Posters note : cool history of geoengineering-type ideas, from the historical and madcap to the current. View online for rich media.
https://m.timeline.com/stories/terraforming-weather-control-manipulation-melting-then-saving-the-poles-geoengineering How to Change the Face of Earth Science & Environment 1877 - NOW The Brief Warming sounds nice this winter, right? That’s what people used to think, but times have changed. A national scientific panel in February detailed two possible ambitious strategies for cooling the world, or at least preventing its warming. Big interventions which aim to manipulate the global environment are called geoengineering. The field was once speculative, with wild armchair schemes for melting polar ice so that people would have less snow to shovel. Now scientists are taking geoengineering more seriously as they try to figure out how to preserve our polar ice, not melt it. Timeline View 1877 Widening the Bering Strait, sinking Alaska Boston, MA, US Topographical map of the Bering Strait. © Defense Mapping Agency To stop North America from being so cold, Harvard geologist Nathaniel Shaler proposed the “very simple geographic modification” of sinking Eastern Siberia and Western Alaska into the sea. The Pacific Ocean current would then pass through the widened Bering Strait to melt polar ice, breaking the grip of winter on the US. He would do it by bringing a large labor force of “political and other tramps” to Alaska, which had been recently purchased from Russia. Of this land-demo crew, he said: “worthless life of this world could in no other way be so well built into its future hope.” 1912 200-mile jetty to extend Gulf Stream, clear bergs New York City In the wake of the Titanic disaster, New York engineer Carroll Riker proposed sending rogue icebergs to hell by building a 200-mile-long jetty into the Atlantic. The submerged wall would push cold, deep water east and keep the warm Gulf Stream waters going north, where they would obliterate ice caps, clear coastal fog and push icebergs from steamship lanes. It might even, he thought, shift the Earth’s axis of rotation to bring more sunlight to areas of the world that were uninhabitable. Riker priced the proposed plan at $190 million ($4.5 billion today), cheaper than the Panama Canal. I hear the exclamation ‘visionary.’ But the idea is not visionary. On the contrary, it is exceedingly practical.Riker in the New York Times, September 29, 1912 The science of the Gulf Stream’s impact on the Earth’s climate explained. © Kurz Gesagt - In a Nutshell/YouTube 1929 Giant orbiting mirror to help farms, melt ice Germany German rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth drew up plans for an orbiting space station housed in a giant, slightly concave mirror which small rocket motors could position to send concentrated sunlight to Earth. Oberth imagined his invention benefiting humankind by melting the Arctic ice or acting as an on-demand grow light. But he didn’t shy away from its darker side. He said that a mirror measuring 10,000 square miles (a bit bigger than Vermont) could beam a lethal spot the size of Delaware anywhere on Earth, but many questioned the claim. If this all seems familiar, you’ve probably seen Hollywood’s take on Oberth’s invention in the Bond film, “Die Another Day.” © Eon Productions 1945 Nuke the North Pole, says Huxley New York City The radioactive dust had only just settled in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when Julian Huxley, the Director-General of UNESCO and brother to writer Aldous, imagined a Brave New World of his own. It was shaped by A-bombs dropped on ice pack to solve the pesky problem of polar ice. Using atomic weapons for demolition seemed like a good idea at the time; maybe you had to be there. How many people realize that we can alter the entire climate of the Northern Temperate Zones by exploding a few dozen or at most a few hundred at an appropriate height above the polar regions?Julian Huxley, 1945 Each summer, the North pole’s Great Melt is “the greatest seasonal change on the planet,” according to nature program presenter David Attenborough. © BBC1 1965 Scientists see warming as a threat, not a goal Washington, DC When scientists began seeing evidence that the greenhouse effect was negative, geoengineering discussions turned to cooling, not warming. As the evidence and urgency mounted, proposals to shape the earth became serious, credentialed team efforts, not lone speculation. President Johnson’s science advisors were “fairly certain” that humans were responsible for rising carbon dioxide levels. They correctly warned that this rise would lift temperatures and sea levels. The threats were so serious that the science advisors put geoengineering on the table, including schemes like seeding cirrus clouds and spreading reflective particles over the oceans. Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson visits NASA’s artificial cloud-generating engine. “NASA is playing God!” he exclaims as he’s wet by the rain. © BBC2 1988 Feed plankton iron to trigger bloom, cool planet Moss Landing, CA It was long known that the ocean contained “desolate zones” rich with nutrients, but low on life. Oceanographer John Martin used this fact as the basis of a wild idea for reducing atmospheric carbon. By dusting the desolate zones with iron, the nutrient that was limited there, you could create plankton blooms that would take carbon in, potentially cooling the planet. In a 1994 study, ocean researchers tested and validated Martin’s concept in the equatorial Pacific, a year after Martin died. But large-scale iron ocean fertilization hasn’t yet been tried. Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an Ice Age.John Martin, July 1988 Various amoeboid protozoans, a type of plankton, seen under X-ray circa 1910. © Edward Charles Le Grice/Getty 2015 Geoengineering becomes serious business Washington DC With some researchers calling a 50-year drought in the US inevitable, there is a small window for avoiding the worst effects of climate change. That’s why the National Academy of Sciences suggests that capturing and burying atmospheric carbon in underground vaults or spray-painting cloud tops to make them more reflective should be considered. No more ice-cap nukes, no more space mirror quackery. By necessity, geoengineering has left the realm of the crackpot and earned serious, governmental consideration. It’s not just the US; drought is increasingly a global issue. In southern China, cloud-seeding was used to ease the impact of the severe 2010 drought. © CCTV -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
