Bill Gates Pays for Cloud-whitening Trials to Beat Greenhouse Gases

Can Whiter Clouds Reduce Global Warming?

June 11, 2010

USA TODAY - A grant from Bill Gates is helping researchers explore the possibility that making clouds whiter and more reflective by spraying them with a fine seawater mist could help block the sun's rays and send them back into space.

Cloud whitening builds on the natural cloud-forming process, says Silicon Valley inventor Armand Neukermans, who received the funding to test if the concept is doable.

When water vapor in cloud-forming regions encounters sea salt crystals it condenses around them, forming tiny droplets, he explains. Together, many droplets diffuse sunlight and make a cloud whiter.

Neukermans says he is working on a conceptual spray mechanism mounted on a fleet of boats in the ocean to lift fine sea salt crystals into the air to increase the number of droplets and the reflectivity in the clouds.

Proponents say the research is needed because of society's failure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which are thought to be causing global warming, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 2000-09 decade was the warmest since record keeping began in 1880, NOAA reports.

"If the climate starts to change in some severe way you can reach for some of these things," Gates said Thursday. "At best it's an insurance policy."

Gates called the $300,000 grant "a tiny amount of money." He spoke Thursday at the Newseum in Washington about the need for more research on clean energy to reduce the threat of global warming.

Critics call the research dangerous.

"The assumption is we can play God with the Earth's ecosystem," says Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth.

The solution to global warming is to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide production, Pica says.

"Everything else is just a distraction."

Gates has been studying technologies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and geo-engineering techniques such as cloud whitening for several years, says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology.

Caldeira and a colleague at the University of Calgary administer $4.5 million that Gates provided for such research. Caldeira awarded $300,000 of that money for laboratory research by a team of engineers led by Neukermans. Other researchers are looking for additional ways to whiten clouds, and at designs for unmanned boats to carry the spray mechanisms, says cloud physicist John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Latham first suggested cloud whitening as a way to counter global warming in 1990, according to Rasch.

Latham envisions hundreds of wind-powered boats generating the sea spray and a combination of planes and satellites to measure and control the clouds' moisture content, reflected solar energy and surface temperature.

He estimates the project, which he says would require international approval before it were launched, would cost about $4.5 billion and buy the planet 30 to 60 years to develop a more permanent solution.

There are risks to spraying seawater into the air, says Dan Murphy, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder. Reducing the sunlight entering the ocean will reduce the evaporation of water and make less rainfall, which could lead to droughts, he says.

Such worries prompted the Montreal-based environmental group ETC Group to launch a campaign called "Hands off Mother Earth!" that counts dozens of member organizations around the world and urges governments to ban real-world geo-engineering trials.

Global warming was caused by "the scientific, corporate and political establishment of developed countries," ETC Group's Diana Bronson says.

"To now think those same people will correct the climate crisis and the biosphere is a little bit naïve," Bronson says.

Kert Davies, research director for the environmental group Greenpeace, worries about unintended consequences but he can imagine a reasonable use for cloud whitening.

"In an emergency situation during summer when the ice cap is melting you might want to think about putting up a cloud," Davies says. "But as a global strategy it's just a Band-Aid."

Bill Gates Pays for ‘Artificial’ Clouds to Beat Greenhouse Gases

May 8, 2010

Times Online - The first trials of controversial sunshielding technology are being planned after the United Nations failed to secure agreement on cutting greenhouse gases.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.

The British and American scientists involved do not intend to wait for international rules on technology that deliberately alters the climate. They believe that the weak outcome of December’s climate summit in Copenhagen means that emissions will continue to rise unchecked and that the world urgently needs an alternative strategy to protect itself from global warming.

Many methods of cooling the planet, collectively known as geoengineering, have been proposed. They include rockets to deploy millions of mirrors in the stratosphere and artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide from the air. Most would be prohibitively expensive and could not be deployed for decades.

However, a study last year calculated that a fleet of 1,900 ships costing £5 billion could arrest the rise in temperature by criss-crossing the oceans and spraying seawater from tall funnels to whiten clouds and increase their reflectivity.

Silver Lining, a research body in San Francisco, has received $300,000 (£204,000) from Mr Gates. It will develop machines to convert seawater into microscopic particles capable of being blown up to the cloud level of 1,000 metres. This would whiten clouds by increasing the number of nuclei.

The trial would involve ten ships and 10,000sq km (3,800sq miles) of ocean. Armand Neukermanns, who is leading the research, said that whitening clouds was “the most benign form of engineering” because, while it might alter rainfall, the effects would cease soon after the machines were switched off.

Other types of geoengineering, such as mimicking volcanoes by using aircraft to spray reflective sulphate particles in the stratosphere, would have much longer effects on weather patterns.

Stephen Salter, Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Edinburgh, said that there was no need to wait for regulations because the trials would not add chemicals to the atmosphere. But Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said that experiments with potential consequences beyond national borders needed international regulations. He told The Times:

“I do not see any geoengineering solution which does not have unintended consequences or is not far too expensive.”

The Silver Lining Project

Bill Gates' Cloud-whitening Trials 'a Dangerous Experiment'

Microsoft founder Bill Gates providing funding for geoegineering experiment to increase whiteness of clouds, reflect more sunlight back into space and reduce global warming

May 11, 2010

Ecologist - Campaigners have criticised plans for a sea trial of cloud-whitening technology, funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

A US-based research body, Silver Lining, which has received $300,000 from Mr Gates, is developing machines to convert seawater into microscopic particles to be sprayed into clouds. Scientists believe this will increase the whiteness, or albedo, of clouds and increase their ability to reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing global warming.

The Gates-backed sea trial would be the largest known attempt to geoengineer the climate so far, reported to be conducted over an area of 10,000km2.

However, campaigners say such a large-scale trial is 'risky' and that a global ban on geoengineering experiments should be put in place until regulations governing the sector can be introduced.

'We knew Microsoft was developing cloud applications for computers but we didn’t expect this. Bill Gates and his cloud-wrenching cronies have no right to unilaterally change our seas and skies in this way,' said Jim Thomas from Canadian environmental campaigners, ETC Group.

In March, MPs from the Science and Technology Committee back such calls and said countries should not be allowed to take unilateral action on geoengineering without consulting the UN.

A major report on the subject by The Royal Society last year also warned of the unknown side-effects of cloud-whitening, including, changes to regional weather patterns and ocean currents.

However, the report said it had advantages over other forms of geoengineering because it could be stopped immediately, and within ten days nearly all of the salt paricles would rain or settle out of the atmosphere.

It could also be used over Arctic to reduce summer ice melt, the scientists said.

Bill Gates Funds Climate, Energy Research

January 27, 2010

Green Tech - Bill Gates has been providing millions of dollars to fund academic research in energy and climate, some of which touches on geoengineering, or manipulating Earth's natural systems to counteract global warming.

Citing atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira, Science Magazine's online blog on Tuesday reported that Gates has put at least $4.5 million of his own money over the last three years into university research.

Caldeira, who is an advocate for research in geoengineering, serves as an adviser in how the money should be dispensed. Caldeira also works for Intellectual Ventures, an investment and intellectual property licensing company founded by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft. Myhrvold and Gates have funded a company called TerraPower, which is trying to develop a breakthrough in nuclear power.

After remaining fairly quiet on the topic of energy and climate since leaving Microsoft, Gates last week indicated that he is spending a great deal of effort researching energy. He also told a reporter that he invested $20 million in Vinod Khosla's green business fun.

In the past, Gates has shown an interest in what could be called geoengineering, a topic that's controversial in academic and policy circles because of the potential dangers. Gates, Myhrvold, Caldeira, and others applied for an "environment alteration" patent in 2008 for calming the effects of hurricanes by using vessels to pump warm water from the surface down to colder areas.

Some ideas proposed for geoengineering include shooting sulfur-based particles into the high atmosphere to block incoming radiation from the sun, or dumping iron into the ocean to stimulate algae growth and sequester carbon dioxide. Some scientists advocate pursuing research in this area in case efforts to cut greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are ineffective.

In a comment to the Science article, Caldeira said that Gates' money was aimed broadly at climate and energy research, but not specifically at geoengineering.

"The funds that I receive through this avenue primarily are helping to support several post-docs in my group doing a wide variety of work, some of which is related to intentional intervention in the climate system, but much of which is related to broader climate and energy concerns," Caldeira wrote.

Some of the funded research included an assessment of high-altitude wind power and ocean acidification.

In an interview last week, Gates said that scientists and entrepreneurs should be pursuing technologies that achieve cheap energy with "zero carbon" emissions.

Gates representative John Pinette told Science that he "views geoengineering as a way to buy time but it's not a solution to the problem" of climate change.

Bill Gates's Hidden Dreams of Geoengineering Revealed

The Microsoft chairman, it turns out, has a small history of dabbling in climate-altering schemes

January 27, 2010

POPSCI - Bill Gates has already proven his interest in geoengineering schemes with his earlier co-patent filing for reducing the intensity of killer hurricanes. So perhaps we're not too surprised that Science Insider has dug up the Microsoft chairman's past projects on altering the Earth's climate, ranging from filtering carbon dioxide to reflecting sunlight via brighter clouds.

The billionaire founder of the PC has apparently quietly funneled $4.5 million of his own money to geoengineering research since 2007. Two researchers who have served as energy and climate advisers for Gates -- Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto, California and physicist David Keith of the University of Calgary in Canada -- have had the duty of dispensing the money as they saw fit. Naturally, scientists and students working for Keith and Caldeira have benefited from some of the philanthropic money. But geoengineering conferences held in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Edinburgh, Scotland have also received backing from Gates.

More funding has gone to Armand Neukermans, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who envisions ships that spray a fine salty mist of seawater into the air to create ocean clouds. The idea of using clouds to reflect sunlight and help reduce global temperatures has drawn support from others in the past, but many scientists still consider such geoengineering schemes as a desperate last resort for tackling climate change.

Keep in mind that Gates has not funded any field trials of geoengineering, and that $4.5 million represents a drop in the bucket these days for almost any research. But the billionaire's sentiment regarding climate change was made clear in a recent Huffington Post column where he argues that innovative technological solutions have become necessary, and that the world can no longer rely on just changing consumer behavior or pushing for energy efficiency.

[via Science Insider]