Warming Up to Geoengineering?

As with many aspects of Climate Change discussions most are heavy on sweeping concepts and light on reasonable details and energy balance. For example how much energy is needed to build and launch the sunshades? How much CO2 would be released in the entire process? How long would it take for the benefits to outweigh the costs? What happens if one or more major volcanic eruptions occur and the natural aerosols and other gases start a cooling cycle? How do we get rid of the sunshades when they are no longer needed? Just one of a series of questions that seem to be ignored when these ideas are promoted.

Another series of questions would revolve around the energy balance of hybrid or all electric cars. How many coal fired power plants need to be built to provide the energy needed to produce those cars? How much energy is needed to produce a wind generator? How long before the wind generator had produced more power than it consumed in its creation? These energy balances must be reviewed before everyone jumps on the bandwagon promoting them. Personally, I support most of the alternative and renewable energy sources. However, I do NOT support corn based bio-fuels because the energy balance is so poor and the impact on food prices unacceptable. I do support hydroelectric which is one of the best and economically positive alternative energy source. Hydro is a great companion for solar and wind as it can buffer the nighttime and no wind periods, but are seldom mentioned.

In short, I think most assessments of alternate energy sources miss the mark by a long shot.