Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

by Elizabeth Kolbert

investigating ways it might intercede on the reef’s behalf. These included: deploying underwater robots to reseed damaged reefs, developing some kind of ultrathin film to shade reefs, pumping deep water to the surface to provide corals with heat relief, and cloud-brightening. This last possibility would involve spraying tiny droplets of salt water into the air to create a kind of artificial fog. The salty mist would, according to theory at least, encourage the formation of light-colored clouds, which would reflect sunlight back out to space, counteracting global warming. Wachenfeld told me that the new technologies would probably have to be deployed in tandem, so that, for example, a robot might deliver genetically enhanced larvae to a reef shaded by a thin film or man-made fog. “There’s all sorts of just amazingly imaginative innovation,” he said.