National Notice: April 2014

Cloud Silver Linings Corporation man-made clouds to counteract climate change?

You were feeling glum about climate change? You feared your grandchildren would grow up on an earth with nary a resemblance to the one humankind has inhabited over the millennia? . . .

. . . Your worries are over. Cloud Silver Linings Corporation says it has perfected an answer: With a little ingenious engineering coupled with what it refers to as the “elbow-glitz” of some good old Madison Avenue know-how, it’s rising to the challenge and some obvious market investment opportunities presented. It says it can guarantee that global warming and climate change won’t be anywhere near as bad as many nay-sayers were predicting. In fact, for the luckiest who get in on the ground floor and buy in early, there is a chance to participate in some real profit.

Cloud Silver Linings started with the pertinent observations that clouds have always had some “really important benefits that those who think simplistically readily tend to overlook,” according to spokesperson Peter Strasser. What's often overlooked?: The significant cooling effect clouds provide.

After 9/11- No contrails results in no clouds formed as a result

Contrail formation of clouds over Europe

Strasser, who eccentrically wears a small Belle Époque goatee and mustache, tends to finger his beard when he talks. He noted how, with the 9/11 attacks, climatologists realized they had an unprecedented opportunity to scrutinize how the contrails from jets form clouds and lower global temperatures by dimming the light of the sun actually reaching the earth. When for several days no planes were allowed to fly over the continental United States after 9/11, cloud formation from contrails ceased and the temperature of the United States consequently rose.

Scientist Beate Liepert in “Dimming The Sun” researching records relating to climate change in a library.

The effect of clouds to reduce sunlight and accordingly reduce temperature has been proved. Overall, in recent decades there has been an increase in clouds across the world that has been preventing sunlight from reaching the earth and that’s known as “global dimming.” See: “Dimming The Sun” (video here). To date, scientists are reasonably certain that “more than half the warming effect of our greenhouse emissions has been masked by the cooling effect of particle pollution.” But, as Strasser points out, that’s only half the job needing to be done, and, what’s more, scientists predict the masking effect is temporary because when the man-made pollution resulting in the global dimming clears up the counteractive effect will end.

“Dimming The Sun” research records relating to climate change in a library.

Cloud Silver Linings Corporation is ready to close the gap with man-made clouds. The clouds would be permanent fixtures in the sky and carefully designed to be more highly reflective of sunlight than the ordinary clouds that come courtesy of Mother Nature. “The `Silver Linings' part of our name isn’t just metaphorical,” says Strasser: “Because of the of the high degree of reflectivity of the clouds we manufacture the edges of our clouds will literally glint with a pleasing silvery brilliance.”

The chemicals that were finally decided upon as being best to ensure cloud brilliance were actually discovered accidentally when experimenting with retardants to find what might make the clouds fire resistant. Maintaining brilliance is important because clouds tarnishing and turning brown will not only look like trouble on the horizon, they will actually absorb heat and put into the atmosphere.

Strasser said ideas for "geoengineering" solutions of this sort go back decades and include ideas like reflective films that would be let out in outer space, or sulfur, aerosols, or particulates that would be pumped up into the upper atmosphere. (See: Scientists Dream Up Bold Remedies for Ailing Atmosphere, by William J. Broad, August 16, 1988, The Energy Challenge-Exotic Visions- How to Cool a Planet (Maybe), by William J. Broad, June 27, 2006 and Engineering a Cooler Planet, by Eric Etheridge, October 21, 2009.)

“Our solution is much more natural,” says Strasser. “For instance, it doesn’t engender any changes of the sky color to purple or white as some proposals would. Mankind was meant to live under a blue sky and it's probably evolutionary that blue skies make people feel happy. People would just see more clouds in the sky, but the new clouds would be of a more beautiful variety.”

Furthermore, the clouds could be provided where most desirable and would be provided free. The clouds could be steered away from areas designated by agreement for solar power collection.
Silver Linings’ clouds technically wouldn’t be true clouds. Engineered with a structure of ultralight nanotubes and nanofibers based on the chemical composition of spider silk (stronger that steal) the clouds would be able to retain shape. Additionally, they would retain the positions in the air or navigate to new ones by integrating nanites or nanobots, microscopic solar powered flying machines that would cooperate, working together using simple swarm technology algorithms. According to Silver Linings’ press releases the flying nanobots have already been largely developed by another company, Parthenogenic Solutions, which is readying the small flyers to replace bees for pollination when colony collapse disorder has done its worst.

To provide the clouds absolutely free and without cost to the public Cloud Silver Linings will produce them in the shape of advertisements that spell out the names of sponsoring corporations. Cloud Silver Linings already has an exclusive contract for its first decade of operation to fill the skies with names of some biggies: Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and Gazprom. The smallest sponsor whose name you’ll see above?: An early investor in the corporation, T. Boone Pickens. Pickens, a heavy promoter of hydrofracking who has also recently been making a name for himself by investing in the water resources that fracking makes much more scarce.

Pickens says he stands willing to invest in everything and anything, “it's all a matter of supply and demand” and on this, “the sky isn’t the limit, but the starting place to invest.”

Cloud Silver Linings’s claim to the sky space is already legally firmly locked up. It litigated the matter under the provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty’s provision that allows foreign corporations to seize natural resources for corporate purposes like mining. For those who where unaware that it is already possible to litigate these matters in secret tribunals prior to actual passage of the TPP, Strasser points out that since the provisions of the TPP under negotiation are being treated as “classified” there is a lot that people don’t know about the TPP, including its retroactive provisions. “I can say no more,” said Strasser. (Working as a subsidiary of HD 'n Burg technologies Cloud Silver Linings has been structured to operate as a foreign corporation no matter where it is doing business in the world to ensure treaty protections.)

Bitcoin dividends?

Cloud Silver Linings is taking one other innovative leap into the future. Its stock will be issued in exchange for U.S. dollars, but its dividends will be paid in bitcoin. Borrowing a page from Bitcoin’s playbook using artificial scarcity to generating perceived value, Cloud Silver Linings will restrict issuance of its stock, issuing only annually on the same day of every year (provided it’s a weekday), April 1st.