TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL WARMING
            Our life has been changed by technology. We flip a switch and change darkness into light, cold into heat, and heat into cold. We turn on a faucet and water fit to drink gushes forth. We touch a button and we send a message around the world. Almost all of this technology has come with a cost to the environment that we’ve largely ignored.
            Now we are being made aware of the costs to our environment. Believe it or not, the data indicates climate change. For billions of people around the world – and quite possibly us – that means widespread disruption. Changes of climate will mean more floods from rising sea levels, food shortages due to disruption in agriculture, and many plant and animal species changing their range or becoming extinct. Changing rainfall patterns and melting ice caps will alter freshwater sources.
            Worldwide the forces at work producing climate change have proved difficult to manage. Researchers are working on ways to curb climate change or mediate its effects using technology. Most are costly, not immediately available, not highly effective, may not be safe, or have undetermined side effects.
            Some of the plans with current engineering studies are:

• Biochar Burial: transforming plants into a material that can be plowed into the ground where plants are grown;
• Artificial Trees: large carbon absorbing filters mounted on poles;
• Subterranean Storage of CO2: compress the carbon dioxide gas and pump it into natural formations deep underground or beneath the ocean floor;
• Carbon-consuming Algae: cultivating algae on the surface of the ocean that would deposit carbon dioxide in deeper water as they die and sink;
• More-reflective Crops: Altering which crops are planted so that more sunlight is reflected back into space making temperatures cooler;
• Cloud Maker: Wind-powered ships to promote the formation of clouds using saltwater;
• White Rooftops and Roads: Painting rooftops and pavement to reflect sunlight or working on a roof tile that would turn white in hot weather and black in cold;
• Space Mirrors: Thousands of space-craft equipped with reflectors put into orbit slightly shading a small part of the Earth just above the equator;
• Foil-wrapped Glaciers: Covering glaciers with thin reflective foil during the summer – already tried at ski-resorts in Europe;
• Giant Snow Machines: Wind-powered-barges in the Arctic Ocean to make snow to replenish disappearing ice sheets;
• Fake Volcanoes: Releasing microscopic particles in the stratosphere to scatter sunlight back into space.

Perhaps we have learned that technological solutions often have consequences we did not anticipate. Adapting and changing our lifestyles may be the better option.

            This information is from an article, “Reengineering Earth” in Science Illustrated, May/June 2010. Read more at www.scienceillustrated.com.

Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 07/07/10 (for publication on 07/10/10 in the Journal-Standard, Freeport, Illinois) Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org