{"id":3247,"date":"2011-12-15T11:11:37","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T17:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=3247"},"modified":"2011-12-15T11:19:06","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T17:19:06","slug":"5-wacky-ways-to-fix-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/15\/5-wacky-ways-to-fix-the-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Wacky Ways to Fix the Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo courtesy of NASA<\/p>

Earth as seen from the surface of the moon.<\/p><\/div>\n

With heat, tornadoes, drought, fires, extreme weather and flooding, the climate has certainly caught the world’s attention<\/a> in 2011. While scientists debate just how much the world is warming<\/a> and how much of that has to do with human impact, others are taking it upon themselves to reverse the changes through technology. Here are five schemes that may seem pie-in-the-sky at first, but could soon have a big impact on our planet:<\/p>\n

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  1. Make it rain.<\/strong> What would China be without a five-year plan?\u00a0The country recently announced a new one that will certainly get the attention of Texas: seeding the skies to grow more crops. “China will begin four regional programs to artificially increase precipitation across the country before 2015,” the state paper China Daily<\/em> reports<\/a>. Sound fanciful? It’s not. As Matt Largey of KUT News\u00a0reported recently, weather modification in Texas is already a real thing<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not science fiction,\u201d John Nielsen-Gammon, the state\u2019s climatologist said. \u201cAbout a third<\/a>\u00a0of the state of Texas has contracts with weather modification companies to engage in cloud seeding on an annual basis.\u201d While cloud seeding can’t actually make it rain, it can make it rain up to fifteen percent more.\u00a0\u201cThe problem with that, in a drought, is 10 percent of nothing is nothing,\u201d Nielsen-Gammon said. But as rains improve in the state, seeding could help aquifers and\u00a0reservoirs. But be careful what you wish for: weather modification in China was blamed for blizzards that caused billions of dollars in damage<\/a> in 2009.<\/li>\n
  2. Who let the CO2 out? <\/strong>Carbon dioxide emissions are at an all-time high<\/a>, and are\u00a0continuing\u00a0to increase about 2 percent every year. So why not built giant vacuums and suck all that carbon back in? As\u00a0Scientific American<\/em> reports<\/a>, a new study has found “that trying to scrub the air is much more expensive than keeping it from getting dirty in the first place.” The main problem? To capture air requires a lot of energy, and as one scientist told the magazine, “the reason we have CO2 emissions is because we use a lot of energy. Controlling CO2 by burning a lot of energy doesn’t make a lot of sense.”<\/li>\n

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