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It does not matter if it is toxic or not. It's a chemical byproduct that we don't want in the atmosphere. That means it's a pollutant. Sure. Terra forming work

by ArnoVW 6y ago

It does not matter if it is toxic or not. It's a chemical byproduct that we don't want in the atmosphere. That means it's a pollutant. Sure. Terra forming works. Conceptually. If you can manage to build a rainforest in the desert, that will fix some co2. That is not the issue. The issue is: how to build a rainforest in the desert. Technically, and economically. Have you considered the amount of water you'd need? The irrigation system required for that? Where would the water come from? For reference, there is already a lot of geopolitics over water supply in the middle east. Have you considered how poor the soil is? How much work it would be to enrich that soil? We are already raising alarm bells regarding our phosphate stock. How would you keep the ecosystem in balance? If you can't you don't need an army of people to maintain it. Most importantly, it would only buy you time. It would fix some of the co2 in trees. But if we continue to burn oil, we'll keep adding co2 to the atmosphere. Every barrel of oil is 430 kilos of co2. That's a lot of tree for one barrel. And you've only fixed it temporarily. If at any time your artificial forest collapses (this being your first terra forming attempt), your trees decompose and release the co2. Again. I'm not saying that any option should be off the table. But I do not think it benefits the already complicated debates, if we present theoretical scenarios as solutions.

chr1 6y ago
You do not build a rainforest in a desert, you build a densely populated region with lots of agricultural land and some forests, so that people living there take care of enriching the soil and making sure that nothing collapses. To do that we need to learn how to control the weather. There are multiple possible ways, like using mirrors in space, using large number of aerostats to change reflectivity, and to guide clouds to the place we need, solar updraft towers to inject dust from lower layers of the atmosphere into higher layers to form clouds, etc. Many of these are may not work, and many won't be cheap, but they will give us more control over the environment and will enable more people to live.

by ArnoVW 6y ago

chr1 6y ago

You do not build a rainforest in a desert, you build a densely populated region with lots of agricultural land and some forests, so that people living there take care of enriching the soil and making sure that nothing collapses. To do that we need to learn how to control the weather. There are multiple possible ways, like using mirrors in space, using large number of aerostats to change reflectivity, and to guide clouds to the place we need, solar updraft towers to inject dust from lower layers of the atmosphere into higher layers to form clouds, etc. Many of these are may not work, and many won't be cheap, but they will give us more control over the environment and will enable more people to live.