I stumbled upon the idea of 'Hacking the Planet' back in 2010 when I read "The Fourth Paradigm - Data Intensive Scientific Discovery". That book harkened back to my college 'bull' sessions and when 'ozone' depletion first was reported. I scoffed at the problem and stated, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, "what's the problem, launch a rocket over Antartica and release a bunch of ozone". My comment laid dormant in my mind until I read "The Fourth Paradigm". Shortly after that Mr. Kintisch's came out and I waited for the eBook price to come down. I finally stopped waiting.While a bit dis-jointed at times if you have an interest in Global Warming you should probably read this book. For the most part it stays away from the politics of Global Warming and focuses on the ideas and technologies currently being researched to reduce or off-set our 'carbon-footprint'. Mr. Kintisch does explain how politics plays a role in what and how real-world experiments take place (or not). Unless your living under a rock you have be aware of the Global Politics of Global Warming.The best construct of "Hacking the Planet" is when Mr. Kintisch starts every chapter with an example of a small 'hacking' of the planet and it's impact years later. I don't think I spoil the book by mentioning that the last chapter's hack results are beneficial where the previous hacks not so much. This is an effective method of demonstrating risk.Mr. Kintisch demonstrates that "the side" which thinks Global Warming is not a risk, and humans do not have the ability to change the environment of the world, support 'Hacking the Planet', or at least research and limited experiments. Whereas the side most worried about Global Warming impact and that humans are responsible for it does not support 'Hacking the Planet'; humans have already done too much damage and anything else we do will only make it worse.My thoughts are, just because I may take medicine that improves my cholesterol numbers does that mean I should eat more bacon (and not change my diet)? I believe Marcus Aurelius would say a combination of both, in moderation, would be the most effective.
