An interesting article. I have a few observations and questions https://twitter.com/ISSUESinST/status/1349698735559892992

These have to be seen in the context of the fact that the authors are insiders who bring their own perspectives https://twitter.com/KevinSurprise/status/1349736944301875210

and who will have thought very carefully about how this piece will be received by other insiders whom they hope to influence.

So it's interesting (and a little depressing) to see it couched in pretty cost/benefit, solutionist terms -- the way it ought to look as a committee agenda item.

Also noticeable that it imagines distributed, university-based programmes, rather than a scary centralised programme. These have the benefit of distributing the spending geographically.

But a dozen groups and three funding organisations makes for a pretty complex show, one which will either be only very loosely coordinated, or in which the co-ordinator will have a lot of power)

Also noticeable that it is very American. No international collaboration at the offset. My impression is that the imagined federal advisory committee would be composed of Americans (not sure if FACA requires that)

And it is very technical/technocratic. It positions its proposal as a quest for reduced uncertainty in specific key questions somehow sitting in between "proponents and opponents" of #solargeoengineering

(what proponents? dunno. But the structure of these arguments requires there to be some)

and establishes this task as necessary, asserting that in the absence of what this programme seeks to achieve it not yet possible/proper (the distinction is blurred, helpfully if possibly unintentionally) to even *begin* (my emphasis) to assess any possible future role for SRM.

It thus imagines a role both outside politics (neither an opponent not a proponent) and above/prior to politics (which cannot start without its imprimatur)

I'd be interested in whether others broadly agree with this assessment of where they are at.

A few other questions, first for people who understand DC better than me (eg @kellywanser @JosephMajkut )
Why is NSF not on the list of funding agencies?
Why is the blue-ribbon panel imagined as requiring Senate confirmation for its members? (noting that this would have...

...been written well before there was any knowledge of who controlled the Senate)
And would it be legal or politically possible for that panel to be international in makeup?

For scholars of nuclear attitudes (eg @dropeik )
Is there reliable evidence for their claim that "Congress’s establishment of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety and DOE’s Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee has reduced public unease"?

For those who think from the inside about #geoengineering research agendas (eg @peteirvine, @DKeithClimate ):
Is it true that "experts agree that substantial controlled, atmospheric experiments are needed to validate [the] duration and distribution of [SAI] cooling"

For those who follow these things closely (eg @geoengineering1 @JesseLReynolds):
Is this the highest-profile call for such specific action that has been made publicly?

And lastly, and most deeply inside baseball: is saying that #SRM means solar radiation *mitigation,* as opposed to *management*, a thing now? If so is there a reason for this cryptic shift of the signified (CSoS)?

(Parting nifty irrelevant anecdote. My favourite CSoS was Boeing/NASA/USAF shifting the meaning of IUS, the name of a thing used to get satellites out of the space shuttle, from "Interim Upper Stage" to "Inertial Upper Stage"

which was done because it had become embarrassingly obvious that the follow-on all-singing all-dancing platonic ideal of an upper stage for which the IUS was a mere stop gap would never see the light of day)