Examiner.com

Nathan Myhrvold thinks it can.

Myhrvold, is the president and founder of Intellectual Ventures and a former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer, who started his own company in 2000 to provide capital for new patents, innovative ideas, and software.

The former Microsoft engineer entered college at age 14 to study mathematics, space physics, and geophysics at UCLA, where he earned Masters and Bachelor of Science degrees. At age 23, he entered Princeton and completed his PhD in theoretical mathematics and earned a Masters in mathematical economics.

On a recent interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Myhrvold talked about how venture capital should be available, but in today’s market, it’s not.

“No one funds inventers,” Nathan said, and he wants to change that, because inventers from other countries, who used to come to the United States to get funding for their inventions innovative ideas, are no longer doing so. Without venture capital, Microsoft, Apple, and Intel would not exist today.

Myhrvold sees global warming as a serious problem, but thinks there might be an easier, less expensive way of keeping the planet from warming to a catastrophic degree.

The idea is based on a theory that Benjamin Franklin came up with after a volcanic explosion that blasted millions of small particles of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which darkened the sky and cooled the temperature, due to the particles acting as a temporary barrier to the sun’s rays.

So, Myhrvold has come up with a way to simulate the same situation, by raising specially designed hoses into the air supported by helium balloons at strategic points around the globe to virtually spraying millions of sulfur dioxide particles into the stratosphere.

The stratosphere is the second major layer of Earth's atmosphere, just above the troposphere, and below the mesosphere.

“In order to have C02 peak in 40 years, which is what scientists are calling for,” said Myhrvold, “we would have to cut C02 by 5% every year. That won’t happen on the current course and geo-engineering should be part of the debate.”

Environmentalists agree with Myhrvold’s assessment that current plans to deal with global warming don’t go far enough. The weak agreement that was struck at Copenhagen doesn’t have enough teeth in it to curb the impacts of Climate disruption from a warming globe. The urgency is real, because they say that climate change has been happening around the world for several years.

Point of fact, in September, 2009, history was made by two German merchant vessels, when they became the first to navigate the Northeast Passage across the Arctic Ocean. For the past 8000 years, the pass could not be traversed by ship, because the ice was too thick. Many previous attempts had ended in disaster, including a Russian endeavor in 1998 that ended with the vessel being crushed by ice.

Nathan Myhrvold is not the only scientist to claim that some kind of geoengineering (climate engineering) process should be researched as a back up plan, in case greenhouse gases aren’t brought into check. Another idea includes a design for ships that ascend and spray sea water into the atmosphere to create cloud cover in a similar effort to slow the penetration of sun rays to reduce warming.

Still other considerations are carbon sequestering directly in the atmosphere or indirect methods of trapping C02 like ocean iron fertilization.

Although, Myhrvold and other scientists agree that cutting carbon emissions is the best way to truly get it done, they feel that research on alternatives should start now, rather than a decade down the road.

But others worry about unintended consequences, like driving the planet into another ice age. They ask “what if there are run away ramifications to geoengineering or playing with Mother Nature?”

To that question, Myhrvold responds: “what if there is run away global warming and we have no other plan?”

Watch Myhrvold’s video

***Copyright Jean Williams 2009. Permission to copy up to three paragraphs with a direct link back to this page.