tags: environment

A scheme to combat climate change by injecting massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere via “artificial volcanoes” has been proposed by experts at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. The method, which sets to mimic the “natural” phenomenon of Global Dimming, will look to create clouds of sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide that will reflect heat back into space.

However the method is not without its risks, and is expected to badly damage the Ozone Lair and set back its healing process by almost 70 years. The method will also not address the other effects of excess CO² in the atmosphere, such as ocean acidification.

Story from Popular Mechanics

Over half a billion years ago in the cloudy depths of the Panthalassic Ocean, lay a lost world of breathtaking wonder. Forests of delicate, jelly-like fractals swayed dreamily in the shallow calcium rich seas, while ribbed domes of gelatinous fauna morphed slowly into huge photosynthetic discs to drink the sunlight from the star above. These were not plants, who were life forms still many millions of years in the future. They were not even animals, at least in the sense that we are familiar with. These were Ediacarans, and they were the planet’s first attempt at multicellular life.

For over fifteen million years, perhaps much longer, they dominated the primordial oceans from which they evolved. For fifteen million years they experimented with a multitude of forms and structures, some resembling plants, some resembling rudimentary creatures. Some are even thought to have even developed crude nervous systems and antennae, the first tentative steps towards becoming even more advanced organisms.

Then came the age of predators; the Cambrian Explosion. And with it, their apocalypse.

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