The prescience of Thom Yorke?
Engineers say a forest of 100,000 “artificial trees” could be deployed within 10 to 20 years to help soak up the world’s carbon emissions.
The trees are among three geo-engineering ideas highlighted as practical in a new report.
The authors from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers say that without geo-engineering it will be impossible to avoid dangerous climate change.
The report includes a 100-year roadmap to “decarbonise” the global economy.
Which is all well and good if one is merely concerned with the rather pedestrian, if highly probable and disastrous effects of global warming. But what about the almost certain although impossibly remote and highly unlikely likelihood of a cataclysmic asteroid strike? Huh? And what do these carbon eaters do to repel alien gamma ray attacks? Well? Tough guy?*
(*who wants to bet Goldberg makes that exact argument)
August 27, 2009 at 3:56 pm
We will cover the globe with giant trampolines to avert asteroid strikes.
August 27, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I believe that, if we eliminate taxes on the very wealthy, The Invisible Hand of The Free Market will dope-slap any extra-terrestrial bodies which menace us. Any asteroid which does get through is proof of SEC over-reach. Adam Smith was very clear about this.
August 28, 2009 at 3:12 am
that is a very lucrative opinion
August 27, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Heh, the humans will move to another planet if this one gets too hot and pockted with asteroids.
Tort reform and Free Market, with a tax cut for planet hoppers is sure to fix this!
What, you mean the poor don’t have SUVs spaceships ? If they just laid off the cheetos and White Castle burgers they would!
August 27, 2009 at 8:57 pm
*who wants to bet Goldberg makes that exact argument)
Not me, that’s a sucker bet if I ever saw one.
August 28, 2009 at 7:59 am
There’s no better way to solve the problem of too much technology than even more technology! It’s just like when you drink too much beer.
August 28, 2009 at 11:48 am
I’m sure the artificial trees will be manufactured by the magic fairy factories that don’t use any electricity, and they’ll be made from magic pixie fibers that don’t use any extractive resources, and they’ll be put in place by flying wings unicorns that have no emissions.
Why are you looking at me like that?
August 29, 2009 at 9:09 am
That veers very closely to “well, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway because everything we do has equally disastrous outcomes, so we really shouldn’t be thinking such things because, like Al Gore who flies all around the world on a big fat jet which has all kinds of big fat emissions and has a giant house fueled by the Christian coal tears of small hillbilly children from Appalachia, it’ll just make us look hypocritical for not looking at the real problem of converting all our houses into yurts and subsistence farms watered by our own sweat. Also space rocks and speed of light pints of ice cream.”
I mean it’s not quite there. But it’s getting there.
Counterpoint: “Geo-Engineering” sounds absolutely problem-free and foolproof.
August 29, 2009 at 9:31 am
“Christian coal tears”
Encore! Encore!
August 30, 2009 at 6:10 am
Not quite what I was getting at. I’m more inclined to think that real trees might be a better solution than engineering and manufacturing fake ones.
But that’s just me.
August 31, 2009 at 9:48 am
Maybe, but there are other considerations to take in: Efficacy of, say, real trees compared to the fake trees in removing CO2. The amount of resources it takes to water and nurture one tree or a grove until they grow large enough to help v. the quicker benefits of said fake trees. In a place like So. Cal, fake trees might tread less lightly on the land. Sure, fake trees sound silly, but what if they work faster, better and use fewer resources than regular trees?
I don’t know the answer, but obviously, we didn’t let beavers have the last word on dams.
August 29, 2009 at 8:50 am
Maybe they can build the trees with giant catcher’s mitts?
September 5, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I like retarded ideas, like the idea that we could litter sub-orbital space with debris that could reflect sunlight away from Aerth.
Trivial question; what retard that is associated with the current administration proposed this brilliant idea?
I don’t know either, perhaps we should do some research.
Or perhaps we should live like cavemen, those black rocks aren’t tasty like clay…
How about fake plastic medicine:
http://a-s.clayton.edu/rosenburg/smith.htm
October 9, 2009 at 7:15 am
Why not just use the fast growing, biochar producing, fiber filled, self reproducing, small footprint, multi use natural wonder that grows in nearly all climates…..hemp? oh ya, sorry, forgot there for a moment.