Geoengineering (2) - Quareness Series 168th "Lecture".
It's a broadly (even if naively) accepted part of the historical narrative that humanity has been genuinely trying to rid itself of nuclear weapons over the past 50+ years. However, what's been a lot less widely acknowledged (or even known about) is that some economically developed nations have been moving into the realm of geo-warfare with the weaponry involved being publicly masked as a new high-tech way to mitigate the effects of global warming. The methods being used for this planetary-scale environmental engineering of our Earth's atmosphere (manipulating our weather, our oceans and the planet itself) are deployed without any real public participation in debate, prior public notification, or indeed democratic oversight. Legally it seems nobody owns the atmosphere above the Earth and so environmental impact studies for atmospheric manipulations are not required by law. Nevertheless the implications of these global experiments necessarily involve profound impacts on our life-support system.
The first of the Nuremberg legal principles guiding experimentation involving human beings clearly states that persons involved should have legal capacity to give consent and should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion...and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him/her to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him/her the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment, the method and means by which it is to be conducted, all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected, and the effects upon his/her health or person which may possibly come from his/her participation in the experiment.
Maybe tinkering with our life-support system is experimentation which fits this definition and ought to require our informed consent?
The magnetic Van Allen belts protecting our Earth from the destructive solar wind's charged particles lie upwards of 480 kilometers (300 miles) above us. Back in August/September of 1958 the US Navy exploded three fission-type nuclear bombs at this lower altitude above the South Atlantic Ocean (possibly before the protective function of the belts was understood) and caused worldwide new artificial aurora borealis effects. The longer term effects of this massive destruction have never been declassified. This first experiment (aka Project Argus) was repeated a second time over the Pacific Ocean in July of 1962 (Project Starfish) when three nuclear "devices" (one kiloton, one megaton, and one multi-megaton) were detonated...
seriously disturbing the lower Van Allen belt and apparently altering its shape and intensity.
By 1962, the U.S. military was using electronic beams to ionize and de-ionize areas of the atmosphere in imitation of lightning. In the same year Canada began launching satellites into the Earth’s ionosphere and chemically simulating the plasma. Starting with the solid state, followed by the more energetic liquid then gaseous states, plasma is even more energetic and contains molecules which are dissociated into positive and negative ions e.g. as in lightning. Later in 1962, the U.S.S.R. undertook similar "planetary experiments", creating three new radiation belts between 7,000 and 13,000 kilometers (4,300 and 8,100 miles) above the Earth. The electron fluxes in the Van Allen belts have changed markedly since this event and have apparently never returned to their former state.
Atmospheric modification experiments involving the addition of chemicals or manipulation through using heat or electromagnetic force have been ongoing now for over 50 years causing interruption or distortion of the normal wave motion of the upper atmosphere and often effecting weather changes in the troposphere. Chemicals dumped into Earth’s atmosphere have included barium acid, barium chlorate, barium nitrate, barium perchlorate and barium peroxide, all of which are combustible and destructive of the ozone layer. Another "culprit" - lithium - is a highly reactive toxic chemical easily ionized by the sun and all of these chemical "infusions" get to increase the density of the lower ionosphere and create free radicals capable of causing further chemical changes. With these experiments seemingly being at least partly driven by the military desire to control weather as a weapon, it's not surprising that publicly available reports of their environmental impact are practically non-existent.
It may be (is?) now possible to "steer" the jet stream thereby deciding the line where warm and cool air meet in geographic regions, or to manipulate the movement of rain from the tropics to the temperate zones thereby causing drought or floods. Natural atmospheric occurrences or instabilities such as monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. can be made more severe by "adding energy". Even earthquakes can potentially be triggered through Inserting oil into tectonic faults or creating artificial Earth vibrations with electromagnetic pulses. And it's quite difficult to separate out the military geo-experiments impact from the genuine heaving of the planet.
This geo-warrior "cult" has now spread sufficiently to encourage a more open blending with the civil/public sphere concerns. We're seeing an emerging wish to go public with even more risky experiments, to gain public approval, and even perhaps to become "climate action heroes" citing geoengineering as the solution to global climate change (openly pitched at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen 2010). Back in 2009 the US military launched a suborbital rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia in order to dump aluminium oxide and chaff creating an artificial cloud in Earth's outer atmosphere 280 kilometers (174 miles) above ground...way higher than normal clouds which form at a maximum of 80.5 kilometers (50 miles) above the surface in the mesosphere. No one really knows what such tests (will) do to our climate, agriculture, human health or if they might trigger altered infrared or UV radiation reaching the planet. What we do know is that the aluminium used in this particular test has to eventually drop into the ocean and/or onto farmland thereby polluting the food supply. We also know that this artificial cloud shading of the US East Coast in the fall of 2009 brought on unusual snow and wintry weather.
It's looking like our Earth may already have become a “research victim” of militarism and we now urgently need to recognise such geoengineering as a crime against life itself...and deny any civil/public blessing to do more planetary damage. And perhaps it's time to honour and protect our Earthly home in the long standing manner of our indigenous peoples...time to seriously question the psychological and economic implications of our desire for domination over all living things and greedy hoarding of natural resources.
To be continued...
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
July, 2022.