MOSCOW, March 12, Vladislav Strekopytov.The White House and Congress have adopted a five-year plan for «climate interventions» that provides for the creation of climate control technologies. Scientists oppose such developments, and security experts warn that their practical application by one of the countries risks turning into a climate war.
Climate is on Russia's side
The document, published on the White House website, says that the goal of the program is «to create a scientific basis for solar radiation management and other rapid interventions in the context of short-term climate risks.» This is how the United States wants to fight «Russia's emerging dominance in agriculture.» The National Intelligence Council considers this a «national security issue» that is «underestimated as a geopolitical threat.»
Experts note that agriculture is the most vulnerable sector of the American economy, especially suffering from climate change. Due to heat, drought and soil degradation, the area of arable land is shrinking every year. Yields in traditional agricultural states may fall by 90 percent by 2040, and the grain-growing region will shift to the Canadian border.
Russia, on the contrary, only benefits from global warming. Scientists have calculated: the zone of effective farming in Siberia will double by 2080 — by almost five million square kilometers. Russia will become the world's top wheat producer with 20 percent of the market.
The explosive growth in agricultural production is only a small part of what climate optimists say is in store for Russia. The steady melting of Arctic sea ice will make the Northern Sea Route the shortest and cheapest route for cargo from China and all of Southeast Asia to Europe. Control over this important transport artery promises significant benefits and revenues.
Engineers Sun
The United States is not ready to put up with this. To counter the White House intends to use solar geoengineering. This is a relatively new direction in science. Scientists are developing various technologies that can reduce or deflect the flow of solar heat entering the Earth — space mirrors that reflect sea clouds, aerosol shielding in the stratosphere.
It all started with the fact that in 2006 the Nobel Prize winner, Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen published an article on ways to save from global warming. He suggested manipulating the atmosphere.
After strong volcanic eruptions, a cold snap sets in — for a year or two. This is due to the fact that many mineral particles are emitted into the atmosphere with ash and gases, reflecting the sun's rays. In geoengineering projects, it is supposed to imitate the natural volcanic effect by spraying reflective aerosol particles of sulfur dioxide, sulfates or calcium carbonate in the upper atmosphere.
The American «answer»
According to the plan of the White House, aircraft or stratospheric balloons will spray tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide particles into the upper atmosphere, which, condensing, will form a layer that reflects the sun's rays.
It is estimated that this will create an effect similar to that of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. Then about 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide entered the atmosphere and the average global temperature dropped by about one degree.
This is a relatively fast and cheap method. But geoengineering technologies cannot be applied locally, only over one country. And there is no international legal basis for this.
Unjustified risks
Scientists are sure that the US authorities underestimate the risks of geoengineering projects. No climate model can accurately predict how changes in the atmosphere in one part of the planet will affect the weather in another.
There are fearsthat outside the sulfur dioxide layer will rise in temperature, causing a catastrophic heat wave around the world. This is the so-called temperature debt effect. If the stratospheric aerosol supply is not constantly replenished, the reflective layer will become critically depleted and the temperature on the planet can jump literally overnight. that geoengineering interventions only temporarily mask the signs of warming and do not solve the key task of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
In 2021, a number of leading environmental scientists from universities in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands published an open lettercall on the UN and governments to ban solar geoengineering and conclude international agreements blocking funding for such projects.
«The risks of solar geoengineering are poorly understood, the impacts will vary by region, and there are uncertainties about impacts on weather, agriculture, and providing basic food and water needs. <…> The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate deniers, and some governments. <…> Without effective global and democratic oversight, the geopolitics of a possible unilateral deployment of solar geoengineering would be frightening and unfair,» the document says.
More than 410 experts from 60 countries joined the call. The scientists' concern is shared by many politicians and public figures.
And representatives of the intelligence community point to the prospect of armed conflicts between countries due to geoengineering projects — climate wars.
The White House ignores all this , generously funding the development of climate weapon technologies. And justified by global warming.
The Long Game
Since the mid-1990s, the hypothesis of the harmful effects of humans on climate, largely thanks to the efforts of the United States, has become dominant and acquired the status of scientific and political consensus.
In 1994, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force, signed by more than 180 countries of the world, including Russia. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was signed, and in 2015, the Paris Agreement. These international documents regulate measures to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, primarily by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy sources.
Specific goals and deadlines are discussed at annual conferences — climate summits. The last such forum (COP27) was held in November 2022 in Egyptian Sharm el-Sheikh. Its participants recognized for the first time and recorded in the final resolution that it is unlikely that it will be possible to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement — to limit warming to one and a half degrees compared to pre-industrial levels — with the current «inadequate» level of measures taken.
In Sixth Assessment ReportThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), prepared for COP27, noted that «the climate crisis is developing much faster than expected.» According to experts, if a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is not achieved in the coming years, by the end of the century, temperature growth will be able to stabilize at only three degrees. And this is the most pessimistic scenario envisaged by the Paris Agreement.
The general conclusion is that the situation is serious and to correct it, it is clearly not enough to replace carbon raw materials with renewable energy sources, at least at the pace at which this is happening now. «Long-term large-scale efforts are needed, as well as the search for new ways to solve the problem.»
Nothing is said directly about geoengineering, but the international community is clearly preparing for this.