Chemtrail Secrets: Strategies Against Climate Change?

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Chemtrail Secrets: Strategies

Against Climate Change?

By Wayne Hall

Spectre Magazine

January 2004

2-9-4

 

 

This article, an efficient overview of the subject of world wide climate

modification was written by Wayne Hall and first published January 2004 in

Spectre http://www.spectrezine.org/, the European-Parliament-based

webmagazine involved in the project to establish a new pan-European

political party initiated by the German PDS, the Synaspismos, and others.

 

Further information is in the footnote.

 

Strategies Against Climate Change

 

The deadlock between on the one hand environmental NGOs warning of the

dangers of global warming and on the other hand spokespersons for the United

States government has on the face of it many similarities with the inertial

deadlock of the later Cold War period (as analysed by the theorists of the

non-aligned peace movements in the 1980s).

 

Just as the SALT treaties for the reduction of strategic nuclear armaments

were continually obstructed by Republicans in the U.S. Senate in the 70s, so

the 1997 Treaty of Kyoto - a very inadequate first step towards curbing

carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere - is being blocked by the

intransigence of their present-day counterparts (including, once again, a

Russian element, for the Russian government's support for Kyoto has been

looking decidedly shaky since early December 2003).

 

The anti-nuclear weapons movement that arose in Europe in the 80s

represented an attempt to break through the deadlock of the Cold War system.

The approach was epitomised in the writings of E.P. Thompson, whose answer

to the question: " What is the Cold War about? " was: " It is about itself. The

Cold War is a show which was put, by two rival entrepreneurs, upon the road

in 1946 or 1947. "

 

The nuclear arms race, which should have been brought to an end in 1991, was

an objective product of the Cold War deadlock. The global warming deadlock

has generated a corresponding " objective product " , whose outlines can be

seen emerging in the global warming debate that was taking place in the

mid-nineties. It is called " geoengineering " . At the time of the Kyoto

conference (and for a time afterwards) a number of articles were appearing

in the popular scientific press that appeared to be trying to rally public

support for geoengineering.

 

One of their favourite themes was that global warming is a technical, not a

moral problem and so should not be allowed to be the monopoly of ecological

non-governmental organizations pursuing an anti-development agenda. Such

organizations were later said to be responsible for the decision at Kyoto to

impose a fifteen percent cut on global emissions of greenhouse gases over

the next decade. Economically this was seen as an indefensible decision, one

likely to cost in the order of $250 billion a year, without taking into

account the cost of losing the goods, services and innovations whose

production would be halted or forgone.

 

The geoengineering proposal of consciously altering atmospheric chemistry

and conditions, of mitigating the effects of greenhouse gases, was put

forward as an alternative to calling for reduction of carbon dioxide,

methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

 

Geoengineering included land, sea and air-based components. Some of the

remedies it was proposing, like large-scale planting of trees, appeared

uncontroversial and in fact worthy of support. Others, such as the " Geritol "

cure of sowing iron filings into the oceans to stimulate the growth of

carbon-consuming phytoplankton, seemed more problematic. Others again, such

as the " sunscreen " proposal of scattering millions of tons of metallic

particles in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space before it

could be emitted in heat radiation and then absorbed by carbon dioxide, were

probably judged by most geoengineering theorists to be virtually impossible

to sell to the public.

 

Nevertheless, in the mid-nineties, valiant attempts were made to give

geoengineering a good name. Gregory Benford, professor of physics at the

University of California, estimated that the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans

could be seeded with iron dust for between $10 million and $1 billion a

year. 15 ships steaming across the polar oceans all year long, dumping iron

dust in lanes, would bring the total to around $10 billion. " This would soak

up about a third of our global fossil-fuel generated carbon dioxide

emissions each year. "

 

" Even better than dust would be microscopic droplets of sulphuric acid.

Sulphate aerosols can also raise the number of droplets that make clouds

condense, further increasing overall reflectivity. Coal-burning freighter

ships releasing sulphates into the atmosphere could also spread iron dust

into the sea, combining both approaches, with some economies. "

 

Probably the best-known of the aerial geoengineering proposals was that put

forward in 1997 by Edward Teller and entitled " Global Warming and the Ice

Ages: Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change " subsequently

popularised in the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled " The Planet

Needs a Sunscreen " .

 

Teller proposed deliberate, large-scale introduction of reflective particles

into the upper atmosphere, a task he claimed could be achieved for less than

$1 billion a year, between 0.1 and 1.0 percent of the $100 billion he

estimated it would cost to bring fossil fuel usage in the United States back

down to 1990 levels, as required by the Treaty of Kyoto.

 

Characteristic of the politics of Teller is the fact that he both ridiculed

the idea of global warming and at the same time put forward what he

represented as a solution to global warming. " For some reason, " Teller

observed sarcastically, " This option isn't as fashionable as all-out war on

fossil fuels and the people who use them. "

 

Teller, who is of course known to history as the father of the hydrogen bomb

and of the Star Wars missile defence programme, has not always succeeded in

getting his pet schemes adopted. His ambitious plan, for example, for using

hydrogen bombs to construct harbours in the United States, never made the

move from the drawing board into reality. His sarcasm reflected a genuine

problem: that of persuading the public that permanent mobilisation of

thousands of aircraft to fly day and night, 365 days a year, over land and

sea spraying toxic metals over the human, animal and plant populations

underneath is a desirable, or even in any way defensible, proposal.

 

Gregory Benford was sensitive to the public relations difficulties. He said:

'If geoengineers are painted early and often as Dr. Strangeloves of the air,

they will fail. Properly portrayed as allies of science--and true

environmentalism--they could become heroes. Not letting the radical greens

set the terms of discussion will matter crucially.'

 

One theoretician who helped keep radical greens out of the debate, and may

even have succeeded in co-opting some radical greens into the debate, was

the Stanford University environmental law student Jay Michaelson, whose

" Geo-engineering: A Climate Change Manhattan Project " , was published in 1998

in his university's environmental law journal. Like the name of Edward

Teller, the title of Michaelson's paper is a standing reminder of the

continuity between geoengineering and the nuclear arms race. The paper is a

masterful attempt to defend the indefensible. Asserting that geoengineering

offers hope for solving climate change " beyond the too-little, too-lates of

Kyoto " , Michaelson's basic thesis is that " in a world where it is very

expensive to reduce greenhouse emissions, those who care about the problem

should support a policy that will work with those who don " t. "

 

Michaelson outlines three possible responses to climate change: 1)

addressing its root causes, 2) doing nothing and adapting to climate change

as it occurs and 3) trying to solve the climate change problem directly via

geoengineering.

 

The impediments to addressing the root causes are the economic cost of

cutting back on fossil fuel use, the social costs in a context of

generalised dependence on automobiles, the question of equity, given the

objection of the nations of the South to having to bear the cost of problems

created by the North, and the harsh fact that enforcement of a regulatory

regime forces most countries to go against their immediate interests.

 

The advantages of the second alternative, doing nothing, is that if

predictions are correct, climate change is soon going to cease to be what

Michaelson calls " an absent problem " . Increasingly disastrous evidence of

the reality of climatic change will probably make it easier to gain

consensus on preventive regulation. But the problem by then will have become

one of choice of priorities: what and who should be saved and what and who

abandoned?

 

These disadvantages led Michaelson, as he says, to the third solution of

geoengineering. Geoengineering would shift priorities away from researching

into whether the globe is warming into practical solutions that can be

started immediately. It would not necessitate making greater demands on the

developing world than on developed countries. It would indeed allow the

developing world to be " a free rider " on a project financed mostly by the

industrialized nations. " Because it would restrict growth in the developing

world less than regulation would, it would allow developing nations to

progress more quickly away from the serious environmental threats of unsafe

water, unhealthy air, and topsoil loss, through proven means such as sewage

treatment, newer (cleaner) automobiles and factories, and modern

agriculture. " By relying on technological innovation and development,

geoengineering would increase the role of private actors relative to that of

government. Instead of requiring widespread enforcement of complex and

growth-threatening rules, geoengineering would give private firms a

financial incentive to help solve the climate change problem. "

 

For all his ostensible commitment to geoengineering, Michaelson conceded

that in the final analysis " geoengineering runs afoul of almost every major

trend in contemporary environmentalism. " " Geritol cures " and " earth

sunscreens " treat shallow symptoms, not deep causes, and fail to " kill two

birds with one stone " as would a serious programme of combating

deforestation or cutting greenhouse gas emissions " " . There is much

circumstantial evidence that he would really have liked the controversial

character of his own proposals to contribute to developing a political

climate that would make possible the implementation of real solutions to

global warming. " If serious debate were to emerge, " he says, " shock at

geoengineering might wane in the context of rational reflection of the costs

of climate change. " But for the emergence of such a serious debate to be

triggered by public shock at realisation of what is being proposed, and not

only proposed but done, by the geoengineers, geoengineering must be publicly

acknowledged, must be the subject of public debate, like genetically

modified foods, cloning or nuclear power, all of which have interest groups

publicly lobbying for and against them.

 

The wholehearted public embrace of geoengineering advocated by Benford,

Michaelson and others in the nineties has not happened. The media has not

tried to make geoengineers into heroes and portray them as allies of science

and true environmentalism. Many global warming sceptics are even on record

as saying that reports of geoengineering activities - aircraft engaged in

large-scale spraying of aerosols in the upper atmosphere, could not be

genuine - that such activities could not be occurring because they are not

needed and would be criminal.

 

The big environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or WWF

do not try to glamorise or otherwise promote geoengineering. They simply act

as if it is not occurring. Their silence, to look at its positive aspect,

possibly reflects a refusal to be associated with the task of making

geoengineering look respectable.

 

The " invisibility " of geoengineering is perpetuated through official denial.

The US Air Force, whose KC-135R and KC-10 tanker planes have become a

familiar sight in many different parts of the world as they engage in the

daily particulate scattering operations of the " sunscreen " programme, on its

official site describes eyewitness accounts of these operations as " a hoax

that has been around since 1996. " " The Air Force " , it says " is not

conducting any weather modification experiments or programs and has no plans

to do so in the future. " The " hoax " accusation is energetically echoed by

the seemingly large numbers of " debunkers " frequenting

chemtrail/geoengineering discussion forums, generating considerable

confusion, as well as resentment at their characterisation as " chemmies " (a

variant on " commies " ) those who wish to draw attention to the mysterious

lines in the sky. Moreover, all elected politicians in the world above the

municipal level, if they have heard at all of geoengineering, believe, or

profess to believe, the official story that the sunscreen climate mitigation

programme is " a hoax " .

 

One reason for the successful conspiracy of silence may well be the still

unresolved status of geoengineering under international law. This is an

issue that was being investigated, again in the mid-nineties, by the

environmental lawyer Bodansky. Among the questions he raised were: who

should make geoengineering decisions? Should all countries be able to

participate in decision-making? (since all will be affected and there will

be both positive and negative impacts). How should liability and

compensation for damages be handled? From the legal viewpoint, schemes to

inject particles into the atmosphere are purportedly among the most

problematic of all geoengineering proposals because the atmosphere above any

country is part of its airspace. Nations lay claim to their airspace and may

act on the claims, for example, by shooting down aircraft. Geoengineering

activity in the atmosphere could be viewed as infringements of national

sovereignty. Obviously, the simplest way of dealing with legal problems of

this kind, pending negotiation of the necessary adjustments to international

law, is to deny that any such activity is occurring.

 

The publication on the internet in 2003 of an interview with an alleged

" insider " of the sunscreen programme (this is not its official name) working

at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory cast further light on the

difficulties involved in trying to promote a favourable image of

geoengineering. Starting from the question of why polymer threads embedded

with " biological material " have been found in residues from aerosol

spraying, the insider (given the pseudonym Deep Shield) explained that

" since the suspended particles eventually do settle into the lowest part of

the atmosphere and are inhaled by all life forms on the surface, there is an

attempt to counter the growth of mould by adding to the mixture mould growth

suppressants, some of which may be of biological material. "

 

Deep Shield acknowledged the potential of the aerosol spaying to cause

sickness: " Some people are more sensitive to the metals, while others are

sensitive to the polymer chemicals. It is true that people will get sick,

and some will die. The World Health Organization has carried out most of the

relevant studies. Some have said the ill effects will be minimal, along the

lines of a million or so, while others have found the numbers to be far

higher - 3 or 4 billion. The Accepted Estimated Casualties (from the World

Health Organization) is 2 billion over the course of six decades. The

majority will be either the elderly or those who are prone to respiratory

problems. "

 

Emphasising the " globalist " aspects of the operations and the need to

" ensure the chemicals are not tampered with " Deep Shield claims that " they

are mixed and sprayed over random nations. This means that chemicals

produced in the USA have a good chance of being sprayed over Russia. Russian

planes may be seen in US skies, but so too will US planes be seen in Russian

skies. The canisters are sealed in a third nation that has no idea where its

canister is going. All of this is to ensure that the shield is not used as a

weapon. Non-participant nations are sprayed by participant nations, who must

spray in order to get enough material to maintain their nation's shield. It

is understood that not spraying is as much a military offence as shooting at

the planes. "

 

One implication of this spraying of non-participant nations by " participant

nations " is that, following the defeat of Saddam Hussein's Ba " ath regime in

Iraq, all of the Middle East - possibly including Israel, where spraying has

started in recent months - is now being sprayed from bases in Iraq.

 

According to Deep Shield ordinary commercial aircraft are involved in the

particulate scattering operations and are not diverted from their regular

flight paths. " But the combined resources of the nations of earth are not

enough to allow constant spraying. Though we have achieved a high level of

technology, there is a great surface area that needs to be covered nearly

daily. Large sections of ocean are all but ignored. The remaining land

masses are more than what can be covered efficiently. "

 

Far from seeing his work as something to be proudly publicised, Deep Shield

sees the existing secrecy as necessary to maintain public calm for as long

as possible: " The Earth is dying. Humanity is on the road to extinction.

Without the shield, mankind will die off within twenty to fifty years. Most

people alive today could live to see this extinction take place. This means

that an announcement of the situation we face boils down to telling every

man, woman and child on earth that they have no future, they are going to be

killed. People would panic. There would be economic collapse, the production

and movement of goods would collapse. Millions would die in all cities on

earth. Riots and violence would reduce civilian centres to rubble within

days. "

 

The secrecy of the sunscreen project was justified to him, Deep Shield says,

on grounds of national security. " All those who know are expected to remain

silent. All those who suspect are either faced with trying to prove the

virtually unprovable or are faced with good enough reasons to remain silent.

I would assume that this situation is worldwide and this could be considered

as one of the dangers of the project. I can see why there is a desire to

repress the information, not that spraying is taking place but the face that

we are facing a period of human history which might be the end of

civilization. "

 

The stance of Deep Shield is deeply irrational, permeated by the same

psychosis as the US government's " War on Terrorism " . People whose conscience

is clear do not think in this way. What Deep Shield says is nothing more or

less than what many, particularly in the ecological milieu say to

themselves, and to others, every day: that humanity is on the path to

self-destruction. National security classification of the sunscreen project

is absolutely unjustifiable and in total contradiction to the logic, however

unconvincing, within which geoengineering was proposed as one of a number of

possible answers to climatic change. Geoengineering was meant to be not

simply a substitution for real action on the environment, but also possibly

a facilitator of, and adjunct to, real action on the environment. Something

it cannot be if it remains secret.

 

David Stewart, who took the " Deep Shield " interviews, has quoted Deep Shield

more recently as saying that the project is failing to do what it should do.

He reports arguments (screaming matches) among the top brass and

civilian-dressed military who come and go at the Lawrence Livermore

laboratory. The arguments appear to Deep Shield to be about the expense of

the project, the effectiveness and, more generally, the long-term outlook

for humanity. Although there is no visible stack of bodies, as Stewart puts

it, of people killed by the aerosol spraying, there is growing evidence of

people dying from diseases plausibly traceable to the project. One black

spot for casualties is in East Texas, where the initial tests for the

spraying materials were carried out in the mid-90s. Projections of 1000%

increases in Alzheimer's disease, one of the side-effects of excessive

exposure to aluminium, over the next decades, have emerged in the media in

the last year or so.

 

The sunscreen project is not the only reason for which aerosol spraying is

taking place in the atmosphere. Spraying is also being carried out to

increase electrical conductivity in the atmosphere, facilitating the

operations of HAARP, the High Frequency Active Aural Research Program, in

Alaska. Also, some reports of the presence of disease bacteria in aerosol

spaying do not fit in with Deep Shield's explanation of biological materials

being spayed to combat the growth of mould. This suggests that black

operations are also in progress, parasitic on the pseudo-public-interest

applications of geoengineering technology and on personnel who believe that

the purpose of their work is the mitigation of climate change. If the

sunscreen project is being used as a cover for other even more illegal and

apparently criminal purposes, this is another argument for opposing its

secrecy.

 

Many other issues require investigation. Is the current bonanza of cut-price

airline tickets being supported by state subsidies to airlines for their

services in spreading particulate matter? If so, and if Deep Shield's

statements on the financing of the sunscreen project are correct, then this

is being done at taxpayers " expense. Quite apart from any economic aspects,

how sane is it, to have ever larger numbers of aircraft clogging the skies

and burning ever larger amounts of fuel, in order to facilitate management

of global warming caused by excessive burning of fossil fuel? Can a policy

of moving to non-fossil-fuel based economy really be developed side by side

with climate mitigation policies of this kind, if that is what they are?

 

Since the appearance of the first comprehensive study of global warming by

the American National Academy of Sciences in 1992, the geoengineering debate

has passed through a number of stages. The mid-nineties (the period before

and after Kyoto) was the period of hype, of extravagant claims. The

post-Kyoto period, apparently the period when policy began to be

implemented, was the period when the respectable proposals of the day before

suddenly became 'conspiracy theory'. The present period is one of controlled

re-introduction of the subject, in such a way as not to expose the lies and

omissions of the preceding phase.

 

A recent article in the British " Guardian " , under the title: " Earth is 20%

darker, say experts " , reveals that " Human activity is making the planet

darker as well as warmer. " Scientists believe that " levels of sunlight

reaching Earth's surface have declined by up to 20% in recent years because

air pollution is reflecting it back into space and helping to make bigger,

longer-lasting clouds. " A certain Jim Hansen, climate scientist with Nasa,

is quoted as saying: " Over the past couple of years it's become clear that

the solar irradiance at the Earth's surface has decreased. " The article

claims that global dimming is probably caused by " tiny particles such as

soot, and chemical compounds such as sulphates accumulating in the

atmosphere. "

 

Returning to the subject of the deadlock over the Treaty of Kyoto engendered

by the argument between defenders and opponents of global warming (or by the

unilateralism of the United States government, as European and other

international politicians like to tell us), the international environmental

organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF have shown

through their silence on geoengineering that they are unwilling to help make

it respectable by lending support to it. They should be given credit for

that. But there remains the task of breaching the secrecy that surrounds the

subject. Given that the ecological organizations are clearly not going to do

this, we must initiate discussions with them to decide who should be

assigned the task. Who is going to bell the cat?

 

 

 

Wayne Hall is a Greek citizen born in Australia, graduate of the University

of Sydney, teacher and freelance translator in Athens. In the nineteen

eighties he was a member of European Political Disarmament, the non-aligned

British-based anti-nuclear-weapons movement. In the late nineteen eighties

he joined the editorial board of the Greek ecological magazine Nea Ecologia.

He was a founding member of ATTAC-Hellas, Greek section of the international

citizen's movement ATTAC and has a personal website kindly hosted by the

Greek student newspaper Diplomatic Times:

http://www.diplomatictimes.com/hddf/hddf. He is married and has one son.

 

'strategies Against Climate Change " is © Wayne Hall

(<halvahalva), 2004 and is used here with

permission.