Toxic Chemicals Engulf the Planet

by Robert Hunziker

[This article was first published in CounterPunch on June 11, 2021.]

Worldwide toxic chemicals are six times global warming emissions. This hidden dilemma is fully exposed in a superbly researched new book by science writer Julian Cribb: Earth Detox, How and Why We Must Clean Up Our Planet, Cambridge University Press, scheduled for release August 2021.

The planet has become a toxic soup of tested, untested, and inadequately tested chemicals that includes deadly toxins. Within only a couple of generations, and largely unnoticed, this startling episode is unique to our generation. Far and away, it exceeds global warming emissions. Yet, it’s a pressing issue that’s not publicly recognized as such.

Earth Detox is an eye-opening exposure of unintentional toxic chemical warfare lodged against humanity virtually everywhere, all over the planet. Throughout this challenging subject matter, Cribb’s work is supported by extensive scientific data, for example: “Americans are a walking cocktail of contaminants.” That statement alone is provocative enough to demand more facts, a whole lot more. For example, why and how has American life been reduced to such a degenerative status? More on this to follow.

But most alarming of all: “More than 25,000 human lives are being lost daily to chemical poisoning.” That statistic of 25,000 deaths/day comes from UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) in its 2019 Global Chemicals Outlook II report, which Cribb disparagingly describes: “With unassailable scientific evidence that more than 25,000 human lives are being lost daily to chemical poisoning, and in the face of a mountain of fresh evidence of chemical harm that has accumulated since its 2013 report, the 2019 report betrays a chilling lack of urgency. Its language is softer and less candid, its proposals more soothing to industry than its predecessor. Indeed, it asserts: ‘We cannot live without chemicals’. It is hard to escape an inference that UNEP has been ‘got at’.” (pg. 216)

It’s a compelling invisible issue. What else in the world accounts for 25,000 daily deaths?

Yet, across the globe there are no signs of concern, no long banners flapping in the breeze on Main Street, no NGOs, no marches, no petitions, no pesky fund-raisers, no signature gatherers at grocery store parking lots, no public demonstrations of concern about this hidden peril found throughout the planet from the top of Mount Everest, where researchers, to their dismay, discovered toxic compounds in-excess of EPA standards, to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, where small crustaceans that live in the pitch-black waters of the trench, captured by a robotic submarine, were contaminated with 50 times more toxic chemicals than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China.

Still, society fails to address this most pressing issue of the 21st century. According to Cribb: “A worrisome component of the poisoning of the planet is the absurd fact that modern society exists and functions as a result of these poisons. For example, industrialized food production uses five million tonnes of specialized poisons to control weeds, insects, rodents and moulds to feed the world.” Here’s the kicker, the vast majority of the chemicals used to produce food negatively impact “non-target organisms,” like honeybees, farm workers and consumers.

Cribb has produced a landmark study that demands further analysis and investigation at the highest levels. It belongs on reading lists of every educational institution and in the hands of policymakers as well as consumers worldwide. Cribb’s gifted science-oriented prose provides an ideal fundamental resource for: (1) supplemental textbooks (2) advocacy groups (3) policymakers (4) critical information for every householder in the world to better understand what’s at stake in everyday life. For example: “Never eat any food containing a substance you can’t pronounce or you don’t trust.” (pg. 67) In other words, read the damn labels!

Earth Detox is truly a masterpiece of deeply researched facts exposing a very, very big story, as big as the survival and condition of Earth’s basic resources that support existence. An opening statement in Cribb’s own words sums up the extent: “Earth and all life on it are being saturated with chemicals released by humans, in an event unlike anything that has occurred ever before, in all 4 billion years of our Planet’s story… Ours is a poisoned world… this has all happened quite quickly and has burgeoned so rapidly that most people are still unaware of the extent or scale of the peril… crept up on us unseen… in a social climate of trusting acceptance of authority, over barely the span of a single human lifetime… impacts are only now starting to emerge.” (pgs. 3-4)

Accordingly, a 2020 study by a team of international scientists led by Switzerland’s Institute of Environmental Engineering: “Over 350,000 chemicals and mixtures of chemicals have been registered for production and use, up to three times as many as previously estimated… identities of many chemicals remain publicly unknown because they are claimed as confidential.” (pg 7)

The Swiss study is the world’s first-ever compilation of global chemical inventory and surprisingly discovered three times previous estimates, which speaks to the lax governance issue, nobody really knows for sure what’s going on, three times previous estimates is evidence of failure to observe. The study uncovered “widespread secrecy, misidentification and obfuscation,” leading to a question of who effectively monitors this darkened world that ultimately reaches into everyone’s home?

It’s the vastness and fragmentation of worldwide manufacturing that makes regulation so difficult. After all, one thousand (1,000) new chemicals are added to the mix every year. The chemical industry is the second largest manufacturer in the world, totaling 2.5 billion tonnes each year.

Yet, according to Cribb: “Regulation has so far banned fewer than one per cent (1%) of all intentionally made dangerous chemicals – and then only in certain countries… large parts of the world’s most polluting industries are relocating away from countries where high standards of regulation and compliance, and high costs, apply.” (pgs. 191-92)

All of which conforms to economic dicta following post-Reagan globalization schemes subsequently embraced by neoliberalism’s penchant for weakening regulations and powerfully goosed ahead via massive deregulation under the Trump administration’s “intentional collapse of scientific wherewithal,” one of America’s darkest hours.

Indeed, chemical usage is an ever-present quandary that’s a challenge to navigate if only because so much of it is necessary in today’s world, leading to one of the great paradoxes of all time, a virtual “Catch-22”: “Man-made chemicals are so widespread in the world today because they are very useful, very valuable, very profitable and help to enhance billions of lives. They are central enabling technology in the modern global economy. They are never going to be universally banned – and nor should they be. But neither should they flood the Earth uncontrolled. The magnitude of our chemical – especially toxic chemical – exposure has crept up on the human population unawares.” (pg. 192)

Cribb has created nomenclature for the chemical epidemic: Anthropogenic Chemical Circulation (“ACC”). “The ACC is just like our carbon emissions – only much bigger and far more noxious… For the first time in the Earth’s history, a single species – ourselves – is poisoning an entire Planet.” (pgs. 20-21)

ACC aptly defines the risks: Man-made chemicals are always on the move constantly in space and time, all around us, traveling on wind, in the water, attached to soil, within dust and plastic microparticles, in traded goods. Chemicals stay with us forever reforming, recycling, recombining, and reactivating as part of an unending planetary river, the Anthropogenic Chemical Circulation. Nothing escapes toxic pollution: “Even the mud on the sea floor is becoming poisonous.” (pgs. 35-37)

Polluted People

It is highly likely that readers of Cribb’s exposé will have been exposed to toxic chemicals without knowing it. You only know, or suspect, after something goes wrong, like cancer or Alzheimer’s but by then forgetfulness masks the original cause/effect.

According to Cribb: “A chilling glimpse of the big picture comes from the USA, among the heaviest chemical users on the Planet. For more than two decades its Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has run a national survey of chemical pollution in the blood, serum and urine of up to 2500 Americans every year.” (pg. 53) The survey reveals: “Americans are a walking cocktail of contaminants. The CDC readily admits that the health effects of many chemicals are not yet clear. WHO says the number of chemicals is ‘very large’ and health risks ‘are not known… Ipso facto, never eat any food containing a substance you can’t pronounce or you don’t trust.” (pg. 67)

We need to clean up more than the grocery aisle. — “Make 2014 the year to tackle toxic chemicals” by DES Daughter is licensed under CC BY NC SA 2.0

The modern industrial food supply chain, from A to Z, is loaded with chemicals. For starters, pesticides used to grow food and livestock end up in human bodies one way or another, and in high enough concentrations proven to influence cancers, brain, nerve, genetic and hormonal disorders, kidney and liver damage, asthma and allergies. Besides pesticides, some 3,000 chemical food ingredients are permitted by the FDA used to enhance freshness, taste, and texture. Preservatives, for example, which extend shelf life, are chemicals that poison the bacteria and moulds that cause food to rot. “Common chemical preservatives such as sodium nitrate and nitrite, sulphites, sulphur dioxide, sodium benzoate, parabens, formaldehyde and antioxidant preservatives, if over-consumed in the modern processed food diet, may also lead to cancers, heart disease, allergies, digestive, lung, kidney and other diseases and constitute a further reason for avoiding or reducing one’s intake of ‘industrial food’.” (pg 70)

By all appearances, based upon Cribb’s extensive research, the Industrial Food Frankenstein, which traverses pesticide-laced farmland-to-artificial (toxic) plastic packaging-to-home refrigeration, given enough time, kills or cripples wide-eyed consumers. There’s little middle ground with industrial foodstuff.

It should be noted, aside from Cribb’s book, a major Rand Corporation study shows “sixty percent (60% or almost 200 million) U.S. adults have at least one chronic condition, 42% have more than one, and 12% have five or more,” e.g., high cholesterol, high blood pressure, anxiety, arthritis, heart disease and diabetes. Whereas, European chronic conditions at 30% are one-half the U.S. on the same timeline as the Rand study. Thus, connecting the dots, it brings to mind whether adverse conditions, like excessive exposure to toxic chemicals, cause chronic conditions?

“Interestingly, Europe only permits the use of 400 food additives out of 3000 permitted in the US. Essentially, Europe has banned 4/5ths of the chemicals allowed in the US food chain. Europe outlaws any chemicals that do not meet its criteria for “non-harm to humans or the environment.” (pg. 73)

“It is important to remember that the universal penetration of man-made chemicals into the food chain has mainly happened in just the last half-century. No previous generations were subjected to such a wholesale chemical exposure.” (page. 76) “There could be anything up to 16,500 different chemicals in the modern food chain today that simply weren’t a part of your grandparents’ diet.” (pg.90) That one sentence says it all in less than 25 words with an underlying message: Avoid industrial food. Eat fresh food.

A major test of a family of five in San Francisco that ate industrial packaged food for a period of time followed by a diet of fresh food for a comparable period of time showed significant reduction of toxic BPA (used to make plastics) and phthalates (used to make household goods) of 67% to 90%, which is extraordinarily meaningful. (Source: Earth Detox) (According to Mayo Clinic, research shows BPA may be directly linked to high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Phthalates makes plastics more durable used in hundreds of household products and can damage the liver, kidneys, lungs, and reproductive system)

Unfortunately, the full scale of the impact of toxic chemicals to humans is not yet fully understood by science, not by governments, not by industry and not by communities. However, numerous studies show mixtures of chemicals connecting dots to cancers, autism and several other diseases. “We are, every one of us, the ‘laboratory rats’ in a vast worldwide chemistry experiment involving an immense cocktail of substances, over which we have neither say nor freedom of action. It is an uncontrolled global experiment that defies the very ethics which outlaw the scientific testing of mixture toxicity in humans.” (pg. 96)

“While global chemical use is forecast to intensify, growing by around 3 per cent per year up to 2050, the world’s ability to regulate and restrict it is weakening… The main reason for this is that, in their efforts to evade regulators, chemical corporations are winding back their operations in the developed world and moving to more poorly regulated countries, mainly in Asia. In the first two decades of this century, chemical output in Asian countries grew three to five times faster than in North America and Europe.” (pg. 196)

Earth Detox offers solutions. Here’s one: “A core finding of this book is that we must build a Global Detox Alliance… Such an alliance would not engage in consumer bans or boycotts, physical confrontation, lawsuits or other direct action against industry or science; to do so will only entrench mutual mistrust and opposition, delay the move to clean production and drive industry into greater secrecy and into unregulated parts of the world. Clean up will do best if founded on principles of co-operation, consensus, openness and equality between society, industry and government.” (pg. 236)

Above all else, readers of Cribb’s fact-filled gem must read the Postscript: “A Cautionary Tale From Deep Time,” which is an extremely intriguing very thought-provoking detailed description of how life on Earth originated, from day one, with some surprising results along the way. Don’t miss it. After all, who doesn’t wonder about the wonders of life’s creation?

Postscript: Ours is a poisoned world… this has all happened quite quickly and has burgeoned so rapidly that most people are still unaware of the extent or scale of the peril… crept up on us unseen… over barely the span of a single human lifetime… impacts are only now starting to emerge. (Julian Cribb)

Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons? (Jane Goodall, Harvest of Hope, 2005)

Annotation: The quotes with page references in this article come from the publisher’s “Proof” and may not conform to the final book publication.

[Note: Feature image – Chemical plant industrial facility, image by timajo from Pixabay]

Based in Los Angeles, Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

June 29, 2021June 29, 2021

Lethal Heat Hits the Planet

by Robert Hunziker

[This article was first published in CounterPunch on June 26, 2021.]

The news does not get much worse than a recent scientific report that the planet is trapping twice as much heat as it did only 14 years ago.

If this one report does not turn heads and create a sense of panic to get off fossil fuels, as soon as yesterday, then nothing will ever move the needle to fix the planet’s broken climate system. (Source: Norman G. Loeb, et al, Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth’s Heating Rate, Geophysical Research Letters – Advanced Earth and Space Science, June 15, 2021)

“Dr. James Hansen” by Climate Justice Now is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Scientists have been warning about the consequences of human-generated greenhouse gases ever since James Hansen testified before a Congressional committee 33 years ago: “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

In fact, the warnings have been coming for 44 years. Prior to James Hansen’s testimony before the Senate committee, the most publicized report came from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977 when it warned that burning coal would crank up global temperatures to intolerable levels by 2050.

Meanwhile, a well-orchestrated core of climate deniers, including many members of the Republican Party, current and past, for decades have worked to create “doubt” about human impact on global warming in order to safeguard the fossil fuel industry and as a consequence block effective governmental policies to halt greenhouse gas emissions.

That type of obstructive behavior was formidably demonstrated only recently by former president Trump along with his entourage, like Pompeo, who shortsightedly celebrated Arctic ice loss in an Arctic Council speech. Unfortunately, he described as a positive event the meltdown of the planet’s greatest safeguard against global warming, i.e., Arctic ice. As the former secretary of state spoke, the planet was in its final throes of losing its biggest, most important giant reflector of incoming solar radiation, which has been around since humans discovered fire but now gone in only a few short decades because of human-generated global warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like oil and natural gas and coal.

The climate denier class, especially in America, carries a heavy burden for the current out of control status of the planet’s climate system. It is beyond shameful that repeated warnings by the nation’s scientists have been ignored for decades, finally leading to the current state of a worldwide climate emergency. Deadly heat is tormenting the world.

Along those lines, Donald Trump’s destruction of environmental agencies and the removal of scientists and destruction of years of irreplaceable scientific data and removal from the Paris climate agreement of 2015 will go down in history as the worst-timed stupidest policies in all of American history.

The shocking Loeb study that lamentably demonstrates a frightening rise in heat absorbed by the planet utilized satellite data via CERES instrumentation that measures how much energy the planet absorbs in the form of sunlight and how much it emits back into space in the form of infrared radiation. This measures “energy imbalance.” Their study found a doubling of the imbalance for the period from 2005 to 2019. That’s exceptionally troubling, almost beyond comprehension, data collection is indicative of a climate system that’s way out of balance as an impending threat to existence.

Meanwhile, making matters doubly bad and emphasizing the fact that the planet is absorbing twice the heat, NASA reported 2020 as the “hottest year ever.” And, by all appearances, 2021 is shaping up to break the records once again, as abnormally high temperatures throughout the planet exceed all-time records. The planet is literally in a burn mode like humanity has never experienced, and nobody is doing anything about this burning dilemma with any sense of global reach. Meanwhile, talk of holding back temperature by controlling emissions at the nation/state level remains, like always, very cheap and ineffective. As well as totally remiss of the big picture of a global mess that requires global unity, or the lights go out fairly soon, here and there all across the land.

Confirmation of the Loeb study’s CERES data was established using Argo, which is an international network of sensors in the world’s oceans used to measure the rate at which the oceans absorb heat. This strengthened and confirmed the CERES data that the planet is trapping twice the amount of heat of 14 years ago.

According to the scientists for the study: “The two very independent ways of looking at changes in Earth’s energy imbalance are in really, really good agreement, and they’re both showing this very large trend,” Norman Loeb, lead author for the new study and principal investigator for CERES at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. (Source: Earth is Trapping Twice as Much Heat as it did in 2005, Space. Com, June 24, 2009.)

Thirty-three years after James Hansen testified to Congress, global carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 70% and have never gone down in any given year, always up, never down. When Hansen testified, fossil fuels were 79% of the world’s energy. It’s 84% today in the face of every wind turbine and solar panel that’s been installed over the past decades ever since Hansen spoke out about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions.

Frankly, the world is getting what it deserves and what it has failed to recognize in spite of the world’s top scientists’ warnings, a lot of heat!

Note: Feature image — “Global Warming” – Image by Avtar Kamani from Pixabay

May 21, 2021May 23, 2021

Chernobyl Alert and the Doomsday Clock

The New Chernobyl — Photograph Source: Studio Incendo – CC BY 2.0

Chernobyl Alert and the Doomsday Clock

by Robert Hunziker

[This article was first published in CounterPunch on May 21, 2020.]

Like the mythical Phoenix, Chernobyl rises from the ashes.

A recent… “Surge in fission reactions in an inaccessible chamber within the complex” is alarming scientists that monitor the ruins of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. (Source: Nuclear Reactions at Chernobyl are Spiking in an Inaccessible Chamber, NewScientist, May 11, 2021).

It is known that this significant renewal of fission activity is located in Sub-Reactor Room 305/2, which contains large amounts of fissile material from the initial meltdown. The explosion brought down walls of the facility amongst tons of fissile material within the reactor as extreme heat melted reactor wall concrete and steel combined with sand used to control the explosion to form a lava-like intensely radioactive substance that oozed into lower floors, e.g., Room 305/2. That room is so deadly radioactive that it is inaccessible by humans or robots for the past 35 years.

Since 2016, neutron emissions from Room 305/2 have been spiking and increased by 40% over the past 5 years. It signals a growing nuclear fission reaction in the room. According to Neil Hyatt/University of Sheffield-UK: “Our estimation of fissile material in that room means that we can be fairly confident that you’re not going to get such rapid release of nuclear energy that you have an explosion. But we don’t know for sure… it’s cause for concern but not alarm,” Ibid.

If it is deemed necessary to intervene, it’ll require robotically drilling into Room 305/2 and spraying the highly radioactive blob with a fluid that contains gadolinium nitrate, which is supposed to soak up excess neutrons and choke the fission reaction. Meanwhile, time will tell whether the monster of the deep in Room 305/2 settles down on its own or requires human interaction via the eyes and arms of a robot, which may not survive the intense radioactivity. Then what?

Meanwhile, an enormous steel sarcophagus, a $1.8bn protective confinement shelter, the New Safe Confinement (NCS) was built in 2019 to hopefully prevent the release of radioactive contamination. NCS is the largest land-based object ever moved, nine years construction in Italy delivered via 2,500 trucks and 18 ships. It is expected to last for 100 years. Thenceforth, who knows?

Nevertheless, according to nuclear professionals, the question arises whether this recent fission activity will stabilize or will it necessitate a dangerously difficult intervention to somehow stop a runaway nuclear reaction.

Inescapably, the bane of nuclear power, once dangerously out of control, remains dangerously out of control, forever and on it goes, beyond human time. Unfortunately, one nuclear accident is equivalent to untold numbers, likely thousands, of non-nuclear accidents.

“We thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” (Albert Einstein)

The Doomsday Clock

Along those lines, the world-famous Doomsday Clock, initially based upon the threat of nuclear warfare, measures humanity’s nearness to utter annihilation: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (“BAS”) a global organization of science and policy experts, has set the famous clock at 100 seconds to midnight: “The bad news is that we’re still closer to midnight than we’ve been at any time since the clock was introduced more than 60 years ago because: (1) widespread mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic in nations worldwide (2) little progress in eliminating nuclear weapons (3) insufficient mitigation of destructive climate change, and (4) threats to national security by rightwing extremists, the BAS decided to hold the clock at the present unsettling time slot, as a warning and “wake-up call.” (Source: Do0msday Clock Stands at 100 Seconds to Midnight, LiveScience)

The perilous setting of the clock so close to midnight is warranted on several counts, e.g., COVID pulled back the wizard’s curtain, revealing a cartoonish figurine of irresponsibility by governments of the world to handle emergencies: “An historic wakeup call that governments are woefully unprepared to handle pandemics,” Ibid.

Moreover, “global carbon emissions, a major driver of human-induced climate change, temporarily dropped about 17% due to the pandemic, but have largely bounced back… still, the impacts of escalating climate change led NASA scientists to declare 2020 the hottest year on record,” according to Susan Solomon, a professor of environmental studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a BAS Science and Security Board member, Ibid.

And, of utmost concern, the nuclear threat remains “unacceptably high,” according to Steve Fetter, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, with the U.S. allocating more than $1T to modernizing its nuclear weapons programs, as China, India, No. Korea, and Pakistan expand arsenals. “By our estimation, the potential for the world to stumble into nuclear war — an ever-present danger over the last 75 years — increased in 2020,” Ibid.

Of special note, the forward momentum in the clock’s proximity to midnight occurred recently, with the advent of Trump’s presidency. In 2018, it ticked to two minutes to midnight. The only other time it advanced that far was in 1953 when the U.S. and Russia conducted their first hydrogen bomb detonations within 6 months of each other.

The Doomsday Clock stood still in 2019, but ticked forward again in 2020, to reflect humanity facing “a true emergency — an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for error or further delay,” Ibid.

Thus, the world is at risk on multiple fronts never before seen throughout the history of the Doomsday Clock (est. 1947) initially set at seven minutes to midnight when nuclear weapons were humanity’s biggest threat. Now, nuclear war shares that formidable baton in an on-going hazardous marathon with: (1) climate change, (2) inept governments, and (3) widespread use of social media platforms that spread misinformation that erodes trust in media and science, throughout the world.

Moreover, according to the BAS, the enlarging rightwing movement threatens U.S. national security: “These extremists represent a unique danger because of their prevalence in federal institutions such as the military and the potential that they might infiltrate nuclear facilities, where they could access sensitive information and nuclear materials,” BAS representatives said. “Officials need to act decisively to better understand and mitigate this threat,” Ibid.

Throughout history, political parties that rely upon lies bring society down to its knees with shameless destruction, for example, the fall of Rome, the 5^th century AD: “By the time of Augustine (354-430 AD), the Roman Empire had become an Empire of lies. It still pretended to uphold the rule of law, to protect the people from the Barbarian invaders, to maintain the social order. But all that had become a bad joke for the citizens of an empire by then reduced to nothing more than a giant military machine dedicated to oppressing the poor in order to maintain the privileges of the rich. The Empire itself had become a lie: that it existed because of the favor of the Gods who rewarded the Romans because of their moral virtues. Nobody could believe in that anymore: it was the breakdown of the very fabric of society; the loss of what the ancient called the auctoritas, the trust that citizens had toward their leaders and the institutions of their state.” (Source: Cassandra’s Legacy, The Empire of Lies, February 8, 2016).

April 25, 2021April 30, 2022

Cooling the Planet?

“Climate Emergency” by John Englart (Takver) is licensed under CC BY-SA-2.0

Cooling the Planet?

by Robert Hunziker

[This article was first published in CounterPunch on April 6, 2021.]

Grandiose plans to cool Earth, saving the planet from overheating by utilizing low-tech balloon flights sprinkling particles into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation back into outer space have been delayed, nobody knows for sure when, or if, it’ll proceed.

Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx)

The planet-cooling scheme referred to as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment aka: SCoPEx headed by Harvard professor Fran Keutsch hopes to save humanity from hothouse Earth with plans to sprinkle aerosols of calcium carbonate and other substances at 12 miles above Earth’s surface to reflect solar radiation to outer space. The initial flight scheduled for June 2021 was set to test the balloon and gondola equipment sans release of aerosols until later in the year.

But heavy lobbying by prominent groups against the “alleged insanity” of toying around with the planet’s climate system put an end to this test run. Still, it’s an open question as to whether it really is insanity. Although, nobody knows for sure what consequences may follow. Nobody! On the other hand, civilization has been insanely altering the climate system by spewing carbon dioxide CO2 and sulfur dioxide SO2 into the atmosphere for years upon years. The question now revolves around whether SCoPEx makes it worse by trying to fix it? As such, is it the issue at hand? Answers: maybe and yes.

No Planet B - Melbourne Climate March for Our Future — “No Planet B” by John Englart (Takver) is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

It should be noted that research to help/repair/fix Earth’s climate system, which is severely broken, is ongoing at major universities throughout the world and for good reason. It’s an open secret that the Anthropocene (direct human influence) is disrupting the planet’s climate system in very big pronounced ways, geologically at warp speed. The proof is found in numbers. For example, throughout the Holocene Era of the past 10,000+ years the natural rate of CO2 emissions was ~0.003 ppm/year which equates to +36 ppm over a time span of 12,000 years versus today’s rate of 2.0 ppm/year or +40 ppm in only 20 years or geological light speed. It’s highly probable the planet has never experienced such a rapid rate of change as it has, especially since WWII. There’s absolutely nothing positive about that.

Climate Engineering Considerations

Raymond Pierrehumbert, University of Oxford — “Raymond Pierrehumbert (University of Oxford)” by ECMWF is licensed under CC BY-ND-ND 2.0

The risk of geoengineering, especially unimaginable unknown unknowns, has prompted prominent reconsideration of the efficacy of SCoPEx. Raymond Pierrehumbert, University of Oxford physicist and renowned expert on climate dynamics, claims that widespread adoption of SCoPEx would be the sword of Damocles hanging over humanity, meaning, unless CO2 emissions are taken down to zero “… each year that goes on, you’ll have more CO2, which gives you more of a warming force which has to be counteracted by an even larger amount of geoengineering. You go into this death spiral, where you try to keep the Earth habitable in the face of ever-increasing CO2 and set ourselves up for a bigger and bigger risk of catastrophe.” (Source: Balloon Test Flight Plan Under Fire Over Solar Geoengineering Fears,” The Guardian, Feb. 8, 2021)

Pierrehumbert’s criticism is analogous to running endlessly on a treadmill that continues to grow bigger and faster multiplying until it morphs into a monolithic monster that overwhelms everything.

Moreover, critics argue the consequences of SCoPEx are not well understood. They claim stratospheric aerosol injections (SAI) on a ”large scale” could (1) damage the ozone layer, (2) cause excessive heating in the stratosphere, and (3) disrupt ecosystems. Any one of which is cause for pause.

Just imagine depleting some, or too much, of the ozone layer. Ozone molecules protect the planet from burning up, no questions asked. According to NASA: “Ozone absorbs harmful components of sunlight, known as ultraviolet B or UV-B… above weather systems a tenuous layer of ozone gas absorbs UV-B, protecting living things below.”

“Study of ozone amounts before and after the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo show that there were significant decreases in lower stratospheric ozone (Grant and others, 1994). The amount of ozone in the 16-28 km region was reduced by 33% compared to pre-eruption amounts.” (Source: Volcanic Gases, Oregon State University)

“Sulfate aerosols pose well-known risks such as ozone depletion and stratospheric heating.” (Source: Zhen Dai, et al, Experimental Reaction Rates Constrain Estimates of Ozone Response to Calcium Carbonate Geoengineering, Nature, Dec.15, 2020)

However, according to the same source: “A prior modeling study from our group suggested that calcium carbonate (CaCO3) might enable stratospheric geoengineering with reduced ozone loss or even ozone increase, but that study lacked measurements of important CaCO3-specific reaction rates… This uncertainty needs to be resolved by empirical methods,” Ibid.

As such, SCoPEx plans to sprinkle aerosols of calcium carbonate as preliminary research indicates this mineral dust may be an acceptable fix, but the jury is still out. It’s far too early to know. Empirical studies for this are not easily accomplished. With geoengineering, uncertainty is common.

Still, proponents of SCoPEx advocate experimentation of redirection of solar radiation regardless of uncertainties, thus, hopefully upending or reducing the impact of multiple ecosystem risks associated with global warming, thereby humanity continues eating, drinking, and pretending to be happy, drinking helps.

Nevertheless, according to the state-owned Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), which operates the Esrange Space Station in Kinuna, Sweden whence the test was to commence: “The scientific community is divided regarding geoengineering,” (Source: Controversial Test Flight Aimed at Cooling the Planet Cancelled, PHYS.ORG, April 1, 2021)

De Facto Moratorium on Geoengineering

Johanna Sandahl, president of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation: “It’s time for all countries in the world to live up to the de facto moratorium on geoengineering introduced by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity of 2010… The test will not be conducted in Sweden and should not be anywhere.” (Source: Geoengineering Monitor, April 1, 2021)

Both sides of the solar engineering argument have agreed to meet to see if there is a middle ground, but from the outside looking in, it doesn’t look all that promising. The list of questions, concerns, and observations is endless, for example: What, where and for how long? Forever? Really? What of slip-ups, the unknown unknowns? What of loss of ozone or something comparable, out of the blue? What if hydrological cycles misfire, disrupting agricultural seasons? If SCoPEx does an A-plus reflection job whilst fossil fuels chug along in tandem, will oceans absorb so much CO2 that whales go belly up?

And, towering above all other considerations: What if world opinion remains sharply divided? Then what?