors that we had considered such as, you know, do you believe science and technology is a solution to climate change? You know, how much harm have you experienced or do you expect to experience from climate change? And in some of our other studies, these had been some of the most important factors, but, you know, hope about climate change was second or third often when it came to these only behind science and technology as a solution to climate change. So it’s very meaningful.

Dr. Pete Irvine: I wonder how much the field and then the public is divided in terms of optimists [who] are more likely to be optimistic about these things and pessimists and more like to think [00:26:00] it’s going to all go wrong.

Chad Baum: Yeah, it’s a good question. Although, you know, you have to wonder, is that an omitted variable or is it the fact that if you’re a climate negotiator for 20 years, you’re probably a pessimist at this point.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So what were the key takeaways from the paper then, if we haven’t already covered them?

Chad Baum: So number one is just in general, we need more research and preferably done by people in the global South that actually understand what emotions mean in that context to kind of explore these things.

You know, myself getting out of the way with my ignorance about this. We also need to look at the meaning of emotions in climate change and how those intersect with SRM. As a very first step, we showed that hope, not just worry, but hope as well, seems to have an important role. And so what does hope mean in the context of SRM?

I mean, you see some groups, for instance, in the Arctic now, the younger, you know, generation, they’re pushing back on the idea of, you know, SRM only being bad in the Arctic. And so it, it’s important to kind of [00:27:00] intersect age generational differences with how these technologies might be used or viewed.

Julie Vinders: Just to comment on your piece, Chad, I think it’s really, really valuable research and hugely important because we can talk about risk assessments and apply a precautionary principle and take into consideration all types of risks but at the end of the day, the decisions that are then made and the policy decisions are value-based. And I think public perception in terms of what is acceptable risk is very much dependent on people’s emotions, people’s perceptions of risks and values in society. So I think it’s a really, um, really valuable piece of research.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So yeah, Rebecca White wrote, kind of did a deep dive into, public engagement and the controversies around field experiments of solar geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal. The piece had a rather stark title, [00:28:00] Failure to Communicate, but I think was a much more nuanced piece under that.

And so they looked at a number of different experiments, SCoPEx, that was canceled. Um, the University of Washington’s Marine Club brightening thing, which was also canceled. And then The Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, which went ahead after some kind of very nuanced integrated engagement work. Um, what was your take on that piece and, um, on the challenges that researchers face?

Chad Baum: It was a very very interesting piece overall, and I thought well done. And, uh, my colleague, Olivia Fritz from the Genie and Uptake Projects was also quoted in there in her research on public engagement, which I, I think is a very important piece.

But when it comes to the overall failure to communicate, I mean. You know, over the years, I’m sure we’ve all heard some of the stories in SCoPEx and don’t necessarily need to get into those, but I think it was telling between the Marine Cloud brightening trials and you know, RRAP, so we had done a site visit down to RA and talked to them on the Great Barrier Reef and [00:29:00] it has its own story. You know, you talk about charismatic species. The Great Barrier Reef is probably, you know, the quintessential charismatic ecosystem that they’ll do whatever it takes to save, you know, short of stopping, polluting and driving coal trucks through there.

But then they’ll give lots of money to this, and you know RRAP, uh, the cooling and shading part, which is what they call it, is one of only seven things that are funded and it’s got the smallest budget, but there’s a lot of other when it comes to coral reef stabilization and some of these genetic breeding aspects. So it’s part of a broader program around restoration and when you see that, it kind of begins to make more sense, but also in a very, you have to say Australian way, yhere are something like 83 indigenous peoples that have claims on the Great Barrier Reef and so you have to engage with them and center them and some very excellent social scientists did a lot of work to make sure that happened and you should definitely, uh, go and look up some of their work. Stuart Lockie, you know, Karen Vella and Berto Brey and others, but so, you know, that was very important. [00:30:00]

Whereas on the other side, I have to say. I had always heard whispers and sort of scientific presentations about the Washington trial, but then nothing in terms of social science. And then all of a sudden, they pop up on a decommissioned naval aircraft carrier, you know, which of course is now a museum, but still it’s got these strong national security connotations. And then, you know, they don’t engage other than having a piece in the New York Times, which then, whether you want to believe it or not, it allows politicians coverage of saying, we hadn’t heard about this before and we want to cancel it.

So I think one’s a good indication of how to go about these things in a very progressive, you know, public engaging way. And the other, yeah, not covering your hindquarters. Julie, any thoughts?

Julie Vinders: Yeah, no, I think that it’s just indicative of the importance of taking a multidisciplinary approach when designing research experiments and really take into ­—  involve [00:31:00] SSH expertise when designing technical, scientific experiments.

And to also then do some sort of anticipatory work in terms of what it’s potential societal ethical implications might be. And then, yeah, prepare a plan. But then also what I think you saw in the RRAP Program and the engagement that they did there, there was some inherent, or some learnings at least that the program couldn’t really rely on a linear, temporal dynamic. So that, you know, you’ve got to have some flexibility built in to adapt and adjust the program depending on yeah those engagement activities that you’re having, et cetera.

So I think reflexivity and mutual learning and engagement of the research team as well as effective communities, politicians, other wider stakeholders, is really key and some of the lessons that can be taken from this.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Well, to wrap things up, we [00:32:00] have an emotional question from our audience. What gives you hope in the world of climate change or SRM?

Chad Baum: Oh, yeah, I get asked this sometimes and, you know, I will say in the paper one of the other sort of life goals in academia is I finally got an Emily Dickinson quote into the first paragraph. So I often think, you know, hope is kind of, you know, sometimes a luxury in these things.

It’s not necessarily for me, it’s to research, to do what we can to put the information out there and to try to give a fair reading of some of these technologies for others to decide, but it’s something that I don’t necessarily allow myself on a day-to-day basis with doing these things, but that, you know, that’s also above my pay grade in a sense.

Julie Vinders: I think for me, um, what gives me hope is especially nuance and realism in the debates. Um, so rather than picking strong sides, I see hope in having informed discussions that provide context that [00:33:00] consider, um, a broad range of different perspectives. So I think nuance and realism give me, uh, give me hope in the climate debate.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Wow. You can find such nuance and realism to help support informed discussion on our website srm360.org. Um, well, thanks Julie, Chad, for joining us. Um, it was great.

Chad Baum: Thank you.

Julie Vinders: Thanks very much. Thanks for having us.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Thanks for joining us for our monthly news roundup. Tune in for more episodes of Climate Reflections, and if you like this episode, please rate and review us wherever you got this podcast. The Climate Reflections Podcast is a production of SRM 360, a nonprofit knowledge broker supporting an informed evidence-based discussion of sunlight reflection methods. To learn more about SRM or to ask a question, visit srm369.org where you can also find a transcript of this episode with the links to the articles we discussed.