Fascinating piece in The American Prospect (link, as always, to follow) that looks at the CIA’s recently revealed interest in studying geoengineering. That’s the use of technological means to slow down the planet’s warming.

Various means have been bandied about to reflect sunlight back into space, now that nature’s way–vast ice sheets and snowfields, for instance–are being melted by increasing worldwide temperatures. Some scientists have proposed dumping iron filings into the sea to form vast plankton blooms that would gobble up CO2 and then sink it to the seabed. Others think sulfur-dioxide aerosols could be injected into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. There has even been a proposal to launch mirrors (yes, mirrors!) into space, though the latter doesn’t have widespread support.

Neither does geoengineering, it should be noted. That said, geoengineering doesn’t need widespread support, which brings us to the CIA. The National Academy of Sciences has confirmed that the CIA is helping to fund a study examining atmospheric geoengineering. The crux of the concern that many of us have is that geoengineering can be accomplished unilaterally. On a global scale, the financial costs are not even that great, though the environmental price could prove staggering. More on that in a moment. Even a wealthy businessperson could significantly alter the planet’s atmosphere with means currently available. In fact, that has already happened.

Little more than a year ago, a California businessman seeded the ocean off British Columbia with 100 tons of iron sulfate. And it worked: a plankton bloom of upwards of 10,000 square kilometers formed as a result. Whew! You’d think such an action, taken without wide consent, would be illegal–but you would be wrong.

Other potential actors–the CIA? Chinese leaders? U.N.?–have much deeper pockets and could exercise much greater sway. Moreover, geoengineering that might prove helpful to North America or Europe could turn out to be genocidal to Southeast Asia or Africa.

American Prospect does a handsome job of providing an overall look at the issues, players, and technology coming to the fore with geoengineering. But I have a couple of criticisms. For starters, the piece notes, but fails to explain, why geoengineering could prove disastrous if, once started, it stopped suddenly. That’s because all the greenhouse gases that would continue to build up in the atmosphere and seas while sunlight was reflected, would then be exposed to a sudden increase in heat, which GHGs hold so effectively. And that, as you might know or guess, would send temperatures right up.

The magazine also fails to note that CO2 and other GHGs would keep increasing even if temps dropped. Most of the emissions worldwide would not be affected by reflecting sunlight.  They would continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, highly problematic because we’ve now passed 400 ppm. The oceans, for example, would go right on absorbing carbon dioxide; thus, acidification would proceed apace. That, of course, is a nightmarish prospect, given the devastation already taking place in the seas, which includes those menacing methane emissions from Arctic sea beds. (And let us forget the methane rising from Arctic lakes and permafrost, which isn’t so “perma” these days.)

So we might engender a sense of comfort, perhaps, in both the literal and figurative uses of the word, if geoengineering were to reduce temps, but the large scale threats to humanity–GHGs–would continue to build. Technology would buy us time to try to come up with a solution, but it would also create a time bomb by letting us continue to live–in every sense–as if there were no tomorrow.

Here’s the link:
https://prospect.org/article/cia-its-way-hacking-sky#.Uiu5SXG7Qz0.email