“We make reflective, high-altitude, biodegradable clouds that cool the planet. Mimicking natural processes, our ‘shiny clouds’ are going to prevent catastrophic global warming.” — Make Sunset website.

“My prior calculations suggest over one trillion dollars would be needed to create a cooling effect similar to the Mount Pinatubo eruption which cooled the planet for three years.” — John L. Casey, former White House space program adviser, consultant to NASA Headquarters, senior field engineer on the U.S. Space Shuttle program and President of the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC)

Just when you thought that global cooling, then global warming, then climate change myths were done for a reader sends us a link to a company that’s using balloons to launch “reflective sulfur particles” into the stratosphere that “create reflective clouds” and, according to them, cooling global temperatures.

According to GeoEngineering.global,

Stratospheric aerosol injection is a solar radiation management (srm) geoengineering or climate engineering approach that uses tiny reflective particles or aerosols to reflect sunlight into space in order to cool the planet and reverse or stop Global Warming. The approach involves spraying reflective sulfate aerosol particles into the stratosphere with high altitude airplanes, tethered balloons, high-altitude blimps or artillery.

The first person to put forward the idea of human intervention to control “the heat balance of the earth’s surface” was a Russian named Mikhail Ivanovich Budyko in 1974. Together with Academician A. A. Grigor’ev, he formulated the periodic law of geographical zonality. Budyko received the Lenin Prize in 1958 for his work on the heat balance of the earth’s surface. Budyko was also awarded two Soviet orders and various former Soviet Union medals.

The company is named Make Sunsets, no pun intended. Founded in October 2022, Make Sunsets is backed by Boost VC, Pioneer Fund, and “others”, i.e. individual donors.

According to a NOAA chart on global temperatures:

CONTIGUOUS U.S.

Nov [2022] temperature in the contiguous U.S. was below average. Parts of the Pacific Northwest had their coldest Nov in nearly 40 years.

The NOAA chart also stated, “On Nov 27 [2022], Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano erupted for the first time since 1984 and disrupted daily collection for a key 60-year record of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Why fly balloons filled with reflective sulfur particles to cool an already cold America?

This is the key question. Any human intervention, no matter how large or small, intended to change the temperature of the earth is a fool’s errand.

The late Professor Robert M. Carter a former Research Professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia) in a Global Research, November 19th, 2022, article titled Global Warming: Ten Facts and Ten Myths on Climate Change wrote:

Ten Facts about Climate Change

1.     Climate has always changed, and it always will. The assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the Earth had a “stable” climate is simply wrong. The only sensible thing to do about climate change is to prepare for it.

2.    Accurate temperature measurements made from weather balloons and satellites since the late 1950s show no atmospheric warming since 1958.  In contrast, averaged ground-based thermometers record a warming of about 0.4⁰C over the same time period. Many scientists believe that the thermometer record is biased by the Urban Heat Island effect and other artefacts.

3.    Despite the expenditure of more than US$50 billion dollars looking for it since 1990, no unambiguous anthropogenic (human) signal has been identified in the global temperature pattern.

4.    Without the greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature on Earth would be -18⁰C rather than the equable +15⁰C that has nurtured the development of life.

     Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas, responsible for ~26% (8⁰C) of the total greenhouse effect (33⁰C), of which in turn at most 25% (~2⁰C) can be attributed to carbon dioxide contributed by human activity. Water vapour, contributing at least 70% of the effect, is by far the most important atmospheric greenhouse gas.

5.    On both annual (1 year) and geological (up to 100,000 year) time scales, changes in atmospheric temperature PRECEDE changes in CO₂. Carbon dioxide therefore cannot be the primary forcing agent for temperature increase (though increasing CO₂ does cause a diminishingly mild positive temperature feedback).

6.    The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has acted as the main scaremonger for the global warming lobby that led to the Kyoto Protocol. Fatally, the IPCC is a political, not scientific, body.

Hendrik Tennekes, a retired Director of Research at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, says that “the IPCC review process is fatally flawed” and that “the IPCC wilfully ignores the paradigm shift created by the foremost meteorologist of the twentieth century, Edward Lorenz“.

7.    The Kyoto Protocol will cost many trillions of dollars and exercises a significant impost those countries that signed it, but will deliver no significant cooling (less than .02⁰C by 2050, assuming that all commitments are met).

The Russian Academy of Sciences says that Kyoto has no scientific basis; Andre Illarianov, senior advisor to Russian president Putin, calls Kyoto-ism “one of the most agressive, intrusive, destructive ideologies since the collapse of communism and fascism“. If Kyoto was a “first step” then it was in the same wrong direction as the later “Bali roadmap”.

8.    Climate change is a non-linear (chaotic) process, some parts of which are only dimly or not at all understood. No deterministic computer model will ever be able to make an accurate prediction of climate 100 years into the future.

9.    Not surprisingly, therefore, experts in computer modelling agree also that no current (or likely near-future) climate model is able to make accurate predictions of regional climate change.

10.   The biggest untruth about human global warming is the assertion that nearly all scientists agree that it is occurring, and at a dangerous rate.

The reality is that almost every aspect of climate science is the subject of vigorous debate. Further, thousands of qualified scientists worldwide have signed declarations which (i) query the evidence for hypothetical human-caused warming and (ii) support a rational scientific (not emotional) approach to its study within the context of known natural climate change.

LAYING TEN GLOBAL WARMING MYTHS

Myth 1     Average global temperature (AGT) has increased over the last few years. [prior to 2009]

Fact 1       Within error bounds, AGT has not increased since 1995 and has declined since 2002, despite an increase in atmospheric CO₂ of 8% since 1995. 

Myth 2     During the late 20th Century, AGT increased at a dangerously fast rate and reached an unprecedented magnitude.

Facts 2      The late 20th Century AGT rise was at a rate of 1-2⁰C/century, which lies well within natural rates of climate change for the last 10,000 yr. AGT has been several degrees warmer than today many times in the recent geological past. 

Myth 3     AGT was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times, has sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years (the Mann, Bradley & Hughes “hockey stick” curve and its computer extrapolation).

Facts 3      The Mann et al. curve has been exposed as a statistical contrivance. There is no convincing evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in AGT were unusual, nor that dangerous human warming is underway.

Myth 4     Computer models predict that AGT will increase by up to 6⁰C over the next 100 years.

Facts 4      Deterministic computer models do. Other equally valid (empirical) computer models predict cooling. 

Myth 5     Warming of more than 2⁰C will have catastrophic effects on ecosystems and mankind alike.

Facts 5      A 2⁰C change would be well within previous natural bounds. Ecosystems have been adapting to such changes since time immemorial. The result is the process that we call evolution. Mankind can and does adapt to all climate extremes.

Myth 6     Further human addition of CO₂ to the atmosphere will cause dangerous warming, and is generally harmful.

Facts 6      No human-caused warming can yet be detected that is distinct from natural system variation and noise. Any additional human-caused warming which occurs will probably amount to less than 1⁰C. Atmospheric CO₂ is a beneficial fertilizer for plants, including especially cereal crops, and also aids efficient evapo-transpiration. 

Myth 7     Changes in solar activity cannot explain recent changes in AGT.

Facts 7      The sun’s output varies in several ways on many time scales (including the 11-, 22- and 80-year solar cycles), with concomitant effects on Earth’s climate. While changes in visible radiation are small, changes in particle flux and magnetic field are known to exercise a strong climatic effect. More than 50% of the 0.8⁰C rise in AGT observed during the 20th century can be attributed to solar change. 

Myth 8     Unprecedented melting of ice is taking place in both the north and south polar regions.

Facts 8      Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are growing in thickness and cooling at their summit. Sea ice around Antarctica attained a record area in 2007. Temperatures in the Arctic region are just now achieving the levels of natural warmth experienced during the early 1940s, and the region was warmer still (sea-ice free) during earlier times.

Myth 9     Human-caused global warming is causing dangerous global sea-level (SL) rise.

Facts 9      SL change differs from time to time and place to place; between 1955 and 1996, for example, SL at Tuvalu fell by 105 mm (2.5 mm/yr). Global average SL is a statistical measure of no value for environmental planning purposes. A global average SL rise of 1-2 mm/yr occurred naturally over the last 150 years, and shows no sign of human-influenced increase. 

Myth 10   The late 20th Century increase in AGT caused an increase in the number of severe storms (cyclones), or in storm intensity.

Facts 10    Meteorological experts are agreed that no increase in storms has occurred beyond that associated with natural variation of the climate system.

So, who do you believe? Professor Robert M. Carter or those who launched Make Sunsets?

NOTE: We have reached out to Make Sunsets and will post their reply to this column when it is received.

We report. You decided.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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