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geoengineering

geoengineering

We Can Stop Global Warming -- And Cook Ourselves Alive

Tweaking Earth's climate to combat global warming seems like a great idea. Giant mirrors or shades in space, artificially enhanced cloud cover, and regular injections of reflective sulfate particles into the stratosphere could all help cool the planet enough for us to ignore all of the CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere. But a new study says one of the most popular ideas — the sulfate particles — would devastate the ozone layer, leaving us all to fry from exposure to ultraviolet radiation even as the planet cooled. More »

entropist

Show Caves of the Nouveau Riche

It's another installment of Entropist, a scifi culture column by futurist design maven Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDG BLOG. The message today seems to be: Become a celebrity, make millions of dollars - and use your fortune to buy alcohol. Get addicted to diet pills. Get your teeth capped. When was the last time the rich got addicted to something interesting? Something that actually made heads turn, made people think what the f-? Why not sink millions of dollars - your entire net worth! - into something truly grandiose? Why not blow your whole bank account building a series of new, artificial show caves beneath the surface of the earth? Why not get addicted to excavation? When it was reported last summer that London's ultra-rich had begun building downward, into the earth's surface, we witnessed what was perhaps the beginning of the world's most interesting subterranean property boom. More »

geoengineering

Blowing Up the Panama Canal

The Panama Canal, a human-created waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, is the last century's greatest work of geoengineering. And it continues to evolve. Just a few months ago, workers began setting off explosives like those you see here to widen the canal and allow oil supertankers to get through. Want to see more of the canal and the giant ships that traverse it? More »

geoengineering

Geoengineers Will Prevent Rain Over Olympic Stadium in China

The top of China's "bird's nest" Olympic stadium is open to the elements, and therefore the government has ordered the Beijing Meteorological Bureau to make sure it won't rain during the games. The Bureau has already had some success preventing light rain, but heavy rain is harder to control. They'll use two different "seeding" techniques for dissipating droplets in frozen clouds, and dissipating warmer clouds before they start forming water droplets. Beijing's head of weather manipulation, Zhang Qian, explains how. More »

futurism

Weaponizing Climate Change for Battle

A new article in Foreign Policy suggests that geoengineering (or weather engineering) may be part of the next high-tech battle strategy for troops who want a force multiplier. The article is an updated version of an essay by futurist Jamais Cascio. Others have already speculated about how the ability to control rain systems and pull down lightening may be the future of warfare. In fact, all the technologies to do this already exist. But Cascio thinks forced ecosystem imbalances may be the weapon of choice for offensive geoengineers. More »