The Year's 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12.21.07
Next to nonstop nauseating Christmas carols in elevators and restaurants, the next seasonal biggest infestation is the ubiquitous list of almost anything anywhere. Some are more interesting and fun than others, such as Wired Magazine's 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth, which includes all those fun geo-engineering ideas like solar shields in space, pumping clouds, seeding the ocean with nutrients to promote plankton growth and other wild and crazy ideas, some of which are not so wild and crazy. ::Wired
Anything involving increasing the albedo (amount of sunlight reflecting back into space) such as cloud seeding, aerosols, painting the deserts white, etc. would at best be a temporary emergency measure to save the ice sheets if things really get out of hand. It doesn't really solve the problem since it does nothing to reduce actual CO2 concentrations, and higher CO2 concentration will lead to acidification of the oceans with very widespread destruction of marine ecosystems that we depend on. This would happen even if albedo altering mechanisms returned temperatures to normal.
We have to keep atmospheric CO2 concentrations within acceptable levels... period!
Agreed... Why do people think band-aid solutions are a good thing? Fix the cause, not the symptom...
It is worth at least researching these projects, though, because there might be a time where they are our only hope of preventing widespread, horrible disasters. They are kind of like chemotherapy for the planet - you treat the major problem, and create some smaller problems, but you can't treat the cause of the cancer, because the cancer's already there. I don't want to have to implement these, and I really don't think they should be used, but it's dangerous to pass up on ideas that could be useful later. After all, no one knows exactly what global warming is going to dole out.
Patient arrives at Emergency Room,; staff stabilizes patient until expert diagnosis, followed by long term treatment, is possible. Iron seeding and all the rest are to stabilize the patient only. They are not the permanent treatment.
This is not rocket science (pun intended).
I believe it was Arthur C Clarke who suggested painting roofs white to counteract heating from orbital power stations. This is hardly planetary engineering but it might actually be beneficial. If roofing companies were to sell IR reflective colours in 50 years the whole infrastructure would be changed for no cost.
To speed things up white roads would be a parallel step. There may be a cost to put a layer of white aggregate on roads.