In honor of Blog Action Day, in which bloggers are encouraged to write articles pertaining to a particular topic, we’ve decided to explore this years “Climate Change” theme by recalling some of humanity’s worst attempts at using technology to deliberately alter the Earth’s climate. This is sort of a Darwin Awards for big ideas with little chance for, or actual attained, success. So sit back, relax, grab a glass of green tea in a Styrofoam cup, and be glad that you’ve had no part in any of these schemes.
In parts of Russia, its cold. It’s also dark for 20+ hours a day. Cold, dark climates don’t usually yield much, especially when it comes to good ideas. Thus in the early 1990’s the Russians, in an attempt to literally brighten their post communism days, decided to launch a giant mirror into low Earth orbit. Having already achieved worldwide acknowledged space travel prowess, the Russians’ intention was to use the mirror’s 20 meter diameter to reflect some of the sunlight being enjoyed by the rest of us back onto the motherland. If it worked and huge arrays of these mirrors were subsequently deployed, they could control the sunlight and beam its life giving rays back onto their dark cities and barren fields, potentially turning Syberia into the second breadbasket of the world. Needless to say, the mirror reached space but did not illuminate the ground as expected. Nice try though!
This next one is inspired by the very best technology of its day, which was none. For as long as humans have needed food, and that food required water to grow, people have tried to influence the water cycle. Whereas the Romans actually used sound science and engineering to create a system of aqueducts to move water from place to place, the Native Americans utilized the slightly less reliable rain dance. Garnishing enough success to warrent the tradition’s passing for many generations, the inconsistency of the rain dance’s results may have directly inspired our next example, although I’m sure there’s nothing comparible to doing a little dance and after which the skies suddenly open up.
There’s a time for sun and a time for rain. Unfortunately, when it’s that rainy time and you’re hosting the world’s Olympic games, you’ll try anything to stay dry. That’s what motivated the Chinese government’s plan to “seed the clouds” just prior to the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic games, thus eliminating the chance of a rained out event. Cloud seeding is not a new idea. In the 1960’s in an effort to lessen the destructive power of hurricanes, the United States tried flying airplanes into developing tropical storms. The planes released vast amounts of silver iodide into the storm meant to induce rainfall that would lower the effective energy potential of the storm. It didn’t work back then, and it didn’t work for the Olympics. So stop trying!
It’s clear that actively influencing weather and climates is a lot harder than the passive influence our lives have taken on the planet over the centuries. I believe that the human mind has the capacity to solve the problems to which it is presented, and thus a slowly changing climate isn’t something I lose sleep over. There isn’t a “point of no return” because when we get there, we’ll figure something out, just like we always do.
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