One should not rule out Russia and China, either as the first ones to conduct global geoengineering experiments. The Russians were the first to propose large scale climate engineering and the Chinese have actively tried to alter the weather and land near Beijing with cloud seeding and large scale tree planting, in an attempt to hold back the Gobi Desert. The cloud seeding has been futile; the jury is still out on the tree planting.
As still largely unaccountable authoritarian regimes, and in the case of China with lots of mouths to feed, their leaders may also be eyeing geoengineering as an option. And oh yes, let’s not forget the EU, perhaps more than a little bit chastened by their Kyoto experience. So while the list of countries that could carry out large-scale geoengineering experiments is short, the U.S. is not the only one, just the most likely.
Finally, as to whether the U.S. dominates the world in technical fix-it people, here is a list of the names and countries of origin and current nations of people proposing geoengineering strategies that have recently been quoted in scientific journals, newspaper articles and on radio programs. This list probably also represents 50% of everyone working on geoengineering. The median age of these people is also around 65, not exactly what you would want for a 21st century Manhattan Project. Ten years from now, I predict this list will be several pages long, the median age will be 35 and most of the names will not come from the U.S., irrespective of their country of birth.
Birth Country Now Residing
Paul Crutzen Netherlands Germany
Tom Wigley Australia United States
Stephen Salter Great Britain Great Britain
John Latham Great Britain United States
Roger Angel Great Britain United States
Alvia Gaskill United States United States
Charles Reese United States United States
Klaus Lackner Germany United States
Ken Caldeira United States United States
Michael MacCracken United States United States
David Keith United States Canada
Lowell Wood United States United States
Things Unsaid
I was cutoff in the middle of a sentence during the segment, but I was given 8 minutes, a long time in radio. What I was going to say concerned how the plastic or whatever material it would be made of could be used to reduce Atlantic hurricanes.
The producers had asked me to be prepared to talk about how regional alteration of land albedo could be used in the Canadian Arctic to help refreeze the summer ice, an example of how expected regional climate change would not necessarily always be bad. I did manage to get that in.
The hurricane creation theory comes out of the University of Miami with the solution from us (15). It involves cutting off the water for the Cape Verde Hurricanes (not a minor league football team with financial problems). Due to the size of the dust particles in the air above the Sahara Desert and the Sahel, raindrops cannot form and the air becomes supersaturated with water.
Winds then blow this supersaturated air westward. When it enters the Atlantic near the Cape Verde islands, it provides some of the energy for tropical waves to develop into a hurricane.
Cover up that area where the supersaturated air forms and (a) it will rain in that area, relieving drought problems and (b) the number of Cape Verde storms will be reduced, since fewer of the waves will enter the Atlantic with enough energy to continue development.
More recently, studies also indicate that too much Saharan dust blown into the Atlantic can disrupt hurricanes and shift the storm tracks toward the U.S. (16, 17). A lot more research needs to be done to determine the exact relationship between the African dust and hurricanes, but a man-made cover can probably be used to stabilize the soil in the Sahel that is the source of the precipitation inhibiting dust much faster than re-vegetation strategies now being considered.
