Controlling the Weather

IT FINALLY RAINED at the eastern end of the Ozarks, and I'm sure my neighbors are as happy as I am, that their lawns are gree again, just one more time this year, before Autumn sets in. The weather, the climate is really a problem now, with prolonged droughs in many parts of the world, including mine.It may not be such a big problem by the end of this century,by which time it seems quite possible that humans will be able to control the weather, or at least influence it a great deal, enough to make it much more pleasant. It is tempting to think about large, currently sparise, desolate and barren sections of Africa, Asia, and North America terraformed, supporting a thriving botanical and zoological ecosystem rather than merely barren desert and scrub brush prairie. It doesn't necessarily seem so far fetched to imagine that future people moght have complete control over the entire biosphere system of the Earth, to the advantage of all, hopefully. Admittedly, a future world without any inudstrial pollution might not seem or be much more realistic than a world without human follly in general. Such a world is, however, entirely and totally necessary for the long term survival of the human species, as anyone who has ever studied people knows all too well. When humanity has exploited every square inch of planet Earth, what next? Dreaming about space exploration, and about human colonies in outer space has been a favorite past time of mine my entire life. Assuming that humans ever achieve this, it would certainly be far batter to do so motivated exclusively by curiosity and ambition rather than necessity or desperation. It woud be far beter for us to reach out into the solar system and universe and have a clean, safe, healthy planet to come home to. Different gueses have been made regarding how many people could live comfortably on Earth, and range up to twenty billion. It would probably be much better to maintain a much smaller human population than that, for the benefit of not only themselves but also for the entire ecosystem but large enough to function as an advanced planetary civilization. Terraforming Mars, turning its surfce ecosystem into one closely resembling Earth's, might be possible, and desirable, with human habitat on the surface and beneath the surface of the Red Planet, and its to moons. Perhaps spacefaring colonies of humans could set forth into the galaxy, eploring, and perhaps colonizing suitable planets. So many Earth-like planets have been discovered in the past few years that it seem almost inevitable that eventually mmillions of Erath like planets will be catalogued, and perhaps explored by humans or human made robots. Most people express a certain nostalgia for stone age cultures such as the native American Indian culture which was the victim of genocide by European conquerors. Somehow the bucolic idealized lifestyle begins to stagnate just a bit without our accustomed devotion to progress and improvement,essentialy, change. The pace of change on Earth has been accelerating for centuries, and oen wonders where and how it will slow down enough to allow humanity regain control of it, which it most certaiinly does not currently appear to have. If, for instance, the human species, perhaps acting through the United Nations, does not establish an organized system for dealing with Artificial Intelligence, we may, or may not, live to regret it.