People breathe out CO2! (Epiphany moment)
Right?! And plants absolutely require it. As a thought experiment, just think what would have happened over the last 100 years if petroleum use was increased at the same rate, but deforestation was something unheard of. The Earth would be massively greener now than it was in 1900.
It's pretty much the standard ivory tower mindset we see in so many other places. It's wrong for anyone to steal... except government. It's wrong for anyone to kill... except government. We're all held responsible for our actions... unless we happen to run a corporation. And on and on and on. Given how
It really blows me away that most of the people begging government to take control of everything, in order to "stop Climate Change" are the same folks who will rant about how wrong the government is and how terribly it handles things like:
- education
- immigration
- food safety
- war (they're actually really good at war, but nobody wants it)
- healthcare
Somehow these same folks think that having government control everyone's energy, food, travel allotments is just a great idea. Good lord < /facepalm>
I like your thought experiment! Never thought about it that way. Reminds me of the greenhouse gas factories in my Mars terraforming video game.
Exactly!
Last year I read the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, and one of the most interesting parts of the series was the ongoing debate around terraforming practices. They were actively pumping all kinds of chemicals into the air to help create an atmosphere, digging DEEP tunnels straight down to release heat from the core, and all sorts of things that sound potentially catastrophic for those of us living on an already-green planet.
I think the only thing blocking us now from terraforming Mars (apart from getting there in the first place) is its lack of magnetic field. We can pump however many gasses we want in an attempt to build an atmosphere but without a spinning liquid core Mars just won't be able to hold onto an atmosphere. Solar winds will strip it away again. In the game Surviving Mars, you can build magnetic field generators but they are costly and require tremendous power. I imagine, if we had the technology, that would be accurate. Is there some other way?