PUSHING UP THE DAISIES IN UKPEAGVIK

WIRED  reports:

Next month, a Silicon Valley engineer plans to head out on a snowmobile from Barrow, on the northern tip of Alaska, to sprinkle reflective sand on a frozen lake to try to stop it from melting. It’s part of a journey that began in 2006, after Leslie Field watched the climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and felt like she’d been “hit by a big fat truck.”...

Field, an inventor with 53 patents, began her research with buckets of cold water on the front deck of her home in Portola Valley, California, where she tested a variety of materials, including hay and daisies, to see how well they could prevent the sun’s rays from raising water temperatures. After settling on silica, she scaled up her experiments with trials on ice in California’s Sierra Nevada and on Canada’s Miquelon Lake.

Along the way, she raised funds from private donors, the largest contribution being a three-year, $1.3 million grant from a family foundation she heard about from a wealthy friend with whom she volunteered at her sons’ school. The money has helped pay for land-use permits and logistical support from Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corp., an indigenous-run organization in Barrow, Alaska.

 In May, Field and a small group of volunteers used an agricultural spreader, dragged by a snowmobile, to cover an area of ice the size of three football fields on an inland lake in Alaska..., she said, she needs to build credibility for her approach, which has yet to win respect from the so-called Geo-clique ,  a small group of North American scientists who advise politicians and large funders.

Among Field’s harshest critics is Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, who has collaborated with Keith and worked with Bill Gates. Caldeira dismissed Ice911 as unrealistic.