Why I Love Mad Scientists

Published October 16, 2007

By Ben Silverman

All I hear from the environmentalist kids on campus is the Inconvenient Truth, the end of the world is upon us doctrine, with the four horsemen all riding marching global warming mustangs that only get seven miles to the gallon. But what I’m not hearing are any good solutions. Yes, of course, we have to reduce CO2 emissions and all that fun jazz, but that simply will not be good enough. There will be over 900 new coal/oil power plants built in the next decade, and the CO2 from them alone will completely noll out the effects of the Kyoto treaty, and you can’t stop that. China is becoming a rapidly expanding economic power house with rapidly expanding CO2 needs, and we shouldn’t stop that. So how can we help the situation (and switching to hybrid cars is not going to do jack)?

I’ve just read this article in Rolling Stone about this scientist named Lowell Wood who might have a dramatic and (gasp) workable solution. This guy is more or less a nut of the greatest callaber, he was the one who designed Reagan’s Star Wars defense system, so you already know the man borders on evil genius. He proposes to release ionized sulfur particles into the stratosphere (this will not cause more acid rain, by the way) over the Arctic Circle to reflect away the sun’s heat. Based upon relatively sound science it can be implemented within a few years, not decades, and costs a mere $100 million compared to some of the other ideas which may cost in the hundreds of billions.

Now some people might be quick to criticize this idea as ‘immoral’ (morals, ethics, values are bullshit, they’re not objective and should be considered opinionated) and that we would be ‘tampering with nature.’ Well what do call a few hundred million-billion tons of CO2! We have already crossed the line of tampering with nature and I believe in committing to something, not doing it half assed. If we’re Earth’s meddlers so be it, at least now we have positive motives for our meddling. Plus it’s only an idea, at least someone out there is trying come up with a solution to our imminent horrible, but likely rather balmy, destruction.

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