Posts
I
regard Dr.Naomi Wolf as a highly- credible researcher.
As
will be clear here the geoengineers try to muddy the waters by claiming that
cloud-seeding (‘weather control”) ans SRM (“climate engineering
“ are TWO TOTALLY SEPARATE THINGS.
In my opinion they
are using sophism to confuse us.
They
may be in their minds while they push their own particular barrows
but this is not the case.
Geoengineering:
More on Solar Radiation Management and Cloud-seeding
If
ever you wanted proof that further dimming the planet with solar
energy management other form of geoengineering is going to save the
planet. Here is recent data from Copernicus of pollution levels in
some of the most rapidly warming areas of the planet (ed. SMR)
You are talking about CLOUD SEEDING, not geoengineering. You cannot create snow with geoengineering. Only with CLOUD SEEDING. Why are these simple terms apparently so hard for people?
Dr Wolf, do you understand the difference between >>geoengineering<< (SRM, climate/albedo modification) and >>weather modification<< (cloud seeding, eg for rainfall enhancement, hail suppression and so on)? Your tweets suggest the distinction may be lost on you.
Geoengineering is an umbrella term that covers multiple technologies. Cloudseeding is one of them.
BINGO. Ironically from a critic. This Parliamentary report from 2009-2010 confirms US and UK coordination of geoengineering. @BTBReviews @LondonEconomic https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/221/221.pdf …
Cloudseeding canisters in LA ignited remotely, ‘like flares’, and smoke rises to clouds. Also done by drones, wh may be weird smoky sprays we see. Draws moisture from air: u have described this. Europe, China, US boosting seeding. Nanotech is on the way.
As
planet gets ever hotter, silver iodide is seen as the rain-maker
...Walker,
CEO of Texas-based aviation company SOAR, carries out an increasingly
popular — and in some cases, controversial — effort to chemically
impregnate clouds to increase rainfall.
To
cope with searing global temperatures, protracted droughts and
chronic water shortages, countries from the United States to China
are turning to “cloud seeding,” which aims to boost rainfall in
dry areas which may be a reason why they publicly downgraded their
travel accommodations...
Independent confirms: 56 countries now cloudseeding, "spraying chemicals into the air." Role of clouds in climate, earth's regulation, ill-understood; mass attack on clouds confirmed 2 cause droughts, wildfires, flooding, may affect global temps.
Almost
half of the world’s population will be at risk from water shortages
by 2030. But is the answer a rather controversial method of inducing
rainfall that came to life in the Forties with rocky beginnings, asks
Jessica Brown
WHOA! EXXONMOBIL and SHELL ARE IN BED WITH DAVID KEITH AND SCOPEX. ExxonMobil FUNDER OF FOX SUPPORTS SOLAR RADIATION MANAGEMENT, SCOPEX. Now we know why a Fox meteorologist funded by ExxonMobil has graced us for two weeks.
Overview
This is a Solar Radiation Management (SRM) proposal to spray large quantities of inorganic particles (e.g. sulphur dioxide) into the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere) to act as a reflective barrier against incoming sunlight. Proposals range from shooting particles from artillery guns, using large hoses to reach the sky, or emptying particles from the back of aircrafts. SAI using sulphates is the most-studied option; this technique would likely cause droughts in Africa and Asia and endanger the source of food and water for two billion people. Because of the unequal global impacts and its potential to be weaponized, SRM carries unsurmountable challenges for governance and should be banned.
Key
Player: David Ketih and SCoPEx
David
Keith, based at Harvard, is the foremost engineer advancing SRM. He
is an investor in the technology, has lobbied governments, and
manages (along with Ken Caldeira) a multimillion geoengineering fund
provided by Bill Gates to the Harvard University (FICER). He has also
commissioned a study by a US aerospace company that argued for the
feasibility of large-scale deployment of solar geoengineering
technologies. In early 2017, he launched Harvard’s Solar
Geoengineering Research Program, which aims to raise $20 million in
funding from several billionaires and private foundations to execute
this project.i
Alongside
other engineers and researchers, Keith has proposed a number of field
experiments,ii including the “stratospheric controlled perturbation
experiment” (SCoPEx). This experiment aims to improve estimates
SRM’s impact by understanding the optical properties of different
aerosols and the microphysics properties of introducing particles
into the stratosphere. The plan is to spray water molecules into the
stratosphere from a balloon 20 km above the Earth, creating a plume,
and then inject different kinds of aerosols into the plume to observe
its reflective properties.
However,
more than a limited scientific experiment, the geoengineers appear to
have a different agenda for this outdoor SRM experiment: to slowly
build mainstream legitimacy for large-scale experiments that
ultimately lead to deployment of solar geoengineering.
Key
Players: ExxonMobil and Shell
There
are large companies for whom ‘saving the world’ – exclusively
through some sort of techno-fix – is increasingly becoming a
structural prerequisite for continuing their business, particularly
when those companies depend heavily on fossil fuels. They try to
shift policy norms so that previously unthinkable notions and
activities – like solar radiation management – start to become
more mainstream and acceptable.
Among
them, ExxonMobil’s Senior Scientific Advisor Dr. Haroon Kheshgi is
the point person on geoengineering, recruited from the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.iii Through his efforts,
ExxonMobil has influenced “independent” reports on geoengineering
and has funded a report that advocates for Carbon Dioxide Removal and
Solar Radiation Management. ExxonMobil’s former CEO and former US
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has described climate change as an
“engineering problem” with “engineering solutions.”iv
Shell’s
chief lobbyist, David Hone, is evangelical about “negative
emissions” and increasingly openly supports SRM.v When Steve
Koonin was chief scientist at BP, he led a project to determine
hardware feasibility for SRM experiments.vi Boeing’s Integrated
Defense Systems Chief Scientist and Vice-President David Whelan
(formerly of DARPA) is also active in geoengineering debates,
claiming there is a small team at Boeing studying the issue. He has
publicly mused about the technical feasibility of getting mega-tonnes
of aerosol sulphates up to different stratospheric levels via
aircraft or large cannons.vii
Impacts
of the technology
As
with all SRM technologies that only address global surface
temperatures, dramatic perturbations in the climate system can be
expected if SAI is deployed. Early research into SAI from the UK’s
Met Office Hadley Centre found that SAI could lead to severe drought
in the Sahel region of Africa. While researchers found that this
could possibly be countered by injecting particles into the southern
hemisphere stratosphere instead, this would likely cause a failure of
the rains in northeast Brazil.viii
A
recent modeling study simulating the climate effects of SAI found
similar potential negative consequences. Injection in the northern
hemisphere would lead to fewer hurricanes in the North Atlantic,
which might be good news for the Caribbean, but it would likely
create drought in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of India. Injecting
aerosol in the southern hemisphere wouldn’t create drought, but it
would create more hurricanes in the North Atlantic.ix
Regional
warming is also likely, based on the results of the 2014-2015
Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project. It predicted that
temperatures in the tropics would cool, but higher latitudes would
warm, with ice sheets and Arctic sea ice still declining, and extreme
temperature anomalies also still increasing. A researcher noted that:
“If geoengineering were halted all at once, there would be rapid
temperature and precipitation increases at 5–10 times the rates
from gradual global warming.”x This means that stopping SAI
once it had started could be more dangerous than starting it in the
first place. Ozone depletion is another important side effect of
SAI.xi
Studies
on the impacts of SAI on public health are limited, but a recent
analysis suggests that adverse public health impacts may reasonably
be expected. Little is known about the toxicity of some aerosols that
have been suggested, and there is no consensus on what acceptable
levels for public exposure to these aerosols are. There are also very
few means of evaluating potential public health impacts should SAI be
deployed.xii
Global
power imbalances
The
prospect of controlling global temperatures raises serious questions
of power and justice: Who gets to control the Earth’s thermostat
and adjust the climate for their own interests? Who will make the
decision to deploy if such drastic measures are considered
technically feasible, and whose interests will be left out?
The
risk for weaponization is considerable. The premise of controlling
the weather originated with military strategies and even led to the
signing of the international Environmental Modification Convention
(ENMOD). Military leaders in the United States and other countries
have pondered the possibilities of weaponized weather manipulation
for decades. If the explicit aim of a technology is to “combat
climate change,” it doesn’t guarantee its use will be limited
only to that application. If anybody can control the Earth’s
thermostat, this can and will be used for military purposes, as
historian James Fleming explains.xiii Even before hostile use,
any state or actor claiming to be able to alter global weather
patterns will hold a powerful geopolitical bargaining chip with which
to threaten and bully.
A
perfect excuse for inaction on climate change
SRM,
and geoengineering more broadly, is a “perfect excuse” for
climate deniers and governments seeking to avoid the political costs
of carbon reductions. For those looking to stall meaningful climate
action, the active development of geoengineering tools and
experiments will be presented as a preferred pathway to address
climate change and be used as an argument to ease restrictions on
high carbon emitting industries. This line of argument was already
put forward by conservative think tanks in the United states such as
the American Enterprise Institute.xiv
Furthermore,
once SRM is deployed, sudden interruption would cause a termination
effect, raising temperatures rapidly, creating a situation worse than
it was before its deployment. Therefore, SRM will create dependency
and captive markets.
Governance
of SRM could be impossible
There
is a moratorium on geoengineering under the Convention on Biological
Diversity that clearly articulates the need for a global transparent
regulatory mechanism for governance before experimentation is
considered. 193 countries agreed to require a global mechanism
because they recognized that the potential impacts and side effects
of geoengineering will be unfairly distributed.
Since
SRM could be a tool to control the Earth’s thermostat for those who
have legal, economic and technological resources, any step towards
realizing those capabilities must be agreed through consensus by all
members of the UN.
The problem is that if all governments could effectively agree on such a complex issue with so many social, economic, environmental and intergenerational aspects at play, including how and who will carry the cost and burden of the negative impacts, and if countries had the capacity to implement the necessary agreed climate measures that demand persistence and coherence over several decades, we wouldn’t have climate change in the first place, because they could have agreed on stopping emissions. Even the Paris Agreement, which seems a miraculous convergence of political will, only lasted a few months after entering into force before the largest historical GHG emitter country declared it won’t respect it.
The
failure to manage fair and effective international climate governance
is a clear argument against moving ahead with geoengineering and
particularly Solar Radiation Management, which is more deeply unfair
and complex and for which there are poor prospects for establishing
the fully democratic, multilateral, legally binding and century-long
agreement needed for minimally fair governance. Without such a
mechanism, once the tools are developed it will be extremely
difficult – or impossible – to stop powerful governments from
using it. Therefore, the most appropriate governance for Solar
Radiation Management is a ban.
Reality
check
SAI
is seen as a quick and cheap way of geoengineering the climate.
Although outdoor experiments have been successfully opposed so far,
limiting research to modeling (one aerosol injection field experiment
in the troposphere has taken place in Russiaxv), there is a new push
to normalize this kind of research which could see the technology
being developed very quickly. SCoPEx is the most high-profile
experiment that has been put forward on SRM.
Further
reading
For
more information on ScoPEx and other SRM experiments see:
Sources
i.
Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, “Funding,”
webpage, https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/funding
ii.
David Keith et al, “Field experiments on solar geoengineering:
report of a workshop exploring a representative research
portfolio,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society A Vol. 372, No. 20131, 2014.
iii.
ETC Group, “Trump Administration – A Geoengineering
Administration?” Briefing, 28 March 2017, http://
www.etcgroup.org/content/trump-administration-geoengineering-administration
iv.
Associated Press, “Climate change fears overblown, says ExxonMobil
boss,” The
Guardian,
28 June
2012, www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/28/exxonmobil-climate-change-rex-tillerson
v.
David Hone, “The geo-engineering taboo,” EnergyPost,
26 June 2017, http://energypost.eu/the-geo-engineering-taboo/
vi.
Jason J. Blackstock et al, “Climate Engineering Responses to
Climate Emergencies,” Novim,
2009, https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0907/0907.5140.pdf
vii.
Fora.tv, “Geoengineering: Global Salvation or Ruin?” Video
produced by Commonwealth Club of California, 23 February
2010, http://library.fora.tv/2010/02/23/Geoengineering_Global_Salvation_or_Ruin
viii.
Time Radford, “Geoengineering could case drought in Sahel,” Climate
Home News,
2 April
2013, http://www.climatechangenews.com/2013/04/02/geoengineering-could-cause-drought-in-sahel/
ix.
Jones et al, “Impacts of hemispheric solar geoengineering on
tropical cyclone frequency,” Nature Communications,
Vol. 8, No. 1382, 2017.
x.
Alan Robock, “Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering,” Issues in
Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 38,
2014. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockStratAerosolGeo.pdf
xi.
P. Heckendorn et al, “The impact of geoengineering aerosols on
stratospheric temperature and ozone,” Environmental
Research Letters, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2009.
xii.
Utibe Effiong and Richard L. Neitzel, “Assessing the direct
occupational and public health impacts of solar radiation management
with stratospheric aerosols,” Environmental Health,
Vol. 15, No. 7, 2016.
xiii. James
Rodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of
Weather and Climate Control, New York: Columbia University Press,
2010.
xIv. ETC
Group, Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering, ETC Group
Communiqué, Issue 103, 18 October 2010,
xv.
ETC Group and Heinrich Boll Foundation, “Field Experiment in
Russia,” Geoengineering Map of Experiments,
2017, https://map.geoengineeringmonitor.org/Solar-Radiation-Management/field-experiment-in-russia/
Team Humanity, the FactSheet on Geoengineering is partnered with the Biofuels Industry. Horrible thought: what if biofuels and the dreck they smear across the sky became inadvertently PART of SRM, geoengineering push, as they benefit fossil fuels in general as they block sun?
Finally, I take this as a sign that Dr.Wolf is following Guy McPherson
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