Global Cooling Foundation
It’s time for an effort to organize amelioration of anthropogenic climatic change. The best technique I’ve been able to pin down is described by the widely cited paper,
Coale, KH et al., "A massive phytoplankton bloom induced by an ecosystem-scale iron fertilization experiment in the equatorial Pacific Ocean," Nature 383(6600): 495-501, 10 Oct. 1996.
500 kg of iron dispersed over 100 km2 of deep equatorial pacific waters fixed 3.5×105 kg of CO2. The annual global increase in CO2 is estimated at 1.2×1013 kg by the US EPA. Assuming a constant multiplier of 3.5×105/500 (i.e. 700), this indicates that 1.7×1010 kg of oceanic iron seeding suffices to enforce equilibrium. At a cost of $US 30/ton of ore, the raw iron cost for such a project comes to $US 510 million/annum.
Bottomline: For less than a billion dollars a year, we can stop global warming. Estimating the probability of success, defined by the enforcement of equilibrium as a result of the application of the resources planned, is a difficult and complex proposition, because of the variety of unknown factors. However, the effect is well-established, and the costs relative to the benefits are vanishingly inconsequential. Compare this to the hundreds of billions spent annually on making war on non-beligerents, for example, and the moral folly of failing to make the attempt stands in absurd clarity.
The Global Cooling Foundation has been established to undertake this project. If you want to recieve the announcement (one-time only) when they set up their initial web site and mail service, you can send an email to “oneshot@globalcoolingfoundation.org” . Their funding plan is establish a 501(c)3 tax-exempt charitable organization, get grassroots bootstrap funding to support enough research on side-effects and enough supporting scientific documentation to present to large institutional contributors so that the full annual cost of the solution can be maintained. Technical, legal, and organizational contributions are very much needed. Please consider taking concrete action to save our generation from the destablizing effects of unmitigated climate change, which may be reasonably projected to include economic depression, political repression, and increasing levels of war, disease, malnutrition and starvation.