A nifty little Brief Analysis from the nonprofit National Center for Policy Analysis came out today, under the title Geoengineering: A Global Warming Fix?" For some reason, author Pete Geddes left off what must have been his working subtitle how applying band-aids to global warming can be the Mother of all Contracting Boondoggles for Corporate America.
Geddes wants to throw the reality-based community a bone, so he starts small:
reforestation (and reduced deforestation) can play an important role in offsetting carbon emission; this is especially true in the tropics, where trees grow three times faster than in temperate zones and each tropical tree removes about 50 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.
So far, so good, right? Well, the olive branch extended, Geddes moves quickly to the real money makers:
Atmospheric Sun Screens, or 'What has Big Business done for YOUR respiratory system lately?'
Another geoengineering idea is to mimic the natural cooling effects of volcanic eruptions that release massive amounts of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere. SO2 eventually turns into highly reflective solid particles that bounce solar radiation back into space....Gregory Benford has proposed a variation on this idea, Science magazine reports. He suggests increasing the planet's reflectivity by putting tiny particles of silicon dioxide (basically, kitty litter) into the stratosphere.
Ocean Absorption, or 'Hey, we haven't completely pushed the ocean ecosystem over the brink YET, so why not keep trying?'
A third idea is to add iron to the upper layers of the ocean. Iron acts as a fertilizer, increasing the growth of phytoplankton which, like all plants, create carbon compounds by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The resulting "algal blooms," when they sink, would take carbon to the sea floor, essentially storing it away.
And just in case there are any of the army of contractors working for KBR, URS, SCS, Parsons, et al who haven't had wet dreams yet ... Geddes tosses in this little tidbit:
Other proposals to reduce the solar radiation reaching the Earth include putting a large mirror or shade into orbit between the Sun and the Earth, or placing trillions of small transparent sheets in orbit to reduce the sunlight reaching the Earth's surface by 2 percent (sufficient to offset warming even with a doubling of CO2), or laying a reflective film over much of the planet's deserts
Yeah baby! "Trillions of small transparent sheets" circling our earth!
Anyone want to guess who the major funders of the nonprofit National Center for Policy Analysis are?
It wouldn't surprise you to find that most of the Corporate funding comes from ExxonMobil ... while the foundation donors list includes the Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, the Koch Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Castle Rock, and JM Foundation.
Naah ... me neither.
Because as Geddes has said "It is time to think outside the soapbox."
I guess that just sounded so much better than "ka ching!"