Saturday, November 25, 2006

Rebooting the Ecosystem By David Wolman, from Wired Magazine Global warming is real. We did it. Now it's time to talk about repairs. Repeat after me: We humans have screwed up our planet. Feels better, doesn't it? Now that we've accepted this reality, at least we don't have to argue about it anymore. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at the highest they've been in at least 800,000 years. Greenland's ice sheet is melting fast. Some – probably a lot – of the current warming trend is because of us, and so are the consequent threats to ecosystems, food supplies, coastal cities, and all that other stuff from An Inconvenient Truth. Of course, that means we're responsible for repairing the damage, but stopgaps like carbon sequestration just aren't going to cut it. Luckily, a growing number of scientists are thinking more aggressively, developing incredibly ambitious technical fixes to cool the planet. These efforts to remedy the accidental experiment of climate change with intentional, megascale experimentation are called geoengineering. Thus far, ideas include reflecting sunlight with gazillions of orbiting featherweight mirrors or by saturating the stratosphere with sulfur, or increasing the volume of microbes that eat CO2 by fertilizing the oceans with iron.             Read the rest here... 11:33:27 PM    comment []

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