Global warming

Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. The largest driver of warming is the emission of greenhouse gases, of which more than 90% are carbon dioxide and methane. Fossil fuel burning (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy consumption is the main source of these emissions, with additional contributions from agriculture, deforestation, and manufacturing. Temperature rise is accelerated or tempered by climate feedbacks, such as loss of sunlight-reflecting snow and ice cover, increased water vapour (a greenhouse gas itself), and changes to land and ocean carbon sinks.

Temperature rise on land is about twice the global average increase, leading to desert expansion and more common heat waves and wildfires. Temperature rise is also amplified in the Arctic, where it has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Warmer temperatures are increasing rates of evaporation, causing more intense storms and weather extremes. Impacts on ecosystems include the relocation or extinction of many species as their environment changes, most immediately in coral reefs, mountains, and the Arctic. Climate change threatens people with food insecurity, water scarcity, flooding, infectious diseases, extreme heat, economic losses, and displacement. These impacts have led the World Health Organization to call climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Even if efforts to minimize future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries, including rising sea levels, rising ocean temperatures, and ocean acidification.

There are concerns that this can lead to an Extinction Level Event (ELE).

Proposals to fix global warming include:


 * Send rockets into the upper atmosphere, where they would release pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, in order to reflect sunlight into space, thereby cooling the earth.


 * Dump iron-based chemicals into the oceans, causing algae to thrive in the ocean, which in turn will increase the amount of carbon dioxide that is absorbed by the algae.
 * Carbon sequestration is a process by which the carbon dioxide emitted from coal-burning power plants is liquefied and then separated from the environment, perhaps by being buried underground. This however cannot remove the carbon dioxide that has already been lofted into the atmosphere.
 * Use genetic engineering to specifically create life-forms that can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide. There are already thousands, perhaps millions, of organisms on our planet that know how to do this.
 * Freeman Dyson advocated creating a genetically engineered variety of trees that would be adept at absorbing carbon dioxide. He has stated that perhaps a trillion such trees might be enough to control the carbon dioxide in the air. In his paper "Can We Control the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere?" he advocated creating a carbon bank of fast-growing trees to regulate carbon dioxide levels.

All of these solutions have risks and dangerous side-effects but because it is more efficient for a Type 0 economy to burn fossil fuels, global warming will be ominous until a Type I economy moves towards a Hydrogen Age, with fusion, solar power and renewables.