The first trials of controversial sunshielding technology are being planned after the United Nations failed to secure agreement on cutting greenhouse gases.
Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.
The British and American scientists involved do not intend to wait for international rules on technology that deliberately alters the climate. They believe that the weak outcome of December’s climate summit in Copenhagen means that emissions will continue to rise unchecked and that the world urgently needs an alternative strategy to protect itself from global warming.
I like the proactive thinking behind this idea (why wait for international cooperation that looks likely not to happen?) but this seems a little ill conceived. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas right? - ie solar radiation is let through the atmosphere while infrared radiation is trapped within (i do realise that the overall effect of clouds are that the earth's surface is generally cooler than it would be without them) - but this increase in water vapor or cloud cover would be unnatural and would surely have adverse effects. It also defeats the point that fossil fuels are a finite resource, their combustion emits masses of GHGs and alternative energy resources must be found soon - with or without artificial cloud making schemes
ReplyDeleteWrite a letter to Gatesy and ask for the detailed results of any tests they've performed on this.
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