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In this section N Why Greenland is warming, not melting, page 8 N Brain damage skews our moral compass, page 10 N Counting swine flu’s dead, page 11
Options for cooling the planet There is a huge range of geoengineering proposals on the table, each with its own risks, costs and potential effectiveness
HIGH
HIGH EFFECTIVENESS LOW COST
Space-based reflectors
CO2 capture from air (artificial trees)
It might, however, turn out to be a lot cheaper than that. In October 2009, David Keith, a climate and energy researcher, founded Carbon Engineering in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The firm aims to build a device to capture CO2 at economically viable prices. He claims his device will draw down a tonne for US$100 to $250. He did not release details of the device at the Asilomar conference,
but said that it involves scaling up existing processes for capturing CO2, which involve passing the gas over a substance such as sodium hydroxide. The gas combines with the chemical and can then be removed and stored underground. Keith says Bill Gates has invested in Carbon Engineering, which plans to spend $3 million over the next five years building a prototype device.
SOURCE: ROYAL SOCIETY
Land-based reflectors (urban)
ARTIFICIAL TREES ON THE WAY There is one geoengineering solution that almost everyone would like to see work. If carbon dioxide can be removed from the air and stored safely underground, we might be able to stave off the worse effects of climate change. The big problem is that sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere is expensive: many estimates put the cost at close to $1000 for each tonne captured.