Surely theres been some research into like pressure relief holes or something…antacid tabs?

I am sure there are lots of geologists who have thought of it, it makes sense right?

The problem is that nobody gives a shit about listening to geologists unless they are talking about where to find oil. Even if a geoengineering project of this scale and magnitude (with such catastrophic consequences if it goes wrong) where possible with near current geological science and hardware this degree of interest and investment of society is only ever committed to visions techbros provide and I don’t think a single techbro has ever taken a geology class and actually remotely paid attention.

It was geologists in the 1970s who first pointed out the obvious connection between human released CO2 emissions and global warming.

Nobody gave a shit :)

(plenty of complicit geologists who made a veryyyyy good living too don’t get me wrong)

We are just weirdos going on about rocks except when those rocks are really valuable and provide the capacity to create empires but even in those cases we are never really part of that, we are always still the weirdos going on about rocks who everybody is like “ok but can you shut up now and point to the gold on the map?”.

I know it is a weird example but look at the landscapes of virtual environments, video game developers have been trying to craft evocative landscapes since the beginning of video games even before 3D engines, you would think that some of them might have been interested to find inspiration for world design from the dizzying variety of landforms and stories described in geology (that are perfect to engage a player with because geological landscapes are layered stories first and foremost).

From the perspective of a geologist, it is obvious for game developers to make world building tools that allow molding an entire mountain range for an open world rpg by first starting with two continents and smashing them together with your mouse over and over again until it made a compelling starting point (instead of just making every damn mountain by hand or just writing a dumb algorithm to randomly generate mountains) and then running a massive river through the mountains for 10 million years to create the main valley for the game.

Todd Howard released a screenshot of the next Elder Scrolls Game

the story here was there was a river and then a mountain range came in (some new kid named Appalachians) and was like “sorry dude” but then the Delaware River was like “I am literally going nowhere bro, put your silly mountains wherever you want and I will cut you down when you get in my way”. This friendly conversation has been going on for 400-500 million years, which is about 1/8 of the earth’s history (the earth was a hot mess for the 1st billion so that barely counts). A lot of rivers are pretty lazy, but not the Delaware River, you gotta give it credit.

A geological sandbox for large scale world design that allowed game developers to quickly and intuitively create landscapes with layered pasts and local variety that perennially inspired curiosity from players seems so obvious to me it is painful. (Also as a fun toy for its own sake).

Like damn… video games barely know how to make a rock outcrop look natural and it is 2024… ——

All that being said to point out that your vision of a cool geo-engineering project is mostly unrealistic because of humans not even bringing geology into the picture. Part of the globalized contagion of late-stage capitalism is VERY crucially a collective forgetting of the stories in the landscapes around us. We have been taught to see the landscape around us as a background for our genius, not the primary gift passed down by our ancestors, the foundation of all the beauty in our lives and a fascinating machine of anarchy that creates endless forms of order.

Everywhere all over the world people are extracting groundwater at a ridiculously unsustainable rate (the fucking AXIS EARTH IS TILTED ON has changed because so much groundwater has been extracted) even while geologists try to point out there is going to be no clean water left???, the dysfunction of our thinking with respect to land goes very deep unfortunately.

Instead we are left with this trash Elon Musk-esque obsession with spiritually disconnecting ourselves from Earth and leaving for Mars as if the idea of separating us from the landscape (and natural systems/biosphere) we evolved in makes any sense at a basic level of our body maintaining homeostasis effectively or is something we would even desire to do (thanks for that one, sci-fi shows and books!). It is like plucking an ant from an ant colony, carefully placing it into the ocean and whispering “now you can start a new life here”…… It makes no sense.