Hot enough for ya ? Our screwball fossil - fuel bacchanalia is driving the satellite ’s temperatures through the cap . effective affair science fiction books and movie have come up with 10 can’t - fail solutions ( well , maybe they ’d puzzle out ) for stopping global heating .
1 : Pump the atmosphere full of nanomachines to get “ smart conditions . ”
In Century Rain byAlastair Reynolds , people sow the sea and the upper atmosphere with tons of tiny float machine , “ invisible to the eye , harmless to people . ” They controlled the weather condition and fixed the clime by reflecting radiation here or absorbing it there . The machine made clouds appear and disappear and controlled ocean currents . And it act upon — for a while . The climate starts give back to pre-2050 conditions . But then the nanomachines stop obeying orders , and even create an lewd symbol off the Bay Of Biscay “ that had to be airbrush out of every planet image . ” The scientists endeavor to free even smarter nanomachines to share with the first batch of nanomachines and — well , you could judge how well that turns out .
2 : A ring of frosting .
Inthe Stanislaw Lem novel Fiasco , scientist launch an artificial ring of iceinto the ambience of the major planet Quinta to shrink temperatures so the oceans will recede and more country pot will be usable . The mass of the internal-combustion engine ring is equal to around 1 pct of the ocean ’ volume . The protagonists speculate that the ring was created by causing lightning in the upper standard pressure to make a kind of ice rail - gun that could shoot the ice up into orbit . This being aStanislaw Lemnovel , the whole thing fall apart due to political haggle before it can be completed , so huge clod of ice rainfall down onto the planet ’s equator in a never - end cloudburst .
3 : Use extra bacterium .
Inthe tarradiddle “ Noah ’s Ark ” by Narendra Desirazu , we retrieve bacteria on Mars , with flaky properties — it hibernates just below the freezing spot of water , but when the piss melt , the bacteria goes into frenetic activity to get the water to refreeze . So scientist scramble with the campaign to introduce the bacteria only to the icecaps and other areas where they need to lift melting — without have it get into , say , our ocean and poppycock . Luckily , there ’s a happy but “ ambivalent ” ending .
4 : establish a gargantuan sunshade around the land .
We construct vast space elevators and a massive awning in The Night Sessions byKen MacLeod , causing the aurora light to look all trippy :
The break of day sky beam innumerable shades of green , from lemon to duck - egg to almost downhearted , like the scope colour in a Hindu painting , and turned slowly to a pure cryptical blue over ten hour or more as he watched . He dozed again .
Also , Arthur C. Clarke ’s Fountains Of Paradiseincludes a ring of satellites and outer space stations linked together around a planet ’s equator by cables and other connectors , which becomes an unplowed steering wheel of tremendous stability — which presumptively can reflect a lot of sunshine . And in Clarke ’s Childhood ’s last , the Overlords are able to use polarized field of battle to “ make the sun go out ” for a particular region of South Africa , to penalise the occupier for deprive the white nonage of civil rights . Andin Venus Of Dreams by Pamela Sargent , colonists cool the satellite Venus by using a elephantine Parasol to shade off the planet , plus bombard the planet with glass asteroid .
5 : Take Earth further away from the sun .
TheFuturama sequence “ Crimes Of The Hot”is like a smorgasbord of global - warming solutions . We learn that humans stopped worldwide heating in the 21st C by bombard the oceans with frappe from outer space . And now that the planet is heating up again , due to the emissions from insecure robots , there are a few solutions , including a giant space mirror ( which goes awry ) and shutting down all the robot . But in the end , the easiest solvent is to have all the robot let loose their exhaust system at once , sending the planet further forth from the sun — and giving us an extra week in each yr , which can be Robot Party Week !
Andin the novel The Circle : A Science Fiction Thriller by Harold R. Watson , the High Rulers Of Earth settle to haul the major planet away from the sun to put it into a recondite freeze for one year . At the end of that sentence , they ’ll return Earth to its original orbit . As some of the planet ’s icy covering melts , it ’ll have the result of restore the ozone layer , and after about five years , enough botany will have grown to make the planet habitable again . Suuuure .
6 : cut up The Human Genome
It ’s a radical solution , but it might be the only way . Inthe story “ Dear Abbey ” by Terry Bisson , a group of radical environmentalists come up with a architectural plan :
Dear Abbey is a radical , tenacious - range plan for saving the environment that will make Ted Kaczynski look like Mother Teresa . It involves an alarmingly complex but theoretically possible piece of genic engineering science that will , allow us say , severely inhibit the power of man to degrade the surroundings . knockout being the running modifier gene . You ca n’t call it act of terrorism because no one will be killed , flat at least , and no one will even screw for certain what is happen until it has been operating for at least a 10 , by which time it will be too later to undo it . The human cost will be high but not nearly as mellow as the cost of doing nothing , or of simply remain with the variety of pointless stunts for which the environmental movement is roll in the hay .
7 : Restart the Gulf Stream
Kim Stanley Robinsonis the champion of depicting environmental disasters and geo - hacking projects , and his environmental thriller Forty Signs Of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below mickle with the disastrous effects of spherical warming . Among other things , Fifty Degrees includes scientist trying to restart the procrastinate Gulf Stream . The icing caps evaporate completely , andin the winter , Washington , D.C. hits fifty degrees below . So an enormous fleet of ships ventures out to floor millions of piles of ice-skating rink into the sea in the hopes of rebooting the Gulf Stream . A fleet of 3,500 oil oiler is uncommitted to transport the common salt , and five hundred million metric tons of salt is necessitate — about two years ’ Charles Frederick Worth of entire world production .
8 : Shut down all our technology
I ’m still not entirely sure what materialise at the close of last year ’s " remake " ( quotation marks are necessary here ) ofThe Day The Earth Stood Still . Keanu / Klaatu was going to let loose nanomachines to disassemble everything on Earth , because that would save the planet . You recognise that makes sensation ! And then he changed his mind and did some kind of EMP - ish affair that made all electricity go out and all engineering science kibosh working . So the human race was allowed to survive , but with no technology . Keanu is merciful ! All hail Keanu !
9 : Open a crowing mess .
world warming ? No problem ! Just spread a dimensional gateway and pump all the extra heat somewhere else . That ’s the scheme that a science whiz come up with in theStargate Atlantisepisode " Brain Storm " ( featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy , among other luminaries . ) Of naturally , it all go horribly awry and the gathering of towering scientist is in danger of freezing to decease . Also , in the Syfy movieLost City Raiders , the earth is flooded due to world warming . And the Catholic Church has the answer — an ancient maw in the priming , which will drain off all the excess urine to … somewhere . But you need to find the secret obscure keys to open it . It all makes perfect sensation !
10 : Kill the aliens who are cause the problem in the first place .
But of course , you know deep down that global thaw ca n’t really be the result of our own completely harmless activeness . There must be aliens behind it — probably evil dinosaur aliens . Inthe Syfy original telly movie , Heatstroke , it turns out that dinosaur hoi polloi have been on the QT working to pump out greenhouse gases to raise our planet ’s temperature and set up the way for their encroachment . But the U.S. government activity knows about this and send a surreptitious taskforce ( why not a whole USA ? Budget constraints , I guess ) to stop them . The aliens are operating on a tropical island , where an ex-wife - swimsuit model just come about to be shooting a young calendar . It ’s like synergy ! Oh , and there ’s alsoThe Arrivaldirected by David Twohy , where Charlie Sheen discovers that weird treble - jointed aliens are bring out greenhouse gases to mess us up and metamorphose our planet . Good thing it ’s Charlie Sheen , then . Oh , and the Silurians inDoctor Who And The Siluriansalso have a like idea about raise the satellite ’s temperature , but they do n’t get very far with it .
Additional reporting by Alexis Brown . This post also would have been a lot harder to write without the never - end awesomeness that isTechnovelgy.com .
Alastair ReynoldsEcologyFuturama
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