Bloomberg's Anna Hirtenstein argues that geoengineering is set to become a real thing, as we end up trying desperately to manage the consequence of uncontrolled environmental pollution and consequent climate change.

A United Nations body is investigating controversial methods to avert runaway climate change by giving humans the go-ahead to re- ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes political despair in Japan's industrial heartland and looks at Argentina's statistical issues.
• The Globe and Mail reports on Morocco's continued industrialization and describes the fear of a Vancouver-based pop singer for the life of her mother in China.
• The Inter Press Service notes the recent terror attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh's ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes the upcoming meeting of North Korea's governing party, observes the absence of a groundswell in favour of Brexit in the United Kingdom, and notes NIMBYism can appear in many forms.
• CBC reports on the upcoming summit of North American leaders, notes Mike Duffy's first appearance in the Senate, reports on the likely huge toll of ( Read more... )

• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer is concerned with Trump: what would happen if a terrorist attack occurred under his rule, would he actually be able to save money from changing foreign basing, do terrorist attacks help him in the polls?
• Towleroad notes the advent of marriage equality in Greenland.
• Window on Eurasia notes legal challenges to ( Read more... )

As much as I agree with the implicit optimism of the title of Matt Williams' Universe Today article, I would suggest that a more realistic one is that we can't. All the schemes depend on technologies that, while imaginable, are also massive.

The first proposed method of terraforming Venus was made in 1961 by Carl Sagan. In a paper titled “The ( Read more... )

Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster writes about a new study of the Earth's history. It took quite a long time for the Earth to build up current levels of oxygen, it turns out.

The researchers measured selenium isotopes in rock samples laid down under the ocean to track oxygen levels from 770 to 525 million years ago (across the full period believed to ( Read more... )

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross starts a discussion about the consequences of satellites getting knocked down. How would a newly satellite-less world cope?
• Centauri Dreams looks at red dwarfs and the challenges of their potentially habitable exoplanets.
• The Dragon's Gaze considers ways to detect the spectral signatures of rocky impacts on young stars.
• The ( Read more... )

CBC's Max Leighton reports on how Elon Musk's talk with Stephen Colbert of using nuclear weapons on Mars' polar icecaps, presumably with the goal of releasing their water and atmospheric gas into the thin Martian atmosphere, was received.

(At very most this would be just the start.)

[T]hings turned sinister when Colbert brought up Musk's plans ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams reports on a theory suggesting the distant dwarf planet Sedna and its kin were captured from another star in the sun's birth cluster.
• Crooked Timber reports on a Dutch court ruling arguing that the Netherlands is legally obliged to reduce carbon dioxide output.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes that hot Neptune Gliese 436b has a comet-like tail ( Read more... )

I went into Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 wanting to really like the novel. I'm still quite a fan of his famous Mars trilogy, justly one of the most famous terraforming sagas out there (among other things), and he has acquired--as noted in The New Yorker, among other places--a reputation as one of the great living writers of science fiction. I had ( Read more... )