Imagine a project that restores the Earth’s atmosphere and land with the creation of clouds. No geo-engineering, pouring iron into our oceans or sending mirrors into orbit. Simply clouds.

Ray Taylor, a former international development worker and coordinator of The Global Cooling Project featured in Celsias’ Projects, thinks these grand vapour-filled energy movers (clouds, that is) could be part of the solution to climate change, with cooling results visible only ten years after local projects are initiated on a large scale.

Ray was working in climate change issues for some time, “worried that global warming was out of control and that governments were not doing enough in time,” when he learned of the rainwater harvesting work hydrologist Michal Kravcik proposed to increase soil moisture in arid regions, resulting in globe-cooling clouds. After months of research into the science of the proposal, Ray has developed a project based on Kravcik’s idea he calls The Global Cooling Project “to be put into action in hot, dry places, catching and holding rainwater on a large scale… helping to produce clouds” and thus cooling the planet. His project is innovative, ground-breaking and timely, especially in light of recent conversations regarding the not-so-surprising negative effects of geo-engineering plans (see links at top).

To slow the warming of the planet, Ray told me there are three approaches:

1. To stop the sun’s heat from coming into our atmosphere
2. To take some of the heat that's already in, and carry it back out again
3. Reduce the greenhouse effect by reducing emissions

Most climate change workers are focused on approach three. Ray supports reducing emissions but is concerned that relying on this approach alone will not stop catastrophic climate change. Approaches one and two can be done with the help of completely natural clouds.

Low altitude clouds reflect light from the sun (approach one). The sun’s energetic heat also creates thunder clouds when vapor rises rapidly (approach two). Ray says thunder clouds are like “giant anvil-shaped radiators", transferring huge amounts of excess energy from Earth’s soil into outerspace. If you do rainwater harvesting on a large scale in places like West Africa, India and Florida, you'll get more of these clouds.

Rainwater harvesting is a family of traditional and modern methods to catch and hold rainwater. The water harvested is used to keep soil moist in the dry season. In these normally dry areas, moisture in the soil can now evaporate to form clouds.

Thunderclouds from space

The benefits of Ray’s Cooling Project are incredibly promising. In semi-arid areas, where the projects would ideally be initiated, one would see:

• more rainfall preventing drought
• less flooding (because rain is trapped during the wettest times)
• local cooling effects
• increased water supply
• improved agriculture (moist soil means a better home for plants), and
• greater biodiversity

Ray told me areas would start seeing results of the project only two years after they begin, a jaw-dropping number when compared to the fifty years most greenhouse gas reducers are hoping for (and that’s if we stop how things are going immediately!).

The Global Cooling Project, according to Ray and scientist Dr Richard Harding, is mimicking how things are in nature, working to recreate how they were. During our talk, he cited three amazing historical records of clouds disappearing, indicating that land use truly does effect climate, and clouds in particular. The first is work done by Professor Roger Pielke in Florida, looking at how the whole state has become hotter and dryer as the wetlands have been drained and the forests cut down.

The second is from the Kogi tribe in Colombia, who describe white Europeans as their "Younger Brothers":

The Elder Brother survived, high on the mountain, but the progress of the conquest ground steadily on. And now .... the Younger Brother is pressing on into this final refuge. And as he does so, he completes his process of plunder, ripping apart the world for profit. Cutting down trees, ripping out gold, minerals and oil, heating up and drying out the world. 'We know what you have done. You have taken the clouds. You have sold the clouds!'

Christopher Columbus

In Christopher Columbus’ biography by his son Ferdinand, it is written:

"on Tuesday, July 22d [1494], he departed for Jamaica.... The sky, air, and climate were just the same as in other places; every afternoon there was a rain squall that lasted for about an hour. The admiral writes that he attributes this to the great forests of that land; he knew from experience that formerly this also occurred in the Canary, Madeira, and Azore Islands, but since the removal of forests that once covered those islands they do not have so much mist and rain as before."

Thus, while land/atmosphere interactions are just beginning to be looked at by the IPCC, humans have been observing their effects for hundreds of years.

Ray has begun contacting leaders in Africa to work out leadership of the project, and a few other places he told me he would like to work with including India are also in the Global South. He is particularly excited about this aspect of the work. Rather than understanding the Global Cooling Project as development work, Ray sees it as the initiation of a straightforward business deal. “Wealthier countries that want to slow global cooling can pay these areas to do the work of installing [rainwater harvesting projects] and the local communities get the spin-off benefits” of jobs, local climate improvement, etc. The areas he hopes to work with in Africa and Asia already possess local techniques for harvesting rainwater, avoiding the usual North-South relationship in which tech is brought in from the West. “We’re so used to the idea of poor Africa and the rest of the world coming in to save them,” Ray said. “This is Africa saving the rest of the world!”

To date Ray has mainly been working with scientists and rainwater harvesting planners. He is now looking for support in French translation, fundraising, video production, and any other area where a hand can be lent. More can be found on his project in Celsias’ Projects section and on the Global Cooling Project website. Take a moment and check out Ray’s exciting and inspiring work. He has hope that if enough people hop on his team, and the Project takes off, “we have a realistic chance of reducing global warming within the next two decades.”

Wouldn't that be something!

Further Reading:

• Greening the Desert