Living in the Greenhouse

Dramatic and scary effects of global warming will occur long before nations coordinate their efforts to reduce their release of greenhouse gasses. (Even the Bush administration dullards and puppets have abandoned denial and are now willing to “do their part”... so long as no sacrifice is required.) Congress' idea of dramatic action is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 15% by 2020. By that time, it will be far too late for reductions to have much effect on the course of warming over the following 50-100 years. What is to be done?

We will have to think of direct ways to slow and reverse global warming itself. For example, we could compensate for the warming of greenhouse gasses by reflecting more sunlight from earth into space or by shading parts of the planet from space. Such ideas will have to be tested on a huge scale to see an effect.

Every technology is eventually used in war, if not actually invented as a weapon. Weather manipulation could be used as a weapon to cause draught or floods, for example. That will get the attention of the Pentagon. It's unlikely the military meteorologists will be better than the civilian ones – correct about half the time.