Global warming delayed the next Ice Age but the warming has been halted and the Ice advances. Now carbon must be put into the environment and technology, including conscious AI, meets this challenge:
carbon repeatedly strewn over the Arctic;
large aerial electric discharges forcing rainfall so that there are less clouds to reflect sunlight;
artificial algal weed covering the seas;
underwater explosions releasing methane hydrate into the atmosphere;
forests burned and replaced by grasses storing less carbon;
drilling into the planetary mantle;
nuclear explosions causing volcanoes that emit carbon dioxide and water vapour.
The Stormseeker minority would welcome the Ice which would not end the world but strengthen and liberate. Life was rich and vigorous and man was creative and free in the Pleistocene. Glaciers will kill AI. Men will make their own destinies in the cold tundras and the equatorial rainlands. (This does not happen.)
Chapters V and IX convey the message that advanced technology will be necessary to counteract future natural threats, both global and cosmic.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The problem with so complex and long range a plan for reversing or preventing an Ice Age was precisely THAT--the role played by AIs in planning, designing, implementing, and managing that reversal. It would inevitably mean the AIs more and more taking over all the real decision making.
My sympathies lies with the Stormseekers, that the human race would tell the AIs to get lost, or better, switch them off. Better an Ice Age than for mankind, wisely or badly, no longer being able to decide the fate of human beings.
Ad astra! Sean
In "Project Hail Mary" the sun is dimming & until something can be done to stop & reverse that, one of the methods in that list is done as a desperation stop gap to keep earth's temperature livable.
Given the longer time scale available and greater industrial base available in 'Genesis' I think large mirrors in space reflecting sunlight to earth, and/or long lasting greenhouse gasses like CF4 and SF6 would be the way to keep earth warm.
There is the question of whether an ice age is worth preventing. As long as it is much less extreme than a snowball earth event, life moving equatorward would be OK.
Kaor, Jim!
I like that idea, esp. since I think it would be possible to build such reflectors without letting the AIs take over all the real power.
I agree, given advanced tech, an Ice Age can be tolerable, as long as it's not ad bad as the one we see on Altai in "A Message in Secret."
Ad astra! Sean
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