Eskimo North

I really wish that was funny.

Seems like to me terraforming of Earth is something that is well underway. A real problem is that we've changed our environment to the point where we are completely maladapted for it. Sometimes I wonder if this isn't actually intended by an alien species, we're just part of the project.

I agree it lacks humor value. I wish I could say I was entirely sure that hypothesis didn't have some element of truth behind it, but what I've read, seen, photographed, and heard in the last few years as well as a strange experience I had almost four decades ago makes it impossible for me to rule out.

I had hoped that the experiment was coming to an end as we seemed to be running out of readily accessible oil. Oh sure there was stuff 25 miles down, almost limitless, but drilling to those depths pretty much impossible and even if we could the pressures would be so great that containing it would be a problem. And then there was oil tightly locked in shale formations and yea, we could strip mine it the way Canada does but that seemed prohibitively expensive, Canada proved otherwise. But still lays waste to the land and produces a lot of ugliness.

But along came frackiing.. Hydrological fracturing of the rock, basically pump water and chemicals in at high pressure, break the rock, chemicals dissolve the otherwise immobile bitumen, and pump it back out. And that promises to make the United States energy independent in the near future and perhaps for another 15-20 years until that runs out. By then, the atmosphere should be about 1% CO2, elderly people and those with any pulmonary issues would have long since croaked, the oceans will have a PH of about 3.0 and be devoid of any life higher life. Anorexic acid tolerant bacteria will be going strong though and pumping out big quantities of hydrogen sulfide which ought to kill off most of the higher life left on land (us) that hasn't already starved to death after we've killed 3/4 of the worlds food supply.

People are worried about tiny earthquakes and ground water pollution from fracking, they ain't seen nothing yet. The worst thing about fracking is that it will get us the oil we want.