Can We Hack the Planet?

Today on Far Future Horizons we present another episode of the acclaimed documentary series “Through the Wormhole” hosted by veteran actor Morgan Freeman.

Humanity is under threat from storms that seem to get ever fiercer, earthquakes that seem ever more deadly, and killer viruses that are engulfing the globe.

Earth Overhaul

It is claimed by some scientists that climate change is being felt the world over and if global warming continues the effects could be catastrophic.

Some scientists and engineers are proposing radical, large-scale ideas that could save us from disaster. Although these ideas might have unknown side effects, some scientists believe we may soon have no choice but to put these radical and controversial plans into action.

Will humanity engage in a massive program of Planetary and climatic engineering, in order to maintain the natural life support systems that sustain humanity and the other life forms that call this Earth home?

In essence will humanity embark on a program of Terraforming the Earth?

Five Ways To Save The World

How will humanity survive the coming century if our global civilization never manages to overcome its addiction to fossil fuels, curb carbon emissions and global warming continues unabated? What effect will a four degree Celsius rise in temperature have for our planet and the future prospects of our world’s ability to support and sustain a global population of some nine billion people?

The World: 4⁰C Warmer

According to an article by Gaia Vince from the weekly science magazine New Scientist of February 25, 2009 the human species is facing a major existential risk that places our long term future into question. We face a nightmarish scenario:

ALLIGATORS basking off the English coast; a vast Brazilian desert; the mythical lost cities of Saigon, New Orleans, Venice and Mumbai; and 90 per cent of humanity vanished. Welcome to the world warmed by 4 °C.

The Earth of the year 2099 may be so altered by global warming and sea level rise that the carrying capacity of our planet is debilitated to the extent that we may see a massive die off of the human species and may face the prospect of a massive relocation effort of its surviving members to the few remaining slivers of land that can sustain them.

If humanity does indeed face such a bleak prospect then it has clearly reached the point in its history where it must take a more active role in managing its planet and all its life sustaining resources as well as the activities of its inhabitants on an unprecedented scale.

Clearly this is a vision of the future that no one wants, but it might happen. Fearing that the best efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions may fail, or that planetary climate feedback mechanisms will accelerate warming, some scientists and economists are considering not only what this world of the future might be like, but how it could sustain a growing human population. They argue that surviving in the kinds of numbers that exist today, or even more, will be possible, but only if we use our uniquely human ingenuity to cooperate as a species to radically reorganise our world.