Unlike many carbon offset schemes, reflecting energy back into space is genuine because every square area of improved reflectance is a real offset to the greenhouse effect. Every Croffle, every land based mirror, every white roof contributes. Carbon capture is not reducing CO2 fast enough.
The commercial arm of global Carbon reduction has been the creation of Carbon Offset financial rewards. The idea is simple. If a commercial process such as manufacturing concrete is taxed for its carbon dioxide emission, than that tax can be offset by planting trees or other carbon capture ideas. The Oceanmirror project is a large scale carbon offset scheme.
Quite rightly, carbon offsetting gets a bad press where it is blatantly hypocritical or really hard to calculate. But this scheme, to increase reflectivity is a genuine Carbon offset.
Every reflective croffle in the Ocean, like any mirror on land, is throwing energy back into space over its tiny area. Provided its reflectivity covers all the high energy incoming radiation, which is in the visual and ultraviolet regions of the spectrum.
Thus every single croffle, or every group of croffles has a calculable carbon offset value. Just like every white roof. Establishing a carbon offset value will help funding the project.
The Oil Lobby: It is true that a successful albedo project like this huge floating mirror will allow the carbon based economy to continue, as it has while everybody is calling for carbon emission reduction. Let's be realistic. We have built our economies on oil and coal, and natural gas. We need an alternative approach while the alternatives take a century to mature.
There is only one alternative: we must improve the albedo, the reflectance. we can try to save the ice but that is hard to do. Let's make a floating mirror.