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Pinatubo created some other positive externalities too. Forests around the world grew more vigorously because trees prefer their sunlight a bit diffused. And all that sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere created some of the prettiest sunsets that people had ever seen.

Of course it was the global cooling that got scientists’ attention. A paper in Science concluded that a Pinatubo-size eruption every few years would “offset much of the anthropogenic warming expected over the next century.”

Even James Lovelock conceded the point: “[W]e might be saved,” he wrote, “by an unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out sunlight and so cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds.”

True, it probably would take a loser, or at least a fool, to believe a volcano could be persuaded to spew its protective effluvia into the sky at the proper intervals. But what if some foolish people thought Pinatubo could perhaps serve as a blueprint to stop global warming? The same sort of fools who, for instance, once believed that women didn’t have to die in childbirth, that worldwide famine was not foreordained? While they’re at it, could they also make their solution cheap and simple?

And if so, where might such fools be found?

In a nondescript section of Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, lies a particularly nondescript series of buildings. There’s a heating-and-air-conditioning company, a boat maker, a shop that fabricates marble tiles, and another building that used to be a Harley-Davidson repair shop. This last one is a windowless, charmless structure of about twenty thousand square feet whose occupant is identified only by a sheet of paper taped to the glass door. It reads “Intellectual Ventures.”

Inside is one of the most unusual laboratories in the world. There are lathes and mold makers and 3D printers and many powerful computers, of course, but there is also an insectary where mosquitoes are bred so they can be placed in an empty fish tank and, from more than a hundred feet away, assassinated by a laser. This experiment is designed to thwart malaria. The disease is spread only by certain species of female mosquito, so the laser’s tracking system identifies the females by wing-beat frequency—they flap more slowly than males because they are heavier—and zaps them.

Intellectual Ventures is an invention company. The lab, in addition to all the gear, is stocked with an elite assemblage of brainpower, scientists and puzzle-solvers of every variety. They dream up processes and products and then file patent applications, more than five hundred a year. The company also acquires patents from outside inventors, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to solo geniuses toiling in basements. IV operates much like a private-equity firm, raising investment capital and paying returns when its patents are licensed. The company currently controls more than twenty thousand patents, more than all but a few dozen companies in the world. This has led to some grumbling that IV is a “patent troll,” accumulating patents so it can extort money from other companies, via lawsuit if necessary. But there is little hard evidence for such claims. A more realistic assessment is that IV has created the first mass market for intellectual property.

Its ringleader is a gregarious man named Nathan, the same Nathan we met earlier, the one who hopes to enfeeble hurricanes by seeding the ocean with skirted truck tires. Yes, that apparatus is an IV invention. Internally it is known as the Salter Sink because it sinks warm surface water and was originally developed by Stephen Salter, a renowned British engineer who has been working for decades to harness the power of ocean waves.

By now it should be apparent that Nathan isn’t just some weekend inventor. He is Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft. He co-founded IV in 2000 with Edward Jung, a biophysicist who was Microsoft’s chief software architect.