Essay by Eric Worrall
Imagine a climate initiative so crazy even Californian greens reject it?
FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
Geoengineering could be crucial in the fight against climate change. But first scientists need to learn how to talk to the public about it
3 APR 2025
2:00 PM ET
BY REBEKAH WHITEWhen Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, mayor of Alameda, California, scrolled through The New York Times on a Saturday morning in April 2024, a story about a controversial experiment caught her eye. Researchers from Washington state were trialing a machine that looked like a big snow cannon, which they hoped could one day be used to brighten clouds to reflect more of the Sun’s rays. They’d been spraying tiny salt particles into the air over the San Francisco Bay.
At first, Ashcraft wondered which neighboring town was hosting the test. But as she read, she was shocked to learn that the researchers were conducting their experiment right there in Alameda.
Ashcraft texted her acting city manager, who was equally surprised. The story revealed that the researchers had kept the test a secret to limit protests. “It wasn’t just an oversight that they forgot to tell the city,” Ashcraft says. “They chose not to.” Concerned about the safety of the test, city staff investigated. Though a report concluded it was harmless, the council eventually voted to ban it, discomfited by the researchers’ lack of transparency.
…
FORGOING PUBLIC engagement has already had fatal consequences for solar geoengineering projects—with ramifications for the entire field.
Read more: https://www.science.org/content/article/geoengineering-fight-climate-change-if-public-can-convinced
…
Geoengineering is wrong on so many levels. The side effects of many proposed schemes are so outrageous they should never see the light of day.
Estimating global agricultural effects of geoengineering using volcanic eruptions
Published: 08 August 2018
Jonathan Proctor, Solomon Hsiang, Jennifer Burney, Marshall Burke & Wolfram Schlenker
Nature (2018)
Solar radiation management is increasingly considered to be an option for managing global temperatures, yet the economic effects of ameliorating climatic changes by scattering sunlight back to space remain largely unknown. Although solar radiation management may increase crop yields by reducing heat stress, the effects of concomitant changes in available sunlight have never been empirically estimated. Here we use the volcanic eruptions that inspired modern solar radiation management proposals as natural experiments to provide the first estimates, to our knowledge, of how the stratospheric sulfate aerosols created by the eruptions of El Chichón and Mount Pinatubo altered the quantity and quality of global sunlight, and how these changes in sunlight affected global crop yields. We find that the sunlight-mediated effect of stratospheric sulfate aerosols on yields is negative for both C4 (maize) and C3 (soy, rice and wheat) crops. Applying our yield model to a solar radiation management scenario based on stratospheric sulfate aerosols, we find that projected mid-twenty-first century damages due to scattering sunlight caused by solar radiation management are roughly equal in magnitude to benefits from cooling. This suggests that solar radiation management—if deployed using stratospheric sulfate aerosols similar to those emitted by the volcanic eruptions it seeks to mimic—would, on net, attenuate little of the global agricultural damage from climate change. Our approach could be extended to study the effects of solar radiation management on other global systems, such as human health or ecosystem function.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0417-3
Plants need sunlight. Any alleged benefit of cloud brightening to reflect more sunlight into space would be more than overshadowed by the negative impact of depriving plants of sunlight.
We don’t need a scientific study to confirm this, because it has already happened. In the year 536 AD, a catastrophic volcanic eruption caused widespread crop failures in the Mediterranean, because the cloud brightening effect of the volcano disrupted weather and weakened plant growth.
…
The Roman historian Procopius recorded in AD 536 in his report on the wars with the Vandals, “during this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness… and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear”.[5][6]
In 538, the Roman statesman Cassiodorus described the following to one of his subordinates in letter 25:[7]
- The sun’s rays were weak, and they appeared a “bluish” colour.
- At noon, no shadows from people were visible on the ground.
- The heat from the sun was feeble.
- The moon, even when full, was “empty of splendour”
- “A winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat”
- Prolonged frost and unseasonable drought
- The seasons “seem to be all jumbled up together”
- The sky is described as “blended with alien elements” just like cloudy weather, except prolonged. It was “stretched like a hide across the sky” and prevented the “true colours” of the sun and moon from being seen, along with the sun’s warmth.
- Frosts during harvest, which made apples harden and grapes sour.
- The need to use stored food to last through the situation.
- Subsequent letters (no. 26 and 27) discuss plans to relieve a widespread famine.
…
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536
Who in their right mind would want to deliberately invite the risk of such a disaster? Obviously I don’t think releasing a few kilos of sulphur from a drone will lead to any kind of disaster, but the warning from nature is clear – repeating these experiments at scale could trigger a global famine.
There is no evidence the mild global warming we are experiencing or will in the future experience in any way justifies inviting such risks.
There is a good reason Geoengineers have to hide their work from the public – the public understands the risks, and strenuously objects to such recklessness.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
As if anyone understands climate well enough to do engineering reliably?
We learn a lot by forbidding any experiments 🙂
Some experiments are kinda stupid.
Like testing to see if three layers of cardboard make good body armor. Or make good umbrellas.
Come on they makes great jackass movies … have some humour in your life.
Pretty good Meme fodder as well
Hmmm. Like gain-of-function research?
Research good.
Doing it in an insecure, badly managed Chinese lab, not so good.
Sorry, not sorry. If gain-of-function research doesn’t bother you, then your measure of good vs bad needs some adjustment.
If only the social engineers piggy-backing on the climate farce would carry out small controlled experiments to determine if their utopian visions were viable instead of demanding we all bow down to the Weather Reliant Energy Gods.
In other words, they should be doing as they say before mandating others.
Mr. George: Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it was a secret experiment. The fact that officials stopped this based, in part, on the lack of transparency in these mad scientists, is heartening. The lack of transparency is good cause to shut down climate science, and has been for decades. You’re good with that?
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
I’m in my mid-seventies. I’ve been hearing about global warming now for something like forty or fifty years. I’ve heard that “the oceans are boiling,” that by the year 2000 the climate in Chicago would be like the climate in Atlanta, Georgia, and that our children wouldn’t even know what snow is. But, you know, the thing is, I simply don’t see any real-life evidence of any global warming.
I live just north of Chicago. The temperature today never made it past 40 degrees Fahrenheit. There were even a few snow flurries in the air. I remember mid-April when I was a boy being about the same, maybe even a bit warmer on average. I remember when I had just turned eight years old riding my bicycle with my brother on the morning of April 8th and it had just rained and it was a lot warmer, probably around 65 or 70 degrees.
If no one had ever told me that there was such a thing as global warming and that the oceans were boiling, and they had asked me about the climate, I would tell them that in over seventy years I haven’t seen any change in the climate at all, except that it might be slightly colder.
Just one man’s observation.
As a fellow Chicagoan growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, I totally agree with you, Marty. I’ve seen it colder, as well as warmer, at times over the years. We live in the latter days of an interglacial warm period. Mild warming is beneficial.We should enjoy it while it lasts.
Here just North of Milwaukee I don’t need a thermometer or NOAA graph to know that winters have been warmer than they were 60 years ago. As far as I know, there isn’t any Climate Crisis.
Just some few years back Lk Michigan froze over; Do you recall how far back that was? Within the last 15 yrs I’m thinking …
One source I found: Although Lake Michigan has never completely frozen over in records dating from the middle 1800s, it has been as much as 90 percent or more ice-covered in certain years, such as 1903-04, 1976-77, 1978-79, 1998-99 and 2013-14.
Marty: I’m about the same age and live not far from you. My primary observation regarding the
climateweather is how remarkably variable and inconsistent it has been over my lifetime. How can anyone claim that anything so inconsistent is changing in a significant way? Of course climate changes – but only on geological time scales and too slowly to be perceptible in a human lifetime. I’ve grown up enjoying all four seasons and like to golf and swim in the summer, hunt in the fall, skate and ski in the winter and fish and garden in the spring. If I wanted constant weather, I’d move to San Diego, Honolulu or Tucson.The Dooming used to be fun-
Adelaide’s Tidal Wave. The One That Never Happened | Adelaide Remember When
PS: Here’s the long haired git with the ‘Repent the end is near’ sign-
Christopher M. Overall | The Overall Lab
The older we get the better we were and there were no mobile phone cameras around to prove otherwise thank Christ.
As a contemporary, I can add. I’ve seen floods in the 60s that were unlike any in the memory of the adults.
I’ve seen snow up to the gutters a few years back.
I’ve been in hot and cold.
Back in the 70s, where I was in Michigan registered the coldest days in the nation for mor than half of the days in a 16 day interval.
I’ve seen lightning snow storms and cloud to cloud lighting.
If you don’t like the weather, hang around for a bit as it will change.
I’ve ben face to face with tornados. 9 in a 4 hour stretch.
I’ve sat through hurricanes.
I’ve been in Hawaii where the residents donned parkas because the temperature was below 75 F.
I see variations, but no measurable trend.
Basing climate alarm purely on some meaningless average global temperature is shoddy if not criminal. Using statistical averages is downright wrong.
There IS evidence of warming, Marty. There is just no evidence of any significant deleterious effect due to it. I for one (in my 80’s) welcome a bit more warmth.
Geoengineering by any measure is totally without merit.
Story Tip: Clean energy provided nearly 41% of global power last year | Fox Business
Figures lie, and liars figure.
As always… hydro doing the lifting. It’s been about the same for 30 years.
What’s not to like about a steady, ready, reliable and available source of power that can supply on demand
The Hoover Dam enters the chat…
FWIW, the water level in Lake Mead got very low due to excessive water releases for downstream water usage. They finally curbed releases and the water level has risen over the last couple of years.
However, they had to modify the turbines on the dam to continue power production due to low water levels and were still close to having to reduce power production.
All of this is due to government mismanagement of the water … they handed out water rights like candy and as a result, downstream agriculture exploded over the last 30 or so years – a lot of crops being grown in the arid desert thanks to water drawn off of Lake Mead releases.
Rainfall in the Colorado River watershed has been low in recent years. Flow downstream of the dam is irrelevant, only the precipitation in the watershed ABOVE the dam matters for the Hoover Dam. The demand for water and electricity have risen along with the population. It is not a favorable situation.
I suggest you research the monthly/annual releases over the last 20 or so years then get back to us on that opinion.
What you’re essentially saying is that the number and size of holes in a bucket don’t matter, only the amount of water going into the bucket.
The alternative headline is renewable provided 15% of global power last year despite many trillions spent on them. Between 2-3 Trillion USD was estimated to have been spent in 2024 alone. You could have powered the whole world and got change if you actually used a technology that worked.
The “global power” is just electricity demand, not the actual global power demand.
Had a good laugh a few years ago when China said they would produce 20% of their electricity from “renewables”.
The renewables shills cheered.. until I pointed out that hydro was already providing something pretty close to that percentage. 🙂
Not true. No doubt refers only to electricity with is about 29% of total energy. So really about 12%. And it probably includes hydro power and burning biomass (wood) and maybe even nukes.
Fox Business parrots the talking points of its owner masters.
Even ‘Our World in Data‘, also a mouthpiece for governments, reported ~160,000 TWh of primary energy (2023) of which less than 5% was wind and solar, upon which more than 14 $trillion has been wasted (this waste includes the consumption side and the grid, according to Bloomberg NEF, 2025). The energy transition has not been building hydroelectric dams. even in Washington State, and traditional biomass topped out in 2010.
First of all. The title of that article is wrong.
Power and energy are different. Energy is the sum of power delivered each moment in time. Energy is expressed in MWhrs, while Power is the capacity (MWs) delivered each moment of time.
Power is in MW.
“Clean” and “green” is neither.
“Green” is sporadic and unpredictable for grid management.
“Green” leaches off the grid for make-up power and energy during clouds, night, and constant wind variations. It isn’t cheaper by far if “leaching” costs and subsidies are rightfully included.
“Green” also does not provide stable voltage, currents, power factor and reactances necessary to monitor and manage a transmission grid. The 41% of energy(mandated) must be supported by grid interconnections and available full time generation–and increases the cost of supporting generation.
Reliable, 24/7, dispatchable generation provides all of that….for FREE in this regulatory nightmare.
Available power (installed capacity to serve any load at any time) is required and desired to serves on demand all industries, first responders, health care, homes and businesses–at lowest cost–and provide for economic growth.
So, fossil fuel, continuous hydro, and nuclear are not choices…they are essential.
Feel free to demonstrate an isolated wind and solar system, with all the batteries needed.
Ps..Industrial companies changed from steam to electric in the 1920’s to gain stability, reliability and dramatically more productivity—and found lower costs on the new electric grids.
So, the Mengele acolytes who’ve now infiltrated the climate Reich aren’t too eager about revealing their work.
How many other climate “scientists” saw this coming?
(before anyone answers – the winner is “nein“)
Serial killers also try to hide their work.
“Climate Geoengineers”.Also known as Climate Geofraudgineers.
They do give us engineers who earn our salaries a bad name.
Rather than spraying aerosols to abate incoming solar radiance, something detrimental for food production on a planet which evolved plants containing chlorophyll requiring photosynthesis, they should perhaps consider altering albedo at the surface using white sheeting stretched between ships at the equator.
Given that most of our oxygen comes from such oceans, this is a terrible idea!
An estimate is required of the particulate contribution from a new cooling tower using salt or brackish water. That has to be compared to the regulations governing particulates. How did they skate away from that? Do they get a pass because they are “improving” the environment?
I know I’ll catch hell for this but wouldn’t loosening the small particulate regulations do the same thing?
There’s a good theory that such regulations have actually caused the slight warming that we have recorded in a few places
Yes. It would. And a lot cheaper.
Anyone who gives you grief does not have a sense of humour.
Yes, see the work of Bjørn H. Samset
Oops, please see my comment in the previous post.
This should have Trump EPA over sight
Especially for a problem, that even most of the acolytes believe, will be no big deal.
If you insist on doing something, how about a law that requires all cars to be white and all building roofs to be the lightest color possible.
By my calculations, that should pretty much eliminate global warming. It could also be reversed on short order should the world start cooling.
How about compulsory baldness plus a no hat rule, that should change earths albedo. (:-))
That’s an excellent example of how alarmists hype alleged problems by claiming that something has an effect, but not saying how big the effect is.
If I run through an unheated room in winter, that heats the room. Could that lead to the oceans boiling? António Guterres probably thinks “It could happen! Oh my god, it’s happening! Quick more socialism, stat!”
I’m sure logically that you’re correct taken in isolation, but also given that the entire world’s population must cover a very tiny percentage of the 29% of the earth’s surface that is land, it’s obviously completely trivial. (Which of course you knew).
They should force all the Millennials who live in their parents’ basement playing video games, to go outside 6 hours a day so their pale faces can do some good.
Exactly.
But then we are talking about the climate worriers and the Misleadia.
“Who in their right mind would want to deliberately invite the risk of such a disaster?”
Bill Gates thinks we should
“Misleadia”
I love that word.
In 2009, Harvard, with Professor Schrag of the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences with his hands tied (it appears), led a conference proposing geoengineering to prevent climate catastrophe. It must have been successful – there is no climate catastrophe, unless you believe Guiterres..
It was also held ‘in secret’ – at Princeton – which was naive enough to host it.
It (they ?) should be shot shut.
I disagree.
I suspect the real reason is that anti-CO2 activists will reject any and all solutions to the “climate crisis” that falls outside their blinkered world view of wind/solar, and thus regard geoengineering as anathema and something to be disrupted by violent protest.
Correction. Their world view that hydrocarbons and coal are evil and should be banned and any use criminalized.
Large-scale Geoengineering would be a cause for war among nations.
Absolutely, unless a treaty is enacted by everyone involved or potentially affected by changes in weather.
Sulphur compounds?
What about “acid rain.” Unintended consequences abound.
Many years ago in a SciFi story, a solution was presented.
A small town was in a drought. They sought a solution to bring in rain. They hooked up an array of heat pumps set to cool. They recognized the heat generated would surpass the cooling.
They installed parabolic dishes to the heat exchangers to radiate the thermal energy into space (IR). After several experiments they determined an aluminum coating on the dishes had maximum effect.
In the story they were successful. Cooling the area and emitting the waste heat to space caused the area to have a low pressure that brought in the rain.
The point of this post is there may be practical engineering solutions to excessive heat that use existing technology. Since we know that thermal energy via IR and other EM wavelengths can be transmitted to space, why not employ something like that.
The known consequence is changes in weather patterns in the region plus the cost of increased electricity use and the materials for the heat exchanger modifications.
I have done no research into this, but it does seem a realistic subject for study.
I do not believe the earth is burning or the oceans are boiling and I do not envision a future where that will happen.
However, if we pursue and terraforming it seems more practical to instead of blocking the sun, turning the planet into a more efficient heat exchange system.