Page 262 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

as one of the cheapest mitigation options, at least in its direct costs. one of the
controversial aspects was the report’s conclusion that “assumed gradual changes
in climate” would produce impacts “that will be no more severe, and adapting
to them will be no more difficult, than for the range of climates already on the
53
Earth and no more difficult than for other changes humanity faces.” Another
problem was the report’s narrow focus on cost-effectiveness and the assumed
ease of implementing remedial policies. These include fantastic geoengineering
schemes conflated with energy-switching and efficiency options under the catch-
all category “mitigation.”
Here are the National Academy’s geoengineering options, notable for their
impracticability:

n Space mirrors. Place 50,000 mirrors, each 40 square miles in area, in Earth orbit
to reflect incoming sunlight.
n Stratospheric dust. Use guns, rockets, or balloons to maintain a dust cloud in the
stratosphere to increase the reflection of sunlight.
n Stratospheric bubbles. Place billions of aluminized, hydrogen-filled balloons in
the stratosphere to provide a reflective screen.
n Low-stratospheric dust, particulates, or soot. Use aircraft delivery systems or fuel
additives to maintain a cloud of dust, particulates, or soot in the lower strato-
sphere to reflect or intercept sunlight.
n Cloud stimulation. Burn sulfur in ships or power plants to form sulfate aerosols
in order to stimulate additional low marine clouds to reflect sunlight.
n Laser removal of atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons. Use up to 150 extremely pow-
erful lasers, consuming up to 2 percent of the world power supply, to break up
CFCs in the lower atmosphere. 54

n Ocean biomass stimulation. Fertilize the oceans with iron to stimulate the
growth of Co -absorbing phytoplankton.
2
n Reforestation. Plant 3 percent of the entire U.S. surface area (100,000 square
miles) with fast-growing trees to sequester 10 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide
emissions. (433–464)

Washington insider Robert A. Frosch—a vice president of General Motors
Research Labs, former deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects
Agency, former assistant secretary of the navy for research and development, and
former administrator of NASA—spearheaded the geoengineering aspects of the
study. His enthusiastic promotion of climate engineering was seen as a rationale
for GM and other corporations to argue against cutting carbon dioxide emis-
sions. At the time, Frosch said,

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