California State University Long Beach 

How do we fix global warming?

• Increase efficiency of usage of fossil fuels
• Gains from 30% efficiency to 60% are technically feasible in next few decades
• More efficient energy production
• New technologies
• Turbines
• Catalysts
• Natural gas
• More efficient energy utilization
• Combined cycle power generation
• Cascade of linked uses
• Decrease emissions of CO₂
• Scrubbing (removal) or clean burning pathways
• Electric power plants contribute about 1/3 of all CO₂ emissions
• Could cut CO₂ emissions to 1/3 to 2/3 of present rate in next 50-100 years
• From 6 gigatons of carbon to 2 gigatons by 2100 A.D. technologically and economically feasible
• Encourage development of noncombustion energy sources
• Energy uses grows by 2% per year, so we can't just do without
• Solar energy
• Nuclear energy
• Biomass fuel energy
• Wave, tide, and wind energy
• Ocean thermal energy
• Hydrothermal energy
• Geothermal energy

• Geoengineering / Climate engineering

• Purposely manipulating the environment to abate unintended change
• Generally considered a fall-back strategy if cooperative greenhouse gas emissions do not attain necessary levels

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Geoengineering examples

• Reforestation
• Planting trees to absorb CO₂
• An 8% increase in forest area would absorb 10-15% of emitted CO₂ during plant growth
• No net gain after about 50-100 years
• Store CO₂ scrubbed from power pants in different reservoirs
• Deep ocean or oil wells
• Speed up the deep-water oceanic conveyor belt
• Dam or divert North Atlantic rivers
• Albedo modification
• Need to reflect only 1.4% of solar input to counteract doubled preindustrial CO₂ levels
• Place mirrors, balloons, or SO₂ in upper atmosphere or space
• Increase reflectivity of ocean (cover with film, foam, or plastic) or by cloud seeding
• Add snow to Antarctica to reflect light (& to counter sea level rise)

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