The Times Online has a potentially disturbing story:
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.
So world governments are seen as weak to deal with a non-existent problem so one man is going to go ahead and shield the Earth from the Sun? What could go wrong?
What? This is the guy who came up with Windows?! And nothing ever goes wrong with Windows.
May 12, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Wasn't this the plot of the execrable Highlander 2?
-Chris M
May 12, 2010 at 5:32 pm
So instead of "Windows", will he call it "Doors"?
Gates' idea is as terrible as my joke.
May 12, 2010 at 5:37 pm
We don't acknowledge Highlander II on this site so we sadly don't know what movie you're referring to.
May 12, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Wasn't he one of the founders of MSNBC as well?
May 12, 2010 at 6:22 pm
I immediately thought of Monty Burns on the Simpsons. Of course, he blocked the sun in order to force Springfield to depend entirely on the nuclear power plant. Excellent!
May 12, 2010 at 6:30 pm
A few years ago, when I took a new online job, my brother the techno-geek strongly recommended that I switch from a fairly reliable but elderly Mac to a shiny new PC running Windows Vista. Worst mistake I ever made. Bill Gates will have a lot to answer for when he stands before the Almighty at the end of his life.
May 12, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Stephen King – The Dome?
May 12, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Blocking the sun! Brilliant! Gosh. Why didn't we think of this before?
Well, it would solve global Warming….
May 12, 2010 at 7:04 pm
The Blue Screen of Death. Very funny. I thought Gates was busying himself with Malaria, or fixing the bugs in Vista. Ha.
What if the brilliant Gates does truly block out the sun, and then the Icelandic volcano REALLY blows, and we are all thrust into a 5 year winter?
Did you hear anyone talk of global cooling being the result of volcanic activity? Of course not. Only my SUV can do that, apparently.
"You are coming to a sad realization, cancel or allow? Allow."
May 12, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Gate's idea is pure science fiction. His plan to deploy 1900 ships that will inject additional water vapor into the atmosphere will cost about $40 billion for starters, and annually $20 billion thereafter. And these ships will only cover about 2% of the oceans.
May 12, 2010 at 7:44 pm
So much for those solar panels.
May 12, 2010 at 8:37 pm
No biggie. Just release a patch if the first version is buggy.
May 12, 2010 at 10:05 pm
I thought we had an ozone problem that would block the sun….then we had an ozone problem when there was a hole in the layer. Now we have a greenhouse gas problem? Can't keep track of them all!
May 13, 2010 at 12:26 am
It's a form of geoengineering, and it's proven to work and is possible(discovery channel actually funded a small scale experiment).
Creating more clouds reflects more solar radiation, but does nothing to combat the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
$40 billion is actually not that much money on a global scale or on a US budget scale.
People shouldn't be condemning what they don't even understand
May 13, 2010 at 12:32 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiVV1Q2qL9g
If anyone actually cares to learn.
May 13, 2010 at 3:44 am
How about people should not try to control what they do not understand?
May 14, 2010 at 2:30 am
Asinine never comes cheap.
May 14, 2010 at 5:55 am
I recommend a surgical nuke strike when they try to turn it on.
May 14, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Eh, just plant an endangered guppy whereever they propose placing one of the ships and sue to have an environmental impact statement done. The court wranglings alone would sink that ship.
May 15, 2010 at 10:09 pm
We should give Gates credit since his foundation funds hundreds of humanitarian-aid organizations and projects around the world. You can't judge the guy on his business ventures. Through his foundation, he has transparently and consistently given toward the greater good for many, many years.