Global warming is an apocalypse 200 years in the making, caused by the frivolous usage of toxic fossil fuels to power our factories, light up our streets, and keep ourselves warm. Humanity was too selfish and ignorant to focus on clean energy such as solar panels, watermills, windmills, and nuclear reactors during the Industrial Revolution, which sparked the beginning of our collective demise. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will eventually bake all life on Earth into a sad, hot, and dead pie, bringing an end to our destructive existence. However, there is still hope. Humanity has the technology and resources to stop global warming, and even reverse the consequences of our actions! Here are three simple and affordable methods to stop global warming and save our planet from burning to a crisp.

The 1883 eruption of Mount Krakatoa was one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic eruptions in recorded history, causing almost 40,000 deaths. The silver lining to this horrible incident was that the 17-mile-high ash cloud caused heavy rains and the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere to drop by 0.4 degrees Celsius. This was caused by the enormous amount of sulfur dioxide (about 15 million tons) released into the atmosphere, a byproduct of volcanic activity that can reflect sunlight away from the Earth when in the atmosphere. With this in mind, scientists should work toward releasing hundreds of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide to replicate the cooling of the Earth caused by Krakatoa. For those of you asking: “How are we ever going to produce that much sulfur dioxide?”, the answer is incredibly simple and ironic. Burning large amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas creates vast amounts of sulfur dioxide. For 1 ton of coal, 90 lbs of sulfur dioxide is created and for 1 ton of oil (assuming a 1.5% sulfur content), 60 lbs of sulfur dioxide is created. This means that by exhausting the remaining oil and coal reserves of the world, we can produce enough sulfur dioxide that the world will be plunged into a refreshing ice age. An added benefit is that humanity will be forced to use green energy because no other fossil fuels are available. 

Plants are known for their remarkable ability to consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Algae can absorb twice their weight in CO2, which vastly outpaces any other plant on Earth. It grows quickly with little nutrients and can inhabit nearly any body of water. This characterizes algae as a potential solution for our carbon dioxide emissions, as we can easily improve algae to better fit our purposes. With the help of genetic modification, scientists can design a strain of algae that can survive on land and in water. Other suggested improvements include increased reproductive efficiency via the ability to consume other plants to produce more algae. Slow, inefficient and resource-taxing trees will be replaced by more effective algal blooms on land and in the sea. Imagine how much more carbon dioxide could be eliminated if we replaced a few forests with genetically modified algal blooms several feet tall! The destruction of lake ecosystems is trivial when compared with the potential burning of the world caused by climate change. With enough funding, we can create a highly infectious (I mean effective) plant that can absorb all carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and stop climate change once and for all. 

Humanity has 50,440 solutions to our climate crisis, but nobody is willing nor brave enough to use them. That’s right, I’m talking about the nuclear option. Only 100 warheads are required to start the solution to our problems: nuclear winter. The mushroom clouds containing debris, water droplets and radioactive fission products will be dense enough to block most sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth, causing a “nuclear winter”. In time, this will decrease the average temperature of the Earth, reversing the negative effects of climate change and then some! In addition, all infrastructure that uses fossil fuels will be destroyed, so that all of humanity will be forced to use clean energy. From then on, humanity will rely on solar power to warm, light and power our bunkers and bring about a new nuclear age free of climate change. Wait…solar panels require sunlight…and the atmosphere is blocking the sun…

“Oh poop.”

• Victor Perkins