Poster's note : This is part of a series. I won't post them all. http://blogs.redding.com/dcraig/archives/2013/05/the-age-of-clim-2.html
The age of climate engineering is upon us (3) Some billionaires are playing both side of this game. Take Murray Edwards, for example. Edwards is a major investor in the Canadian oil sands, "but he also has put money into a company called Carbon Engineering, managed--owned by David Keith, the scientist we saw, and in which Bill Gates has an investment.Speaking on Democracy Now! yesterday, Clive Hamilton said, "But, you see, the reason why these conservatives like geoengineering, it's because they see it as a substitute for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. They see it as a permanent solution to global warming. They see it as a...vindication of the system. They see...geoengineering as a way of protecting the system, of preserving the political economic system, whereas others say the problem is the political and economic system, and it's that which we have to change."Relying on climate engineering is not risk-free Hamilton reports. In fact, "The potential risks are enormous: disrupting the food chain, damaging the ozone layer, the loss of monsoon rains in Asia." Hamilton explains that while "installing this solar shield around the Earth through a sulfate aerosol layer...will certainly cool the Earth...it will also affect and change global rainfall patterns." In fact, "it could shift the Indian monsoon...which provides the annual water for a billion or more people."Hamilton asks us to consider what happens if "either the United States or China decides, in a desperate state, to install this solar shield, and it shifts the Indian monsoon, and there's a massive continuing drought, and people are going hungry."What then?While all of us are unintentionally conspiring together to alter the climate of the Earth through our greenhouse gas emissions, Hamilton asks us to consider the "geopolitical implications" when we turn to our government to save us from ourselves with geoengineering schemes.He states, "Here you've got a government, probably, backed by the military, probably, or in collaboration with their military, actually setting out to regulate the temperature of the Earth, which may suit their interests. It may help fix their climate, but if it's severely damaging the climate of another country, particularly a poor country, I mean, what are they going to do? If it's a nuclear-armed country--you know, these are the kind of scenarios that are attracting the attention of the military planners, who are now--the Pentagon, for example, is taking an interest in geoengineering, because they can see some of these longer-term implications."It is the age-old problem. As we seek to solve one problem we create several more. And we can't be naive. Our always amusing and gullible denier friends may have their heads in the sand as they deny the most obvious scientific facts of global climate change. However, there aren't any deniers in the Pentagon or in China's military leadership. They take global warming extremely seriously and are considering the inevitability of geoengineering.Hamilton discussed the "militarization of climate change itself, the geostrategic implications of a changing climate around the world, the potential destabilization that it is likely to bring about, particularly if we continue to do little about it. And so, when it comes to geoengineering schemes, using technology to essentially take control of the world's climate, it's no wonder that the Pentagon has now got people, you know, on the case, watching the scientific debate and taking note of the fact, for example, that China a year ago included geoengineering amongst its earth science research priorities."We can see that the emergence of a kind of global situation, where a number of nations are starting to investigate geoengineering, in the absence of regulation or, at this stage, any kind of global cooperation or transparency, and so it's no wonder that the Pentagon is taking an interest in it. I mean, it would be derelict in its duty if it weren't taking an interest in the emerging science and geopolitics of geoengineering."Of course, we could just not heat up the climate in the first place but we seem intent on doing this the hard way. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
