Sweet dreams are made of geoengineering

Thu Sep 3, 2009 5:00am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Farming plankton, sending solar panels into orbit, remodeling hydrogen -- for the latest wave of entrepreneurs suggesting easier ways out of climate change, it's all in a day's pitching.

Beyond grabbing headlines, such notions are attracting serious scientific attention and venture funding from investors who at least until the collapse of Lehman Brothers lent credibility to high-risk investment propositions.

Some plans seek radical alternatives to fossil fuels. Other businesses are dreaming of geoengineering -- planning to tweak the earth's climate by removing heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) or reflecting sunlight into space.

...

Britain's top science academy, the Royal Society, this week urged more funds be channeled into research on geoengineering, but for some climate commentators the unproven, technical solutions smack of society's craving for pain-free get-outs.

They note politicians may prefer to feed that habit rather than face tough choices in redressing global warming.

/article continues (Reuters Investing News)... http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idUSTRE58202P20090903?sp=true

it gave us SDI and was headed by Edward "Iago" Teller and Daniel O. "Gorby is a Stalinist" Graham; they're stuck in the gee-whiz, pre-Rachel-Carson 40s, thinking that capitalism, William Shockley-ish nerds at Bell Labs, manly engineers, and all-American know-how could remake whole universes to order
didn't happen, and ain't gonna

...this is a necessary long term project that must be undertaken.

Whether or not it can help mitigate current global warming, however, I am not sure. It is certainly something that must be considered, because we release more than 25 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere yearly.