The Crisis Report - 14
The Crisis Report - 14
Understanding WWIII, what’s in it for China?
China and the US are moving towards a showdown, why?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
Richard, excellent articles. I followed you here from reddit, right now I'm going through your old analysis. You are being exceptionally inspirational, thank you for your work.
Some disagreement and questions about this one, regarding geoengineering. How would the US weaponize the albedo enhancement? Once you inject the sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere, it flows all over the planet with no human navigation, isn't it? So how are we fighting over control of the global thermostat, when in reality no one controls it at all? Or do you mean the US would do something with the cloud like they did back in Vietnam? But that was not geoengineering.
My take on geoengineering is controversial, I find many collapseniks disagree with me. I think an important factor is left out in geoengineering disscussions: economic collapse. Right now, to even hold on to the current economic status, the world relies on debt. Every dollar that's been made is associated with 3 dollars of debt, it's in full runaway mode. To lauch such projects to dim the planet, takes a big chunk of the world's GDP, and this effort has nothing to gain for the shareholders. Once the financial crash occurs (it will soon), all nations will find themselves in ruins, the remaining energy and resources will be primarily spent on essentials like food production, or easing social chaos, or wars.
That is also linked to political collapse. I do not see any way that the US government could hold on another 10 or 15 years. Can we lanuch geoengineering without a sufficiently running government? I highly doubt it. And China, it might become a horrendously authoritarian state, much worse than today(I'm from China). Or it could just easily break apart as well. But I fail to see any sencario where humanity can do geoengineering.
In my opnion, geoengineering would always remain on "paper". Perhaps there will be some negotiations, some pilot projects, some testings and so on, but I fail to see a possibility that we could do geoengineering on a scale that actually makes a difference in climate, whether it's good or bad difference. Because the required financial and political power won't exist.