Geo-engineering or: How I'm Even More Worried and Still Terrified of the Bomb

I don't talk about the good aspects of work very often, but isn't that the American way? To bitch about your job? So today I thought I'd take a minute and tell you about the crazy things I have researched today. I highly recommend looking some of this up yourself because it's pretty interesting.

So. We know the planet is in the shitter. That's just fact. We industrialized and now we're going to die of cancer. It's a tradeoff for being able to stand infront of the microwave and watch that frozen burrito become a tasty afternoon snack.

So the science ninjas (bc that's what I picture them as) are always doing some crazy ninjaneering, trying to find ways to save our world from melting. and then freezing. and then melting and flooding and making us all live like they do in WaterWorld and damn I really hope it doesn't get to the point where we have to drink our own pee. Kevin Costner brave I am not.

But if you ever feel the urge, go wiki 'geoengineering.' They have some crazy schemes out there that were intended as last ditch efforts, but it looks like it's about time to pull out those plans. Things like pumping aerosol into the atmo to block the suns rays, or adding an obscene amount of iron to the ocean to increase phytoplankton bloom (bc phytoplankton absorb CO2 and sink to the ocean floor with they kick the bucket, sequestrating the carbon for significant periods of time.), or designing fake trees that act as CO2 scrubbers, absorbing more than the average tree without wasting energy for photosynthesis, or shipping what are basically trillions of mirrors into space to bounce the sun's rays away from Earth. These are just some of the 'holy shit these people are on some serious medication of the illegal variety' ideas that are being considered as of late. Things that aren't so crazy, like cloud seeding (ok, maybe from the name it sounds pretty left field) and biochar are also pretty neat to research. Personally I think we all just need to invest in solar panels and wind turbines.

I also had an interesting discussion with my boss that was brought on by Wall-E, sorta. I wondered what the rationality of burying carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases was compared to potentially shipping it all to space. Can't you just picture a Looney Tunes cartoon with a giant garbage truck-shuttle going out to space and dumping all our 'bad air'? I mean yes it sounds silly, but giant mirrors around Earth sounds silly, so why not? But, as he pointed out, the cost for something of that nature would be insane, as would the amount of GHGs from production and launch, which would be completely counter productive. But who knows, it may even come to something like that. I'm scared.

So that's basically what I've done today. I've read up on some really off the wall research that is probably going to be getting some serious funding in the next decade or two. All I can say is if you're going to invest in gemstones, invest in peridot or any of the olivine minerals. That is a different carbon sequestration lesson for another day, kids. unless we've already discussed this, which i feel like we have.

Chris Bailes has not yet sent me today's fun link to share with you. You should have words with him over this fact.