[extropy-chat] global warming eats island

[Keith Henson]

At 10:26 PM 12/29/2006 +0000, Robert wrote:

snip

>Here are the analytical questions.  How much carbon have we put into the 
>atmosphere?  How long would it take (a) microorganisms; or (b) nanotech 
>based molecular sorters; to put said amount of carbon someplace where it 
>can do no harm?

That's actually the wrong question.  Given that we want to keep the earth 
close to the current temperature or even cool it a bit, what method is the 
least disruptive?  It might turn out that a mess of sunshades in the 
earth-sun L1 location are the best (least clostly) way to go.

>(Note I'm proposing at least *two* solutions, there may be more).  If you 
>are ambitious, ask how long and what the energy costs would be to put said 
>carbon into orbit where it might be more useful.  (The upper atmosphere is 
>a really poor place to park ones carbon resources.)

Although we don't now worry about too *little* CO2, if there was really 
widespread use of CO2 to grow massive engineering structures out of diamond 
*that* could become a problem.

Keith Henson