And The Heavens Filled With Brimstone, Like the Bowels Of Hell!
source: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/climate-engineering
-
-
- remanns
- added this
Brute-Force Engineering and Climate
The eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 pumped so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that New England farmers found their fields frosted over in July. Climate change, it seems, can be quick and overwhelming, at least on short scales. The eruption of the Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 cooled global temperatures for several years by about half a degree Celsius. Sulfur dioxide works.
So how about this: We send a fleet of airships high into the stratosphere, attached to hoses on the ground that pump 10 kilos of sulfur dioxide every second. The airships then spew this mix into the upper atmosphere, a aerosolized pollutant that, turning the skies Blade Runner red, shields the planet from the Sun’s heat. Call it geo-engineering, an extreme form of human climate manipulation that is the subject of a recent story in The Atlantic.
Into the Anthropocene
Writer Graeme Wood notes that our activities have been transforming the planet for centuries now, leading some to dub our era the ‘anthropocene’ period. Says Wood:
…humans have reshaped about half of the Earth’s surface. We have dictated what plants grow and where. We’ve pocked and deformed the Earth’s crust with mines and wells, and we’ve commandeered a huge fraction of its freshwater supply for our own purposes. What is new is the idea that we might want to deform the Earth intentionally, as a way to engineer the planet either back into its pre-industrial state, or into some improved third state. Large-scale projects that aim to accomplish this… constitute some of the most innovative and dangerous ideas being considered today to combat climate change.
The eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 pumped so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that New England farmers found their fields frosted over in July. Climate change, it seems, can be quick and overwhelming, at least on short scales. The eruption of the Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 cooled global temperatures for several years by about half a degree Celsius. Sulfur dioxide works.
So how about this: We send a fleet of airships high into the stratosphere, attached to hoses on the ground that pump 10 kilos of sulfur dioxide every second. The airships then spew this mix into the upper atmosphere, a aerosolized pollutant that, turning the skies Blade Runner red, shields the planet from the Sun’s heat. Call it geo-engineering, an extreme form of human climate manipulation that is the subject of a recent story in The Atlantic.
Into the Anthropocene
Writer Graeme Wood notes that our activities have been transforming the planet for centuries now, leading some to dub our era the ‘anthropocene’ period. Says Wood:
…humans have reshaped about half of the Earth’s surface. We have dictated what plants grow and where. We’ve pocked and deformed the Earth’s crust with mines and wells, and we’ve commandeered a huge fraction of its freshwater supply for our own purposes. What is new is the idea that we might want to deform the Earth intentionally, as a way to engineer the planet either back into its pre-industrial state, or into some improved third state. Large-scale projects that aim to accomplish this… constitute some of the most innovative and dangerous ideas being considered today to combat climate change.
-
- groups:
- Tech, Green, Max and Jason: Still Up
-
- tags:
- Science, Climate Change, Global Warming, Energy, 7 more
-
-
remanns
-
A premonition of a future that looks like Blade Runner, with skies dominated by a ruddy smog that’s our only defense against mass flooding and famine,.....
- 2 years ago
-
remanns
