While the term “climate change” is familiar, the term “geoengineering” is still relatively new. Yet: it emerges as the “remedy” or, at least, one of them…
More than 4 years ago1 we wrote among other things:
… Global warming, as it appears as a global problem, provides ground for extremely bold, even fictional (for now…) ideas. From the “absorption” of CO2 (and its “burial” deep into the Earth’s crust…) to the creation of some kind of “filter” in the stratosphere, in order to absorb part of the solar energy.
For example, Zhen Dai, a researcher at Harvard, proposed in a recent publication (early 2019) the spraying of the stratosphere (at an indicative altitude of 20 kilometers above sea level) with calcium carbonate powder – commonly used so far as a digestive aid. According to Dai and her team, this material is the safest option to reflect part of the solar radiation before it reaches the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface.
Dai’s research has, so far, been conducted through electronic simulations. She proposes (and is seeking government approval and funding) experiments under real conditions: spraying the stratosphere with calcium carbonate over selected areas of the oceans using special balloons, and measuring how it functions as a filter. Obviously, different thicknesses of such a layer would have varying levels of effectiveness.Harvard seems to want leadership on the issue. And, just as happened when the “recognition of the greenhouse phenomenon” began through media coverage, so now reputable media outlets are playing their role. In an article (on November 23, 2018) under the title “Solar geoengineering could be ‘remarkably cheap’ – report” the English Guardian wrote:
Cooling the Earth by spraying microscopic particles that block the sun in the stratosphere could be “remarkably cheap” according to the most detailed mechanical analysis done so far.
Researchers add that the fear that a pariah state or military force could unilaterally take control of the global climate is unfounded, as it would require thousands of flights, and this would quickly become apparent.
The new study calculated the costs of the technology to deploy millions of tons of calcium particles high into the atmosphere. This form of geoengineering mimics the results of large volcanic eruptions, which significantly reduced global temperatures in the past.
“We show that a hypothetical program of such dispersal, while simultaneously highly uncertain and highly ambitious, would be technically feasible,” said Gernot Wagner, from Harvard University. “It would also be remarkably cheap, with a cost per year of around 2 to 2.5 billion dollars.” Current investments in green technologies are approximately 500 billion dollars per year.
2019 was the last pre-covid19 year, so we had some margin to ridicule such paranoid ideas, even if they bore the signature of a Harvard… But 2023, 3 years post-covid19 (3 a.c.), with the road open to every paranoia of capitalist restructuring, the issue could very naturally occupy the “experts” of the UN, especially those who have a “tendency” towards planetary universality (: last attempts to maintain their hegemony over this spinning rock). Because:
…There is growing interest from scientists, governments and philanthropists in exploring stratospheric aerosol injection, a form of solar radiation management (SRM). Such interventions, which also include modifying cloud density, have the potential to lower average global temperatures…
And just hearing the words “philanthropists are interested” is enough to make any rational person in the 3rd century AC do a 180-degree turn. “We’re fed up” with philanthropy, enough!
In the end, it fell to the Mexican government to stop, a year ago, the first “experiment” of this kind, attempted by an American start-up “extremist mobilized” against climate change, named Make Sunsets… Which “released” onto Mexican soil and airspace (without a permit), into the stratosphere, two large balloons filled with reflective sulfur particles – which are supposed to reflect a portion of solar radiation… The CEO of this company/activist organization, Luke Iseman, declared among other things that… it is unethical not to conduct experiments and not to test solutions that could save the planet…
It is easy to find this apostolic passion bubbling through and within every paranoid idea of “saving the world,” whether it concerns “climate change,” or “health,” or anything else. Putting a “filter” around the planet to “somehow block the sun,” as has happened in the past after large volcanic eruptions (say the apostles and their followers, experts and non-experts alike!), would have terrible consequences for all living beings on it—there is no doubt about that. Nevertheless, the American government has already begun funding a 5-year program for the “research and development” of this idea. Of solar geoengineering…
Where do these eschatological/soteriological (capitalist) sovereign ideas and actions come from? In year 0 (zero) of the “new normality”, in February 2020, we wrote among other things2:
George Caffentzis, in an article of his 40 years ago, guides us through the capitalist inconsistencies around the energy/work duality3:
The litany of natural raw materials—oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, wood, water, solar light—the struggle over their limits, the enjoyment of their abundance, the skepticism about their benefits, all this is included in the volume of “analyses” on the “energy crisis” we are facing. While in the 1950s and 1960s Nature was “under control”… now it seems that Mother Nature is changing her face. Instead of being the obedient, invisible, and eternally malleable material of social development, the planet appears as a stingy and cunning witch. And this is because the energy crisis is usually located in two problems:
a) in the “limited” or “finite” quantity of fossil fuels and uranium on Earth;
b) in the increasingly “full of surprises” discovery of the interactions between the use of these fuels and the biological and social consequences they have.
Although analyses place different emphasis on these two “problems,” the “solutions” they propose tackle both. Thus, the “great energy debate” (or what appears as such) is a conflict between supporters of “there are no limits,” who worry about the abyss of zero-oil-coal-natural gas-uranium approaching very quickly and are willing to adopt any “exit,” even untested solutions, and those who say there are limits, who argue that the “balance” or “structure” of Nature is so complex and fragile that any of the solutions proposed by supporters of “there are no limits” could lead Mother Nature to a schizophrenic collapse.Because of this confrontation, one might think that we live in unique times. We do live such times, but not in the way they are presented. On one hand, supporters of borderlessness shudder with fear at the coming of the day “when the earth will stand still,” the day when “civilization” (sometimes with the addition “as we know it”) will collapse and an era of social anarchy will follow – hunger, rapes, murders and cannibalism4. Opposite them stand the equally apocalyptic supporters of borders who predict terrible floods due to CO2 and the “greenhouse effect”; or the end of biological life due to ozone layer depletion, which will lead to a tidal wave of high-energy solar radiation that will penetrate chromosomes and dissolve proteins; or the explosion of a jungle of mutations from nuclear reactor radiation leaks. Conclusion: either social collapse or natural collapse. “Choose” they tell us. But why should we have to choose?
This confrontation, with its revelatory exaggerations, indicates a crucial crisis for capital and its efforts to achieve a major reorganization in the process of accumulation, in order to overcome current difficulties. The Revelation is not an accident. Whenever the current model of exploitation becomes unsustainable, capital begins to hint at death in the form of the end of the world.
Every period of capitalist development has its revelatory visions… I refer to the functional Revelations that mark each period of significant changes in capitalist development and thought. Because the Revelation appeared in other periods of capitalist history when (as is happening in the last decade) class competition reached a level of intensity that challenged the control of capital…5The realization that the “Revelation” about impending disaster—if not of the planet as a whole, certainly of large parts of civilized societies—due to “climate change” (formerly known as the “greenhouse effect”) has been around for decades, should not come as a shock. There exists a tight relationship that makes the dramatized representation of an Approaching End compelling every time capitalism’s masters restructure it: it is the relationship between energy and work. Human labor. No energy restructurings would be necessary under capitalist conditions if they were not aimed at increasing the produced work.
And because every such (technologically, mechanically) organized wave of increasing produced work (labor) causes major and serious social upheavals (not necessarily pleasant or/and desired by the masses of citizens), the “Revelation,” the Approaching End if restructuring does not occur, functions as the necessary and sufficient mega-extortion.
Such is the, let’s put it this way, “invisible existential metabolism” of capitalism! Within it and on its behalf, however, there are always the “catalysts,” the “levers,” the “accelerators,” etc. The “philanthropists who care” always come at their time, but they are not the authentic pioneers…
Power Amplifier
In 1996, the following study was published, which had been conducted on behalf of the American military: Weather as a force multiplier: Owning the weather in 2025.
The year 2025 is now approaching, and perhaps the (American) ownership of the weather will not have been secured yet. However, the intentions and efforts are alive and well; and even more so! Here’s how that study/proposal began:
By 2025, U.S. aerospace forces may be “owners of the weather,” capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing on developing these technologies for military applications. Such a capability provides the warfighter with tools to shape the battlefield in ways never before possible. It offers opportunities to conduct operations across the entire spectrum of conflict and is relevant to all conceivable scenarios. The purpose of this report is to highlight the strategy for using a future weather-modification system to achieve military objectives, and not to propose a detailed technical path.
As a high-risk, high-reward issue, weather modification creates a dilemma not unlike that of atomic fission. While certain segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather modification, the alarming military capabilities that could emerge in this field are overlooked—and this works against us. From enhancing friendly operations or creating obstacles for the enemy through appropriate small-scale weather modification, to achieving complete dominance over global communications and space control, weather modification offers the warrior a wide range of possible options, either to win or to impose control over an adversary.
Technological advances in five key areas are necessary to upgrade weather control capabilities: 1) advanced non-linear modeling techniques, 2) computational power, 3) information gathering and transmission, 4) a range of sensors across the planet, and 5) weather intervention techniques. Some intervention tools already exist today, while others need to be developed and properly shaped in the future.
If these seem to be a small specific sample of what “ownership” and “military use” of time means:
… Let us assume that in 2025 the United States are at war with a wealthy and politically entrenched drug cartel in South America. The cartel has purchased hundreds of Chinese and Russian military aircraft that have successfully impeded our efforts to strike drug production facilities. Thanks to its numerical superiority and logistics lines, the cartel can field over 10 aircraft for every one of ours. Moreover, the cartel is using the French system pour l’observation de la terre (SPOT), a geolocation and movement monitoring system which, by 2025, is capable of delivering near real-time polymorphic imagery with a one-meter offset. The United States seek to engage the enemy in an unconventional battlefield so that we can utilize our entire arsenal of aircraft and munitions.
The meteorological analysis shows that the equatorial zone in South America typically causes afternoon thunderstorms on a daily basis throughout the year. Our intelligence services confirm that cartel pilots do not want to fly near or within such thunderstorms. Thus, the Army Weather Support Element (WFSE), which is part of the Air Operations Center (AOC) command (CINC), undertakes to predict the path of such thunderstorms and, most importantly, to pull sections of these thunderstorms over critical targets that the enemy must defend with their aircraft. Given that our fighters in 2025 will be all-weather, the threat of thunderstorms is minimal for our own forces, so we can effectively and decisively control the skies above the targets.
The casual observer will wonder whether it is actually possible (for the American military or anyone else) to trigger local storms (or droughts, or anything else) here or there. The science fiction enthusiast will answer that “yes, of course it can!”—because that seems to him the appropriately passive-aggressive thinking. The issue, however, is not whether by 2024 or 2025 one or more armies are capable of being “weather owners”… But that at least the American (why not others too?) wants to! And to achieve it, it throws not only money and purchased experts. It throws, also (perhaps mainly) ideology: that the relevant research, experiments, etc., are conducted for the good of humanity…6
This factor, the ideological one, which produces for the contributors a kind of mass mobilization in the sacred passion of “salvation,” is perhaps more significant than the modification-of-time itself as a “future investment.”
Mainly because this, even if specialists of the chapter manage to sell “something” as a success, it will cause significant destruction (just like the campaign to impose mRNA platforms of genetic engineering)7. Destruction that should either remain invisible to the subordinates, or be “forgiven” in view of the “great duty of salvation”….
Let us just remember that for this issue, of weather and the infinite complexity of the factors that shape it, the (mathematical) Chaos Theory was created. Its motto about the “butterfly effect” may have become famous, but it leaves the greedy “weather owners” utterly indifferent: they have no intention of causing “stormy weather” by releasing butterflies in Beijing!!!
Ziggy Stardust
- Cyborg 14, February 2019, engineering of everything: the atmosphere… ↩︎
- Cyborg 17, February 2020, climate change and 4th industrial revolution ↩︎
- The Work / Energy crisis and the Apocalypse, November 1980, from the collective volume Midnight Oil, work, energy, war, 1973 – 1992, of the American collective Midnight Notes. ↩︎
- The first Australian-produced thriller Mad Max was released in cinemas worldwide in 1979, and was a huge success. It was followed by 3 sequels, Mad Max 2 (1981), Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Fury Road (2015). ↩︎
- Midnight Oil… page 215 – 216. ↩︎
- Cyborg 25: Green transition … towards dystopia. ↩︎
- More about the “promising” geoengineering techniques at Cyborg 28 Geoengineering: the most controversial solutions explained. ↩︎