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Canadian environmental scientist David Keith wants to change the world’s climate by creating a type of sun filter in the sky to halt global warming. In an interview, he argues the technology is effective and inexpensive, but critics liken it to a nuclear bomb. … When he first devoted himself to the idea more than 20 years ago, it was considered dangerous nonsense. It enraged climate activists, and even Keith received death threats on his answering machine. Since then, the concept of geoengineering has increasingly won over supporters, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even grappled with the...

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is among five government agencies investigating new ideas to mitigate climate change, according to a report from Mother Jones. The 21-month, $630,000 project will be run by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with funding coming from the CIA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA. The project is called "Geoengineering Climate: Technical Evaluation and Discussion of Impacts." Geoengineering is a fairly broad term, but in this context it refers to efforts to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere or reflect solar radiation away from Earth to lessen the effects of global...

GM rice had not been exposed and report to the public. The field trial was found to be contaminated. Many countries took action on imposing ban of US rice or on imposing a strict certification and testing on all rice import.

The Illinois Ag Dept. illegally seized privately owned bees from renowned naturalist, Terrence Ingram, without providing him with a search warrant and before the court hearing on the matter, reports Prairie Advocate News. Behind the obvious violations of his Constitutional rights is Monsanto. Ingram was researching Roundup’s effects on bees, which he’s raised for 58 years. “They ruined 15 years of my research,” he told Prairie Advocate, by stealing most of hisstock.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Protesters rallied in dozens of cities Saturday as part of a global protest against seed giant Monsanto and the genetically modified food it produces, organizers said. Organizers said "March Against Monsanto" protests were held in 52 countries and 436 cities, including Los Angeles where demonstrators waved signs that read "Real Food 4 Real People" and "Label GMOs, It's Our Right to Know."… The U.S. Senate this week overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would allow states to require labeling of genetically modified foods.

World's most vulnerable people need protection from huge and unintended impacts of radical geoengineering projects. … The dangers arose in projects that cooled the planet unevenly. In some cases these caused devastating droughts across Africa; in others they increased rainfall in the region but left huge areas of Brazil parched. "The massive complexities associated with geoengineering, and the potential for winners and losers, means that some form of global governance is essential,"

Over the past several months, while most of the political world has been focused on the election and the ensuing struggle over the fiscal cliff, a little story appeared that is worthy of much more attention.It concerns the efforts of the British Columbia–based Haida native-American tribe to restore the salmon fishery that has provided much of their livelihood for centuries. Acting collectively, the Haida voted to form the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, financed it with $2.5 million of their own savings, and used it to support the efforts of American scientist-entrepreneur Russ George to demonstrate the feasibility of open-sea...

A California businessman chartered a fishing boat in July, loaded it with 100 tons of iron dust and cruised through Pacific waters off western Canada, spewing his cargo into the sea in an ecological experiment that has outraged scientists and government officials. The entrepreneur, whose foray came to light only this week, even duped the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States into lending him ocean-monitoring buoys for the project. Canada’s environment ministry says it is investigating the experiment, which was carried out with no government or scientific oversight. A spokesman said the ministry had warned the venture...

A private company backed by a controversial U.S. businessman has unilaterally conducted the world's most significant geoengineering project to date. Russ George, in conjunction with a First Nations village on Haida Gwaii, has dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean in a technique known as ocean fertilization. The experiment, which is in violation of two United Nations moratoria, has outraged environmental, legal, and civic groups. The iron sulphate was dumped into the Pacific back in July, but recent satellite images are now confirming its effects — an artificial plankton bloom that's 10,000 square kilometers (6,214 square...

Geoengineering hopes revived as study of iron-fertilized algal blooms shows they deposit carbon in the deep ocean when they die. In the search for methods to limit global warming, it seems that stimulating the growth of algae in the oceans might be an efficient way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere after all. Despite other studies suggesting that this approach was ineffective, a recent analysis of an ocean-fertilization experiment eight years ago in the Southern Ocean indicates that encouraging algal blooms to grow can soak up carbon that is then deposited in the deep ocean as the algae...

German researchers have re-ignited debate over geo-engineering by saying that “seeding” oceans with iron is an effective way to lock up CO2. While the principle behind seeding is simple enough – the iron acts as a fertilizer for phytoplankton, which multiply and consume carbon dioxide as they grow – the topic is fiercely debated. The core of the argument is also simple: it’s probably impossible to predict what other environmental impacts phytoplankton fertilization would have. The researchers, led by Victor Smetacek from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, are reporting the results of a 2004...

Blue skies would fade to hazy white if geoengineers inject light-scattering aerosols into the upper atmosphere to offset global warming. Critics have already warned that this might happen, but now the effect has been quantified. Releasing sulphate aerosols high in the atmosphere should in theory reduce global temperatures by reflecting a small percentage of the incoming sunlight away from the Earth. However, the extra particles would also scatter more of the remaining light into the atmosphere. This would reduce by 20 per cent the amount of sunlight that takes a direct route to the ground, and it would increase levels...

The fact that the world is being restructured from decentralized diversity to collectivized hierarchy by an authoritarian regime cloaked in green trappings can hardly be disputed. The final push toward the next and perhaps final phase may be announced this June at the 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A Scientific American editorial by Gary Stix highlights a policy article written by several dozen scientists that appeared online March 15 in the journal Science. The conclusions reached by the scientists, as well as the editorial from a staff member of Scientific American are incredibly unscientific...

In what to some might seem almost ludicrous, (think Dr. Stranglove,) a British team of geo-engineers are set to launch a giant balloon a half mile into the sky pulling with it a water hose that will then spray water pumped from the ground, into the air. But this is only the beginning; the idea is to see if such a system is feasible. The real goal is to see if it might be possible to send such a giant balloon much higher, say twice as high as airplanes fly, so as to release aerosols into the atmosphere to mimic...

This Climate Plan B approach could cause wars and mass starvation. by Diana Bronson Think you've heard enough about climate change? Chances are you haven't heard anything about the dangerous and costly sci-fi climate fixes known as geoengineering. Geo-what? Geoengineering is a set of speculative, massive-scale technologies that would have humans intentionally modify the climate--rather than accidentally, as we've been doing since the Industrial Revolution. Many U.S. lawmakers are starting to take it seriously as a climate change Plan B. Yet, proposed geoengineering schemes are absurd and potentially devastating for the Earth. Here are a few examples of how you...

There is a hole in the Democrats' plan to fight global warming. A .270-caliber hole, to be specific. "I'll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill, because it's bad for West Virginia," Gov. Joe Manchin, the Democratic candidate for Senate, says in an ad put out last week. To demonstrate, he pops what appears to be a .270 cartridge in his Remington 700, then shoots a bull's-eye through a piece of paper reading "Senate of the United States" and "Cap and Trade Bill." If you look closely, you can see that the bullet tears through the word "jobs" in the...

PACIFIC GROVE, CALIFORNIA—An international group of scientists, ethicists, and governance experts meeting here this week has agreed that research into large-scale modification of the planet is "indispensable" given the "threats" posed by climate change. "It is thus important to initiate further research in the natural and social sciences to better understand and communicate whether alternative strategies to moderate future climate change are, or are not, viable, appropriate, and ethical," declares a statement by the organizing committee released today at the close of the conference. "Further discussions [on geoengineering] must involve government and civil society." The statement capped a 5-day meeting...

Enlarge Image Seeding the skies. Geoengineering approaches include spreading aerosols in the stratosphere, where they could block a small fraction of the sun's rays. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Blink SAN DIEGO—The prospect of cooling the planet manually—geoengineering—was the subject of several presentations here today, including two presentations that involved new findings on the controversial idea. The scene was the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). It turns out that there’s a lot scientists don’t know about various cooling methods, but that’s changing steadily. And researchers are learning lessons that suggest that some...

The U.S. Congress will explore deliberate tinkering with the climate in its first ever hearing on geoengineering early next month, ScienceInsider has learned.Congressional committees have shied away from focusing hearings on the controversial topic until now. One reason might be that talk of a technical fix could distract from needed emissions cuts, especially with the U.S. Senate and international negotiators debating new controls on carbon pollution. The House of Representatives' science and technology committee has slated the hearing on the controversial subject for 5 November. The exact focus of the hearing is not known, but the meeting could be a...

Let's say the world will spend $250 billion a year for the next 10 years to minimize the suffering caused by climate change. What's the best bargain we can get for the money? The Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC), a think-tank in Denmark headed by Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, has commissioned 21 papers from leading climate experts and economists to answer that very question. Over the coming month, the CCC will be looking at the benefits and costs of proposed actions in four different areas: climate engineering, cutting future greenhouse gas emissions, economic growth, and green energy technologies. Each topic will...