Eleutherian

"We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet."

This quote was by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the Global Environment Forum in Incheon, South Korea.

In a previous post on climate change, I commented on a claim that we had only ten years before it is too late to save the planet:

Really? 10 years? Where are the figures that show our current level of carbon emissions will cause a an irreversible atmospheric imbalance? No such findings exist.

The UN Secretary-General, like so many others, is just using his position of influence and mock-power to scare people with unscientifically-based time frames. Additionally, choosing four months wasn't very well thought-out. No government action takes effect in less than four months. By October of this year, only 11 percent of federal Stimulus funds will have been put into the economy. If government action cannot quickly stimulate the economy, it also cannot quickly reduce carbon emissions. The Secretary-General fabricated a time frame in which nothing can be accomplished.

Instead of looking to government for a solution, let's turn our attention to the private sector. The Telegraph reported last week on a study by the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, evaluating private sector climate change solutions. "Cloud ships" were the favored project.

The project, which is being worked on by rival US and UK scientists, would see 1,900 wind-powered ships ply the oceans sucking up seawater and spraying minuscule droplets of it out through tall funnels to create large white clouds.

Unmanned ships will sail by satellite to regions of the world with the best conditions for increasing cloud cover (and to avoid changing land weather patterns), thus reflecting the sun's rays and decreasing the negative effects of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The best aspect of this project is the cost:

They would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and launch within 25 years, compared to the $250 billion that the world’s leading nations are considering spending each year to cut CO2 emissions, and the $395 trillion it would cost to launch mirrors into space.