On Feb 15, 2015, at 10:27 AM, Andrew Lockley
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Respectfully, I disagree.
The status of geoengineering is perhaps more likely to be akin to
trade sanctions.
Imagine a bipolar world which is divided up purely into a Chinese
superpower zone and an American superpower zone. There may be
various skirmishes going on at any one time, as we see in
Ukraine. Simultaneously, we may see ongoing trade, diplomacy and
cooperation in other ways. (This pattern is common among
'frenemies'.)
Where the parties have a clearly different CE preference, the
concept of weaponisation becomes extremely blurred. Using CE
becomes a bargaining chip like all others. In extremis, such a
tool may cause profound food shortages in the counterparty's
zone, or expose key infrastructure to natural disasters.
How could we agree whether that constituted a weapon, or not?
A
On 15 Feb 2015 16:38, "Ken Caldeira"
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Based on the history of our intelligence agencies involvement
in secret kidnappings and torture, killing noncombatants with
drones, spying on our telecommunications, etc, we can take it
as a given that secret US governmental organizations will
engage in criminal behavior.
However, we should be entirely clear:
*There is absolutely no evidence that any US intelligence
agency has any interest in climate intervention for anything
other than defense-related **informational **purposes.*
*
*
*Furthermore, there is no plausible scenario in which climate
intervention could be used effectively as a weapon.*
So, while I share Alan's contempt for the criminal behavior
of our secretive governmental agencies, I do not think it is
helpful to speculate that in this instance, the agencies are
looking for new ways that they might inflict suffering on others.
Best,
Ken
_______________
Ken Caldeira
Carnegie Institution for Science
Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 7212 [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
http://kencaldeira.com <http://kencaldeira.com/>
https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira
My assistant is Dawn Ross <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>, with access to incoming
emails.
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 8:08 AM, Alan Robock
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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]
<mailto:[email protected]>
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USAhttp://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
<http://envsci.rutgers.edu/%7Erobock>
http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
Watch my 18 min TEDx talk
athttp://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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