Ways to Save the Planet

There’s a great series on TV at the moment: Ways to Save the Planet, Sundays 7pm on the Discovery Channel. My friend, and fellow Brighton resident, David Herman produced the series, so I urge you to watch it.

As climate change and the effects of global warming appear to be moving much faster than we thought, the only thing left might be geo-engineering: using technology to fix the problem. Huge, ambitious projects are being conceived, like putting mirrors in space to reflect the sun’s rays, that could actually save us. Opinion is divided amongst environmentalists though, as to whether these projects could work, or which are the right ones to pursue.

And either way, we can’t afford to carry on regardless with our unsustainable ways.

The Discovery series features some fairly out there geo-engineering proposals:

Is a vast, high-tech blanket enough to save an icecap from melting? Can we bomb the planet’s forests back to life? Could a beam of energy free us from fossil fuels? Ways to Save the Planet joins a team of the world’s most prominent scientists and engineers as they identify and put to the test a selection of highly ambitious and cutting edge proposals from the field of geo-engineering.

Highlights include:

Dr. Jason Box, a glaciologist from Ohio State University, wants to prevent glaciers from melting by covering them with blankets that will reflect the powerful rays of the sun

Professor Roger Angel of the University of Arizona, has put forward a radical idea to put specially engineered lenses into space in order to deflect 1.8% of the Sun’s rays.

Scientist Mark Hodges believes he has devised a way to reforest large areas of Earth from the air.

Engineer Fred Ferguson has developed a lighter-than-air tethered wind turbine that rotates about a horizontal axis in response to wind, generating electrical energy.

Professors Latham and Salter propose to spray fine droplets of seawater into clouds and thus slow down global warming by increasing cloud’s reflectivity by 10%.

Alongside the series, you can win a year’s green electricity from Ecotricity at www.discoverychannel.co.uk/planetinperil.

Prepare to be inspired and let me know what you think.

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This entry was written by Nigel and posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm and filed under Cool things, Laughing in the face of climate change, Co2 emissions, Green energy, Climate change. Bookmark the permalink. You can follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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