Chill factor at 'cia' weather query | Daily Mail Online

[Andrew Lockley]

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."

[Alan Robock]

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: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
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

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

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[Ken Caldeira]

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 kcal...@carnegiescience.edu
http://kencaldeira.com  

https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira

My assistant is Dawn Ross <dr...@carnegiescience.edu>, with access to incoming emails.

[Andrew Lockley]

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

[Jamais Cascio]

It’s not a question of whether or not it's a weapon, it’s a question of whether or not it’s perceived as a threat.

At the Berlin event, I told some of you about the CIA Center for Climate Change and National Security simulation exercise I was asked to do four or five years ago. What started as a climate disruption/storms & droughts & bears scenario evolved (as the China and US teams responded) into a potential SRM scenario. By the final turn, the possible deployment of SRM on one side had been perceived as a real threat to agriculture on the other, and missiles were being put on alert.

Perception trumps objective reality when it comes to national security. 

On that note, the CIACCCNS is no longer around, as the Republican house determined that since climate change wasn’t real, the center wasn’t needed. Seriously.

-Jamais Cascio

Proof: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamais_cascio/6214330683/

[Fred Zimmerman]

I am less concerned about outcomes for the major parties and their "zones" in the scenario you describe than for the risk of incidental catastrophe for largely uninvolved parties in particularly vulnerable areas like sub-Saharan Africa.   I think this is the concern Cush was hinting at in his earlier message regarding regional and subregional biomes.   At what point does it become acceptable to do CE if there is, say, a 10% possibility that an intervention will result in a catastrophe for one or two nations?  Remedial funds would not be enough to compensate for the human loss.

ᐧ

[Greg Rau]

Relatedly, I must say I felt a little chill when reviewing the NAS report where support from "US intelligence community" was acknowledge without providing any specifics as to what agencies.  More importantly, there was no subsequent discussion in the report as to the reason the intelligence community might be interested in doing this. This support was again acknowledged by Marcia McNutt at the AAAS session yesterday without any details. At least support by DOE and NOAA, the "US energy/environmental community"?, was clearly stated, while Depts. of Agriculture, Interior and EPA were conspicuously absent given the heavy emphasis on land ecosystems in the report. 

Anyway, it would be nice to know to what extent my research or anyone else's in this field is serving the intelligence community and how. I have no doubt that there are national security implications for successfully or unsuccessfully dealing with climate change, but then should these implications be classified, which ones, and who decides? What role does the NAS and as well as ordinary US scientists have in this, and are they serving US interests or global interests? 

Greg 

---

From: Jamais Cascio <cas...@openthefuture.com>
To: andrew....@gmail.com
Cc: Ken Caldeira <kcal...@gmail.com>; Alan Robock <rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu>; Mick West <mi...@mickwest.com>; Geoengi...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Chill factor at 'cia' weather query | Daily Mail Online and BBC interview

[Alan Robock]

Dear Greg,

Yes, those are the questions.  And I would like to know how much money each agency put into the report.  There should be a public record of that.

With respect to Ken's claims:

1.  There is absolutely no evidence that any US intelligence agency has any interest in climate intervention for anything other than defense-related informational purposes.

Why would you expect there to be evidence?  It's the CIA.

2.  Furthermore, there is no plausible scenario in which climate intervention could be used effectively as a weapon.

I agree that it would be hard to target, given what we know now.  But if cooling the planet gives agriculture in my country an advantage over agriculture in your country, there might be pressures to proceed.  Anyway, as the research goes on, it might be clearer how to weaponize control of climate.  Is that a motivation for supporting research?

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: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
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

[Adrian Tuck]

Anyone interested in some history here might like to look up:-

John von Neumann, Collected Works, Volume VI, Macmillan, New York, 1963, pages 499-525.

Herman Hoerlin, United States high altitude test experiences, Technical Report LA-6405, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, 1976. Page 35 especially, has remarks about affecting weather and climate by injecting condensation nuclei in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.

Sidney Chapman, no less, said in 1934 in his presidential address to the Royal Meteorological Society that if UV astronomers wanted to make a hole in the ozone layer they would need to deploy a catalytic agent.

I remember Michael McElroy speculating about a “bromine bomb” to destroy the ozone layer above an enemy’s territory, some time around 1975-6. As far as I know though, he had no connection to the intelligence agencies.

As was recognised as long ago as 1958, atmospheric motions and turbulence would rapidly degrade any hole made by weapon bursts.

Adrian Tuck

 

'ATMOSPHERIC TURBULENCE: A Molecular Dynamics Perspective'.

Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-923653-4.

http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199236534

 

***************************************************

[olivermorton]

Dear Adrian -- do you have a reference for the Chapman talk? Fascinating

Gordon McDonald of UCLA, a JASON and a noted figure in the assessment of weather modification and environmental science more generally, wrote about the possibility of deliberately creating a hole in the ozone layer over enemy territory as a military possibility in a 1968 essay called "How to Wreck the Environment". He also worked on the MEDEA program at CIA in the 1990s, a Gore-inspired effort to see what environmental data from national intelligence sources might usefully be declassified for use by environmental scientists. 

---

From: Jamais Cascio <ca...@openthefuture.com>
To: andrew....@gmail.com
Cc: Ken Caldeira <kcal...@gmail.com>; Alan Robock <ro...@envsci.rutgers.edu>; Mick West <m...@mickwest.com>; Geoengi...@googlegroups.com

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[olivermorton]

Jamais, Alan

It seems to me that the best way to avoid geoengineering triggering tensions which rise to the level of nuclear war is to commit oneself, as I am pretty sure Alan is committed, to working towards a golbal zero option on nuclear weapons. This has the added bonus of avoiding anything *other* than geoengineering leading to the threat of war, too...

ever, o

[Alan Gadian]

Oliver,

Sydney Chapman was a (maths) professor at Imperial (and was supervisor to
DR Davies, my research collaborator --- and worked a little with John Green).

You could try IC (all staff at IC did have to go through an inaugral
lecture) or the Royal Met Soc ... where they keep presidential addresses

Cheers
Alan

On Mon, 16 Feb 2015, olivermorton wrote:

> Dear Adrian -- do you have a reference for the Chapman talk? Fascinating
> Gordon McDonald of UCLA, a JASON and a noted figure in the assessment of
> weather modification and environmental science more generally, wrote about
> the possibility of deliberately creating a hole in the ozone layer over
> enemy territory as a military possibility in a 1968 essay called "How to
> Wreck the Environment". He also worked on the MEDEA program at CIA in the
> 1990s, a Gore-inspired effort to see what environmental data from national
> intelligence sources might usefully be declassified for use by environmental
> scientists. 
>
>
> On Monday, 16 February 2015 01:22:31 UTC, dr.adrian.tuck wrote:
> Anyone interested in some history here might like to look

> up:-John von Neumann, Collected Works, Volume VI, Macmillan, New

> ____________________________________________________________________________

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "geoengineering" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to geoengi...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>

--

s-
Alan Gadian
Senior Scientist, NCAS, Environment, Leeds University, LS1 9JT , UK
Email: al...@env.leeds.ac.uk or ala...@gmail.com
Tel: (+44)/(0) 113 343 7246 Mobile: (+44)/(0) 775 451 9009
s-

[Adrian Tuck]

Oliver,

The reference is:

S Chapman, 1934, The gases of the atmosphere, Q J R Meteorol Soc, 60, 127-142.

Adrian Tuck

 

'ATMOSPHERIC TURBULENCE: A Molecular Dynamics Perspective'.

Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-923653-4.

http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199236534

 

***************************************************

[Fred Zimmerman]

Fascinating couple of pages about the bromine bomb in Fleming FIXING THE SKY

https://books.google.com/books?id=zmdBon09PY0C&lpg=PA220&ots=WFitxrgPu2&dq=bromine%20bomb&pg=PA220#v=onepage&q=bromine%20bomb&f=false

ᐧ

[Mike MacCracken]

Dear Oliver—With respect to the zero option when there is knowledge out there of how to build a nuclear bomb and there are facilities around that could be readily diverted to such efforts, the key question is what happens when some party then starts to build them. The zero option argument is that one would need to have a strong enough international cooperative effort (i.e., a world government with some powers) that was poised to take action rapidly to prevent this. The notion of having such a powerful global government that ensures stability for the world (plus however much security and rules) raises all sorts of concerns about its power across the spectrum of society, and whether having a bi-polar (i.e., not the mental illness definition, but two balancing centers of power or framings) or perhaps multi-polar (though this raises questions of two or more ganging up against one) world might be more stable and better allow for the free development of people and society. Also, on nuclear weapons, a reason put forth for the superpowers to retain a reasonable number of weapons in a bi-polar world, for example, is that it is very unlikely that great advantage could be accomplished with a breakout of an agreement for roughly equal numbers (or capabilities) of weapons/destructive power, etc. I would only suggest (and the points here are only a few of many that are raised and merit consideration) that the issue of what situation is optimal for society is much more complex than just the number of nuclear weapons—at both the regional and global levels, etc.

Mike

On 2/16/15, 5:55 AM, "olivermorton" <oliver...@economist.com> wrote:

Jamais, Alan

It seems to me that the best way to avoid geoengineering triggering tensions which rise to the level of nuclear war is to commit oneself, as I am pretty sure Alan is committed, to working towards a golbal zero option on nuclear weapons. This has the added bonus of avoiding anything *other* than geoengineering leading to the threat of war, too...

ever, o

On Sunday, 15 February 2015 19:03:15 UTC, cascio  wrote:

It’s not a question of whether or not it's a weapon, it’s a question of whether or not it’s perceived as a threat.

At the Berlin event, I told some of you about the CIA Center for Climate Change and National Security simulation exercise I was asked to do four or five years ago. What started as a climate disruption/storms & droughts & bears scenario evolved (as the China and US teams responded) into a potential SRM scenario. By the final turn, the possible deployment of SRM on one side had been perceived as a real threat to agriculture on the other, and missiles were being put on alert.

Perception trumps objective reality when it comes to national security.

On that note, the CIACCCNS is no longer around, as the Republican house determined that since climate change wasn’t real, the center wasn’t needed. Seriously.

-Jamais Cascio

Proof: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamais_cascio/6214330683/

On Feb 15, 2015, at 10:27 AM, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com <javascript:> > 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" <kcal...@carnegiescience.edu <javascript:> > 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 kcal...@carnegiescience.edu <javascript:>
http://kencaldeira.com <http://kencaldeira.com/>   
https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira

My assistant is Dawn Ross <dr...@carnegiescience.edu <javascript:> >, with access to incoming emails.

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 8:08 AM, Alan Robock <rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu <javascript:> > 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: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu <javascript:>

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 <andrew....@gmail.com <javascript:> > 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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[Mike MacCracken]

Hi Fred--I’d just suggest that it is all relative. Given that no society has been able to vanquish human short-comings, perfection does not seem to be a realistic possibility, so then the question is what is least bad. It is interesting to hear some in the political domain seeming to long for the days of the Cold War with its relative clarity (fearful as we all were of possible obliteration) and, in their view, it seems, greater global stability.

Relating back to geoengineering connection, at what time in history and with what governance, would climate intervention be most workable and how comfortable would we be with that with respect to other aspects? Very concerned about the growing risks and impacts of climate change, it seems to me that we may well need climate intervention even with aggressive mitigation and, recognizing the challenges of going from doing nothing to the notion of global intervention, my suggestion has been that we should first be thinking about potential regional interventions aimed at addressing very specific impacts, both to be helpful and to demonstrate that we have sufficient knowledge to be doing interventions in a cautious and iterative way—and so can be thinking about how, perhaps, to shave the undesirable part of the warming that we cannot avoid by aggressive mitigation, adaptation, and CDR.

Mike


On 2/16/15, 10:50 AM, "Fred Zimmerman" <geoengin...@gmail.com> wrote:

We've already tried both bi-polar and multi-polar -- results were not encouraging!
ᐧ

On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 10:46 AM, Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:

Dear Oliver—With respect to the zero option when there is knowledge out there of how to build a nuclear bomb and there are facilities around that could be readily diverted to such efforts, the key question is what happens when some party then starts to build them. The zero option argument is that one would need to have a strong enough international cooperative effort (i.e., a world government with some powers) that was poised to take action rapidly to prevent this. The notion of having such a powerful global government that ensures stability for the world (plus however much security and rules) raises all sorts of concerns about its power across the spectrum of society, and whether having a bi-polar (i.e., not the mental illness definition, but two balancing centers of power or framings) or perhaps multi-polar (though this raises questions of two or more ganging up against one) world might be more stable and better allow for the free development of people and society. Also, on nuclear weapons, a reason put forth for the superpowers to retain a reasonable number of weapons in a bi-polar world, for example, is that it is very unlikely that great advantage could be accomplished with a breakout of an agreement for roughly equal numbers (or capabilities) of weapons/destructive power, etc. I would only suggest (and the points here are only a few of many that are raised and merit consideration) that the issue of what situation is optimal for society is much more complex than just the number of nuclear weapons—at both the regional and global levels, etc.

Mike

+1 650 704 7212 <tel:%2B1%20650%20704%207212>  kcal...@carnegiescience.edu <http://kcal...@carnegiescience.edu>  <javascript:>

http://kencaldeira.com <http://kencaldeira.com/>   
https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira

My assistant is Dawn Ross <dr...@carnegiescience.edu <http://dr...@carnegiescience.edu>  <javascript:> >, with access to incoming emails.

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 8:08 AM, Alan Robock <rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu <http://rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu>  <javascript:> > 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 <tel:%2B1-848-932-5751>
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[Mike MacCracken]

Fred--That depends on the proposed POTENTIAL specific objective (that is, this is all pretty speculative with little supporting research to date)---slow Arctic warming, moderate potential for very intense hurricanes, nudge storm tracks, cooling waters reaching glacial calving faces, etc. We don’t know that any are possible, but all seem to depend on energy patterns, timing, gradients, etc. that might be able to be modified by cloud brightening, cirrus thinning, water/surface brightening, vertical mixing of the water column, disruption of the insulating effect of sea ice, and other approaches that might possibly be altered in their spatial extent, intensity, and influence. Note, however, that this all assumes a good bit of mitigation is going onto stop making the situation worse—without that, on the course we are on, such specific regional/sectoral approaches, even if they might work in plausible ways, would be quickly overwhelmed and so not really worth doing.

Mike


On 2/16/15, 11:55 AM, "Fred Zimmerman" <geoengin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Fair enough.  What more do you think we need to know to be confident in the success of highly specific regional interventions?
ᐧ

On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 11:32 AM, Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:

Hi Fred--I’d just suggest that it is all relative. Given that no society has been able to vanquish human short-comings, perfection does not seem to be a realistic possibility, so then the question is what is least bad. It is interesting to hear some in the political domain seeming to long for the days of the Cold War with its relative clarity (fearful as we all were of possible obliteration) and, in their view, it seems, greater global stability.

Relating back to geoengineering connection, at what time in history and with what governance, would climate intervention be most workable and how comfortable would we be with that with respect to other aspects? Very concerned about the growing risks and impacts of climate change, it seems to me that we may well need climate intervention even with aggressive mitigation and, recognizing the challenges of going from doing nothing to the notion of global intervention, my suggestion has been that we should first be thinking about potential regional interventions aimed at addressing very specific impacts, both to be helpful and to demonstrate that we have sufficient knowledge to be doing interventions in a cautious and iterative way—and so can be thinking about how, perhaps, to shave the undesirable part of the warming that we cannot avoid by aggressive mitigation, adaptation, and CDR.

Mike


On 2/16/15, 10:50 AM, "Fred Zimmerman" <geoengin...@gmail.com <http://geoengin...@gmail.com> > wrote:

We've already tried both bi-polar and multi-polar -- results were not encouraging!
ᐧ

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On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 8:08 AM, Alan Robock <rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu <http://rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu>  <http://rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu>  <javascript:> > 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 <tel:%2B1-848-932-5751>  <tel:%2B1-848-932-5751>
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[Andrew Lockley]

Perhaps far less controversial in the first instance to start experiments on basic science, which closes gaps in our knowledge of geoengineering.

I'm no expert on the niches, but I understand that there's much about the behaviour of marine boundary layer clouds, cirrus, and stratospheric sulphur particles we don't understand. All of these fields can be researched by small scale perturbation experiments, without having to tie them specifically to geoengineering.

Indeed, all of the above additional information would be helpful in improving understanding of cloud feedbacks under warming, and of the climate's response to volcanoes in a warmer world.

Separately, a more controversial programme of hardware development and test deployment would be needed. This can be the cannon fodder for haters, whilst much of the (actually much tougher) work on basic physics is carried out.

A

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