Every bold plan sounds stupid before it’s implemented. In a world plagued by potential disasters, we need bold, “stupid” plans. Scientists around the world have come up with plans to save the world.
Resurrecting Mammoth Saves Environment
Scientists don’t actually need a reason to resurrect ancient monsters, they will do it desperately, and then justify the monsters after they rush through the street. Still, there is a real plan on the table-using cloned mammoths to fight global warming.
Siberia has vast savannahs, with permafrost beneath them. As the planet warms, this permafrost is not as permanent as we think. Once it melts, it is likely to endanger millions of people. A large amount of carbon is buried under the permafrost, the result of millions of years of plant decay. It is estimated that the underground carbon content in Siberia and Alaska is twice the current carbon content in the atmosphere. When the permafrost melts, these substances are released into the air in the form of carbon dioxide, and the global temperature naturally rises.
So how do we stop it? Obviously, the answer is: “Resurrect some mammoths.” Russian geophysicist Sergei Zimov hopes to use genetic engineering to bring mammoths back to the Siberian steppe as part of his “Pleistocene Park” project. We don’t know what habit mammoths have, but it’s clear that they hate trees so much that they knock them down when they see them. As a result, the number of trees will decrease and the area of grasslands will increase. Because grass reflects more sunlight than trees, this helps keep the ground cool. Snow can act as a thermal barrier, warming the ground, and mammoths prevent this through a process that scientists call “very huge and often moving.”
Create killer robots to sell invasive species to Whole Foods Supermarket
Humans are very good at eradicating some species, but they also face a problem: the breeding of invasive species is out of control. This means that a species is accidentally introduced into an unfamiliar ecosystem and spreads so fast that the rest of the system completely collapses. The emergence of fish without natural enemies in the river can have the same consequences as the leakage of toxic waste. But what if we could solve this problem with a combination of technology and overeating?
A Bermuda-registered company has been using electric drones to shock an invading lionfish, then suck them into buckets and sell them to Whole Foods Supermarket. A restaurant in Florida has spent a lot of money rebuilding the lionfish into a delicious fish for anglers to fish for, and it looks pretty good right now.
In the Galapagos Islands, drones drop poison pills accurately on mice; in Kenya, drones drop large numbers of parasitic insects to kill invading cacti; in the United States, drones are used to track invading pigs. Australia also has drones that completely autonomously invade starfish.
Reflecting sunlight with polluted ships
Over the next few years, you will hear more about plans to use strange technologies to fight climate change. The smartest is to simply turn the problem into a solution. For example, a research team led by a retired scientist thought of using a cargo ship to whiten the clouds.
Theoretically, the idea of cloud whitening is quite reasonable. Increasing the brightness of clouds will increase the albedo of the earth and reflect more sunlight. If there is less sunlight in the atmosphere, it will cool the earth-the same as it would be after a volcanic eruption.
Scientists plan to install a pump on the ship to suck out the salt in the seawater and spray it into the exhaust pipe on the ship. When the salt floats in the atmosphere, a reflective cloud will be generated. If the two ships are unsuccessful, another option is to use a fleet of autonomous navigation drones to do the same.
Destroy space junk with harpoon and laser
I believe everyone has heard of space junk. There is a lot of garbage in near-Earth space-more than 20,000 pieces of 10 cm in diameter, plus thousands of smaller pieces, all of which are spinning at a speed of 28,164 kilometers per hour.
“Kesler Syndrome” refers to a hypothetical scenario in which a large piece of debris collides with another piece of debris, causing the trash to collide with each other and breaking into a chain reaction of smaller fragments, thereby multiplying the amount of trash. Donald J. Kessler, a former chief scientist of NASA’s Orbital Debris Project, said this would make low-Earth orbit largely unusable for generations and could destroy orbiting satellites. No matter from which point of view, we will be confined to the Earth’s atmosphere.
So what do we do? The answer is to clean up space trash. Use huge lasers to heat individual debris pieces and send them into “graveyard orbits,” or drag them down and crash them harmlessly into the ocean. For debris that is so large that it cannot be removed with a laser, the European Space Agency has prepared a crazier plan for them-the space harpoon. They plan to develop a satellite with a harpoon, collect space trash, and drag it back to Earth.
Driving a car with bullshit
If you ask what animals are most likely to destroy the earth, you might say “human beings are the most dangerous animals.” However, the real answer is cows. It turns out that cows are an important factor in climate change because their methane emissions are 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
Fortunately, people in California in the US are aware of this and they are collecting methane and using it as fuel. California has more cows than any other state in the United States, and California has begun encouraging farmers to install biogas digesters. Normally, cow dung is flushed into a central cow pit, and when the manure breaks down, methane is released. The biogas digester is like a tarpaulin covering these dirty swamps, and when methane escapes, it is captured, like loading into a huge oven.
Not only that, the captured methane can also be used as truck fuel. The National Institute of Agricultural Technology of Argentina takes this technology to a new level: a bullshit backpack. This technology can extract gas directly from the cattle’s digestive system, which can then be used as a source of heat or energy.
In addition, it is very feasible to use bullshit as energy, because natural gas burns cleaner than coal or oil, unlike coal and oil, which releases carbon that was previously trapped underground.
