Dear Mick,
The Daily Mail article is true.
But you might also be interested in the more informative BBC interview:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31475761
Alan
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644
14 College Farm Road E-mail: [email protected]
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
Watch my 18 min TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54
On 2/14/15, 10:30 PM, Mick West wrote:
The Daily Mail story about CIA inquiries concerning covert
geoengineering is interesting because I actually posed a very similar
question to the Geoengineering list three years ago, to which both of
you (Alan and Andrew) responded directly.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/geoengineering/UzNzNyJIZ2g/Qvs7XFNK5doJ
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21msg/geoengineering/UzNzNyJIZ2g/Qvs7XFNK5doJ>
So I was wondering Alan, if is this the Daily Mail's dramatic
retelling of this exchange, or were there actually "CIA" men calling
you asking similar questions?
Mick
On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 6:56 PM, Andrew Lockley
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Poster's note : Robock tweeted this, so it's probably not entirely
inaccurate. (Members outside the UK may not be aware that the
Daily Mail is widely derided.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2954051/Chill-factor-CIA-weather-query.html
Chill factor at 'CIA' weather query
By Press Association
00:43 15 Feb 2015,
A leading American climate scientist has said he felt "scared"
when a shadowy organisation claiming to represent the CIA asked
him about the possibility of weaponised weather.
Professor Alan Robock received a call three years ago from two men
wanting to know if experts would be able to spot a hostile force's
attempts to upset the US climate.
But he suspected the real intention was to find out how feasible
it might be to secretly interfere with the climate of another country.
The professor, from the Department of Environmental Sciences at
Rutgers University, New Jersey, has investigated the potential
risks and benefits of using stratospheric particles to simulate
the climate-changing effects of volcanic eruptions.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in San Jose, California, where he took part
in a debate on geoengineering to combat climate change, Prof
Robock said: " I got a phone call from two men who said we work as
consultants for the CIA and we'd like to know if some other
country was controlling our climate, would we know about it?"I
told them, after thinking a little bit, that we probably would
because if you put enough material in the atmosphere to reflect
sunlight we would be able to detect it and see the equipment that
was putting it up there."At the same time I thought they were
probably also interested in if we could control somebody else's
climate, could they detect it?"
Asked how he felt when the approach was made, he said: "Scared.
I'd learned of lots of other things the CIA had done that haven't
followed the rules and I thought that wasn't how I wanted my tax
money spent. I think this research has to be in the open and
international so there isn't any question of it being used for
hostile purposes."
Geoengineering to offset the effects of global warming could
include scattering sulphur particles in the upper atmosphere to
re-direct sunlight back into space, seeding the oceans with iron
to encourage the spread of carbon-hungry algae, and creating
reflective areas on the Earth's surface.
But the long-term effects of such strategies are largely unknown
and many experts fear they may pose grave risks.
A further twist in Prof Robock's story concerns the CIA's alleged
co-funding of a major report on geoengineering published this week
by the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences.The report
mentions the "US intelligence community" in its list of sponsors,
which also includes the American space agency Nasa, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the US Department of
Energy.
Prof Robock said the CIA had told one of his colleagues it wanted
to fund the report, but apparently did not want this fact to be
too obvious.
"The CIA is a major funder of the National Academies report so
that makes me really worried who is going to be in control," he added.
He pointed out that the US had a history of using the weather in a
hostile way. During the Vietnam War clouds were seeded over the Ho
Chi Minh trail - a footpath-based supply route used by the North
Vietnamese - to make the track muddy in an attempt to cut it off.
The CIA had also seeded clouds over Cuba "to make it rain and ruin
the sugar harvest".During a press conference on the potential
risks of geoengineering, Prof Robock was asked what its greatest
hazard might be.
He replied: "The answer is global nuclear war because if one
country wants to control the climate in one way, and another
doesn't want it or if they try to shoot down the planes ... if
there is no agreement, it could result in terrible consequences."
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