In March, models indicated millions would die from COVID-19. Nations reacted decisively, using unprecedented measures to buy time.

What might this tell us about the use of rapid-acting stopgap measures in a climate emergency? (1/n) https://go.nature.com/35pr8SA 

Disclaimer: comment was written with the brilliant @Oliver_Geden, Masa Sugiyama, and @OlafCorry. But some of what follows may be my own take – all errors, and all US-myopia, are mine. (2/n)

Lockdown measures rapidly spread throughout the world, interacting with a socially amplified risk in a rapid-share media ecosystem of endless preprints, high-profile retractions, and uneven, uncoordinated science communication from official agencies. (3/n)

Post-normal science: and more. The science-policy interface is fully mediatized, and the way it is operating, makes possible measures that were previously thought of as infeasible. (4/n)

Enter solar geoengineering. How would this science-media-policy interface cope with it? Not well, judging by the response to COVID-19. We discuss five parallels in the comment. Here are a few: (5/n)

Narrow metrics seem user-friendly, but they are not our friends. Averages – such as R0 or even IFR – miss uneven dynamics in transmission and occlude risks to specific populations. Trackable case counts became a key metric, and then this metric began to define the solution. (6/n)

Global average temperature has similar problems – it’s merely a proxy for a wider set of desired outcomes, which include things like sustainable development, biodiversity, and more. For climate change as for the pandemic, broader goals are needed. (7/n)

The response to the pandemic also illustrates how emergency measures may be performative – measures without a strong evidence base may be taken just to demonstrate leaders “responding to a threat.” (8/n)

COVID-19 illustrates how we still don't have one singular global society - and research on solar geoengineering needs to better figure out how to cope with this. (9/n)

In the US, lockdowns were introduced as a temporary stopgap that would buy time for confronting the virus, which then morphed into buying time for a vaccine. Stratospheric aerosols are also discussed as a stopgap measure. (10/n) https://rdcu.be/b61nH 

The response to COVID-19 shows how easily a stopgap rationale can fall away. The mediatized focus in the US turned to shaming other people for not wearing masks, not to holding politicians accountable for doing something with bought time. (11/n)

Policymakers still don’t seem to be able to decide if mitigation or suppression is the goal of COVID-19 policy – so it’s no wonder if publics are confused. How would we avoid similar confusion with solar geo? (12/n)

There’s more in the paper, but the key point is – the science-media-policy interface has structural weaknesses and is unlikely to be able to deal with a concept like solar geoengineering. What do we do? (13/n)

We need anticipatory research on solar geo — research that anticipates its use in a variety of suboptimal scenarios — and a pre-developed way of making decisions about its use that draws from a range of expertises and communities. (14/n)

This is not a case in which we want just one set of disciplinary experts framing the problem and the solution. Plenty of people have been saying this for years - but the pandemic illustrates how high the stakes of interdisciplinary failure are. (15/n)