Dear All,
regarding historical linkages between geoengineering, nuclear weapons
and missile defense, you may read my article published today in the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654256
It is part of the Bulletin's special issue on geoengineering, see Editorial:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255
and the Magazine's commentary on using nukes for planetary changes:
https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/things-you-shouldnt-nuke
Jürgen Scheffran
On 26.08.2019 07:34, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note: obliquely relevant as MCB is potentially able to
influence hurricanes
Axios: Trump suggested dropping nuclear bombs into hurricanes to stop
them from hitting the U.S..
https://www.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html
Scoop: Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting U.S.
Illustration of Trump pressing nuclear button
Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
President Trump has suggested multiple timesto senior Homeland
Security and national security officials that they explore using
nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States,
according to sources who have heard the president's private remarks
and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that
recorded those comments.
Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House,
Trump said, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" according to
one source who was there. "They start forming off the coast of Africa,
as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye
of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" the source
added, paraphrasing the president's remarks.
* Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said
something to the effect of, "Sir, we'll look into that."
* Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S.
could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government
intervene before they make landfall.
* The briefer "was knocked back on his heels," the source in the
room added. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People
were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the
f---? What do we do with this?'"
Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior
administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second
conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should
bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source
briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word "nuclear";
it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.
* The source added that this NSC memo captured "multiple topics, not
just hurricanes. … It wasn't that somebody was so terrified of the
bombing idea that they wrote it down. They just captured the
president’s comments."
* The sources said that Trump's "bomb the hurricanes" idea — which
he floated early in the first year and a bit of his presidency
before John Bolton took over as national security adviser — went
nowhere and never entered a formal policy process.
White House response: A senior administration official said, "We don't
comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have
had with his national security team."
* A different senior administration official, who has been briefed
on the president's hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump's
idea and said it was no cause for alarm. "His goal — to keep a
catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad,"
the official said. "His objective is not bad."
* "What people near the president do is they say 'I love a president
who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough
questions.' ... It takes strong people to respond to him in the
right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells
weren't going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody
is going to use this to feed into 'the president is crazy' narrative."
The big picture: Trump didn't invent this idea. The notion that
detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane could be used to
counteract convection currents dates to the Eisenhower era, when it
was floated by a government scientist.
* The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists
agree it won't work. The myth has been so persistent that the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S.
government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans,
published an online fact sheet for the public
<https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html> under the heading
"Tropical Cyclone Myths Page."
* The page states: "Apart from the fact that this might not even
alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the
released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the
tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating
environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea."
About 3 weeks after Trump's 2016 election, National
Geographic published
<https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/11/hurricanes-weather-history-nuclear-weapons/> an
article titled, "Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really
Bad Idea." It found, among other problems, that:
* Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would be banned under the
terms of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S.
and the former Soviet Union. So that could stave off any
experiments, as long as the U.S. observes the terms of the treaty.
Atlantic hurricane season runs until Nov. 30.
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