Cool Planet

By Roger Stephenson,
Executive Vice President for Programs
Clean Air-Cool Planet

A consultant to foundations researching the state of climate change education and action remarked to me 4 years ago that, in her interviews with more than a dozen people and organizations, the concept of “adaptation” was mentioned only by Clean Air-Cool Planet.

In 2006 Clean Air-Cool Planet was first among climate organizations to examine and report on the state of carbon offsets and the emerging market for offsets, which we detailed in a report downloaded more than 85,000 times (feel free yourself:  http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ConsumersGuidetoCarbonOffsets.pdf)

We continue to focus on cutting edge issues related to solutions – through practice, through policy and through technology.  And the most recent example is geoengineering.

Through the efforts of our Washington office we were able to attract one of the world’s leading thinkers on geoengineering to Portsmouth NH last week to meet with and speak to our 2009 Climate Fellows.

The National Academy of Sciences defines geoengineering as “options that would involve large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry.”

Examples include carbon sequestration, solar radiation management, and ocean iron fertilization. (See John Tierney’s article on this topic, “Engineer the Climate?” in today’s NY Times Science section.)

Dr Alan Gadian came to our office to explain the concepts and potential technology surrounding cloud whitening that would in effect increase the amount of solar radiation reflected back into space.  (Dr Gadian began by reminding us that we have been geoengineering for the past century and a half.)   See a brief and excellent intro to concepts in 20 July Science Centric.

For our 2009 Climate Fellows to be exposed to these concepts was a fantastic experience. Their questions ranged from the technical to social and even to international law.  We lost sense of time during the presentation and conversation, and I sensed that Dr. Gadian left the office impressed with the depth of interest on the part of our 2009 Fellows.  I am grateful we were able to connect the fellows with a distinguished leader in the field of geoengineering.  These young people are leaving Clean Air – Cool Planet this month. I will miss their hard work, enthusiasm and ideas.  Stay tuned for more on the Fellows and their projects at summer’s end!

This entry was posted on August 11, 2009 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Geoengineering, Research and Development. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Alan Gadian, climate change solutions, climate fellows, cloud whitening, Geoengineering, next generation