Terraform Earth Using Synthetic Life to Stop Climate Change

                                                                            Its alive!  Its alive!  
                                            Igor---release the artifical life so it can begin capturing CO2!

Don't like the idea of geoengineering the climate?  How about  bioengineering synthetic life forms in the lab, and then seeding them around the planet so they can geoengineer terraform the Earth's climate instead? Bioengineers are proposing to do just that---they say then can create  new synthetic life that will go forth and terraform the Earth in order to stop global warming.

There are advantages to using synthetic life to terraform the Earth.  Life grows and reproduces naturally so after being released from the lab a new synthetic life form could easily grow and multiply and spread across the globe until it was capable of pumping down huge amounts of CO2.  Very little expense would be involved once the synthetic lifeform was released as it would feed on the same kinds of food as natural organisms.  If at went as planned, the synthetic organisms could go on to terraform the earth with absolutely no human supervision once they were released.  

Of course the very same things that are advantageous about creating synthetic life forms that will gobble up CO2 from the atmosphere could lead to problems.  What if the synthetic life form does better then expected and pumps down too much CO2 and starts an ice age?  What if it thrives to the point that it begins crowding out other natural organisms and altering ecosystem?  What if it triggers a chain of events that accelerates global warming?  One can imagine all sorts of Frankenstein-like scenarios, but the bioengineers say not to worry---they are testing various ways to ensure that the synthetic life they create will behave itself when released into the wild.   

Perhaps the greatest concern is what kind of changes will occur in the synethetic life forms after they are released from the lab and start to spread around the world.  Life is extremely tenacious and organisms typically evolve to compete with other organisms to fill all the available ecological niches---artificial life should behave no differently.   While various safeguards will be built into the genetics of any artificial lifeform released from the lab, the creatures will be subject to natural mutations and will start evolving as soon as they are are released into the wild.  One can imagine artificial lifeforms undergoing mutations that allow them to compete with existing organisms for the available ecological niches. 

Adding synthetic life into biosphere will very interesting at best--- at worst we might wind up having to geoegineer the earth twice---once to stop global warming and once to counteract the effects of terraforming done by out-of-control synthetic life forms.