An evil atmosphere is forming around geoengineering

international | environment | other press Wednesday July 21, 2010 18:16 by Dorothy Gale

Right-wing think tanks that deny climate change is even happening are advocating climate engineering to fix it. Don't listen to them. Full text of article by Clive Hamilton at link.

IN 1892 Edvard Munch witnessed a blood-red sunset over Oslo, Norway. Shaken by it, he wrote in his diary that he felt "a great, unending scream piercing through nature". The incident inspired him to create his most famous painting, The Scream. The striking sunset was probably caused by the eruption of Krakatoa, which sent a massive plume of ash and gas into the upper atmosphere, turning sunsets red around the globe and cooling the Earth by more than a degree.

Now a powerful group of scientists, venture capitalists and conservative think tanks is coalescing around the idea of reproducing this cooling effect by injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to counter climate change. Despite the enormity of what is being proposed - nothing less than seizing control of the climate - the public has been almost entirely excluded from the planning.

Bill Gates has been funding geoengineering research for three years. Gates is also an investor in a firm named Intellectual Ventures that is promoting a scheme called StratoShield, which would pump sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere through a hose held aloft by blimps. Richard Branson has also set up his own "war room" to do battle with global warming using "market-driven solutions", including geoengineering.