Gazetteer Topics

[Feinan]

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I like the idea of having biomod plants in the atmosphere working to break down some of that CO2, though. Hell, the atmosphere is thick enough and deep enough that you could have an entire airborne ecosystem of terraforming plants sucking up that carbon dioxide. Plenty of room for broadleaf to "evolve" without requiring us to cool the surface down from blast-furnace first.

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I've never insisted the plants be on the surface; in fact, I usually mention that the algae I've designed are made to float in the atmosphere. I think others have gone for the surface model...and when I've read of the algae model for terraforming Venus, I do believe I remember something about water production/rain that would eventually cool the surface. But you certainly don't need that for an evolving ecosystem in the atmosphere. If you want to make it difficult to harvest the broadleaf, you could always say that the extremophilic tendencies have made it so that the thionite-producing variety lives down at the bottom of the viable plant range, nearer the heat/surface.