The CIA and Climate Control

The American CIA is funding a study on geoengineering (weather manipulation) that will last 21 months, with an initial cost of $630,000. The study is backed by the National Academy of Sciences, with the participation of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The CIA’s interest in the climate is not new, but its participation is significant because of the wartime implications of climate manipulation and due to the pressure exerted by geoengineering proponents to advance experimentation of these techniques despite a United Nations moratorium against its application.

The project will analyze various geoengineering proposals, such as solar radiation management and the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; it will also study the effects of “cloud seeding” and other ways to manipulate the weather to cause rain, drought or control hurricanes. According to the official description, it will make a technical assessment of the impacts of these technologies from the viewpoint of environmental, economic and national security.

The latter are the issues that concern the CIA, which in previous papers has called climate change and climate control strategic factors of geopolitical importance and national security. Nevertheless, Republicans voted to get rid of the CIA’s climate change department, which prompted the agency to fund the initiative. The reasons could go much further, as climate control is a long-standing national military project, on which experiments were performed during the Vietnam War, causing rain for months that flooded Vietnamese crops and roads. In the same sense, the U.S. Air Force published a document in 1996 entitled ”Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,” whose title clearly reflects its intentions.

These interests converge with those of a small but influential group of climatologists and other scientists from Northern countries, who argue that geoengineering is necessary because you cannot quickly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases — as if their countries were not those that have to take major steps to do so. Or, as stated by David Keith, a known promoter of geoengineering, because it’s a “cheap and easy” plan.

Yes, cheap and easy for those who have caused climate change with their overconsumption of resources and petroleum-based industrialization because instead of actually reducing emissions, they could continue warming the planet and also make a lucrative deal for new technologies that manipulate the climate of all, to raise or lower the temperature as appropriate for the military and economic interests of those who control it.

Under the term “solar radiation management,” the goal is to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth (for example, by building huge artificial volcanic clouds and injecting them with sulfurous particles). Other proposals include whitening clouds, placing trillions of mirrors into space to reflect sunlight or the more recent one — again by David Keith — to disperse sulfuric acid from airplanes on the equator to mix with clouds. “Carbon dioxide removal” includes other techniques such as machines or artificial trees that absorb carbon from the atmosphere (incidentally, they do not know where it will be deposited permanently). The best known is ocean fertilization: pouring nano-particles of iron or urea into the sea to cause plankton blooms, which absorb carbon dioxide and take it to the depths.

Geoengineering techniques are only theoretical except for some, such as ocean fertilization, of which there are known legal and illegal experiments, which show that in addition to not serving their purpose — carbon does not remain at the bottom of the sea — the impacts can be huge: disruption of the marine food chain, anoxia (lack of oxygen) in marine layers, creating toxic algae, etc. …

Geoengineering, to have an impact on global climate, would have to be applied on a mega scale, disturbing a little known, highly dynamic global ecosystem and its interaction with all life on the planet. Therefore there is no experimental stage. What is done on a small scale doesn’t always affect global climate, although it could have serious negative impacts on an area or region. And if it’s done on a large scale, it is not experimental, it is widespread and irreversible.

For example, artificial volcanic clouds cannot be removed until the particles fall to the ground, which is toxic. This technique also worsens the hole in the ozone layer and the acidification of the seas, two very serious global problems. If you really succeed in reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the North, it would produce extreme drought in Africa and disruptions to the monsoon in Asia, putting the food sources of two billion people at risk.

Imagine if the CIA could decide on the global thermostat. Geoengineering is so risky, both for its effects on the climate and its potential hostile use against other countries, that the only sensible thing is to prohibit its use internationally.