A Study in Infra-Red part 8 Solar Radiation MISmanagement
“You see, but you do not observe”- Sherlock Holmes
In part 7 we took a closer at the phenomena labelled “contrails” by mainstream science and “chemtrails” in the popular vernacular. We linked this to geoengineering proposals to alter the climate but speculated that rather than mitigating global warming, the real but concealed intention was to actually bring it about.
Proposals for Geoengineering or Climate Engineering, officially the intentional intervention in Earth’s climate systems for limiting the adverse consequences of climate change, contain within them clues as to what may actually have already been in progress on a clandestine basis.
There are two primary means, Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).
SRM is about controlling sunlight before it reaches the planet.
A particular form of SRM, Stratospheric Sulfate Aerosols Geoengineering (SAG-SRM) has been proposed in order to create the desired global dimming effect. John Holdren, the lead scientific advisor to Obama, advocated emplacing pollution particles (sulphates) into the upper atmosphere as a means of cooling the planet by reflecting the sun’s rays. Dr Holdren was numbered among those prominent scientists who, back in the 70’s proposed raising global temperatures by means of such schemes as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot in order to avert a mini-ice age.
Professor David Keith suggested using aluminium as an alternative option to sulphur.
Other proposals involving SRM include Cloud Seeding, using boats that atomise seawater and spray the fine vapour into the lower level clouds, augmenting their density and reflectiveness, and aircraft to seed the same clouds via cloud condensation nuclei in the jet fuel.
The action plan laid out by AMEG – Arctic Emergency Methane Group, ostensibly made to avert climate catastrophe, contains geoengineering proposals such as:
Preparing supply and logistics for spraying reflective aerosol precursor in large quantities, preferably into the lower stratosphere.
Establishing the positive and negative net forcing from contrails, and encouraging flight paths of commercial airplanes to reduce positive or increase negative net forcing. Reintroducing the ban on polar flights, lifted recently.
Financing the development and deployment capability for cirrus cloud removal. Stock-piling of suitable cloud seeding chemicals. Kitting out of aircraft to spray these chemicals.
Financing the development of, and deployment capability for, marine cloud brightening
Considering techniques for reducing Arctic storms and their strength.
Considering techniques for un-sticking of blocked weather patterns.
Considering techniques for improving surface albedo of sea, lakes, snow and ice by brightening water with bubbles, covering snow and ice with white granules or sheets to prolong albedo, draining pools on ice, forming ice on pools, depositing snow on ice (as fresh snow has a higher albedo) and on land, discouraging growth of plants with low albedo, etc. AMEG founder member, Peter Wadhams, supported the idea for improving surface albedo by means of white granules. Professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge, Wadhams has spent over 40 years measuring the sea ice in the Arctic from underneath by means of Submarines.
“A key factor is the Arctic sea ice, whose reflection of sunshine keeps the planet cool. Remove the sea ice, and not only does the planet start to overheat, but the whole climate is suddenly changed. The global weather systems, on whose predictability farmers rely, are dependent for their stability on there being a temperature gradient between tropics and the poles. Remove the snow and ice at one pole, and the weather systems go awry and we have “global weirding”. Peter Wadhams
Reverse-engineering Geoengineering
We have established that there is in all likelihood an ongoing global, clandestine campaign involving aircraft of military, commercial and undisclosed origin emplacing particulate matter into the upper troposphere for the purpose of seeding vast artificial cirrus cloud formations that can last for extended periods of time.
Prominent anti-geoengineering activist, Dane Wigington holds that these aerosol spraying operations and the concomitant artificially produced cirrus clouds are, in alignment with geoengineering proposals, for the purpose of mitigating global warming. According to him, at the cost of short-term cooling comes an overall, long-term warming and other disruptive climatic and weather events.
Mediarologists, on one of those black swan events when they actually address the possibility of actual, ongoing geoengineering operations, brush them aside with their characteristic lack of grace.
However, occasionally, perhaps they let something slip about the true nature and purpose of persistent aviation-induced cirrus. In this one-sided but candid interview with Wigington, they attack his stance on the cooling intention of covert geoengineering yet also reveal an opening in their screaming omerta.
“But if there was a conspiracy to use jet produced clouds to cool the atmosphere, would it work? No.” Meteorologist, Chris Edwards, on Detroit’s WXYZ News, bluntly answers his own question and defers to a heavyweight.
“Contrails that are spreading, that you can identify as contrails, those would tend to warm the atmosphere, everything that we know about, would say that.” Joyce Penner, UN IPCC Climate scientist, weighs in on the debate. Emphasis mine
Contrails, or as Wigington prefers to call them, particulate trails, in addition to forming line-shaped clouds, spread out to form aviation induced cirrus clouds. The higher cirrus clouds, unlike the lower clouds, have an overall warming effect on the globe. Penner is correct on that one.
“But if there was a conspiracy to use jet produced clouds to cool the atmosphere, would it work?
No.” Emphasis mine
But what if we were to turn Edwards’ question on its head?
If there was a conspiracy to use jet produced clouds to WARM the atmosphere, would it work?
Yes
You see where I am going here?
What if there was an ongoing global, clandestine campaign involving aircraft of military, commercial and undisclosed origin emplacing particulate matter into the upper troposphere for the purpose of seeding vast artificial cirrus cloud formations that can last for extended periods of time, in order to bring about a global warming?
Let us take a good look at where the rubber meets the road, official geoengineering – cirrus cloud seeding proposals for cooling and then turn them around as if they were for warming to see if that is a good match for what is happening.
Geoengineering Proposals for Cloud Seeding
This presentation on cirrus cloud seeding, kindly uploaded by Jim Lee, gives the stated purpose of this form of geoengineering as being a means to mitigate global warming by reducing cirrus cloud coverage. It targets longwave IR radiation rather than shortwave Solar radiation and thus differs from the usual geoengineering proposals.
On The Climate Response to Cirrus Cloud Seeding - WXMOD 2015
The stated purpose of the seeding would be to convert the cirrus clouds from those that consist of many, smaller ice crystals that last longer to those that consist of fewer, larger ice crystals that precipitate out at a faster rate, reducing lifetime and coverage.
Different concentrations of ice nuclei in the upper atmosphere were modelled and without the presenter specifying what the ice nuclei were, they were very efficient, forming ice crystals at 10% supersaturation.
Concentrations of 15 ice nuclei (IN) per litre were found to be the most effective for inducing precipitation. They discovered a “goldilocks” phenomenon where:
IN concentrations of up to around 10 IN per litre had no effect on cirrus clouds,
10 – 15 IN per litre was found to be “just right” producing cirrus clouds of few but large ice crystals leading to a reduction in cirrus coverage and a resulting cooling effect.
Concentrations of 16 IN and higher were found to lead to an “over-seeding regime”, resulting in cirrus clouds of many but smaller IN and a consequent warming effect.
The study also looked at the most efficient latitudes for cirrus cloud geoengineering.
Mid to high latitudes are proposed for targeting to maximise the long wave effect. It is interesting that the correlation between air traffic and increases in cirrus cloud coverage since the 70’s have occurred primarily at these latitudes in the northern hemisphere.
When they modelled the cirrus seeding as a function of the solar zenith angle, they found that those regions of polar night or close to polar night in the higher latitudes were the most effective.
The further poleward you go, the greater the long wave forcing and the less the shortwave forcing.
Around 8:40 “Now going deeper into the climate response, you can see here the surface cooling that we could achieve with this cirrus seeding , and you can see that there’s a strong polar amplification and if you do the ratio of high latitude to global cooling, you get a ratio of 2.5 which is actually very similar to the kind of polar amplification you get from the greenhouse warming, so in that sense this is probably a better compensation for CO2 warming than some of the SRM techniques that tend to overcool the tropics and undercool the high latitudes.
In terms of the vertical temperature changes, we can see that there is a cooling (in the model) happening throughout the troposphere and then a warming in the stratosphere, so again that mirrors what happens in response to increased CO2 concentrations.” Emphasis mine
Now it doesn’t take a huge leap of logic to imagine what would happen if in the model, you switched the cirrus seeding to an “over-seeding regime”. You would get warming at the poles and throughout the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere.
Apply the “over-seeding regime”, primarily to the northern hemisphere and the north pole and you arrive at what has actually been happening since 1970.
The presenter also looked at the modelling of precipitation changes to the climate. They found a pattern of “wet gets drier” and “dry gets wetter”.
Of course again, reversing this to an “over-seeding regime” we get “wet gets wetter and dry gets drier” which is what James Hansen predicted in his book “Storms of My Grandchildren” but from CO2.
Around 12:30 “…it is not entirely clear how you would build up this optimal seeding concentration, but even if you knew exactly what the seeding ice nuclei concentration should be, it’s not obvious how you would achieve that, people have proposed drones or commercial aircraft but that’s still an unanswered question” Emphasis mine
The foregoing presentation is based on the work of Mitchell and Finnegan.
Modification of cirrus clouds to reduce global warming
“Abstract. Greenhouse gases and cirrus clouds regulate outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and cirrus cloud coverage is predicted to be sensitive to the ice fall speed which depends on ice crystal size. The higher the cirrus, the greater their impact is on OLR. Thus by changing ice crystal size in the coldest cirrus, OLR and climate might be modified. Fortunately the coldest cirrus have the highest ice supersaturation due to the dominance of homogeneous freezing nucleation. Seeding such cirrus with very efficient heterogeneous ice nuclei should produce larger ice crystals due to vapor competition effects, thus increasing OLR and surface cooling. Preliminary estimates of this global net cloud forcing are more negative than –2.8 W m–2 and could neutralize the radiative forcing due to a CO2 doubling (3.7 W m–2). A potential delivery mechanism for the seeding material is already in place: the airline industry. Since seeding aerosol residence times in the troposphere are relatively short, the climate might return to its normal state within months after stopping the geoengineering experiment.” Emphasis mine
“Substances exist that nucleate ice crystals as effectively as silver iodide (AgI, the best ice nucleant known) at cirrus cloud temperatures, and some are relatively inexpensive and non-toxic (see section 2.1). If significantly larger, these artificially seeded ice crystals would fall faster, and their higher fall velocities may lead to reduced cirrus cloud coverage as predicted in GCM simulations (Mitchell et al 2008, Sanderson et al 2008). The lower cirrus cloud coverage would result in greater OLR and cooler surface temperatures, thus reducing the impact of global warming. It is important to note that the decrease in cirrus coverage would occur where the cirrus greenhouse effect is strongest (i.e. temperatures < –40 °C). This is a key principle for this geoengineering idea.” Emphasis mine
“Soot particles emitted from aircraft jet engines may possibly nucleate ice through heterogeneous nucleation (e.g. Möhler et al 2005b), but soot particles may also become coated with soluble species that make them act more like homogeneous freezing nuclei (Möhler et al 2005b, 2005a, DeMott et al 1999). Other studies have found that jet fuel exhaust particles fail to nucleate ice below water saturation (DeMott et al 2002), and that fresh biomass combustion particles act as homogeneous freezing ice nuclei (DeMott et al 2009). Thus many have argued that the evidence implicating soot particles as heterogeneous ice nuclei in the upper troposphere is rather poor. Moreover, even when considered as a heterogeneous ice nucleus, an ice supersaturation threshold of ∼ 30% is often assumed for soot (e.g. Kärcher et al 2007). In this case one would expect efficient ice crystal seeding material introduced into the upper troposphere to generally out-compete soot particles for water vapor.” Emphasis mine
“2.1. Potential seeding material
An ideal ice nucleating agent for cirrus geoengineering would be one having a high effectivity (for ice nucleation) at temperatures colder than ∼ –20 °C, but a very low effectivity at warmer temperatures. Bismuth tri-iodide (BiI3) had been investigated as an ice nucleant for weather modification programs but was unsuitable because its effectivity threshold was below –10 °C. However, this makes it a suitable ice nucleant for geoengineering, targeting primarily cirrus clouds and not the clouds normally targeted in cloud seeding experiments. In addition, BiI3 is non-toxic and reagent grade bismuth metal is about 1/12th the cost of silver, suggesting BiI3 would be about 1/12th the cost of AgI.” Emphasis mine
“2.2. Delivery mechanism
Since commercial airliners routinely fly in the region where cold cirrus clouds exist, it is hoped that the seeding material could either be (1) dissolved or suspended in their jet fuel and later burned with the fuel to create seeding aerosol, or (2) injected into the hot engine exhaust, which should vaporize the seeding material, allowing it to condense as aerosol in the jet contrail. The objective would not be to seed specific cloud systems but rather to build up a background concentration of aerosol seeding material so that the air masses that cirrus will form in will contain the appropriate amount of seeding material to produce larger ice crystals. Since the residence time of seeding material might be on the order of 1–2 weeks, release rates of seeding material would need to account for this. With the delivery process already existing, this geoengineering approach may be less expensive than other proposed approaches.” Emphasis mine
Summary
It can be seen that every single one of these techniques can be turned on its head to bring about the opposite effect.
For example, covering snow and ice with white granules or sheets to prolong albedo can beturned on its head with William Gray’s technology to dispense black carbon onto the snow and ice to shorten albedo, and most probably has been, as covered in part 6.
However, cirrus cloud seeding proposals for cooling offer the most insight as to what were to happen/has indeed happened if they were reversed.
The idea is to use aircraft to introduce suitable ice nuclei that out compete others, entraining enough water to reach precipitation size early on and so reduce cirrus coverage on a global level, resulting in a net negative forcing of –2.8 W m–2. The decrease in cirrus coverage would occur where the cirrus greenhouse effect is strongest, in the higher latitudes.
The writers suggest that soot emitted from aircraft jet engines may already play a role in ice nucleation, although not a major one. Their chosen ice nuclei would outcompete soot for water vapour.
The particular seeding agent of choice would be Bismuth tri-iodide (BiI3), about 1/12th the cost of Silver Iodide (AgI.), the traditional ice nucleant.
The airline industry is potentially to be used as the delivery mechanism.
Drones have also been proposed. The seeding material would be either:
Dissolved or suspended in the jet fuel. Later to be burned with the fuel to create seeding aerosol.
Injected into the hot engine exhaust, vaporizing the seeding material so that it condenses as aerosol in the jet contrail.
The objective is not to seed specific cloud systems but rather to build up a background concentration of aerosol seeding material so that the air masses that cirrus will form in will contain the appropriate amount of seeding material to produce larger ice crystals.
There is a goldilocks phenomenon where just the right amount of ice nuclei are required to induce precipitation, an optimum seeding regime.
More than this optimum number would result in too many ice nuclei entraining atmospheric water but not reaching precipitation size for a considerable length of time. These persistent cirrus formations on such a scale would add significantly to global warming.
Release rates would need to account for the residence time of the seeding material, 1-2 weeks for an optimum seeding regime of BiI3.
The result would be a cooling of the troposphere and a warming of the stratosphere.
Wet regions would become drier and dry regions would become wetter.
This geoengineering approach would have the advantage over all the other proposals of greater cost effectiveness.
Imagine now that this global project has actually been underway since 1970, with the difference being that instead of building up an optimum seeding regime, an over-seeding regime had been established.
We would see warming at the poles and throughout the troposphere and a cooling of the stratosphere.
If we had applied the “over-seeding regime” primarily to the northern hemisphere and the north pole, we would arrive at what has actually been happening since 1970 but normally ascribed to CO2.
In terms of rainfall we would have seen dry regions getting drier as the innumerable aerosols locked up the sparse amount of water, not reaching precipitation size for long periods until finally, they came down in the form of deluges so that wet regions would have become wetter. The precipitation cycle would have been distorted.
The commercial airline industry, operating at precisely the altitudes where cirrus form, would have been used as the delivery mechanism. To supplement these jets, drones would have been used. In fact, modern commercial jet planes can be controlled remotely to the extent that one with no pilot and empty of passengers, is basically a drone. If this were to be a clandestine operation, then using commercial jets would be the most effective way of concealment – in plane sight. Only the bizarre flight patterns of these jets with no destination and of military planes brought in to radically enhance aerosol concentrations would pose difficulties. As usual, the docile nature of the general public would come to the rescue.
You can easily see that this clandestine climate modification campaign could have easily resulted in the weather-weirded world that we live in today.
Now really open your eyes and observe. Remove the notions that CO2 alone could have accounted for all these features. It couldn’t have.
I put it to you that an aerially obtained, aerosol over-seeding regime is exactly what has occurred to the present day.
The question remains as to the nature of the seeding material and the exact method of delivery. Under a clandestine campaign, BiI3, easily detected would be of limited use.
In part 9, we shall examine traces left behind that may indicate the nature of this elusive aerosol of choice.