So I watched an instagram video with a journalist standing out in front of the US capital building, excitedly proclaiming that conspiracy people have been right all along and his following story proves it. The government is spraying us with chemicals (chemtrails) in an effort to make us sick so we’ll buy more drugs from ‘big pharma’! I think he mentioned the government controlling the weather as well. Not surprisingly, the story itself had nothing to do with any government or any conspiracy.
The 'story' was about a private start up called 'Make Sunsets' (doesn’t exactly scream science does it?) who have been filling weather balloons with He (Helium) and S02 (Sulfer Dioxide) and releasing them into the air where they rise up and eventually pop, turning the S02 gas into sulfuric acid particles which are supposed to reflect sunlight and lower the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth. The theory (which has been around for about 30 years) is called 'geo-engineering' and usually refers to one of several proposed technological fixes to the largely irrelevant 'problem' of global warming. Up until now however, I was not aware of anyone thoroughly stupid enough to try it.
Apparently, governments of the world are not responding to the 'existential threat' of global warming fast enough for these idiots, so they are taking matters into their own hands. Fortunately, a couple governments have already taken notice. “Make Sunsets” is banned from operating in Mexico, and our own EPA requested information from them in April of this year, so I'd surmise their days of ballooning crap into the air here are numbered as well. The problem is obvious to anyone with half a noggin’: We have no idea what injecting S02 into the stratosphere will do BESIDES reflect sunlight. Obviously, S02 is not pleasant stuff and can cause respiratory irritation, coughing and even death if you breath enough of it. Most rational scientists and others with functioning brains have already come out against the idea, but these two San Francisco environmental wackos either didn't get the memo, or just don't give a damn. Never underestimate the mindless self-righteousness of a rabid global warmer.
Now here's the other side of what is really going on: These guys got together and figured "Hey, if big corporations are stupid enough to pay millions in carbon credits (to offset their nasty C02 emissions) then surely they'll be stupid enough to purchase "cooling credits" as well! That's right, our geo-engineering hippies from San Francisco want to get rich selling "cooling credits" to all the misguided corporations who haven't yet figured out that the whole carbon trading market is scam.
They’ve already come up with a pseudo-sciencey metric which “calculates” the amount of manmade C02 ‘warming’ offset by the tiny toxic acid clouds their experiments create. When you get to this math: an estimation x an assumption = a guess… it’s safe to assume we left the realm of science long ago. Make Sunsets cites two volcanic eruptions which climate scientists have theorized cooled the global temperature by .4 degrees. Pay attention to the word ‘theorized’. Make Sunsets added both Mt. Pinatubo and the Tonga eruptions together and somehow came up with a total of .9 degrees C of cooling from the S02 contained in them – way over the scientific estimates of the cooling we think may have happened. These geniuses took that over-inflated theory and ran with it. If in theory a volcanic eruption can cool the planet, then let’s do more of that! More is better, right? Sheer green lunacy, and friggin’ dangerous to boot.
On the other hand, except for mucking up the stratosphere with sulfuric acid - it's not a bad idea. Not environmentally of course – in theory it may have some trivial effect on downward radiation reaching the Earth, but even if they scaled it up to biblical (read volcanic) proportions…it’s still very much a theory, with a lot of pollution. Theories have a way of changing over time. “We’re not sure volcanic eruptions lowered the Earth’s temperature but we can’t think of anything else that would have done it so…welcome to climate science!”
But money-wise? It's pure evil genius! Corporations, in their ongoing effort to kowtow to nutty environmentalists, really ARE that stupid. Carbon credits are the perfect scam because they do nothing to lower emissions of C02 (or the temperature of the globe for that matter), there is no product, no advertising, no pollution, no employees and zero overhead! It's ALL PROFIT, and it enriches thousands of investors around the world to this day. And corps can write it off their taxes! Everybody wins!!!
So far, the west coast loony duo behind “Make Sunsets” have only launched about 230 balloons, which sounds like a lot but is actually a bit like dumping a single molecule of pee into an Olympic-sized swimming pool. No one’s gonna notice. The problem is that they have a couple Venture capital backers, who rightly recognize the profit potential in ripping off major corporations through feel-good environmental publicity campaigns...Let’s face it, Thanks to Al Gore and his ironically titled movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, Wall Street traders and their clients have been lining their pockets with carbon credit cash for decades now. So with enough money, these green morons could potentially loft enough toxic S02 up into the stratosphere to cause some real havoc – and nobody has any idea what that havoc would look like. Thankfully, the feds are already onto them, and I expect they will soon have to move their operation or be shut down.
Of the two conspiracies mentioned by the journalist at the top of the video: Government weather control and the always-good-for-a-laugh chemtrail wingnuttery, our kooky city-by-the-bay watermelons don’t move the ‘proof’ needle either way. Because of course - nobody can. That’s why they remain fringe conspiracy theories and not gigantic news stories.
So while the government still isn’t controlling the weather, let’s all hope it can control “Make Sunsets”, and shut down these nuts, before they hurt themselves…or the rest of us.