[Brett66]

I like the idea of Terraforming Earth, and utilizing free markets to do it. There's so much we could do if we had the will to.

We could:
1. Use space-based mirrors to warm cold regions of the Earth and to create more yields from crops and more pleasant to live in.

2. We could use some type of shading to cool regions of the Earth that are too hot.

3. We could build large levys around our coasts or throughout the ocean to control tidal waves.

4. We could alter moutain ranges that inhibit rainfall to certain areas of continents so more rain falls there.

There is nothing of these 4 things that are beyond our current engineering capabilities. It's just that it would be enourmously expensive and very difficult politically. The expense part of the equation is beginning to be solved by men like Rutan, but the political part is a very difficult hurdle to overcome, but we could engineer the planet if we truly had the will to do so.

[NicknamedBob]

Please see my link as listed above. Terraforming Earth is a part of terraforming other planets as well, principally Mars.

My suggestion of using a mass-driver to deliver loads of ice from Antarctica to deserts on Earth, and to Mars to terraform it, would eliminate the principle danger of global warming on Earth, the rise of oceans.

At the same time, it would permit the global warming of Mars, and in only hundreds of years, we would have a second planet for the human race.

Note that all of the space activity piggybacks on the launching of loads of ice electrically, rather than with rocket fuels. It is all a matter of scale.