Enough Jibber-Jabber...I demand a crazy scheme!!

crazy schemes...

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On the one hand, such folks do have a point inasmuch as any global modification to the environment that went wrong would be a cure worse than the disease. On the other hand, it seems increasingly unlikely that a global agreement on emissions caps will be enacted anytime soon. The IPCC report claims that there is a high likelihood that Earth's climate has already moved past the point of no return and that sea levels will continue rising for millennia. Simultaneously, billions of people in China and India are arriving at the First World banquet table: according to the International Energy Agency, in two years China will pass the United States as the largest source of carbon emissions. "The political impossibility of what I call the prohibitionist agenda--that is, carbon prohibitionism--brings a kind of hallucinogenic quality to the global-warming discussion," says Benford. "No economist I know believes that global carbon emissions can be restrained within a century to even the level we have now. Every economist knows that the timescale for changing energy infrastructure is at least half a century to a century, just because of replacement costs. Economists are scientists too, and ignoring them isn't just blind: it's perverse."

Benford has a proposal that possesses the advantages of being both one of the simplest planet-cooling technologies so far suggested and being initially testable in a local context. He suggests suspension of tiny, harmless particles (sized at one-third of a micron) at about 80,000 feet up in the stratosphere. These particles could be composed of diatomaceous earth. "That's silicon dioxide, which is chemically inert, cheap as earth, and readily crushable to the size we want," Benford says. This could initially be tested, he says, over the Arctic, where warming is already considerable and where few human beings live. Arctic atmospheric circulation patterns would mostly confine the deployed particles around the North Pole. An initial experiment could occur north of 70 degrees latitude, over the Arctic Sea and outside national boundaries. "The fact that such an experiment is reversible is just as important as the fact that it's regional," says Benford.
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-Technology Review