In The 1970s Climate Modification Proposals Included Purposely Melting Arctic Sea Ice With Black Soot

In his 1975 book The Genesis Strategy, the late climate scientist Dr. Stephen Schneider reviewed contemporary climate modification proposals to reduce the severe 1960s and 1970s droughts, floods, and extreme weather…which were at that time associated with the ongoing global cooling. One proposal was to eliminate the Arctic’s sea ice by having aircraft dump black soot on the ice pack.

In 1974, Schneider reported that the Earth had warmed 0.6°C from 1880 to 1940, then cooled -0.3°C from 1940 to 1970. He suggested the warming could not have been due to human activity, but possibly the ongoing cooling might have been.

Image Source: Schneider, 1974

By 1975 Schneider had published a book, The Genesis Strategy, that focused on the creation of human impacts on climate. He reiterated contemporary concerns about the ongoing global cooling and that cooling leads to more extreme weather, droughts, floods, crop failures…

There were many climate modification proposals of the mid-1970s that conventional wisdom suggested would “offset an inadvertent climate change” and “stabilize the climate.” Purposely changing the climate by “creating a stratospheric dust layer” in space, “cutting down tropical forests,” diverting rivers and damming the Gulf stream, and even “creating surface temperature anomalies” could all potentially “relieve” the Earth of droughts, floods, and “gloomy long-range weather forecasts.”

One of the more prominent climate modification proposals was to “eliminate the Arctic Ocean ice pack” by “spreading black particles such as soot by aircraft” over the top of it. It was surmised that decreasing the reflectivity of a large area of the ice “would cause it to disappear in a period of about three years.” It was estimated that 10 million metric tons of soot would be needed to sufficiently blacken the ice; it would take about 500 aircraft 50 days to complete the job.

Another suggestion was to “dam the Bering Strait and pump water from the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific, thereby drawing warm Atlantic water in from the other side and raising the surface temperature enough to melt the ice pack.”

A third method proposed detonating “thermo-nuclear devices” in the middle of the Arctic Ocean to “fragment the ice.”

By the early 1980s Schneider had abandoned global cooling climate modification proposals and hopped onto the nascent global warming scare-mongering popularized by James Hansen.

In 1989 Schneider gave Discover magazine an interview (Jankovic and Schultz, 2017) in which he said climate scientists must choose between telling the truth and being effective in “working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.” The latter choice necessitates capturing the public’s imagination by offering up “scary scenarios” and making “simplified dramatic statements” while avoiding mention of “any doubts we might have.”

This climate-scientist-as-political-activist proposal has been the clarion call for what anthropogenic global warming activism has become today.

Image Source: Jankovic and Schultz, 2017

11 responses to “In The 1970s Climate Modification Proposals Included Purposely Melting Arctic Sea Ice With Black Soot”

  1. Felix

    The sheer arrogance of thinking mere humans can undo billions of years of physical and biological evolution.

  2. pochas94

    Hang on to that thought. Might need it in another 35 years or so.

  3. Extreme Rainfall – Newsfeed Hasslefree Allsort

    […] In The 1970s Climate Modification Proposals Included Purposely Melting Arctic Sea Ice With Black Soo… […]

  4. Michael T. Montgomery

    Very revealing to say the least. Looks like Dick Lindzen is right again about the Golden Triangle.

  5. dm

    A valid interpretation of “..climate scientists must choose between telling the truth and being effective in …” reducing “… the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.” is: Climate scammers knowingly misrepresent weather cycles to deceive the public. Climate scammers do so to impose their political and social policies on the public.

    Let me explain. Many who created fear about a pending ice age advocated for more government control of the economy & society. Similar political and social policies were advocated by many who strove to create fear about global warming. Now, fear mongering over catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is the vehicle for those policies. The pattern is obvious. Misrepresent recent weather to scare the public & decision makers into supporting the climate scammers’ political & social policies.

  6. bonbon

    Schneider was a close friend of The Population Bomb’s Paul Ehrlich and wife, Anne Ehrlich, both at Stanford, whose anti-population philosophy he fully shared. He and Paul Ehrlich co-authored articles on the “limited carrying capacity” of the Earth, and challenged population advocate Julian Simon with a bet on how fast man would exhaust certain resources.

    For these Malthusians, cooling or warming is irrelevant – their only target is population reduction, exactly as de-carbonizer Dr. John Schellnhuber CBE.

    So guess what Zero-Carbon Carney’s Great Reset and Green New Deal means?

    1. The Indomitable Snowman, Ph.D.

      Julian Simon took that bet. And won.

  7. Richard Greene

    A different angle on black soot:

    I wonder what global warming effect black soot from air pollution falling on the snow in the Arctic has?

    In the past 25 years China (and others) have been burning a lot of coal and polluting the air. There is so much pollution over China that some drifts east to the United States left coast. I think that pollution lowers the IQ there.

    There must be a lot of dark soot falling on the Arctic snow. I know each new snowstorm would cover the soot … but it never stops coming.

    I imagine this is one cause of some of the global warming in the Arctic Circle, which is the “poster child” for global warming since the mid-1970s.

  8. In The 1970s Climate Modification Proposals Included Purposely Melting Arctic Sea Ice With Black Soot | Un hobby...

    […] K. Richard, Aug 2, 2021 in […]

  9. Sol

    And that is what they are doing, burning the Amazon along other rain forests, forests all orotund the world, and now more than ever before, breaking down the ice around the poles with their new icebreakers, and arctic routes.

    They are also covering glaciers with black dirt and to proof it there is plenty of video and photographic evidences you can easily find.

    And if that should not be enough, at the same time some psychos after telling us that the sun is giving us cancer, are attempting to block it by what they call geoengineering and disseminating aluminum, sulfuric acid and other toxic particles, by airplane.

    As if they should own the planet and the future of pur children, everyday dumping tons of industrie’s garbage which they are actually selling to our governments which buys it and dumps it on us with the excuse of using it for trying to save the planet .

    1. Sol

      In other words they are actually pissing on our heads and telling us not worry cause that piss is just “rain”

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