Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
Can technology fix global warming? Scientists are starting to pitch some pretty far-out ideas, including these:
- PROPOSAL: Use a fleet of blimps to pour up to 4 million tons of sulfur dioxide, which reflects solar radiation, into the stratosphere each year.
REALITY CHECK: And you thought weather balloons messed with the ufo crowd. - PROPOSAL: Position 20 million tons of reflectors between Earth and the sun, 932,000 miles away.
REALITY CHECK: International Space Station—just 240 miles away—will cost more than $100 billion. - PROPOSAL: Cover oceans with white Styrofoam beads.
REALITY CHECK: Marine life and Styrofoam don’t mix. - PROPOSAL: Put anti-gas drugs in cow feed to reduce burps laden with methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more powerful than CO2.
REALITY CHECK: This is actually happening…in Scotland. - PROPOSAL: Launch fleet of solar-powered satellites that will transform sunlight into electric power to be delivered to Earth as microwaves or laser beams.
REALITY CHECK: Everything after “solar-powered satellites” sounds really scary. - PROPOSAL: Cover large swaths of desert with giant sheets of plastic to reflect sunlight back into space.
REALITY CHECK: Think Laura Palmer. - PROPOSAL: Send thousands of unmanned yachts to patrol globe and thicken marine clouds by whipping ocean with giant eggbeaters.
REALITY CHECK: Think Exxon Valdez. - PROPOSAL: Use large artillery to shoot sulfate into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight and allow Arctic ice to thicken.
REALITY CHECK: Beware the flight to Reykjavik. - PROPOSAL: Genetically engineer a creature that would metabolize carbon dioxide.
REALITY CHECK: They’re called trees. - PROPOSAL: Seed oceans with iron to stimulate growth of phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that convert CO2 into organic matter.
REALITY CHECK: Being tested, but other micro-creatures would likely eat phytoplankton and emit carbon, neutralizing effect. - PROPOSAL: Inject diatomaceous earth, the chalky stuff in cat litter, into the stratosphere above Arctic Circle.
REALITY CHECK: World beholden to Jonny Cat lobby.
