http://blog.ted.com/2008/10/geoengineering.php

“Climate geo-engineering tactics, ranked by cost, risk, awfulness” refers to a talk by David Keith and to his latest paper.

Also, the more I think about this plan, the more I think we should be really careful and perhaps wait for some scientists to get a better understanding of these sort of shock therapies.

Exactly, and that is a pretty big problem indeed. That’s why I demand that any solution should have a kill switch. The algae thing might get a bit out of hand and suffocate all other plant life on the planet. Also, you would have just given the world another invasive species to worry about.

The nasty issue here is that for a solution to be really effective, it should probably be ‘viral’, it should thrive on CO2. Whether it’s an organism that loves CO2 or a technology that makes removing CO2 profitable, it should spread like wildfire. But that would make it very hard to stop.

What is to stop this new and successful company from just continuing their CO2 removal until someone bombs them?

> There should also be a focus on Methane as
> well, as this has over 60 times the power of
> C02 as a greenhouse gas.

I agree, but the most important achievement will not so much be the removal of carbon, it will be showing mankind that this sort of massive thing can be done quickly and cheaply.

Once that message is across, we’ll worry about getting the details right.

Would methane make a good ‘backup’ greenhouse gas? Something we could use to actually push temperatures up a bit if things get bad?

I am starting to think that one of the best ways of doing this is to use the chlorophyl process embodies in massive scale algal farms. Hell, the Gippsland lakes are well on their way to becoming a prototype implementation.

Short of the approach undertaken in the film “spaceballs” the algal approach has a number of merits.

The question then becomes, what to do with all the algae once grown? It is being tipped for conversion into biofuels, which is a great monetisation, however the gunk would need sequestering to achieve the results associated with the outcome.

There should also be a focus on Methane as well, as this has over 60 times the power of C02 as a greenhouse gas.

Sam.
http://www.smartenergygroups.com