Geo-engineering has always struck me as very frightening.

But what about this?  Couldn't sea water be safely pumped up into the atmosphere in an aerosol with wind/wave powered floating platforms to help counteract GHG warming?

Is this geo-engineering?  Would it be safe?  How much effect on solar insolation and GHG sequestration would it have?

In polar regions it would produce more ice through the winter.  The imensely powerful polar winter winds give this potential for signifigant extra ice formation.

In summer, in tropics and polar regions, this  would put up huge clouds that reflect solar energy and increase rainfall, greening dry areas and promoting GHG sequestering plant growth.  Tropical pumping aparatus could be powered by solar thermal, the solar furnace heating the water and pressurizing it at the same time.

Thousands of these floating devices mass produced and deployed with remote thrusters and anchors could be maneuvered for best effect.  Wouldn't middle east nations wealthy with oil now, like to back a system like this that could green their deserts for later after the oil runs dry?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Any idiot could see that the way to fix global warming is to stop emitting air pollution, specifically greenhouse gases.  Oh, that's right, scientists aren't just any idiots, they're a special kind, the kind who got us into this mess to begin with!

A great blog by Joe Romm this time. May I point out we used to have a wonderful mechanism for pumping sulfur compounds into the atmosphere - it was called burning high sulfur coal without a scrubber.  Yes, some of that ended up in the stratosphere, such like other ozone depleters such as Freon and methyl bromide do.

As to Amazing's comment, we're pumping water into the upper atmosphere as fast as we can. That's because the products of combustion include CO2 and water. So power plants, jets, and all kinds of things are forcing more water into the upper atmosphere. In addition, warmer ambient temperatures over the oceans allow more water vapor to be absorbed. Dr Jeff Masters at Weather Underground found some citations that indicate additional water vapor loadings that also seem incomprehensibly large, just from natural sources.

I guess that's a "feedback loop" if there ever was one. Water is one of the more potent climate change chemicals out there.

Onward through the fog