Io9 has a mini series of articles on how humans consciously alter earth's geography in 3 parts (2 are out right now), and the good and the bad of this. It's kinda interesting getting this sort of analysis from a Sci-Fi Site.


http://io9.com/5644048/terraforming-ear ... 3000-years
http://io9.com/5646575/terraforming-ear ... nsequences

Oh side note: do I digivolve when I hit 100 posts?

Side reply - yes. And I believe it's actually more interesting.

Terraforming is fascinating. Mostly I've read about it in the context of Mars, where there isn't a whole ecosystem to mess up. I kinda hope it's complicated enough to do that we'd only get around to it after large amounts of research. Then again, climate disasters might provoke some interesting responses...

On ecosystems, Io9 has the 3rd part of their series, focusing on ecosystem changes:
http://io9.com/5653437/terraforming-ear ... owed-a-fly

From what I've heard of Martian Terreforming, it's fairly simple, just really large scale. I believe the focus mainly to raise the temp enough so that the water on mars melts, and then everything takes care of itself.

Oh yeah, they also need to add oxygen somehow....

Yea, the heat and oxygen (atmospheric pressure in general) are the big parts, but as part of that, you need to add a lot of heat without adding a lot of CO2, since that's most of what's there now. I'd suggest the Mars trilogy to anyone curious about it.