Excuse
me. Do you mind if I turn your blue
skies white? Why spend all that
money on wind farms and insulation?
Keep on driving, brothers and sisters, because Big Science is going to
fix global warming.
While
they talk up a new Manhattan project to block out the Sun, it's another year of
multi-billion dollar profits for the coal and oil companies. Stall, stall, stall, while the money rolls
in!
Welcome
to Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. In this program, we'll dig into
geoengineering - the industrialization of the climate. You'll hear top climate scientist Alan
Robock. He's got a laundry list of
reasons why trying to control the climate may not be such a good idea. Diana Bronson of the ETCgroup joins us, to
counter the Academies and think tanks pushing geoengineering.
Alan
Robock's reply to Bjorn Lomborg, Eric Brickell and Lee Lane's
"science" of geoengineering (at realclimate.org).
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/08/a-biased-economic-analysis-of-geoengineering/#more-840
Royal Society press release and
report "Stop emitting CO2 or geoengineering could be our only
hope." 28 Aug 2009
http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8734
Bjorn
Lomborg's geoengineering article in the UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/5987229/Cloud-ship-scheme-to-deflect-the-suns-rays-is-favourite-to-cut-global-warming.html
Bjorn Lomborg's errors site: A
comprehensive list of errors and flaws in Bjorn Lomborg´s book: The Skeptical
Environmentalist, compiled by biologist Kaare Fog
www.lomborg-errors.dk/
www.lomborg.com/
From Joe
Romm's Climate Progress blog: British
coal flack doubts global warming, but says let's use geoengineering so we
don't have to stop burning carbon...
http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/12/british-coal-industry-flack-pushes-geo-engineering-ploy-to-give-politicians-viable-reason-to-do-nothing-about-global-warming-is-that-why-lomborg-supports-such-a-smoke-and-mirrors-approach/
Scientist
Ken
Caldeira's response to the Lomborg Report (via climateprogress.org)
http://climateprogress.org/2009/09/05/caldeira-delayer-lomborg-copenhagen-climate-consensus-geoengineering/#more-10902
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/
ETCgroup
press release "The Royal Society’s Report on Geoengineering the
Climate: Geoengineering or Geopiracy?"
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=767
Risks
of geoengineering to precipitation changes - Susan Solomon via
climateprogress.org
http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/29/science-risks-of-climate-geo-engineering-hegerl-susan-solomon/
In this
week's program won't hear Bjorn Lomborg - the self-styled "skeptical
environmentalist" now pushing projects to reduce the Sun's rays reaching
Earth. I invited Mr. Lomborg to do an
interview, but he was too busy. I
believe he is busy. Lomborg has op-eds
and interviews going in all the major media.
Newsweek and Time magazine love him.
Newspapers print his words uncritically.
In early
September, Lomborg was at the White House to meet Joe Aldy, special
assistant to the president for energy and the environment.
Bjorn
Lomborg knows the major governments of the world, the IPCC, and all those other
carbon cutters - are on the wrong track.
Lomborg doesn't dispute that rapid global warming is upon us. But cutting greenhouse gas emissions is much
too expensive he says. Citing a report
written for his organization, called the "Copenhagen Consensus" -
Bjorn Lomborg has a half dozen good reasons why we should just keep on burning
gas, oil, and coal.
Say what?
Known for
his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist", Lomborg has summoned elite
economists to determine the world's priority needs. Wonder of wonders, climate change is way down the list, they say,
compared to treating tropical diseases and working on poverty. Let's do that first, and big America
corporate donors, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are glad
to take his advice. No need to upset
Exxon Mobil or Peabody Coal.
Now
Lomborg has a report on geoengineering, which he commissioned. He calls it science, others disagree. Let's go to one of the prime contributors
from the blog realclimate.org - world-famous climate scientist, Alan Robock.
Alan
Robock has posted
a rebuttal of Bjorn Lomborg's latest attempt at climate science, at
realclimate.org. Just type in Lomborg,
L o m b o r g, in the realclimate search box.
Geoengineering
- humans trying to run planetary systems - in this case the climate. In an article in the British newspaper The
Telegraph on August 7th, 2009, Bjorn Lomborg claims it is way cheaper to block
off the Sun, than to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Lomborg
isn't a climate denier - he agrees we're in trouble. He's a climate delayer - with almost every reason an oil company
executive could think of, to wait a longer before pricing carbon, capping
emissions, or going to sustainable energy.
In the
Telegraph article, we are told a fleet of so-called "cloud ships"
will stop global warming by injecting sea water into the lower atmosphere. The droplets would create large white
clouds, blocking one or two percent of the incoming sunlight, preferably over
the oceans.
Quoting
from the Telegraph "They would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and
launch within 25 years, compared to the $250 billion that the world’s leading
nations are considering spending each year to cut CO2 emissions, and the $395
trillion it would cost to launch mirrors into space."
The
newspaper doesn't criticize these cost estimates, which are very questionable,
if not completely wrong. Lomborg is not
trained in climate science. His degree
is in Political Science.
But
Lomborg is no longer a lone voice.
Suddenly, almost everyone is on the geoengineering bandwagon. The British Royal Society released a hundred
page report on getting the science going behind climate manipulation. It's called "Geoengineering the
Climate, Science Governance and Uncertainty" released in September 2009.
The
American Meteorological Society just did the same. So it's not just Bjorn Lomborg, and the right-wing think-tanks
who promote his work.
I'll get
into the rumors of a super-strategy to derail climate talks in a minute. First, we need to hear from Diana.
[Diana
Bronson interview][Bracketed by song "Never Turn Your Back On
Mother Earth" by Neko Case]
You are
listening to a Radio Ecoshock special on geoengineering - human control of the
biosphere.
We've
heard from top climate scientist Alan Robock, and from activist Diana Bronson,
from the ETCgroup that's opposed geoengineering for years. In fact, when Russ George and his company
Planktos tried to crank out carbon off-sets, by seeding ocean plankton - we had
the ETCgroup on to help head him off at the pass. Planktos went nowhere, and then went broke. We did two shows on that, in the first two
weeks of September 2007. Part I “Planktos:
Offsets Real and Imagined” and Part 2 “Planktos
II: The Intervention” (caution 1 hour programs 56 MB each).
Now, there
are two groups of humans who are trumpeting the sudden need for geoengineering.
The first gang are, I think, well-intentioned. They are top scientists who are not just worried. They are frightened at the rapid deterioration of our climate.
Keep in
mind, two German commercial freighters just went through the North East
passage. That is, they sailed from
Vladivostok, on Russia's Pacific coast, right past all of Siberia, to the Barents
Sea, and then on to Europe. That cuts
4,000 miles off the other shipping route through Singapore and the Suez
Canal. With a reduction in shipping
emissions, to be sure. That route has
been sealed by sea ice for tens of thousands of years. Now it's open, without even an ice-breaker.
Simple
yachts are already sailing the North West passage, across the top of Canada to
Alaska. The Summer sea ice is the third
lowest on record this year.
United
Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki‑moon just went to the Arctic to see for himself. He found open waters, a great melting. In a speech to the World Climate Conference,
the Secretary-General said "Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are
heading towards an abyss."
There is
plenty of climate panic to go around.
Given the
low hopes for the coming climate treaty talks in Copenhagen in December, a
collection of scientists are plotting Plan B - in case humans just don't adapt
their energy system in time. In case
we're too crazy or lazy to respond.
Proposed
schemes include feeding algae, stimulating volcanoes, mimicking volcanoes by
shooting tons of sulfur into the upper atmosphere, pretty well everything,
short of creating a nuclear winter with bombs.
We're very desperate bunnies.
Some of
the scientists involved include well-known names in science. James Lovelock endorses geoengineering
research. In the United States, Dr. Ken
Caldeira has briefed groups ranging from Google execs to the U.S. military.
I
accept most of these top scientists are trying to be good humans.
I'm also aware of a tendency in Western science to create big projects
that can end up very badly. Like the
Manhattan project. In fact, Caldeira,
who I respect, works at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, most famous for it's secret
nuclear weapons development. He
sometimes sounds like that mind culture.
What we have is a network of scientists who propose solutions that could only be implemented by either a coalition of the world's big powers, or by a major power like the United States, Russia, or China - unilaterally. Without a vote, or a voice.
The
scientists want big research money for starters, perhaps billions of dollars
that will go to new institutions they will direct. Humans are seldom free of self interest.
The awful twist is: we may need the science they develop.
Who really believes North Americans are going to stop driving gas cars
any time soon? Who really thinks China
will stop building mega-coal plants?
Science to kill us, science to delay our extinction...
There
is a second group of geoengineering cheerleaders behind the curtains.
They are the big oil, coal, and power companies - and countries like
Saudi Arabia, who make billions every day we use their products, every day we
delay cutting CO2 emissions.
I'm sorry to say, Bjorn Lomborg is connected to that dark carbon energy. His latest scientific-sounding report is co-authored by Lee Lane - a writer/publicist with the American Enterprise Institute. The AEI is famous for denying climate change - but suddenly, they say global warming is so serious, we must go straight to geoengineering.
It's no surprise to find that the American Enterprise Institute has received millions of dollars from Exxon/Mobil. Exxon's anti-warming long-time CEO Lee Raymond sat on the AEI Board for years.
There is
a whole web site devoted to uncovering unsubstantiated claims made by Bjorn
Lomborg, and links to all the American right-wing think tanks, like the
Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, the complete collection. These have sponsored this photogenic
well-spoken Dane in his trips to America.
Click blog on our main page at
ecoshock.org. Or just Google "Lomborg errors" and it's top of the
pile. Fascinating reading.
I'm not
out to demonize Bjorn Lomborg. I
invited him to present his views on this show.
I would have given him, and you, a fair hearing. People who call Lomborg a traitor miss the
point. Bjorn is just another player in
the carbon drama. We're all players, as
we sidle up to the gas pumps for one more hit.
Yes,
there is an evil conspiracy of fossil barons, to keep the world warming while
they make money. Here's just one example I found in Joe
Romm's necessary climate blog, at climateprogress.org.
From
Joe's blog, where AGW stands for Anthropogenic Global Warming, with humans as
the cause, quote:
"Richard
S. Courtney, British coal industry flack, is one such denier who spreads
disinformation on various blogs... As
BigCityLib informs us, Courtney recently made this remarkable admission:
'I am firmly convinced that dangerous AGW is not a problem and cannot become one. However, I do think the possibility of the geo-engineering should be supported. My reason for this is a political ploy and I explain it as follows….
The politicians need a viable reason if
they are to back-off from this commitment to the constraints [of GHGs] without
losing face.
The geo-engineering option provides the
needed viable reason to do nothing about AGW now….'
Joe Romm
compares this tactic to the nuclear industry, which kept promising new
technology to store waste. It never
came, but the plants kept churning out more radioactive blunk. Kind of like the "clean coal"
campaign. It's all just smoke and
mirrors to let us off the hook. We can
keep our carbon addiction, while day-dreaming about the Big Save by science,
just before we go under.
Never
mind that blocking out sunlight does nothing to stop acidification of the
ocean, threatening ocean life. Our
carbon pollution will keep rolling into the seas, killing off coral and all
shell-making plankton, and all the layers of life that depend upon them. That's not even mentioned in most of the
popular press articles Lomborg pumps out, through project-syndicate.org The London Telegraph doesn't mention any
side effects at all!
Oh yeah,
and so-called solar radiation management might wreak havoc with world
rainfall patterns as well. That's
the other side of global warming. You
could call it global wetting. Except most
of the extra water taken up in the warmer world will fall at the Poles, while
major crop areas will experience centuries of drought.
Geoengineering
could skew that rainfall even more, with very unpredictable consequences. You know, droughts, floods, extreme rainfall
events, triggering mass starvation and mass migration.
That's
covered in a
scientific paper released last Spring, written by Gabriele C. Hegerl and
Susan Solomon, titled "Risks of Climate Engineering". The authors caution that climate shift is
about much more than temperature. Maybe
we could cool things off for a few years with geoengineering, but the
precipitation changes are unknown - until we try it all out on a the
unsuspecting species who share this planet with us.
Derrick Jensen, the deep green writer,
often asks, "What will it take" before you would be willing to fight
for what's left of the Earth. I know
for sure, if anybody turns my blue skies white, because the carbon barons
stalled real action, I'll take up arms.
If we let that happen, there will be little left to live for.
I'm Alex
Smith - and I'm still hoping we'll make it through the eye of the needle, to
keep the natural Earth. You cut your
emissions, and I'll cut mine. We'll
dedicate ourselves to real solutions.
We can't
take this one lying down on the couch. Demonstrate you care on 350 day, October
24th. 350.org
for the action nearest you.
Join me
next week on Radio Ecoshock, to learn why some communities survive crisis,
while others fall apart.
"See
You In the Sun" by Shane Philip
(Cdn)