Cloud Whitening To Geoengineer Climate

The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, has provided a US research organisation with thousands of dollars in funding to look into geoengineering technologies intended to combat the effects of climate change.

Specifically, $300,000 of Gates’ fortune will be spent on developing so-called ‘cloud whitening’ techniques, producing clouds that are more reflective, that beam incoming solar rays away from the earth and, therefore, stop temperatures increasing.

Geoengineering Technologies: Climate Change

Multiple different approaches to geoengineering technologies that could alter climate change have emerged in recent months, including artificial forests and arrays of space mirrors launched by rockets. The majority of these would be extremely high-cost and unlikely to surface for many years yet.

In 2009, however, research was carried out into the viability of using ships to launch seawater up vertically. The seawater would be converted into minute particles and would result in overhead clouds becoming thicker, and therefore whiter, with boosted reflectivity.

Cloud-Whitening Technologies

The technology involved in converting this seawater will be developed by San Francisco-based Silver Lining and a future trial of it is set to involve ten ships, along with an area of ocean 10,000 square kilometres in size.

The head researcher involved is Armand Neukermanns, who has referred to cloud-whitening technologies as “the most benign form of engineering.”
 
Despite this, the plan has been criticised by environmentalists. They highlight the risks involved in trialling geoengineering technologies in advance of the introduction of official rules governing them, which have not yet been put in place.

Speaking to the Times, Sir David King – who used to hold the post of Chief Scientific Adviser – stated: “I do not see any geoengineering solution which does not have unintended consequences or is not far too expensive.” And elsewhere, a Canadian campaigner told the Ecologist that “Bill Gates and his cloud-wrenching cronies have no right to unilaterally change our seas and skies in this way.”

Enviro News will provide further coverage on the development of this cloud-whitening technology in future News Items.

See also:

Approval for Climate Change Geoengineering Research