Page 273 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

thick toxic clouds of smoke (266). The petroleum device was not unlike Irving
Langmuir and Vincent Schaefer’s smoke screen generator of World War II.
Ground-based solar radiation measurements then showed what everyone already
knows—a thick cloud obscures the Sun: “Possible changes in the irradiance are
estimated in this case rather approximately. The irradiance reduction in this case
was about 28%” (269). Note the experimenters’ use of the terms “possible” and
“approximately”; a reduction of sunlight of 28 percent, sustained globally, would
devastate life on Earth. Another experimental trial also yielded inconclusive
results. Cloudy weather with sky clearing made it difficult for the researchers to
detect a “possible change in the solar radiation caused by the artificial aerosol
sample passing over the instrument complex against the background of natural
changes” (269). Nevertheless, for this team, inconclusive small-scale experiments
near the ground were seemingly a sufficient proof of concept: “Based on the
experimental results obtained in our work, it is shown how it is principally pos-
sible to control solar radiation passing through artificially created aerosol forma-
tions in the atmosphere with different optical thickness” (272). We can only hope
these Russian experimenters are not in charge of managing solar radiation for
the globe.
An editorial cartoonist for the New York Times captured the essence (and
the absurdity) of one of the proposed techniques (figure 8.3). Two overheated
polar bears are feverishly trying to pump sulfur into the air, but they seem to
be having trouble keeping their hose erect, especially if their ice floe shrinks
any further. And whose warships are those in the distance? Do they carry
Frosch/Crutzen sulfate cannons, or are they trying to stop the geoengineering?
Russian opinion has long favored an open Arctic ocean, and some scientists,
including Budyko, believe that the beneficial effects of global warming might
“pep up” cold regions and allow more grain and potatoes to be grown, making
the country wealthier. Better check with Vladimir Putin before we screw
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(with) the Arctic.
Naval artillery is only one of the many “manly” ways to declare “war” on
global warming by using military equipment. The cartoon alludes to a proposal
by Edward Teller’s protégé Lowell Wood to attach a long hose to a nonexistent
but futuristic military High Altitude Airship (a Lockheed-Martin–Defense
Department stratospheric super blimp now on the drawing board with some
twenty-five times the volume of the Goodyear blimp) to “pump” reflective par-
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ticles into the stratosphere. According to Wood, “Pipe it up; spray it out!”
Wood has worked out many of the details—except for high winds, icing, and
accidents, since the HAAs are likely to wander as much as 100 miles from

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