Exclusive: Rather than take prudent steps to reduce the release of global-warming gases, some Trump advisers are pondering risky gambles to re-engineer the Earth’s climate, as Jonathan Marshall explains.
By Jonathan Marshall
While President Trump floors the accelerator to speed up global warming through executive orders and appointments of notorious climate deniers to his administration, more and more scientists are pinning their hopes on “Plan B”: planetary-wide interventions to engineer ways to avoid global climate disruption. But critics warn that such a prescription, however alluring, may be as bad as the disease.
President Donald Trump giving his weekly address on Feb. 25, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)
Now, to compound the irony, members of Trump’s inner circle are touting climate engineering as a cheap way to insure the planet against harm without any need to change lifestyles or curb the oil and coal industries. They resemble compulsive eaters who count on frequent liposuction rather than maintaining strict diets to keep their body fat in check and stay healthy.
Evidence of climate disruption is all around us, including record-high temperatures, record-low sea ice, the die-off of major coral reefs, acidification of the oceans, drought-induced famines, and more extreme storm damage.
At the same time, climate scientists warn that barring breakthroughs in energy technology and adoption of cleaner transportation, industrial and agricultural processes, the world faces severe risks of economic and social disruption over the next half century from potentially irreversible warming.
Such considerations helped motivate more than 100 scientists and policy makers to meet in Washington, D.C., late last month to discuss some largely untested ways to prevent runaway warming by limiting the Earth’s absorption of solar radiation. These measures could include using aircraft to release tiny particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight, or using fleets of boats to spray the air with saline mist to promote the formation of reflective clouds.
Several prominent Trump supporters are big boosters of such climate engineering. For example, Newt Gingrich, the President’s close adviser and former House Speaker, gushed that it “holds forth the promise of addressing global warming concerns for just a few billion dollars a year. Instead of penalizing ordinary Americans, we would have an option to address global warming by rewarding scientific innovation.”
And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told investors in 2015, when he was still CEO of Exxon Mobil, “Our plan B has always been grounded in our beliefs around the continued evolution of technology and engineered solutions to address and react to whatever the climate system and its outcomes present to us.”
Dangerous Gamble
Responsible scientists, on the other hand, have little faith in untested proposals to re-engineer the earth’s climate system, even if they back further research into such stop-gap measures.
President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, whose future is threatened by rising sea levels. (Photo from maralagoclub.com)
“Climate intervention is no substitute for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and adaptation efforts aimed at reducing the negative consequences of climate change,” concluded a two-volume study released by the National Academy of Sciences in 2015. “However, as our planet enters a period of changing climate never before experienced in recorded human history, interest is growing in the potential for deliberate intervention in the climate system to counter climate change.”
Strategies to reflect more solar radiation, it added, “could rapidly cool the planet’s surface but pose environmental and other risks that are not well understood and therefore should not be deployed at climate-altering scales; more research is needed to determine if [such] approaches could be viable in the future.”
In 2013, the American Meteorological Society adopted a policy statement, which declared that climate engineering “must be viewed with caution because manipulating the Earth system has considerable potential to trigger adverse and unpredictable consequences.”
Among those consequences could be severe weather changes for different nations and peoples, “thus raising legal, ethical, diplomatic, and national security concerns.” For example, shifting storm and precipitation patterns could dry out some regions and promote famines while subjecting others to devastating floods. The end result might not seem so promising to Gingrich if the Midwest turned into a dust bowl.
Researchers have also warned that one popular proposal — lacing the upper atmosphere with reflective sulfur dioxide particles — could deplete the Earth’s ozone layer, increasing the penetration of destructive ultraviolet radiation.
Tinkering with the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation could also “distract the public and policy makers from critically needed efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build society’s capacity to deal with unavoidable climate impacts,” the AMS statement continued.
If CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were allowed to grow, continued ocean acidification would have a devastating effect on biological systems. And if the world ever let up on its solar radiation management, for whatever reason, global warming would rapidly accelerate in the carbon-rich atmosphere.
Who Would Decide?
Perhaps the single biggest obstacle to climate engineering is not technical but political: who would govern its deployment? Could a mad billionaire take matters into his own hands? Could rogue nations weaponize the technology, trying to fine tune solar radiation to disrupt the climate of their enemies?
The image of the Earth rising over the surface of the moon, a photograph taken by the first U.S. astronauts to orbit the moon.
Rutgers University climatologist Alan Robock has even warned about the increased risk of nuclear war: “Because if countries can’t agree on what the temperature should be, and somebody is mad at somebody else for controlling their climate, the situation could escalate into hostilities.”
Harvard physicist David Keith, one of the scientific community’s leading proponents of further climate engineering research, insists that the rapid pace of climate change — and the failure of governments to address it in time — make it imperative to look seriously at every option for preventing runaway global warming.
But he and his colleagues are quick to agree with critics that “fear of solar geoengineering is justified” and that “it would be reckless to deploy solar geoengineering based on today’s limited research.” While stoutly defending the need for more research, they add, “if Trump were to push solar geoengineering while gutting climate science, we believe the only appropriate response is active resistance.”
Jonathan Marshall is author of “Global Warming’s Threat to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago,” “Dangerous Denial of Global Warming,” “To Fight Global Warming, Canada Ponders a Carbon Tax,” and “Global Warming Adds to Mideast Hot Zone.”
stratospheric aerosol injection (the cheapest form of geoengineering) is already fully deployed all you have to do is look up in the sky. It is very obvious. We the citizens and the tax payers don’t have a choice. Consortium news should investigate what is going on. It is likely too late to do anything about it but the public has the right to know.
Geo Engineering / climate engineering is already going on without public consent . Just look up!
Then go ahead and look it up .
Growing up in Berkeley, CA as a girl I would climb the tallest street (Marin Avenue) and look out into deep blue skies and puffy white clouds, look at the golden gate bridge, the vista was stunning. Then came the “con-trails” that didn’t disappear behind the planes (unmarked military planes). I too, took pictures of the chem trails, watched as the bay area skies became milky white, bruised sunset skies and took the photos to my local radio station (KPFA) and no one wanted to touch the story. I believe the reflective chemicals they are ALREADY putting in our skies are causing the summer fires to be burn deeper causing much more destruction. Aluminum oxide and quartz were the chemicals mentioned when I researched it. I found a picture in my research of canisters lining the inside of these planes. So this is already going on…since 1998. I also came across literature stating that these chemicals sprayed all over the world make the soil infertile. So this talk of geoengineering is after the fact, perhaps to make the war crimes of chem trail usage reasonable considered reasonable. And it doesn’t work and is further debilitating this once pristine planet. We are full of cleverness and bereft of wisdom. And still the lines in the sky quietly form parallel lines and make the deep blue skies milky white, over and over again.
How much does the House of Rothschild pay you to espouse their Global Warming lie?
“Evidence of climate disruption is all around us, including record-high temperatures, record-low sea ice, the die-off of major coral reefs, acidification of the oceans, drought-induced famines, and more extreme storm damage.”
this statement here means ZERO until we take into account the fact that these scientist continue to deny and lie about the manipulation they are already doing to the climate. We have no baseline because they won’t stop altering the weather. They are inserting variables and then denying that they exist. Hello $cience 2017.
We need to consider these things, whether or not we reduce the increase of future release of greenhouse gases.
We already released too much.
We are not even talking about real reduction, just reduction of increase.
We are already agreed to 2 degrees C (4 degrees F) warming and a doubling of the CO2 levels of the past. We are not likely to keep within those limits, but that is the best we even hope for.
So yes, it is time to consider doing more.
That is not a substitute for reducing our rate of increase, but it is a long-overdue next step.
Those pushing limits on greenhouse gases don’t want to change the subject to this. We need to do both. We can’t ignore this, any more than we can ignore the other.
Mark, I think you are absolutely right. Figuring out a way to reduce CO2 levels is critical at this point. A reduction in increase will not cut it. I don’t think we can talk everyone back into the stone age, or to become vegans living off the grid in communes. That means really working for clean technologies, sustainable agriculture, and a new economic model (one that doesn’t require infinite growth). It means wresting control from the oligarchs if we are to have a chance at long term survival.
Death comes to everyone, Renee, but what is the point of your ugly comment? Seems to me you are angry, basically. Why be angry anonymously at people who are thinking and asking questions about this globalist world that is dominating all of us, including you, at the expense of a better life for everyone and our life support systems?
Thus is in reference to the comments.. with the upmost sarcasm u guys can’t wont live forever! Death is certain. Yall ain’t nooooo special! And in the end, what then? THINK U JUST HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT HUH? PFT… YOU DONT FUCK WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE.
Now they are rolling out the disclosure of the geoengineering they have been doing since 1998 when I started taking photos of those “reflective particles” in the upper atmosphere above Los Angeles. What is causing the “disruption,” unbalanced nature, geoengineering or both?
I wonder whether or not Sulfur content in jet fuel is regulated like diesel fuel for the trucking and over the road industry. If not then it is a cheap way to create atmospheric geoengineering by using commercial airlines to be the beneficiaries of no regulations on the Sulfur content of the fuels that jets burn allowing them to purchase cheaper Sulfur emitting fuel while also passively participating in geoengineering attempts to cover up the effects of Global Warming through a passive geoengineering strategy to create a reflective sulfate haze from jet contrails which reduces the effective sunlight reaching the surface of the Earth. There are many websites which propose that contrails are somehow responsible for geoengineering by some sinister means of loading jet fuel with chemicals. But merely allowing no regulation of the Sulfur content of jet fuel could be a passive way to accomplish the same effect without the need for espionage.
p.s.
a mathematician is the best person to ask.
and astronomers, biologists, botanists, chemists, musicians, painters, not specifically in that order. Aeronautics is a certain field, I would love to ask those assholes who do not know science, but they only know god. Who made an airplane, and why and how does it fly? Could never ,ever be science, no, god made aircraft. And why do these science deniers use air transport? Just asking
Imagine the planet.
Imagine that we re-positioned it’s structure.
Moved mass from here to there.
Imagine that we burned .. oil / gas / coal .. & therefore it no longer exists.
The core of the earth pushes on the surface of the planet .. distributing weight .. the weight distribution has changed.
What has happened to planet earth as a result ?
a) it is lighter
b) it’s shape has changed
c) the planet is smaller
d) & therefore it is spinning faster but then so is the whole solar system .. as a consequence.
Is this serious ?
I haven’t got a clue .. what does the scientific mind set say .. or haven’t the realized yet ?
“runaway warming” ?
Did you know that planet earth has tilted on it’s axis .. ever so slightly ?
As a result .. nations have moved away from their former climate.
Did you know that planet earth has sped up just a smidgen ?
Yep, planet earth spins on it’s axis just a smidgen faster.
As a result the 24 hour day .. though it is still 24 hours long .. is a shorter 24 hours .. FACT.
When we say, “there aren’t enough hours in a day” it is not that there aren’t enough hours.. but that they are shorter hours .. that is why we are always so tired .. we the people of planet earth have not yet acclimatized to the faster pace .. & we may die of exhaustion as a result.
Though this is known to the Scientific Geneii .. we have not been told .. yet.
Poor Mr. Trump has his hands full.
What a wretched situation we humans have already created for earth, for all the other wonderful beings whose planet this is also. I did a thesis on the extinction of the American mammoth when the overkill hypothesis by man at the end of the last ice age was trendy, and my evidence pointed to climate change. The elephant is the last of a great family, winnowed down to a remnant, a very intelligent animal we may even lose by human greed now. It will be a very impoverished world future generations inherit, if we manipulate it for own selfish ends.
Let me get this straight. They believe climate change is a hoax dreamed up by the Chinese … but they are turning to climate engineering to combat it?
I believe this is true in the same way that building the F-35 contributes to the defense of the US. Both are about making piles of money. Climate engineering might save us if done along with drastically cutting fossil carbon fuel burning, just as the F-35 might have been OK if it had been designed without the vertical take-off feature demanded by the Marines. The Chinese had enough sense to nix that feature when they built their copy of the F-35 from stolen blueprints.
The version of Climate Engineering Trump’s guys are talking about is worse than useless.
Renewables and Conservation can easily discard fossils and global warming. Only lack of political will prevents it. The Fossil fuel strategy is to block renewable energy transition lines. The technology is here it only need be used. Germany is almost 100% renewable electricity and there are many alternative fuels ( alcohol, electric, fuel cells) to fossils.
Obi-jonKenobi, we are deliberately not told about either HAARP or chemtrails, it is easy to fool people who are overworked, stressed-out, don’t look up at the sky as they anxiously scurry about. The American Dream, stay in your house and be comfortable! HAARP had to be approved by Congress as it is a military weapon, but Congress is mostly lawyers who don’t bother much with science. Initially it came online in the 1990s. There have been times when the HAARP array was taken offline, has to be considered in military treaties, and there have been movements against it at times which have been tamped down. Online you can read a discussion of “Angels Don’t Play This HAARP”, and I urge everyone to read it to really understand how scary it could be, since this push toward climate manipulation seems to be getting ramped up. Scientists and engineers will start urging to employ it more and tell us the benefits.
As for how chemtrails were approved, I am not clear on the history. In fact, your question makes me want to look into it. Many people have been aware of chemtrails for years, and they were simply told that they were normal contrails of airplanes. They are not normal, they linger and change into other patterns. Where the money for them is coming from is hidden, has to be billions. The US is not the only country doing chemtrailing. You can see that the plane creating the line in the sky is very small, it is a drone. Some of the trails have strange forms, loopy even. The clouds then change, then usually the weather changes the next day or two.
The question of how these programs came about – as well as how they keep operating off the radar screen of any scrutiny that I know of by either Congress or the press – is, of course, of interest to me, too.
But, the more immediate question for me is can chemical agents sprayed into the atmosphere (chemtrails) or electronic pulses designed to heat up the troposphere (HAARP) be affecting climate? It seems like a reasonable assumption that they are but is it a major factor and are these activities being considered in climate models? Are the scientists doing all of these super-sophisticated studies even aware of HAARP and chemtrails given the secretive nature of these programs?
What has been missing for some time in the analysis of climate change – in my opinion based on limited knowledge about HAARP – is ANY mention by ANY scientist that I know of about what is already going on in both the HAARP program and what is know as “chemtrails” (spraying various chemical agents into the atmosphere).
For those of you rolling your eyes at the mention of chemtrails, I was one of you 10 years ago but I’ve seen enough of what I consider credible information that this has been and probably still is going on. Why? I haven’t the foggiest idea BUT if what I’ve read is true, it leads me to wonder if any of the science being released regarding human-caused climate change takes into consideration the effects of these agents.
Meanwhile, this proposal sounds like something ripped from the pages of what has been already reported about HAARP and chemtrails.
Go Trump climate change a joke cut funding spend money on helping poor American citizen who were born in America lets start helping out our own kind instead of helping everyone else out
Storms can be geoengineered with ionospheric heaters directing energy. The complete title of the Air Force document is “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025”. Scientists who opposed it stated that it has potential to rend the ionosphere, causing UV to bombard earth. The ozone layer depletion is already huge. There is a book about HAARP which is well worth reading by Nick Begich and Jeanne Manning, “Angels Don’t Play This HAARP”. Nick Begich is a scientist activist from Alaska and Jeanne Manning a journalist. Explains well how the ionospheric heaters work, scientists who oppose them state the technology is the most significant in environmental effects since the atomic bomb.
And there is also electromagnetic engineering, which is everywhere, smart meters which are forced on consumers and ELF, electromagnetic low frequencies, and VLF, very low frequencies, have a powerful effect as shown by research. Such frequencies can even be mind altering and induce cancer by affecting DNA. Cell phone towers are everywhere.
Earliest weather manipulation began about in the 1950s, I think I have read. Dane Wigington says geoengineering has been ongoing for 70 years. People like Newt Gingrich who haven’t a clue about science should be making decisions about this? I don’t think so, and these people should be vigorously opposed.
We have lost countless species on earth because of this manipulation, birds, bees, many mammals, killing bats that help reduce insects, so much more. Yes, if this keeps up, we will have collapse and we will become extinct ourselves. Then earth will have to recover from the most destructive species that ever lived on it.
Indigenous people commonly attracted rain. Once in Hawaii a friend of mine ceased a downpour with a simple poem/chant so we could access our campsite.
From one of the early kinks:
Allowing the fate of Planet Earth to be decided by characters like this is unthinkable. Every single one of them is some kind of nut, and I’d wager what they have in common is a love of power and money, for none of them have any record of giving a damn about the fate of the Earth.
A quick way to get up to speed on an accidental bit of climate engineering is to watch the 2006 PBS Nova show of Dimming the Sun. Several people have uploaded it to youtube, and many public libraries might have it.
As Jonathan Marshall correctly says, this is an insanely dangerous procedure. Given how far we’ve gone on the road to disaster, we’re probably going to have to try some version of Climate Engineering. But to put money-grubbing idiots and psychopaths in charge of the program will just cause the End to come sooner. Much sooner.
More reading on one of the loons:
http://www.desmogblog.com/david-schnare
*** By the way, this was a remarkably good essay. ***
Thanks Jessica. Geoengineering has been around for a long time. Some of the same scientists wafting daydreams about colonies (haven’t we had enough of colonization?) on Mars are eager to get funds for this dangerous and unproven idea. Haven’t we messed with the atmosphere and climate enough already?
We are deep enough into the complexity trap without adding another layer to our foolish attempts to improve on Mama nature. The ultimate target victim of all advanced technology is our own infinitely complex and poorly understood physiology. The path beyond our escalating problems is an orderly retreat into greater simplicity and cooperation with nature’s functioning.
Craig Dilworth has written a book with a deep analysis of how this is a key human problem: Too Smart For Our Own Good.
As individuals we need to do everything we can to lower our own carbon footprints. The government can’t be relied on to get any of this done. At some point we really need STEP technology deployed on a vast scale: “Licht says that using STEP in an area less than 10% the size of the Sahara desert could bring CO2 in the atmosphere down to preindustrial levels in just 10 years.” http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/08/carbon-capture-strategy-pays
For example, Newt Gingrich, the President’s close adviser and former House Speaker, gushed that it “holds forth the promise of addressing global warming concerns for just a few billion dollars a year. Instead of penalizing ordinary Americans, we would have an option to address global warming by rewarding scientific innovation.”
If Newt Gingrich endorses this program check it out with all the skepticism you can muster.
China will have to develop the technology reducing global warming for us to survive. Future economic activity will probably be centred there and they have the most apparent problem now. Economic troubles reducing the US footprint is, unfortunately, likely the best solution for the US problem. The neoliberal framework has to be broken for any serious progress to occur. Trump, temporarily seriously damaging as he is, was paradoxically the only hope for the destruction of the neoliberal paradigm once the Sanders challenge had been neutralized by the establishment.
Germany is nearly 100% renewable electrical energy, China has already decided to transition to and is implementing vast renewable projects. The reason we depend on fossil fuels is a direct result of Rockefeller creating a monopoly, originally there were one third electric, one third steam, and one third gas fueled vehicles in the USA. Rockefeller , GM, and Chrysler crushed all alternative fuels and mass transit (Railroads and electric trolleys).
For those wanting a timely site for what is really happening to our world, I highly recommend the below link.
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/
BTW Dave Glad to see you comment here. I dig your website and your brother’s poetry too.
Geoengineering has been going on for years, and now, in the Trump global warming denier administration, the issue is being brought out of the closet. Dane Wigington, a solar engineer from California, has an ongoing website, geoengineeringwatch.org, and works determinedly to bring out the issue at programs around the country. The chemtrails which have been sprayed in the sky for years now have been denied by debunkers, and whoever is doing so relies on people not asking questions. In travel, I have seen them for years all over the country, and the chemicals are dispersed by drone particularly with sun’s rays early in a.m. and sundown, sometimes other times to enhance effects. If you watch the sky, you will see the cloud patterns change, sometimes even very quickly after the lines go up. Now, Dr. Keith of Harvard, states that he and a colleague will release a trial balloon of chemicals into the atmosphere near Tucson next year! He knows very well it has been ongoing.
There are also ionospheric heaters, Tesla technology, run by several countries, about 8 of them on earth. The US has the largest, in Alaska, HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), which is a large antenna array across which radiofrequency waves can be focused and beamed into the ionosphere to direct energy in specific patterns or lenses, in order to influence weather, though the initial justification for HAARP when approved by Congress, who are not scientists, was to intercept enemy satellites. The ionospheric heaters are the result of the work of the brilliant Serbian physicist, Nicola Tesla, discoverer of AC. DARPA operates HAARP, and the Air Force has a document from 1996, “Owning the Weather in 2025”. It is online.
I recommend everyone here following geoengineeringwatch.org. At some point, these manipulators of earth will bring about the “law of unintended consequences” far worse than we are already experiencing. There is never any serious discussion of the fact that we all must change our consumption patterns, and that capitalism is an obsolete system based on limitless growth on a finite planet.
The Tic Tac Toe patterns of chemtrails are extremely obvious. The fallout from the chemicals are devastating for human, animal, plant and soil health. There have been geoengineering conferences for decades discussing chemtrail applications. Excellent movie youtube “What the Hell are They Spraying” or similar title.
You didn’t miss anything Dave. Trump and the clueless clowns he chose as assistants are greeting every new challenge by whatever nonsense pops into their heads at the moment. These folks are convinced now that reality is whatever they say it is, so they have no need to consider future impacts, they just think they will come up with another fresh fantasy idea whatever comes up.
So Trump and his EPA director both say Climate Change is a hoax, but they are also contemplating ways to engineer the global climate so as to prevent global warming?
Did I miss something here?
Dave Lindorff
founding editor of ThisCantBeHappening.net
Real answers to atmospheric pollution are: population reduction, reduced consumption, vegan diet, organic farming, elimination of air travel, reduction of private car use in favor of mass transportation, and elimination of armies and war.
All of the methods above are ways of saying less. Unfortunately less is a word modern addicted people do not want to hear. What we demand is more, more, more. Please Mr. Scientist (the modern God) do your magic so we can have our cake (plenty of it!) and have a nice stable world to disport our spoiled selfish egos in.
And by the way the immediate danger of catastrophic parboiling is far greater than has been reported. Total human extinction by fire is now definitely a possibility, verging on a probable outcome of our species inability to grow up and meet our adult responsibilities.
this is right along with what I was thinking…although was unable to really put the words to. Capitalism demands infinite growth using finite resources…therefore our masters will always take any other way besides limiting growth and consumption. And when the world begins to warm again after pumping reflectors in the atmosphere, well just keep pumping more reflectors! If the reflectors get to cooling the planet more than they should well we may have warm the planet. Meanwhile the air quality is getting toxic…cause now that we shut those hippies up shouting about climate change…there’s no need to move to renewables!
It is sad because we have the full capability to launch a Manhattan Project like effort to bring ourselves in balance with nature. This would require a COMPLETE ABANDON of our current consumption based capitalist system. Baby steps will not be sufficient. It is time for a complete overhaul to achieve an economy based on sustainability. We are controlled by crazy people…who would sooner go under ground with all their billions and just nuke the entire planet, before they would limit their profits for the sake of humanity.
I don’t know the solution but altering the climate with our own poisonous thermostat is just as crazy as it sounds. The only viable(sounding) solution I have seen is Peter Joseph’s resource based economy discussed in The Zeitgeist series. Our leaders will not bring us the change we need, unless we make them…but lunch break is over…back to work…too distracted with the day to day to do what is required. I guess I will just keep reading articles and getting pissed off.
Brilliant assessment.
We are already inadvertently geo-engineering the atmosphere by adding CO2, and have been since the dawn of the industrial age. I am no scientist, but I can’t help thinking that figuring out a way to sequester the CO2 and methane we are releasing would be a prudent measure. Adding reflecting particles to the upper atmosphere sounds a lot more risky. I think a good two-fer would be to quit growing corn to feed cows, and plant a bunch of fast growing trees instead. We’d get rid of all the cow farts (methane), and soak up a lot of CO2. Plus we’d all live healthier lives by reducing red meat consumption. Vegie burgers to the rescue!
I travel cross country by car quite often, and the feedlots in the panhandle and high plains are gross beyond belief. Nothing but scorched earth, cow manure, and miles of critters waiting to be turned into hamburger.
Good observation; we’re already geo-engineers. In fact, we can expand that concept: all lifeforms are Geo-engineering the planet, unless one proposes that those former 60 million American Bison had no impact on their environment. Life is essentially a log-rolling/problem-solving exercise, and it is an illusion that some permanent, static-state status can be achieved. I gleaned from EIR that the Way of Nature is to constantly re-organize to higher, anti-entropic complexity, proceeding from single-cell organisms to human beings (and no that is not the end either, especially when our descendants colonize Mars in their tens of millions and more adapting to the change in gravity and sunlight). I like the idea of greening the Earth with trees and grasslands where there are now deserts. To do this would take a massive water management/desalination project that realistically can only be powered by nuclear powerplants (preferably from India’s 4th generation designs, not our risky 2nd generation designs, where it has been frozen, now atrophied, since 3-mile island…this will happen when we join them in the New Silk Road paradigm, which will GREATLY reduce the need for military forces). This would kill a few birds with one stone: the new extra mass of flora will absorb CO2 and exhale O2. The nukes enable us to move away from carbon-based fuels to hydrogen/electric based fuels for vehicles. This will also increase the mass of fauna (new places where the deer and the antelope can now play). This will create new jobs in this high-tech/manufacturing version of a CCC program, with new skillsets established, making possible a move to small-plot, labor-intensive permaculture (instead of corporate factory farming), and scientific harvesting of wildlife fauna for the meat-eaters (instead of gigantic feedlots filled with big, farting cows). Brain-storming in this way is a very good exercise.
Yes, the environment is always in flux, and all beings have an impact. That said, for us today, I think our only choices are along the lines you are recommending. I don’t know much about different types of nukes, but another commenter (davidgmills) mentioned thorium nukes in an earlier comment stream. They are supposedly safe. As earth’s population continues to grow, we will have to make smarter choices. That means wresting control from the oligarchs, and pushing for more enlightened policies on all fronts. Here’s hoping!
Yes, thorium. India is the biggest source for thorium, and they’ve been working diligently to perfect its’ use in nuclear reactors. They’ve succeeded. Thorium can’t be weaponized.
I will put this link here to the fist commenter to remind that climate engineering is a profit making endeavor. How Trump can be so ignorant to assume he will invent climate engineering. What a complete jackass he is. I am getting more and more the sense that he has never read anything worth while, and relies on television to get his ‘knowledge of the world’.
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/