Geoengineering The Sky 2.0

Written by Lynne Balzer on March 5, 2024. Posted in Current News

The people pushing the “climate crisis” narrative are finally starting to realize that the measures undertaken to cool the Earth by reducing carbon dioxide are not working as well as they had hoped.

So now they’ve decided to take more extreme measures.

We previously reported about a plan, dubbed Solar Radiation Management (SRM), also called solar geoengineering, that would inject millions of tons of tiny sulfur dioxide (SO2) particles into the stratosphere, at an altitude of 10 – 15 miles (16 -24 km) to reflect sunlight to cool the planet.

A 2018 study at Harvard University estimated that this would cost around $2.25 billion a year over 15 years.

A California project entitled “Make Sunsets” released sulfur and other harmful chemicals into the atmosphere, using high-altitude weather balloons.

When they tried to move this project to Baja California, in Mexico, the project managers were met with criticism and outrage, and the government of Mexico put a stop to it.

An Israeli company, Stardust Solutions, is testing another plan to shoot reflective particles into the sky at high altitudes to reduce solar radiation. They hope to make this an actual reality within the “next few months.”

However, some fear that the ozone layer in the stratosphere could be destroyed by reactions with these aerosols. Because ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the sun, more ultraviolet rays would thus reach the Earth.

Other geoengineering projects are either in the planning stages or already being implemented. A project at Southern Cross University in Australia involves blasting a brine mixture into the sky to convert wispy clouds into larger, brighter clouds that would supposedly reflect more sunlight into space.

This endeavor is being funded by the government, various conservation groups, and universities.

The hypothesis is that “brightening” clouds above the oceans would cause more light to be reflected away from the Earth before it can reach the oceans below, where it would be absorbed.

This is a way of increasing the albedo effect: the fact that light colored surfaces reflect more light and heat than dark surfaces. The brightness of a cloud depends on the size of each water droplet comprising it.

The smaller the droplets the more surface area there would be in any cloud. Reducing their size could enable them to scatter more light.

To achieve this, tiny aerosols are sprayed on the surface of the oceans. These would provide condensation nuclei to form smaller water droplets than would occur naturally if the water evaporating from the ocean was allowed to rise by convection until it reaches an altitude where it is cold enough to condense.

A large fleet of ships would be needed to carry the machines needed to do this. Just building the required ships is estimated to cost upwards of five billion dollars.

Some worry that reducing the droplet size might affect the period for which these clouds exist, as well as the amount of water they can hold. The risk here is that weather patterns could be affected.

Since scientists just don’t know enough about how climate works, this experiment could have negative, unintended consequences.

Some scientists have expressed fears that playing with the earth’s thermostat could change rainfall patterns and shift monsoons, with potentially devastating consequences for agriculture.

The resulting unintended changes in climate could vary between regions, with some areas benefiting and others being harmed. This could create conflict between nations.

Just like the study of climate, the technology of solar geoengineering is in its infancy, and it’s frightening that the changes being contemplated will affect other aspects of climate besides temperature.

Experiments done with climate models can’t tell us how these measures would affect the real world. Reducing sunlight would surely decrease plant growth and crop yields.

A reduced amount of plant biomass, which itself is a carbon dioxide sink, would have a result that is opposite to what these people are trying to achieve.

At Martha’s Vineyard, in the United States, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is planning to dump thousands of gallons of sodium hydroxide mixed with dye into the ocean.

They claim that this will create a “carbon sink” to draw carbon dioxide into the ocean from the atmosphere. It is not understood how they think this will happen.

One of the best-studied and most promising methods of geoengineering is ocean fertilization. This involves increasing the growth of phytoplankton, tiny algae that, in the presence of sunlight, react CO2 with water vapor to produce biomass through the process of photosynthesis.

Interestingly, about 50% of all the photosynthesis occurring on Earth is accomplished by phytoplankton. These can be fertilized just like crops to help them grow faster. In the process, these tiny plants would use more CO2. Iron is the main ocean fertilizer being considered.

However, overuse of this method could cause an overgrowth of phytoplankton that could deplete oxygen from water, thereby harming marine animals. Additionally, a sudden increase in the number of phytoplankton could adversely affect the marine food chain and destabilize marine ecosystems.

The latest study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released on Feb. 28, 2024, calls for removing water from the stratosphere. In other words, this would dehydrate the atmosphere! After all, the main “greenhouse gas” is water vapor, which has 50-70 times as much effect on the warmth of our planet as carbon dioxide.

The authors propose that this could be done by seeding tiny “ice nuclei” into the stratosphere using high-altitude planes. They believe that this ice would cause the water vapor in the stratosphere to crystallize into ice, which would fall to lower levels.

The study’s abstract explains, “The mechanism is the targeted injection of ice-nucleating particles (INP) in air supersaturated concerning ice at high altitudes in the tropical entryway to the stratosphere. Ice formation in this region is a critical control of stratospheric water vapor (WV).

Recent airborne in situ data indicate that targeting only a small fraction of air parcels in the region would be sufficient to substantially remove water.” The lead author of this study, Joshua Schwartz, admits that NOAA currently doesn’t have the technology to accomplish this feat.

The global warming doomsayers still want us all to stop eating meat and drive electric vehicles (EVs), of course, but they worry that taking these steps is inadequate to achieve the “carbon-free economy” that they want to see by the year 2030.

However, the prospect of creating a solution that is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the “problem” is so scary that even some climate change believers are warning against it.

“The ethical questions associated with climate manipulation loom so large that some forms of geoengineering are simply unacceptable,” wrote Kevin Trenberth in Physics Today. Kevin Trenberth has been one of the main proponents of the climate change narrative.

Source: CCD

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