{"id":302292,"date":"2017-04-05T15:28:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T14:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/team-trump-ponders-climate-engineering\/"},"modified":"2017-04-05T15:28:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T14:28:22","slug":"team-trump-ponders-climate-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/team-trump-ponders-climate-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Trump Ponders Climate \u2018Engineering\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> Rather than take prudent steps to reduce the release of global-warming gases, some Trump advisers are pondering risky gambles to re-engineer the Earth\u2019s climate, as Jonathan Marshall explains.<\/p>\n<p>By Jonathan Marshall<\/p>\n<p>While President Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2017\/03\/28\/climate\/trumps-executive-order-pushes-the-us-climate-pledge-further-out-of-reach.html\">floors the accelerator<\/a> to speed up global warming through executive orders and appointments of notorious climate deniers to his administration, more and more scientists are pinning their hopes on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/environment\/climate-change\/climate-scientists-its-time-for-plan-b-1221092.html\">\u201cPlan B\u201d:<\/a> planetary-wide interventions to engineer ways to avoid global climate disruption. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etcgroup.org\/issues\/climate-geoengineering\">critics warn<\/a> that such a prescription, however alluring, may be as bad as the disease.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_22789\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-300x222.png\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22789\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"222\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-300x222.png 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-768x569.png 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-160x119.png 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM.png 1018w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22789\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-300x222.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"222\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-300x222.png 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-768x569.png 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM-160x119.png 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.36.57-PM.png 1018w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Donald Trump giving his weekly address on Feb. 25, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Now, to compound the irony, members of Trump\u2019s inner circle are touting climate engineering as a cheap way to insure the planet against harm without any need to change lifestyles or curb the oil and coal industries. They resemble compulsive eaters who count on frequent liposuction rather than maintaining strict diets to keep their body fat in check and stay healthy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/library.wmo.int\/opac\/doc_num.php?explnum_id=3414\">Evidence<\/a> of climate disruption is all around us, including record-high temperatures, record-low sea ice, the die-off of major coral reefs, acidification of the oceans, drought-induced famines, and more extreme storm damage.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, climate scientists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csap.cam.ac.uk\/media\/uploads\/files\/1\/climate-change--a-risk-assessment-v9-spreads.pdf\">warn<\/a> that barring breakthroughs in energy technology and adoption of cleaner transportation, industrial and agricultural processes, the world faces severe risks of economic and social disruption over the next half century from potentially irreversible warming.<\/p>\n<p>Such considerations helped motivate more than 100 scientists and policy makers to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etcgroup.org\/content\/trump-administration-inflates-geoengineers-balloon\">meet in Washington<\/a>, D.C., late last month to discuss some largely untested ways to prevent runaway warming by limiting the Earth\u2019s absorption of solar radiation. These measures could include using aircraft to release tiny particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight, or using fleets of boats to spray the air with saline mist to promote the formation of reflective clouds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.etcgroup.org\/content\/trump-administration-geoengineering-administration\">Several prominent Trump supporters are big boosters of such climate engineering<\/a>. For example,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/04\/05\/team-trump-ponders-climate-engineering\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: Rather than take prudent steps to reduce the release of global-warming gases, some Trump advisers are pondering risky gambles to re-engineer the Earth\u2019s climate, as Jonathan Marshall explains. By Jonathan Marshall While President Trump floors the accelerator to speed up global warming through executive orders and appointments of notorious climate deniers to his administration, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-302292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}