Global Warming and Geoengineering
Here’s a Jeopardy-style answer/question for you. In the category Geoengineering:
It’s the percentage of the incoming solar radiation that we must reflect back into space in order to stop global warming dead in its tracks.
Correct response: What is 1%?
That sounds doable, doesn’t it? And it’s urgent too. Neither the private sector nor our world governments are making anywhere near adequate progress towards decarbonizing our grid-mix, and thus, with each passing year, we continue to experience the slow but certain increase in the frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters: floods/hurricanes, wildfires, and desertification/droughts, not to mention the loss of our land masses due to sea-level rise.
OK, so let’s look at another Jeopardy answer/question. Same category (more money):
It’s the number of different major modalities of geoengineering currently being investigated and computer-simulated by the world’s top atmospheric scientists.
Correct response: What is 6?
OK, but what exactly does that mean? Due to the limited understanding of geoengineering that most of us possess, when we think about the subject we tend to conjure images of shooting reflective particles high up into the stratosphere, but we are (rightfully) concerned about the unintended consequences, and we shudder to think about additional dangers imposed by the frailties of human judgment in a highly political and less-than-rational world: even if everything goes according to plan, who should control our planet’s thermostat?
Fortunately, one of the other five modalities takes a fundamentally different approach and poses no threat whatsoever in terms of possible unwanted outcomes.
It’s called “Tropical Cloud Generation,” and it carries with it additional benefits, including the virtual elimination of hurricanes and the nourishing of our oceans. I hope you’ll take a few moments to learn about it here, from the website linked above.
If you’d like to take an active role in moving this forward, or even if you’d simply like to gather more information, please let me know by leaving a comment, or hitting the “contact” button.
I look forward to hearing from you, as always.
Geoengineering makes me more than a bit nervous. The forces involved in nature are huge and seemingly uncontrollable. I have a sense, though, that we’ve already slipped past several tipping points that are leading to climate disaster.
We need to be very careful about tampering with the system that we’ve already disturbed – but hopefully not destroyed.
Dean: Over the years, virtually everybody I’ve spoken to about the concept of geoengineering shares your concern. I know I do. As you say, we’re talking about truly massive forces.
That’s the main reason that this particular approach (Thermal Cloud Generation) offers a huge set of advantages over the others. Thanks for your interest, and good to hear from you again.
Thankyou craig shields for this information
One species on Earth is responsible for induced global warming and that species must adjust what it is doing to fix it. I’ve invented a simple, scalable, fuel and process flexible technology that can enable fixing it, but it has not received any support from any of the entities that I’ve appealed to for support since I invented it and tested in in the 1980s. And since-then we have passed many of the tipping points that lock in induced global warming. It’s easy to see my most recent prototype which is fully capable of backing up wind and solar simply by going to http://www.aaecorp.com
“The ones who think that they can change the world are the ones who do.” ~Steve Jobs
“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”
~Albert Einstein
Hi Craig,
I hope it can work, good luck on the effort to curtail this global menace.
B. Shehu
Les, I’ve looked at your website in the past and if everything is as good as you say than the Small Business Development arm of the Small Business Administration should be able to help you bring this to market. I believe that local small scale energy generation at the point of use is an important aspect to reversing climate change so I wish you good luck.
Yea Craig! It might take a lot of energy especially because warm water wants to rise.
There’s quite a good book on the subject by Oliver Morton called The Planet Remade. It talks about the technology, of course, but also the political ramifications. It is somewhat puzzling that the mainstream media doesn’t talk about it more often. I’m certain that at some point, we’ll be forced to go down that road.
This looks like a great use of appropriate technology. Most of the geoengineering I have read about scare me because if they work too well we could go into an ice age.