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Pitch

Climate change is not suitably addressed because the academics leading the response are not up to the task. MIT must try to change this.


Description

Summary

MIT firstly must rectify the abysmal state of the climate change science in academic institutions. For example, a professor at Cambridge University recently told me that loss of reflectivity was not responsible for about half of annual warming, and the research indicated some time in the future. The researchers said the research was about the present.

Not that the UNFCCC would recognise such research as accurate, so insistent they are that mitigation is restricted to increasing sinks and reducing emissions.  It seems they are avoiding whitening altogether.

But whitening lowers ice bereft rock temperatures by as much as 18C, allowing re-glaciation.

This reversible measure is the only safe geoengineering because it mimics nature at the same time as being reversible.

Could MIT employ a helicopter crew to spray paint the rocks bordering the Goram Glacier in Switzerland ?

Whitening rural roads, urban roofs and runways would also contribute to restoring albedo.

Furthermore, and despite the desperate situation we are now in, academics seem incapable of devising strategies.

Yet there is an obvious strategy, that is to link climate change response work with poverty alleviation, work which includes reforesting, revegetating and whitening for a reasonable wage wherever these measures are possible. 

But could the UNFCCC coordinate such numbers ? Probably not, which is why they should continue reducing emissions and leave it to the UN Security Council to set up a climate change response program, advertise it in the media outlets of banks and post offices worldwide, and fund it with finance from governments and the private and corporate sector.

MIT has yet to sufficiently assert its authority to even call for such a program, but really there is not enough time to lose. 

 


What actions do you propose?

The Alumni must take it on themselves to transform the above strategy into a worldwide movement. They should prepare the descriptions and advertisements, liaise with the Security Council to achieve endorsement of the proposed advertising actions, insist a coordinating panel is set up, constituted of government, corporate, academic and NGO representatives, and detail exactly how the unemployed are to be employed, including their relocation and housing where necessary.

This will be the greatest internationally cooperative event ever, with the ancillary benefits that at last youth will have occupations they so badly need, and reclusive leaders opportunities to contribute to a common cause.

Because the UN infrastructure is immense, the chain of command will stretch from the coordinating panel through every city on earth. And because the NGOs are working in most places, they too will organise the program's implementation.

The concept was first put to the NGOs in 2007, but they could not countenance losing any individuality and becoming part of a wider team. Since the, the NGOs have joined up with each other, but no enough to make enough difference. 

Every nation needs to subsume its army to the UN for the purpose of organizing the program. There will be no more wars, except for the ridiculous religious sect wars, because everyone will be on the same side.

Don't let us down by hesitating, please.