Halfbakery: Discoball Stratosphere

The name is a little silly, but the idea is perfectly serious.

Global warming MUST be corrected, but cutting down on CO2 emissions before we've developed alternate technologies would exact too great an economic price. The Kyoto Accord would have cost the US 4% of GDP ($2800/household), 2% of manufacturing wages, and 2.4 million jobs. Total cost to the US economy would be $300 billion per YEAR - more than is currently spent on elementary and secondary education combined. Other, less robust countries, would be even harder hit. [But all this pain would at least halt global warming, wouldn't it?] No. We would create an unprecedented global economic depression without doing much good at all. 0.19% of a degree (C) would be shaved off the warming of the next 50 years. The Kyoto Accord - and any such talk of CO2 emissions cuts - is hysterical folly.

Thankfully, there is no need to cut emissions before we are prepared with substitute technologies. All we have to do is counteract those emissions. If the earth is absorbing heat more efficiently because of our greenhouse gasses, all we have to do is adjust (i.e. increase) the earth's reflectiveness accordingly. How to do that?

Use enormous cannon to shoot shells filled with silvery sequin-like material into the stratosphere. Only a very minor increase in the planet's albedo - something between 1 and 2% - would be required to counteract all the human-caused warming since the Industrial Revolution. This buys us extra time (20 years? 30? 50?) to develop more benign technologies and get out of our fossil fuel dependence phase. In other words, this lets us have our cake and eat it.

[What if we put up too much sequin stuff? Will we cause a new Ice Age?] No. We put the stuff up gradually and monitor it so that we know when to stop. [But there's Murphy's Law to consider.] That's why we have 100s of gigantic solar-driven unmanned airships circling the globe. These airships have baleen-like sequin-collection contrivances to lower, if needed, the planet's albedo. Of course eventually, when we have stopped burning so much oil and coal, we'll be able to remove the sequins entirely.

What would all this cost? A hell of a lot less than the Kyoto Accord, that's for sure. AND - the sequin plan is 100% effective. The Kyoto Accord (or whatever its successor proves to be) could only hope to marginally reduce - not reverse - global warming.

The sequins would not be visible to the unaided eye.

This idea won't go over well with the cuts-at-any-cost or the sacrifice-is-righteous crowds, but they're not interested in rational action anyway.

Let me add that I am not American (I used US statistics because it's easier to imagine on a national than a global scale). I consider myself an economically-minded environmentalist. And no, I have no financial interest in sequin manufacture.