ultracool writes, "While the only permanent solution for human-driven global warming is developing renewable energy, a temporary hack to counteract possible abrupt climate change is to build a giant sunshade in space. The sunshade would be launched in small pieces by electromagnetic launchers, conventional chemical rockets being far too expensive. The sunshade could be developed and deployed in 25 years, would last about 50 years, and would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by 2% — enough to balance heating due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." From the article: "The [trillions of] spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer... Sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun [at L-1], would be diverted away from our planet... The sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers [collectively] launching a stack of [a million] fliers every 5 minutes for 10 years."
But if they're going to do it, then why not make it photovoltaic and get some energy out of it.
Blocking/decreasing photosynthesis would be bad, since it's one of only ways to decrease the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
We need to plant more trees to replace the devastation going on in South America, limit our CO2 production. America would be smart and try to help polish it's now tarnished reputation by taking a lead in this, and start by decreasing the amount of SUVs on the road.
L1 one of the Lagrange points [wikipedia.org], i.e. points in space where the gravity of the sun and the earth cancel each other out. Objects stationed at these points do not fall towards either the earth or the sun.
"...It's like making a complex solution to a simple problem..."
The weather system of the planet is about as far from "simple" as you can get. We have no clue about how the ecosystem of our world actually works. All this rancor about the "problem" of global warming and possible "solutions" are built upon an alter of such vast ignorance that I often find the discussion and "debate" of the topic to be the epitome of absurdity. The one prevailing predicate of almost every discourse about global warning and/or global climate change, is an unspoken implication that we (the human race) understand how the environment we live in works. WE DO NOT. And there exists a vast amount of historical evidence demonstrating that very notion.So the proposal of building a "shade" system for the planet to "cool it down" is so laughable due to the vast amount of hubris required to give it any consideration at all.
Perhaps we should work first on understanding the problem before coming up with solutions. Yeah, that means that the "I said it first" mentality will be hamstrung, but that, in my opinion, would be a good thing.
The history of the planet has shown that there is a history of global temperature change. How is this any different? I can see how people could think that we are polluting the planet (we are dont get me wrong) but do you guys really think that 'man' is actually doing enough harm to this planet?? Im not saying that this article is nuts or something all im saying is that i think there should be more research into our contribution to raising the earths temperature before we start making it colder without knowi
As you state, there have been global temperature changes before. But never at this rate. It is statistically reasonable to think that this is not just a coincidence. It might even be that global temperature was changing on its own to begin with, but the high rate probably means we are speeding it up.
About doing "enough harm", I would be worried after seeing what be managed with just a few years of CFCs. Unfortunately, the "more research is needed" line would be good... if there wasn't s
Welcome to/. I don't mean to be rude, but when you say "i think there should be more research into our contribution to raising the earths temperature", are you speaking from the perspective of someone in academia, preferably in a similar field, or are you just another bloke? Because I do know a few people doing climate research, and there in fact has been considerable investigation into this matter. And it's not controversial, either. Inside these circles, they're pretty much in agreement that humans a
Ah, ok. Well just for the record, I think the idea is stupid too. We should fix the problem by fixing the problem, not by launching a sunshade. But still, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means if we're dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, it's going to raise the global temperature. It is indeed a big deal.
1. The climate has always been variable. 2. Therefore, man is not having an impact on today's climate!
QED, right?
Here's an exercise: Explain to me how increased levels of CO2 (which are rising due to humans- I challenge you to find an explanation that has not been debunked from here to Shanghai and back), which Arrhenius demonstrated over 100 years ago [nasa.gov] could cause climate change, can't possibly be causing climate change?
The solution is a bit nuts. But it could have an undo button. If each of these little craft opened up some sort of large, deployable shade, then when we decided it was a bad idea, we could simply have them fold back up. Also, replace the shades with solar panels, and you'd have a huge electric grid that could be used for extraterrestrial mining and ore refinement. Of course, then you have to steer asteroids towards Earth to run them through the process, which sounds like another screwed up idea.
In an immediate sense I agree with you. But in the long run, it seems rather silly to hobble ourselves. The problem with energy usage, and even wastage, is not because we're using energy, but because of where that energy comes from (hydrocarbons).
If our energy came entirely from solar energy, we could use almost any amount of energy we wish (within reason) with negligible detrimental effects.
Also interesting to note I got modded -1 over-rated for this opinion. One wonders if there is a mod who drives an SUV and sporting a twin GFX card monster PC muttering about how no commie liberal is going to stop him doing what he damn well pleases and FU with some negative mods.
When you see how much time it took them to build the ISS, you know this kind of project has absolutely no chance of happening (and you wonder why some people waste time thinking about this kind of stuff).
The ISS is a useless status symbol. This actually has a purpose, and the need is becoming more apparent every year. On the upside, an enormous project like this would have many spinoffs. Maybe the launchers could also send up units to convert solar energy to microwaves and beam them back.
The ISS was originally a science/research project, and was designed to showcase international co-operation in a pro-active spirit of pushing back the boundaries and uniting man under a commmon aim. It was, therefore, clearly doomed from the very start. A giant sunshade in space is expensive and difficult, but means we can go on polluting our atmosphere and spunking energy away, and don't have to do any of that boring, annoying growing up and taking responsibility for our actions.
At least they're not using a giant space mirror. A project like that could possibly be retrofitted into a giant space laser and used to destroy all the robots on the planet only to be narrowly avoided by moving the planet away from the sun, legthening our year by a week. I know at the very least Al Gore would be against such an action.
The trouble is with things like that are the unintended consequences that it'll undoubtedly have. The real fix is that we start living sustainably. The sunshade won't fix problems such as that which will be caused because we're using 4 barrels of oil for every new one discovered.
As I quite literally just posted in Snowball Earth Hypothesis thread only this time maybe in a bit more detail...
So if you support the idea of global warming and that humanity is by far the largest contributor to the phenomenon then you believe that through our own naive actions we have potentially created a dire set of consequences for humanity and many other species on Earth. Now you want to actively cool the Earth by changing it's albedo even though we are still ignorant to how the climate actually work
``The real fix is that we start living sustainably.''
Yes. And biofuel is a good start. As I've said [slashdot.org] before [slashdot.org], biofuel is carbon-neutral, cheap to produce, does not create a dependency on foreign countries, and we can produce enough of it to power the whole USA using just a fraction of all the desert land there. It probably also doesn't produce as much nuclear waste as nuclear fission does (but I don't have any data for that).
Various means of producing power causes pollution. Pollution = Greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases cause global warming. Humankind puts up giant sunshade. Earth gets less light. Less light means solar power becomes obsolete. People need to burn more fossil fuels to get more power. Global warming picks up. Humankind builds a bigger sunshade.
Okay, that is a big exaggerated, but my point is that we need to invest in solar power and stop using fossil fuels which are just so obsolete. Maybe we should work on fission.
I don't care if I get modded down for this. I want to bring up this subject to discuss intelligently when I have time to reply.
Of course, but it isn't contradictory. We already receive far more solar energy that what we use from any energy source, and the only hard part about solar power is to produce the pannels in a way that is neither too expensive nor too poluting.
This is clearly a dumb idea, but its wrapped up in a way that will make sense to dumb people in power: Can't stand the heat? Get in to the shade! But along similar lines I was thinking about using hydrogen for fuel. There is a serious by product of creating hydrogen from oceans: oxygen. Oxygen is poisonous in high concentrations, but perhaps more worryingly its also a catalyst for fire. Isn't there a real chance that creating that much oxygen and pumping it into the atmosphere is going to take us from the re
A launch every 5 minutes for how 25 years? Do you kow how much energy that will use? Where are they going to get it from? Oil so it creates more emmissions? Sun maybe, nope sorry we'll be blocking that too!
The trillions this would potentially cost would be better served as investments in renewable energies. How about some long term solutions rather than band-aids?
Carbon Dioxide + Water + Light energy Glucose + Oxygen + Water Isn't there a way we can do this on a massive scale and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? And I don't mean plant forests because that isn't likely to happen due to the space they require. Synthesize our own chlorophyll and do it much more efficiently than plants can? Or perhaps skip chlorophyll altogether and go with some other means of using light (or even use nuclear power if some other energy source would be more efficient) to implem
Looking at the picture in the article, it looks like they're planning to put 100 millions CDs in orbit to reflect the light. If so, I think I have enough AOL CDs in my drawer for the mission to go ahead right now.
It would be way easier to modify earth's albedo instead. Man has modified albedo in two directions: polar caps are shrinking, decreasing albedo, and forest is shrinking also, increasing albedo.
But by actively modifying the albedo of part of the sahara and the other big deserts, for example, you could feasibly dump into space the few percent required to equilibrate earth's climate.
A combination of controled deforestation with desert "painting" could also do the trick.
At least this shows that anyone who considers burning trees as a good source of energy (Hint! Renevable!) cannot handle advanced physics concepts like light pressure.
Guess there's no limit to imagination when it comes to thinking of alternatives to building more nuke plants to replace coal/oil.
In the Simpsons, Mr. Burns built a giant sunshade to block the free source of energy that is the sun. In Futurama, a giant mirror is launched into space to block the rays of the sun, and reduce global warming. A small meteor hits it, causing it to turn, focus the light on the surface of the Earth, and cut a swathe through the arena from which the scientists (and Nixon's head) look on.
"conventional chemical rockets being far too expensive"
Hilarious that cost should be an issue when it comes to saving the world.
According to TFA:
The total mass of all the fliers making up the space sunshade structure would be 20 million tons. At $10,000 a pound, conventional chemical rocket launch is prohibitively expensive. Angel proposes using a cheaper way developed by Sandia National Laboratories for electromagnetic space launchers, which could bring cost down to as little as $20 a pound.
>Hilarious that cost should be an issue when it comes to saving the world.
What did Bush say about Kyoto? He wouldn't sign up to anything that hurt the US economy? Well, dude, debating about the value of Kyoto apart, it's going to hurt a whole lot more if you don't do something pretty damned radical.
whilst I agree that long term solutions are the best, like planting more trees or reducing the amount of carbon we emit, the problem has got really bad - a lot worse than most people care to think. We just physically won't be able to get the US/India/China to agree to cut their emissions by an appropriate amount between now and 2050, this could keep us going whilst we're waiting to get an agreement internationally.
the problem has got really bad - a lot worse than most people care to think.
I agree. One problem is called global dimming, and means that our earlier pollutants (such as soot) have been reflecting sunlight out of the atmosphere and thus hiding the effect of the greenhouse gases. When we move to cleaner energy systems (not in terms of CO2, but other light-reflecting pollutants) the hidden effects due to global dimming might accelerate global warming faster than our current CO2 emissions can account for.
Angel is a brilliant mirror designer, but given that's what he spends his time thinking about, how much credibility would you give his ideas on fixing global warming? He is probably about as qualified to make suggestions on the subject as Mrs. Guy Ritchie. Or me.
If there are 2 proposed solutions to a problem - one boring and sensible (e.g. "let's stop wasting so much energy") and one that sounds as though it's the brainchild of a 12-year-old on crack - the media will emphasize the second one.
The goal of today's journalist isn't to inform; it's to attract attention and get a response. Because that's what pleases the advertisers, who are the customers who count.
Screw the superstrength wires. The reason ringworld was held together was that it was symmetric and the solar wind and light pressure on it from all sides evenly balanced itself (which even had to be sorted out in the second [or third?] book of the series). Any objects which are light enough to be put in orbit in such quantities will be blown to hell and gone off orbit by the light itself in 2-3 months. Nasa already did the experiment 20+ years back with an inflatable aluminium foil sphere and there was a si
Frankly pestering your local politicscritters until they stop approving cretinous suburbia developments that are designed to make trees impossible is a much better idea. Just look at most recent suburbia in UK (Cambouorne, MK, etc) and US. The utility supply lines are run deliberately in a manner which prevents anyone from planting anything larger then a small cherry or apple. And this is intended that way, allowed and approved by the bastards sitting on city council planning committees.
1. I'm pretty sure that I read (on/., actually) that they did a study and the amount of sunlight that actually reaches the surface of the earth has decreased by a whopping 10% since 1950. That alone puts a pretty huge dent in your theory. This is probably due to the fact that...
2. Life forms are surprisingly adaptive. You act as if plants are completely helpless in the face of a minor 2% change. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some long-term consequences (more to do with specific species thriving/suffering as opposed to planet-wide climate change) , but a permanent, perfectly linear/proportional drop in oxygen output is unrealistic.
3. Sunlight is only the energy source--plenty of other factors are involved in oxygen production.
4. I'm not at all sure that the greenhouse effect depends on gas proportions. You imply that the overall level of greenhouse gases could stay the same but if the relative amounts of other gases dropped, we would warm up. That's entirely possible, but that's not how I assumed it worked. Mars is pretty cold, and its thin atmosphere is composed (IIRC) mostly of CO2, so that seems to be another dent in your theory. Venus, on the other hand, has an extremely thick atmosphere of C02 and it's hotter than Mercury. From this, I would hazard a guess that raw quantities of greenhouse gasses are more important than percentages.
5. Even if greenhouse gases did have a proportional effect, the missing oxygen might very well be replaced by other inert gases. Plants aren't simple oxygen machines; they give and take in ways that I simply cannot recall (nor be bothered to Google) at 5:30 AM.
Oh, and personal responsibility doesn't work. Sorry. Wish it did... but it doesn't, so let's not completely neglect the worst-case-scenario plans, eh?
God obviously intended to heat us up a little (maybe so future generations will have less hair). It is His plan. Obviously, therefore, a massive Sun Shield fired in pieces every 5 minutes for 10 years is also God's design.
Don't worry, any project that have a real change of strongly reduce american addiction to cheap oil won't affect any big compagny that much. The worst thing that could happen would be a temporary raise of the blackmail, bribe and hitmen expenses, and they are tax deductible.
Didn't Mr Burns try this allready. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds bad, but cool 1rst step to Dyson sphere (Score:2)
Blocking/decreasing photosynthesis would be bad, since it's one of only ways to decrease the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
We need to plant more trees to replace the devastation going on in South America, limit our CO2 production. America would be smart and try to help polish it's now tarnished reputation by taking a lead in this, and start by decreasing the amount of SUVs on the road.
Re:Sounds bad, but cool 1rst step to Dyson sphere (Score:4, Informative)
L1 one of the Lagrange points [wikipedia.org], i.e. points in space where the gravity of the sun and the earth cancel each other out. Objects stationed at these points do not fall towards either the earth or the sun.
Parent
Re:Sounds bad, but cool 1rst step to Dyson sphere (Score:5, Insightful)
The weather system of the planet is about as far from "simple" as you can get. We have no clue about how the ecosystem of our world actually works. All this rancor about the "problem" of global warming and possible "solutions" are built upon an alter of such vast ignorance that I often find the discussion and "debate" of the topic to be the epitome of absurdity. The one prevailing predicate of almost every discourse about global warning and/or global climate change, is an unspoken implication that we (the human race) understand how the environment we live in works. WE DO NOT. And there exists a vast amount of historical evidence demonstrating that very notion.So the proposal of building a "shade" system for the planet to "cool it down" is so laughable due to the vast amount of hubris required to give it any consideration at all.
Perhaps we should work first on understanding the problem before coming up with solutions. Yeah, that means that the "I said it first" mentality will be hamstrung, but that, in my opinion, would be a good thing.
Parent
Or.. (Score:2, Insightful)
But hey, that would involve personal effort and we can't have that, can we.
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About doing "enough harm", I would be worried after seeing what be managed with just a few years of CFCs. Unfortunately, the "more research is needed" line would be good... if there wasn't s
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I love this logic:
1. The climate has always been variable.
2. Therefore, man is not having an impact on today's climate!
QED, right?
Here's an exercise: Explain to me how increased levels of CO2 (which are rising due to humans- I challenge you to find an explanation that has not been debunked from here to Shanghai and back), which Arrhenius demonstrated over 100 years ago [nasa.gov] could cause climate change, can't possibly be causing climate change?
Hey, climate science is uncertain, and question
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Also, replace the shades with solar panels, and you'd have a huge electric grid that could be used for extraterrestrial mining and ore refinement. Of course, then you have to steer asteroids towards Earth to run them through the process, which sounds like another screwed up idea.
We should
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If our energy came entirely from solar energy, we could use almost any amount of energy we wish (within reason) with negligible detrimental effects.
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Ditto for nuclear energy, but then we'd all be going to hell.
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The ISS is a useless status symbol. This actually has a purpose, and the need is becoming more apparent every year. On the upside, an enormous project like this would have many spinoffs. Maybe the launchers could also send up units to convert solar energy to microwaves and beam them back.
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A giant sunshade in space is expensive and difficult, but means we can go on polluting our atmosphere and spunking energy away, and don't have to do any of that boring, annoying growing up and taking responsibility for our actions.
I forsee a great future for
At least... (Score:2)
of course he wood (Score:2)
Band aid fix? (Score:3, Insightful)
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So if you support the idea of global warming and that humanity is by far the largest contributor to the phenomenon then you believe that through our own naive actions we have potentially created a dire set of consequences for humanity and many other species on Earth. Now you want to actively cool the Earth by changing it's albedo even though we are still ignorant to how the climate actually work
Biofuel (Score:2)
Yes. And biofuel is a good start. As I've said [slashdot.org] before [slashdot.org], biofuel is carbon-neutral, cheap to produce, does not create a dependency on foreign countries, and we can produce enough of it to power the whole USA using just a fraction of all the desert land there. It probably also doesn't produce as much nuclear waste as nuclear fission does (but I don't have any data for that).
Cause and effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Pollution = Greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases cause global warming.
Humankind puts up giant sunshade.
Earth gets less light.
Less light means solar power becomes obsolete.
People need to burn more fossil fuels to get more power.
Global warming picks up.
Humankind builds a bigger sunshade.
Okay, that is a big exaggerated, but my point is that we need to invest in solar power and stop using fossil fuels which are just so obsolete. Maybe we should work on fission.
I don't care if I get modded down for this. I want to bring up this subject to discuss intelligently when I have time to reply.
Plant billions of trees (Score:2)
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Ironically (Score:2)
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We already receive far more solar energy that what we use from any energy source, and the only hard part about solar power is to produce the pannels in a way that is neither too expensive nor too poluting.
Really? (Score:2)
But along similar lines I was thinking about using hydrogen for fuel. There is a serious by product of creating hydrogen from oceans: oxygen. Oxygen is poisonous in high concentrations, but perhaps more worryingly its also a catalyst for fire. Isn't there a real chance that creating that much oxygen and pumping it into the atmosphere is going to take us from the re
This is dumb (Score:2)
Where are they going to get it from? Oil so it creates more emmissions? Sun maybe, nope sorry we'll be blocking that too!
The trillions this would potentially cost would be better served as investments in renewable energies.
How about some long term solutions rather than band-aids?
Artificial photosynthesis (Score:2)
Isn't there a way we can do this on a massive scale and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? And I don't mean plant forests because that isn't likely to happen due to the space they require. Synthesize our own chlorophyll and do it much more efficiently than plants can? Or perhaps skip chlorophyll altogether and go with some other means of using light (or even use nuclear power if some other energy source would be more efficient) to implem
Picture (Score:3, Funny)
If so, I think I have enough AOL CDs in my drawer for the mission to go ahead right now.
Modify earth albedo instead? (Score:2)
Man has modified albedo in two directions: polar caps are shrinking, decreasing albedo, and forest is shrinking also, increasing albedo.
But by actively modifying the albedo of part of the sahara and the other big deserts, for example, you could feasibly dump into space the few percent required to equilibrate earth's climate.
A combination of controled deforestation with desert "painting" could also do the trick.
All this seems far more plausible than sun
Oh well (Score:2)
Guess there's no limit to imagination when it comes to thinking of alternatives to building more nuke plants to replace coal/oil.
You mean to counteract the REAL cause .. (Score:3, Informative)
Why look for a scientific explanation when you can make it a political issue?
They both did it (Score:2, Informative)
In Futurama, a giant mirror is launched into space to block the rays of the sun, and reduce global warming. A small meteor hits it, causing it to turn, focus the light on the surface of the Earth, and cut a swathe through the arena from which the scientists (and Nixon's head) look on.
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According to TFA:
Even if
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What did Bush say about Kyoto? He wouldn't sign up to anything that hurt the US economy? Well, dude, debating about the value of Kyoto apart, it's going to hurt a whole lot more if you don't do something pretty damned radical.
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I agree. One problem is called global dimming, and means that our earlier pollutants (such as soot) have been reflecting sunlight out of the atmosphere and thus hiding the effect of the greenhouse gases. When we move to cleaner energy systems (not in terms of CO2, but other light-reflecting pollutants) the hidden effects due to global dimming might accelerate global warming faster than our current CO2 emissions can account for.
No, it's Angel, what do you expect (Score:2)
No, it's modern journalism (Score:2)
If there are 2 proposed solutions to a problem - one boring and sensible (e.g. "let's stop wasting so much energy") and one that sounds as though it's the brainchild of a 12-year-old on crack - the media will emphasize the second one.
The goal of today's journalist isn't to inform; it's to attract attention and get a response. Because that's what pleases the advertisers, who are the customers who count.
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Any objects which are light enough to be put in orbit in such quantities will be blown to hell and gone off orbit by the light itself in 2-3 months. Nasa already did the experiment 20+ years back with an inflatable aluminium foil sphere and there was a si
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And you European
Re:less photosythesis = lower oxygen (Score:4, Interesting)
1. I'm pretty sure that I read (on
2. Life forms are surprisingly adaptive. You act as if plants are completely helpless in the face of a minor 2% change. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some long-term consequences (more to do with specific species thriving/suffering as opposed to planet-wide climate change) , but a permanent, perfectly linear/proportional drop in oxygen output is unrealistic.
3. Sunlight is only the energy source--plenty of other factors are involved in oxygen production.
4. I'm not at all sure that the greenhouse effect depends on gas proportions. You imply that the overall level of greenhouse gases could stay the same but if the relative amounts of other gases dropped, we would warm up. That's entirely possible, but that's not how I assumed it worked. Mars is pretty cold, and its thin atmosphere is composed (IIRC) mostly of CO2, so that seems to be another dent in your theory. Venus, on the other hand, has an extremely thick atmosphere of C02 and it's hotter than Mercury. From this, I would hazard a guess that raw quantities of greenhouse gasses are more important than percentages.
5. Even if greenhouse gases did have a proportional effect, the missing oxygen might very well be replaced by other inert gases. Plants aren't simple oxygen machines; they give and take in ways that I simply cannot recall (nor be bothered to Google) at 5:30 AM.
Oh, and personal responsibility doesn't work. Sorry. Wish it did... but it doesn't, so let's not completely neglect the worst-case-scenario plans, eh?
Parent
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