Talk of manipulating Earth's climate

[YankeyMCC]

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WASHINGTON -- The idea seems like something out of a Superman comic: A machine or missile shoots tons of particles into the atmosphere that would block the sun's rays, cool down the overheated Earth, and reverse global warming.
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But today some of the country's leading minds in science, history, and economics will gather in a closed session organized by NASA and Stanford University to discuss researching such a strategy -- a subject long taboo in environmental circles because so much could go wrong. Some fear it would be seen as a quick fix, replacing the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions, but others contend that the world needs an emergency plan in case global warming triggers a catastrophe, such as a break up of the Greenland ice sheet and massive flooding in coastal regions.
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"Is it better to let polar bears go extinct and let the ice sheets melt? Is it worse to inject some aerosols into the stratosphere that could deflect some sunlight?" said Ken Caldeira , a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, which is hosting the two-day meeting.
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Those scientists who believe it could work point to the eruption of volcanoes in which masses of particles have deflected sunlight and reduced global temperatures by an average of 0.9 degrees.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/11/18/talk_of_manipulating_earths_climate/

It really seems like we're hearing this sort of idea more and more lately...not a good trend IMHO.

[don954]

1. terraforming Terra...

im not all that shocked its come to this, but it would be better to test out the technology on mars or Venus first..

[kestrel91316]

5. Well, we've BEEN terraforming earth since the start of

the industrial revolution and that hasn't seemed to work out very well so far.

[pretzel4gore]

2. meanwhile, tax carbon so much

sailing ships return to our oceans, lta's (lighter then air) aircraft slow down air travel (all heavier then air craft would be banned)...cleaning up past industrial pollution would become make work jobs for every single unemployed human on earth...
-wildlife preserves, including no go areas, would be established for animals, only research zoo's allowed
-marijuana legalised, booze restricted except for meals
-passport controls ended forever; humanity free to go wherever we wish. this would end hogging of resources/wealth as that would make the homelands of mr piggy too attractive to less fortunate, ergo eliminate all 'less fortune'
-all high political office held by women, even in biz men restricted to situations where their emotions don't affect the resulting work
-automation to eliminate all drudgery type work; minimum wage set at middle class rate, no one would have too much (wouldn't be prudent, piggishness is for pigs only!)
-fascism outlawed
-reading taught after maturity reached; illiteracy means better memory, sharper wits (and with photo memory, young adults learn to read/write PROPERLY in 3 months anyway)
-rapid transit univeral; just like once a person could take the metro from new york to florida for one thin dime, it would be the same, only globally!
-colonies on the moon/mars etc, all the lebensraum the capitalist pig wants is up in the sky! and free...

and best yet, it would all cost alot less then letting mr piggy ruin everything as history shows is his wont....no more war, cuz law would be humane and disagreements settled by agreement, as they always are among civilised peoples - uncivilised peoplets ie fascists, would be shot whenever they found
ps...tim russert etc castrated (cleaning up the gene pool)

[Deja Q]

3. Find a way to rapidly convert carbon dioxide into oxygen...

Trees do it all the time; surely we can make a synthetic substitute?

oh, no doubt this is already patented, if I didn't patent it already. :P

[Odin2005]

6. Nanotech?

build nanotech-based diamond-synthesizing plants that use nanites (molecule-sized machines) to turn CO2 into O2 and diamond, and then use the diamond as a building material.

[hatrack]

4. Call me crazy, but aren't we doing this already?

And the last time I looked, it wasn't working out too well.

:eyes:

[NNadir]

7. Yes but haphazardly.

I believe it is technically possible to control the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.

I think a case could be made for attempting to reduce this concentration so that it approximates pre-industrial levels, but one would have to move gingerly.

While I think it is technically possible to accomplish this, it would require a huge international effort involving world-wide co-operation in the political, environmental, economic and technological spheres. It would involve sacrifice and commitment and a concerted effort to guard issues like fairness, and justice and respect.

To sum, while I think it is technically possible, it is humanly impossible. The situation now obtained is that we are forced to wait until it is too late too do anything. If we are not there just yet - and we may well be there - we will get there soon.

[gulfcoastliberal]

8. Back in the 90s my geology professor mentioned dumping iron oxide

in the oceans to soak up more co2 by creating large plankton blooms... I guess we now know that would further acidify the seas...

[htuttle]

9. The main thing is, "Do No Harm"

Until we can be fairly certain that we won't make things worse, I'm not thrilled about the prospect of this course of action.

However, it will get to the point where the potential harm caused by an action with not-entirely-known consequences will be outweighed by the real harm caused by continuing our current course of activity (or inactivity, as the case may be). At they point, "we might as well", as they say.

Keep in mind that this is the equivalent of an army medic attempting to perform open heart massage at the front line of a war zone. If we had any brains at all, we would not have let it get to that level of peril in the first place....(of course, it's becoming increasingly clear that as a species, we have "no brains at all"...).