What if the livable atmosphere was made to be “dependent” on technology and the system remaining intact ?
Talk about control.
The ability to put the controllers in their place could become suicidal.
This is from an “atmosperic phycisicist” in Nevada : " It would work like this: Fleets of large drones would crisscross the upper latitudes of the globe during winter months, sprinkling the skies with tons of extremely fine dust-like materials every year. If Mitchell is right, this would produce larger ice crystals than normal, creating thinner cirrus clouds that dissipate faster. “That would allow more radiation into space, cooling the earth,” Mitchell says. Done on a large enough scale, this “cloud seeding” could ease global temperatures by as much as 1.4 °C, more than the planet has warmed since the Industrial Revolution, according to a separate Yale study. ARTICLE from MIT: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604081/the-growing-case-for-geoengineering/
This is from Ted Kaczynski : APPENDIX FOUR
The Long-Term Outcome
of Geo-Engineering
In 2009, a correspondent asked me whether I thought nuclear weapons
were the most dangerous aspect of modern technology. What follows
is my reply, heavily rewritten.
The most dangerous aspect of modern technology probably is not
nuclear weapons. It could plausibly be argued that the remedies for global
warming that are likely to be adopted constitute the most dangerous aspect
of modern technology.
Nations have a strong incentive to avoid using nuclear weapons, at
least on any large scale, because such use would probably be suicidal. This
doesn’t mean that nuclear war can never happen. On the contrary, the risk
of it is very real. But a major nuclear war at least is not a strong probability
for the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, it is virtually certain that nations will fail to
reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide sufficiently and in time to prevent
global warming from becoming disastrous. Instead, global warming
will be kept in check through “geo-engineering.” This means that the
Earth’s climate will be artificially managed to keep it within acceptable
limits.1 Of the many tools that have been proposed for management of the
Earth’s climate, three examples may be mentioned here: (i) Powdered iron
can be dumped into the oceans to stimulate the growth of plankton that
will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 2 (ii) Microbes or other
organisms may be genetically engineered to consume atmospheric carbon
dioxide. 3 (iii) Carbon dioxide may be pumped into underground reservoirs
for permanent storage there.4
Any attempt at geo-engineering will entail a grave risk of immediate
catastrophe. "Geo-engineering makes the problem of ballistic-missile
defense look easy. It has to work the first time, and just right."5 Novel
technological solutions usually have to be corrected repeatedly through trial
and error; rarely do they work “the first time, and just right,” and that’s why
people "quite rightly see [geo-engineering] as a scary thing."6 But let’s assume that geo-engineering does work the first time and
just right. Even so, there is every reason to expect that the longer-term
consequences will be catastrophic.
First: Attempts to meddle with the environment almost always have
unforeseen, undesirable consequences. In order to correct the undesirable
consequences, further meddling with the environment is required. This
in turn has other unforeseen consequences … and so forth. In trying to
solve our problems by tinkering with the environment we just get ourselves
deeper and deeper into trouble.
Second: For hundreds of millions of years, natural processes have
kept the Earth’s climate and the composition of its atmosphere within
limits that have allowed the survival and evolution of complex forms of
life. Sometimes during this period the climate has varied enough to cause
the extinction of numerous species, but it has not become so extreme as to
wipe out all of the most complex organisms.
When human beings have taken over the management of the Earth’s
climate, the natural processes that have kept the climate within livable limits
will lose their capacity to perform that function. The climate will then be
entirely dependent on human management. Since the Earth’s climate is a
worldwide phenomenon, it cannot be managed by independent local groups;
its management will have to be organized on a worldwide basis and therefore
will require rapid, worldwide communication. For this reason among
others, management of the Earth’s climate will be dependent on technological
civilization. Every past civilization has broken down eventually, and
modern technological civilization likewise will break down sooner or later.
When that happens, the system of human climate-management necessarily
will break down too. Because the natural processes that kept the climate
within certain limits will be defunct, the Earth’s climate can be expected
to go haywire. In all probability the Earth will become too hot or too cold
for the survival of complex life-forms, or the percentage of oxygen in the
atmosphere will sink too low, or the atmosphere will become contaminated
with toxic gasses, or some other atmospheric disaster will occur.
Third: When the Earth has a managed climate, maintenance of the
technological system will be considered essential for survival because, as
has just been pointed out, the breakdown of the technological system will
probably lead to radical and fatal disruption of the climate. The elimination
of the technological system, through revolution or by any other means, APPENDIX FOUR: NOTES 2 17
would be almost equivalent to suicide. Because the system will be seen as
indispensable for survival, it will be virtually immune to challenge.
The elite of our society-the scientists and engineers, the corporation
executives, the government officials and the politicians-are afraid
of nuclear war because it would lead to their own destruction. But they
will be delighted to see the system that gives them their power and their
status become indispensable and therefore immune to any serious challenge.
Consequently, while they will make every effort to avoid nuclear war, they
will be quite pleased to undertake management of the Earth’s climate.