In a recent comment @nananini made the statement
> When I see facts like this that prove the intricacies of them working together to sustain life....I can only say there is nothing mankind can create to compete with this 'technology'.

And she is correct.  I've written numerous post about the earth and climate change and am amazed at how many things come together to support life on earth.

It starts with the sun.  Different stars generate different amounts of energy and some are violent.  The violent ones can create explosions that would either eliminate life on earth immediately or just gradually rip away the atmosphere until we cannot survive.  Our sun is one of the good stars that are well behaved and generate the right amount of energy.

The second part is the placement of the earth in it's orbit.  The earth is close enough to the sun to be able to sustain liquid water on the surface but not so close to be too hot.  The availability of liquid water on the surface of the planet has been established as a criteria for life on other planets.  In the 1990's scientist figured out how to detect planets orbiting distant stars.  Since that time the Planetary Habitability Laboratory of  the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo had started putting together a [list of possible habitable planets](http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog).  Although the discovery of planets has been successful with more than 2300 confirmed planets identified, there are currently only 55 planets on the list that could potentially support life.

Even the dreaded greenhouse effect is an amazing benefit.  Water vapor is the most dominant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere.  The ability of the water vapor to trap heat from our sun warms the earth from a point that it would be survivable to a point that it is comfortable.  Without the greenhouse effect the average temperature of the earth would be approximately 0°F, but with the greenhouse effect the average temperature is 59°F.  Live may have been able to exist without the greenhouse effect, but I doubt it would be able to thrive.

The tilt of the earth gives us the various seasons we enjoy but also has the function of replacing the glaciers around the north pole that are melted during the summer.  The amount of tilt being important, more tilt making for colder winters and hotter summers.  Recent research has led to the understanding the tilt of the earth not only impacts our weather but can also be changed by our weather.  

The glaciers at the north pole, as they form and melt drive a vast ocean current that cools the southern hemisphere and warms the northern.  Ice melting today will not complete the current to return to the north pole as warm water for hundreds of years.  This ocean current works as the earth's thermostat to maintain the pleasant temperatures we enjoy.

The moon impact the tides in the ocean and has stirred the fascination and inspiration of mankind for thousands of years.  The tilt of the moon's orbit, that no one can explain, changed solar eclipses from be a relatively common place occurrence every month to a celestial show that now we understand but brought fear to our ancient ancestors.    Since the beginning of literature people have incorporated the full moon into everything from love stories to horror stories.

So many aspects of our planet interact with each other there is no way we could understand all the interactions.  Now some scientist with incredible hubris are discussing or trying geoengineering as a way to combat man-made global warming.  Different ideas are out including spraying water high in the atmosphere to generate clouds and artificial volcanoes spewing aerosols in the air to reflect more of the solar energy back to space. Not knowing all the interactions of the different aspects of our planet and climate system, who would have the arrogance to suggest something like this.

I look of how interconnected the climate system is and how seemingly arbitrary aspects of our environment have huge impacts on our ability to thrive on this planet.  I have never been an overly religious person, but I have trouble seeing how this all came together without some form of guidance.  Scientist are now telling us that the chance for intelligent life on other planets is one in 1 billion-trillion, or one in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  We've already beaten some long odds to get where we are, maybe we shouldn't be so eager to potentially screw it up with geoengineering.