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What if we accidentally trigger an ice age.

• empath75 7y ago
  We can just burn down some forests.
• crimsonalucard 7y ago
  This is a legit worry. The same material we use to stabilize the climate could be the same material that throws it into a negative feedback loop. This happened during the ice age, which is exactly stated in the article.
  • carapace 7y ago
    Okay, no, it's not. You're being silly. We could always fire the Clathrate Gun... (^_^) But you bring up an interesting point: there's no going back. This really is the Anthropocene Age and we're going to have to manage the planet from now on, now that we can, now that we know.
    • crimsonalucard 7y ago
      How am I being silly? Logically if the same conditions caused an Ice age in the past and we take steps to replicate those conditions in the present then this is a genuinely possible outcome. How is this not something to think about?
      • carapace 7y ago
        First, I'm not an expert, maybe you aren't being silly, I don't really know. Second, this is actually totally something to think about, and it seems to me like matznerd & co. are thinking about this very clearly and scientifically. The reasons I think it's kind of silly to worry about olivine weathering triggering an ice age is that it seems to me (again, NOT an expert) that we would have enough warning to deal with it, now that we know it's something we have to deal with. We could put less olivine out than we had planned, or remove some (make it into concrete or something), or even just burn off fuel or release methane to counteract the cooling. Like I said, you are bringing up an important point: we can no longer pretend that we're not already "geoengineering" our home world. "We are as Gods, we might as well get good at it."