The CIA Wants To Know How To Control the Climate 238
Taco Cowboy writes " The CIA is currently funding, in part, a $630,000 study on geoengineering, the science of using experimental techniques to modify Earth's climate. 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 study calls for information on two geoengineering techniques in particular, 'solar radiation management (SRM),' which refers to launching material into Earth's atmosphere to try and block the Sun's infrared radiation, limiting global temperature rise; and 'carbon dioxide removal (CDR),' taking carbon dioxide emissions out of the climate, which scientists have proposed doing through a variety of means, from structures that eat air pollution to capturing carbon emissions as they come out of smokestacks."
The US just has to control everything, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm.
Re: (Score:3)
After earthquake control [realclearpolitics.com] where do you go as an agency? Remote viewing? Mind control lasers? That's so 1970s. Let's face it, in this harsh world you're only as good as your latest doomsday weapon.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
And why not the US? The UN has signaled it is against geoengineering in principle. This makes strategic sense, it would be foolish to allow big carbon emitters to say "Oh, we'll just fix it later" while continuing to burn coal like there's no tomorrow. However, it's clear that some climate change is going to happen, and that it will negatively impact a lot of people. Not research
Re: (Score:3)
Humans in general like to LOOK at nature, not be subject to it's whims. Especially after we messed up the usual pattern.
And why not the US? The UN has signaled it is against geoengineering in principle. This makes strategic sense, it would be foolish to allow big carbon emitters to say "Oh, we'll just fix it later" while continuing to burn coal like there's no tomorrow. However, it's clear that some climate change is going to happen, and that it will negatively impact a lot of people. Not researching geoengineering is kind of foolish in that sense. Those countries which are contributing to climate change should probably invest in fixing the problems they largely created. Ideally after doing no further damage, but none of us were born yesterday: we know we're going to be getting our power coal until some climate-change related problem makes enough people in the US realize that nuclear or solar power would have been a better choice..
It's pretty clear that managing emissions down to pre-industrial levels is a non-starter; even if we did agree that it is a problem, we simply can never agree as a planet on what each nation's "fair" reduction would be. Therefore, it will be the usual token gestures of reducing carbon by x percent in a certain industry while other industries quickly rise up to fill the gap. If climate change is going to hurt us, our only protection will be taking action *after* it happens, until then there just won't be c
Re: (Score:2)
You're right that the size of the human population is the basic problem.
But implementing mandatory population control requires something akin to a police state, and it would be too little, too late.
Nature has a lot of experience with cutting excessive populations down to a manageable size. It's not a pleasant process for the overpopulated species, but ecosystems have rules we can't flaunt forever. Our population is in the hands of nature now, at the mercy of a climate that we ourselves have made more seve
Re: (Score:3)
And why not the US? The UN has signaled it is against geoengineering in principle. This makes strategic sense, it would be foolish to allow big carbon emitters to say "Oh, we'll just fix it later" while continuing to burn coal like there's no tomorrow.
Um, we're talking about the CIA here...not the NOAA. The CIA doesn't give a shit about climate change.
Re:The US just has to control everything, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most national intelligence agencies care about climate change, because changes in local rainfall, drought and flood patterns is going to lead to unrest and the movement of peoples and what comes with that. Geoengineering falls under this umbrella easily: being able to predict who's going to get screwed by it is a pretty good way to predict who's going to be coming after the US for it, and where the new hotspots/issues will arise.
A huge part of any intelligence agency's mission is to discern the underlying factors which motivate the behavior of countries: someone beating the drums for war usually has an ulterior motive to the stated one, both locally and abroad.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm extremely reluctant to defend the CIA in most circumstances, but I think the poster (or possibly the source article) may have misunderstood the point of this study. If there was a potential superweapon that could be used against your country, wouldn't you want to know everything possible about it so you could a) possibly detect it in advance, and b) defend against it? Who knows what the CIA's real motivations are - it's not like they have any kind of democratic accountability - but assuming that this
Re: (Score:2)
Well look on the bright side, at least one prominent US agency has now shown interest in halting global warming and reducing the amount of CO2 in the air.
And if they happen to find a way to harmlessly dissipate an incoming hurricane or super-typhoon before it annihilates a population center, so much the better.
Re: The US just has to control everything, eh? (Score:3)
Everyone knows humans don't have an effect on climate. Look how little a person is compared to the Earth! It's all solar cosmic rays and Martian volcanos getting closer to Earth that makes it get warmer, just like when dinosaurs ruled things and made people's live in caves instead of drive cars wherever they wanted.
Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
The most obvious answer is always the one (almost) never thought of or mentioned: stop polluting the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just the corporations. Actually most of the corporations like being in a somewhat affluent society. They are much cleaner than they otherwise would be. Consider here in the US we have more forest than we had 100 years ago, we have about doubled the cars on the road since the 70s and held emmisions mostly constant. Our carbon foot print is big because our living standard is high but if you look at and activity basis rather than a per capita basis we do things with higher carbon efficiencies than most of the world.
Think about cooking, driving, electrical generation etc. compare the carbon output of the way we usually do those activities to say India, or Chad.
Running around trying to manage all the greenhouse gas sources only works when you have piles of money to throw at the problem and even then it does not achieve the goal of preserving our comfortable life style and stopping climate change, it demands sacrifice and sacrifice sucks!
Geoengineering or centralized carbon scrubbing is the future, that or radical population controls. I am more comfortable with the former, I bet most people will be too when they sit down and think on it. What's sad here is its the spooks behind this instead of transparent organization
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
Our carbon foot print is big because our living standard is high but if you look at and activity basis rather than a per capita basis we do things with higher carbon efficiencies than most of the world.
Most (western) European countries have an equally high living standard but a considerable lower carbon footprint. I doubt that bringing activity into the calculation will change much...
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm definitely in the camp that Americans need to do more but that is a bit disingenuous comparison. It looks like the Western European Country with the lowest population density is three times the population density of the US. That has huge public transportation ramifications.
Only if you look at the average. The US has large empty areas. If you ignore them -- and you can, for the discussion about public transportation -- the eastern third of the country is densely populated, entirely comparable to Europe.
Re: (Score:2)
Even where we have HIGHER density than Europe, our public transportation is below standards. There's also VERY few people in our low density areas. You could easily go all day without seeing another person.
Re: (Score:2)
And you make the point nicely that the entire rest of the EU is more populated that the US.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934666.html [infoplease.com]
Which makes it more difficult for lots of issues that lead to more pollution - transportation among the top ones.
Re: (Score:3)
You have a point in that Europe has a higher population density than the US, but some European countries are less actually less dens.
Country Density Carbon efficiency
- - - - -
USA 35 pop/km2 1.77 CO2 emissions/$ GDP
Sweden 23 pop/km2 0.7 CO2 emissions/$ GDP
Norway 16 pop/km2 0.74 CO2 emissions/$ GDP
That said Sweden and Norway probably have an advantage in having plenty of waterpower.
That's some pretty intense cherry picking. If you looked at the stats for just Oregon or Washington (with decent carbon-free power sources) you would find the same. However, across the entire US (just like across the entire EU) the picture is different because not all areas have the same resources.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, you don't mention how a much greater percentage of Sweden and Norway's population is centered in their large cities while the american population is much more decentralized.
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree! You can have remote start, so that the car is nice and cool when you first get in, not just while shopping!
(I actually have remote start, but for the winter when you can't see out the front window until the defroster starts working so you end up sitting in the driveway for 5 minutes anyway.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, just bend way down to look out the one small, clear hole.
Re: (Score:2)
I usually used an ice scraper to "defrost" windshields.
I have to use that in addition to the defroster. It gets the chunks off, but you still can't see anything. Believe me, before remote start I was not just sitting there in the car freezing my ass off for no reason. This is at 6:30 in the morning. Public transit is not an option because the transfer and destination stations are not safe add odd hours.
Re: (Score:2)
I usually used an ice scraper to "defrost" windshields. It's not as fun as just sitting down in your preheated car but it does work. Certainly, the usage requires me to burn some calories which requires oxygen and emits carbon dioxide, and to compensate for that I need to eat food. And what do you know, the ice scraper is made from fossil fuels. But it's still less wasteful than starting the engine of your car when you don't use it as vehicle.
Hey you know what, so do I. You know what happens if there is humidity in the air and you have a cold windshield? Your windshield will frost right back up while driving. Not exactly a smart thing to do, so I either warm up the car until the ice melts, or I scrape the ice and warm up the car until the ice can melt.
Re: (Score:2)
But lately I rely more upon public transport, while sacrificing some of my convenient spare time, it is cheaper AND quite reliable here in (Western) Europe to use public transport, at least for a single person, who doesn't need to buy food for a whole family.
Well I get the train when I travel 200 miles to London, as it's far faster (3 hours door-to-door) than driving (4 hours door-to-carpark, then another half hour to the office). I read on the trip too. I don't have enough convenient spare time to waste driving all the way (I do drive the first 15 miles to the station)
Americans often use public transport too, it's called a plane.
Re: (Score:2)
If the inside of his car fogs up, why do you think you know better?
Re: (Score:2)
Our carbon foot print is big because our living standard is high but if you look at and activity basis rather than a per capita basis we do things with higher carbon efficiencies than most of the world.
Think about cooking, driving, electrical generation etc. compare the carbon output of the way we usually do those activities to say India, or Chad.
That's a bit of a cop-out. Your standard of living is pretty good but comparable or better levels exist in countries where the carbon footprint is lower. Activity basis is a flawed measure because as you become more efficient it goes down. For example transporting things long distances is activity but often quite wasteful and unnecessary.
Comparing yourself to India or Chad is just ridiculous, try France of the UK or other western European countries.
Re: (Score:2)
Comparing yourself to India or Chad is just ridiculous, try France of the UK or other western European countries.
I'd bet the US holds up quite well, especially since Europe started buying our surplus coal. I'd wager that a European city dweller is pretty much on par with a US city dweller, and the French in the countryside pretty much mirror the people in the US countryside. I'd also bet that any discrepancy is due to automobiles, since the US likes big engines and don't penalize as much for that taste. Even there, I'd bet the discrepancy has fallen quite a bit in recent years as our standards have tightened and Europ
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I agree that the US is behind Europe on fuel efficiency of our car fleet - though we have made recent strides. Also, the measure that the Europeans use for fuel economy is much looser than the US standard - in reality, many of the cars available are virtually the same yet have drastically different ratings in the US and Europe.
You can't compare the entire US to France - the US on the whole has a much rougher climate than most of France. There are few areas of the US with the kind of mild climate that part o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not that far off.... it's all about perspective. If you compare the economic output of the US (2,291 GDP/tons of carbon) and EU (3,712 GDP/tons of carbon) vs their carbon output [wikipedia.org], they are quite similar when compared to, say, China (435 GDP/tons of carbon).
Re: (Score:2)
That's a good point, though it is changing in the US. You can live car-free in Philadelphia and Boston now, thanks to car sharing services. New York has always been mostly car-free (I lived there without cars for about 5 years). Buses take you from city to city (Chinatown bus) in the Northeast for less than $20. My wife recently took the bus from Philly to the Jersey shore, and it wasn't much worse than driving (time wise).
Re: (Score:2)
You can live car-free in Philadelphia and Boston now, thanks to car sharing services.
Car-lite perhaps, but not exactly car-free.
Re: (Score:2)
No, definitely not. But two things: (1) Zip cars don't charge for gas, and so the vehicles tend to be very fuel efficient. I always seemed to get a Civic or Scion. (2) The average ZipCar member rents for only 4 hours per month, driving 6 miles per hour. [gigaom.com]That's only 24 miles per month. It would take your average ZipCar driver over 300 years to drive 100,000 miles. Your average car driver puts more than 13,000 miles per year on their car, so they take 7 years or so to get to 100,000 miles. That's a huge impro
Re: (Score:2)
taking a cab doesn't count as car free when ecological impact is being measured.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't mention cabs?
Re: (Score:2)
That does seem to be the way many in NY get around w/o a car. Car sharing is just a variation on cab.
Re: (Score:2)
See my response above. [slashdot.org]
ZipCars use nowhere near as much resources as everyone owning a car for themselves. Think about the incentives at work: if you had to swipe your credit card to use your own car, you'd use it a lot less. As it is right now, your own car just sits in your driveway if you don't use it. You already paid for it, so you might as well use it. With a ZipCar (or a cab, for that matter), you have to weigh the cost of the rental/ride (perhaps $20) against a ride on the MTA ($2 or no additional co
Re: (Score:3)
The UK and France have very mild climates compared to most of the US. The UK is the most densely populated country in the EU. Comparing energy use of residents in Wyoming or even Atlanta to France or the UK is silly. The closest approximation would be the Delaware-to-New York part of the East Coast, but even that has much harsher temperature extremes than the UK or most of France. As an example, residents of NYC have half the carbon footprint of other people in the US - mostly because heating (the units are
Re: (Score:2)
Expensive = Less Green (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider this: since our economy is based on carbon fuels (renewable sources are very small), every dollar (or euro or yuan) goes into creating carbon emissions.
0. If you buy stuff or services, where does the money go?
1. To the seller (20%) - who pays for stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), and fuel (heat, electricity, personal transportation - carbon emissions)
2. To the distributer (20%) - who pays for stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), and fuel (heat, electricity, transportation - carbon emissions)
3. To the shipper (5%) - of which most goes to fuel (carbon emissions), and the rest goes for stuff (goto 0), and services (goto 0)
4. To the producer (55%)
5. And the producer pays for wages for people [to buy stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), fuel (heat, electricity, manufacturing - carbon emissions)] and raw materials [which used carbon-based fuels for extraction/mining/refinement/etc. and results in carbon emissions]
With the industrial revolution switch from human power to machine power, the entire economy is based on us paying for energy. The root of all transactions are to pay for fuel. Nobody "pays" for crop growth or minerals - dollars don't flow to mother nature or the ruler of the earth as a dead-end, just to the people who use energy to promote growth or extract minerals. If the economy were based entirely on real/near-time solar sources (sun, wind, hydro) and nuclear, that would be a different equation as all roads wouldn't lead to carbon emissions. But even buying a solar panel or windmill is non-green, as current technology spends as much in fossil fuel to mine, refine, produce, distribute, install, and maintain the equipment as you get back in power.
Now, that kind of sucks, but it does offer insight into how to *truly* reduce carbon emissions, and that is to minimize your lifecycle costs for everything. Being efficient *is* being green if you're at the end-user point where you cannot control the mix of energy production sources. If you are at the energy producer level (which is almost none of us), you can control carbon emissions through the selection of source - coal, oil, nat gas. (I leave out nuclear and solar, as they are simply purchasers of carbon-based materials like the rest of us, and I leave out fiber incineration/contemporary organics as that's primarily an oil-based source as oil is used for promotion, harvest, and transportation).
Re: (Score:2)
But even buying a solar panel or windmill is non-green, as current technology spends as much in fossil fuel to mine, refine, produce, distribute, install, and maintain the equipment as you get back in power.
Might be the case, but it needn't be. Much of the energy required to produce something like a solar panel or wind turbine can itself come from renewable resources.
But your point about improving end use efficiency is dead on: one unit saved at point of use could result in dozens or hundreds of units saved as you go up the supply chain.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And because the corporations can not be counted upon to 'go green.' So the government has to force them to do that. And because the US and other countries are governed by corporations, nothing will happen until the corporations see their profits deminish because of global warming or other causes that they can do something about. For instance, fish factories are already working on and implementing sustainable methods of catching and/or breeding fish, because if they wouldn't they would go out of busi
Re: (Score:3)
It's not the reaction that's the problem - it's close to 100% complete in a properly maintained car - but that turning the heat into useful work is not trivial. You can get more useful work out of the same energy with, say, a gas turbine.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Any problem with corporations is a problem with the government.
In a democracy, any problem with the governemnt is a problem with the people.
The summarization of the summary of the summary is left to the reader.
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
There are no democracies.
Re: (Score:2)
Or it's a democracy in name only either actually or constructively.
Re: (Score:2)
"carbon dioxide removal (CDR),' taking carbon dioxide emissions out of the climate"
Have they also considered not bulldozing every tree in sight?
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly this. $630,000 that could be used to educate and bring awareness to the people. We are the ones targeted by products, and we have to make an informed choice about what is useful vs what is damaging. Isn't that also known as "geoengineering"? I believe it is, and on a global scale too.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That seems to completely miss the point. The CIA doesn't give a shit about "climate change" or whatever we're calling it this week. They care about ability to and implications of controlling and weaponizing weather. Some asian country giving the USA shit? Send a hurricane their way. Some south american country not playing along with US policy or making us look bad? Cause an earthquake. Want to bolster US corn syrup? Cause an extensive drought in sugar producing regions of other nations.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope that was sarcastic. I really hope so. If not...
It is not possible to weaponize weather in any meaningful way.
Before you continue thinking reality has anything to do with what CIA spends its money on, read The Men Who Stare at Goats.
Fusion (Score:4, Interesting)
The most obvious answer is always the one (almost) never thought of or mentioned: stop polluting the planet.
- Develop cold fusion.
- Replace polluting energy sources by unlimited fusion energy.
- Use unlimited energy to reverse the polluting mechanisms (carbon scrubbing).
Some times I wonder how bad is the player that's managing Humans in the intergalactic strategy game. Somewhere there's a civilization that made a fusion rush and are now conquering their galaxy.
Maybe we're the AI set to Dumb.
Re: (Score:2)
That's it! So instead of creating mitigation measures, we should just count on the ability of all the nations of the world to join hands and sing!
Re: (Score:2)
The most obvious answer is always the one (almost) never thought of or mentioned: stop polluting the planet.
And it has an obvious problem. You can only eliminate the pollution by eliminating the productive activity that lead to the pollution. That's why no one considers it. We have higher priorities than stop polluting the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
While I agree we shouldn't pollute the planet and that we should strive to be as neutral to this planet as possible, I have started having some doubts that warming is caused in any meaningful way by man's activities. Given the situation on Mars I have to wonder. Science is science and it means we should keep our eyes open to new possibilities.
Do I deny that we should keep the planet clean? Hell no. We should. It's in our best interests. And we should ensure that enough O2 producing life is available t
Re: (Score:3)
It is the most obvious and most thoughtless answer.
1. There is a trade off for everything we do. If we do not pollute we in essence will live back in the stone ages. However we will still be producing Bio Waste and without those polluting infrastructures we will create a hazardous environment that will kill millions of people and plants and animals, really messing stuff up. There is a reason why Stone age man life span was averaged at 35 years, and it wasn't getting eaten by a predator.
2. If too many pe
Re: (Score:3)
The drug war, for example. It's blindingly obvious what SHOULD happen to anyone with half a brain, but that doesn't describe a lot of voters, and there's law enforcement and the prison industry making sure we don't decriminalize drugs, so we don't. Instead we waste a hell of a lot of money
Re: (Score:3)
The most obvious answer is always the one (almost) never thought of or mentioned: stop polluting the planet.
Since we already know that dung fires are more polluting than industrial power plants, per capita, what does this really mean? It means bringing technology to the masses, and then building clean, distributed power plants to power that technology.
We have the technology to do this, and clean up previous generations' left-behind pollution (i.e. nuclear waste) but governments are preventing industry from
Re: (Score:3)
At present our economy is based solely on the creation of infinite products out of finite resources
Premise is wrong. The economy is about the same thing that economies are about - distributing scarce resources to make things and services of value which are themselves scarce. If it were somehow true, then why would producing infinite products of value out of finite base materials be somehow "stupid" rather than really useful? Last I checked, infinite was bigger than finite so that looks to me to be stretching the usefulness of those finite resources quite a bit.
Simply put our economy is incompatible with the environment and this cannot be fixed unless our economic system is changed, which is highly unlikely to happen.
There are other choices such as accepting so
Well, I guess that answers the question... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Global warming is real.
. . . if it's not real, the CIA will now be able to make it real for us . . .
Re: (Score:2)
. . . if it's not real, the CIA will now be able to make it real for us . . .
Naw, we just learned that it's the CIA who blackened the skies in the war against the machines. Totally foolish, incites blowback, and works against the national interest. Makes perfect sense in retrospect, really.
I'm not disputing that this is useful research (Score:2)
I just wonder why the funding is coming from the CIA. Surely having another US Government organisation providing the money would be less controversial.
Re:I'm not disputing that this is useful research (Score:5, Informative)
"It should be noted, and in fact highlighted, that CIA is only funding a portion of this study, with the rest provided by NOAA, NASA, and the National Academy of Sciences itself."
"one of the objectives of the study is to discuss the possible national security concerns that might arise should geoengineering techniques be deployed (expected or unexpectedly), either by a private entity or another country."
Climate Change (Score:3)
HAARP (Score:2, Informative)
I thought they used HAARP to control the weather
relax! (Score:3, Informative)
Since the use of "ad trap" tactics (CIA... Geoengineering... success!) are usual nowdays in Slashdot:
The study is commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49540) and their spokesperson states that the study is not designed to test any geoengineering methods or experiment with any findings whatsoever, but rather "assess the current state of knowledge about several geoengineering techniques," and use the findings to inform "future discussions" about their use, and the CIA's involvement "begins and ends with its financial contributions.", CIA is only funding a portion of this study, with the rest provided by NOAA, NASA, and the National Academy of Sciences itself.", the study sponsors, including the CIA, only address the committee in charge of the study once, at the beginning, and "do not correspond with the committee or provide any further input into the study. They receive a final, independently peer-reviewed report with the study's findings at the end of the project", "one of the objectives of the study is to discuss the possible national security concerns that might arise should geoengineering techniques be deployed (expected or unexpectedly), either by a private entity or another country.".
They're called trees you idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
If only we had a solar powered carbon sink, that you could put somewhere and leave for 20 years, then come harvest it for a resource to build buildings and create heat? If only they also made oxygen helped nature and looked good on the horizon.
Re: (Score:2)
Won't someone think of the trees?
Re:They're called trees you idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because they are terribly inefficient? According to http://www.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.htm [ncsu.edu], 1 tree process around 24kg of CO2 per year. Refrigerator (which I'm not giving away to be 'green'), according to http://www.botany.org/planttalkingpoints/co2andtrees.php [botany.org], produce almost 900kg of CO2 because of energy used per year. This means, I need almost 40 full-grown trees just to cover my refrigerator. If you add some other things, like PC I'm writing it on, water heating, house warming, washing machine, etc etc, we are probably talking about acre of forest just to cover my family needs. Don't know about you, but I live in area where space is a bit of premium and people are sometimes failing to secure 50m^2 apartment in multi-store building (which translates to probably like 20m^2 of real ground space, even with pavements etc) - they can hardly affort paying for extra 5000m^2 of ground to plant forest there.
Generally, plants are very bad at anything they do, if you look from pure efficiency point of view. Same way as solar panels are order (or even few) of magnitude better at converting solar to energy than plants, there might be a non-plant solution for getting rid of CO2 in hundred times more efficient manner than trees are doing that now.
I'm a lot more worried about all these ideas with 'lets change the albedo', 'lets spray air with nanoparticles of HaArP molecules' etc. We don't know a lot about our planet and I'm afraid that any manual steering of single variables will cause catastrophic results.
Re: (Score:3)
Canada has around 1,000 million acres of forest lands. It is hard to get your head around exactly how big a space that is.
You can make up for low efficiency with volume, unlike profit. Trees are a tremendously underutilized resource. The trees don't have to necessarily be on top of where you are to get a mass benefit - although that depends on where you are.
The US has similar potential volumes for tree growth; maybe more so, depending as the average state is more temperate than up here.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Canada has incredibly thin population density. 228th in the world for 243 listed countries. In global scale, you might need maybe 1 acre of forest per person to cover everything. Which means that Canada forests cover for India population. Thats cool. We can probably pair up countries like that and we are ok.
Now, let's say that population of India doubles. Do you have spare 1000 million of acres of land in Canada to plant extra trees there?
I would be more ok with reducing population of world, rather tha
A giant PRISM (Score:5, Funny)
To divert the sun's rays
weaponize the climate? (Score:2)
This being the CIA and all, to me this sounds like an investigation whether they can use geo-engineering as an offensive weapon themselves. You know, stop all the rains in your enemy's country and watch that country collapse without any "human" casualties.
Sigh (Score:2)
Don't do it! We know ice ages can come on in as little as a few years. All it takes is one extra cool summer where the snow pack doesn't fully melt and so much energy gets reflected back into space the next winter is severe and even more snow builds up. It's a local attractor in chaos theory, or a stable local minimum on the energy gradiant space.
With warming, moving in from the sea over 100-300 years: irritation but nobody dies, and lives continue to imp
Re: (Score:2)
SRM goes both ways; you can reduce albedo by, essentially, painting the snowcap black.
If you weren't scared before ... (Score:2)
.., be scared now. The CIA, really?! You _know_, absolutely and without doubt, that they are doing this with the intent of hurting someone or more likely, a whole bunch of someones.
You know that the US already has a dept? (Score:2)
Let's say run a company with 2 million employees and you have a departments which specialize in graphic design for the company, including the best and brightest with all the technology and creativity at their fingertips. Accounting doesn't get to hire an outside firm to design their new departmental logo.
The US already has a department for this - NOAA. If the CIA want's this kind of data, they need to go ask NOAA for it, not spend 2/3 of a million dollars on some contractor to put together a useless fluff p
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
That's like, one cup of government coffee (Score:5, Funny)
$630k is like pop-machine change in government terms.
$80,000 writing the proposal for funding
$170,000 for 17 interns to edit it
$60,000 for 3 admins to bang the interns during "late night editing sessions"
$3000 for abortions
$200,000 the inevitable hush-money to the interns
$310,000 for the multimedia presentation of the project to admins.
No, it doesn't add up to $630k. This is GOVERNMENT. Having the numbers match up costs extra.
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds to me like you've worked in this organization before...
GIven our track record (Score:2)
Given man's track record to royally fsck stuff up before truly understanding the big picture I think we should be adapting before modifying.
Re: (Score:2)
"Trust me, I'm with the government."
[Presses Climate-o-matic button]...
[Europe freezes and India is wiped off the map by tsunamis]
"Oops. Uh, somebody confiscate Fox News' e-mails so they don't report this."
Not new (Score:2)
Proposals and discussions about "weaponizing the weather [salon.com]" go back (in the US) to the 1950's. I can even remember the Castro regime complaining about US manipulation of hurricanes (to hit Cuba).
Bit by bit... (Score:2)
The CIA is turning into Cobra, "a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world"*...
Today the Weather Dominator... tomorrow the MASS Device... and then the world**!!!!
Where's a Real American Hero*** when we need one?
* even their names share similarities. Add two "o" (one connected to the "I" of CIA) and the letter "r" and what do you have?
** although arguably they are working in reverse... they already have "the world" in their clutches, they have the basic tech for the MASS Device - quantum
Re: (Score:2)
Now I know, and knowing was half the battle.
Intel stats say we now have a 50% success rate against these foes.
Air traffic (Score:2)
CIA? (Score:3)
Shouldn't this be a project(s) funded by the NSF? Just because it might have national security implications doesn't mean the CIA's role should be expanding into scientific research.
First we have to be able to predict weather (Score:2)
Before we can control something, we have to understand it well enough to be able to predict it accurately. Despite all the supercomputers in use for weather system modelling, we can't do that. Unless and until we can, trying to modify the weather systems is suicidally dangerous. Not just to people in the area, but to people around the globe affected by the larger pattern of the systems.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
This article should have the above tag.
So the CIA would like to have at their disposal those scientists in the Flint movie who controlled the world's climate using volcanoes. Kidding aside, the "I" doesn't seem to stand for "Intelligence" any more. (More like "Incompetence", IMHO.) Hell, they can't even figure out who the good guys are before toppling foreign governments; what chance do they have in managing the planet's climate?
Seeing as how the Earth's climate has been getting changed by humans for qu
Roland Emmerich's first movie (Score:2)
http://www.atlasfilm.com/product/by-genre/classic---cult/the-noahs-ark-principle.html [atlasfilm.com]
Sometime in the future.... a gigantic European-American meteorological research station "The Florida Arklab" circles the earth with a crew of two men. Equipped with high-tech machinery, Max Marek, scientist, and Billy Hayes, chief technician, are in charge of global weather forecasts and climate control. Realizing that the radiation to which the capsule is exposed has become incalculable, scientists and politicians on eart
Yeah..... (Score:2)
I don't see how *this* could end badly....... /sarcasm>
When they finally figure it out... (Score:2)
They will have to realize the uselessness of their organization and the likes of their organization. For the human mind/body is a powerful influencial system on nature, including climate.
Rain Dances and such are not without real effect.
Re: (Score:2)
How about finding a way to eliminate our dependence on crude oil?
We already have plenty of ways to do that. They just aren't economical at the moment.
The West would be so much stronger, if it weren't us having to pay jizya to those crude savages in the Middle East.
We're paying for stuff that runs our society. So it's not a "jizya", but a legit payment for goods rendered. And those "savages" will either use the wealth to build modern societies or they'll be driving camels [gluckman.com] in a few generations. That problem is its own solution.