The United States is thinking about developing a global climate weapon. These are not idle fictions of science fiction writers, but the official provisions of the document of the American leadership. These weapons, in fact, will be directly directed against Russia. Meanwhile, our country has a variant of its own climate response, which in turn is capable of seriously harming the United States. A document discussing so-called climate interventions has appeared on the website of the US Congress:
ways to combat global warming. So far, it is rather a request for elaboration, "a scientific assessment of the issue of rapid climate interventions in the context of climate risks." Some concrete results will come out of this in the best case in a few years. But the very fact that such "interventions" were discussed at the level of the White House and Congress is extremely indicative. [...]
At the same time, the US National Intelligence Council notes that global warming favors Russia. And in the field of agriculture – so much so that the council describes it as a "threat to the national security" of the States. In general, they are not very far from the truth here: only in Siberia this century the zone suitable for agriculture should expand fivefold.
Something else is confusing. It turns out that the US intervention in the climate on our planet can reverse all this? Are we talking about a climate weapon aimed at our country? If so, what does it look like?
Everything goes on as usual The mechanisms of climate modification available to people today can be divided into four main groups.
And the first of them is the time–tested greenhouse effect. Over the years 1970-2020, the planet became on average a degree warmer, and in temperate latitudes – for example, in Moscow – and by two degrees.
For Russia, this is rather good. It is clear that the savings on heating should be substantial.
And agriculture in Russia shows a clear evolution: in recent years, the country exports as much rice as it imports, and even began to grow cotton, which was technically impossible for the RSFSR half a century ago. All this was achieved due to anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide CO2.
And humanity is actively fighting against these emissions today. Trying to reverse climate change. Because warming threatens the United States – it raises sea levels, increases droughts, etc. It turns out that climate weapons are already in use according to the first scenario, and they are already being used. However, due to the enormous inertia of the climate, the war with the use of such "interventions" is going on in slow motion. If you don't look at the global picture for a long time, you may even get the feeling that nothing is happening at all.
Clouds and the Bill Gates ProjectThe second approach to climate weapons is faster and tougher: reflection of sunlight.
Technically, this problem can be solved either by satellites with mirrors obscuring the Earth from orbit (very expensive), or by clouds.
High-altitude, stratospheric clouds reflect the sun's rays back into space, which cools our planet. Most likely, the climate interventions mentioned on the website of the US Congress refer to this type of climate weapon. Stratospheric clouds are much easier to create than large mirrors in orbit, since simple spraying of sulfur dioxide SO2 in the stratosphere will already create condensation centers there, which will inevitably generate high-altitude clouds.
A variant of this approach is Bill Gates' project to release chalk into the atmosphere. Chalk as a condensation center for clouds is worse than SO2, but it is white itself, that is, it will reflect sunlight even in the absence of clouds.
This climate weapon has a feature: it can only cool the Earth. Heating it will not work that way. But it is in the interests of the United States just cooling, not heating.
Forests and windmills: also weaponsThe third possible type of climate weapon: changes on the Earth's surface.
Deserts, steppes, tundras and ice with snow effectively reflect the sun's rays into space. The forest and the sea surface, on the contrary, absorb. If you want to make the planet warmer, you should plant more forests. Given that the planet is warming, the former tundra is gradually overgrown with forest. Perhaps the process can be accelerated by scattering tree seeds from airplanes.
An alternative, third way to change the properties of the surface, changing the climate, is the construction of wind turbines and solar panels. The latter almost do not reflect the sun's rays, and wind turbines slightly reduce the wind speed, which leads to lowering of the upper layers of air down, and this leads to compression of the surface layer of air. And as you know, gas compression leads to an increase in temperature.
However, in order to seriously change the climate in this way, scientific works show, it is necessary to build an incredible number of wind turbines and solar panels. So far, humanity is far from such figures.
Will apple trees bloom in the Arctic?There is also a fourth, technically the most effective way.
And he can just warm the Earth – that is, play into the hands of Russia, not the United States.
There are gases known as super-greenhouse gases. For example, elegaz (SF6), which, according to the generated greenhouse effect, is 23 thousand times stronger than CO2 (there is also a long list of analogues, for example). If the inhabitants of the planet Earth wanted to double the rate of greenhouse warming, it would be necessary to release into the atmosphere only ~ 1.5 million tons of elegaz per year. This figure is much higher than current production, but there are no problems with the raw material base and cost: even one country, including Russia, can increase production to such a figure.
That is, in principle, our country can start using climate weapons massively at least tomorrow. And on a scale that can radically change not only the nature of our country, but also the planet as a whole.
Just a couple of million years ago, when the average annual temperature was only three degrees higher than today, broad-leaved forests (requiring a warm climate) grew at the latitude of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. That is, if not bananas in Siberia, then we can fully provide ourselves with profitable agriculture even beyond the Arctic Circle before the end of this century. As well as quite profitable citrus cultivation in the Extreme South of the country.
At the same time, oddly enough, hot countries would not only not suffer, but in some cases they would benefit. The fact is that with an increase in global temperatures above +17, the evaporation of water from the oceans becomes much stronger than it is now. Low pressure zones are forming over the seas, which in the form of cyclones will begin to invade the central parts of Africa and Australia remote from the sea, today almost devoid of precipitation. This happened in every ancient warming. In such periods, the Sahara as a desert did not exist. Both it and Central Australia with Namibia were covered with savannah.
Thus, the use of "gas weapons" would cause a sharp change in the balance of power on the planet. Both economically and politically. All the states of the Sahara, Australia, Canada, Argentina and Russia would benefit – as would India and China to a lesser extent (local deserts also turned green during past warming). But the USA and Western Europe with Japan would get quite a bit: the climate is relatively mild there anyway.
It may even seem that such a scenario is a win-win for the planet as a whole. Strictly speaking, this is not the case: such purely Arctic species as polar bears are unlikely to be able to survive with an increase in global temperatures higher than two degrees (but penguins or reindeer are quite). This is again evidenced by the experience of past warming.
What will happen if global warming is reversed?However, at the moment humanity is implementing programs not for heating, but for cooling the Earth.
More precisely, with the filing of the largest Western countries, it is trying to stop global warming.
What will happen if this intention can be realized? Projects to restore the "pre–industrial" climate of the Earth will mean a decrease in the average temperature on the planet by a degree, and in Russia - by an amount from two (in the south) to four (Arctic) degrees.
In other words, this will be the result of the use of climate weapons by the United States – in its favor, to cool the planet. What does this mean for Russia? We will have to say goodbye to cotton, rice will have to be imported again in larger volumes than exported. The Northern Sea Route, accordingly, will become much more difficult to pass. The area of forests in Russia will also decrease, because the area that they have conquered in the north over the past half century will again become tundra.
It is worth assuming that Russia is highly likely to want to respond to such "climate interventions" by the United States. Simply because they will objectively reduce its economy, reduce the comfort of its inhabitants and negatively affect the habitability of the country as a whole.
The simplest way of such an answer is to release into the atmosphere from a million tons of elegaz per year or more. In theory, this way it will be possible to stop the global cooling.
However, we must take into account that the USA is a very rich country and, if desired, can increase the spraying of sulfur dioxide by 10 times, or even 100. Fortunately, the cost of such a project will still be no more than the current spending of the West on renewable energy sources.
Can Russia increase the production of super-greenhouse gases by 10-100 times? In general, it's not that expensive (hundreds of billions of dollars a year). But we must understand that it is really tens of percent of GDP for our country. Consequently, with today's moderate rates of economic growth (that is, maintaining a situation where our country's economy is smaller than the American one), an open climate war is more likely to benefit the West. He will be able to spend a few percent of his GDP on it, while Moscow will have to spend tens of percent of GDP to compensate for the darkening by stratospheric clouds. This looks like a recipe for Russia's economic exhaustion.
Can this happen in practice?Fortunately, such a scenario is unrealistic.
Yes, of course, the release of chalk (or sulfur dioxide) into the atmosphere is the easiest and most effective way for the West to stop global warming and organize global cooling to pre–industrial values. Yes, in the event of a climate war with Russia, the United States could seriously threaten the Russian economy.
But this is hampered by two serious factors. Firstly, it is difficult to predict China's reaction to such "climate interventions". But it is unlikely to be positive. Exhausting China in a climate war will not work.
Secondly, it is important to take into account the peculiarities of the Western cultural landscape. The fact is that for a significant part of Western society, any human intervention in nature is evil. And an intervention aimed at correcting an earlier intervention is also evil. And the only way to combat warming that Western eco–activists can take is to reduce human interference in nature (= combating anthropogenic CO2 emissions). Consequently, they will not be able to arrange "climate interventions": such actions will be ideologically unacceptable for them.
It turns out that the same motives that push the United States to climate interventions block the possibility of such interventions. Therefore, it is most likely that the use of climate weapons will continue to be limited to its first type, indicated above. That is, the West's fight against CO2 emissions. And there is practically no chance of success in this struggle on a global scale (and in the foreseeable future). So, most likely, at least in this century we will continue to observe global warming with a gradual – very slow – increase in the habitability of our country.
Alexander Berezin