{"id":354,"date":"2006-06-27T21:56:37","date_gmt":"2006-06-27T21:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/27\/terraforming-the-earth\/"},"modified":"2006-06-27T21:56:37","modified_gmt":"2006-06-27T21:56:37","slug":"terraforming-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/27\/terraforming-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Terraforming the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was an interesting article in the Times<\/cite> today about the possibility of “geoengineering”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place. <\/p>\n

But now, in a major reversal, some of the world’s most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious look because of growing concerns about global warming.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don’t really have a lot to say on the subject– global warming isn’t my thing– but I thought it was a reasonably good read. And the question it raises is an interesting one: should we start to think about pie-in-the-sky ways to slow or reverse the problem of global warming, or should we maintain an exclusive focus on reducing emissions in order to prevent future warming?<\/p>\n

My immediate impression is that emissions reduction is cheaper by several orders of magnitude, but there’s something extremely cool about the idea of orbiting space mirrors to cool the planet…<\/p>\n

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There was an interesting article in the Times today about the possibility of “geoengineering”: In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick… Continue reading Terraforming the Earth<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in_the_news","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}