... We need to approach the problem from an engineering perspective, using techniques that will physically alter the atmosphere, while we're waiting for our conservation efforts to alter it biologically. ...
I completely agree with that because the rate and extent of life style changes required to reduce global warming are impossible to achieve.
For example: As I recall there are 800 cars per 1000 persons in the USA and only 6/ 1000 persons in China, but China is now selling more cars than the US is. Only freezing the number (or total HP) of fossil fuel cars is clearly impossible UNLESS the US were to take about 50% of its cars off the roads so China could have the same ratio of cars to people (400/1000) as the US; but even if that were possible, it would still be a 400%
increase in the number of cars as the Chinese population is 4 times larger. (And all this is forgetting about India and Tata's $2500 car for domestic and export, etc.)
I think there should be a crash program to make thousands of autonomous, floating wind mills, which use a small part of their produced power to "station keep" their assigned location (mainly tropical), but most of their power to spray jets of water to several hundred meters altitude in a full sky covering arc above their locations to form local clouds or fogs during the day time hours, to reflects sunlight. Perhaps during clear night their power is used to heat a coil red hot which is at the focus of a parabolic reflector to send an IR beam into deep space. When local sky is not clear to IR (both day and night) but winds are generating power, there are both chemical processes they could drive to either store energy or make stable, dense (sinking in salt water) compounds from GHG. Alternatively they could use that power to make energy intense compounds like aluminum, for the sea water.*
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*Many years ago, Von Neumann, sort of the founder of AI, proposed (with extensive analysis) that self replicating floating units, made mainly of aluminum, be turned loose on the oceans. After a several decades (perhaps 100 years) some could be periodically and sustainably harvested annually for their aluminum (and some other valuable metals).
But we are way off thread, except to note that it is good thing that humanoids learned to walk upright (and man can ride bikes) as we will need to do a lot more of that soon (as well as "telecommute" to work from our well insulated, nearly buried, homes or efficiently** cooled apartments.)
**For several years, I spent part of my profession time developing "CASES" including a detailed study of the US Navy CINCMD base at Norfolk Va.
(CASES = Community Annual Storage Energy System.) I have been working on energy system for more than 40 years - I see problems coming before most do. (Make that 50 years, if including my fusion related plasma physics Ph.D. research)
No where until well into Canada is there any net need for heating. Even in the middle of winter, the heat production in larger building (and factories) exceeds the needs of well insulated houses. In CASES, this surplus heat is stored in an Aquifer and used in winter as the heat source for efficient water-source heat pumps.
Where there is no Aquifer available, then large efficient ice machines*** (they are heat pumps) are used for efficient heat production and the ice is stored in large, well insulated "Quonset hut" type structures for summer cooling. Detailed hour by hour simulations with real weather records were used to evaluate the economics of the CASES approach. It typically had about a 15 year pay-back period. (There are insulated warm and cold water pipes circulating thermal source or sink water for more local heat pumps.) Over all, the annual COP was usually greater than 15 for cooling. (At least five times better than typical air conditioner)Heating is "free" (with zero energy cost) in the model as all electric power was "charged" to cooling in the model. Typically in a reasonably balanced community, there is a net surplus of heat to dump (spray pond) but now with more efficient lighting and motors that surplus would be smaller.
The US is not socially/politically organized to accept this energy saving system (partly why a US Navy base was modeled in detail) but some of the Scandinavian countries are and closely related ideas are in use there; but as their cooling load is relatively small, these systems tend to be called "district heating system" (hot water, not steam is distributed thru out the community)**** Most of the work was paid for by DoE but the Navy paid for the Norfolk base study.
*** They have large a rotating drum which is slightly below 0C and continuously scrap off thin ice as it forms. I.e. they do not need to transport heat thru more than ~1 mm of ice film and are very efficient.
**** Baltimore's BG&E had a small steam district heating systems - sold heat as well as electric power but steam is not suitable for sending more than a few city blocks from the source. Warm / hot water can go miles and feed heat to local very efficient water source heat pumps (which are also cheaper than air source.)