but nature is self-correcting as well
As an amateur astronomer, I take a universal view of "nature". For the geological moment, this planet suits our needs. It has not always been so, and it will not always be so. Nature is a context, not a friend or enemy, and that context works out sometimes for what we might call "good". Sometimes it works out to our destruction. A species decimating pandemic could be natural enough. If we fast forward millions of years, we will surely need to fend off comet/asteroid strikes that nature sends our way. It will not be so hectic as in the movies, and the corrections needed are likely to be quite boring to watch. Finally, of course, the sun itself will destroy all life on this planet. I think the affinity we have for "nature" is simply that the ecological balance that nature finds of over hundreds of thousands of years tends to be more stable than what we get when we change things rapidly with limited foresight of how things will play out.
Nevertheless, if "nature" wants to lead us into another ice age, I would humbly suggest that we decline, if possible. Perhaps we should simply develop some technology to "throttle" solar radiation through modification of the net albedo of the planet. The scale of the problem is daunting, of course.
Edited by mhosea, 21 January 2014 - 02:30 AM.