Another Scurrying Rat - This Time He's NDP

NDP MP Nathan Cullen says the federal government should have done more to prevent the experimental dumping of 100-tonnes of iron sulphide in the waters off the Queen Charlottes.

Oddly enough Cullen, the MP for that area, acknowledges he knew about the project as far back as last summer when he met with its backers and it appears he saw no need to sound an alarm.

"I never got the sense that they were trying to do harm or that there was any bad intent at all, and felt like they had done their work in terms of talking to marine scientists and lawyers. … They thought they had a defensible case," the NDP MP said.

Nothing two-faced about that, is there?

The Rats Scurry for Cover

Russ George must be wondering where everybody went.   The rogue geoengineer behind the dumping of 100-tonnes of iron sulphate off the Charlottes in July suddenly doesn't have all the friends he had just a few months back.

Harper EnviroShill Peter Kent says he only learned about it just this week.   Oh my goodness, gosh, how could this have happened right under Pete's nose?

Kent, responding to questions in Parliament, said spreading iron on the ocean appears to be illegal.

"Environment Canada was not asked to approve this apparent violation of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act," Kent said.

"Anyone who contravenes environmental law should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

Adam Sweet, Kent's press hack, said his boss was entirely in the dark.   "Until three days ago, this matter had not been elevated to the minister's attention. Upon being notified, he immediately sought answers into the scope of Environment Canada's involvement."

It had "not been elevated" to Kent's attention which suggests that someone at EnviroCan knew about it but kept it from the minister.   Really?  This is the same shill who is running cover for the proposed supertanker traffic through B.C.'s treacherous coastal waters, right?  And he's utterly clueless about what's going on in those waters, right?

Green Party leader Elizabeth May pointed out the painfully obvious, "This incident should be a wakeup call that we don't have a handle on this."

And the Haida who, by some accounts, may have shelled out up to $2.5-million for the dumping experiment, are likewise running for cover.

On Haida Gwaii, where the Council of Haida Nations prides itself on environ-mental responsibility, hereditary chiefs and Guu-jaw, president of the Haida Nation, distanced themselves from the experiment, which was approved by Old Massett village council.

"The Hereditary Chiefs Council and the Council of the Haida Nation are in no way involved in artificial fertilization through dumping of iron compounds in the ocean around Haida Gwaii," said a council statement.

"The consequences of tampering with nature at this scale are not predictable and pose unacceptable risks to the marine environment. Our people, along with the rest of humanity, depend on the oceans and cannot leave the fate of the oceans to the whim of the few."

They knew, they all bloody well knew.   The Harper EnviroMin staff knew.   The Harper FisheriesMin staff knew.   The Haida bloody well knew and ponied up big bucks to fund the dumping.

Here's something to keep in mind.   If this experiment was a great success, you wouldn't be hearing the feet of so many rats scurrying down the sewers.  Remember what JFK said?   "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan."   The orphan in this fiasco is wannabe geo-engineer Russ George.

Disaster Capitalism Goes Celestial

Eco-sleight of hand may reach stratospheric proportions if Bill Gates and other members of his Club of Billionaires succeed in pushing geo-engineering as the solution to anthropogenic climate change.

The allure of geo-engineering is powerful, seductively irresistible to those who are themselves powerful and rich.  It's a multi-faceted gambit.   It buys time.  Why worry so much about man-made warming now if, when necessary, we can somehow seed the atmosphere and induce an offsetting cooling effect.  It saves massive amounts of money.  Why 'upset' the economy now by switching to a decarbonized economy and society when geo-engineering solutions are cheaper.  It creates the potential for almost unimaginable wealth in the future.   We have to act now, the time for pursuing alternative energy solutions has passed, so your only real hope is to pay us to implement geo-engineering mechanisms to save your backsides and keep your toxic economies ticking.

In some ways, geo-engineering seems the environmental equivalent of feedlot cattle production.   Once it takes hold, you're stuck with it.

The doctors of disaster capitalism are gathering to plot the future of geo-engineering.     Names like Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Canadian Tar Sands magnate Murray Edwards are funding studies into geo-engineering options to "save" the planet.


"We will need to protect ourselves from vested interests [and] be sure that choices are not influenced by parties who might make significant amounts of money through a choice to modify climate, especially using proprietary intellectual property," said Jane Long, director at large for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, in a paper delivered to a recent geoengineering conference on ethics.

"The stakes are very high and scientists are not the best people to deal with the social, ethical or political issues that geoengineering raises," said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace. "The idea that a self-selected group should have so much influence is bizarre."

But Gates, Branson et al did not get where they are by failing to spot opportunity.   How could they be expected to miss the rich opportunities from political ineptitude and intransigence just laying about for the picking?


The shortfalls and pitfalls of geo-engineering are myriad.   Massive amounts of research into climate history going back hundreds of thousands of years has been required just to understand how we got to where we are today and what probably awaits us.  It has taken us decades to synthesize all this information, study and analysis into a coherent theory of anthropogenic global warming.   Yet we're to pin the future of mankind on possible solutions of questionable value, indeterminate longevity and with unknown side effects and potentially irreversible consequences.

It's entirely foreseeable that geo-engineering will be, at best, a lifeboat for the first-class passengers and a dark, final swim for everyone else.   Just as global warming is impacting different parts of the world in different ways, to different degrees and at different speed, it's just as likely that geo-engineering, the ultimate "one size fits all" response will be anything but universal, at best, and, at worst, may benefit a few regions at the expense of the many.

And we need only look at the developed world's magnanimity  toward the most vulnerable countries when it comes to helping them cope with the impacts of global warming to get an idea of just how generous we're likely to be when it comes to spending vastly more on them to extend geo-engineering benefits their way.   It may actually cost far more to geo-engineer our own way out of this if we try to do it for the whole planet.   Costs and efficiency could well dictate that to save ourselves we really have to throw the rest of mankind to the wolves.

Rolling the Dice - Geo-Engineering the Planet

Game On!  Quietly acknowledging we haven't got much hope of getting greenhouse gas emissions under control in time to prevent catastrophic as in runaway global warming, UN scientists will begin preparing an analysis of geo-engineering options to be presented at next year's UN climate summit.  From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Later this year IPCC ''expert groups'' will meet in Peru to discuss geo-engineering. Options include putting mirrors in space to reflect sunlight or covering Greenland in a massive ''blanket'' so it does not melt.

Sprinkling iron filings in the ocean ''fertilizes'' algae, which absorbs CO2 and ''seeding clouds'' means that sunlight is blocked. Other options include artificial ''trees'' that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, painting roofs white to reflect sunlight, and human-made volcanoes that spray sulphate particles high in the atmosphere to scatter the sun's rays back into space.

Okay, we're getting ready to roll the dice.   These are uncharted waters.  No one really knows if any of these things will work but that's not the main problem.  What's also unknown, perhaps unknowable before they're implemented, is whether they'll blow up in our faces producing side effects no one could contemplate.  Figuring out what something might do is a fairly direct problem.  Assuring yourself about everything it won't do is an order of magnitude more complex.  In other words, it's desperation time, the Hail Mary play.

What is or perhaps should be the greatest concern about geo-engineering solutions is that they increase our focus on global warming in isolation of the several other, potentially existential challenges facing mankind this century.  Geo-engineering solutions to stop warming won't resolve desertification, deforestation, air/soil/water contamination, ocean acidification, overpopulation, species extinction, resource depletion and exhaustion, the freshwater crisis that is already rapidly setting in, nuclear proliferation, terrorism or any other global security threat.

Geo-engineering global warming solutions may actually make these other threats even more intractable.  Geo-engineering will relieve us of having to address the fundamental flaws and imbalances in global economics, industrialism and geo-politics, the very toxic influences that underlie all the other threats that continue to imperil mankind.  Know that adage about being unable to see the forest for the trees?  Well, this is it.