The increasing speed that climate change is impacting our globe, coupled with slow transformations of lifestyle and policy to radically reduce GHG emissions, have prompted many climate change scientists to (re)consider Geoengineering, A.K.A planetary climate-engineering, to rapidly cool the earth.  Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have surpassed 385 parts per million, rising above the limit of 350 parts per million that many scientists consider to be the threshold for maintaining a stable ‘natural’ climate.  Despite the present interest in global warming, current studies reveal that we are still pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – approximately increasing the levels by 2 parts per million each year.  Geoengineering – an option that was seldom considered viable, is now being acknowledged as a potential solution, or Plan B to climate change.  One of the reasons for this (beyond the grim reality of carbon levels) is that geoengineering could potentially be very cheap.  Many now argue that geoengineering is an economic alternative to ‘buy us time’ to develop zero-emission technology in a cost effective manner.  While most scientists agree that the reduction of GHG emissions is the fundamental solution (Plan A), they also admit that geoengineering may one of the few options to address future climate change. Ronald Prinn, a professor of atmospheric science and the director of the Center for Global Change science at MIT, explains why climate scientists have started to change their minds about geoengineering in this video.   Put simply, we have come too far and engineering our way out of this situation may be our only choice.

[Comparison of various Geoengineering Strategies via newscientist.com]

For years, geoengineering techniques were only to be found in science-fiction novels, and not put on the table as possible options.  Now, as geoengineering is being reconsidered, we realize how little we know about the atmosphere and climatic changes.  This has already prompted research and a report on Geoengineering by the UK’s Royal Society, as well an American report, instigated in part by President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren.  Even the IPCC’s report touches on geoengineering in section 4.7, stating what many scientists firmly believe – geoengineering focuses on the symptoms rather than the cause.  The purpose of this nascent research, however, is to wage the various options of geoengineering, understand how to implement them, and run models to gain insights on their potential side effects.  There are several schemes currently being cooked up by scientists to geoengineer our climate that fall into two basic categories: (i) Solar Radiation Management and  (ii) Mitigation techniques, such as carbon sequesterering.  While several of these initial ideas are seemingly sci-fi in nature, they are becoming increasingly plausible solutions to address climate change.  Step 1 is to understand atmospheric systems more precisely and Step 2 is to figure out how to manipulate this system.

[Cloud seeding and cloud brightening with salt water to increase solar reflection via wired.com]

Solar Radiation Management could take several forms, but the basic premise of each strategy is the same: to block or reflect solar radiation out of the atmosphere.  Proposals range from cloud seeding, to arctic ice harvesting (for its reflective quality) to large sun disks in outer space.  The first notable proposal, which is still under investigation today, was by the Soviet Scientist, Mikhail Budyko in 1974.  Budyko suggested the injection of gases into the upper reaches of the atmosphere would cool the earth.  The idea is inspired by the natural phenomenon of volcanic eruptions or massive forest fires that send sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere where it acts as micro-deflectors of sunlight.  Hovering 10 kilometers above the earth in the stratosphere, this sulfur not only reduces the amount of sunlight that hits the surface, it also creates a haze that diffuses the sunlight.  The most cited precedent for such an approach is the eruption of Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) in 1991, which released 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and cooled average temperatures by half a degree Celcius.   Current predictions estimate that between one and five million tons of sulfur would need to be injected into the stratosphere each year.  From rockets filled with sulfur to hot air balloon smokestacks from coal-fired power plants, there are several options on how to actually get the sulfur into the stratosphere.  One major issue with sulfur injections is that they do not address GHG emissions.  In fact, they require a continual supply of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere – and, as the earth is further heated – will always require more and more sulfur dioxide in future years.  The economic and resource investment would be continually past down to future generations.  Beyond the technical and unsustainable growth model of sulfur dioxide injections, scientists don’t know enough about atmospheric chemistry to predict exactly what will happen. Without percise climate models, there is little understanding on how this will affect rain, wind patterns and ocean currents.  And simultaneously, climate modeling is our only choice – as it is difficult to test several ideas without impacting climatic systems.  The unpredictable nature of the ensuing effects could be more disasterous than our current climatic crisis.  Others have noted that sulfate shields only work to block sun, and would therefore be less effective during the night and winter.  This differential climate would have several large reaching effects on the world’s ecosystems and oceans.  Oceans, in fact, would continue to acidify because the GHG’s would linger and build in the atmosphere.  Other climate models show that sulfur sunshades could also create catastrophic droughts (droughts were noticed for a year after Mount Pinatubo’s eruption).  With so many variables and little precision in climate modeling, sulfur dioxide injections may pose more problems than solutions, especially because they are cheap.

[Solar Shading - Sulfur, Clouds or Disks? via livingearth.com]

Mitigation Techniques include different forms of carbon capture and carbon sequestering.  Three of the major strands of research here involve (i) Phytoplankton Storage (ii) Artificial Trees, and (iii) Geological Storage.  Phytoplankton consume large amounts of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Filling the seas with iron – a favorite of phytoplankton – would encourage blooms that would absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide and transport this to the bottom of the ocean.  The dropping of massive quantities of iron into the ocean and promoting large scale phytoplankton production would have great repercussions on ocean ecosystems – repercussions that we cannot predict.

[The Ocean as a Mega-Phytoplankton Farm? via popularmechanics.com]

Other materials that can capture and store large amounts of carbon dioxide are being explored to augment natural processes.  One such trajectory of research is examining peridotite rocks, which form magnesium carbonate when they react with carbon dioxide.  Others, such as Columbia University’s Klaus Lackner, are exploring the production of ‘artificial trees’.  Lackner’s tree is able to capture a ton of carbon from the atmosphere each day.  What are these ‘trees’ made of?  For the most part, panels of an absorbent resin that react with carbon dioxide to form a solid.  Lackner’s prototypes suggest that a 10m x 10m area of panels could extract 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year.  Once captured, these filters can be cleaned with steam.

[Rendering of Artificial Trees developed by Lackner]

The largest issue with attempting to orchestrate a climatic transformation is that we just don’t know enough about how our atmosphere works and the repercussions of our tampering.  Further, most geoengineering schemes require future generations to maintain such measures, with little end in sight.  Geoengineering also poses a political issue, as any response would affect the entire globe.  Because certain schemes, such as sulfate shading, are quite simple and relatively cheap to implement, they could be done by most nations, creating the seeds for future conflicts. Currently, no international laws or treaties would prevent a country from unilaterally beginning a geoengineering project.  Who would monitor such projects, and who should have a say?  The political administering of geoengineering is just as complex as some of the schemes.  Another issue is a social one – the present energy on climate change initiatives may slow if there is a belief that we can always find new engineering solutions to address unsustainable practices.  As it stands, the risks of geoengineering seem to outweigh any possible benefits.  Some scientists predict that we are about 40 years away from understanding this technology.  Once we do, Plan B may be less risky than doing nothing.

A great discussion on Geoengineering took place a few weeks ago on TVO’s The Agenda.  You can watch the episode here.

Editors Note: File under Glacier / Island / Storm, a studio run by BLDGBLOG at Columbia University GSAPP. Island Edition.

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Gilles Deleuze, in "Desert Islands," distinguishes between two types of islands, continental (separated) and oceanic (originary) islands. He writes, “Continental islands serve as a reminder that the sea is on top of the earth. Oceanic islands that the earth is still there under the sea gathering its strength to punch through to the surface.” While certainly staying true to deep-time, geological phenomenon, he does overlook another obvious case of artificial islands, which are simultaneously originary—because they are often constructed from scratch—and separated—because they are often grown upon annexed foundational granular material. The previous century was witness to an abundance of innovative development energy in producing something solid amidst something entirely liquid. It most early cases of land fabrication, catalysts of the artificial, manufactured islands type are centered on volcanic heroism, political anomaly, or development opportunism.

[The Federated States of Micronesia consists of 607 islands extending 1,800 miles and is divided into four states. Nan Madol is on the eastern state of Pohnpei.]

1. NAN MADOL // What better place to start than volcanic heroism. The early occupants of The Federated States of Micronesia constructed Nan Madol, a series of 92 artificial rectangular islets, for nobility made of basalt prisms in about 1300. Megalithic land manufactured of columnar basalt formed seawalls stacked like logs, with coral rubble fill behind the seawalls. The basalt seawalls and breakwaters of Nan Madol have survived centuries of brutal Pacific conditions and have become symbiotic with the existing island coast.

[Nan Madol map.]

[Earths first prefabricated material, basalt prism columns are formed from the mathematics of cracking cooled lava.]

Columnar basalt forms when flowing lava is spread think over a large area and cools simultaneously from the top (air cooling) and bottom (earth cooling). It contracts as it cools, but due to irregularity, the entire body does not contract. Instead, the contract is localized and cracks form, resulting in polygonal columns of basalt that are only a few feet wide. The early Pohnpeians of Nan Madol used these columns in a manner similar to log-cabin construction with alternating rows.

[A portal marking the entry into the mortuary enclosure of Nandauwas of Nan Madol. Constructed entirely out of basalt prisms, est. 1200. Apologies for the tourist, but it is useful for scale.]

Today, Nan Madol’s ruins, often called the Venice of the Pacific, are connected by a grid of shallow canals. (In fact, “Nan Madol” originates form the term “spaces between,” which carries a double meaning of between land / water and literally the canal-like spaces between its enclosures.) Again, Deleuze is useful here. From Desert Islands he writes: “Islands are either from before or for after humankind.” Islands are themselves a kind of geologic ruin—or in some way considered partial complete or partially eroded. How ideal then to have Nan Madol, artificial island, nestled within Micronesia, an originary island.

[Deshima is a Dutch trading post setup in 1634 on artifically constructed land in Nagasaki Bay, so as to prevent foreigners from touching Japanese soil.]

2. DEJIMA // Now for the case of political anomalous artificial land fabrication. The Japanese constructed Dejima, a man-made island in Nagasaki Bay in 1634. The island was constructed on the orders of the shogun to accommodate merchants, who were later expelled leaving only employees of the Dutch East Trading Company (also known as VOC) in 1641. At 120 meters by 75 meters wide, the fan-shaped island was administratively part of Nagasaki, but autonomous in many other ways. It housed residences for twenty Dutchmen, warehouses, and some accommodations for Japanese officials. With 150 interpreters deployed to Dejima, the island was heavily controlled to ensure that there remained room for economic benefit without political compromise.

[Deshima Island, circa 1810.]

The Dutch East India Company, arguably the first megacorporation, set the benchmark for trade in Asia. And cultivated a fleet of over 4000 ships to establish its monopoly–through political-spatial exceptions on trade islands throughout Asia. Dejima, because of the suspicion of of shogunate rule, was the most extreme with its own land serving as both port, trading post, resort, and geographic satellite. The Dutch flag was flown there from 1641 until 1857. For several years during the Napoleanic wars, Dejima was the only place that the Dutch flag stood firm.

In many ways, Deshima was a foreshadowing of globalization, trade politics, free-trade zones, and other EEZs, 400 years in the making. The island form, especially that which is entirely artificial, served as a prophylactic throughout the trade exchange and contact between Asia and Europe. It was a mediator, neither authentically Japanese nor authentically European. Its fan-like shape provided an ideal lengthened edge towards the Bay for docking.

[Construction of the Venetian Causeway in Miami (1925). From the Florida Photographic Collection, Rc21474.]

3. VENETIAN ISLANDS // No, not the real Venice; Venice, Miami. Before the faux fronds of Dubai, there was the Venetian Causeway–a developers crap shoot. The 1920s saw a land boom in Florida. The team of John Collins, a farmer turned developer, and Carl Fisher, a promotional genius, responded by constructing a chain of capsule-shaped islands along a causeway linking Miami to what became know as Miami Beach. The project, known as the Venetian Islands, began by selling underwater plots, specifying that the buyer would receive land on an island that had been dredged, filled, and improved. There was no physical land for potential buyers to survey when buying; they were buying the idea of land and lifestyle convey through images and real-estate speak.

[The perfect pill-shaped developments of Biscayne Island, San Marco Island, San Marino Island, Di Lido Island, Rivo Alto Island, and Belle Island. Constructed in the 1920s.]

The Venetian Islands were tightly calibrated to dimensionally ensure as much beach property as possible. All the islands were bisected by the Venetian Causeway, a bridge linking across the Bay that provided infrastructure and access. Collins and Fishers development in the Bay is tied to a contentious legacy, initiated in the 1860s, of drainage and land reclamation in the Florida Everglades.

[These concrete pillars are all that exists of the unfinished Isola di Lolando in Biscayne Bay, the Venetian Island under construction when the market crashed in 1929. Now, ironically, rather than an artifical island, it is an artifical reef.]

The exuberance of the overall project finally stalled with the combined strike of hurricanes and a burst real-estate bubble (the first of its kind!) in 1929. The legacy of this can be seen in the massive outline island figure of Isola de Lolando and its concrete pilings rising some 5-10 feet out of the Bay.

Intended simply as evidence of a more storied history of innovations in land fabrication, these case studies show the role of economic opportunism and exceptions to create something solid from nothing, or something inhabitable from the uninhabitable. How do politics and economics figure in the scale and magnitude of these geographic exceptions? Although single-minded in their intention, how can the techniques involved in their fabrication–socially, ecologically, economically–further their viability and relevance?

[Ed note: Inspired by the mounting concern over a dry unprecipitated Winter Olympics, an earlier version of this sat in our post-box for several weeks, though finding the time to complete it was elusive. In that time, places, mammoth, and BLDGBLOG all wrote excellent pieces on the ephemeral impact of snow on olympics, cities, and landscapes.]

Much has now been written about the snow-starved Cypress Mountain in the impending leadup to 2010 Winter Olympics opening later this week. In fact, there was no snow accumulation in January, and February has only yielded rain. They cant even get graupel if they wanted it. According to Canada’s National Weather Service, this has been the warmest Vancouver winter on record since 1937.  (Blame most commonly rests on an El Niño weather phenomenon warming the surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean. The typical weather anomaly scapegoat.) Just yesterday, as many organizers within VANOC had predicted, Cypress did see the beginning of a light dumping of the real thing.

[Making moguls on Cypress Mountain, Vancouver. Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press.]

Although not the first time there has been Olympic anxiety over an unseasonably warm January: Torino (2006) looked worryingly dry until just days before, Nagano (1998) had rain at the beginning, and Innsbruck (1964) famously moved 20,000 ice bricks for bobsled and luge events. So too, again 2010 Vancouver's snowboarding and some skiing events are threatened. Every good party has a plan B, but how realistic or desirable is any plan B?

[Trail map of Cypress Mountain.]

When snow prospects at lower Cypress looked dim, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) unrolled the contingency plan to use snowcats, trucks, helicopters and a team of about 45 people to equitably redistribute snowfall. This led to two basic weather engineering practices: snow transfer and snow-base packing. Trucks and snowcats are moving snow from higher elevations, while helicopters are ferrying in bales of straw to bolster bases, walls and turns. Snow is being moved hastily – none of the ice brick techniques found at Innsbruck here – almost more as a cut-fill soil strategy. VANOC is trucking in about three dozen loads of snow a day from as far away as Manning Park, more than two hours drive east of Vancouver. That is over 300 truckloads and counting.

VANOC has permits to use urea, commonly used in fertilizer, as a snow-hardening agent, but would do so only as a last resort. Other measures could include giant tarps to protect snowboard half-pipe walls between runs.

[Trucking in crystalline water ice, aka snow, from higher elevations 90 miles away in a massive weather transfer effort.]

[Keep on trucking.]

In lieu of snow, VANOC has built halfpipes and other ski cross and snowboard cross course features from over 1,065 bales of straw, each weighing between 450 and 650 kilos. This is where snowboarding meets farming.

[Helicoptering 500-kilo bales of hay.]

[Unloading snow, er, bales of hay for snow packing foundation.]

So if plan A was do nothing, let nature take its course,  plan B definitely went into effect. Though if we always planned with plan B, it could argued that Winter Olympics could be more a state of mind than necessarily a climatological condition. And I dont mean Dubai Ski here, but maybe the logistics of snow transfer or drift , if planned in advance could invite some other geographical candidates for Olympics. Certainly if the games were held in Washington DC this year, everything would be fine, except for the obvious topographical problem.

If none of this works out for VANOC for tomorrow's opening — and future Winter cities inconvenienced by El Nino take note! — next time we recommend IDE's all-weather snowmaker.

If you’re planning a winter getaway to the islands this year, you might move beyond ‘eco-tourism’ to trash tourism, in this case, visiting the island of Thilafushi, just off the shores of the Maldives, an island country in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls. The country foregrounded itself on the headlines back in October, when the president of Maldives and members of his cabinet met underwater to stress the significance of rising seas.

The name conjures images of azure seas and white beaches, but Thilafushi is an island of trash, created in the early 1990s on 7km lagoon called Thilafalhu, to solve the Maldives' mounting garbage problem.

[An industrial waste-scape emerges from Thilafushi - built from, and for, trash]

The island has grown at the rate of a square metre a day, as more and more rubbish is dumped here. Mountains of rubbish – plastic, metal tins and rusty oil barrels – extend as far as the eye can see. Unlike the adjacent resort islands, the only visitors here are the Bangladeshi workers who wade through the sludge and brave the stench to burn the tonnes of refuse that arrive at the island every day, writes Maryam Omidi.

Spotting the potential to generate revenue from the mushrooming island, the government decided to lease part of it for industrial purposes. Additional terrain was created using white sand and now giant cement cones, oil drums and the skeletons of future boats can be seen dotted around. Metal compactors compress junk into blocks for sale to India. Each tonne sells for US$175.

The island has grown to such proportions that it now has a café, a restaurant, two mosques, a barbershop, a clinic, a police station and rather unexpectedly, a makeshift zoo.  Like  Wall-E's post-apocalyptic world, here is a society built around, and sustained by trash.

The garbage is collected in the capital and separated before being transferred to Thilafushi on landing vessels. However, a major concern for environmentalists around the world, is the treatment of toxic wastes, which includes both e-waste and batteries

According to Ali Rilwan, executive director of environmental NGO Bluepeace, these materials leech into the surrounding environment. "These chemicals remain forever and they are getting into the ecosystem and inside the reef," he said. "Unlike a landfill, this is a lagoon fill. It is a landfill in liquid form and so it absorbs these chemicals much more easily and this makes it more vulnerable."

[Does every island needs is trash alter-ego? Singapores Semakau island]

Singapore built itself it's the Semaku, an island covering an area of 3.5 square kilometers and consisting of two small islands connected by a rock embankment.

[Eastern and Wester Pacific Gyres]

Thilafushi,  of course, pales in comparison to Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a "plastic soup" of waste growing tenfold every decade, and now covering an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

[A new trash ecology emerges in the Pacific]

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. It is believed that 100 million tons of flotsam is circulating in the region, composed primarily of plastics – everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bag.

Maybe we could capitalize on this: the ultimate flea-market, duty-free island in the Pacific, for all the cruise boats..?

This past October 25, 2008, The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design hosted a symposium organized and curated by Prof. Pierre Bélanger, recently swiped up by appointed by Harvard GSD, titled Landscape Infrastructures. Bélanger rightly marks our time as witness to a unique convergence of infrastructure and landscape. The urgency and opportunities of this embrace engineering of landscapes.

[Screen grabs from the DVD. George Baird (top left), Stan Allen (top right and bottom left, Jane Wolff (bottom right).]

Guest speakers included:
Stan Allen, Princeton University / George Baird, University of Toronto / Pierre Bélanger, University of Toronto / Julia Czerniak, Syracuse University / Herbert Dreiseitl, Atelier Dreiseitl / Kristina Hill, University of Virginia / Michael Jakob, Université de Genève / Nina-Marie Lister, Ryerson University / Kate Orff, Columbia University, SCAPE / Jane Wolff, University of Toronto

The proceedings of the symposium is now available in DVD format. Contact Pierre at belanger[at]harvard[dot]edu if you would like additional information.

[Mobility conduit, or landscape infrastructure par exellence.]

Science Machine from Chad Pugh.

What can be said about Pugh's video beyond itself. A universe where hair follicles and islands are similar issues at different scales… A geography at once everywhere and nowhere … A cyclical environment of managed natures… A network of habitats distinct and yet intertwined.

Chasing down one of the designers of the Peak 2 Peak gondola linkage for Whistler, we stumbled upon Ecosign. They have certainly carved a niche in ski resort planning, or what they call "mountain design." Obviously a misnomer, mountain design sounds inverse to what actually takes place in their design process. Through a rigorous analysis of sun angles, prevailing winds, and topography they arrive at some kind of idealized clearings for the pleasure of downhill maneuvering, the mountain proper remains untouched.

[Ecosign: mountain design for Luosta, Finland.]

These guys are the double-diamond of the industry. They have designed "350 resort development projects in over 32 countries spanning 6 continents as well as the design of 4 Winter Olympic Games and several World Alpine Championships venues." They have been mogul-making since 1975.

[Ecosign: runs for Sierra Nevada, Spain.]

The possibilities for bifurcating runs and slopes is a little underexplored in their 30+ year history. What is needed in an exercise like this? And what should it address? The networks of routes mark the speed of mountains, and are then ranked according to difficulty. In addition, routes expand and contract according to popularity or some pachinko logic of converging skiers. There is room for rethinking the simplified independence of a skiers energy and a chairlift, or the organicist criss-crossing routes relationship to difficulty ratings. Like a net cast over a peak, the infrastructures supporting this sport have a Benton MacKaye logic of geotechnics using ridge lines, transects, and cross grain topos.

[Ecosign: Sun Valley, Idaho.]

A new project in Boscombe (near Bournemouth, UK) proposes an artificial wave-breaking ridge located about 210 meters from shore. Not exactly a surfer's paradise yet, Boscombe hopes to raise its profile with the new £2.7million surf reef. Sculpting the seabed, the ridge will be made of two layers of geotextile bags, a total of 55 bags of various diameters and lengths, covering an area the size of – since it is England – a football pitch. The bags will be anchored to a geotextile mat on the seabed.

Once the bags are in position on the seabed, they will be pumped with sand, bringing their weight up to 2500 tons and heights of up to 2m.

[surf reef simulation, complete with AIR]

The large ridge is estimated to make break waves of up to 13ft (4m). It simultaneously serves as an artificial reef for local marine life. The project is designed by Dr. Kerry Black, aka the Surfing Futurist. Dr. Black is an oceanographer that has pioneered the artificial surf reef into a triple whammy of coastal erosion protection, surfer's dream, and marine life reef.

[Dr. Kerry Black asks: How does complex bathymetry affect wave shoaling and breaker characteristics?]

[The configuration of large-scale reef components at Bingin, Bali, Indonesia from ASR Ltd.]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) first opened in 1999 with the ambitions to permanently bury transuranic waste in our post-nuclear production age. Located 26 miles from Carlsbad, New Mexico, WIPP houses barrels of waste 2,150 feet below the surface. This site was chosen not only because of its remoteness but also because waste cold be embedded within a 3000 feet thick salt formation that has been stable for 250 million years. The underground salt formation from an ancient sea is just wet enough to move and seep slowly, therefore sealing the caverns after their construction. However, this also means that they would eventually flood. That is if it doesnt first collapse as it is predicted to do so before its 1000th birthday.

[Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM]

Regardless of floods or collapses, the site is estimated to remain dangerous for 24,000 years. And recently there has been considerable debate on how to mark the site as such long after the surface-based processing buildings are gone. Cave scratchings? Symbols? Words?

[Axonometric of WIPP]

Maybe more significantly to us here is the role of salt (ancient seas) as burial grounds for toxic waste.

[Nullarbor Plains, Australia is a 90m high limestone cliff running for almost 100km.]

Limestone, at high temperatures, breaks down into carbon dioxide and quicklime, in a process that produces greenhouse gas. But dump that quicklime in seawater, and it absorbs roughly twice as much CO2 as was released in the first reaction. This is what the folks at cquestrate hypothesize.

This scheme works off the assumption that regardless of the greenhouse effect, CO2 buildup leads to ocean acidification, which could lead to large-scale oceanic ecosystem collapse. This cocktail of lime and saltwater, however, takes gas out of the air and sequesters it into the ocean, thus making oceans more alkaline. Now whether enough limestone can be sourced and ecologically transported to oceans would be the challenge… the Nullarbor Plains would be a good start.

[A cloud seeding yacht

Another salty vision for earth involves "cloud seeding." This is proposed by John Latham and Stephen Salter, (i know, i know, his last name is perfect!) who suggest to spray droplets of seawater high up into the air, so that the tiny particles of salt from these droplets will make clouds thicker and more reflective.