7.17.2013

The Evolution From Cloud Seeding to Weather Modification to Solar Radiation Management

Solar Radiation Management[?] in the skies above Rachel Nev.

As Earth continues to warm and growing human populations continue to expand demands upon the Earth's limited resources increasing extractive and industrial pollutants throughout the biosphere more and more life forms, including humans, will be driven toward extinction. It follows that someday relatively soon natural resource wars will dominate the planet. Certainly the Military Industrial Complex [MIC] knows that in the context of global warfare military use of environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) constitute the ultimate weapon.

This isn't news or speculation, the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report said back in 1996, "Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence  purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog, and storms on earth or to modify space weather, … and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of technologies which can provide substantial increase in US, or degraded capability in an adversary, to achieve global awareness, reach, and power."

While there is no firm evidence that the US Air Force is using environmental modification techniques deliberately to modify weather patterns, one would expect that if these capabilities are being developed for military use, they would at least be the object of routine testing, much in the same way as the testing of new conventional and strategic weapons systems.

What started nearly 100 years ago with the earliest cloud seeding experiments has developed into a wide range of technologies as different eras have presented different challenges. The last few Mud Reports have concentrated on global warming, regardless of its causes, as the main driver of our current era's extreme weather events. Understanding this full well, research by the military and corporations has concentrated on 'getting ahead of  curve'. Consequently Solar Radiation Management [SRM], Stratospheric Aerosols, Geo-Engineering, Climate Engineering have all evolved as offshoots of cloud seeding research and development throughout the decades.

In 1990 the idea of spraying aluminum oxide from jet aircraft was patented by Hughes Aircraft. The plan proposed to seed the metallic particles was to add the tiny particles to the fuel of jet airliners, so that the particles would be emitted from the jet engine exhaust while the airliner was at its cruising altitude.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION: Patent #5003186
A method is disclosed for reducing atmospheric warming due to the greenhouse effect resulting from a greenhouse gases layer. The method comprises the step of seeding the greenhouse gas layer with a quantity of tiny particles of materials characterized by wavelength-dependent emissivity or reflectivity, in that said materials have high emissivities in the visible and far infrared wavelength regions and low emissivity in the near infrared wavelength region. Such materials can include the class of materials known as Welsbach materials. The oxides of metal, e.g., aluminum oxide, are also suitable for the purpose. The greenhouse gases layer typically extends between about seven and thirteen kilometers above the earth's surface. The seeding of the stratosphere occurs within this layer. The particles suspended in the stratosphere as a result of the seeding provide a mechanism for converting the blackbody radiation emitted by the earth at near infrared wavelengths into radiation in the visible and far infrared wavelength so that this heat energy may be reradiated out into space, thereby reducing the global warming due to the greenhouse effect."

This seems to be the first published geo-engineering project and it was only a short time later in the 1990s that talk radio host Art Bell started talking about the curiously long lasting lines in the sky above his hideout in Rachel Nev. [see photo above]. and the whole chemtrails controversy exploded into the pejorative name calling fiasco it is now. Calling the now widely documented phenomenon Solar Radiation Management [SRM], Stratospheric Aerosols, Geo-Engineering or Climate Engineering instead of chemtrails allows the debate about it to get beyond the knee jerk conspiracy theory name calling and lets it move back onto weather manipulation and environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) issue where it belongs.

It seems obvious [IMO] that the US military and its NATO allies are worried about global warming's strategic danger and are researching if not already taking action to mitigate the risks. All of these topics are highly controversial, most folks knowing how the long list of disaster caused by the hubris of scientists rightly fear all types of the potentially destructive global geo-engineering schemes. Writing about these covert schemes usually leads to ridicule, but that's what The Mud Report will do tomorrow.