A panel convened on Tuesday by AEI argued that geoengineering would be necessary to combat global warming.
By physically altering the planet on a global scale, geoengineering projects would theoretically offset warming caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The concept was dismissed as fringe science when it was first introduced in the 1960s. Now, what once seemed like science fiction is not only being deemed feasible, but necessary, said experts at a panel convened here Tuesday by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank.
One popular geoengineering scenario is to create an artificial volcano. Thomas Wigley, an expert on climate change based at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., has created computer simulations that replicate the 1991 "Mount Pinatubo effect" -- a temporary cooling period created by the launch of 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.
More after the flip:
Wigley proposes mimicking the natural process by injecting sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide into the same region, 60,000 to 70,000 ft. above the earth's surface. The compound would react to form a cloud of sulfuric acid droplets that would in turn reflect sunlight and cool the globe.
Opponents of the scheme argue that it avoids the core issue of reducing emissions. Additional concerns are that it destroys ozone and reduces rainfall.
"That's an excuse to conduct business as usual," says Alan Robock, a meteorologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "It takes political will to lower carbon dioxide emissions. There are plenty of solutions already available."
...Volcanic eruptions also destroy ozone. Geoengineering schemes that blast sulfur-containing compounds into the atmosphere could hinder the repair of the ozone hole by up to 70 years. The hole has been on the mend; it is estimated that it will disappear by the mid-21st century.
Both Robock's and Wigley's models suggest that this approach could reduce rainfall globally. Mount Pinatubo triggered lower rainfall, soil moisture and river flow in many regions. Volcanic eruptions at tropical latitudes cause warmer winters in the Northern Hemisphere, and eruptions at high latitudes can weaken the Asian and African monsoons.
It can also cause acid rain.
A 2006 paper in the journal Science, for example, written by the eminent atmospheric scientist Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, suggested that annually blasting roughly 500,000 tons of sulfur (about 7% of yearly sulfur production) into the stratosphere every year for three decades would prevent global warming. But there is that acid rain issue.
[In April], White House science adviser John Holdren found himself at the center of a brouhaha over remarks to the Associated Press that geoengineering of all sorts was "mentioned" as the administration pondered means of limiting global warming. Holdren later downplayed geoengineering schemes, after news stories appeared linking atmospheric geoengineering to drought, ozone depletion and acid rain, among other concerns.
Earlier this year it was reported that as a ‘Plan B’, a technological fix may become necessary to offset global warming.
Levels of CO2 have continued to increase during the past decade since the [Kyoto] treaty was agreed and they are now rising faster than even the worst-case scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body. In the meantime the natural absorption of CO2 by the world's forests and oceans has decreased significantly. Most of the scientists we polled agreed that the failure to curb emissions of CO2, which are increasing at a rate of 1 per cent a year, has created the need for an emergency "plan B" involving research, development and possible implementation of a worldwide geoengineering strategy.
Last week the American Meteorological Society became the first scientific body to officially endorse geoengineering research.
The document states that "deliberately manipulating physical, chemical, or biological aspects of the Earth system" should be explored alongside the more conventional approaches to climate change. Conventional approaches means reducing emissions – "mitigation" in policy-speak – and adjusting to the unavoidable effect of climate change – known as "adaptation".
Looking past temperature mitigation to the darker side of controlling the climate, the History Channel recently aired a documentary called Weather Warfare.
The power to use tornados, hurricanes and the deadliest weather as weapons of war may now be possible. We'll investigate reports that weather weapons are in development and reveal the technology that--in the future--could turn hurricanes, earthquakes, even tsunamis into some of the most powerful and plausibly deniable weapons of mass destruction the world has ever seen.
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Suspicions center upon a Pentagon program which since 1988 has researched methods to harness the ionosphere, an electrically charged region 50 miles above earth.
One of the first ideas came mid-decade from Bernard Eastlund, a physicist working for oil-and-gas conglomerate Atlantic Richfield. Arco had the rights to trillions of cubic feet of natural gas under Alaska's North Slope. The problem had always been how to get that gas to the port at Valdez. Eastlund had a better idea: Use the gas onsite to fuel a giant ionospheric heater. Such a facility, he wrote in a series of patents, could fry Soviet missiles in midflight or maybe even nudge cyclones and other extreme weather toward enemies. That's right: weaponized hurricanes.
Arco's executives presented the idea to Simon Ramo, one of the godfathers of the US intercontinental ballistic missile program. Ramo passed it on to the under secretary of defense, who in turn gave it to the Pentagon's advanced research arm, Darpa, and the DOD's secretive science advisory board, code-named Jason. Tony Tether, director of Darpa's strategic technology office, gave Arco a contract to conduct a feasibility study. Arco brought on board none other than Dennis Papadopoulos as a consultant.
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Luckily, the senior senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, enjoyed a reputation for inserting projects into the federal budget to benefit his home state, most notoriously a $223 million bridge from the town of Ketchikan to, well, not much of anyplace. In 1988, the researchers sat down with Stevens and assured him that an ionospheric heater would be a bona fide scientific marvel and a guaranteed job creator, and it could be built for a mere $30 million. "He provided some congressional money, some pork money," Papadopoulos says. "It was much less than the bridge to nowhere." Just like that, the Pentagon had $10 million for ionospheric heater research.
The CBC ran a report on the program in 1996
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