Geo-engineering...

[Wolferz]

Geo-engineering to fix global warming? Daft or just dimwitted?
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/experts-%e2%80%94-and-cia-%e2%80%94-look-at-manipulating-climate

I think the simplest and cheapest solution would be to just plant more trees. Make them fruit trees and you get an added bonus every year.:know:
Lock the carbon dioxide up in wood and add more oxygen to the atmosphere.
Natural solutions will always trump the artificial varieties, with no nasty side effects. Unless you eat too many Apple pies.

[BrucePartington]

First off, the video game Alpha Centauri comes to mind. Terraformers can raise and lower terrain to change weather patterns, for peace and war purposes.

Obviously I know very little about nature and climate, compared to someone with a degree on this.
However it does strike me as further artificial change of a system that has proved over millions of years to be self regulating and self stabilizing. Fiddle with it and you may throw it even farther from balance.

It seems that scientists in general now have a "tunneled vision" in which there can be only artificial solutions.
I don't think the side effects of the proposed fiddling would be of no consequence.
I guess engineering is more profitable than allow and help nature do it.

We need more pure air, not further deplete our resources on planetary scale projects.
It looks as though Earth will eventually become Coruscant. We may even see some Jedi walking around.

[Stealhead]

The problem with planting more trees(any plant produces oxygen) is that as the human population grows good land becomes more and more scarce.In the end the more serious problem facing Earth/the human race is over population that will cause very serious problems long before a failed environment will.I do not think that the ideas like the one you linked are so great either.We do not know what the long term effects are.

I am unsure if you could plant enough trees to counter the negative effect anyway they can only do so much.Plants need water to convert carbon dioxide into O2 and water is another element that is diminishing.

Also as the world ages the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere gets lower and lower.Millions of years ago there was a much higher ratio of oxygen in the air which is one of the reasons why insects and other animals could grow to be so large in comparison to their average size now that change occurred long before all of the pollution we have now and all of our added pollution.If dinosaur farts where too much to handle for the plants of long ago (which where far larger and more abundant) it does not bode well.On top of all that there most likely where only a few hundred thousand of every
dinosaur species alive at any one time of course there where many other smaller animals but they where they had the largest impact at the time.What caused the dinosaurs to die out was not one single event but several major changes they where very well adapted to their environment(sounds familiar only we adapt the environment to suit us) so much so that if something major changed like the specific thing that they ate they could not easily adapt to something different so they died out.I think we have the same weaknesses.Look at the staples that we rely on if they where to take a major hit millions of people would starve.

I think in the long term no matter what we do Earth will become a pretty barren place some things we simply can not control and it is in our nature to ignore serious problems and focus on day to day survival a useful trait 150,000 years ago but not so much now.

[Wolferz]

There are people out there that are working out a solution for the over population problem too. Survival of the fittest will be brought to bear and it won't be pretty. As for the ecosystem, the clearing of the tropical rainforests by human encroachment is akin to ripping a lung out of the planet. Half of the first one was ripped out of the European continent for construction and warmth.
The other half from North America as trees were cleared for farm land, construction and heat.

Maybe we'll have another Carrington event like the one in 1859 and get tossed back into the dark ages for an undetermined length of time..

[Platapus]

The sooner the human species is extinct, the sooner the earth can start healing itself. :yep:

[Wolferz]

The sooner the human species is extinct, the sooner the earth can start healing itself. :yep:

As things are progressing now, there won't be much left for the meek.:-?

[Spiced_Rum]

This just makes me think of that dreadful film 'The Avengers' with Sean Connery as an arch villain Sir August De Wynter the mad weather man.

[Cybermat47]

This just makes me think of that dreadful film 'The Avengers' with Chris Hemsworth as arch villain Thor the mad weather man.

Wrong. Thor was a good guy. It was his brother who was the villain :yep:

[Oberon]

Wrong. Thor was a good guy. It was his brother who was the villain :yep:

Wrong Avengers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKNmPh_MGOA


Anyway, I've long believed that we need to go up as well as out. Unfortunately the Earth rarely a still place, and thus any buildings would have to be extensively tested against wind and tremors, however skyscrapers and vertical farms are going to be something that is desperately needed if our population continues to grow and does not level off in 'peak child'.

Of course, we also need to expand outwards and better our defences against extraterrestrial objects, and for the love of God, get something, anything on another planet so that if this one takes a massive hit the human race will survive in some form elsewhere and our knowledge and technological achievements will continue. Otherwise, one rock and we're back to the dark ages for a few centuries before we're able to slowly claw our way back up the ladder. From being able to touch the sky to crowding around a fire in a cave in one easy hunk of rock. :/\\!!

[WernherVonTrapp]

Geo-engineering to fix global warming? Daft or just dimwitted?
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/experts-%e2%80%94-and-cia-%e2%80%94-look-at-manipulating-climate

I think the simplest and cheapest solution would be to just plant more trees. Make them fruit trees and you get an added bonus every year.:know:
Lock the carbon dioxide up in wood and add more oxygen to the atmosphere.
Natural solutions will always trump the artificial varieties, with no nasty side effects. Unless you eat too many Apple pies.
That's all good and well, but "phytoplankton contribute between 50 to 85 percent of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere."

The oceanic evrionment is a very sensitive one, even to the subtlest of changes. There have already been test models conducted, concerned with aiding/altering the phytoplankton population in order to increase oxygen and/or help in lowering the CO² levels. The test models were allegedly unsuccessful.

http://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to-worlds-oxygen (http://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to-worlds-oxygen)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0607_040607_phytoplankton.html

[Cybermat47]

Wrong Avengers.


I know. I edited the quote in my post a little. :)

[BrucePartington]

Wrong Avengers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKNmPh_MGOA


Anyway, I've long believed that we need to go up as well as out. Unfortunately the Earth rarely a still place, and thus any buildings would have to be extensively tested against wind and tremors, however skyscrapers and vertical farms are going to be something that is desperately needed if our population continues to grow and does not level off in 'peak child'.

Of course, we also need to expand outwards and better our defences against extraterrestrial objects, and for the love of God, get something, anything on another planet so that if this one takes a massive hit the human race will survive in some form elsewhere and our knowledge and technological achievements will continue. Otherwise, one rock and we're back to the dark ages for a few centuries before we're able to slowly claw our way back up the ladder. From being able to touch the sky to crowding around a fire in a cave in one easy hunk of rock. :/\\!!
Agree. My view as well.
There is (or was?) a plan to "terraform" Mars, for exactly this purpose.
However, there are a few major obstacles, not least the ferrous micro-dust that gets everywhere, including atmospheric filters, and the fact that Mars is "dead". Not as in devoid of life (which it is), but rather as in no tectonic activity, necessary to recycle and renew materials in the crust, vital to sustain plant life and provide mineral resources.

So I would think Mars would be viable only to be used as an outpost and a springboard.
This leaves us stranded in this system for now, since we do not yet have the technology to make interstellar travel feasible.

All we can do for now is enjoy old Star Trek episodes and hope one day we'll have some sort of "warp drive" to enable us to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Meanwhile we should try and maintain our little garden.

[Stealhead]

Personally I think that any species that lasts millions of years it must survive some very trying times and come through.Alligators and Crocodiles are two good examples they have been around for much much longer than humans have and they surely have survived several near extinction events.

Even humans just barely made it past the last ice age and that actually wiped out a cousin to modern humans the Neanderthals(some speculate that the last of them inter bred with modern humans).

If there are and feel that there are advanced life forms in the universe at or above humans level intelligence I am sure like gators they must have survived near extinction several times and having better cognitive abilities they learned.We humans learned we did survive the last ice age by adapting to the change only once you live in relative ease it is easy not to fear long term dangers.

One type of event that could cause a near extinction would be one of the major volcanoes having a massive eruption there are several that have enough size to pump out enough ash to bolt out the sun for up to a year.That would be very serious and there is nothing that we can do about it.

[Oberon]

Agree. My view as well.
There is (or was?) a plan to "terraform" Mars, for exactly this purpose.
However, there are a few major obstacles, not least the ferrous micro-dust that gets everywhere, including atmospheric filters, and the fact that Mars is "dead". Not as in devoid of life (which it is), but rather as in no tectonic activity, necessary to recycle and renew materials in the crust, vital to sustain plant life and provide mineral resources.

So I would think Mars would be viable only to be used as an outpost and a springboard.
This leaves us stranded in this system for now, since we do not yet have the technology to make interstellar travel feasible.

All we can do for now is enjoy old Star Trek episodes and hope one day we'll have some sort of "warp drive" to enable us to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Meanwhile we should try and maintain our little garden.

This is, sadly, true. As much as I would love to reinvigorate Mars, it's far beyond our technological limits at this time, however as an outpost and springboard it would work out fine.

As regards to warp drive, one of my biggest hopes is that one day we will be able to work with the UN to get a prototype 'Orion' drive built in orbit and sent out in to space. I can think of no better use for our obscene stockpiles of nuclear weapons than to enable us to explore this solar system and beyond it within reasonable time constraints. Alas, human nature will keep these weapons firmly for our own self-destruction. :/\\!!

[BrucePartington]

This is, sadly, true. As much as I would love to reinvigorate Mars, it's far beyond our technological limits at this time, however as an outpost and springboard it would work out fine.

As regards to warp drive, one of my biggest hopes is that one day we will be able to work with the UN to get a prototype 'Orion' drive built in orbit and sent out in to space. I can think of no better use for our obscene stockpiles of nuclear weapons than to enable us to explore this solar system and beyond it within reasonable time constraints. Alas, human nature will keep these weapons firmly for our own self-destruction. :/\\!!
Carl Sagan presented the Orion drive concept in one of Cosmos episodes, one of my favourites.

Sadly, (I believe) aggressiveness is inherent to every living being, in this and in any other world. Species survive by defeating other species.
It all began when the first cells felt the need to swallow other cells in order to absorb their energy. The arms race had begun.
It has always been about resources.

However, I do believe our species will survive to go on and discover new worlds. But not before some really hard times that lay not far ahead. And I fear it will be ugly this time. WWII will look like a lovers quarrel.
I apologize for my grim view. I have faith and I am generally a positive person, but I am also realistic, and the current big picture I see does not look good.

[Spoon 11th]

The sooner the human species is extinct, the sooner the earth can start healing itself. :yep:
What kind of short sightedness is this? In about few billion years the Sun is going to scorch this planet. As long as there's no confirmation about E.T.'s, mankind and interstellar colony ships is the only possible savior of lifeforms of this planet.