/sci/ - Science & Math

I have been brainstorming a possible last-ditch approach to dealing with the looming climate crisis. It's obvious now that we're already well past the "critical point", where the warming from humanity's emissions have given the process enough momentum to make it self sustaining.

I think now we're at the point we should shelve carbon cutting measures indefinitely and instead focus on managing the Earth's climate directly, by forcibly increasing it's albedo. I propose that we build massive nuclear powered blended-wing-body airplanes that spray millions of gallons of filtered seawater in the lower stratosphere which then immediately turns to enormous clouds of sunlight-reflecting ice. When the plane runs out of water it lands in the ocean again to refill its tanks with more filtered seawater for another spraying mission. It will repeat this process until it's reactor fuel needs replacing. The overall design of these special "Jötnar" airplanes would be similar to pic related, and have onboard closed-cycle nuclear reactors. Unlike the experimental nuclear-powered bombers of the 1960's (which were ultimately never built), where heated air from a reactor was used to turn a turbine compressor in place of combusted jet fuel, the Jötnar planes will have their reactors serve as generators for an array of electrically driven propellers. The planes would perform their spraying missions almost exclusively far out at sea, both to minimize risks of fallout in the event of a crash, and to reduce the amount of heat absorbed by the ocean from sunlight.

The Jötnar airplanes would be enormous, similar to the obscure Lockheed CL-1201 airborne aircraft carrier proposal. If enough of these machines are put into operation together, they can potentially slow or even halt the runaway warming process.

I know this would ultimately be a trillion dollar (at least) effort, but I think it's a good idea to at least have on the drawing board if things really get serious in the future.