Our War against climate: geo-engineering climate & weather Modification and the paradox of second best January 29, 2009 Mickey Glantz Consortium for Capacity.

Our War against climate: geo-engineering climate & weather Modification

and the paradox of second best

January 29, 2009

Mickey GlantzConsortium for Capacity

Building (CCB)

INSTAAR/CUBoulder, Colorado

[email protected]

www.fragilecologies.comSandia Lab Program logo

Aspects of Climate

• Climate variability• Seasonal to inter-

annual• Climate change

• “Deep” climate change

– New global climate state

• Extreme meteorological events

• Seasonality

Kinds of climate modification

• Inadvertent or Advertent ?

– “We are inadvertently changing the climate, so why not advertently try to counterbalance it?” (Mike MacCracken)

• Quick onset or Creeping onset ?

Societal interactions with Nature(3 competing perspectives)

• Society…

• dominates Nature

• is subordinate to Nature

• in harmony with Nature

Web-lines referring to the ‘war with climate”• Nobel Peace prize 2007 prepares world for war against climate terror• The Climate War Game Team

– Winning the War Against Global Warming• Citizens urged to wage war vs climate change

– 'War room' to battle warming proposed• EU defends leadership in 'world war' on climate change

– A win-win war on climate change• Rationing could be key to war on climate change

– U.S. Declares War On Climate Change• We Fought a War on Climate Change and Climate Change Won

– Britain 'at war' on climate change• TWO FAMOUS WARRIORS IN THE WAR AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

– US must win the war on climate change, says Charles• War on climate change targets flatulent cows

– Countries Without Borders: How the War Against Climate Change Will be Won• Video Wars on Climate: Of Penguins and Polar Bears

– A Victory Bond for the war against climate change• War on Climate Instead of Iraq

– From prediction to action: meteorology and the war on climate change• 'Green' Budget signals war on climate change

– India can lead war on climate change: Gore• London mayor Johnson unveils secret weapon in war on climate change - the roof garden

– Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us• The Iraq war and climate change mitigation: National security and cost of action

– Our War against climate: geo-engineering climate & weather and the paradox of second best

Global warming’s “Tipping points”

• IPCC 1st to 3rd Assessments

• IPCC 4th Assessment

• Inconvenient Truth

• Nobel Prize

The Spotlight has shifted

• From …

• WG 1 IPCC SCIENCE

•To … •WG 2 IPCC IMPACTS

“Impacts Research Seen as New Frontier”

Science Magazine (October 10, 2008)

Global warming: what’s happening now

Sea level rise

Arctic ice melting rapidly

Glaciers melting worldwide

Warm ecosystems moving upslope

Infectious disease vectors shifting poleward

Increasing levels of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc)

High rates of tropical deforestation (“Lungs of the Earth?”)

Fossil fuel burning implicated

Proposed geo-engineering schemes to control climate

After Kellogg & Schneider

REDIRECTING AGULHAS CURRENT

TOWING ICEBERGS

CREATE THERMAL MOUNTAINS

HYDROPOLE

TOW ICEBERGS

Damming the Med

South-North water diversions in China

* And now … aerosol injections to the stratosphere

Trees as Shelterbelts

1930s Dust Storm, Dust Bowl years, USA

A dust storm in rural Oklahoma inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to compose his song, “So long, it’s been good to know ya”

Eliminating Arctic sea ice

A Walrus sitting on melting ice, basks in the sun on the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Russia.Photo: Greenpeace

Geo-engineering design for a Bering Straits dam

www.thevenusproject.com/ city_think/energy.htm

Soviet (Russian) river diversions

1. In the middle of the 20th century, Soviet officials talked about changing the direction of northward flowing Siberian Rivers to its arid central Asian republics.

2. This idea was controversial until it was shelved when Gorbachev came to power in the mid-1980s.

3. Discussion appeared again in the late 1990s about such river diversions into the desiccating Aral Sea basin.

4. Soviet and now Russian scientists have for the most part opposed it, for environmental reasons.

Northward flowing Siberian rivers

Deforestation Affects Climate and Rainfall In The Amazon

Clearcutting, widespread deforestation

http://images.wildmadagascar.org/pictures/tana_flight/madagascar_erosion_aerial_11.JPG

Engineering schemes proposed to modify climates in Africa

Glantz, CCB, NCAR

ITCZ

Sergel’s plan to irrigate the Sahara

www.mythinglinks.org/ afr~subsahara~Niger.html Russian proposal, circa 1910

Black topping the Sahara (and Venezuela

(Creating thermal mountains)

Karakum Canal, Turkmenistan

The largest irrigation and water supply canal in the world. Started in 1954, and completed in 1988, it is navigable over much of its 1,375 km length, and carries 13 km³ of water annually from the Amu-Darya River across the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan. [wikipedia]

Canadian view of attempts to divert Great Lakes

Also, Oklahoma and the US Midwest’s Ogallala Aquifer region

Floods in The Netherlands 1953

The Dutch, after their terrifying experience of the February 1953 storms, made sure that flooding and destruction on that scale would never happen again by creating the greatest storm surge barrier in the world, known as the Delta project.

Netherlands’ Delta Plan (1957-81)A success story

Delta Plan, flood control and reclamation project, S Netherlands, in the Rhine River delta. Built in 1957–81, it involved construction of four major dikes (up to 131 ft/40 m high) across the Rhine's four estuaries on the North Sea, three auxiliary dams, and a storm-tide barrage across the IJssel River. The project shortened the Dutch coastline by c.440 mi (700 km), reclaimed 6,100 acres (15,000 hectares), and created a freshwater lake (33 sq mi/85 sq km). Two navigable waterways to Antwerp and to Rotterdam and Europoort were left open.

Vision of the future: a hydrometropole The Netherlands

• The Netherlands faces higher sea levels and more extreme hydro-climatic events in the future. We think two basic approaches to climate proofing could help combat these threats.

• In one, urban and industrial activities, including infrastructure, move from below sea level to higher and drier lands, as found in the eastern Netherlands.

• The second approach involves the creation of a large 'hydrometropole', a world in which we have learned how to live with — and make a living from — water (see 'Vision of the future: a hydrometropole').

• This would be a major urban, industrial and rural area with more than 15 million people living and working in a world partly floating on and surrounded by water.

• Given the history of the Netherlands and the spirit of its people, this second vision seems more appropriate and attractive, but only time — and vigorous public debate — will tell what approach is favoured.

India’s Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster: Narmada Valley Dam Projects

http://www.irn.org/ http://www.narmada.org/

Great Man-made River, Libya

www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/gmmrp.shtml

Alaska-California under-ocean

(subsea) freshwater pipeline

Feasibility study proposed in US Congress in 1991 in midst of multi-year

drought in southern CaliforniaShasta Lake

pipeline

(at a cost of ~ $80+ Billion)

Alaska

California

Geo-Schemes proposed to stop Global Warming

• Carbon sequestration• Iron particles in the

ocean• Global scale tree

planting• Go nuclear• Go renewable energy

www.lightwatcher.com/ chemtrails/smoking_gun.html

Grow Ocean Algae to Remove Carbon Dioxide (iron fertilization)

Supertankers would spread millions of tons of iron over the ocean surface.

1. The iron stimulates growth of algae which consume carbon dioxide from the ocean surface as they grow.

2. When the algae die, they sink to the sea floor, taking the carbon with them.

3. The ocean draws more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to replace what the algae took from its surface. globalwarming.enviroweb.org/.../ grow_algae.jpeg

More examples

• Towing icebergs • 1888, Argentina• 1970s, Saudi Arabia

• Redirecting ocean currents

• Carbon dust on glaciers (to foster melting rates

and timing)

• Cloud seeding• Project “Stormfury”• Sequestering Carbon

dioxide

www.telegraph.co.uk/.../ 2005/02/23/ixhome.html

Some thoughts (mine) about geo-engineering

• Societies try to exploit areas that are “marginal” to production, – while they actively the degradation of productive areas.

• Technology is neutral. – How society chooses to use it determines whether its

positive, negative or benign.

• Societies need to move away from an “environmental ethic” – based on dominance to one based on harmony.