The Crisis Report - 17
"Rapid Climate Intervention" is the new code for Geoengineering the Climate.
In another signal of the growing desperation, we are considering doing this.
Using dust from the Moon to slow the effects of climate change. We are now willing to talk seriously about this being an “idea” worth investigating.
The Biden administration is currently reviewing comments from last years “public input” on a proposed five-year research project aimed at a “scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions” to slow climate change. The input period closed on September 22nd 2022.
If you have no idea what they are talking about, that’s because you aren’t really supposed to notice things like this. This is the “fine print” of government where real “stuff” gets done. The “details” where “the devil” can be found.
Here’s what happened last year.
In the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in coordination with relevant Federal agencies, was directed by Congress to develop a five-year
“Scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions in the context of near-term climate risks and hazards”.
The report shall include:
(1) the definition of goals in relevant areas of scientific research.
(2) capabilities required to model, analyze, observe, and monitor atmospheric composition.
(3) climate impacts and the Earth’s radiation budget.
(4) the coordination of Federal research and investments to deliver this assessment to manage near-term climate risk and research in climate intervention.
This is something the European Union is already studying.
That’s how desperate the Climate Conversation is becoming just slightly behind the scenes. Just on the fringe of public perception governments are starting to consider the options for —
Rapid Climate Interventions
This is another way of saying “Mega Project Geoengineering”.
That should ALARM you. Because it implies that they think it might be necessary. It implies that things are getting BAD.
What’s being considered is “Solar Geoengineering”
What they are discussing, is using dust from the Moon, to create a reflective cloud between the Earth and the sun in the L1 Lagrange point. The proposal got some coverage today because this study “Dust as a solar shield” was published in PLoS Climate.
Dust from the moon could help slow climate change, study finds The Hill 020823
A solution to the climate crisis: mining the moon, researchers say The Guardian 020823
#Sci-fi reference: If you played “Traveler” this is the same concept as the “sand caster” defense against laser weapon attack in the ship to ship combat rules. The sand cloud would “scatter” the incoming laser and weaken it.
Space-based geoengineering is gaining attention, as a possible “break the glass” solution to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. Advocates of “space based solar geoengineering” argue that such a cloud would block some of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth.
The science is clear, if less solar energy reaches the Earth, the Earth will cool down.
The reporters writing the articles don’t really understand what’s going on. They think this is a “fringe idea” on the periphery of discussions around climate mitigation and geoengineering.
They discuss it by talking about what the “advocates” for space-based geoengineering say are its good points.
“advocates of the space-based approach hope it could sidestep some of the potential environmental consequences posed by Earth-based initiatives, which generally involve seeding the atmosphere with reflective particles.
space-based methods offer advantages by avoiding the need for difficult trade-offs and decisions in terms of land and resource use on Earth”.
Here’s what this really represents.
Remember the scene in the movie Armageddon where Billy Bob Thornton has a brainstorming session at NASA and they go through a bunch of “crazy ideas”?
That’s the same thing you do when you really need a way of doing a “RAPID CLIMATE INTERVENTION”. This is the kind of “solution” that you consider when you are starting to get desperate.
That we are even talking about it, is a signal of how desperate the people with the best information are starting to feel.
Many Climate Scientists are not happy with this “solution”.
A group of 380 scientists have signed an open letter calling on world governments to pledge to take solar geoengineering off the table.
“While it is certainly true that reducing sunlight can cause cooling, it acts on a very different part of the climate system than carbon dioxide,”
“Efforts to offset carbon dioxide-caused warming with sunlight reduction would yield a very different climate, perhaps one unlike any seen before in Earth’s history”
“There is the risk of sudden massive shifts in atmospheric circulation and rainfall patterns and possible worsening of droughts.
These scientists argue that the risks of climate engineering are poorly understood and could destabilize weather patterns, with unknown impacts on global agriculture and the water cycle. We could literally make things much, much worse by accident.
There are also “moral hazard” objections. Counting on “moonshot scale projects” like solar geoengineering to “save the day” distracts and disincentivizes everyone from far cheaper and more practical decarbonization efforts. Like reducing fossil fuel use and decarbonizing the global economy.
Counting on solar geoengineering to fix Climate Change is like counting on winning the Lottery to solve your budget problems.
Lastly, the scientists signing this letter point out that the current global governance system is not able to regulate the deployment of solar geoengineering technologies. At this time,
Any country, corporation or private individual could theoretically launch an independent project — dragging the rest of the world behind them into experimental territory.
Right now, anybody can try doing something like this.
We should know, because we have done it ourselves.
Americans Weaponized Clouds During the Vietnam War
During the Vietnam War, U.S. forces engaged in “cloud seeding” to increase rainfall and dampen the enemy’s ground efforts in a project dubbed Operation Popeye.
Introduced in 1967, Operation Popeye was a five-year campaign that called for plane crews to ignite canisters of silver and lead iodide and direct the smoke into ongoing storms above Vietnam. It’s unclear how much cloud seeding aided the American cause. But, after the extent of the top-secret campaign became public, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened to discuss the matter in 1974.
An international treaty was introduced to ban future weather manipulation by military forces in 1978.
Called the Environmental Modification Convention, the international treaty bars
any action undertaken by military or otherwise hostile forces that could result in “earthquakes, tsunamis; an upset in the ecological balance of a region; changes in weather patterns (clouds, precipitation, cyclones of various types and tornadic storms); changes in climate patterns; changes in ocean currents; changes in the state of the ozone layer; and changes in the state of the ionosphere.”
The convention is, in effect, so comprehensive it bans many forms of weather modification that, at least according to publicly-available knowledge, do not yet exist. But Deborah Gordon, director of the energy and climate program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says the convention is ultimately toothless.
The existing international law, ONLY bans weather manipulation by MILITARY forces. Everything else is completely unregulated.
Which makes me wonder if China is considering this as its “save the world project” way of rallying support to its coalition.
The Strategic Implications of the China-Russia Lunar Base Cooperation Agreement 03/21
That we are thinking of projects like this is not a good sign.
This is “My Take”.
-rc 021023