James Hodgskiss of "Chemtrails Project UK" recently posted a claim that Professor Tim Lenton of Exeter University "conceded that the geoengineering of our skies was indeed already happening".
Link (currently the site is working only intermittently) http://www.chemtrailsprojectuk.com/cracked-top-climate-scientist-admits-to-ongoing-geoengineering/
The story is mirrored here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/top-br...-ongoing-geoengineering-interventions/5485739
This claim is based on a Q&A session at a conference in Paris in July 2015 entitled Our Common Future Under Climate Change
Here is a transcript of the relevant part of the Q&A session:As you will see from the transcript and video excerpts, below, Professor Lenton initially denied that geoengineering activities were already occurring but, when pressed further, he threw in the towel and conceded that the geoengineering of our skies was indeed already happening.
* The source transcribes this part as "a small scale uncontrolled [sic] one" but it seems to me that Pritchard says "and controlled", as he intended.
Olga Raffa, Chemtrails Project UK: My name’s Olga Raffa, from ClimateChangeSense.org. I represent a large group of people who are wondering why programmes such as weather modification and ongoing geoengineering programmes throughout the World have not been taken into consideration with a lot of the research done. And we notice, on a daily basis, that our environment is being tipped through the aerosols being dumped into the atmosphere blocking our sun. And there seems to be a lot of aluminium in the environment – within the bees now have aluminium, and it’s destroying their, well, there’s a bee collapse obviously with the insects and the biodiversity. Aluminium… found in whales. So we recognise this is a military programme. And the EMFs – so you’ve got your cell towers, your HAARP… which is putting heat into the atmosphere, into the ionosphere and seems to be moving the jet streams. Have you done any research and published on the tipping points that this is doing and will cause in the future. Thank you.
Prof. Tim Lenton, University of Exeter: Not precisely on those interventions, but I am someone who’s obviously worked on tipping points and also on trying to evaluate these… well, I would think of them more as proposed, existing proposals for geoengineering inverventions – either in the camp of sunlight reflection methods or large-scale carbon removal methods. I’ve been on my own journey with my thinking about that but, as I’ve said publicly and in the literature, I’m now of a view that the risks posed by large-scale attempts to reflect sunlight back to space… far outweigh the potential benefits in terms of reducing risk of higher temperatures and associated tipping points. So I still feel that there’s a space for and there’s a need, in fact, to look at the options for carbon removal as I think we may need that later this century. But that’s not what you’re most concerned about.
The next Q&A covers another subject raised by another attendee, before the geoengineering topic is rekindled by Dr. Colin Pritchard.
Dr. Colin Pritchard, University of Edinburgh: My question is again for Tim. Colin Pritchard, Edinburgh University. Hi, Tim. Thank you very much for your very cogent explanation. I would basically agree with you on geoengineering – except, may I infer that you prefer an enormous global-scale uncontrolled experiment in geoengineering as opposed to a small-scale and controlled* one. At the moment we are in the former. And it seems to be a little bizarre to prefer the former to the latter.
Prof. Tim Lenton, University of Exeter: I’m certainly not preferring carrying on with our current uncontrolled experiment. And I’m not – what’s the right word – I’m not monolithically set against things that are being discussed under the banner of geoengineering. So it’s quite a nuance… I think that’s quite a nuanced discussion to have, perhaps over lunch, because it really depends on the options you’re considering. So you’ve got some things which would be reflective roofs and road surfaces that are very practical, local adaptation options against urban heat islands that, if you did on a large enough scale, could have some measurable effect on regional climate and I think are very sensible. So we have to just be… I think we have to be nuanced on specific proposals, specific technologies. But I think we can perhaps all agree that certainly none of us want to continue the current uncontrolled experiment. I guess, knowing the numbers, we realise that we would like the strongest mitigation efforts possible but we now know that additional things including carbon removal from the atmosphere may… we may want to develop that capability because we may need it as part of the risk management portfolio.
Chemtrails Project UK claim that this represents an admission of ongoing geoengineering, which is not the case at all, if you listen to the Q&A session in context. Colin Pritchard's question was facetiously referring to mankind's current unbridled emissions of carbon dioxide as "an enormous global-scale uncontrolled experiment in geoengineering" (i.e. exacerbating the greenhouse effect), and asking Lenton whether he prefers that to a controlled small-scale geoengineering experiment. Remember, Lenton had just stated his opinion that the risks of solar radiation management would outweigh the benefits.
Professor Lenton has confirmed by email to me that this is what he meant, and that CPUK are misrepresenting his views.
Colin Pritchard, who put the question to Lenton, also confirms that this is what he was talking about:
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