Geoengineering the climate - news articles
Evaluating a technological fix for climate
Could Aluminum, Barium and Other Substances from Stratospheric Aerosol Geo-Engineering Programs be Destroying Eco-Systems around the World?
These schemes have varied from the simple, such as painting every rooftop and roadway white to increase planetary albedo, to the creation of space-based solar reflectors. The use of rockets, airplanes, and giant guns to deliver reflecting material to the stratosphere has been debated, and there is even a body of conspiracy theory on “chemtrails” where the gullible believe that experiments are already underway.
However, the strategy reviewed here, the deliberate injection of stratospheric sulfate aerosols to artificially create the cooling that the earth experiences from some natural volcanic eruptions, has seen legitimate scientific discussion. The National Academies have a significant presence in this debate, publishing in 1992 a 918-page volume on the policy implications of greenhouse warming (6) with a full chapter on geoengineering as one of the options that must be on the table.
Will Copenhagen Lead to Radical Climate Experiments?
Could Aluminum, Barium and Other Substances from Stratospheric Aerosol Geo-Engineering Programs be Destroying Eco-Systems around the World?
Indeed, scientists say there is little doubt that we could bring about an artificial planetary cooling by, say, seeding the Earth's stratosphere with reflective particles, called sulfate aerosols, that would act as an artificial global parasol and cool us down. Such an act would amount to mimicking the climatic effects of a large volcanic eruption, such as the explosion of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 -- whose 22 mile high stream of ash, subsequently dispersed across the globe, resulted in half a degree Celsius of global cooling over the course of the following year.
Excluded from the Copenhagen Agenda: Environmental Modification Techniques ENMOD and Climate Change
The manipulation of climate for military use is potentially a greater threat to humanity than CO2 emissions. Why has it been excluded from the debate under COP15, when the UN 1977 Convention states quite explicitly that "military or any other hostile use of such techniques could have effects extremely harmful to human welfare"? (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques United Nations, Geneva, 1977).
Why the camouflage? Why are environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) not being debated by the civil society and environmentalist organizations under the auspices of the Alternative Forum KlimaForum09?
ReEngineering the Earth
As the threat of global warming grows more urgent, a few scientists are considering radical—and possibly extremely dangerous—schemes for reengineering the climate by brute force. Their ideas are technologically plausible and quite cheap. So cheap, in fact, that a rich and committed environmentalist could act on them tomorrow. And that’s the scariest part.
If we were transported forward in time, to an Earth ravaged by catastrophic climate change, we might see long, delicate strands of fire hose stretching into the sky, like spaghetti, attached to zeppelins hovering 65,000 feet in the air. Factories on the ground would pump 10 kilos of sulfur dioxide up through those hoses every second. And at the top, the hoses would cough a sulfurous pall into the sky. At sunset on some parts of the planet, these puffs of aerosolized pollutant would glow a dramatic red, like the skies in Blade Runner. During the day, they would shield the planet from the sun’s full force, keeping temperatures cool—as long as the puffing never ceased. Technology that could redden the skies and chill the planet is available right now.
HOLLYWOOD MOVIE - Cloudy with a chance of meatballs (movie for kids - about a kid who can change the weather)
Reasons for not going to Copenhagen
This was an international Climate Change demonstration, two years ago: December 2007. The photograph was taken in Athens , Greece , but it could have been taken anywhere. The message of the small group holding the two placards, in English and in Greek, saying “Spraying from Aircraft is NOT the answer to Climate Change” passed unnoticed. This is despite the fact of our having participated in the organization of the demonstration and tried unsuccessfully to influence the wording of the resolutions issued in the name of the demonstration as a whole.
Our position was, and is, that there cannot be meaningful discussion of climate change without simultaneous reference to the aerial spraying (with aluminium? with barium? with sulphates?) being conducted globally and represented by informal sources as an “answer” to the problem of climate change.
The veil of silence that shrouds this spraying, evidently detrimental to both the environment and human health, appears to be due not only to its illegality but also to the impossibility of its being legalized, given the difficulties faced by governments in persuading public opinion that deliberate pollution can be a “solution” to any problem.
