Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future in Science and Inquiry

Jan 13, 2022 aPriL does feral sometimes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: academic-notations, science, non-fiction

'Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future' by Elizabeth Kolbert is a review of various theoretical and some current scientific test experiments. The scientists want to either increase the hardiness of species in order for them to survive a hotter environment or to slow down the incoming catastrophe of global warming through manipulation of what is in the atmosphere.

Global warming is inevitable. The fixes people are exploring to solve the problems in slowing down its inevitable arrival and at 'Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future' by Elizabeth Kolbert is a review of various theoretical and some current scientific test experiments. The scientists want to either increase the hardiness of species in order for them to survive a hotter environment or to slow down the incoming catastrophe of global warming through manipulation of what is in the atmosphere.

Global warming is inevitable. The fixes people are exploring to solve the problems in slowing down its inevitable arrival and at the same time save civilization cover a LOT of theoretical territory. Kolbert's book offers some hope, but in my humble opinion, the Earth all of us that are alive now know is not going to be the same one for our grandchildren.

Below I've copied the cover blurb:

"That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.

One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face."

I cannot see at all that there is any political will whatsoever in any of the developed countries to give any more than lip service and minor half-hearted support to these ideas and experiments Kolbert describes. Every single one of them involve astronomical economic burdens and require unprecedented cooperation of all the tribal territories/governments of Earth. Many of the ideas are theoretical and untried or, if currently being implemented, are not easily scaled up or not possible to scale up. Kolbert writes of ideas that were tried in the 1970's and proved a failure. Nor is it known if the sideways consequences of some of the ideas to slow global warming might be worse than the original problem. For example, increasing the reflection of heat/light back into space could cause catastrophic failure of agricultural crops.

The book has Notes and Credits sections.

My personal thoughts:

People being what they are, I predict a future Earth full of warring dystopian societies for a long while before any true civilization returns. I think there will be only wealthy people, not wealthy countries. The scale of disruption caused by global warming is literally global, but the experiments scientists are doing today involve small caverns, or a field, or a reef, or an island. Stop and start, stop and start, funding permitting. There are almost 200 countries on Earth - each one populated by self-interested and tribal xenophobic humans, with every current society having layers of competing haves and have nots...

I am going to be 70 years old soon. Frankly, as an ordinary low-income and maybe humble individual, I am very happy after finishing reading this book that the existential problems future generations will be struggling with in dealing with global warming very probably are ones I will not have. Good luck.

I highly recommend The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. ...more

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Oct 17, 2021 Chinook rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook, science

This was interesting, though I expected more of it to be about future solutions like the space particles turning the sky white, and that’s really only a quarter or so of the book. There’s a long look at various invasive species, and I’m amused that I’ve recently read two books that mention pup fish.

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