This is for Rob Irving's design thread:
Summary: We survived due to technological innovation. All of our effort to stem our downward spiral failed and we were pushed past the global tipping point before we took the drastic step of starting a series of atmospheric filters on a planetary scale (atmo-processors). These same filters were the starting point of the Mars terraforming project, making the the failure there seem even more surprising.
Detail: Political efforts in the early to mid 21st century had a mild impact on the impending carbon crisis, but the atmospheric accord began to fail as a new, trade-centric cold war began to form between China and various western powers. Russia’s push to become a manufacturing rival to China further inflamed the issue and the globe began to approach the 2 degree tipping point by 2065. Ice melting rates had hit all-time peaks and the future looked rather grim with stubborn parties on all sides and no easy answer to the stalemate.
In 2071, a Finish economist and climate advocate Marko Autio announced an idea for planetary change at a now-famous TED talk where he proposed that global powers use the planet’s massive manufacturing power to combat the issue they had created. He proposed a theoretical “atmo-processor”; a series of large, strategically placed machines that would filter and alter the Earth’s atmospheric flow on a planetary scale. He argues that the the technologies need to make such a machine already existed and the problem was one of just leveraging unprecedented manufacturing capacity and providing proper incentive. So, he proposed that starting with some wealthier member countries pledging money and technology together to have the equipment manufactured in some less wealthy, but more industrial countries, both the pledging and the manufacturing countries would champion the cause: buyers for the rights of first placement of the processors (and first impacts from the changes) and sellers for the first profits from the manufacture. As the manufacturing scaled and became cheaper, more processors could be purchased by less wealthy countries Russia (Moscow) ended up chiefly benefiting from the manufacturing side of these processors, which lead to it’s impressive industrial capabilities in the modern day.
The Atmo-processors were also augmented by a variety of other planetary engineering projects, including high-altitude particle seeding seeding and ocean convection manipulation. The first atmo-processor was deployed in June of 2080 and within a decade we had averted the worst of the warming side effects. By 2117, the Earth’s atmosphere seemed to return to a pre-industrial state of quality.
At the same time, humanities eyes looked to Mars as its glowing backup planet should the grand planetary engineering experiment back home fail to take root. The same atmo-processing technologies were repurposed as terraforming catalysts for the red planet. Unfortunately, the delta atmospheric change needed there was beyond the atmo-processors stabilizing capabilities, which lead to the horrible tragedy that occurred in 2125. The fact that the Earth’s atmosphere had been fine for the 15 years prior using the same machines had helped give the Martian engineers the false confidence that led to their failure.
Summary: We survived due to technological innovation. All of our effort to stem our downward spiral failed and we were pushed past the global tipping point before we took the drastic step of starting a series of atmospheric filters on a planetary scale (atmo-processors). These same filters were the starting point of the Mars terraforming project, making the the failure there seem even more surprising.
Detail: Political efforts in the early to mid 21st century had a mild impact on the impending carbon crisis, but the atmospheric accord began to fail as a new, trade-centric cold war began to form between China and various western powers. Russia’s push to become a manufacturing rival to China further inflamed the issue and the globe began to approach the 2 degree tipping point by 2065. Ice melting rates had hit all-time peaks and the future looked rather grim with stubborn parties on all sides and no easy answer to the stalemate.
In 2071, a Finish economist and climate advocate Marko Autio announced an idea for planetary change at a now-famous TED talk where he proposed that global powers use the planet’s massive manufacturing power to combat the issue they had created. He proposed a theoretical “atmo-processor”; a series of large, strategically placed machines that would filter and alter the Earth’s atmospheric flow on a planetary scale. He argues that the the technologies need to make such a machine already existed and the problem was one of just leveraging unprecedented manufacturing capacity and providing proper incentive. So, he proposed that starting with some wealthier member countries pledging money and technology together to have the equipment manufactured in some less wealthy, but more industrial countries, both the pledging and the manufacturing countries would champion the cause: buyers for the rights of first placement of the processors (and first impacts from the changes) and sellers for the first profits from the manufacture. As the manufacturing scaled and became cheaper, more processors could be purchased by less wealthy countries Russia (Moscow) ended up chiefly benefiting from the manufacturing side of these processors, which lead to it’s impressive industrial capabilities in the modern day.
The Atmo-processors were also augmented by a variety of other planetary engineering projects, including high-altitude particle seeding seeding and ocean convection manipulation. The first atmo-processor was deployed in June of 2080 and within a decade we had averted the worst of the warming side effects. By 2117, the Earth’s atmosphere seemed to return to a pre-industrial state of quality.
At the same time, humanities eyes looked to Mars as its glowing backup planet should the grand planetary engineering experiment back home fail to take root. The same atmo-processing technologies were repurposed as terraforming catalysts for the red planet. Unfortunately, the delta atmospheric change needed there was beyond the atmo-processors stabilizing capabilities, which lead to the horrible tragedy that occurred in 2125. The fact that the Earth’s atmosphere had been fine for the 15 years prior using the same machines had helped give the Martian engineers the false confidence that led to their failure.
