Aarrgh! We don’t want you to actually do it ya bloody idiots! Just talk endlessly about it and sit on your hands until everyone comes to their senses about the “global warming boogeyman”.
A British chemical engineer, Peter Davidson, presented a webinar early this morning on his strategy to combat global warming: Fog Earth’s upper atmosphere with paint particles, streamed from giant balloons, to reflect sunlight away from Earth and offset the greenhouse effects of burning fossil fuel.
Plan B, indeed.
As the years roll by with essentially no meaningful progress on cutting carbon emissions, “geo-engineering” solutions like Davidson’s attract more attention and perhaps even faith from those inclined to believe that since technology got us into this mess, technology can somehow get us out. (A piece on Davidson’s idea in The Chemical Engineer has drawn favorable references in places as diverse as Gasworld and Earth Times.)
And the idea of mirroring sunlight away from Earth is not, at a certain conceptual level, completely insane. But in practice it might be close.
Speaking as a ‘Davidson’ myself, while I concede a certain amount of eccentricity, I disown the sheer stupidity my *distant* cousin espouses.
Anything with a non-zero albedo he would ‘inject’ into the atmosphere becomes a respirable particulate, and sets up his cure to be worse than the disease.
One cannot reap the benefits of a ‘controlled climate’ from inside an iron lung.
Perhaps he should diversify his familial DNA (at least for the sake of his progeny) with a little DNA from a more practical ethnic group.
FTA: “is not, at a certain conceptual level, completely insane”
I beg to differ. And as tadchem said, what happens when the paint falls prey to the whims of gravity?
I personally would prefer the PM from power plants over this foul idea.
If this could reliably produce rain when needed, go for it. Don’t use cheesy excuses like ‘climate change’ when it might actually be useful tech. Still want to see the numbers though.
tadchem is right, this idea adds additional respirable particulate to the other noseums, PM2.5 and black carbon.
At least the guy is thinking out of the box, way out of the box.
Actually I agree. But he needs to be IN a box. A very small and heavily padded box.
He’s a bit slow…the US Navy filed a patent in 1974.