The (maybe) solution to global warming: salp shit
and 134 million 200m metre long pipes suspended in the ocean.
That’s a whole bunch of pipes. The suggestion comes from James Lovelock, who I am increasingly thinking may be right on a lot of things (the severity and speed of climate change, the need for nuclear energy until we get our renewable act sorted out), although the idea that the planet is a self-healing organism is fanciful.
Meanwhile I’ve been headscratching about whether a liberal environmentalism can ever work. Joe Otten writes (and writes well) about it here. No shit, salp or otherwise.
September 28, 2007 at 9:21 pm
what??!!
October 1, 2007 at 11:54 am
The whole geo-engineering question is fascinating. Some are terrified by it - that the effective status quo will shift from inaction to ineffective or disasterously counter-productive geo-engineering without any serious attempt at mitigation in between. Perhaps they are right to be terrified.
But I can see no good arguments in principle against geo-engineering solutions, and certainly no reason to oppose experiments like this.
In the longer run (longer than the timescale we need to tackle global warming on) the ability to actively stabilise the climate will be very useful, perhaps essential. Many possible natural changes to the climate may be dangerous to us - the eruption of Yellowstone comes to mind.