Hedging their bets against politicians and a United Nations which seem incapable of finding solutions to climate change, a handful of philanthropic billionaires are funding private geoengineering projects which seek to manipulate the Earth's climate on a global scale. Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Canadian tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström are donating millions of dollars annually to companies which hold patents over Geo-engineering technology, filling in for a lack of government funding.

Geo-engineering projects are on the cutting edge of climate science and remain deeply controversial. One area of research examines spraying millions of tons of reflective particles of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, intending to reflect solar radiation away from the planet in order to cool it. Activists are concerned that companies who hold intellectual property rights over geoengineering technology stand to make massive profits while delaying emission reduction strategies and permanently changing the climate in unpredictable ways.

I disagree with the whole thing.

Instead of working towards a better future the right way (recycling, green energy, etc), they are going to attempt to put metaphorical duct tape around the world's problems and call it progress.

Pretty backwards if you ask me =/

Cant make monies off recycling.

Oh yeah you can dude!

You can make a fortune on recycling.

This is the way I think about it. We've done a bit of a bad job with pollution etc with this planet, so geo engineering is an attempt to clean it up while we try to avoid polluting it more in the future.

A parallel situation could be BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Sure, we can try to avoid spilling again in the future (i.e. reduce, reuse, recycle), but we've still got a LOT of oil to get out of that ocean (i.e. geo engineering).

But I see what you're saying. We can't JUST rely on radical solutions. The common sense ones like the 3 R's will always and forever be important in combating anthropogenic climate change.

But this assumes that the geoengineering helps in the first place and we wont accidentally cause a disaster like what happened with DDT or Agent Orange.

Company incentives are likely on short-term profit and would likely follow through with lucrative projects without first assessing safety.

I think they should invest money into alternative energy and transportation research instead. That way we can eventually stop the problem at the source while catering to and maintaining our current infrastructure.

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Feb 9 2012 12:34am

I should clarify that I'm not totally against geoengineering. There are plenty of projects surrounding it that are totally beneficial and do not run the risk of altering life as we know it. Some are as simple as planting trees. Other projects I find to be mad scientist in nature.

I just, as you said, disagree with relying on these radical solutions.