Monday, June 26, 2006
The Future Of Climate Change: Geoengineering
My new favorite buzz word is geoengineering. The idea is to intentionally alter the environment on a wide scale to achieve a particular goal. In this case, that goal is to reverse the trend of global warming.
Popular Science had a good article on some of the more feasible theories currently being floated. It's definitly worth the read, there are some very interesting ideas. The ideas that I found really interesting were: storing Carbon Dioxide underground, the Carbon Dioxide air scrubbers, and forcing a chemical reaction to turn Carbon Dioxide into stone. Other ideas floated have been changing the color of sand in deserts, making it more reflective of sunlight; and building large reflective islands in the oceans to reflect sunlight.
The naysayers argue that these ideas are absurd, for two reasons: some of these options require the use of fossil fuels to operate; the adverse effects of these manipulations would be worse for the environment than global warming (ie: the cure is worse than the disease). The latter crisism may or may not be valid of partical ideas, research would be required to determine that. But as far as having to burn a bit of fossil fuel to massively reduce greenhouse gases, who cares? In fact, in the Sask experiment, where they're pumping compressed Carbon Dioxide into the ground, it's also being used, at the same time, to help pump oil. I think thats efficient, responsible, and brilliant.
The NYT hits the nail on the head:
As I write this, I'm download "An Inconvient Truth", Al Gore's global warming movie. I think it'll be pretty much a lot of regugitation of the same old fear mongering, whithout much of a realistic solution proposed. Thats just my gut feeling, but maybe after watching it I'll "flip a shitter" and get a bad case of The Fear.
Popular Science had a good article on some of the more feasible theories currently being floated. It's definitly worth the read, there are some very interesting ideas. The ideas that I found really interesting were: storing Carbon Dioxide underground, the Carbon Dioxide air scrubbers, and forcing a chemical reaction to turn Carbon Dioxide into stone. Other ideas floated have been changing the color of sand in deserts, making it more reflective of sunlight; and building large reflective islands in the oceans to reflect sunlight.
The naysayers argue that these ideas are absurd, for two reasons: some of these options require the use of fossil fuels to operate; the adverse effects of these manipulations would be worse for the environment than global warming (ie: the cure is worse than the disease). The latter crisism may or may not be valid of partical ideas, research would be required to determine that. But as far as having to burn a bit of fossil fuel to massively reduce greenhouse gases, who cares? In fact, in the Sask experiment, where they're pumping compressed Carbon Dioxide into the ground, it's also being used, at the same time, to help pump oil. I think thats efficient, responsible, and brilliant.
The NYT hits the nail on the head:
Geoengineering's advocates say humankind is already vastly altering the global environment and simply needs to do so more intelligently.
As I write this, I'm download "An Inconvient Truth", Al Gore's global warming movie. I think it'll be pretty much a lot of regugitation of the same old fear mongering, whithout much of a realistic solution proposed. Thats just my gut feeling, but maybe after watching it I'll "flip a shitter" and get a bad case of The Fear.
