Post by Wayne Hall on Sept 4, 2010 7:57:37 GMT -5
CLIMATE: ARE WE HAVING THE RIGHT DISCUSSION?
www.enouranois.gr/english/sygrafeisenglish/wayne/indexenglishekdilosi1.htm
W. Hall
“It is strange that geoengineering is being promoted enthusiastically by a number of right-wing think tanks that are active in climate denialism. …Why would activists who deny warming is occurring and oppose measures to reduce emissions support the development of a technology aimed at countering global warming?”
(Clive Hamilton: The Return of Dr. Strangelove)
“A number of right-wing think tanks actively denying climate change are also promoting geoengineering, an irony that seems to escape them.”
(Clive Hamilton: An Evil Atmosphere is formed around Geoengineering)
Geoengineering has a long, though marginal, prehistory as a tendency in the scientific and political debate on climate. It has not made any appreciable impact on the climate debate here in Greece, where the key climate science personalities, the people who represent this country at the international conferences of the IPCC, etc., have for years dismissed it out of hand and actively sabotaged any discussion of it.
That is now beginning to change under the impact of the Climategate scandal preceding last year’s Copenhagen Climate Summit. In the new post-Copenhagen conjuncture there is both more climate change skepticism and more public advocacy of geoengineering. That is on the face of it absurd, but a message that would be incoherent and incomprehensible if addressed to a single audience can retain an appearance of coherence if its two components are targeted at different audiences: the geoengineering advocacy at ecologists and leftists, the skepticism at conservatives.
The thesis I put forward in this article is that it is precisely climate activists’ and climate scientists’ long history of previous involvement in the climate change debate that makes it difficult now for them to deal with the climate-change skeptic in his new guise of geoengineering advocate. (I say “his” because there are few women among the pro-geoengineering voices.)
Newcomers to the discussion, e.g. the American writer and film-maker Michael Murphy, who is so much of a newcomer that he is more or less a climate change skeptic himself, are advantaged by contrast, because they will not be tempted to fight the climate skeptic/geoengineers as climate skeptics. They will fight them as geoengineers.
The point made in the quotations at the head of this article - the irrationality (in terms of formal logic) of the skeptics’ adoption of “solutions” to problems whose existence they have denied for decades – is valid. If political conditions were different, or became different, the absurdity of the skeptic/geoengineer’s intellectual stance would be recognized as something monstrous, something comparable to the worst political aberrations of the twentieth century. What would be demanded would not be civilized co-existence with the skeptic/geoengineers but their political marginalization and eradication.
It has of course been argued for years by climate scientists and activists that “the skeptics” have no place in the climate debate, and should be excluded from it. That is far easier said than done when “freedom of speech”, particularly in the U.S,. is an article of faith for so many. But in any case, the skeptics are too strong to be excludable from the political debate, or even from the scientific debate. And the corporate mass media ensure that the more they are excluded from scientific discussion the more confident they can be of a popular following.
Climate activists’ ambivalence about geoengineering
The main difficulty faced by climate activists in opposing skeptic/geoengineers as geoengineers is simply that climate activists themselves, if they know about geoengineering, are often ambivalent about it. The ambivalence can be seen even in such a hard-hitting analysis as Alex Steffen’s excellent “Geoengineering and the new climate denialism”: “Megascale geoengineering”, Steffen writes, “. (should not be)…. a taboo subject. We need a smart debate…., where we explore the subject honestly and without industry spin…. Ethical people -- whether geoengineering proponents, opponents or doubters -- all need to be extremely clear in saying that a strong, rapid movement away from fossil fuels and toward climate neutrality is non-negotiable. Many leading thinkers on geoengineering (such as Paul Crutzen and Ken Caldeira) already make clear that immediate action on reducing greenhouse pollution (on both the national and global levels) is the first step, period. We should follow their lead… (And) we should only turn to megascale geoengineering as a last resort…. Legitimate debates about the possible uses of megascale geoengineering should not include people whose institutions have been consistently and intentionally dishonest about science and science policy.”
What Alex Steffen is demanding, in other words, is that geoengineering be kept on the table as a policy option but that “climate change skeptics” be excluded from discussing it. . That is not a realistic demand, and if there ever was any hope that it was realistic, that hope - in the time since Steffen published his article (April 2009) – has disappeared because, as indicated, Copenhagen and Climategate have weakened the position of climate science and climate activists and strengthened both climate change skepticism and the advocacy of geoengineering by climate change skeptics.
The demand for a debate “where we explore the subject honestly and without industry spin” is a demand for a a different political system and in fact a different world. The rules that apply today require admission to industry spin on grounds of free speech. This in itself is enough to guarantee that the role of “the ethical people” will be reactive and oppositional. And when corporations rather than government make even further inroads and begin to take on the task of organizing the scientific seminars and conferences themselves, corporate control becomes absolute.
Of course some leading proponents of geoengineering have, in parallel with role of geoengineering advocate, for years also been playing the role of oppositionist to geoengineering. David Keith is one such person. Note these words of his from the February 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) geoengineering conference in San Diego: “I think that the more we do research, the less easy this (spraying of sulphate aerosols) will look, the more complicated the environmental effects will appear. And that’s a good thing, because right now it looks too easy. So I think if we do more research we’re likely to find out that it’s harder and more complicated than we thought, and the side effects are harder to manage, and that’s a healthy outcome.”
Geoengineer Alan Robock is another oppositionist. He has given us “Twenty Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea”. His article was originally published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, but it has now also been honoured with an approving link to it from the anti-geoengineering “Hands off Mother Earth” website. And Paul Crutzen, in the 2006 paper on stratospheric sulphur injections that put him in the media spotlight for several months, was also oppositional: “Again I must stress… that the albedo enhancement scheme should only be deployed when there are proven net advantages and in particular when rapid climate warming is developing… . Importantly, its possibility should not be used to justify inadequate climate policies.” “ The very best would be if emissions of the greenhouse gases could be reduced so much that the stratospheric sulfur release experiment would not need to take place.”
Perhaps this oppositional orientation has something to do with a recognized necessity to secure public trust if there is to be a move towards open implementation of geoengineering programmes. Crutzen stresses the requirement of trust: “Building trust between scientists and the general public would be needed to make such a large-scale climate modification acceptable.” The same point has been made more recently by Britain’s Royal Society: “Public attitudes towards geoengineering, and public engagement in the development of individual methods proposed, will have a critical bearing on its future. Perception of the risks involved, levels of trust in those undertaking research or implementation, and the transparency of actions, purposes and vested interests, will determine the political feasibility of geoengineering. If geoengineering is to play a role in reducing climate change, an active and international programme of public and civil society dialogue will be required to identify and address concerns about potential environmental, social and economic impacts and unintended consequences.”
If one is to speak of trust, I can think of two occasions where I have seen scientists associated with geoengineering being put to something like a trustworthiness test. Once was with Alan Robock, who outside the AAAS conference in San Diego consented to being videoed in informal street discussion with anti-geoengineering activists, in this way providing some insight into what unscripted interaction between geoengineers and “the public” looks like. The result did not encourage either respect for the activists or trust for Alan Robock.
The other occasion was with Paul Crutzen, during the time that his stratospheric sulphur article was receiving media publicity. I was involved in an attempt at that time to organize, via an American institute in Athens, Greece, a video conference on his geoengineering proposals, including on one side Crutzen and on the other the American farm defence activist Rosalind Peterson. The institute declared willingness in principle to host the discussion, Rosalind Peterson was willing to participate. It was Paul Crutzen that was unwilling or unable to take advantage of this presumed opportunity to win some of that absent “public trust”. Why?
Good cops and bad cops
There is a division of roles among geoengineers: “good cops” and “bad cops”. Those we have mentioned so far are all good cops. Their discourse makes many concessions to the sensibilities of climate scientists and climate change activists. Their key themes are caution, prudence, responsibility. They certainly have no sympathy for the “climate change skeptic” viewpoint. By contrast the bad cop geoengineers are typically people who are in, or who have come from, the weapons laboratories. They too make concessions to a wider public. But the section of the public they propitiate and flatter are the anthropogenic climate change skeptics. And the indulgence of the skeptic viewpoint is not something that has emerged only recently, as part of the recent public strengthening of climate skepticism. It has been present from the beginning of the discussion, from as early as Edward Teller’s 1998 “Sunscreen for Planet Earth” article and doubtless even before that.
Teller was the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove and is probably the only member of the Western power elite with whom Mikhail Gorbachev refused to shake hands.
His “Sunscreen for Planet Earth” is the template for the stance cited by Clive Hamilton in the quotes at the beginning of this text: “If the politics of global warming require that ‘something must be done’ while we still don't know whether anything really needs to be done--let alone what exactly--let us play to our uniquely American strengths in innovation and technology to offset any global warming by the least costly means possible. While scientists continue research into any global climatic effects of greenhouse gases, we ought to study ways to offset any possible ill effects. Injecting sunlight-scattering particles into the stratosphere appears to be a promising approach. Why not do that?”
In other words geoengineering is the solution to this possibly non-existent problem. .
Teller was the driving force behind not only the hydrogen bomb but also President Reagan’s “Star Wars” anti-missile system. The disingenuous logic of “Sunscreen for Planet Earth” is nothing more or less than a continuation of the mechanisms perfected by Teller during his long career as a weapons scientist, not least in the “Star Wars” proposals that were placed on the negotiating table at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit. At Reykjavik, Reagan (i.e. Teller) proposed total destruction of Soviet and American nuclear arsenals in exchange for acceptance by the Soviets of America’s “Star Wars” system for shooting down the nuclear missiles whose abolition had just been negotiated. Gorbachev rejected the proposal “as a matter of principle”. It was not, he said, acceptable or rational to consent to the construction of a system the purpose for which it had just been agreed should and could be eliminated. That was his opinion. Teller, who had the support of the international media, succeeded in communicating a different message: Gorbachev was responsible for rejecting an American proposal for total abolition of the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals (a proposal which, by the way, startled and shocked European leaders).
We may infer from this that the skeptics were shoved into Teller’s bag of tricks to play the same role as the United States’ nuclear arsenal at Reykjavik: a “persuader” to be held in reserve, with withdrawal offered on condition of consent to the “solution” proposed by Teller: an anti-missile shield for shooting down prospectively non-existent nuclear missiles, a “sunscreen” of global aerosol spraying as a solution to putatively non-existent anthropogenic global warming.
The parallels between geoengineering and the nuclear arms race are blatant: “Both are big, technocratic operations that can potentially put an end to civilization as we know it….” “Just as the central question of the nuclear age was how to keep a Doctor Strangelove from pushing the button, the central question of the geoengineering age will be how to prevent a Dr. Strangelove from hacking the climate.” An MIT physicist with a weapons lab background says: “A single person can now engineer a microbe that could kill millions of people. Terrorists can use a jet to crash into the World Trade Center. Now one nation, or even one person, can manipulate the entire earth’s climate…” How do you stop someone – or some state – from trying to take control of the climate: That is a very interesting question. ….You have countries like Russia, which actually like global warming, because they want to get at the oil and gas in the Arctic. How would they react to someone trying to cool the planet.?”
It is no solution to pass legislation banning geoengineering. “Here in the United States, we can pass laws saying “Thou shalt not fill the stratosphere with particles”, but they’re not going to carry a lot of weight in Russia or Brazil. Ideally, the governments of Russia and Brazil will pass their own laws, and a global consensus will emerge. But what if (a consensus doesn’t emerge)?”
Teller died in 2003 but was succeeded in his mad (and evil) scientist role by Lowell Wood. Without possessing anything of the Central European Jewish background that may help to explain, without decriminalizing, the mentality of the late Edward Teller, Wood is evidently proud to be able to show the world that “Edward Teller is not dead”, continuing the Teller tradition of successfully instrumentalizing absolutely everything in this world and beyond it in the interest of pursuing his chosen projects.
How to Cool the Planet
In April of this year (2010) Jeff Goodell, the Rolling Stone journalist who four years ago wrote the first PR spiel for Lowell Wood’s geoengineering plans (“Can Dr. Evil Save the World”) published a post-Copenhagen book on geoengineering entitled “How to Cool the Planet”. It is worth engaging with its content, in my opinion, because Goodell from his own characteristically “good cop” perspective appears to be sincere in the unease he expresses at how geoengineering is moving under the control of the bad cops.
I am trying to frame my exposition in such a way that it can connect with the concerns of two different audiences: firstly the opponents of geoengineering who support the campaign of the ETC group and the other NGOs calling for “Hands off Mother Earth”, secondly the chemtrails activists whose claim is that geoengineering is not just a matter of proposals, or of a twinkle in the eye of Lowell Wood, David Keith and friends, (and the Chinese and Russians and Richard Branson and Bill Gates), but a well-entrenched reality of global dimensions, in full application for well over a decade. (They base this assertion on the evidence of the senses.)
Chemtrails activists typically also claim that the spraying they observe does not serve (only?) the purpose of geoengineering but in fact (additionally?) serves other even more sinister, and indeed criminal, purposes. Any objection from a chemtrails activist to what I now recommend should be accompanied by full details of the suggested alternative strategy for abolishing the well-established global reality.
I would argue that a focus on the demand that Alex Steffen puts forward for “a smart debate” on geoengineering ….”where we explore the subject honestly and without industry spin….”, in other words an alliance with the “good cop” geoengineers against the “bad cop” geoengineers, is possibly the only way of resolving the deadlock that chemtrails activists have been in for years as a result of stigmatization as “conspiracy theorists”.
It is in any case a strategy that I judge should be tried out.
At a public presentation of Goodell’s book in Seattle in April 2010, a “chemtrails” activist Rebecca Campbell made an attempt to expose its author as a “disinfo agent”, asking both him and the audience rhetorically if they ever look at the sky.
Ms Campbell’s intervention was not effective.
I do not believe that the exhortation to look at the sky is an appropriate way to handle an exponent of the “good cop” version of support for geoengineering. Goodell makes it perfectly clear in his book that a key criterion (legally and politically speaking) in the geoengineering discussion is “intentionality”, and that once it is admitted that weather and climate modification is being carried out deliberately, the question of “climate justice” will arise. And because Goodell and the “good cop” geoengineers generally are not willing, or do not feel able, to provide leadership for such a global “climate justice” crusade (for one thing they fear the power of the climate skeptics to whip up public hysteria against them) they feel obliged to persist in their position that no intentional geoengineering programmes are in operation.
If one applies traditional rules of morality and conceptions of proper procedures in both science or statesmanship to the stance of these perhaps well-meaning scientists (and their political and journalistic supporters) the expectations they invest in “others” seem almost adolescent. “If we lived in a rational world,” says Goodell , “instead of diminishing the political will to reinvent our energy economy, the prospect of geoengineering would alarm us enough to boost it.” This amounts to wishful thinking that exposure to the proposals of the geoengineers could frighten the public into support for the positions of climate change activists: a forlorn hope that fear can be enlisted to take the place of scientific and/or political leadership. (What distinguishes this mindset from the attitude of oppressors throughout history?)
All the evidence suggests that fear strengthens climate change skepticism. It does not undermine it. One of the reflexes from which climate change skepticism derives its dynamism is its (similarly blustering and adolescent) refusal to be frightened by “danger mongering ecologists and leftists” (or “liberals”, to use the American terminology). The “Global Dimming” documentaries screened in English-speaking countries five years ago evidently failed to achieve their aim of increasing support for cuts in carbon emissions. The reason for this failure, in my opinion, was the over-reliance on fear and corresponding censoring out of focused political analysis. “Global Dimming” was portrayed as the result of specifically non-intentional “particle pollution”, not of geoengineering, theoretical or actual. .
Jeff Goodell’s “How to Cool the Planet” is a step forward from the Global Dimming documentaries. In that sense Goodell deserves the placatory congratulations that were extended to him by Rebecca Campbell. (“I .thanked Mr. Goodell for at least minimally exposing this long-concealed subject to public view.”)
The open antagonism that Rebecca Campbell displayed to Jeff Goodell was also displayed by the ETC group towards the British Royal Society for its 2009 report on geoengineering. The ETC paper, entitled “The Emperor’s New Climate: Geoengineering as 21st Century Fairytale”, offended Ken Caldeira because of what he saw as its ad hominem approach. “It is one thing to suggest that we are uninformed, misinformed, or even deluded, but another thing entirely to suggest that we are acting with the intent to “trick” people into doing things that might harm the environment. Charges that we are acting in bad faith are unfounded, reckless, repugnant and malicious…..If ETC really believes the emperor has no clothes, they should be happy to join us in calls for an investigation into the emperor’s clothing.”
To respond to this in the same spirit, one could say that if “good cop” geoengineers are really upset about the unwillingness of many ecological NGOs to discuss or ever give a moment’s thought to the considerations that have led scientists of good reputation (Paul Crutzen, for example) to embrace geoengineering, then they must become more engaged with these NGOs. Is it enough for Caldeira or Keith to flaunt a hippie past of anti-militarism and nuclear disarmament politics suitable perhaps for impressing media audiences? If they want their anti-militarist and anti-nuclear-weapons credentials to be recognized by people of some significance in present-day nuclear disarmament circles, should they not be showing some evidence of real and continuing involvement in today’s global campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons? Caldeira’s active opposition to the Planktos and Climos ocean fertilization projects seems to have had some effect, suggesting that he is not without influence. Should he not try to exert similar influence in the circles whose support for geoengineering he wants to secure?
Why don’t Caldeira, for example, and others from among his anti-nuclear-weapons geoengineering colleagues, spend some time talking about geoengineering to e.g. Jonathan Granoff or other senior people at the Global Security Institute campaigning for a Nuclear Weapons Convention and a global ban on nuclear weapons? These people of influence could discuss joint initiatives to achieve progress in both areas: geoengineering and nuclear disarmament. Couldn’t they?
If Jeff Goodell is really concerned that “well-meaning environmentalists and do-gooders will stall funding on geoengineering research for another decade” why doesn’t he try to find people in the international climate justice movement who understand how his own sense of unsuitability for a leadership role in the fight for climate justice prevents him from saying frankly all that he knows about geoengineering, or articulating the arguments best suited to embarrassing and silencing the climate change skeptics and the “bad cop” geoengineers?
Such meetings and such discussions could lead to agreements on divisions of labour that would provide the ANTI-geoengineering movement also with its good cops and bad cops. Many of Goodell’s problems with “well-meaning environmentalists and do-gooders” must after all stem from the fact that he does not always speak to them honestly, and that sometimes when he is dissembling, they think that he is sincere.
He says: “I hope that we never launch particles into the stratosphere, dump iron into the oceans, or brighten clouds. I hope that we will grasp the scale of the catastrophe that awaits us, muster up the courage and political will to cut emissions quickly and deeply, invent new energy systems that are cheap and clean and abundant. Most of all, I hope that the whole notion of geoengineering looks in retrospect exactly how it looks at first glance, like a bad sci-fi novel writ large.”
He says: “I fear that geoengineering will be packaged and sold as a quick fix. Rather than engaging people in the act of managing the planet, it will be used as another tool to increase our passivity – just sit back and let Big Brother take care of the climate!”
He says: “The thing I fear most is that we won’t do anything at all. We won’t explore geoengineering: we won’t cut greenhouse gas pollution in any significant way; we won’t change our lives. We will argue about it on TV and write books and make movies and hang banners on the smokestacks of coal plants, and nothing much will change. We will just ride into the dark apocalypse…a future of war and starvation and disease driven by the changes on our superheated planet.”
If he really hopes and fears these things, surely he should be trying harder to make himself understood by people such as Rebecca Campbell whose gut reflex is to dismiss him as a “disinfo agent” simply because he does not register awareness of the aspect of the situation that is of most importance to her, and indeed of most importance to any person who comes to the climate debate through “looking at the sky”. .
Goodell quotes Lowell Wood as writing in private correspondence: “When I talk with people who object to geoengineering, I often say. “You don’t have to argue with me, and I don’t have to argue with you, let’s find something more pleasant to talk about because I’m going to win.” That sounds cynical, but it is open to question whether even such a very very bad cop as Wood really has the courage of his own evil convictions. Far from elaborating on his claim that it is he, Lowell Wood, who is going to win, in his correspondence he goes on to say that it is in fact “geoengineering” that is going to win, and: the people “to blame” for that are the politicians. “The politicians, when they finally come down to the crunch, are going to ask: What is the cheapest thing that might possibly do the job? They don’t care what it is.”
In the final analysis, all that might be motivating Lowell Wood is concern to make money in his old age. . After leaving the Lawrence Livermore weapons laboratory in 2007 he went into business with an old friend who had been the chief technology officer at Microsoft. They established a firm called Intellectual Ventures whose basic business plan is to buy patents and license patents to interested companies, many of them involved in geoengineering projects. .
Both the nuclear arms race and its successor the climate/geoengineering game that is both a variation on it and in part a consequence of it, are largely based on fraud. The Russian nuclear arsenal, for example, was not abolished by the “victors” when the Cold War ended and it is to say the least very dubious whether that has anything to do with the preferences of anyone of significance in Russia in 1991. It is certainly not due to the late Boris Yeltsin. The question of precisely who “controls” Russian nuclear weapons today is also one that deserves, and is not getting, investigation.
An alliance with “good cop” geoengineers can and should focus on the fraudulent elements in the climate debate, after which it will be time to move on to focus on the fraudulent elements in the nuclear disarmament debate. Because everyone with the status of “player” at the governmental level or in the international organizations dealing with these questions either is inadequately informed or feels obliged to dissemble, it is the Rebecca Campbells and (even moreso) the Michael Murphys that are in the best position to lead. But for that to be possible they must acquire the reflexes, and the level of understanding, that are required of leaders.
Aigina, Greece, 4th September 2010
www.enouranois.gr/english/sygrafeisenglish/wayne/indexenglishekdilosi1.htm
W. Hall
“It is strange that geoengineering is being promoted enthusiastically by a number of right-wing think tanks that are active in climate denialism. …Why would activists who deny warming is occurring and oppose measures to reduce emissions support the development of a technology aimed at countering global warming?”
(Clive Hamilton: The Return of Dr. Strangelove)
“A number of right-wing think tanks actively denying climate change are also promoting geoengineering, an irony that seems to escape them.”
(Clive Hamilton: An Evil Atmosphere is formed around Geoengineering)
Geoengineering has a long, though marginal, prehistory as a tendency in the scientific and political debate on climate. It has not made any appreciable impact on the climate debate here in Greece, where the key climate science personalities, the people who represent this country at the international conferences of the IPCC, etc., have for years dismissed it out of hand and actively sabotaged any discussion of it.
That is now beginning to change under the impact of the Climategate scandal preceding last year’s Copenhagen Climate Summit. In the new post-Copenhagen conjuncture there is both more climate change skepticism and more public advocacy of geoengineering. That is on the face of it absurd, but a message that would be incoherent and incomprehensible if addressed to a single audience can retain an appearance of coherence if its two components are targeted at different audiences: the geoengineering advocacy at ecologists and leftists, the skepticism at conservatives.
The thesis I put forward in this article is that it is precisely climate activists’ and climate scientists’ long history of previous involvement in the climate change debate that makes it difficult now for them to deal with the climate-change skeptic in his new guise of geoengineering advocate. (I say “his” because there are few women among the pro-geoengineering voices.)
Newcomers to the discussion, e.g. the American writer and film-maker Michael Murphy, who is so much of a newcomer that he is more or less a climate change skeptic himself, are advantaged by contrast, because they will not be tempted to fight the climate skeptic/geoengineers as climate skeptics. They will fight them as geoengineers.
The point made in the quotations at the head of this article - the irrationality (in terms of formal logic) of the skeptics’ adoption of “solutions” to problems whose existence they have denied for decades – is valid. If political conditions were different, or became different, the absurdity of the skeptic/geoengineer’s intellectual stance would be recognized as something monstrous, something comparable to the worst political aberrations of the twentieth century. What would be demanded would not be civilized co-existence with the skeptic/geoengineers but their political marginalization and eradication.
It has of course been argued for years by climate scientists and activists that “the skeptics” have no place in the climate debate, and should be excluded from it. That is far easier said than done when “freedom of speech”, particularly in the U.S,. is an article of faith for so many. But in any case, the skeptics are too strong to be excludable from the political debate, or even from the scientific debate. And the corporate mass media ensure that the more they are excluded from scientific discussion the more confident they can be of a popular following.
Climate activists’ ambivalence about geoengineering
The main difficulty faced by climate activists in opposing skeptic/geoengineers as geoengineers is simply that climate activists themselves, if they know about geoengineering, are often ambivalent about it. The ambivalence can be seen even in such a hard-hitting analysis as Alex Steffen’s excellent “Geoengineering and the new climate denialism”: “Megascale geoengineering”, Steffen writes, “. (should not be)…. a taboo subject. We need a smart debate…., where we explore the subject honestly and without industry spin…. Ethical people -- whether geoengineering proponents, opponents or doubters -- all need to be extremely clear in saying that a strong, rapid movement away from fossil fuels and toward climate neutrality is non-negotiable. Many leading thinkers on geoengineering (such as Paul Crutzen and Ken Caldeira) already make clear that immediate action on reducing greenhouse pollution (on both the national and global levels) is the first step, period. We should follow their lead… (And) we should only turn to megascale geoengineering as a last resort…. Legitimate debates about the possible uses of megascale geoengineering should not include people whose institutions have been consistently and intentionally dishonest about science and science policy.”
What Alex Steffen is demanding, in other words, is that geoengineering be kept on the table as a policy option but that “climate change skeptics” be excluded from discussing it. . That is not a realistic demand, and if there ever was any hope that it was realistic, that hope - in the time since Steffen published his article (April 2009) – has disappeared because, as indicated, Copenhagen and Climategate have weakened the position of climate science and climate activists and strengthened both climate change skepticism and the advocacy of geoengineering by climate change skeptics.
The demand for a debate “where we explore the subject honestly and without industry spin” is a demand for a a different political system and in fact a different world. The rules that apply today require admission to industry spin on grounds of free speech. This in itself is enough to guarantee that the role of “the ethical people” will be reactive and oppositional. And when corporations rather than government make even further inroads and begin to take on the task of organizing the scientific seminars and conferences themselves, corporate control becomes absolute.
Of course some leading proponents of geoengineering have, in parallel with role of geoengineering advocate, for years also been playing the role of oppositionist to geoengineering. David Keith is one such person. Note these words of his from the February 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) geoengineering conference in San Diego: “I think that the more we do research, the less easy this (spraying of sulphate aerosols) will look, the more complicated the environmental effects will appear. And that’s a good thing, because right now it looks too easy. So I think if we do more research we’re likely to find out that it’s harder and more complicated than we thought, and the side effects are harder to manage, and that’s a healthy outcome.”
Geoengineer Alan Robock is another oppositionist. He has given us “Twenty Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea”. His article was originally published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, but it has now also been honoured with an approving link to it from the anti-geoengineering “Hands off Mother Earth” website. And Paul Crutzen, in the 2006 paper on stratospheric sulphur injections that put him in the media spotlight for several months, was also oppositional: “Again I must stress… that the albedo enhancement scheme should only be deployed when there are proven net advantages and in particular when rapid climate warming is developing… . Importantly, its possibility should not be used to justify inadequate climate policies.” “ The very best would be if emissions of the greenhouse gases could be reduced so much that the stratospheric sulfur release experiment would not need to take place.”
Perhaps this oppositional orientation has something to do with a recognized necessity to secure public trust if there is to be a move towards open implementation of geoengineering programmes. Crutzen stresses the requirement of trust: “Building trust between scientists and the general public would be needed to make such a large-scale climate modification acceptable.” The same point has been made more recently by Britain’s Royal Society: “Public attitudes towards geoengineering, and public engagement in the development of individual methods proposed, will have a critical bearing on its future. Perception of the risks involved, levels of trust in those undertaking research or implementation, and the transparency of actions, purposes and vested interests, will determine the political feasibility of geoengineering. If geoengineering is to play a role in reducing climate change, an active and international programme of public and civil society dialogue will be required to identify and address concerns about potential environmental, social and economic impacts and unintended consequences.”
If one is to speak of trust, I can think of two occasions where I have seen scientists associated with geoengineering being put to something like a trustworthiness test. Once was with Alan Robock, who outside the AAAS conference in San Diego consented to being videoed in informal street discussion with anti-geoengineering activists, in this way providing some insight into what unscripted interaction between geoengineers and “the public” looks like. The result did not encourage either respect for the activists or trust for Alan Robock.
The other occasion was with Paul Crutzen, during the time that his stratospheric sulphur article was receiving media publicity. I was involved in an attempt at that time to organize, via an American institute in Athens, Greece, a video conference on his geoengineering proposals, including on one side Crutzen and on the other the American farm defence activist Rosalind Peterson. The institute declared willingness in principle to host the discussion, Rosalind Peterson was willing to participate. It was Paul Crutzen that was unwilling or unable to take advantage of this presumed opportunity to win some of that absent “public trust”. Why?
Good cops and bad cops
There is a division of roles among geoengineers: “good cops” and “bad cops”. Those we have mentioned so far are all good cops. Their discourse makes many concessions to the sensibilities of climate scientists and climate change activists. Their key themes are caution, prudence, responsibility. They certainly have no sympathy for the “climate change skeptic” viewpoint. By contrast the bad cop geoengineers are typically people who are in, or who have come from, the weapons laboratories. They too make concessions to a wider public. But the section of the public they propitiate and flatter are the anthropogenic climate change skeptics. And the indulgence of the skeptic viewpoint is not something that has emerged only recently, as part of the recent public strengthening of climate skepticism. It has been present from the beginning of the discussion, from as early as Edward Teller’s 1998 “Sunscreen for Planet Earth” article and doubtless even before that.
Teller was the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove and is probably the only member of the Western power elite with whom Mikhail Gorbachev refused to shake hands.
His “Sunscreen for Planet Earth” is the template for the stance cited by Clive Hamilton in the quotes at the beginning of this text: “If the politics of global warming require that ‘something must be done’ while we still don't know whether anything really needs to be done--let alone what exactly--let us play to our uniquely American strengths in innovation and technology to offset any global warming by the least costly means possible. While scientists continue research into any global climatic effects of greenhouse gases, we ought to study ways to offset any possible ill effects. Injecting sunlight-scattering particles into the stratosphere appears to be a promising approach. Why not do that?”
In other words geoengineering is the solution to this possibly non-existent problem. .
Teller was the driving force behind not only the hydrogen bomb but also President Reagan’s “Star Wars” anti-missile system. The disingenuous logic of “Sunscreen for Planet Earth” is nothing more or less than a continuation of the mechanisms perfected by Teller during his long career as a weapons scientist, not least in the “Star Wars” proposals that were placed on the negotiating table at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit. At Reykjavik, Reagan (i.e. Teller) proposed total destruction of Soviet and American nuclear arsenals in exchange for acceptance by the Soviets of America’s “Star Wars” system for shooting down the nuclear missiles whose abolition had just been negotiated. Gorbachev rejected the proposal “as a matter of principle”. It was not, he said, acceptable or rational to consent to the construction of a system the purpose for which it had just been agreed should and could be eliminated. That was his opinion. Teller, who had the support of the international media, succeeded in communicating a different message: Gorbachev was responsible for rejecting an American proposal for total abolition of the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals (a proposal which, by the way, startled and shocked European leaders).
We may infer from this that the skeptics were shoved into Teller’s bag of tricks to play the same role as the United States’ nuclear arsenal at Reykjavik: a “persuader” to be held in reserve, with withdrawal offered on condition of consent to the “solution” proposed by Teller: an anti-missile shield for shooting down prospectively non-existent nuclear missiles, a “sunscreen” of global aerosol spraying as a solution to putatively non-existent anthropogenic global warming.
The parallels between geoengineering and the nuclear arms race are blatant: “Both are big, technocratic operations that can potentially put an end to civilization as we know it….” “Just as the central question of the nuclear age was how to keep a Doctor Strangelove from pushing the button, the central question of the geoengineering age will be how to prevent a Dr. Strangelove from hacking the climate.” An MIT physicist with a weapons lab background says: “A single person can now engineer a microbe that could kill millions of people. Terrorists can use a jet to crash into the World Trade Center. Now one nation, or even one person, can manipulate the entire earth’s climate…” How do you stop someone – or some state – from trying to take control of the climate: That is a very interesting question. ….You have countries like Russia, which actually like global warming, because they want to get at the oil and gas in the Arctic. How would they react to someone trying to cool the planet.?”
It is no solution to pass legislation banning geoengineering. “Here in the United States, we can pass laws saying “Thou shalt not fill the stratosphere with particles”, but they’re not going to carry a lot of weight in Russia or Brazil. Ideally, the governments of Russia and Brazil will pass their own laws, and a global consensus will emerge. But what if (a consensus doesn’t emerge)?”
Teller died in 2003 but was succeeded in his mad (and evil) scientist role by Lowell Wood. Without possessing anything of the Central European Jewish background that may help to explain, without decriminalizing, the mentality of the late Edward Teller, Wood is evidently proud to be able to show the world that “Edward Teller is not dead”, continuing the Teller tradition of successfully instrumentalizing absolutely everything in this world and beyond it in the interest of pursuing his chosen projects.
How to Cool the Planet
In April of this year (2010) Jeff Goodell, the Rolling Stone journalist who four years ago wrote the first PR spiel for Lowell Wood’s geoengineering plans (“Can Dr. Evil Save the World”) published a post-Copenhagen book on geoengineering entitled “How to Cool the Planet”. It is worth engaging with its content, in my opinion, because Goodell from his own characteristically “good cop” perspective appears to be sincere in the unease he expresses at how geoengineering is moving under the control of the bad cops.
I am trying to frame my exposition in such a way that it can connect with the concerns of two different audiences: firstly the opponents of geoengineering who support the campaign of the ETC group and the other NGOs calling for “Hands off Mother Earth”, secondly the chemtrails activists whose claim is that geoengineering is not just a matter of proposals, or of a twinkle in the eye of Lowell Wood, David Keith and friends, (and the Chinese and Russians and Richard Branson and Bill Gates), but a well-entrenched reality of global dimensions, in full application for well over a decade. (They base this assertion on the evidence of the senses.)
Chemtrails activists typically also claim that the spraying they observe does not serve (only?) the purpose of geoengineering but in fact (additionally?) serves other even more sinister, and indeed criminal, purposes. Any objection from a chemtrails activist to what I now recommend should be accompanied by full details of the suggested alternative strategy for abolishing the well-established global reality.
I would argue that a focus on the demand that Alex Steffen puts forward for “a smart debate” on geoengineering ….”where we explore the subject honestly and without industry spin….”, in other words an alliance with the “good cop” geoengineers against the “bad cop” geoengineers, is possibly the only way of resolving the deadlock that chemtrails activists have been in for years as a result of stigmatization as “conspiracy theorists”.
It is in any case a strategy that I judge should be tried out.
At a public presentation of Goodell’s book in Seattle in April 2010, a “chemtrails” activist Rebecca Campbell made an attempt to expose its author as a “disinfo agent”, asking both him and the audience rhetorically if they ever look at the sky.
Ms Campbell’s intervention was not effective.
I do not believe that the exhortation to look at the sky is an appropriate way to handle an exponent of the “good cop” version of support for geoengineering. Goodell makes it perfectly clear in his book that a key criterion (legally and politically speaking) in the geoengineering discussion is “intentionality”, and that once it is admitted that weather and climate modification is being carried out deliberately, the question of “climate justice” will arise. And because Goodell and the “good cop” geoengineers generally are not willing, or do not feel able, to provide leadership for such a global “climate justice” crusade (for one thing they fear the power of the climate skeptics to whip up public hysteria against them) they feel obliged to persist in their position that no intentional geoengineering programmes are in operation.
If one applies traditional rules of morality and conceptions of proper procedures in both science or statesmanship to the stance of these perhaps well-meaning scientists (and their political and journalistic supporters) the expectations they invest in “others” seem almost adolescent. “If we lived in a rational world,” says Goodell , “instead of diminishing the political will to reinvent our energy economy, the prospect of geoengineering would alarm us enough to boost it.” This amounts to wishful thinking that exposure to the proposals of the geoengineers could frighten the public into support for the positions of climate change activists: a forlorn hope that fear can be enlisted to take the place of scientific and/or political leadership. (What distinguishes this mindset from the attitude of oppressors throughout history?)
All the evidence suggests that fear strengthens climate change skepticism. It does not undermine it. One of the reflexes from which climate change skepticism derives its dynamism is its (similarly blustering and adolescent) refusal to be frightened by “danger mongering ecologists and leftists” (or “liberals”, to use the American terminology). The “Global Dimming” documentaries screened in English-speaking countries five years ago evidently failed to achieve their aim of increasing support for cuts in carbon emissions. The reason for this failure, in my opinion, was the over-reliance on fear and corresponding censoring out of focused political analysis. “Global Dimming” was portrayed as the result of specifically non-intentional “particle pollution”, not of geoengineering, theoretical or actual. .
Jeff Goodell’s “How to Cool the Planet” is a step forward from the Global Dimming documentaries. In that sense Goodell deserves the placatory congratulations that were extended to him by Rebecca Campbell. (“I .thanked Mr. Goodell for at least minimally exposing this long-concealed subject to public view.”)
The open antagonism that Rebecca Campbell displayed to Jeff Goodell was also displayed by the ETC group towards the British Royal Society for its 2009 report on geoengineering. The ETC paper, entitled “The Emperor’s New Climate: Geoengineering as 21st Century Fairytale”, offended Ken Caldeira because of what he saw as its ad hominem approach. “It is one thing to suggest that we are uninformed, misinformed, or even deluded, but another thing entirely to suggest that we are acting with the intent to “trick” people into doing things that might harm the environment. Charges that we are acting in bad faith are unfounded, reckless, repugnant and malicious…..If ETC really believes the emperor has no clothes, they should be happy to join us in calls for an investigation into the emperor’s clothing.”
To respond to this in the same spirit, one could say that if “good cop” geoengineers are really upset about the unwillingness of many ecological NGOs to discuss or ever give a moment’s thought to the considerations that have led scientists of good reputation (Paul Crutzen, for example) to embrace geoengineering, then they must become more engaged with these NGOs. Is it enough for Caldeira or Keith to flaunt a hippie past of anti-militarism and nuclear disarmament politics suitable perhaps for impressing media audiences? If they want their anti-militarist and anti-nuclear-weapons credentials to be recognized by people of some significance in present-day nuclear disarmament circles, should they not be showing some evidence of real and continuing involvement in today’s global campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons? Caldeira’s active opposition to the Planktos and Climos ocean fertilization projects seems to have had some effect, suggesting that he is not without influence. Should he not try to exert similar influence in the circles whose support for geoengineering he wants to secure?
Why don’t Caldeira, for example, and others from among his anti-nuclear-weapons geoengineering colleagues, spend some time talking about geoengineering to e.g. Jonathan Granoff or other senior people at the Global Security Institute campaigning for a Nuclear Weapons Convention and a global ban on nuclear weapons? These people of influence could discuss joint initiatives to achieve progress in both areas: geoengineering and nuclear disarmament. Couldn’t they?
If Jeff Goodell is really concerned that “well-meaning environmentalists and do-gooders will stall funding on geoengineering research for another decade” why doesn’t he try to find people in the international climate justice movement who understand how his own sense of unsuitability for a leadership role in the fight for climate justice prevents him from saying frankly all that he knows about geoengineering, or articulating the arguments best suited to embarrassing and silencing the climate change skeptics and the “bad cop” geoengineers?
Such meetings and such discussions could lead to agreements on divisions of labour that would provide the ANTI-geoengineering movement also with its good cops and bad cops. Many of Goodell’s problems with “well-meaning environmentalists and do-gooders” must after all stem from the fact that he does not always speak to them honestly, and that sometimes when he is dissembling, they think that he is sincere.
He says: “I hope that we never launch particles into the stratosphere, dump iron into the oceans, or brighten clouds. I hope that we will grasp the scale of the catastrophe that awaits us, muster up the courage and political will to cut emissions quickly and deeply, invent new energy systems that are cheap and clean and abundant. Most of all, I hope that the whole notion of geoengineering looks in retrospect exactly how it looks at first glance, like a bad sci-fi novel writ large.”
He says: “I fear that geoengineering will be packaged and sold as a quick fix. Rather than engaging people in the act of managing the planet, it will be used as another tool to increase our passivity – just sit back and let Big Brother take care of the climate!”
He says: “The thing I fear most is that we won’t do anything at all. We won’t explore geoengineering: we won’t cut greenhouse gas pollution in any significant way; we won’t change our lives. We will argue about it on TV and write books and make movies and hang banners on the smokestacks of coal plants, and nothing much will change. We will just ride into the dark apocalypse…a future of war and starvation and disease driven by the changes on our superheated planet.”
If he really hopes and fears these things, surely he should be trying harder to make himself understood by people such as Rebecca Campbell whose gut reflex is to dismiss him as a “disinfo agent” simply because he does not register awareness of the aspect of the situation that is of most importance to her, and indeed of most importance to any person who comes to the climate debate through “looking at the sky”. .
Goodell quotes Lowell Wood as writing in private correspondence: “When I talk with people who object to geoengineering, I often say. “You don’t have to argue with me, and I don’t have to argue with you, let’s find something more pleasant to talk about because I’m going to win.” That sounds cynical, but it is open to question whether even such a very very bad cop as Wood really has the courage of his own evil convictions. Far from elaborating on his claim that it is he, Lowell Wood, who is going to win, in his correspondence he goes on to say that it is in fact “geoengineering” that is going to win, and: the people “to blame” for that are the politicians. “The politicians, when they finally come down to the crunch, are going to ask: What is the cheapest thing that might possibly do the job? They don’t care what it is.”
In the final analysis, all that might be motivating Lowell Wood is concern to make money in his old age. . After leaving the Lawrence Livermore weapons laboratory in 2007 he went into business with an old friend who had been the chief technology officer at Microsoft. They established a firm called Intellectual Ventures whose basic business plan is to buy patents and license patents to interested companies, many of them involved in geoengineering projects. .
Both the nuclear arms race and its successor the climate/geoengineering game that is both a variation on it and in part a consequence of it, are largely based on fraud. The Russian nuclear arsenal, for example, was not abolished by the “victors” when the Cold War ended and it is to say the least very dubious whether that has anything to do with the preferences of anyone of significance in Russia in 1991. It is certainly not due to the late Boris Yeltsin. The question of precisely who “controls” Russian nuclear weapons today is also one that deserves, and is not getting, investigation.
An alliance with “good cop” geoengineers can and should focus on the fraudulent elements in the climate debate, after which it will be time to move on to focus on the fraudulent elements in the nuclear disarmament debate. Because everyone with the status of “player” at the governmental level or in the international organizations dealing with these questions either is inadequately informed or feels obliged to dissemble, it is the Rebecca Campbells and (even moreso) the Michael Murphys that are in the best position to lead. But for that to be possible they must acquire the reflexes, and the level of understanding, that are required of leaders.
Aigina, Greece, 4th September 2010