The USS Hornet may be a decommissioned aircraft carrier, yet it has nevertheless become the launch site for a controversial new war in the skies.
The Marine Cloud Brightening Program’s Coastal Atmospheric Aerosol Research and Engagement project, led by researchers from the University of Washington, took to the deck of the Hornet Tuesday to launch streams of particles into the sky above the San Francisco Bay.
Their ultimate objective is apparently to block and reflect sunlight in hopes of limiting “global warming.” CAARE researchers behind the geoengineering scheme opted not to announce their experiment, reportedly citing concerns that there might be significant backlash.
After all, the American public — or at the very least, the residents of Alameda — might first want to hear from the hundreds of scientists who have called for a non-use agreement for solar radiation management and stated in an open letter that the “risks of solar geoengineering are poorly understood and can never be fully known.
Impacts will vary across regions, and there are uncertainties about the effects on weather patterns, agriculture, and the provision of basic food and water needs.” Clouds bounce some of the sun’s rays back into space, supposedly helping cool temperatures locally.
The University of Washington’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences conceded that fossil fuel emissions and other human activities have long generated aerosols in the atmosphere that mix in with low-altitude clouds, causing them to brighten and reflect more sunlight, cooling the earth’s climate.
“I think most people are aware that there’s a greenhouse gas effect that warms climate,” UW MCB program director Sarah Doherty told the Weather Channel.
“But what most people aren’t aware of is that the particles that we’ve also been producing and adding to the atmosphere offset some of that climate warming. So, the overall effect is one of climate warming, but it would be a lot more without that particulate pollution.”
With climate alarmists concerned over supposed global temperature increases and the corresponding war on fossil fuels, which is sure to rob the clouds of a contributing brightener, some scientists are keen to pump out aerosols of their own.
Robert Wood, the lead UW scientist running the cloud project, noted on his university blog that the team at the CAARE facility developed a “Cloud-Aerosol Research Instrument (CARI).” This device, which has multiple nozzles and resembles a snowmaker, can apparently fire trillions of salt particles into the air.
The UW indicated that once emitted, such particles would only remain airborne in the atmosphere for a few days.
Wood told the San Francisco Chronicle simulations project that if 15% of Earth’s marine clouds were artificially brightened, the globe might cool by approximately one degree.
According to the New York Times, CAARE researchers used their CARI device last week aboard the USS Hornet, firing particles and testing to ensure their cloud-brightening machine would function as desired outside a lab.