



Geoengineering – the intentional manipulation of the climate to counter the effect of global warming by injecting aerosols artificially into the atmosphere – has been mooted as a potential way to deal with climate change.

However new research led by climate experts from the University of Exeter suggests that targeting geoengineering in one hemisphere could have a severely detrimental impact for the other.

They suggest that while injections of aerosols in the northern hemisphere would reduce tropical cyclone activity – responsible for such recent phenomena including Hurricane Katrina – it would at the same time lead to increased likelihood for drought in the Sahel, the area of sub-Saharan Africa just south of the Sahara desert.

In response, the team of researchers have called on policymakers worldwide to strictly regulate any large scale unilateral geoengineering programmes in the future to prevent inducing natural disasters in different parts of the world.

The study is published in leading scientific journal Nature Communications on Tuesday, November 14 2017.

Dr Anthony Jones, A climate science expert from the University of Exeter and lead author on the paper said:

“Our results confirm that regional solar geoengineering is a highly risky strategy which could simultaneously benefit one region to the detriment of another. It is vital that policymakers take solar geoengineering seriously and act swiftly to install effective regulation.”

The innovative research centres on the impact solar geoengineering methods that inject aerosols into the atmosphere may have on the frequency of tropical cyclones.

The controversial approach, known as stratospheric aerosol injection, is designed to effectively cool the Earth’s surface by reflecting some sunlight before it reaches the surface. The proposals mimic the aftermath of volcanic eruptions, when aerosols are naturally injected into the atmosphere.

In the study, the researchers use sophisticated simulations with a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model to investigate the effect of hemispheric stratospheric aerosol injection on North Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency.

They find injections of aerosols in the northern hemisphere would decrease North Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency, while injections contained to the southern hemisphere may potentially enhance it.

Crucially, the team warn however that while tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic could be suppressed by northern hemisphere injections, this would, at the same time, induce droughts in the Sahel.

These results suggest the uncertain effects of solar geoengineering — a proposed approach to counteract global warming — which should be considered by policymakers.

Professor Jim Haywood, from the Mathematics department at the University of Exeter and co-author of the study added:

“This research shows how a global temperature target such as 1.5 or 2C needs to be combined with information on a more regional scale to properly assess the full range of climate impacts.”

The research, Impacts of hemispheric solar geoengineering on tropical cyclone frequency, is published in the journal Nature Communications.


The study:

Impacts of hemispheric solar geoengineering on tropical cyclone frequency


Solar geoengineering refers to a range of proposed methods for counteracting global warming by artificially reducing sunlight at Earth’s surface. The most widely known solar geoengineering proposal is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which has impacts analogous to those from volcanic eruptions. Observations following major volcanic eruptions indicate that aerosol enhancements confined to a single hemisphere effectively modulate North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the following years. Here we investigate the effects of both single-hemisphere and global SAI scenarios on North Atlantic TC activity using the HadGEM2-ES general circulation model and various TC identification methods. We show that a robust result from all of the methods is that SAI applied to the southern hemisphere would enhance TC frequency relative to a global SAI application, and vice versa for SAI in the northern hemisphere. Our results reemphasise concerns regarding regional geoengineering and should motivate policymakers to regulate large-scale unilateral geoengineering deployments.


204 thoughts on “Study: Artificially cooling the planet is a ‘risky strategy’ – may create worse storms

      • Not predictably or well, but we have shown a great knack for shooting ourselves in the foot, Steve.

      • Mr Mosher.
        It appears that sanity is a visitor at your house.
        Man cannot change the climate, and temperature is a part of climate.
        Welcome to the dark side.

      • Rubbish Steve a couple of hundred nukes will definitely change the planets climate, man has ample capability to change it :-)


        Total unscientific BS. This assumes that we can explain cyclone activity and we cannot. This is nothing but the unfounded mantra that there will be more powerful storms “in a warming world”. This simplistic ASSUMPTION is contradicted by the massive drop in N. Atl ACE between 2005 and 2016.

        Clearly we have fundamental lack of understanding of hurricane formation and climate in general.

        At least they get the bottom line that is would be extremely dangerous to mess with our life support system without knowing how it works.

        Well, actually, they don’t get it because they are arguing about counter effects they think they also understand, rather than arguing the generally piss-poor level of understanding that they and everyone else has.

        More hubris than than wisdom, sadly.

      • I should also say a few in the QM field moaning about funding suggested have had a funny discussion going. They wonder if they could push that the new materials and processes that convert electricity from heat could part of cooling the planet funding. There is megawatts of heat there according to climate scientists for us to tap into :-)

      • So right – and an average temperature change of 1 or 2 degrees is a far cry from “climate change” – there’s a lot more to climate than temps.

      • LdB November 15, 2017 at 12:31 am

        LdB, you overestimate the power of nukes.

      • “When did simulations begin “confirming” things as opposed to “suggesting possibilities?”

        Ever since climate “science” convinced much of the world that computer model output is more reliable than ‘biased observations’. Their words, not mine.

      • Richard

        Much like, in 1942 the measured level of atmospheric CO2 was above current levels (nor was it unique) around 430ppm, but it seems that wasn’t good enough for ‘climate scientists’ who preferred Paleoclimate data which was much lower.


      It’s the warm water in the tropics and the cool air above that ramps up hurricanes, it’s the temperature difference! How in heck do they think cooling the atmosphere will not make hurricane strengths worse? More darn, stupid, incompetent models (modelers).

      • I was reading WUnderground during the genesis of Rina. They were saying that the storm formed because of the difference in the temperature of the water and the troposphere above since the water alone was at best marginal for development. What I took from that was that Henson and Masters think that a cooler atmosphere would produce more storms, now fewer. Since the air heats and cools much quicker than the water, global cooling is more dangerous than global warming.

    • I believe there was a movie based on this: Highlander II or was it III. Even with a near omniscient being coordinating all the scientists and gov’ts etc they still royally screwed up the earth while attempting to fix it. Life was an unbearable hell.

      Sounds like a perfect job for Mann et Co.

      These guys couldn’t plan a trip to mcdonalds and now the loons want to fix the earth. The english language doesn’t have a word to express the combined hubris, ignorance, and evil for this idea. Maybe we can germanise it: dummböserStolz

      • Dumb evil pride! I love it–it is correct. The sheer unmitigated hubris this shows would have been unbelievable had I not read this article. Please, God, spare us from the machinations of these people! There is a not-so-old saying: “Only a madman would give a loaded revolver to an idiot.” That would fit here.

  1. I thought computers were supposed to free us all up… we had more leisure time to do other things
    …Instead it’s created a Frankenstein of climate scientists…is there anything else they can come up with to model and play with their computer games?

      • Yes Steven. That is a great idea. You personally are inhaling air with 0.04% CO2 and exhaling 4%. You can contribute by ceasing to breathe..

      • CO2 is HIGHLY NECESSARY for the survival of the planet moshpit..

        Yes.. EVEN YOU are totally dependent on it for your feeble existence.

      • Nature dumped heaps of the stuff in the past and look what happened – we evolved! and thrived! as did the dinosaurs before us. And no-one can answer the most basic simplest question – how much of the little warming we have had witnessed is natural and how much is caused by CO2. You are right – the climate is chaotic and baffling (like the modelling) and yet some silly people think they can control it.

      • We are not entering unexplored territory here Steven.
        The earth has had higher CO2 levels in the past and nothing bad happened.
        So get a new pair of pants and rejoin the grown ups.

  2. How about cleaning-up the “plastic patch” … “the size of Texas” … floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that we’ve all been told about ? The one that WE (capitalistic conservatives) created by our sinful use of plastic shopping bags. The one that is slaughtering the wales, seals, fish, turtles, little kittens, small children, and narwhals. Get that done … and then we will consider letting you Destroy the planet with your hairbrain scheme to solve another problem that doesn’t exist.

    • I’d rather they cleaned up the plastic patch, then move to another planet, and leave this one alone!!!

      What is WRONG with them??? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

    • That has been greatly exaggerated as. They skim for a hundred miles with huge nets and might find half a cup of decomposing plastic. And it turns out it gets eaten by bacteria.

      The media make it out like there tires and bottles bobbing up and down everywhere and reinforce this by showing Philipine harbors after major hurricanes carefully cropped so you can’t see the land.

      If you took a trip to the plastic gyre you wouldn’t even know you were there.

      • I once searched Notices To Mariners for any reference to this plastic patch as it would be a hazard if ingested into cooling systems. Found nothing.
        Does anyone know of credible proof of it’s existence?

      • @BillT
        it exist, but when you look at the data of scaremongers, it appears that they say something like “there is more plastic there than fish”. Did you ever see an island of fishes? This is the real extent of the problem.
        Now, it certainly isn’t a good idea to disregard the problem and let it grow out of control. I don’t like the idea of Ocean turned into a waste dump place. A few reasonable and free (money-wise) steps, like using biodegradable single use grocery bags, are likely to be enough.

      • The middle of the ocean has always been rather devoid of fish, so it’s not hard for there to be more plastic than fishes.
        That’s not evidence that there is a lot of plastic.
        There is no problem, never has been.

      • Stupid WordPress not allowing edits…

        Yes, you’re absolutely correct. To add: There’s been one claim, and no actually follow-up studies on this p-gyre. But plenty, plenty, of media coverage.

    • One my my greatest laments regarding the CAGW meme is that it’s distracted us from addressing actual environmental issues. I once read (or, was told…I forget which) that at the time of the discovery of the new world, the Chesapeake bay was clear down to its bottom and had a bed of oysters (or clams) many feet deep. Now THAT sounds like something worthwhile to strive for.

      Let’s not begrudge the industrialization that has produced the pollution of the bay…let’s just work to correct it. I imagine that for a mere fraction of the investment in so-called green energy, we could have designed and implemented a scheme to return those waters to clarity. And this is but a single (somewhat trivial) example. Others abound.

      Of course, given the nature of governments and bureaucracies, it’s almost impossible to imagine things like this being addressed competently, and without a concomitant increase in power for the overseeing agency… This problem is such a universal truth that it’s depressingly assured the increase of power would become the actual goal, rather than the resolution of the actual issue itself.



      • I agree rip. I think the world mistakes all the real pollution for CO2, and doesn’t realize that CO2 is an invisible, colourless, odourless trace gas that is not only wholly beneficial for life on Earth, it is indeed the building blocks of life itself. What a sham that CO2 now gets all the blame, and real issues are still swept under the rug.

      • The ocean gyre they say is full of plastic is hyped for media, to being attention to the issue. Certain nations do dump raw garbage at sea, as did parts of North America 40-50 years ago. Probably more insidious is the micro bead plastic that is nearly invisible and gets into the food chain. Taking care of our own backyard is probably a responsible thing to do, as in being good stewards of the good Earth. It’s even in the Bible.

  3. How in the blue-eyed world do you get these control-freak people to understand this simple principle: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

    The sheer arrogance those people carry with them borders on pure lunacy. Somebody PLEASE stop them!!! PLEASE!!!

  4. This encapsulates the original meaning of the Precautionary Principle; if you are not absolutely sure of the outcome of a proposed action, DON’T DO IT.
    Like a lot of things, the progressives managed to turn it 180 degrees.

    • “Like a lot of things, the progressives managed to turn it 180 degrees.”
      So which progressives are advocating geoengineering?

      It does apply as you stated it – if you are not sure of he outcome of substantially changing the composition of the atmosphere, don’t do it.

      • Nick Stokes;

        What a vacuous argument. For starters, we’re NOT “substantially” changing the composition of the atmosphere. We’re changing it by about 2 parts per million per year. Hardly substantial. Even if you compare the change only to the amount of CO2 itself, then we’re changing it by about 1/200th per year. Again, hardly substantial. When you consider that CO2’s effects are logarithmic, even less as time goes on. Further, we’ve been changing it by such tiny amounts since about 1950, and the deleterious effects are no where to be found. Given that suddenly stopping the use of fossil fuels would condemn billions to starvation, poverty, and short brutal lives, the precautionary principle in fact suggests that we keep on doing what we’ve been doing.

      • “if you are not sure of he outcome of substantially changing the composition of the atmosphere”

        Just returning the accidentally sequestered Carbon back into the Carbon Cycle where it belongs.

        You know… the cycle that feeds ALL life on Earth, and which is still only marginally above plant subsistence level.

      • ” We’re changing it by about 2 parts per million per year. Hardly substantial.”
        It certainly changes the IR opacity. And we’re not sure what will be the outcome of that. There is very good reason to expect them to be large.

      • Nick

        Computer models might predict the outcome to be large.
        Palaeoclimate history shows the outcome to be either zero or beneficial.

      • Nick there are also genetic dangers, atomic dangers, cosmic dangers the list is almost endless that can kill everything on the planet. Why climate scientists think they are the most pressing danger does my head in.

      • Well, the progressive environmental engineers, of course. There are already congresses on geoengineering and tools have been presented here in WUWT for years (not by WUWT, but by the progressive environmental engineers). There have even been two scientifically accompanied experiments with an iron fertilization in reality made with an incomprehensible result – one positive, one negative. It is therefore not wrong to speak of the progressive engineers as a lick of the billions market of anthropogenic global warming. Because of course, they hope for a profit, as well as all other actors of the bad drama AGW.

      • Nick Stokes November 15, 2017 at 1:01 am

        There is NO reason to expect them to be large. If they were large, we would have by now seen changes readily differentiated from natural variability. Instead we see changes so small that we’re not sure if they are natural variability or not. End the use of fossil fuels and there will be no doubt as to the outcome. Starvation and death for billions. You just can’t get your head wrapped around the fact that you want us to cease the use of fossil fuels to stop something you can barely measure the outcome of, in return for an outcome that is truly known and spells misery and death for most of mankind.

      • We are returning the atmosphere to what previously was it’s natural state.
        We can easily find out how the atmosphere reacts to these higher levels of CO2 by examing periods in the past when CO2 levels were this high, as well as much higher.

      • Nick: “It certainly changes the IR opacity”

        Sorry, no evidence to support your claim. In fact, it may be reducing it slightly according to Gero/Turner 2012.

        Miskolczi also found no change in his inspection of NOAA balloon data from 1948.

    • Actually, the progressives are against geo engineering. They want to use CAGW as a tool to destroy capitalism. If we can easily solve the problem with a little geo engineering, they would lose a major weapon in their arsenal.

      • I do not think so. The AGW is led by Al Gore, Soros, Tom Steyer and others. There are “activists” only the stupid 5th column. It is really about making money, new technologies and other things (including power and world domination) Since left chasers have only the role of useful idiot.

    • Considering we’re in the midst of an inter-glacial, I’m most worried about managing to trip the climate back into a glacial epoch.

    • Nick,

      has it ever occurred to you (given you stated an “IR opacity” atmosphere, you were almost there) that CO2 actually keeps Gaia from heating? Keeping dat dere IR energy from actually reaching the surface (with ~60-65% of particle emissivity away from the curved global surface)?
      Rather than preventing IR from escaping?

  5. “…the researchers use sophisticated simulations with a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model to investigate the effect of hemispheric stratospheric aerosol injection on North Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency.”

    Using computers to run a large number of calculations is very much like Bitcoin “mining”
    These guys should get their salaries paid in Bitcoin or one of the other cryptocurrencies.

    Virtual reality meet virtual money.

    • The only way to make money as a bitcoin miner is use less energy for you computing power than it costs you to get the currency. They are many times more sensible than anyone in the climate game.

  6. I especially got a chuckle out of this comment in the press release: “..northern hemisphere would reduce tropical cyclone activity – responsible for such recent phenomena including Hurricane Katrina.”

    Can’t argue with that!!! Katrina was certainly a TC and it was “phenomena. At lest they did not claim Katrina was caused by rising CO2. Some how though that “responsible for such phenomena” statement was needed by someone to give their work impact.

    Maybe they could have mentioned the unprecedented and natural 12 year long Major hurricane landfall on the US hiatus from 2005-2017? Nah!! That would have ruined it.

  7. University of Exeter is probably the world’s uni with its nose DEEPEST in the climate trough.

    It boasts the most IPCC authors (or did a couple of years ago when I briefly looked at their web site),

    and that one branch is almost TOTALLY RELIANT on climate swilling to keep itself running.

    • Here in the colonies, both UC-Boulder (NCAR) and Columbia U (GISS) have their collective noses deep into the climate trough.

  8. Based on the state of climate science, nobody has the faintest idea how the climate works, much less how to stop it from working. Applying geo-engineering to cool a climate that doesn’t need to be cooled, even if it was actually warming is beyond crazy. The unintended consequences are likely to be far worse than doing nothing at all. They might as well drop a nuke into a volcano. There’s about the same level of risk.

    These same fools think that we can geo-engineer Mars by adding CO2. Little do they realize that on a molar basis, the Mars atmosphere already has 15x more CO2 than Earth’s. What Mars needs is a stronger Sun.

      • Cephus0

        Lol hence any idea to geo-engineer Mars and colonize it would come only when we can restart a a dead dynamo.

        I don’t even have credentials in anything, yet cringe when lauded big boys like Michio Kaku and Niel deGrasse talk about Mars.

        I start wondering how these people got degrees beyond Women’s Studies.

  9. If somebody wants to dump aerosols in the atmosphere its their damn business. We have no right preventing people from dumping stuff in the air, unless we can prove via planetary scale experiments that it would cause harms bigger than the benefits. Especially when the only evidence people have is models!
    Jeez, who cares if a model tells you aerosols would cool the planet. That’s not science. the only way to tell is dump away… fill the skies, and test.
    And plus, “cool the planet?” global average temperature does not exist, you cant cool the planet.

    • We know what will happen, because we have had volcanoes doing this to show us the effects. We also know that overall cold is bad, and warm is good. This has been demonstrated throughout history.

      So, no, they have no right at all, because we know the result, and we know it’s bad.

    • So mosher actually advocates allowing actual POLLUTION of the atmosphere.

      (as opposed to increasing the fundamental building block of all life on Earth.)

      What a sick-minded little non-entity you are, Mosh

    • CO2, a colorless, odorless gas. A fundamental molecule necessary for photosynthesis.

      Aerosol Sulfates are none of those things. They are not even a gas.

    • The other connection that Mosher fails with his /sarc is that CO2 emissions are deeply connected to GDP.
      While natural sulfate aerosols mostly comes from volcanoes and have no connection to GDP. If adding aerosols to the stratosphere was deeply connected somehow to GDP, we’d probably already be dong it. And in one sense we already are by burning kerosene in the stratosphere.

      The Bonn COP attendees would like to get home though. And Leo’s private jet needs to pick him up at Caan’s for his Tahiti vacay. Important stuff for climate aware folks like them.

    • As if paleoclimatology needed computer models to establish demonstrable facts and credible reconstruction of atmospheric circulation intensity variation…
      Take a shower and go to bed. You’re beyond unfunny.

    • Steven Mosher;

      Once again putting words in skeptics mouths and painting us all with the same brush, huh Steven?

      The fact is, as I pointed out to Nick Stokes upthread, is that we’ve been adding CO2 to the atmosphere in tiny, but measurable amounts since about 1950. As a portion of the atmosphere, about 2 parts per million per year, hardly substantial. As a portion that is CO2, about 1/200th per year, again hardly substantial. No deleterious effects have so far appeared, we have the biggest population, the longest life span and the lowest incidence of hunger in history. If it is models upon which you wish to rely because they have some sort of credibility with you, then I suggest you use the much more effective economic models to predict the outcome of suddenly ceasing the use of fossil fuels. The outcome of such decisions are well known, and explain the resistance governments all over the world have to keeping their CO2 reduction promises in any meaningful fashion. The outcomes are poverty, starvation and early deaths for billions of people. So if it is models upon which you wish to predicate decisions regarding the future of humanity, by all means, let’s use ALL the models to make decisions, not just the climate ones.

    • Mosher the Moron strikes again. There is no evidence that the slight warmup since the LIA is dangerous, despite the blatherings of Alarmists. Indeed, the warming has been a positive thing, as has been the increased CO2. But wait, there’s more, numnuts. There is zero, none, nada evidence that the additional CO2 has caused any of the warming. Sure, it could have caused a very slight additional warming, which again, is a positive thing, but if there, it can not, nor will it ever be measured. It can only be guessed at.
      Got that, mush-for-brains?

      • what warming?
        Look according to skeptics there IS NO GLOBAL TEMPERTAURE.

        1. There are not enough thermometers today to measure accurately.
        2. none of the temperature data we have we can trust.
        3. There are only proxies of temperature during the LIA
        4. Proxies are wildly more inaccurate than thermometers.
        5. As Kip Hansen, and Pat Frank, and Other have shown the uncertainties are Huge.
        6. Cooler in the LIA implies warmer today, and we cant even measure today accurately.

        And most importantly as many here have pointed out you cant average temperatures.
        Its physically meaningless, we’d need billions of triple redundant thermometers..

        There was no LIA and the skeptics destroyed it.

      • It’s called science Steven, ask how many people believe in QM or GR.
        Not an issue to those fields keep on moving along, we don’t feel the need to care what the public thinks.

      • I guess we should be out on every TV channel getting the message across QM and GR are correct. The only problem we would have is that three quarters of the science community would fail at understanding or explaining either. The consensus question would be a really interesting one with QM and GR and I really doubt we would get 50% of scientists.

    • Mosh, since these models can … err… model what happens when aerosols are injected into the stratosphere they can. presumably, also model what would happen if one took the atmosphere of, say, 1910 and progressively reduced the number of CCNs just above the ocean surface in the so-called boundary layer. Would fewer aerosols = less stratocumulus, lower albedo, more surface warming?

      Think about that. The signature warming with fewer aerosols would look more like the warming signature mentioned in the WUWT post at

      Use your contacts to run this simulation.

      Now, think of something that could reduce the number of boundary layer CCNs, with particular reference to Slow students may Google “Benjamin Franklin Clapham pond”

      Now explain why it is not permissible to increase artificially the number of CCNs, but an inadvertent non-natural reduction in CCNs is acceptable/can safely be ignored.



  10. My eye caught on one of the conclusions of the study – that injections of aerosols into the atmosphere with the intent of producing a change should be strictly prohibited until the action’s effects (on the opposite hemisphere) are completely understood. If the Russians (or the USA) decide to inject aerosols just who is going to stop them? There is no ‘world ruler’ to enforce stuff like this. Nor is anyone likely to give up power to make that happen.
    The second thought is that proposed existing changes – say in CO2 – are NEVER rigorously analyzed for their secondary effects elsewhere in the world. Is this paper saying we should start doing that and do NOTHING until we have proof? If that is so, I agree totally.

  11. So lets get this right: Warming the planet is bad. But trying to cool it back down again is bad too. And presumably keeping it the same might be even worse. Who knows? Certainly not them.

    • Why is warming bad? A warming, which led us out of LIA ( so far) is not bad. Without this warming, half of the world’s population would have long starved to death under the temperatures of the LIA. Ask in Ireland and elsewhere, in Germany and France in the history books. Or why do you think why in the US most European names have. There was a reason for that: sheer distress in the LIA.

  12. As I’ve said before, I have no problem with this at all.

    As long as they don’t do it on my planet, nor with my money, of course.

  13. If we don’t do something; things will get worse. If we do something; things will get worse.

    I do see something interesting in these exercises however. They no longer use models but sophisticated models. Good thing since the regular models haven’t been doing so good.

  14. So how much would it cost to severely polute the Earth’s atmosphere and to make our winters more severe if the scheme works at all? I would think that cooling the Earth would allow less H2O to enter the atmosphere which would make droughts more severe and dry up areas whose rainfall is currently tenuous at best. The reality is that we are nearing the end of our current warm period with another 100K year ice age expected to follow. It may take sevral thousand years for the next ice age to really start to take hold. Maybe we would be better off trying to enjoy the warmth of the current intergalcial period while it is still here. If the future is anything like the past we will have 100K years to enjoy the next ice age.

  15. Climate science is a truly wonderful enterprise. Absolutely no need to produce anything useful or productive. My praise goes to the coal miners who go down into the ground and come up with coal. Ditto oil, gas workers who get their hands and faces dirty. Kudos to car makers, heating and air conditioning industries. Etc. Etc.

  16. I’ve had a little time to think about this proposal. At first, it sounded nuts. But then I realized that there is a planet that could use a little help getting cooler.
    Since many of us have seen the Mad Max movies, if you start at the beginning, you realize that the planet where that story takes place isn’t Earth. It’s some other planet far, far away, where not only have things gone completely wrong with society in general, but also the weather/climate has gone completely off-kilter.
    The evidence for this starts with the very first episdoe, “Mad Max”, where everything is still green and growing, but there are signs here and there along the roadsides that indicate something isn’t right, e.g., “Entry Forbidden” – that sort of thing.
    In the next episode, ‘Road Warrior’, there has been an obvious change in both the weather and the climate because plant life is dying off.
    In the third episode ‘Beyond Thunderdome’, the planet is almost completely desertified and there are only pockets of greenery here and there, such as in the canyon where some orphaned children have set up a colony of sorts while waiting for Capt. Walker to return.
    And in the fourth episode, ‘Fury Road’, the entire place is barren, with the survivors heading for something they call ‘Sanctuary’, which is probably the last habitable spot on that planet.
    Obviously, that isn’t Earth. It’s probably Ceti Alpha Five which had gone completely to pot by the time Khan and his friends reappeared in ‘Wrath of Khan’, which is simply in another location. In fact, Khan, being the egotistical jerk that he was, probably caused all the trouble in the first place.
    This planet would be the perfect location for a test of this egregious experiment suggested by the study authors, and would cost us nothing but the time it takes to send them there.
    It’s a good solution to this desperate need manifested by these underemployed fribbles who want to meddle with a bountiful little world like ours, unless someone else has a better idea.

    • Sara, I knew George Miller (creator and director of the Mad Max series) from teenage parties we attended together and from University of Sydney days (where he studied medicine and I, geology-geophysics), after his parents moved from Queensland. He was one of the nicest guys around and a girl magnet. Most of the Greek parents would have loved to have had him as a son-in-law. His ideas of Mad Max movies did not come from his later teenage upbringing in the leafy Sydney Eastern Suburbs of Dover Heights and Vaucluse, but from his early days when he lived in Chinchilla (Queensland). The link here explains how George got his ideas for Mad Max.

      • Well, if you ever see him, give him my love. His inspirational take on film (nothing is real) is reflected by Magritte’s surrealist work. All the dystopic movies (which are mere shadows of his creation, including ‘Hunger Games’, Divergent and Purge) have the same thing going – everything has gone sour. Considering the mathematical odds of other Earthlike planets orbiting stars like ours, I figure this is all going on some place else. It’s a progression from a thriving, busy world to sheer devastation and barrenness.


    There are possible military applications of that. link

  18. How about a solar sunshade in space to cool the Earth? That way you wouldn’t have to pollute the Earth’s atmosphere with aerosols to cool things down. You’ll need a pretty big shade.

    You can start on cooling the Earth just as soon as the Earth’s temperature breaks the temperature downtrend the world has been in since the 1930’s. Hint: It has to get at least 0.4C hotter than 2016 in order to break the temperature downtrend. It may be a while before we break it, if at all. So calm down.

    • Yeah that or direct scrubbing of the CO2 which is after all what they are trying to control. Either process running from now until the year 2100 will have a direct effect and you can stop the process when you want. The thing is that most of the CAGW crowd really don’t actually want to achieve the result they want the political change.

    • If you put the shade at the Earth/Sun L1 point it would need to have a diameter of around 187,000 km to completely occult the Earth. Yes, that’s a pretty big shade.

      • !00 % occult is not good!! A solar powered rail-gun (Gerard O’Neill ‘s mass driver) located on the moon could be used to launch sufficient dust to the L1 to cause some dimming, if that was necessary.

      • I certainly HOPE that such a contingency would never be necessary. However, your claim to KNOW it is not necessary is akin to a claim of God-like omniscience. Sorry, but THAT seems a better example of cosmic insanity.

    • Anyone who remembers the last eclipse has noticed how quickly the temperature dropped.
      Blocking the earth from sunlight is dangerous.
      The plants would revolt.
      Ice age here we come.

    • Why you would want to block the whole sun, I have no idea of that thought process as. You just want to block a percentage, you have 80 years remember the warming is 4 degree by year 2100.

  19. “Geoengineering” to “cool” earth will be as successful as “Geoengineering” to “warm” the earth.

    Both Fail.


    • It was Highlander II: The Quickening. Invented a machine to keep the Ozone from depleating and caused a red cloud that blocked out the sunlight.

      Artificially screwing with our atmosphere is a bad idea. Sure. That was just a fictional movie but it shows how stupid people can be. Don’t fix what ain’t broke.

      • “Artificially screwing with our atmosphere is a bad idea.”

        And before any CO2 hating twerp comes along and says something about CO2 being artifical.


        We are just returning MUCH NEEDED but accidentally sequestered carbon back into the Carbon Cycle WHERE IT BELONGS.

        Where all plant life can use it and thus feed and nourish ALL life on this glorious carbon-based organic Earth of ours.

      • You know the funny part is Oxygen is also a pollutant under the strange definition they use. There is also the other perverse way of looking at it, that plants only dump oxygen into the atmosphere so they can respire it back again at night when they can’t photosynthesize. We are stealing the plants nightly oxygen reserves and should be ashamed of ourselves.

        It’s amazing how many stupid social editorials you can build if you have a fertile mind and there is a bucket of cash at coming up with a good story.

  20. Are we not doing this process in urban areas — that occupy around one-third of the land area –? We are injecting pollutants [particulate matter] in to the atmosphere — not CO2 –, which is increasing with the time and intensity of urbanisation. The two critical issues in urbanisation are destruction of green belts and water bodies. All these change the energy balance.

    I published an article “Effect of air pollution on radiation and human comfort over six Indian stations”, Indian J. Met. Geophys. (1974), 25: 441-444.

    Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

    • Yes people = parasites, we don’t have a balance with anything in nature. The problem is any solution requires radical change that most of us cast that problem forward to the next generation.

      • Interesting video RexAlan, but absolutely nothing to do with the statements that Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy was even talking about. How come you trash someone as you did referring to their comment as rubbish and don’t even address the issue they had mentioned?

      • Apologies Earthling2. I took exception to Dr Jeevananda’s assertion that urban areas occupy around one third of the earths land area. Maybe if we include areas under agriculture the one third figure could possibly be correct. That is why I linked to the video to show how little space all the urban areas would take up if they were all combined.

    • I don’t think you meant to imply that urban landscape occupies one-third of the planet, it doesn’t. Our footprint on the planet is much smaller than the eco-psychotics like to imagine.

      • Cities and adjacent suburbs/rural are 1% of the land area globally. Land use change is a further 10%, so 10%-11% is only a 1/3 of the claim that 1/3 of total land surface is touched by humans. This was in a WUWT article just last month. 11% is still significant and adds a fair bit of UHI convection heat, which adds to the LWIR radiation that H2O and CO2 delay, all of which must balance and lose heat (cool) on its way out to space.

  21. We don’t dare try to modify tropical cyclones for fear we’ll make them worse or point them on a course for even more devastation and risk assuming the implied liability that accompanies such unintended consequences, Yet we dare talk about geoengineering the world? Sure.

    • In certain parts, the major source of water is through cyclonic activity. If they are weakened or destroyed the system, precipitation will be severely affected in downwind direction. Because of this reason, I sent a report to AP state government in India to stop cloud seeding practice as the seeding company invariable was seeding such systems only. When we questioned the seeding agency on this at a technical committee meeting, they replied back saying that it is not part of their agreement. With my report, government stopped granting funds for that project. In fact China Olympics, they used this technique to stop rains in the games arena and farmers downwind direction fought with the government..

      Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

    • and how many Gods live inside computers?

      Climate Models are the contemporary ultimate buck-pass.
      All they have actually done is hold some sort of brain-storming session, maybe at a nice hotel owned by Mr Trump, and decided what they imagine is: What sorts of ‘y’ are going happen if we do ‘x’

      Then they program up a computer thus
      10 Print ‘Hello World’
      20 Print ‘If aerosols then less hurricane and more drought’
      30 End

      Right, there’s me set up as a Climate Scientist although admittedly not a ‘distinguished’ one, need to produce a crappy little graph for that. Hang on a mo, watch this space.
      My job’s done, where’s my £60,000 annual salary, Ivory Tower office-space, trips to Paris and solid-gold pension to look forward to?

      Love how the hapless Sahel gets a mention – obviously everyone’s Dream Holiday to go there..
      A long time ago there were semi-nomadic herders, cows, not sheep or goats. Sheep are like goats and will eat anything/everything and came from Syria originally. We can all see what a fertile green idyll that place is nowadays.
      Why don’t Climate Scientists go there for COPs – and admire the lovely forests of Cedar trees?

      The nomadic herders basically followed the sun as it went back and forth across the Equator on an annual basis, leaving a trail of wet weather as it went. This grew grass and the cows ate it.
      Then came the politicians and divided up that part of the world into their sweet little countries – putting up fences and border-posts & controls and armed policeman & soldiers.
      The cow herders couldn’t then ‘follow the sun’ and were stuck on the same old patch of ground which got eaten bare by the cows, until they died, then sheep until they died, then goats until they died and then, surprise surprise, people died.
      And Climate Change did it, but we all (round here at least) knew that.

      Total fools

  22. WE have been doing stratospheric aerosol injections since WWII. Its called aircraft, that leave contrails high in the atmosphere.

    Not chemtrails, contrails.

    It almost certainly has had an effect on global climate, though what that effect is and how great is highly debatable.

      • Remember after Sept 11/11, when the air traffic was shut down over North America for 3 days, that daytime temps were a bit warmer (about 1 degree) and night time temps were lower also about a degree. No effective change over the 24 hour day, but a 2 degree difference between daytime highs and nighttime lows.

        When air traffic is busy as it is now always, then the incoming solar insolation in the daytime is partially reflected as wispy albedo and the nighttime outbound LWIR is partially delayed through the same medium, therefore warming at night. High altitude air traffic may be more potent at a higher altitude just because it is introducing new water vapour residue. It would be good to see more research is this field, because there does seem to be a cause and effect by human activities.

  23. Before they tell us about the predictions their models make they might at least prove that the models are accurate. They haven’t even done that yet.

  24. Exeter at least manages a sensible answer- don’t screw about with geo-engineering because there is zero evidence that the sort of loons who have created today’s fashionable panic have any understanding of what they claim or are doing.
    To be fair, Exeter is no worse than the Looniversity of East Anglia which has just been admonished for making misleading claims to prospective students about the league table excellence of its courses. While of course many of its courses are excellent, the antics of its absurdly named climate department continues to be an embarrassment to any notion of academic integrity.

  25. Bit late in the day for this article to get an airing: Stratopheric Aerosol Geo-engineering (SAG) has been used since the 1970s (possibly before that), & it’s already mucking up the weather; see Geo-engineering Watch. Plus, hving lived under the direct flightpath for Bentwaters I do know the difference between “chem-trails” & con-/vapour trails: the latter never formed dodgy looking cloud cover but disappeared (time taken for this depended on temperatures)

  26. Stupid humans think they can get one over on Mother Nature? This, along with our perceived cleverness in developing artificial intelligence might just be the end of us.

  27. When they say aerosols, they mean sulfate aerosols. Not clouds, which only last for minutes but long-lasting sulfate molecules which can stay up for a year or longer.

    Sulfate aerosols will destroy Ozone if injected into the stratosphere.

    All this effort went into the south pole Ozone Hole, yet these scientists are so obsessed with this idea, that they are perfectly ready to just go up and damage the Ozone layer.

    They are the definition of “mad scientist” and should be locked up as soon as they try anything. There is also a UN Convention signed by all countries that prevent one from even experimenting with this so we can lock them up.

  28. So what about the danger of destroying all means of CO2 production and returning to the days of
    pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels, which are not great enough to provide enough crops for
    the world’s population? If more CO2 is needed, where is it going to come from? Global warmists only worry about too much CO2, never thinking of what will happen if they actually succeed if they remove all or most human CO2 generation. No PLan B, one would say. Not even an acknowledgement that a PLan B is needed.

  29. “Climate change is the greatest threat we face in the 21st century.”

    Geoengineering makes that a true statement. Billions will die.

  30. “Artificially cooling the planet is a ‘risky strategy’”
    Yes. So would be having nuclear armed space stations manned by monkeys to ward off any attacks by space aliens.

    • Good effort Bruce but I don’t really think you can effectively parody something quite this stupid and run always headlong into Poe’s law. Poe likely had climate alarmism is mind when formulating his universal law.

  31. Climate models. The synthetic CDOs of science, creating actual risk out of unfounded certainty heaped upon a whole barrel full of assumptions.

    And yes we keep giving these guys too much money.

    Ive read The Big Short many times and listen to the audio book. Even have the movie. Such a fantastic display of stupidity. More layers than an onion.

  32. The Alarmists love piling Stupid on top of Stupid on top of still more Stupid, hoping we’ll knock down the top layer of Stupid, and dust off our hands and say, “there, that’s done”, not noticing the even bigger, deeper layers of Stupid underneath. It’s really a stupid ploy though on their part.

    • Bruce – you have now put a picture in our minds of a nuclear armed space station manned by a bunch of chimpanzees playing poker with bananas to decide who gets the first go at pressing the big shiny red button. Larson would love it.

  33. Climate “expert”? I guess ‘science’ has neg connotations in the communications fraternity. We have to keep all these lucky-to-be-highschool-science-teachers-in-earlier-generations types (thanks S. McIntyre) from adventures with Geo or any other kind of gerryrigineering the planet. Engineering deals with properly calculated outcomes, not botched SciFifantasy.

    Wasting trillions on computer games is one thing, this is something else! Thank goodness Trump cancelled global warming before they graduated their first geogangreeneering professionals. Once you create a title in wifty-poofty disciplines for someone, idiосу is closer to happening. The momentum of the dead ‘science’ of global warming is entirely due to titles like Chair of Global Climate Alarum, Ministry of Tipping Points and the like, what else can they do? They have mortgages, and children in uniperversity, too.

    • Heh-heh. As a Minnesotan, I have to agree. But SO2 is not a well mixed gas. How would you feel about Qatar using SO2 to lower their local temps (and incidentally global avg T) so as to increase their food security?

  34. Most pitiful side effect of climate hysteria is that it allows any lunacy to be seriously considered, you just have to use code name “climate change fighting”.
    And we had/have/could have
    “dump iron in the ocean”, “dump soot on ice”, “pump ocean water a few km high”, “subsidize rich people sport car”, “reduce population 10x or 100x”, “burn trees instead of coal”, “pay huge money to Indian Moghul so that he buys iron foundries in Europe, close them, and move them to India”, “double electricity rate to pay for bird choppers”, “put dissenting voices in prison, or even kill them”
    And now
    “Let’s replay Krakatoa”

    Some of these lunacies were not just considered, they were even implemented! So you cannot rule out a Krakatoa replay actually be staged.
    Curious thing, to feel like a late day roman, experiencing direct live the fall of once great western civilization, because ruling class have rather make fuss about a quite literally airy matter, than cope with barbarians encroachment.

  35. I wonder if these stupid people gave any thought at all to the billions of tonnes of aerosols that would be needed to make even a pin prick of an effect on the climate, and whether they considered how frequently for the rest of time that the exercise would need to be carried out.

  36. “Geoengineering” is the Warmunist’s straw man. They know it’s a stupid idea, but pretend that it almost might be a reasonable thing to do, if we were desperate enough, but we’re not quite there yet. But unless we act now, and devastate our economies and go back to living in dark, cold, mud huts, we’re doomed, so unless you want geoengineering….
    Plus, it has a side benefit for them. It allows them to use an implied false analogy (as seen above with Mush-for-brains); that we are essentially already geoengineering the planet with our CO2, so whatever possible negative outcomes we see to these geoengineering schemes allows them (the think) to say “yes, exactly, so for the same reasons, we should not “dump” (they love that word) “carbon” into our atmosphere. So it’s a win-win, they think. But they still lose every time.

    • Agriculture and economies are vulnerable to rapid climate change, natural or otherwise. Further, to the extent that geoengineering can be weaponized, it is an issue of national security and therefore of interest to the military.

      So, geoengineering is very likely an area of active classified research. Otherwise, it would be an irresponsible neglect of responsibility. (Not saying that’s impossible.)

  37. The Law of Unintended Consequences has been amply demonstrated in Australia with the introduction of rabbits, the introduction of prickly pear and the introduction of cane toads.

  38. When we’ve killed the last of fur-bearing animals to keep warm in the next ice age as we are forced to used body heat and solar panels for 4 hours of the day to keep warm, we will breathe a prayer of thanks to these tireless minions of AGW who helped save us from a tropical planet full of lush vegetation and happy animals.

  39. Silicate weathering gradually removes CO2 from the atmosphere over billions of years.
    It came close to causing a mass extinction in the last glacial maximum with CO2 levels well below 200ppm.
    Hominid fossil fuel burning is a Gaia response of the biosphere to survive.
    Fossil fuel burning and CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere is the only sensible geo-engineering.
    Attempts to stop it are genocidal.

  40. All we need is some idiot “Frankenstein” climate scientist like Michael Mann or Gavin Schmidt to start messing with the atmosphere and we’re screwed! I pray to God that never happens.

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