A dangerous game they are already playing, acting like they only wargamed it. This is already happening, I noticed many private aircraft doing it over eastern California near national parks.
I reported it to FAA, well turns out you can just put any flare on your plane and fire them wherever.
Beats me how and why it makes sense to hire a Florida company through a Utah company to go spray public lands you don't own over eastern California.
I don't usually engage on conspiracy theories but why not provide more detail? If you've seen the planes, then you can use an app to figure out what the aircraft is and the owner also. You could then share that data here. What company and/or entity is "they" here?
Which National Parks?
What endgame are you proposing here? What's the goal?
I did do exactly that, and included that in my inquiry to the FAA. FAA even called the owner to ask about what was going on.
It is done under the umbrella of cloud seeding as the sibling comment said. And it is completely unregulated. You can actually go hire this company to cloudseed wherever you wish. You don't have to own the land, the people below don't get to give informed consent.
It was Yosemite.
I can think of two endgames. These cloud seeding agents have a dessicant effect on the forests. Leading to more forest fires under the guise of trying to prevent them.
Another longer term endgame I could imagine is to combine a solar minimum with ongoing established patterns of cloudseeding to create issues.
Flares and spraying sounds like aerial firefighting. Small aircraft go ahead of big boys to mark positions with aerial flares and tankers come in to drop.
It is cloud seeding by a private company. FAA investigated and got back to me about it after talking to the owners and said it doesn't fall under their purview.
Presumably this is the Stanislaus or Upper Tuoloumne River projects (or similar), which are cloud seeding for local irrigation districts. They even mention the flares.
It's probably not this exact filing, no FL addresses, but it gives you the gist:
The article is talking about sunlight reflection, you're talking about "cloud seeding".
"Cloud seeding" is a practice that's a few decades old, typically having a plane fly around burning a certain type of flare in an attempt to cause the cloud to condense and become rainfall in that area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
The past couple of years the Sun has been low-single-digit-percent amounts brighter because it's the first actual solar maximum that's done anything for 40 years.
It's been heatwaves and droughts and stuff unlike anything we've seen since I was in primary school.
So yeah any attempt by us to dick about with the Sun's output is going to be utterly catastrophic, because it's not going to be even as small as a 3% increase or decrease.
It would help if you (and the GP) actually read the article
> These technologies promise to reverse global warming by reflecting away a portion of the sunlight reaching Earth, for example by spraying particles of sulphur dioxide or some other manufactured substance into the atmosphere.
The global maritime shipping industry has already been doing this, by accident, and their stopping (going to better fuel oil with less sulfur in it) has detectably raised global temperatures. [https://cpo.noaa.gov/the-unintended-consequences-of-reducing...]
But, second, yes, I know what they're talking about. I also know about the shipping thing. So (honest question), while that was happening, did it reduce the sun's radiation to the ground by 1%? 0.1? 0.01?
But it was enough to make a measurable difference in temperature. To make a meaningful difference in temperature is going to take, say, 10 times as much sulphur as the ships were putting out, or else putting it at more strategic layers of the atmosphere. So "most attempts" (most people who say "let's do this") aren't going to get anything like the scale that is needed.
The solar cycle is not the cause of heatwaves and droughts. The graph at the top of this Wikipedia page shows the solar irradiance trending down over decades (which is a natural phenomenon) while temperatures have increased.
What other options are on the table if we REALLY want to limit warming below the 2 deg C target? It's already 1.5+, and control systems theory says that the inertia of various mechanisms (ocean warming, ice/permafrost melt, ...) will cause a lag between the emissions being produced and the actual warming happening. So even if we immediately switch off all human sources NOW, everything that's already in the air will stay there, and the temperature will keep increasing for some time. Under the assumption that the "residual warming" will overshoot 2 C, aerosols are the only industrially feasible way I know of. Mass production of engineered particles certainly sounds more reasonable than mass producing carbon capture machines in the volumes required.
Of course, we are too busy arguing about how important it is to fully commit to any path.
"Simulations like this one are not supposed to predict the future. The outcomes depend on the design of the game and the relative personalities and experience of the players. Many of those in the room lacked first-hand diplomatic and national security experience. The UN forum, which organizers selected as the game’s setting, may also not be as effective as talks between smaller groups of major countries."
------------
This paragraph deserves emphasis to balance out the doomer linkbait headline.
The players of this game largely ignored scientific opinions and played politics like it was a fun board-game. Presumably, they did have fun. Notably missing from this wargame was the kind of pressure that real leaders and diplomats would face to swallow their pride, eschew fun, and get the solution right. It's just our planet and civilization on the line, right?
It would be deeply foolish to use this wargame to rule out the UN. Under more realistic conditions they could get it right, and they might be our best hope for preventing one or a small number of governments from acting unilaterally and getting it tragically wrong.
I don’t take these war games seriously myself, but have you been living under a rock? This U.S. administration and many an ally they’re trying to install elsewhere are in open denial about climate change. Pretending that scientific opinions aren’t often ignored in the real world especially when there’s both strategic interests and powerful industry groups meddling in it is patently absurd. Not to mention the “science” is heavily influenced by politics and industry money to begin with. The NGO secretly owned by fossil fuel lobby funding the scientist is a nice touch in this one.
26 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 44.8 ms ] threadI reported it to FAA, well turns out you can just put any flare on your plane and fire them wherever.
Beats me how and why it makes sense to hire a Florida company through a Utah company to go spray public lands you don't own over eastern California.
Which National Parks?
What endgame are you proposing here? What's the goal?
It is done under the umbrella of cloud seeding as the sibling comment said. And it is completely unregulated. You can actually go hire this company to cloudseed wherever you wish. You don't have to own the land, the people below don't get to give informed consent.
It was Yosemite.
I can think of two endgames. These cloud seeding agents have a dessicant effect on the forests. Leading to more forest fires under the guise of trying to prevent them.
Another longer term endgame I could imagine is to combine a solar minimum with ongoing established patterns of cloudseeding to create issues.
What is the agent that causes this?
It's probably not this exact filing, no FL addresses, but it gives you the gist:
https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWA...
"Cloud seeding" is a practice that's a few decades old, typically having a plane fly around burning a certain type of flare in an attempt to cause the cloud to condense and become rainfall in that area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
It's been heatwaves and droughts and stuff unlike anything we've seen since I was in primary school.
So yeah any attempt by us to dick about with the Sun's output is going to be utterly catastrophic, because it's not going to be even as small as a 3% increase or decrease.
Almost any attempt to change the sun's output is going to have a 0.000% change. It is very much not easy to affect something that size.
> These technologies promise to reverse global warming by reflecting away a portion of the sunlight reaching Earth, for example by spraying particles of sulphur dioxide or some other manufactured substance into the atmosphere.
The global maritime shipping industry has already been doing this, by accident, and their stopping (going to better fuel oil with less sulfur in it) has detectably raised global temperatures. [https://cpo.noaa.gov/the-unintended-consequences-of-reducing...]
But, second, yes, I know what they're talking about. I also know about the shipping thing. So (honest question), while that was happening, did it reduce the sun's radiation to the ground by 1%? 0.1? 0.01?
But it was enough to make a measurable difference in temperature. To make a meaningful difference in temperature is going to take, say, 10 times as much sulphur as the ships were putting out, or else putting it at more strategic layers of the atmosphere. So "most attempts" (most people who say "let's do this") aren't going to get anything like the scale that is needed.
https://www.stce.be/content/sc25-tracking
The solar cycle is not the cause of heatwaves and droughts. The graph at the top of this Wikipedia page shows the solar irradiance trending down over decades (which is a natural phenomenon) while temperatures have increased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_activity_and_climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)
Of course, we are too busy arguing about how important it is to fully commit to any path.
------------
This paragraph deserves emphasis to balance out the doomer linkbait headline.
The players of this game largely ignored scientific opinions and played politics like it was a fun board-game. Presumably, they did have fun. Notably missing from this wargame was the kind of pressure that real leaders and diplomats would face to swallow their pride, eschew fun, and get the solution right. It's just our planet and civilization on the line, right?
It would be deeply foolish to use this wargame to rule out the UN. Under more realistic conditions they could get it right, and they might be our best hope for preventing one or a small number of governments from acting unilaterally and getting it tragically wrong.