reply to post by burntheships
It seems that they are talking about the total cost of an aerosol injection program.
The paper that pianopraze linked is a cost analysis of several different means of deploying an aerosol program. It's quite detailed and goes as far
as to include devlopment, depreciation, and interest costs. Their least expensive method would be to use dirigibles at a cost of 1.37B so Gate's
company is in the ballpark for a global effort at under a billion since the operating costs for tethered blimbs would presumably be less. Development
costs would also be reduced since, as they point out, most of the technology already exists.
Remember also that they are talking about
costs not profits. It doesn't really sound like there is a huge amount of money to be made in
geoengineering.
Why is it a good thing to learn about potential problems with a program before implementing it? Um..that seems kind of obvious to me. It could very
well turn out that some negative impacts not yet thought of could exist. Something that would tip the balance to say "Nope. Can't do it. Not worth
it.".
Where is the modelling? All over. Here's a start:
scholar.google.com...