The Crisis Report - 14

Understanding WWIII, what’s in it for China?

China and the US are moving towards a showdown, why?

Edvard Munch, 1893 “The Scream”

In a word, “geoengineering”.

Because we are going to try geoengineering the Earth’s climate. Otherwise, too many people will die too quickly and COLLAPSE happens.

People ask me why I think we are “at war” with China. Frequently there is a pejorative “you must be a China hater” implied.

I spell out in detail my reasons for saying we are at war with China here — The Crisis Report — 05 : The China Situation. If you want a simpler reason, there’s this.

Trump declared war on them.

Remember this?

“Trump is engaged in a sophisticated form of economic warfare to confront the Chinese,”

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top strategist and a self-proclaimed China hawk.

“He intends to play hardball”

Donald Trump threatens China with MASSIVE tariffs unless ‘REAL DEAL’ on trade is agreed

Trump threatened China via a tweet.

Trump tweeted:

“We are either going to have a real deal with China, or no deal at all.”

Trump said things like this,

“We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing.”

Trump loved “talking tough” to China.

His attitude towards China was “these are our demands”. “Give us what we want, or we will wreck your economy with tariffs and starve your people by cutting off your food supply”.

Words have consequences. We are at war with China.

Now, this war is tied to the Climate Crisis. Putin and Xi are acting as if they expect the situation to quickly get worse. They are acting as if we are in an “end game” state of play.

In Ukraine, we may be seeing the first war of the “Climate Crisis” — We are having a 1914 Sarajevo moment.

This graph shows the downward trend in Earth’s albedo, as measured by earthshine (black) and CERES data (blue) in watts per square meter. Image credit: Goode et al. (2021), Geophysical Research Letters.

The Rate of Warming is Accelerating.

Warming right now is running about 0.36C per decade. It’s going to get bad, quickly now. There will be enormous pressure to try and cool the planet using geoengineering techniques.

We can geoengineer the Climate State. It’s not delusional. There is a way.

From the truly awful movie “Geostorm” 2017.

This is what most people assume when they imagine what a geoengineering solution might look like. This is delusional fantasy.

What we are going to do is something much lower tech.

The CO2 this ship emits causes the planet to warm up. The sulfate particulates it emits (SOx) cool the planet. The cooling effect is the more powerful of the two, but only lasts 3–5 years. The CO2 affects the climate for thousands of years.

We are going to do Albedo enhancement.

Increasing planetary reflectivity using sulfate aerosols injected into the atmosphere. It will cool the planet down and it’s fairly effective.

We have been doing it for over a century. The sulfates in the diesel fuels ships use are cooling the planet down 0.4C (IPPC) up to 0.9C (Hansen and multiple other studies). Right now.

S0x pollution may be cooling the planet by as much as 0.9℃. From IPCC, Climate Change 2021 Summary for Policymakers, page 7

That’s geoengineering in action. Sulfate particulates work. We know this because we have seen it happen in the past. Remember the Munch painting at the beginning?

There is a theory that what Munch painted in 1893 was his memory of the skies of 1883. The year Krakatoa erupted.

The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (Indonesian: Letusan Krakatau 1883) in the Sunda Strait occurred from 20 May till 21 October 1883.

The eruption caused a volcanic winter.

In the year following the eruption, average Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures fell by 0.4 °C (0.72 °F). The record rainfall that hit Southern California that year is known as the “water year”.

From July 1883 to June 1884 Los Angeles received 38.18in and San Diego 25.97in of rainfall. Normal rainfall for LA is 14.77in per year.

It has been attributed to the Krakatoa eruption. Because, when you suddenly cool the atmosphere down. Water falls out of it. Cool air holds less water than warm air.

The eruption injected a huge amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere. This was transported by high-level winds all over the planet.

This led to a global increase in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) concentrations in high-level clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) reflected more incoming light from the sun away from the Earth.

Here's a modern example of this effect.

Which cooled the entire planet until the sulfur fell to the ground as acid rain. A process that takes 3–5 years.

So we know exactly how to Geoengineer the Climate.

The question is “who is going to be in charge?”.

That’s what this war is about. Control over the geoengineering project. Being in charge of that.

For Xi, that’s worth going to war over. Particularly if having it in US hands means the next Trumpublican President can weaponize it.

We are fighting over control of the global thermostat. That’s what WWIII is currently about.

If you are having trouble visualizing what the consequences of this project are likely to be. You might want to read this book.

‘Under A White Sky’ by Elizabeth Kolbert 2021

This is a good book. She makes clear how far we already are from a world of undisturbed, balanced nature. Spoiler alert, there is none.

Then she delves into how far we are going to have to go in finding a new balance for the planet’s future. One that still includes us.

The “White Sky” is what living with that level of reflective particulates is going to be like. No more blue skies, for the rest of your life.

Because that’s what it’s going to take.

-rc 020223