GEOENGINEERINGRecent Hurricanes and Geoengineering
The recent back-to-back hurricanes that made landfall in the United States have sparked conspiracy theories about the government creating these disasters through geoengineering. While such theories are false, they have drawn attention to the risky idea of geoengineering, which typically refers to the large-scale, intentional manipulation of the earth’s processes to modify weather.
The recent back-to-back hurricanes that made landfall in the United States—Hurricane Helene on September 26 and Hurricane Milton on October 9—have sparked conspiracy theories about the government creating these disasters through geoengineering.
While such theories are false, they have drawn attention to the risky idea of geoengineering, which typically refers to the large-scale, intentional manipulation of the earth’s processes to modify weather.
While both hurricanes wrought enormous damage in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, there is no evidence that points toward any government, or other entity, being involved in their creation.
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“The spread of misinformation about government involvement in disasters has become something of a trend lately.”
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The spread of misinformation about government involvement in disasters has become something of a trend lately. False allegations about its hurricane response efforts prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to create a Hurricane Rumor Response web page this month.
Conspiracy theories about geoengineering may have resulted from confusion about the government’s history of involvement in research on cloud seeding, a practice that commonly involves dispersing substances into the air to promote precipitation.
The U.S. government, including the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, experimented on and off with cloud seeding beginning in 1947 with the aim of diminishing hurricanes and other weather events. Many of these initial tests were disrupted by controversy over the risk that a hurricane would inadvertently or intentionally be steered onto land.
After research on cloud seeding came up inconclusive in the 1970s, the attention of scientists was largely redirected toward better understanding hurricanes to improve forecasting and mitigate damage to coastal regions. Still, some research is continuing, including that being conducted by a Japanese research team that hopes to find ways to weaken dangerous typhoons—what hurricanes are called in the western North Pacific.
While the United States, China, and the British government have experimented with weather modification, even considering military applications, the 1977 U.N. Environmental Modification Treaty banned all hostile use of environmental modification. Currently, some nonhostile weather-modification efforts persist, particularly in China where cloud seeding reportedly has been used to protect agriculture and modify weather in advance of public events, including the 2008 Olympics.
Studied approaches to geoengineering vary widely and include stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, large-scale reforestation, and direct air carbon capture and storage. Most of these technologies are in their infancy and have yet to be scaled or adopted by a major global actor.
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“While the conspiracy theories about the recent hurricanes are false, they do point to the open risk that geoengineering still poses.”
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Real environmental risks from the secondary effects of geoengineering include:
· Stratospheric aerosol injection: changes in regional precipitation patterns, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, and dangerous rebound effect if geoengineering is stopped
· Marine cloud brightening: changes in regional precipitation patterns and dangerous rebound effect if geoengineering is stopped
· Large-scale reforestation: risk of water pollution and nutrient runoff, ecosystem disruption
· Direct air carbon capture and storage: large energy and water demands, potential toxic chemicals.
Geopolitical risks associated with implementing geoengineering include tensions over setting the optimal climate state, disagreement between states on whether to implement or not, territorial disputes related to large-scale land or resource needs, and using geoengineering as a scapegoat to blame adversaries for other environmental misfortunes.
There are international legal mechanisms in place that partially address risks of geoengineering, including the Environmental Modification Treaty and the Convention on Biological Diversity, but none have fully addressed the known environmental and geopolitical risk of geoengineering.
While the conspiracy theories about the recent hurricanes are false, they do point to the open risk that geoengineering still poses.
Emmi Yonekura is a physical scientist at RAND and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. This article is published courtesy of RAND.