—By Dana Liebelson and Chris Mooney
| Wed Jul. 17, 2013
The Central Intelligence Agency
is funding a scientific studythat will investigate whether humans could use
geoengineering to alter Earth's environment and stop climate change. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will run the 21-month project, which
is the first NAS geoengineering study financially supported by an intelligence
agency. With the spooks' money, scientists will study how humans might
influence weather patterns, assess the potential dangers of messing with the climate,
and investigate possible national security implications of geoengineering
attempts.
The total cost of the project
is $630,000, which NAS is splitting with the CIA, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, and NASA. The NAS website says
that "the US intelligence community" is funding the project, and
William Kearney, a spokesman for NAS, told Mother Jones that phrase refers to the CIA. Edward
Price, a spokesman for the CIA, refused to confirm the agency's role in the
study, but said, "It's natural that on a subject like climate change the
Agency would work with scientists to
better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security." The CIA reportedly closed its research center on climate change and national security last year, after GOP members of Congress argued that the CIA shouldn't be looking at climate change.
better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security." The CIA reportedly closed its research center on climate change and national security last year, after GOP members of Congress argued that the CIA shouldn't be looking at climate change.
The goal of the CIA-backed NAS
study is to conduct a "technical evaluation of a limited number of
proposed geoengineering techniques," according to the NAS website.
Scientists will attempt to determine which geoengineering techniques are
feasible and try to evaluate the impacts and risks of each (including
"national security concerns"). One proposed geoengineering method the
study will look at is solar radiation management—a fancy term for pumping
particles into the stratosphere to reflect incoming sunlight away from the
planet. In theory, solar radiation management could lead to a global cooling
trend that might reverse, or at least slow down, global warming. The study will
also investigate proposals for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The National Academies has held
two previous workshops on geoengineering, but neither was funded by the
intelligence community, says Edward Dunlea, the study director for the latest
project. The CIA would not say why it had decided to fund the project at this
time, but the US government's apparent interest in altering the climate isn't
new. The first big use of weather modification as a military tactic came during
the Vietnam War, when the Air Force engaged in a cloud seeding program to try
to create rainfall and turn the Ho Chi Minh Trail into muck, and thereby gain
tactical advantage. Between 1962 and 1983, other would-be weather engineers
tried to change the behavior of hurricanes using silver iodide. That effort,
dubbed Project Stormfury,
was spearheaded by the Navy and the Commerce Department. China's "Weather
Modification Office" also controversially seeded clouds in
advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, hoping to ensure rain would
fall in the Beijing suburbs instead of over the Olympic stadiums.
Although previous efforts to
manipulate weather and climate have often been met with mockery, many geoengineering
proposals "are fundamentally doable, relatively cheap, and do appear to be
able to reduce climate risk significantly, but with risks," explains David
Keith, a Harvard researcher and top geoengineering proponent.
But if geoengineering is cheap
and "fundamentally doable," as Keith claims, that suggests foreign
countries, or even wealthy individuals, could mess with the climate to advance
their own ends. "This whole issue of lone actors: Do we need to be
concerned about China acting unilaterally? Is that just idle chatter, or is
that something the US government should prepare for?" asks Ken Caldeira, a
geoengineering researcher at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global
Ecology and a member of the current National Academy of Sciences panel.
At least one individual has
already tried modifying the climate. Russ George, the former head of Planktos,
a company that works to develop technology to deal with global warming, seeded the Pacific Ocean off western Canada with iron to generate a plankton bloom that, in
turn, was supposed to suck up carbon dioxide from the air. George's effort was widely condemned, but at present there's little to stop other
individuals or countries from trying it or something similar. That's part of
what has the US intelligence community interested.
The CIA's decision to fund
scientific work on geoengineering will no doubt excite conspiracy theorists.
The last time the government tried to do cutting-edge research related to the atmosphere—with
the High Frequency
Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP),
which aimed to protect satellites from nuclear blasts—people speculated that it
might be a death ray, a mind control weapon, or, worst of all…a
way to control the weather. More http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/cia-geoengineering-control-climate-change
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