Humans have been qualify the Earth for thousands of days , but we ’ve scarcely scratched the surface of what ’s possible . Here are eight dramatic way we could interchange the look of our planet .
For the purposes of this list , we ’re limiting the word to megaprojects involving the Earth ’s geology , atmosphere , and biosphere . This mean no technical megastructures such as space elevators and sky hooks . That ’s a subject field for another clip .
(1) Global Weather Control
Weather controller is a prospect that remains well beyond our technical reach , but that could convert in the comparatively near future . consort to nanotechnology expertJ. Storrs Hall , the author ofNanofuture : What ’s Next for Nanotechnology , we could start to make a weather motorcar later this hundred .
Hisproposed systemwould dwell of a monumental but thin global cloud of small transparent balloons stationed in the stratosphere . It would basically operate as a sort of programmable and reversible greenhouse gas . When the mirrors on the hydrogen balloons face out from Earth , they would excogitate sunlight back into space . When orientate sideway , sunlight could come through while allowing longwave radiation to escape . fabulously , all the arrangement demand is about a tenth of one - per centum of solar radiation to influence global clime in any focal point we desire . ( Image : NanotechNow )
Not only could we work global and local atmospheric condition pattern , we ’d also be able to address climate change . What ’s more , we could even make prominent part of the Earth more human - friendly and habitable ( include Antarctica ) .
(2) Terraforming the World’s Largest Deserts
The estimate of transmute the world ’s deserts into riotous timber goes back historic period , and has many roots in skill fable . No doubt , our major planet hosts some rather massive expanses of wasteland land;approximately one - third of Earth ’s res publica control surface is a desert . Some are located in the polar region ( like Antarctica ’s McMurdo “ ironic valley ” ) , but a bonnie share are outside these frigid areas , including the 3.5 million - hearty mile Sahara Desert , the one million - square mile Arabian Desert , and the 500,000 - square mile Gobi Desert . There ’s also Australia ’s internal to consider , the 250,00 - straightforward nautical mile Great Victoria area .
( quotation : NOAA / Geology.com )
A conditions control system would certainly help to terraform these regions , but but other options exist as well . Leonard Ornstein , a biologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine , and David Rind and Igor Aleinov , researchers at NASA ’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies , have describea program to pump desalinated saltwater from the seashore to the Sahara Desert and Australian Outback . Desalination works wouldacquire the postulate energyfrom monumental solar farm . The water would be used to irrigate crop , such as Eucalyptus grandis . Over time , these trees would replenish the soil and facilitate more rainfall . depend on the size of the woodland , it could fix as much as 8 million tons of atmospheric CO2 . So not only would it make huge regions of land fertile and inhabitable , it could potentially end global warming . This programme was in the first place excogitate for Africa and Australia , but there ’s no reason why it could n’t work elsewhere .
But as Stuart Foxpoints outin Popular Science , this plan could usher in some nasty side - effects :
For one , guts from the Sahara is carry into the air travel , across the Atlantic , and deposited in South America . The rich junk that return from the sky , and the rainfall storms have by that dust picking up wet during it ’s transoceanic journeying both inseminate the Amazon pelting forest . No desert , no dust . No dust , no pelting timberland . During that journeying , the rubble also flow a variety of ocean life .
Plus , the pelting could cause massive swarm of locusts . presently , wet years in the Sahara induction serious population spikes of the destructive insects . With a permanent forest and heavy rainfall every year , hegira - level clouds of locusts could disperse across the entire continent .
What ’s more , it could cost upward of $ 2 trillion per twelvemonth .
(3) Creating Artificial Islands
It may finally be possible and practical to make newfangled land . For instance , we could excavate the continental shelf to build a serial publication of hokey island . Interestingly , by resurrect part of the ocean bottom above sea level , we could actually turn down sea stage by a similar amount — a utilitarian scheme for addressing rising ocean degree on account of climate change .
Dubai Plam Jumeriah : This artificial island was built from 94 million three-dimensional beat of sand a 7 million tons of rock . Future projects could shadow efforts like these . ( Credit UAE )
withdraw geochemist Roelof Schuiling of Utrecht Universityhas proposed an ideawhereby the injection of sulphuric dot into limestone would do it to ferment into gypsum , making it produce to twice its original sizing . Thus , any shallow seafloor comprised of limestone could be terraformed into unexampled earth . According to Schuiling , this could be done at Adam ’s bridge , a narrow and shallow strip of shallow stretching for 22 miles ( 35 km ) between India and Sri Lanka .
(4) Creating a New Continent
But why stop at contrived islands when you’re able to build an full continent ? Such was the dream of German designer and megaproject groundbreaker Herman Sörgel ( 1888 - 1952 ) . Writing in his extremely influential book , Engineers ’ Dreams , Sörgel organize a plan to make the new continent of Atlantropa by damming the Strait of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles . This would cut off the Mediterranean Sea from the ocean , dropping its water level some hundreds of meter through evaporation . The lead difference in sea levels would be used to generate hydroelectric power , and offer a powerful solution to Europe ’s energy problems .
The scheme would create 3.5 million square km of arable land along the shore and leave overland memory access to Africa . And by dam up the Congo River , the plan would allow for the irrigation of the Sahara Desert and the existence of massive artificial lakes in the African interior . ( Above image : Artist ’s impression of Atlantropa ( Credit : Lttiz / CC BY 3.0 ) ; inset image take from Sörgel ’s Engineers ’ Dreams )
But asnotedby Kees Gispen in Project Muse , Sörgel ’s utopian program was not only grossly unrealistic , it was also an expression of the other 20th Century European expansionist impulse :
The theme that prompt Sörgel ’s visual modality was unbounded technological optimism wedded to bass ethnical pessimism — geopolitical , demographic , racial — about Europe ’s future in the aftermath of World War I. Sörgel believed that the war had fatally undermined Europe ’s situation in the humankind , menace it from the Orient with teeming Asiatic hordes — a “ jaundiced jeopardy ” about to engulf Europe — and from the Rebecca West with the voracious dynamism of American capitalist economy . As Sörgel and his pocket-size band of following saw it , only the realization of Atlantropa would give Europe the intensity level to become a “ third force-out ” and maintain its global standing against Asia and America .
Disturbingly , and as Gispen points out , “ the law of similarity between Hitler ’s solution to Germany ’s problem and Sörgel ’s seem perhaps even more pregnant than their differences . ”
(5) Eliminating Vast Swaths of Land
Conversely , we could also remove turgid tracts of land .
Five million years ago , the North American , South American , and Caribbean Plates converge . The fresh Isthmus of Panama restrict piss exchange between the Pacific and Atlantic , divert waters that once flow through the ship route . The result was a strengthened Gulf Stream . ( Oceanus )
Asnotedby Michael Marshall in New Scientist , we could relink the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans :
Destroying the Isthmus of Panama , the slender striptease of country that joins North and South America , would reunify the Pacific and Atlantic oceans . Underground atomic explosions would do the magic trick . With the estate gone , the ocean current that once flowed around the equator would restart and , allegedly , stabilise the climate .
Of of course , the common people living in Panama might have something to say about this . Not only that , it would produce serious downstream effect , including a dramatic lessening in northerly latitude ocean temperature and the subsequent decrease of snow in the north , and calamitous result on migratory terrestrial life sentence in Central America .
Marshall also says we could deluge the planet ’s vast depressions , such as the Qattara depression in north - west Egypt and California ’s Death Valley . This could serve multiple design , admit the foundation of newfangled bodies of water , the propagation of hydroelectricity , and as a means to countervail rising sea point from global thaw . But on that last point , and as Marshall points out : “ [ It ] is not deserving doing for this grounds alone : even if we flood all of the world ’s major depressions , it would barely make a difference . ”
(6) Assisted Species Migration
Megaprojects need not be limited to the Earth ’s atmosphere and geology — there ’s also our major planet ’s biosphere to deal . chip in that humanity has instigated the Anthropocene Era , we ’re going to have to give the plants and animals of the world a facilitate manus every once in a while .
“ With climate change , the range of landscape that a specie is adapted to moves northward , often much faster than species can move , ” explain Ramez Naam , author ofThe Infinite Resource : The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet . He says that ’s especially true for behind - move ecosystem like forests and coral reefs .
“ One matter we ’re moderately likely to do is to help those species move into their new zones — planting forests further northerly , transplanting corals that thrive in highly affectionate waters into other sea that are warming up , and so on , ” he told io9 .
For reasons unknown , bumblebees ca n’t transmigrate northward to annul warm temperatures . ( Credit : Bernie Kohl / PD )
lately , scientist learned that bumblebees — an crucial pollinator — are incompetent of transmigrate northwards on their own . Since 1975 they’velost 300 kilometers ( 186 miles ) of southern rangeand serious danger of being wiped out . aided migration has been vaunt as a potential solution .
(7) Eliminating Predation
The idea of eliminating marauder from the ecosystem is certainly one of the most basal megaprojects ever propose . And indeed , ridding our biosphere of depredation would be a monumental job require engineering and farsightedness ability far beyond our current capacities .
( course credit : Hamish Paget - Brown / CC SA 3.0 )
But such is the pipe dream of David Pearce , a British philosopher and futurist who imagines a future in which animals are liberated from the never - ending cycle of Darwinian processes and its attendant pain and suffering . Here’swhat he narrate me last yearwhen I asked him if it was any of our concern to interfere with the animal kingdom in such a sweeping way of life :
Humans already massively “ interfere ” with Nature in unnumerable ways array from uncontrolled habitat - death to imprisoned facts of life programs for big cats to “ rewilding ” . Within the next few decades , every cubic metre of the planet will be computationally accessible to surveillance , micro - direction and control . On current vogue , large nonhuman terrestrial vertebrates will be extinct outside our wildlife parks by mid - century . So the question arises . What principle(s ) should order our stewardship of the rest period of the living human race ? How many of the traditional horrors of “ Nature , red in tooth and nipper ” should we boost and perpetuate ? instead , insofar we want to conserve traditional forms of Darwinian life , should we aim for an ethic of compassionate stewardship instead . Cognitively , nonhuman animals are akin to small tike . They need wish for as such .
To accomplish and manage a post - Darwinian ecosystem , our descendents will have to rely on a big suite of advanced technologies , including genomics ( for conductinggene drive , as an model ) , massive arrays of sensor and surveillance ( both on the ground and from space ) , and stilted intelligence to monitor , evaluate , and cipher the optimal parameters ask for keeping the new system of rules in counterbalance .
(8) Mass Carbon Capture
As Ramez Naam explained to me , it ’s look increasingly likely that we ’re going to pump carbon into the atmosphere well past the 450 part per million / 2 degrees Anders Celsius limit point that scientists remember it ’s life-sustaining to stop at . accordingly , we need to start thinking about “ negative emissions . ”
“ It ’s going to be increasingly important for us to capture carbon dioxide from the air and pump it into clandestine formations where it can stay for trillion of age , ” he state , adding that the mass would be absolutely incredible — on the order of several three-dimensional miles every year .
Concept forCarbon Engineering ’s atomic number 6 seizure “ slab . ” ( acknowledgment : CarbonEngineering.com )
Physicist Peter Eisenberger has come up with a potential scheme . His programme would call forthe deployment of scrubbers that apply chemicals holler aminoalkane that can capture carbon dioxide from the open air , where it ’s found at concentration of 400 parts per million . What ’s more , his system would also be adequate to of recycling the amines . Less speculatively , carbon can be enamor by a liquid answer of sodium hydroxide , which is a well - established industrial proficiency .
Geoengineering schemes on such a massive scale may be a necessity . But once we start , it’ll be practically impossible to quit .
conservationFuturismScienceTechnology
Daily Newsletter
Get the beneficial technical school , skill , and cultivation news in your inbox day by day .
word from the future tense , delivered to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
