Engineers' ideas for cooling the Planet

Engineers have published the world's first 100-year action plan on how to tackle climate change using mechanical trees and algae. If the initiatives put forward by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) are adopted it could create at between one to two million new green jobs for the UK economy by 2050 � under the Mitigation Adaptation and Geo-Engineering approach (MAG). 'Geo-Engineering: Giving us Time to Act?' is the world's first such report containing practical engineering analysis detailed statistics and scientific data to be produced by any engineering organisation and comes after 12 months' intensive work by practising engineers. It contains five key recommendations to government and solutions that can also benefit our natural environment.The first key recommendation urges the Government to support a national start-up research project which could cost between �10 and �20 million. With this research funding geo-engineering initiatives could get off the ground. These include: artificial or mechanical trees energy from algae and solar radiation management � reflective buildings.The other four recommendations are to: use the resources we already have; pilot promising schemes; adopt a realistic roadmap for decarbonisation of the global economy integrating geo-engineering; and maximise the commercial opportunities for UK plc.The report will be presented at party conferences and to a select group of politicians and MPs later this year at the IMechE.
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