The Big Cloudspiracy

In previous posts I explored the viability of CDR schemes and how they show potential in future management. This week I begin investigating into the solar radiation management (SRM) method and stumbled across a few interesting sources...

While researching, I came across a mysterious website labelled 'Geoengineering Watch' scattered with photos of planes and clouds and short reports. I wanted to know more, especially after seeing how large a reach this website had, with interaction from many members of the general public. After watching a few videos of plane trails and reading some speculatively written reports I came to the understanding that the authors and viewers of the website have reason to believe that despite public concerns, aerosol spraying (a form of SRM) is already being used by governments. In particular, the conspiracists believe that certain planes purposefully release aerosols in an attempt to manage solar radiation. The website suggests these 'chemicals' (chemtrails) released by the planes can encourage cloud formation and rainfall or contain biological agents. Are they right?

Supposed 'Chemtrails' released by aircrafts (Source: www.geoengineeringwatch.com)

Personally, I was not entirely convinced by these arguments and the majority of the scientific community agree with me. The trails are mistaken for contrails which dissipate over time and are yet known to be harmless. However, what I found most interesting was the way in which these authors understood and communicated ideas of geoengineering.

Upon further reading of similar websites, one comedically named 'Aircrap', I came across an apparent trend where authors encouraged readers to refer to 'chemtrails' as 'geoengineering' to avoid being labelled as conspiracy theorists:

'A world-wide program is underway to control the weather since the mid-90s. It is being done without your consent. It is called GEOENGINEERING or SRM (Solar Radiation Management) and originally: chemtrailing’ (Aircrap 2013).

And when searching through Geoengineering Watch, I found the following:

'First of all, semantics are extremely important in regard to the introduction of geoengineering. The geoengineering term is related to hard science, the ‘chemtrails’ term has no such verifiable basis but rather leads anyone that Googles the term straight to ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘hoax’ definitions.'

In both cases, the term geoengineering is being used to legitimise their discourse surrounding chemtrails and as found by Cairns (2016) allows the phenomenon to be mainstreamed into academia.

Furthermore, across both sources, the authors use scientific jargon of 'tipping points' and 'thresholds' in an attempt to rally followers to take action. Through integrating scientific knowledge with speculation, they bring into question the real viability of what they term 'Geoengineering'. Dialogue of this type could be part of the reason why the public currently associate 'Geoengineering' with uncertainty and mystery. The term has been surrounded with negative connotations leading to a lack of authority in the public sphere. Therefore, a redefinition of the term should be introduced to prevent it from being deteriorated by more extreme understandings.

However, I do believe that this discourse highlights the potential dangers that geoengineering of this nature could pose in the future. The articles make reference to military use and biological hazards of injecting chemicals into our environment. The use of cloud seeding as a weapon could ignite flooding in regions and drought in others, all controlled by the human touch. Therefore, these websites do illustrate that if aerosol spraying is to be used as an approach, the politics of such an approach must be assessed thoroughly.