earthblanket

The earth is getting to much energy from the sun, imagine that, we have a problem with to much energy. So what can we do with that energy? Lets either reflect it back out in space or use it!

So the idea has a few parts – first, we create reflecting “blankets” to replace the white stuff that is melting. These are simple/cheap reflectors that float on the (now larger) ocean. Lets say they are about 2 square kilometers in size with big “holes” in 50% of their area to let some light and air through so they don’t damage sea life. We either anchor these or put automated sails on them to keep them in position.

We put out about 2 million such blankets, which would be about the size of Greenland – so perhaps this would be sufficient to balance the earth’s temperature. Perhaps someone could figure out how many blankets we would need (since this idea is half baked).

To make this a world event we put out a guaranteed 20 year contract to anyone who will reflect 80% of one square kilometer according to the rules of the game. So then we have a free market in cooling the earth controlled by the amount we put in the pot to support the blankets. This could be paid for by a $1/bbl tax on oil and the equivalent for coal. My guess is that would about pay for blankets the size of Greenland. No big government program – just pay to get rid of the energy.

Now for the extra part – why not also pay a guaranteed price for hydrogen or any other fuel produced by the suns energy on these blankets – so now we can have blankets of photocells or photochemical cells that produce fuel for shipment to the world – thus also reducing the use of carbon fuels. Companies that would take this up are getting “free” land (ok, ocean) to put out their energy producing blankets plus being paid to reflect light plus getting a guarantee on the price for the energy they produce – what a deal! My bet is with the combined incentives we would have reflecting blankets in 5 years and energy producing blankets in 15.