6 Terrible Ideas That Science Says Will Save the Planet
Ridiculous times call for ridiculous measures. With catastrophe constantly threatening the planet from countless directions, every option is on the table.
Or is it? Because there are some pretty wacky damned schemes that have been invented by people who are otherwise considered geniuses. We're not qualified to say if these drastic measures would work or not. All we're saying is that if it comes down to any of these, we may already be screwed.
#6.
Asteroid Coming? Aim that Bastard at Russia or Venezuela
It's estimated that cosmic boulders over 0.6 mile in diameter regularly hit Earth every 500,000 years or so, utterly obliterating all life around their impact sites and sending ripples of species-killing horror through the ecosystem. Worse, Hollywood's portrayal of just how we would stop one of these monsters seem fairly implausible.
"Now wait a minute," you might be saying ,"what's wrong with sticking a couple of nuclear warheads up the asteroid's ass and calling it a day?"
Aside from the obvious.
Unfortunately, according to the B612 Foundation, an atomic blast could easily fracture the asteroid, resulting in thousands of illegitimate baby asteroids bombarding the planet like global buckshot. Instead, the B612 scientific group--helmed by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart--wants to use some high-level scientific spells to gently bump or tow all dangerous space dirt away from us. The problem is that the aiming process would temporarily point it at places in the so called "risk corridor."
Also known as the "Fuck You Line."
Yes, they've proposed a path that would cause the least amount of damage, which the scientists admit is a real "fuck you" to the many millions of people that the plan requires to sit tight while they pass beneath the sites of a rapidly approaching asteroid. A hit along that Equator of Expendables, which includes Russia and Venezuela, might result in the least amount of damage (chances are you're not getting international approval without a few wars).
Schweickart presented the group's theories at the American Geophysical Union in December 2009, and his proposal will probably soon land in front of some UN delegates. Maybe they'll be able to decide who gets to take one for the team: the vast, empty plains of Siberia or the home-country of Stefania Fernandez.
Russia who now?
#5.
Global Warming? Block the Sun!
The 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines was a big one, so big that the sulfur it launched into the stratosphere reflected enough solar radiation to cool the Earth by 0.5 degree Celsius. Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen says, hell, why not just do that and solve this global warming thing? He doesn't mean we should explode a bunch of volcanoes--we can replicate the process by seeding the heavens with sulfate particles and partially blocking out the Sun.
It totally worked in The Matrix!
Crutzen's "Albedo2 Enhancement Method" of bringing us closer to The Matrix's scorched sky scenario would be achieved by high-altitude balloons carrying artillery cannons that would release sulfur charges into the upper layers of the atmosphere.
Though hailed solely as a last resort, Crutzen claims this method could neutralize the effects of Global Warming in just six months and with his 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studying the ozone layer, the man probably knows what he's talking about when he says Aerial Flatulence Canons are the key to the future of our planet. And we have to admit, it sounds less crazy than the competing proposal...
...to fill the sky with reflective mirrors.
British-born astronomer Roger Angel, in a plan he may possibly have stolen from a cartoon, wants to send an assload of mirrors into space and reflect the Sun's rays, thus cooling the globe.
Just like in Futurama!
For this solar restraining order to work, we would need to put 16 trillion(!) glass discs in orbit around us, covering a reflective area over 60,000 miles wide and blocking about two percent of Earth's sunshine. That's what it would take, according to Angel's calculations, to completely reverse Global Warming.
The biggest concern right now is how to get all these mirrors into space for cheap. He says the answer is as simple as it is fuckin' awesome: a gigantic railgun. There have been talks about building an electromagnetic "slingshot" up in the mountains to fire cargo beyond our atmosphere, and with the amount of stuff needed in orbit for Angel's plan to work, the railgun might turn out be the most cost (and badassness) effective option.
Then again, by his estimates the project would take 30 years and cost $4,000,000,000,000 to complete.
#4.
Global Warming is Still Happening? Dump Iron Into the Ocean!
In another attempt at what seems like the reverse psychology of environmental science, oceanographic researchers are trying to combat pollution by "polluting" the oceans with iron, hoping to turn them into ginormous sponges for harmful gases.
Science!
Iron, though bountiful on the mainland, is a very rare commodity in the underwater kingdom, where entire gangs of fish probably hold bloody turf-wars to gain control over its supply. What the element actually does is act like some magical mixture of fertilizer, caffeine and comic book radiation, causing a rapid bloom in the ocean's plankton population.
Plankton eat CO2, and in ecosystems where the theory was tested scientists saw a 20 percent drop in CO2 and other gases' levels. So, by our math, on a worldwide scale it could clean up a fifth of our air pollution problem.
Though the long term effects of iron fertilization are not yet known, giant projects like this never, ever have unforeseen consequences. And after all, how hard would it be to just fish out all of those billions of tons of iron if we don't like the results?
"We'll be done by lunchtime, gents!"
Prove to me that the global tropical-ish climate the dinosaurs were living in was not a better environment for life (after all, plants thrived in the warmer temps creating more oxygen and thereby helping dinosaurs to get as big as they did because of the higher oxygen content in the bloodstream, etc; granted, there were also 6 foot millipedes for the same reason so maybe that's not such a good thing). Anyway, humans have only been putting out industrial fumes for about 100-200 years. The Earth's climate has been in constant flux for about 4,000,000,000. See History Channels show in the "Mini Ice-Age." and if you sitll think we're screwed, check out Cracked's own Reasons Why Mother Nature is Better at Cleaning Up Our Messes Than We Are. I think we just might be okay when that super CO2 eating whatever-the-fuck-it-is outgrows it's smoking volcano and starts scarfing down all that wonderful CO2 we've been pumping out. Never forget (Cracked's) disasters that were made worse when trying to fix them. Yes! Orange juice will help neutralize the acid in your water!
ReplyCajones is drawers in Spanish; cOjones is slang for testicles.
ReplyAbout #5, how exactly does science plan to take out those mirrors once global warming was settled and global cooling started?
ReplyThat's probably about when gravity starts to take over.
I guess there's a bright side to mass asteroid-induced extinction. The price of oil will drop in a few million years.
ReplyWas hoping for a Simpsons reference in the one about blocking the sun.
ReplyTruly a missed opportunity.
nope! futurama wins, besides maybe it will be like in futurama, anyone?
*Spoilers* #4 is present in Deus Ex: Human Revolution *Spoilers*
ReplyThats it, Im calling Captain Planet.
Reply"Earth! Water! Wind! Fire! Heart!"
Hm... One of these is not like the others...
#6's "Fuck you line" going through both Russia and Venezuela? Seems a bit too obvious to be a coincidence anymore.
ReplyThem asteroids just some crazy-ass CIA scheme from the Cold War, I tells ya!
what about bocking the sun only on the poles?
ReplyYou mean the poles that only get 6 months of sunlight to begin with?
Awesome how the proposed solutions to problems caused by total disregard for the complexity of the environment's interconnected nature consist of gems like tossing iron into the ocean to promote the rapidly increased growth of living organisms that exist in a system we know very little about.
ReplySeriously, how many moments of "duurrrrrr.....oops." does our history have to record for us to collectively take a step back and be a little more thoughtful as to the consequences of our decisions?
And if anyone wants a perfectly good soapbox, I'm done with this one.
"ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
ReplyWait a tick, #4 is currently happening?
Replyis anyone else seriously unnerved?
ReplyI've never understood the "don't blow the asteroid to bits it'll make things worse" argument. It basically says that a bunch of asteroid bits hitting the Earth would cause more damage overall than one massive asteroid, and as this article did often comparing it to a buckshot blast. However, this argument fails to take into account a couple of things:
Reply Hide All See All 9 Replies1. Many of the asteroid bits would be burned up in the Earth's atmosphere, would burn up easier than a much larger object, and those that remain would be smaller and thus less damaging.
2. Even before burning up, the asteroid bits would be smaller than a intact asteroid, as a result they would be less affected by gravity and more affected by wind resistance, thus the intact bits would be much slower and thus hit the Earth with much less force.
The above would apply even if the asteroid were broken into
To use the shotgun comparison, would you rather be hit by a slug or buckshot? Both with equal amounts of mass, but with the buckshot many of the shots vaporize once they get close to you, the remainer moving comparatively slower and hitting with less force.
Agreed, not to mention that a huge single asteroid would throw much larger amounts of dust and whatnot into the atmosphere, potentially killing the whole damn human race - and a few other species, I should think - in the same way that the dinosaurs bit the dust before us.
Actually, wind resistance is proportional to cross sectional area. Yes, the less mass the easier it is to stop with the same force, obviously, but shards of asteroid will actually travel MUCH QUICKER. Now you may hop back to the other half of your argument and point out "sure, but a lot of those will burn up!"
Two major problems, there. 1) Asteroid burns up in the atmosphere and you have that mass of dust in the atmosphere. No way around it.
2) The ones that make it through are faster. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass, yes, but is proportional to the SQUARE of velocity. This means that to deal with speed that's literally dozens of times faster, you have to have bits HUNDREDS of times smaller. It wouldn't just be like buckshot. It would be like a shot of buck with similar mass but extraordinarily higher speed. It would Swiss cheese the area it hits.
I think your big problem is that you think we can blow the asteroid up to the point where it's basically dust, and thus will be useless. That's not really the case. Asteroids are composites and are irregular in size and shape. You'd have to drill into the thing and lace it with explosives, and then pray none of the remaining bits is big enough to get through. Instead of carrying literally millions of pounds of nuclear weaponry up, why not have the rocket have more fuel, and push the thing lazily to the left so it misses the Earth? Right. No reason.
One more not insignificant issue: assuming you used nuclear weapons - and a whole lot of them - the asteroid fragments would now be laced with radiation. Not only would the impact damage be more widespread, you'd be looking at worldwide nuclear fallout in addition to space dust. Not an attractive prospect.
@killerwhale. A counter to your first problem is that, compared to letting a huge ass asteroid hit Earth and all that dust going into air, the shards can only produce as much dust as the asteroid weighs. Thats in the asteroids best scenario (worst for us). 2: It may swiss cheese the area, but it probably won't DESTROY THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE
Holy shit! Push the asteroid and pray it doesn't hit the earth might work! But it might hit another planet, and do some crazy s**t and kills us all, xD
@evilkillerwhale,
Actually, smaller objects will fall more slowly than larger ones. You might want to study how things like drag and terminal velocity actually work before claiming the opposite.
Also, the fastest asteroid at risk for hitting Earth is "approaching at 35.5 km/sec. After adding in the effect of the earth's gravity, it will hit the atmosphere at 37.2 km/sec". My point being that after it enters the atmosphere, unhindered by any terminal velocity, it will speed up by less than 5%. "dozens of times faster" indeed, LOL!
And some of these space-debris and asteroids, (correct me if I am wrong) may contain some metals, in other words MORE RESOURCES :D
The thing is, unless you blow the asteroid into *really* fine powder, the amount of mass ablated from each piece isn't really significant, and in the end, since most of the pieces would hit the Earth anyway, the kinetic energy deployed wouldn't change, so the amount of megatons wouldn't change, it would just be more spread out.
its because any "we need to stop it or we are fucked" astroids, any explosion on it would cause huge, not burning up in atmosphere grade astroids to cause serious nuke rain (a piece of a large astroid from explosion would be the force of MANY MANY nukes) and since itd be sprayed arround the earth with millions of super nukes hitting everything, itd basicly cause the fallout series scenario but with less radiation and more everywhere on the planet instead of 1 country turning into molten rock.
Terrible Ideas was the main point of this article. Scientists that focus on climate change and try to find way to further f**k it up fit the very definition of Larry Niven's "Crazy Eddie"
ReplyWhen I saw the picture of Earth with the reflective mirrors around I thought it was a picture of some crazy shoot 'em up-bullet hell video game, until I clicked in the link to the BBC News site. If you are having a terrible idea, at least draw it properly so that your idea doesn't look more stupid than it already is.
ReplyTurns out seeding the ocean with iron to reduce global warming doesn't work. Sure, it spawns plankton that will suck up CO2... but all it takes is a herd of hungry shrimp to eat the plankton and render the whole thing pointless. See, the point is to trap the CO2, and if something eats the CO2-laden plankton, the CO2 is back in the environment.
ReplyAccording to your example, there should be no grass left on the planet at all. :| Revise your statement.
No. He's actualy right. It dosn't trap the CO2 long enough to take it out of the cycle. It just recycles back into the environment. Thats why things like coral reefs are good because they take huge amounts of CO2 out of the environment for potentially thousands of years.
i wonder if these futurama ideas were invented by the prize winning math genius that writes for the show
Replyfor global warming, here's a plan: plant some trees!
ReplyTrees aren't magic pollution filters.
I'm still working on the pollution-destroying laser.
One way to deal with an Asteroid would be guiding it into the moon. Many small asteroids near Earth have Platinum, Cobalt, Nickel, and other elements to the tune of around 15-20 trillion dollars (Not counting for saturation fluctuations). That could save the economy.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesWell, the moon is kind of important for stuff like tides, currents, and wind. Losing the moon could be just as devastating a blow as getting hit ourselves.
Not blow up the moon just crash it into the moon. The moon wouldn't crack under a less than one mile asteroid. And as a bonus it would kick up a pile of tritium rich dust for us to scoop up cheap.
It would only work if the asteroid came at the right time of month though.
Wouldn't want the moon bitching at us for a whole week, now would we?
I fail to see how devaluing (more product equals less value of said product) Platinum, Cobalt, Nickel, and other elements would save any economy.