CFR- Bottom line

It is pro­bab­ly safe to assu­me that the direct mone­ta­ry cost of geo­en­gi­ne­ring would be at

least 100 times less than the cost of a full pro­gram of GHG aba­te­ment…

…and perhaps much che­a­per than that

Becau­se it is rela­tively cheap, a nati­on that had not done much aba­te­ment, but star­ted cli­ma­te impac­ts, might be temp­ted to uni­la­te­ral­ly enga­ge in albe­do-modi­fy­ing geo­en­gi­nee­ring.

Uni­la­te­ral Geo­en­gi­nee­ring

A few basic ide­as about the sci­ence to start our dis­cus­sions

2008 May 05

M. Gran­ger Mor­gan

Department of

Engineering and Public Policy

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA 15213

tel: 412−268−2672

e-mail: granger.morgan@andrew.

Four examp­les of how the earth’s albe­do might be increa­sed:

 

1. Add small reflec­ting par­ti­cles in the stra­to­s­phe­re.

2. Add more clouds in the lower part of the atmo­s­phe­re.

3. Place various kinds of reflec­ting objec­ts or dif­frac­tion­gra­tings in space eit­her near the earth or at a sta­ble

loca­ti­on bet­ween the earth and the sun.

4. Chan­ge lar­ge por­ti­ons of the planet’s land cover from things that are dark and absor­bing, such as trees, to things that are light and reflec­ting, such as open snow-cover or gras­ses.

A sin­gle nati­on could do the­se wit­hin it’s natio­nal bounda­ries

This is not hard to do,nor all that expen­si­ve.

Sources: NASA; Boe­ing; www.carlstumpf.com

David Keith has sug­gested that it should be pos­si­ble to crea­te micro­scopic reflec­ting com­po­si­te par­ti­cles that would be sel­fori­en­ting and self-levi­ta­ting, and thus might  have to be repla­ced very fre­quent­ly.

Gun for shoo­ting com­po­si­tes into the air