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geoengineering
Helene and Milton Conspiracy Theories Have Roots in the Real Plot Against Nature
The modern state’s drive to dominate the environment and its rich history of accumulation by dispossession are the prototypes and contexts for ideas that the U.S. government can control hurricanes.
Oct 21, 2024
The recent natural disasters caused by the Helene and Milton tropical cyclones in the Southern U.S. have triggered unfounded and ill-informed conspiracies about the origin of the disasters and the government’s involvement in weather modification. Despite being based on ill-informed claims that defy common sense, these conspiracies have historical contexts.
In a broader sense, the modern state’s drive to dominate nature and its rich history of accumulation by dispossession are the prototypes and contexts for such conspiracies. Environmental conspiracies have long been an integral part of the larger conspiracy against nature, which treat nature as a cornucopia of resources external to human identity and society that must be dominated to maximize its utility.
Environmental conspiracies have long served the interests of power structures, enabling them to control people and societies by dominating nature. These false claims have significantly shaped modern Western techno-bureaucratic approaches to nature and the environment. Interestingly, many of the dominant misguided claims were not propagated by ordinary people but by epistemic circles within the state apparatus, including scientists, ecologists, geographers, and naturalists who were and are part of the bureaucratic and technical machinery of the colonial or neocolonial states.
The rhetoric and discourse about the “brutality,” “ferocity,” or “violence,” of nature imply the pressing necessity for the state to manage, regulate, and exert control over nature and natural processes.
One of the conspiracy theories surrounding recent natural disasters involves the alleged involvement of the U.S. federal government in controlling and harnessing these disasters for political and economic ends. Although this claim that the Biden administration has manipulated Hurricane Milton is ludicrous, the desire to exert control over nature and natural processes has long been the inspiration of the modern state and its techno-bureaucratic machinery, at least since the European Enlightenment. From the colonial state manipulating and altering ecological landscapes, socio-ecological practices, and dismantling traditional knowledge sources, to current efforts to manipulate and control planetary processes through techno-bureaucratic techniques, such as geoengineering and planetary management, the domination and control of nature have remained an active pursuit within the state’s or state-supported technocratic and epistemic circles. Control over nature is part of the rationalizing and moralizing mandate of the modern state.
Embedded in the works of influential Enlightenment thinkers was establishing mastery over nature. This maxim provided a clear intellectual foundation for the systematic and cumulative progression in the understanding of nature through the means and tools of natural sciences within the epistemological fabrics of empiricism. Francis Bacon, an early Enlightenment philosopher, advocated for scientists to meticulously observe and accurately measure natural processes to gain mastery over them. He also proposed that the government should financially support these scientific pursuits to achieve such mastery. Consequently, in tandem with the progress in natural science, Western colonial and post-colonial states financed and endorsed scientific, and at times pseudo-scientific, undertakings to exert dominance over nature.
Colonial Fabrications
Although Bacon proposed a methodical approach to gathering evidence, involving a continuous interaction between theory and evidence, in the colonies, the European colonial states couldn’t afford to postpone their loot and plunder for the sake of a time-consuming scientific process or exert their power over nature and people. Instead, they resorted to ecological conspiracies and ill-informed theories to justify and rationalize their socio-ecological intervention and domination.
During colonial rule in al-Maghrib, French colonial ecologists expounded ecological conspiracies that gained widespread acceptance as scientific facts, even to an extent today. Drawing on biblical narratives, they claimed that the Sahara Desert had once been a fertile and lush geography that had served as the Roman Empire’s granary. They further doubled down on the conspiracy and blamed the native people’s social and ecological practices for transforming the once lush region into the arid Sahara. Scientifically, there is no evidence suggesting that the Sahara Desert was green during the Roman Empire. Contrary to the colonial ecologists’ claim, recent scientific evidence indicates that the Saharan region was just as arid and harsh at the end of the last Ice Age as it is today.
India essentially served as a testing ground for British colonial “experts” to validate and perpetuate their ecological conspiracies and schemes and violence against nature.
The environmental conspiracy provided a convenient excuse for colonial powers to justify their oppression and domination by blaming the natives for an imagined ecological catastrophe. It also justified European dominance and invasions by claiming a historical responsibility to restore the Sahara to its original fertile state, which they portrayed as a region that could once again supply Europe with agricultural goods. This justification not only upheld European colonial control but also moralized and materialized their plunders by dispossessing Indigenous people of their lands and resources.
In South Asia, the colonial administrators, experts, and operatives faced the challenge of dealing with unpredictable rivers, especially those originating from the Himalayas. They devised environmental conspiracies that long served as scientific claims. In Northern India, facing persistent failure to contain and control the flow of the Indus and other mighty rivers for centralizing irrigation practices, British colonial experts wrongly attributed the frequent destructive floods in the upper Indus Valley to the obstruction of the rivers by glaciers in their upper regions. Lacking evidence, they based their speculative scientific claims on their knowledge of European rivers.
Environmental conspiracies by the colonial British in India were mostly due to the unscientific socialization of colonial experts. Many of these experts, such as ecologists, hydro- and civil- engineers, and geographers, were not trained as scientists but rather as soldiers, military officers, or colonial operatives. Their roles as scientists in India were more out of necessity, primarily driven by the need to assert control over nature by manipulating socio-ecological practices to maximize economic plunder. As a result, these colonial agents engaged in extensive and unregulated ecological experimentation, which resulted in numerous human tragedies such as floods, famines, and diseases. India essentially served as a testing ground for British colonial “experts” to validate and perpetuate their ecological conspiracies and schemes and violence against nature.
U.S. Misinformation
Environmental conspiracies and conspiracies against nature for ecological and social exploitation were not confined to 19th-century European colonial powers; similar ideas flourished in the United States as well. James Espy, the first official American meteorologist, lobbied Congress for funding to burn forests of Appalachia in hopes of inducing rain. A storm enthusiast, much like today’s amateur storm chasers, Espy initially worked as a schoolteacher before he devoted himself to studying storms. He believed that burning forests could trigger rain.
Although Congress ultimately declined to back Espy’s proposal, it did allocate funds for Robert Dyrenforth’s rain theory. In the late 19th century, the Senate approved funding for Dyrenforth, a former Civil War general and an engineer by profession, who proposed that creating loud noises through explosives in the atmosphere could agitate clouds and cause them to release rain. Drawn from his experiences during the war, Dyrenforth’s idea was a bold attempt to manipulate weather patterns.
After his experiment of tossing dry ice into the cloud at the Schenectady airport in New York caused a cloud to dissipate and turn into rain, Irving announced in joy that mankind finally learned how to control the weather.
In the summer of 1891, Dyrenforth and his team of rainmaking enthusiasts, which included a meteorologist from the Smithsonian Institute and a college professor, embarked on a series of experiments by waging several attacks against the atmosphere. They launched an all-out assault on the sky detonating blasting dynamite, firing mortar shells, igniting smoke bombs, flying electrified kites, setting off oxy-hydrogen balloons, and even unleashing a spectacular array of fireworks. The intention was to manipulate the natural process of rainmaking.
Controlling the atmospheric dynamics in the United States has not been the hobby or fixation of weather enthusiasts. Scientists equally contributed to the fascination of dominating and controlling the atmosphere. During the initial years of the Cold War, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and chemist Irving Langmuir claimed to have developed a method of harnessing and controlling hurricanes. After his experiment of tossing dry ice into the cloud at the Schenectady airport in New York caused a cloud to dissipate and turn into rain, Irving announced in joy that mankind finally learned how to control the weather. Around this time, weather manipulation became a strategic goal during the Cold War. The political and geopolitical landscape of the era compelled the two superpowers to engage scientists and harness scientific advancements to manipulate weather and nature for their strategic objectives and goals.
Against Nature
These examples could easily, and also rightly, be viewed as anecdotal. However, beyond these specific instances, there exists a common and overarching ontological premise that has led to various scientific and pseudo-scientific experiments. Moreover, this premise also influences popular environmental conspiracies and techno-bureaucratic/epistemic conspiracies against nature. The premise is the aspiration to dominate nature. Although Irving was indeed a bright scientist, the setting of his experiment parallels those of colonial scientists—or so-called scientists—active in regions like al-Maghrib and South Asia. They all sought to assert control over natural processes. In the 21st century, amid ongoing ecological crises, this mission has broadened its scope to include the manipulation and management of global planetary systems and processes.
The enabling context for popular environmental conspiracies, such as those that emerged following the two tropical cyclones in the southern United States, is an overarching reductionist, simplistic, and anthropocentric understanding of nature. It isn’t, however, an outlook born from the minds of everyday individuals; rather, it reflects a deeper understanding of modern civilization rooted in the logic of the modern state, influenced by Enlightenment ideals. It is further implemented through the techno-bureaucratic apparatus of the state that aims to realize the state’s legal and moral duty of monopolizing violence, whether caused by humans or nature. The rhetoric and discourse about the “brutality,” “ferocity,” or “violence,” of nature imply the pressing necessity for the state to manage, regulate, and exert control over nature and natural processes.
Nature is not an external entity out there to be controlled and dominated. On the contrary, it is a complicated self-regulating and self-perpetuating collection of processes, elements, and mechanisms, where humans are as much a part of it as non-human living and non-living elements. Although contemporary humans, through their advanced material-technological culture, can manipulate various aspects of nature, we—along with our political and social structures, including the state—often struggle to predict or design the outcomes of such interventions.
Nature is an agent of its own. It can reset the disruptions and offsets caused by humans. How this happens remains a mystery. Although we can understand its processes to some extent, the reactions and resetting mechanisms are ultimately unknown. This highlights an important lesson for modern humanity, especially for the power structures: Rather than trying to manage, regulate, or control the planetary processes, we must focus on minimizing our footprints and encroachment into the boundaries of nature now more than ever.
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The Dangerous Politics of Climate Engineering
The idea that humans can manipulate the Earth to reduce the risks of climate change relies on and perpetuates a futile sense of human control and domination over our planet.
Jul 21, 2024
Climate scientists around the world are now projecting warming of at least 2.5°C within this century. As U.S. and other wealthy governments fail to phase out fossil fuels, investments in climate engineering—technological interventions to manipulate the climate—have been increasing.
We’re seeing this play out in real time in Massachusetts. This August, a team of researchers plans to dump 6,600 gallons of sodium hydroxide into ocean waters just south of Martha’s Vineyard. Next summer, they intend to dump a staggering 66,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine. They call it the “LOC-NESS” experiment, and it’s intended to test a new geoengineering technique called “ocean alkalinity enhancement.” They plan to make ocean waters less acidic, causing them to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They hope if alkaline substances were dumped at truly massive scales it could offset a portion of human caused emissions.
There are many serious concerns with manipulating the ocean environment in an attempt to address climate change. Sodium hydroxide is a dangerous substance that causes chemical burns on contact with humans or marine life. The dumping locations are home to at least eight endangered species, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. This experiment will alter the ocean environment, creating new risks to many already threatened marine species.
Rather than supporting manipulations of Earth’s systems, humanity needs to deploy existing solutions that center ecological integrity, environmental justice, and human rights.
Dozens of reputable studies also cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of ocean alkalinity enhancement. At least two gigatons of alkaline material would have to be dumped continuously by every bulk carrier and cargo ship in the world in order to capture only 4% of current CO2 emissions. Additionally, mining on the scale the project requires, as well as transporting the mined materials to ships for dumping, likely causes more greenhouse gasses to be emitted than it removes from the atmosphere after it’s dumped in the ocean.
The idea that humans can manipulate the Earth to reduce the risks of climate change relies on and perpetuates a futile sense of human control and domination over our planet. This false sense of control emerges directly from the technological optimism of billionaires who are enthusiastically advocating for more geoengineering research, like those funding the LOC-NESS project. In addition to wasting money that could instead be used to fund wind and solar projects already proven to reduce emissions, climate engineering diverts attention away from the equitable phaseout of fossil fuels that is urgently needed to avoid further climate catastrophe.
The scientists involved in the LOC-NESS experiment say they are not advocating for immediate deployment of marine geoengineering—just to develop the technologies and information that society may need in the future if we do decide to geoengineer. However, the history of multiple technological advances shows that after a technology is developed, the scientists involved lose control over what happens next. This disconnect is clearly demonstrated in the film Oppenheimer, when the U.S. military comes to transport the nuclear bomb away from Los Alamos. In a telling moment, Oppenheimer asks to be kept up-to-date about when the technology will be used. The military general responds with a clear message—the job of the Los Alamos scientists is done and they will no longer be involved. As the saying goes, history tends to repeat itself.
Despite the powerful influence of those advocating for climate engineering, concerned citizens around the world are mobilizing against it. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has established an effective moratorium on geoengineering, making exceptions only for small-scale research projects conducted in a controlled environment—which the LOC-NESS experiment is not. Indigenous People in particular have led resistance to many geoengineering experiments, which frequently target Indigenous lands for deployment.
Rather than supporting manipulations of Earth’s systems, humanity needs to deploy existing solutions that center ecological integrity, environmental justice, and human rights. Recognizing that climate chaos is a symptom, and not the core problem, is essential for effective transformative change. We must oppose projects like LOC-NESS and focus on guiding our world toward a healthy, just, and sustainable future.
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False Climate Solution of Geoengineering Could Cause Heatwaves Thousands of Miles Away
"We need more regional geoengineering modeling studies like this work to characterize these unintended side effects before they have a chance to play out in the real world," said the study's lead author.
Jun 21, 2024
A study published Friday found that a cloud engineering technique designed to cool parts of the western United States could inadvertently stoke heatwaves from North America to Europe, underscoring why many scientists reject geoengineering as a false climate solution.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, concludes that marine cloud brightening (MCB)—"a geoengineering proposal to cool atmospheric temperatures and reduce climate change impacts"—in the "remote mid-latitudes or proximate subtropics" of the northern Pacific Ocean—would decrease "the relative risk of dangerous summer heat exposure by 55% and 16%, respectively."
However, the researchers found that regions including Africa's Sahel, central North America, Europe, and northeastern Asia would "experience exacerbated heat stress and hotter summers with MCB than would otherwise occur under global warming."
Additionally, the study shows that MCB would be less effective over time and could "even increase heat stress in the western United States" and beyond by mid-century.
University of California San Diego researcher Jessica Wan, who led the study, toldThe Guardian that MCB "can be very effective for the U.S. West Coast if done now, but it may be ineffective there in the future and could cause heatwaves in Europe."
The study's authors said the paper's findings are especially troubling given the dearth of international MCB regulation.
"There is really no solar geoengineering governance right now. That is scary," said Wan. "Science and policy need to be developed together. We don't want to be in a situation where one region is forced to do geoengineering to combat what another part of the world has done to respond to droughts and heatwaves."
As New Scientistreported:
The MCB experiments that have taken place so far in Australia and California haven't been of a sufficiently large scale to cause detectable climate effects, but they suggest that regional geoengineering could be closer to reality than previously thought, says Wan. "We need more regional geoengineering modeling studies like this work to characterize these unintended side effects before they have a chance to play out in the real world."
In Australia, researchers are experimenting with geoengineering techniques in an effort to cool the Great Barrier Reef and decelerate its bleaching. In California, scientists from the University of Washington sprayed sea salt flecks over a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the San Francisco Bay in hushed testing that was halted by the city of Alameda last month over safety concerns.
"We strongly welcome Alameda City Council's unanimous decision to say no to the first open-air marine cloud brightening experiment in the U.S.," Mary Church of the Center for International Environmental Law said after the halt. "Key concerns raised by council members focused on lack of sufficient information, notice, and transparency. The rejection rightfully reflects the gravity of what's at stake for both local and global communities."
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