Climate of the third millennium: sun, air, mosquitoes
From Edward Lorenz to Ray Bradbury
The term "butterfly effect" itself refers to the property of some systems, with a slight influence on them, to lead to unpredictable consequences even in a completely different place. The concept of the butterfly effect was first introduced by the American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1961.
He believed that a butterfly flapping its wings in Iowa could cause an avalanche of effects that could culminate in Indonesia. Most likely, Lorenz used the phrase "butterfly effect", recalling Ray Bradbury's short story "Thunder Came" (1952), in which the death of a butterfly in the distant past changes the world of the future.
The effect is well illustrated by the English rhyme “The Nail and the Horseshoe”, which we know in the translation of Samuil Marshak: “There was no nail - the horseshoe was gone. There was no horseshoe - the horse was lame. As a result, the commander was killed and the army was defeated. In short, "the enemy enters the city, not sparing the prisoners, because there was no nail in the forge."
But are scientists always afraid that their experiment will lead to a “butterfly effect”? To begin with, let's consider such a global idea as an attempt to close the Earth from the supposedly sizzling rays of the Sun.
Operation Stolen Sun
There are many ideas on how to fight global warming. The matter is not limited to limiting greenhouse gas emissions and paying for such emissions (we talked about this in the previous article - HYPER). In this case, there is today such a direction of scientific developments as solar geoengineering.
Its essence is to spray some small particles in the atmosphere, which will envelop the planet in a continuous veil and reflect sunlight. The idea was not born in a vacuum. In the Philippines in 1991, the Pinatubo volcano woke up, and climatologists recorded a cooling around the world by an average of half a degree Celsius.
This is what led scientists to think about how to cool the Earth. And so, two professors at Harvard University, Frank Koicha and David Keith, proposed spraying particles in the stratosphere that would reflect a lot of sunlight and prevent it from reaching the Earth's surface. As a result, the sun will heat the Earth less.
This is how we beat global warming! Bill Gates began to sponsor the project "stratospheric aerosol injection" - in English SCoPEx (Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment). Interestingly, the experiment was originally supposed to take place in the New Mexico desert in the southwestern United States in early 2019.
Then they decided to conduct the experiment in June 2021 in Sweden. But already in February, Swedish environmental organizations and the Council of the Indigenous Sami sent an open letter to the government, urging them to postpone the experiments. Then the Harvard Committee - the group of nine experts who decided whether the test would be carried out in Sweden - announced that the backlash had put the project on hold pending "further discussion with the Swedish public."
But in the meantime, Make Sunsets, a fledgling company founded in October 2022, has field-tested a similar technology in Mexico without prior notice or consent from the country's government. The Secretariat for the Protection of the Environment and Natural Resources of Mexico announced a ban on solar geoengineering experiments "to protect society and the environment."
Currently, there are no international agreements regulating or controlling the conduct of such risky projects. But is this a guarantee that no one will dare to spray something over the Earth, covering the Sun with clouds of dust?
Make Sunsets has already said it would be "particularly excited to work with island nations threatened by climate change."
It should be noted that the Stolen Sun project became popular precisely because it was supported by Bill Gates. As Newsweek pointed out, the financial participation of the founder of Microsoft in the project has been confirmed since November 2018. Nature magazine reported in 2018 that Professor Keith had received $12 million at the time "mostly from philanthropic sources like Gates."
What are the opponents of the project concerned about?
Why is it wrong to steal the Sun from people?
A number of scientists are concerned about the so-called "shock wave boundary" (termination shock). Indeed, to maintain low temperatures on Earth, it is necessary to endlessly update and supplement reflective particles. If you suddenly stop doing this, it can lead to very sharp warming. Raymond Pierumbert, a physicist at the University of Oxford, argues that solar geoengineering is too risky even for research outside of computer simulations.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), has prepared a report on this issue. It states that "uniform or tropical spraying of stratospheric sulfate weakens the African and Asian summer monsoons and leads to the drying up of the Amazon."
Climatologists explained that, in general, at the global level, a decrease in temperature will lead to a slowdown in the water cycle in nature and a decrease in average rainfall. But this is in general, and if you look at each region separately, then the consequences there can be very different. Somewhere there will be less rain, and droughts and crop failures will begin, and for example, in the middle latitudes, soil moisture will, on the contrary, increase.
Scientists also have a strong suspicion that solar geoengineers will spray for a while and quit. And this can lead to much more dramatic warming and increased rainfall than is currently observed. Moreover, artificial darkening of the Sun does not solve the problem at the root: the accumulation of carbon dioxide will not end there, we will just sit in a dark greenhouse.
In the most hyped "green" blockbuster, "Snowpiercer", the spraying of a chemical into the atmosphere led to global cooling. The entire planet plunged into the Ice Age with temperatures down to -120 ºС. The remnants of humanity live on a constantly moving train capable of maintaining a normal temperature inside.
So, you think, all's well that ends well. These experiments are over. But it was not there.
The US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) recently published a new report calling for the US government to spend at least $100 million to study solar geoengineering as one of the areas of science that is still too little explored.
So the “butterfly effect” from the Stolen Sun project may still happen.
But Bill Gates already has a lot of projects. In addition to the Stolen Sun, there is also a mosquito extermination project - something like Chinese sparrow shooting. The project is so interesting that, in my opinion, it is quite worthy of a separate publication - from the series “Weapon XNUMXst century".
Say the amount in words
And here we just have to find out how much money is spent on various kinds of “climate projects?
Do not hesitate - a little less than the war. According to the Report of the UNFCCC Finance Committee (2018), the flow of climate finance in 2015 amounted to $29,9 billion, and in 2016 increased to $33,6 billion.
Multilateral development bank funds amounted to $17,4 billion and $19,7 billion, and private funds mobilized through these banks were $10,9 billion and $15,7 billion, in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Including other channels, including multilateral climate funds, climate finance in 2015 and 2016 amounted to $70,3 billion and $74,5 billion, and by 2020 almost reached $100 billion.
The UN indicates that the estimated annual financial needs will be 160-340 billion US dollars by 2030. Not a bad amount. It will be divided into funding for various projects. It will probably include GMO mosquitoes and Stolen Sun.
So Mr. Gates will definitely return and even increase his previously spent millions and billions ...
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