Episode 20 << Click to Listen

[Download]

Eli Kintisch, author of Hack the Planet, joins us to discuss some of the ambitious and risky geoengineering schemes that are being proposed to address climate change.

Panel Topic: Terraforming

Please follow us on Twitter.

Introduction

0:00 Introduction by Tor.com

0:38 Dave and John introduce the show

Interview: Eli Kintisch

02:00 Interview begins

02:11 How Eli got interested in science and became a science writer

02:51 Eli’s favorite science fiction authors and “climate porn”

03:30 Worst-case scenarios: methane, mega-droughts, and the death of the rainforests

05:27 Regarding geoengineering, and how the book came to be

06:17 Proposed methods of geoengineering

08:00 Small-scale environmental engineering and how it’s gone wrong

11:38 The history of geohacking; turns out it goes back a long way

13:32 Countries with competing interests in where to set the thermostat

14:51 Eli’s opinions of other books in the field

15:46 Regarding Michael Crichton’s State of Fear and Carl Sagan’s treatment of other planets

17:01 Eli’s take on terraforming: the ultimate hubris

18:12 How immersion in the subject has impacted Eli personally

19:12 The conspiracy theorists

20:18 Geoengineering vs. cutting carbon

21:53 Is there climate-related speculation happening now?

22:41 Coastal cities and adaptation to climate change

23:13 Waterworld and what generations down the line might be dealing with

24:02 What about super-cooling the planet? The problem of thermal inertia

25:58 What can we do as individuals?

26:41 Eli would love to hear from listeners at http://hacktheplanetbook.com

26:57 End of interview

Dave and John talk about geoengineering and terraforming

27:08 Geoengineering and the Gulf oil spill

28:45 People’s natural revulsion toward geoengineering

29:56 Lex Luthor’s misguided effort at geoengineering to increase property values

31:28 The Day After Tomorrow, and scientists as heroes

36:25 The difficulty that SF faces today, and the optimistic futures of the Shine anthology, edited by Jetse de Vries

38:51 The importance of the cautionary tale: Soylent Green; Anathem

40:57 Glaciers, sea levels, ice, and fresh water: Ice Pirates; The Millenial Project

43:34 Terraforming 101: AIR.

45:08 Regarding Mars: Total Recall; the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

46:25 Example of terraforming in Star Trek: the Genesis Torpedo inStar Trek II; ST:TNG

47:32 More about Mars: Red Planet and Mission to Mars

49:47 When terraforming becomes routine: Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny; Slartibartfast’s award-winning fjords

51:34 Zelazny’s “The Keys to December” and the unforeseen consequences of geoengineering

53:02 Altering humanity to suit the environment: Frederik Pohl’sMan Plus; “People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi

53:54 The origin of the term “terraforming”

54:17 Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun

55:07 Stuck in the Solar system: terraforming what we’ve got, and the example of Firefly

56:49 Mike Resnick’s Kirinyaga

57:43 The ethics of terraforming

59:45 Show wrap-up

Next week: Nnedi Okorafor, author of Who Fears Death

Thanks for listening!

Show notes compiled by podtern Christie Yant. Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.