Geo-engineering: Fictional solutions to climate change

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Climate Change is essentially a energy substitution problem, where the current technology and consumption patterns of energy in the world are needed to be replaced. In short the fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas that produce Carbon and other GHG gasses like methane, nitrous gasses and fluorocarbons need to be replaced. However the fossil fuel’s that today meet over 85 % of the world’s energy needs are managed by powerful corporations in the coal oil and gas segment, who have no plans to let go.

Because of close participation of the oil and gas industry with the decision and policy making bodies in the US and Western Europe, many of the solutions being devised today are quixotic and unproductive. Solar and Wind power are possibly the two solutions that can substitute fossil fuel on the long run, but requires more developmental funds to lower costs. However since policy making is deeply influenced by the coal lobby and the oil lobby, these developmental funds are being diverted to the fictional solutions in climate change thus denying the renewable energy industry of much needed funding.

The Carbon economy and Cap and trade solutions was one such solution introduced with the Kyoto Conference in 1997. Over the next 15 years it resulted in billions of dollars being invested and virtual markets being created to sustain a futile mirage of capping emissions. When the EU ETS was first introduced in the year 2005, Carbon economics was touted to be the solution to all ills of environmental pollution.

However in the first five years of its operation, it was found to be unsustainable and counter-productive, raising energy prices three fold due to speculative trading of carbon , oil and gas without reducing overall emissions. The failure of the G7 nations to force Carbon economics on the rest of the world at Copenhagen, however was a big setback to the oil and gas lobby. For the first time there was the talk of allocation of funds directly to a Clean energy program and voices across the world that Cap and Trade should be scrapped and direct funding of low carbon technologies was needed.

As soon as the Carbon economy was exposed and rejected, the oil and coal lobby pushed through the G7 nations, new proposals to control climate change thru Geo-engineering. The end objective............to deny the renewable energy industry of developmental funds.

Geo-engineering refers to the large-scale technological manipulation of the climate through man made techniques, to reduce the GHG gasses, global warming and effects of climate change. It includes Carbon sequestration, or the CCS, mischievously named as the Clean Coal technology, pushing aerosols in the stratosphere for decarburization, , fertilizing the ocean, cultivating algae blooms, increasing the brightness the clouds., and shielding the sun, building space mirrors.



We have previously exposed the technological complexities and weakness of Clean Coal Technology both from the feasibility and scalability point of view both at Technorati as well as this blog.

We will take up the other subjects one by one, and show you their true face in the coming months. No estoeric solution to climate change or any global energy problem can be ever implemented or accepted by the masses. For a truly acceptable solution, the same must be cheap and cater to the man on the street. Such solutions can come only from volume production of clean energy solutions of solar, windpower and rainforest plantations and not from far-fetched theories like Carbon economics and Geo-engineering