More on the insane solar radiation management program

THIS IS SERIOUS SHIT AND SEEMS TO BECOMING MORE REAL
 I must admit to being impressed by Naomi Wolf’s discussion of geoengineering. She describes the connection between contrails and the strange changes in the skies people are noting around the world without ascribing to the term ‘chemtrails’ or trying to explain what she does not have direct evidence for.

She goes on to talk about the very real moves towards towards geoengineering led by people like David Keith. This is no longer just a theoretical option but is being actively researched althoough, as you will see from the resources below, this is highly controversial.

The following follows on my post from yesterday

Geoengineering: the God complex

A discussion on geoengineering - A debate between Paul Beckwith and Dane Wigington

Monetising the weather – moves towards solar radiation management

ScopEx May Soon Be Underway in Arizona -- Unnamed Material Sprayed in AZ Stratosphere to "Unknown" Environmental Effect, Raising Millions for Harvard

Geoengineering not science fiction? And now about to be funded by HR 353? 

 
Via Facebook 

See our video about HR 353, discussed in Congress this week, which gives $111 million dollars to research for "the weather industry", does identify cloud behavior simulations as a field of study, and then hands over ALL of the tech and IP developed in this vast research funding bonanza, to "the weather industry" in a "tech transfer." Then read the link below which was on the cover of today's NYT Business section -- the Carnegie Foundation has just had a giant DC conference for -- guess who -- WEATHER scientists to MOVE AHEAD WITH GEOENGINEERING EXPERIMENTS and cloud spraying to protect the earth from global warming consequences -- rather than cutting carbon emissions. The writer notes that this policy is more appealing to a Trump presidency (weird creepy weather changing band-aid for warming) than actual cutting of carbon emissions. The feature posits that a global governance structure to basically run the geo-engineered weather, is a likely outcome. 
 
I am not making this up. It is the front page of the business section of today's NYT -- the Carnegie Foundation funded this conference -- and you can see HR 353 for yourself on DailyClout.io soon and in the video here. 

The point of HR 353 is now clear. These MILLIONS in US taxpayers' money is being directed to "academic partners" in global weather experimentation, per both documents, and that in turn is going to create a "US weather industry" of technology in private sector hands, actually using military jets to spray clouds. See the New York Times!!! And note it is on the Business section, not the Science section.

 
This narrative that I always assumed was right in the tinfoil hat category, is now fully documented and confirmed. Instead of investing in cutting carbon emissions and saving our precious planet, our government is handing over millions to the private sector for cloud pattern experimentation in real time, spraying of clouds to reflect back the sun's rays, and the creation of a vastly lucrative and powerful "weather industry" in private hands. 

 
Should this bill pass? Yo there, bill sponsor, Sen. Maria Cantwell? Should there be a rider in it forbidding geoengineering? Use the BillCam have your say! Or should there be general laws AGAINST this kind of tampering with weather -- what the Times itself calls "geoengineering? today" Don't take my word for this jaw-dropping development. Read HR 353, and then read this very boosterish article about a tech that most Americans feel they should discuss thoroughly before having sprayed in their air. https://www.nytimes.com/…/geoengineering-climate-change.html

This is the NY Times article Naomu refers to

To Curb Global Warming, Science Fiction May Become Fact

Remember “Snowpiercer”?

In the delirious sci-fi thriller by the Korean director Bong Joon-ho, an attempt to engineer the climate and stop global warming goes horribly wrong. The planet freezes. Only the passengers on a train endlessly circumnavigating the globe survive. Those in first class eat sushi and quaff wine. People in steerage eat cockroach protein bars.

Scientists must start looking into this. Seriously.

News about the climate has become alarming over the last few months. In December, startled scientists revealed that temperatures in some parts of the Arctic had spiked more than 35 degrees Fahrenheit above their historical averages. In March, others reported that sea ice in the Arctic had dropped to its lowest level on record. A warming ocean has already killed large chunks of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Let’s get real. The odds that these processes could be slowed, let alone stopped, by deploying more solar panels and wind turbines seemed unrealistic even before President Trump’s election. It is even less likely now that Mr. Trump has gone to work undermining President Barack Obama’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

That is where engineering the climate comes in. Last month, scholars from the physical and social sciences who are interested in climate change gathered in Washington to discuss approaches like cooling the planet by shooting aerosols into the stratosphere or whitening clouds to reflect sunlight back into space, which may prove indispensable to prevent the disastrous consequences of warming.

Aerosols could be loaded into military jets, to be sprayed into the atmosphere at high altitude. Clouds at sea could be made more reflective by spraying them with a fine saline mist, drawn from the ocean

The world’s immediate priority may be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet and hopefully exceed the promises made at the climate summit meeting in Paris in December 2015. But as Janos Pasztor, who heads the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, told me, “The reality is that we may need more tools even if we achieve these goals.”

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The carbon dioxide that humanity has pumped into the atmosphere is already producing faster, deeper changes to the world’s climate and ecosystems than were expected not long ago. Barring some technology that could pull it out at a reasonable cost — a long shot for the foreseeable future, according to many scientists — it will stay there for a long time, warming the atmosphere further for decades to come.

The world is not cutting emissions fast enough to prevent global temperatures from spiking into dangerous territory, slashing crop yields and decimating food production in many parts of the world, as well as flooding coastal cities while parching large swaths of the globe, killing perhaps millions of mostly poor people from heat stress alone.

Solving the climate imperative will require cutting greenhouse gas emissions down to zero, ideally in this century, and probably sucking some out. But solar geoengineering could prove a critical complement to mitigation, giving humanity time to develop the political will and the technologies to achieve the needed decarbonization.

With Mr. Trump pushing the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter after China, away from its mitigation commitments, geoengineering looks even more compelling.

“If the United States starts going backwards or not going forward fast enough in terms of emissions reductions, then more and more people will start talking about these options,” said Mr. Pasztor, a former United Nations assistant secretary general on climate change.

While many of the scholars gathered in Washington expressed misgivings about deploying geoengineering technologies, there was a near-universal consensus on the need to invest more in research — not only into the power to cool the atmosphere but also into the potential side effects on the atmosphere’s chemistry and on weather patterns in different world regions.

While it is known that solar radiation management can cool the atmosphere, fears that field research would look too much like deployment have so far limited research pretty much to computer modeling of its effects and small-scale experiments in the lab.

Critically, the academics noted, the research agenda must include an open, international debate about the governance structures necessary to deploy a technology that, at a stroke, would affect every society and natural system in the world. In other words, geoengineering needs to be addressed not as science fiction, but as a potential part of the future just a few decades down the road.

“Today it is still a taboo, but it is a taboo that is crumbling,” said David Keith, a noted Harvard physicist who was an organizer of the conclave.

Arguments against geoengineering are in some ways akin to those made against genetically modified organisms and so-called Frankenfood. It amounts to messing with nature. But there are more practical causes for concern about the deployment of such a radical technology. How would it affect the ozone in the stratosphere? How would it change patterns of precipitation?

Moreover, how could the world agree on the deployment of a technology that will have different impacts on different countries? How could the world balance the global benefit of a cooling atmosphere against a huge disruption of the monsoon on the Indian subcontinent? Who would make the call? Would the United States agree to this kind of thing if it brought drought to the Midwest? Would Russia let it happen if it froze over its northern ports?

Geoengineering would be cheap enough that even a middle-income country could deploy it unilaterally. Some scientists have estimated that solar radiation management could cool the earth quickly for as little as $5 billion per year or so. What if the Trump administration decided to focus American efforts to combat climate change on geoengineering alone?

That wouldn’t work, in the end. If greenhouse gases were not removed from the atmosphere, the world would heat up in a snap as soon as the aerosol injections were turned off. Still, the temptation to combat climate change on the cheap while continuing to exploit fossil fuels could be hard to resist for a president who promised to revive coal and has shown little interest in global diplomacy.

As Scott Barrett, an environmental economist from Columbia University who was at the meeting in Washington, noted, “The biggest challenge posed by geoengineering is unlikely to be technical, but rather involve the way we govern the use of this unprecedented technology.”

These ethical considerations should be taken into account in any research program into managing the rays of the sun. Perhaps researchers should refrain from taking money from an American administration that denies climate science, to avoid delegitimizing the technology in the eyes of the rest of the world.

People should keep in mind the warning by Alan Robock, a Rutgers University climatologist, who argued that the worst case from the deployment of geoengineering technologies might be nuclear war.

But it would be a mistake to halt research into this new technological tool. Geoengineering might ultimately prove to be a bad idea for a variety of reasons. But only further research can tell us that.

The best way to think of the options ahead is as offering a balance of risks. On one plate sit whatever pitfalls geoengineering might bring. They might be preferable to the prospect of radical climate change. Thinking in terms of delirious sci-fi fantasies, the trade-off won’t necessarily be between cockroach protein bars and some happy future of cheap, renewable energy. It is more likely to pit cockroach treats against some dystopian, broiling world.

H.R.353 - Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/353

Public Law No: 115-25 (04/18/2017)

 

(This measure has not been amended since it was passed by the Senate on March 29, 2017. The summary of that version is repeated here.)

Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017

TITLE I--UNITED STATES WEATHER RESEARCH AND FORECASTING IMPROVEMENT

(Sec. 101) This bill requires the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to prioritize weather research to improve weather data, modeling, computing, forecasts, and warnings for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.

(Sec. 102) NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) must conduct a program to develop an improved understanding of forecast capabilities for atmospheric events and their impacts, with priority given to the development of more accurate, timely, and effective warnings and forecasts of high impact weather events that endanger life and property.

In carrying out the program, the OAR must collaborate with and support the nonfederal weather research community by making funds available through competitive grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements. Congress urges that at least 30% of the funds authorized for research and development be made available for this purpose.

(Sec. 103) NOAA must establish a tornado warning improvement and extension program to reduce the loss of life and economic losses from tornadoes through the development and extension of accurate, effective, and timely tornado forecasts, predictions, and warnings, including the prediction of tornadoes beyond one hour in advance.

(Sec. 104) In collaboration with the U.S. weather industry and appropriate academic entities, and through the National Weather Service (NWS), NOAA must plan and maintain a project to improve hurricane forecasting, including:

• the prediction of rapid intensification and track of hurricanes,
• the forecast and communication of storm surges from hurricanes, and
• risk communication research to create more effective watch and warning products.

(Sec. 105) The OAR must issue a research and development and research to operations plan to restore and maintain U.S. leadership in numerical weather prediction (processing weather data with computer models) and forecasting.

(Sec. 106) NOAA must: (1) prioritize observation data requirements necessary to ensure weather forecasting capabilities to protect life and property to the maximum extent practicable; (2) evaluate observing systems, data, and information needed to meet those requirements; (3) identify data gaps in observing capabilities; and (4) determine a range of options to address those gaps.

(Sec. 107) The OAR must undertake Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSE) to assess the value and benefits of observing capabilities and systems.

OSSEs must be conducted before: (1) acquisition of major government-owned or government-leased operational observing systems with a lifecycle cost of more than $500 million, and (2) purchase of any major new commercially provided data with a lifecycle cost of more than $500 million.

The OAR must complete an OSSE to assess the value of data from Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation and from a geostationary hyperspectral sounder global constellation.

(Sec. 108) The bill requires an annual report on NOAA computing priorities and upgrades as they relate to weather prediction.

(Sec. 109) The U.S. Weather Research Program must: (1) report annually to Congress about on-going research projects and the five NOAA projects related to observations, weather, or subseasonal forecasts closest to operationalization; (2) establish teams with staff from the OAR and the NWS to oversee the operationalization of research projects; (3) develop mechanisms for research priorities of the OAR; (4) develop a system to track research goals; (5) provide testing facilities; and (6) facilitate visiting scholars.

(Sec. 110) The bill authorizes through FY2018: (1) the OAR's weather laboratories and cooperative institutes and weather and air chemistry research programs, and (2) a joint technology transfer initiative.

TITLE II--SUBSEASONAL AND SEASONAL FORECASTING INNOVATION

(Sec. 201) The NWS must collect and utilize information to make reliable and timely foundational forecasts of subseasonal and seasonal temperature and precipitation. Subseasonal forecasting is forecasting weather between two weeks and three months and seasonal forecasting is between three months and two years.

TITLE III--WEATHER SATELLITE AND DATA INNOVATION

(Sec. 301) NOAA must complete and operationalize the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (a weather satellite program which develops observational techniques using global navigation systems).

(Sec. 302) The bill permits the purchase of weather data by the federal government through contracts with commercial providers and the placement of weather satellite instruments on co-hosted government or private payloads.

(Sec. 303) NOAA must avoid unnecessary duplication between public and private sources of data and the corresponding expenditure of funds and employment of personnel.

TITLE IV--FEDERAL WEATHER COORDINATION

(Sec. 401) The NOAA Science Advisory Board must continue to maintain the Environmental Information Services Working Group. Membership requirements and reporting requirements for the group are established.

(Sec. 402) The Office of Science and Technology Policy must establish an Inter-agency Committee for Advancing Weather Services to improve coordination of relevant weather research and forecast innovation activities.

(Sec. 403) The OAR and the NWS may establish a program to detail their personnel to each other with the goal of enhancing forecasting innovation through regular, direct interaction between OAR scientists and NWS operational staff.

(Sec. 404) The NWS may establish a program to host postdoctoral fellows and academic researchers at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

(Sec. 405) The NWS must designate warning coordination meteorologists at each of its weather forecast offices.

(Sec. 406) NOAA must conduct an evaluation of its system for issuing watches and warning regarding hazardous weather and water events.

(Sec. 407) The NWS may establish the NOAA Weather Ready All Hazards Award Program. The program must provide annual awards to individuals or organizations that use NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards receivers or transmitters to save lives and protect property.

(Sec. 408) NOAA must analyze the impacts of the proposed Air Force divestiture in the U.S. Weather Research and Forecasting Model, including the impact on:

• U.S. weather forecasting capabilities,
• the accuracy of civilian regional forecasts,
• the civilian readiness for traditional and extreme weather events in the United States, and
• the research necessary to develop the Weather Research and Forecasting Model.

(Sec. 409) NOAA must contract or continue to partner with an external organization to conduct a baseline analysis of the NWS operations and workforce.

(Sec. 410) NOAA must submit a report to Congress on the use of contract employees at the NWS.

(Sec. 411) The NWS must review existing research, products, and services that meet the specific needs of the urban environment, including those with the potential for improving modeling and forecasting capabilities by taking into account factors such as varying building heights, impermeable surfaces, lack of tree canopy, traffic pollution, and inter-building wind effects.

(Sec. 412) NOAA may establish mechanisms for outreach to: (1) assess the weather forecasts and forecast products provided by NOAA, and (2) determine the highest priority weather forecast needs of specific communities.

(Sec. 413) NOAA must enter into one or more agreements with public and private entities to acquire backup for the WP-3D Orion and G-IV hurricane aircraft that is sufficient to prevent a single point of failure.

NOAA must continue the development of the Airborne Phased Array Radar under the U.S. Weather Research Program.

(Sec. 414) The Department of Commerce must complete a study, within 180 days of the enactment of this bill, on gaps in the coverage of the NWS's Next Generation Weather Radar. Additionally, Commerce must submit recommendations to Congress for improving hazardous weather detection and forecasting coverage in areas of the United States where limited or no Next Generation Weather Radar coverage has resulted in insufficient warnings or degraded forecasts for hazardous weather events.

TITLE V--TSUNAMI WARNING, EDUCATION, AND RESEARCH ACT OF 2017

Tsunami Warning, Education, and Research Act of 2017

The bill also revises and reauthorizes through FY2021 the Tsunami Warning and Education Act.

(Sec. 504) The tsunami warning systems for the Pacific and Arctic Oceans and for the Atlantic Ocean are consolidated into a single warning system. The system must support international tsunami forecasting and warning efforts.

NOAA must support or maintain tsunami warning centers to support the national warning system and develop uniform operational procedures for the centers. Warning centers are given additional responsibilities, including maintaining a fail-safe warning capability and an ability to perform back-up duties for each other.

(Sec. 505) The tsunami hazard mitigation program must provide for: (1) technical and financial assistance; (2) activities to support the development of regional hazard and risk assessments; (3) activities to promote preparedness in at-risk ports and harbors; and (4) dissemination of guidelines and standards for community planning, education, and training products, programs, and tools.

(Sec. 506) The tsunami research program must develop the technical basis for validation of tsunami maps, models, and forecasts.

NOAA no longer has to operate an International Tsunami Information Center to improve tsunami preparedness for Pacific Ocean nations.

(Sec. 508) NOAA must: (1) designate an existing working group to serve as the Tsunami Science and Technology Advisory Panel to provide advice on matters regarding tsunami science, technology, and regional preparedness; (2) maintain a coordinating committee to assist in the national tsunami hazard mitigation program; and (3) develop formal outreach activities to improve tsunami education and awareness and foster the development of resilient communities.

Could “cocktail geoengineering” save the climate?

Monday, July 24, 2017

Carnegie Science, Carnegie Institution, Carnegie Institution for Science, Ken Caldeira

Washington, DC— Geoengineering is a catch-all term that refers to various theoretical ideas for altering Earth’s energy balance to combat climate change. New research from an international team of atmospheric scientists published by Geophysical Research Letters investigates for the first time the possibility of using a “cocktail” of geoengineering tools to reduce changes in both temperature and precipitation caused by atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas not only cause the Earth to get hotter, they also affect weather patterns around the world. Management approaches need to address both warming and changes in the amount of rainfall and other forms of precipitation.

So-called solar geoengineering aims to cool the planet by deflecting some of the Sun’s incoming rays. Ideas for accomplishing this include the dispersion of light-scattering particles in the upper atmosphere, which would mimic the cooling effect of major volcanic eruptions.

However, climate-modeling studies have shown that while this scattering of sunlight should reduce the warming caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it would tend to reduce rainfall and other types of precipitation less than would be optimal.

Another approach involves thinning of high cirrus clouds, which are involved in regulating the amount of heat that escapes from the planet to outer space. This would also reduce warming, but would not correct the increase in precipitation caused by global warming.

One method reduces rain too much. Another method reduces rain too little.

This is where the theoretical cocktail shaker gets deployed.

The team—which includes Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira, Long Cao and Lei Duan of Zhejiang University, and Govindasamy Bala of the Indian Institute of Science—used models to simulate what would happen if sunlight were scattered by particles at the same time as the cirrus clouds were thinned. They wanted to understand how effective this combined set of tools would be at reversing climate change, both globally and regionally.

“As far as I know, this is the first study to try to model using two different geoengineering approaches simultaneously to try to improve the overall fit of the technology,” Caldeira explained.

The good news is that their simulations showed that if both methods are deployed in concert, it would decrease warming to pre-industrial levels, as desired, and on a global level rainfall would also stay at pre-industrial levels. But the bad news is that while global average climate was largely restored, substantial differences remained locally, with some areas getting much wetter and other areas getting much drier.

“The same amount of rain fell around the globe in our models, but it fell in different places, which could create a big mismatch between what our economic infrastructure expects and what it will get,” Caldeira added. “More complicated geoengineering solutions would likely do a bit better, but the best solution is simply to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”

Caldeira said that the international collaboration of scientists (including scientists from China and India) undertook this research as part of a broader effort aimed at understanding the effectiveness and unintended consequences of proposed strategies for reducing climate change and its impacts.

Chemical sunshade to slow warming may not be feasible: U.N. draft

27 Jamuary, 2018

OSLO (Reuters) - The idea of spraying a haze of sun-dimming chemicals high above the Earth as a quick way to slow global warming faces so many obstacles that it may not be feasible, a leaked draft U.N. report says.

The U.N. review of a planetary sunshade, mimicking how a big volcanic eruption can cool the planet with a veil of debris, is part of a broad study of climate technologies ordered by almost 200 nations in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Proposals by some scientists to spray chemicals such as sulfur high in the atmosphere from aeroplanes have won more attention since Paris as a relatively cheap fix, costing perhaps $1 billion to $10 billion a year.

But such geo-engineering may be “economically, socially and institutionally infeasible,” according to a draft obtained by Reuters covering hundreds of pages on risks of droughts, floods, heat waves and more powerful storms.

The draft, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about ways to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, is due for publication in October. It could still change substantially, the IPCC said.

Problems involved with “solar radiation management” include testing and working out rules for a technology that could be deployed by a single nation, or even a company, and might disrupt global weather patterns.

And it “would result in an ‘addiction problem’; once started, it’s hard to stop,” the draft says. A halt after several years could lead to a jump in temperatures because greenhouse gases would continue to build up in the atmosphere.

David Keith, faculty director of Harvard University’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program which is working for a tiny outdoor experiment to dim sunshine, said there was a misguided “taboo” against examining the technology.

“We need a serious research effort to understand its risks and potential benefits. Then we will be able to write informed assessments,” he wrote in an e-mail.

But many scientists are skeptical.

“To deploy it safely ... would take many decades,” said Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at Oxford University. He said it was “completely misleading” to suggest it could be an easy short-cut to slow warming.

Given the long time needed for research, it would be better to focus on ways to limit greenhouse emissions, he said. Allen said he was giving his personal views, not of the IPCC draft of which he is an author.

The draft also says rising temperatures could breach 1.5C by mid-century unless governments take unprecedented action. The Paris Agreement has been weakened by U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw.

Scientists suggest a giant sunshade in the sky could solve global warming

Scholars from developing countries call for greater say in solar geoengineering research, arguing poor nations have most at stake

In a leaked draft of a report about global warming due for publication in October, a UN panel of climate experts express scepticism about solar geoengineering, suggesting it may be “economically, socially and institutionally infeasible”.

This is from today

Air Quality Emergency Over NYC: Particulate Sprays Blocking Sun

Dr Naomi Wolf has been reporting on geoengineering on DailyClout - new tech such as solar radiation management, that stands to generate billions for IP holders but may damage human health and environment. White plumes that are not ordinary emissions have been covering blue sky in Manhattan since Nov 2017. Are these biofuels...SRM...ordinary contrails that climate change or pollution is affecting in extraordinary ways...cloud-seeding

..or some other tech? White cirrus type clouds can be caused by manmade pollutants; Dr Wolf shows how the emissions are blocking sun and affecting the solar industry

Here is some more from Naomi Wolf's Daily Clout

21 June, 2018

ScopEx May Soon Be Underway in Arizona -- Unnamed Material Sprayed in AZ Stratosphere to "Unknown" Env., Effect, Raising Millions for Harvard