These days the very idea of geoengineering – cooling the planet manually to reverse global warming – is producing lots of controversy, but it’s time for a new wrinkle.

The most radical flavors of planet-hacking block the sun by using particles that would be sprayed in the stratosphere. Or they seek to brighten clouds to reduce the amount of sunlight that would strike the ocean. But Harvard physicist Russell Seitz introduced a radical alternative back in March:

Creating unbelievablly huge amounts of tiny bubbles at sea, which could cool large swaths of ocean or at-risk lakes to fight global warming. I wrote back then: :

Natural bubbles already brighten turbulent seas and provide a luster known as “undershine” below the ocean’s surface. But these bubbles only lightly brighten the planet, contributing less than one-tenth of 1% of Earth’s reflectivity, or albedo. What Seitz imagines is pumping even smaller bubbles, about one-five-hundredth of a millimeter in diameter, into the sea. Such “microbubbles” are essentially “mirrors made of air,” says Seitz, and they might be created off boats by using devices that mix water supercharged with compressed air into swirling jets of water. “I’m emulating a natural ocean phenomenon and amplifying it just by changing the physics—the ingredients remain the same.”

Badass whitewater reflects lots of light. But much more subtle amounts of imperceptible bubbles, over large areas, can have profound effects.

What I didn’t write about when I introduced Seitz’s near insane(ly brilliant) idea is a twist which makes the sci-fi concept of cooling the planet with made-to-order whitewater positively Terry Gilliam-eque:

That those tiny bubbles could drive this planet into a total Ice Age and eliminate most life on Earth.

I first heard about Seitz’s wild idea about a year and a half ago, but I kept quiet. I knew that he was submitting a paper to the journal Climatic Change in which he would lay out the basic concept and some lab results that suggested it might work. But at the historical Asilomar meeting on governing geoengineering which occurred in March, Seitz went public with his idea. And yet several scientists were intrigued by an insidious possibility related to Russell’s wild concept.

Here’s the scheme. Seitz or others who have dreamt up variations of the idea envision making the bubbles in the ocean using mechanical means – pushing air into the water or mixing the water up somehow in the same way that whirlpools do. But others have imagined using microbes. Those microbes may be genetically programmed to create tiny bubbles. The fear is that such microbes – which no one has ever tried to make, as far as I know – could grow out of control, multiply, and add giant amounts of nano bubbles all over Earth’s seas.

The fear is that even a small change in the brightness of the ocean – what scientists call its albedo – can tip the planets radiation balance out of whack one way or another. This happens naturally. For example, as the Arctic melts, its bright white ice is being replaced by the dark surface of the water that is revealed. As this occurs, the whole area warms rapidly — twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

So the nightmare scenario would be that the superbugs which scientists breed to create bubbles would create giant white patches in the ocean which would in turn create cooling, which would create more ice and more ice until the Earth’s was completely covered in ice.

Michael Crichton — bless his departed global warming denying soul — would have a field day.

Yes, the killer tiny bubbles is just an idea in a couple people’s heads, but it could change the way scientists think about regulating the controversial idea of geoengineering research. At the Asilomar meeting most scientists were concerned about regulating field trials of geoengineering, in which scientists would alter clouds, the ocean, or even the stratosphere. But the idea of genetically modified microbes that would create tiny bubbles suggests that geoengineering research rules should include careful restrictions about microorganisms that might affect the environment on a large scale as well.

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