What If We Lost the Sky? 421
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Anna North writes in the NYT that a report released last week by the National Research Council calls for research into reversing climate change through a process called albedo modification: reflecting sunlight away from earth by, for instance, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. But such a process could, some say, change the appearance of the sky — and that in turn could affect everything from our physical health to the way we see ourselves. "You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore." says Alan Robock. "Astronomers wouldn't be happy, because you'd have a cloud up there permanently. It'd be hard to see the Milky Way anymore."
According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, losing the night sky would have big consequences. "When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger. There's clearly a neurophysiological basis for that," says Keltner, adding that looking up at a starry sky provides "almost a prototypical awe experience," an opportunity to feel "that you are small and modest and part of something vast." If we lose the night sky "we lose something precious and sacred." "We're finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people," says Paul K. Piff. "In many ways it's kind of an antidote to narcissism." And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that's available to almost everybody: "Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky."
Alan Robock says one possible upside of adding aerosols could be beautiful red and yellow sunsets as "the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud." Robock recommends more research into albedo modification: "If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision. Dr. Abdalati says deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort. "We've gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we're even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that."
According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, losing the night sky would have big consequences. "When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger. There's clearly a neurophysiological basis for that," says Keltner, adding that looking up at a starry sky provides "almost a prototypical awe experience," an opportunity to feel "that you are small and modest and part of something vast." If we lose the night sky "we lose something precious and sacred." "We're finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people," says Paul K. Piff. "In many ways it's kind of an antidote to narcissism." And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that's available to almost everybody: "Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky."
Alan Robock says one possible upside of adding aerosols could be beautiful red and yellow sunsets as "the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud." Robock recommends more research into albedo modification: "If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision. Dr. Abdalati says deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort. "We've gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we're even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that."
Highlander III did it already... (Score:3, Informative)
Possibly the worst movie ever, but everyone in their world hated their lives because they had no sky.
Highlander II but the sky part should own movie (Score:2)
Highlander II but the sky part should of been it's own movie not Highlander + a B movie scifi plot.
Re: (Score:2)
Highlander II was an abomination of a movie. I refuse to accept that it can teach us anything except how low Sean Connery will sink for a buck.
Re:Highlander III did it already... (Score:5, Insightful)
To quote the (only) movie: "There can be only one".
I refuse to acknowledge that the fantastic movie Highlander ever has had any sequels, prequels, tv shows, a franchise or anything else.
Just that one movie, with its marvellous soundtrack and the mystery of who the immortals were, where they came from, and why there could be only one.
None of this "they came from space. No, the future!" malarkey. It is and was a mystery, never explained.
Re:Highlander III did it already... (Score:5, Informative)
Those time-traveling immortals should have taken a detour via 2013 to hear Allan Savory's TED Talk: Allan Savory: How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change. [youtube.com] The action is all in the soil, not up in the sky.
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for sharing, that's the first time I've seen a somewhat thoughtful and serious (if not rigorous) attempt to debunk Savory's claims. Unfortunately, it disappoints on several fronts. First it gets some key facts wrong. For example, Holistic Management is not a "livestock management system" it is applicable to any context, not just agriculture. The livestock management system used by Savory is called Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG) [wikipedia.org] or just "rotational grazing" for short. A minor distinction,
Re: (Score:2)
Have you seen "Zardoz" [imdb.com]? Sean Connery running around in a loincloth and hip boots. Eek!
Re:Highlander III did it already... (Score:5, Interesting)
Another movie did it too.
They called it Operation Dark Storm and shortly afterwards most of humanity went extinct, just like how the greenies like it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes I think like this.
The greenies want to see the earth depopulated and they take every opportunity they can to make predictions about this or suggestions on how to do it via population control. Paul Ehrlich summarizes the whole movement pretty well with his numerous antihuman quotes.
Re:Highlander III did it already... (Score:4, Funny)
Nothing that mankind has control over is more likely to cause mass death than continuing to contribute to climate change
The most likely stable state the climate is going to end up in, compared to the interglacial we're in right now, is back into full glaciation.
There's no stable "hotter" state known (no matter the historical CO2 levels, which have been much much higher than we're projecting to ever reach) to science. The only question during an interglacial is whether the poles will be free of ice or not - and looking at the latest interglacial, the Eemian, we shouldn't be surprised if the arctic circle becomes ice free (still without any catastrophic effects whatsoever).
What do we need to do to get back into full glaciation?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Although - changing the albedo as proposed in the article might well bring us there sooner rather than later.
Caveat: This post reflects the current state of science accurately. Watch out for replies that don't.
Re: (Score:3)
Who are you? What do you even do with the rest of your life when it's not waiting to post something about systemd in every single article on Slashdot?
Re: (Score:2)
He is Leonart Poetering. He spends the rest of his time actually writing Systemd.
on starting with smaller-scale albedo modification (Score:5, Insightful)
Developed areas currently cover around 1% of Earth's surface already. Switching to more-reflective materials -- asphalt mixed with recycled glass, roofs with light-colored shingles instead of dark, Mediterranean-style exterior color schemes -- not only increases albedo but can mitigate heat-island effects and reduce the need to expend energy on cooling.
Re:on starting with smaller-scale albedo modificat (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds like a practical, reasonable plan that can be done with 19th century solutions. In other words, gay.
We're going to need a solution, preferably more than one, that will require 3D printers, private space, and dozens of universities, think thanks, and tax-funded "private" companies to rob you blind.
Welcome to the 21st century, don't forget to pay your rent.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is actions like this put the burden individuals and smaller municipal governments.
People especially Americans, do not like the government telling them what they can and can't do to their own property. Also the small local governments have limited funds, such actions will mean that the local government will need to make a serious sacrifice.
Putting such actions in place, will only lead to the politicians who put the rule in place being kicked out, and if it continues violence will escalate.
Now you
Re: (Score:3)
Local governments can change local building codes to require all new construction to fit the guidelines for albedo modification. Done.
Yeah, it won't affect existing infrastructure, but in the long term (and with AGW we're talking long term, or should
Re: (Score:3)
It's a shame the company didn't offer a retrofit kit to bring the old design into compliance.
They don't have to do this stuff to sell their stoves anywhere else, so why bother? Just drop the market, and keep selling the old design which works fine as long as you don't overdamp it. But sadly, most of us have no idea that overdamping is what causes excessive wood stove emissions. I mean, nobody ever taught me anything about starting a fire, or maintaining one, even though I grew up in a house with a fireplace.
Re: (Score:3)
Which neatly illustrates why we need environmental regs in the first place: if you're not going to make me, I won't bother doing something that'll benefit everyone. There must be a way to sell "makes your existing stove less polluting for a relatively low price" but they didn't want to bother.
Re:on starting with smaller-scale albedo modificat (Score:5, Insightful)
Irrelevant. We don't need to make specific predictions to predict that things will be bad.
Hell, forget specificity - it would be nice if it could even make a good/bad prediction, or at least *something* close enough and concrete enough. We've seen predictions of an ice-free Arctic by now (nope), sea levels that should have risen at least 5-12" by now (nope), swarms of killer hurricanes (nope)... and mostly we see a lot of authorities having to go out of their way to explain why their 10-year-old predictions have turned to crap. It doesn't help that some of them have resorted to long circuitous loops of semi-logic to try at an explanation.
Seriously - this isn't about quibbling over a fractions of a degree here, it's about getting the trend predictions workable, at least enough that later events come to within at least the same zip code of confirming them. Put this way: According to Dr. Hansen's infamous 'hockey stick', we should have seen something affirmative by now... and instead of revisiting his hypothesis to see why it didn't stack up against the facts on the ground (which would be the scientific way to deal with failure), we see Dr. Hansen actively litigating against any big-name critic that hurts his ego by pointing out that he was (*gasp*) wrong. And no - don't get me started on the IPCC; it's become little more than a propaganda organ these days.
So yeah - it is relevant to have a working model that can at least predict a trend, especially in light of what these scientists are demanding of society as a whole. As long as the science itself remains broken, no one should take stock in it.
Before anyone comes swooping in to express their hurt little feelings via downmods, note that I *want* these scientists to have a working model, and to have some sense of accuracy, no matter how it turns out otherwise. So far, not only is there a lack of one, but a religious and ideological fervor has swept the whole damn field, making it a mess that has lost credibility (partially in some cases, entirely in others).
Re: (Score:2)
Whitewash the whole built environment, like Greek villages? Albedo hackers, meet the solar panel supporters. Popcorn!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose the first thing to ask is "What can go wrong?"
Our planet maintains a balance so far and if you start to upset that balance then you are going to have two possibilities. 1) The planet goes through a runaway greenhouse effect and effectively gets far too hot, although probably not as hot as Venus. 2) The planet goes into deep freeze and this has happened before. We can actually thank volcanic action for reversing this process.
I can understand concern over potential global warming and am in favour of
The ocean is not acidifying (Score:3, Funny)
It doesn't actually remove any CO2, so things like ocean acidification will continue to get worse,
The ocean is getting more neutral [wattsupwiththat.com] if anything, but absolutely not "more acidic".
And whatever changes come from CO2 are far less than natural variance over the course of a month (read article)...
I despair that alarmists can't understand even the most basic aspects of material science.
Kind of makes you sweat that people who can't even understand the pH scale are casually fine messing with the atmosphere for the e
Re: (Score:3)
The ocean is getting more neutral [wattsupwiththat.com] if anything, but absolutely not "more acidic".
It's the same thing, just a different name.
And whatever changes come from CO2 are far less than natural variance over the course of a month (read article)...
The changes from CO2 add up to the natural variance.
Re: (Score:3)
It's the same thing, just a different name.
"more acidic" (the term I used) kind of is, but is misleading.
The original term used - acidifying - is absolutely clear as to what it means, and is totally wrong. There is nothing acidic involved with what is happening to the ocean from CO2.
The changes from CO2 add up to the natural variance.
RTFA. I knew you alarmists were dense, but really.
I leave you with that, nothing more can be done to help you I think.
Re:The ocean is not acidifying (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing acidic involved with what is happening to the ocean from CO2.
CO2 dissolves in water to form carbonic acid. It's clear enough.
RTFA. I knew you alarmists were dense, but really.
I'm not an alarmist. I'm just stating the facts. It's perfectly reasonable to talk about increasing acidity when you're adding an acid. Even if you're starting with a base.
This sounds like... (Score:3)
...the plot to a really terrible movie [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
haha, I watched that the other week. Less for the environmental plot, more for the gratuitous violence.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't fucking do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Yes, let mother nature take care of us. All hail our Goddess Earth.
Re:Don't fucking do it. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The nice thing about us - versus an anthropomorphized "Mother Earth" - is that we don't need to throw a massive amount of volcanic ash into the air in some completely uncontrolled way. We can put some into the air and see what the effect is like. We can gradually increase or decrease the amount applied. We can stop the "eruption" at any time and let the effect quickly dissipate.
I'm not trying to be glib about this - the ideal is to stop throwing CO2 into the air in the first place. But the fatalist approach
Burns, Montgomery Burns (Score:3)
But if you don't have a orbital sunshade swarm at L1 and blackout Tuesdays, you're just not a power worth worrying about.
Re:Don't fucking do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some questions:
1. How do you plan to decrease that amount?
2. How do you know how long you need to wait to realize you've overdone it? Suppose the temperature rises 0.5 degrees per year, so you spit some substance out. Next year there's no reduction of the trend, so you do what? Wait to see if that goes down next year or spit some more substance? Do you wait a decade? A century?
These global mechanisms are poorly understood and overly complex as it is, the last thing I'd want is meddling with it. It's like a 2 year old shoving both hands into a running car engine to make it sound more like the lullaby his mom's singing to him every night.
Re:Don't fucking do it. (Score:4, Informative)
Known around these parts as "eighteen-hundred-froze-to-death".
As in "Wow, that's old. Haven't seen one of those since eighteen-hundred-froze-to-death".
My friends usually look at me weird when I explain that the expression references 1816 and the effects of Mount Tambora exploding and putting lots and lots (and lots) of ash into the atmosphere.
Re:Don't fucking do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
we're already fucking with it, with CO2. that's not just going away
so we need to do something to counteract that
i think this aerosol solution is horrible, prone to all sorts of unseen side effects
i'd like to see more of the "seeding dead parts of the ocean with iron" effort, but that may be just as full of unintended consequences
there are solutions that are more mechanical, less about fucking with the atmosphere or ocean irreversibly in the short term. something we can roll out and recall with ease and comp
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know we think we're all-knowing, or at least smarter than mother nature. But we just shouldn't be fucking around trying to fix something by doing something more.
When the alternative is we all go back to living by the salt of the earth, building our homes by hand so the only pollution we create is the waste our bodies generate... yeah, I'm all about fucking around trying to fix it by doing something.
Changing for you maybe (Score:5, Informative)
"You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore."
Living in Ireland, the sky is white or grey about half the time. You get over it.
Re: (Score:2)
"You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore."
Living in Ireland, the sky is white or grey about half the time. You get over it.
The other half, it's just night time.
Re:Changing for you maybe (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, a lot of people already live in the sort of environments that they're warning against. This line got me:
Is that a joke? People's ability to see the night sky varies vastly depending on where they are. In big metro area, all you can see are the brightest of stars. There's little to no majesty to it. It's when you get out into the deep, deep countryside and look up at the uncountable multitude above you that you feel little and insignificant compared to the cosmos around you. There's nothing universal [othersideofthesky.net] about ready access [oarval.org] to a dark sky. And it's getting rarer and rarer.
Re: (Score:2)
Waaah. I live in Iceland, don't complain to me about a lack of winter sunlight.
I wasn't excusing anything - I don't support any geoengineering that works by increasing the albedo, for many different reasons. But it's simply fact that a large portion of the world's people live in areas that get proportionally little sun. And contrary to myth, they don't have higher suicide rates or anything like that.
The US (where many if not most slashdotters live) is actually an unusually sunny country, by first-world stan
Re: (Score:2)
Living in Ohio, much the same.
The open blue sky is great for meeting cultural expectations, but it's not particularly special. Once you're used to the cloud, it's actually rather uncomfortable to go somewhere with directional sunlight.
Re: (Score:3)
Quite true. Last spring I went to the US (Indiana and Texas) from Iceland with my then-fiance to show him where I grew up and went to school (he grew up in Iceland). It was too bright for him in Indiana, and in Texas it was downright painful for him.
We don't get much of that "sun beating down straight overhead" stuff here that you get in the states, it more sort of rotates around you, with really long sunrises / sunsets (sometimes with multiple sunrises / sunsets in a day as it moves past mountains).
Re: (Score:2)
The same is true in any large city, even in a sunny place, compared to the desert. Are the people of Los Angeles depressed because their skies are whiter than Arizona's?
What is interesting (Score:3)
- an envious Canadian
Re: (Score:3)
Re:What is interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but in those countries, they count beer and cider as alcohol. No self-respecting Irishman would do the same.
/duck
/run
Re: (Score:2)
You mean the Irish come from both Eurasia and Oceania?
Sadly (Score:3)
and our leadership is filled by tools bent on their own reelection above all else,
we are likely to wait until such a measure is a the only recourse.
Burn the land (Score:5, Funny)
Burn the land, boil the sea; you can't take the sky from me.
Cripes, what could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
What effects might the aerosols have?
What if we use too much? Do we really want to risk a snowball Earth?
Do we really want to risk anything on such a large scale just because some yahoo wants to roll coal?
Can no one see that not messing with the climate any more than we have to is the conservative position, at least as "conservative" is properly defined?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah.
There is one thing that could be done. Pull CO2 out of the atmosphere on a large scale. That would take enormous amounts of carbon-free electricity.
It would almost be like paying interest on a loan. Here's to hoping we can afford the payments when they come due.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, that sounds like some weird bitter irony:
Problem: We can't released all of the excess stored solar energy (compacted into fossil fuel over the millennia) fast enough!
Solution: Reduce the amount of solar energy the Earth receives now!
Way to rob the future to pay for the past.
Re:Cripes, what could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
Think about how much power was generated over the past 100 years of burning carbon, you're going to need more than that, probably much much more than that, to pull all that carbon out. And that's on top of all the power we'll be using in the meantime.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
What effects might the aerosols have?
What if we use too much?
At least we'll all have great looking hair that always stays in place.
Re: (Score:3)
Can no one see that not messing with the climate any more than we have to is the conservative position, at least as "conservative" is properly defined?
There are two fairly rational rebuttals to that, at least that I know of, and I'm on your side. The first is that we're already messing with the environment, so we might as well try to mess with it in a way that improves it. The second is that we're not going to stop messing with the environment, it's kind of what we do, so again, let's try to do it right. So both inertia and our nature work against the idea of not doing something.
Now, with that said, there are a couple of patents on making chemtrails- uh,
Re:Cripes, what could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some idiot is just going to do it.
It wouldn't surprise me if some consortium of obnoxious rich people (billionaires who own substantial amounts of Florida real estate are good candidates) and a low-lying country (my bet is on the Maldives) are just going to go distribute aerosols in the upper atmosphere.
The thing is, the actual volume of material you need to get into the stratosphere is not very large. A small jet flying eight or ten hours a week could do it. The problem is that most small business jets don't fly high enough to get effective distribution.
So you'd need to re-engine a gulfstream or two -- that's the big capital investment.
Someone could do this and not even need to ask permission.
We did this already... (Score:5, Funny)
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky."
So, the Sky is literally falling (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, the whole "Climate Change" thing was to explain that "it's not really global warming"; now they want to stop climate change by cooling the earth. ... So. Global Warming.
This kind of tampering would be a disaster.
Do it to Venus first (Score:5, Insightful)
Subject says it all.
Re:Do it to Venus first (Score:5, Interesting)
Venus is a little more complicated. It's got no internal dynamo, so its magnetic field is generated by the convection of its intense atmosphere. If you cooled it or slowed it, the magnetic field would disappear and its atmosphere would be eroded by solar wind.
Re: (Score:3)
Again, speaking as a layman, but my understanding is that it isn't the rotation of the planet that creates the internal dynamo, but the fact that our cool mantle constrains the energy of our hot core, which can only then be expressed as an internal convection. Venus, unlike Mars, also has a hot core, but also has a hot mantle; heat energy from the core radiates out without constraint. The energy that would have been used to power the dynamo instead goes to heat up the planet's crust.
Biology suggests that could potentially be Bad (Score:2)
We already know the human body is essentially a giant walking blue light detector. Changing the color of the sky permanently could seriously screw with us in ways we don't even know about, let alone the ones we do already know about.
Don't fuck with Mother Nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Any fix on this scale will come with many, many unintended consequences.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't fuck with Mother Nature
We. Already. Did.
I'd rather have us fuck with Mother Nature after a decade of exhaustive research, debate, and cost benefit analysis than continue fucking with Mother Nature purely based on what's most profitable at the moment (aka, what we do now).
Re:Don't fuck with Mother Nature (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd rather have us fuck with Mother Nature after a decade of exhaustive research, debate, and cost benefit analysis
I refer you to the calicivirus experiment in Australia for a truly scary example of exhaustive research, debate and cost-benefit analysis that didn't quite work out as intended.
Rabbit haemorrhagic disease, also known as calicivirus, was trialed in Australia to eliminate the rabbit population. Calicivirus can only infect rabbits; there is no interspecies transmission or carrier.
The trial was conducted on Wardang Island, some 2.4 miles off the coast of South Australia in Spencer Gulf. The island was already loaded with rabbits that were cut off from the mainland, and there was no known way for any of these rabbits to cross the water.
In 1991, the virus was introduced to the island. By 1995 it had spread to the mainland, killing 10 million rabbits within 8 weeks of it’s arrival. Those that were left developed immunity.
So, we have an isolated island with a virus that can only be transmitted within a single species; said species can’t swim; certainly not the two miles. Yet, unintended and unforeseen consequences of this carefully planned, carefully modeled and (apparently) highly contained in a very controlled area that was heavily policed by AQIS went horribly awry and made the rabbit plague in Australia much worse, but managed to wipe out huge numbers of pets rabbits..
We can't get it right on the small scale; how do we know we'll get it right on the planetary scale?
Reversing what now? (Score:3)
This is supposed to "reverse" the climate change? As in making it essentially perpetually cloudy? This sounds nothing so much like a nuclear winter, though without the nukes...
How something like that is going to reverse anything, now climate being that chaotic as it is doesn't easily move forwards or backwards along some line, like a car or animal does. It will change it, sure. Probably to the nuclear winter-like conditions, as if that were anything better than today's situation. Or maybe this would also keep heat in, so we would get what is essentially a runaway greenhouse... now wasn't that what was supposedely the problem initially?
This is just wrong on so many levels...
Re: (Score:3)
Why would that be a probable outcome ? Why couldn't we just add a little bit of the aerosols, measure the effect, and slowly add some more ?
There is pretty good historical evidence of what did happen when a big volcano blew out lots of ash and particles. Mount Tambora for example, that had an eruption in 1815, and the following year, 1816, became known as "the year without a summer", because of this. There is no good reason to expect a significantly different outcome from filling the atmosphere with other similar particles. It will become colder.
On the other hand, this does argue for the possibility that the system can behave somewhat predicta
Nature... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I came here to mention this. For some reason the people that suggest reducing the light hitting the surface always fail to grasp that it would also reduce the crop yields (along with the growth of all of the other plants, reducing their carbon uptake). It would also reduce the electricity generated from solar power plants.
Wouldn't it cause a massive plankton die-off? (Score:3)
And more omninously, make bikinis go out of style?
Human being is truly amazing. (Score:2)
Last time i checked we weren't the only creatures on this planet, worse yes, only, no.
Might be a good idea think what it does for the living biomass in a whole....We are kept alive by that very same mass.
Why try stop the warming like this? Pretty obvious, after that we can cash in for the fossil fuels that are still left to burn.
*pffft*
In other words - Status quo in Northern Norway (Score:2)
Krikkit (Score:2)
Some Kids have already lost the sky... (Score:4, Interesting)
“Now I prefer cloudy days when the drones don’t fly. When the sky brightens and becomes blue, the drones return and so does the fear. Children don’t play so often now, and have stopped going to school. Education isn’t possible as long as the drones circle overhead.”
I added the bold.
From: http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]
I only read this a few days ago, but was really struck by it. The reason is completely different from that covered in the original article, but I wonder at the effects the author is concerned about...
Cheers,
Bruce.
Right... what could go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. We have a perfect understanding of the climate. We can predict to a tenth of a degree what the weather will be two weeks or two hundred years from now anywhere on Earth. We fully understand what triggers ice ages and can hindcast the climate of the entire Pliestocene, quantitatively. Our knowledge of solar dynamics is almost perfect, so we can confidently predict the state of the sun well into the future. Our measurements of atmosphere, ocean, and land are complete so that we know the entire state of the ocean (for example) well enough to predict with complete accuracy its future evolution given any possible variation of solar input. Finally, we are perfectly capable of predicting the future course of human affairs -- global population, the distribution of that population, land use -- and can predict already precisely when we will make critical scientific and technological breakthroughs (like thermonuclear fusion or widespread LFTR fission or storage batteries that don't suck or high temperature high current superconductors) . Our knowledge of the interior of the Earth itself is at last nearly complete, so we can predict to the day when Yellowstone or other supervolcanoes will wake up and erupt continuously for ten or twenty thousand years. Finally, once we create an orbital cloud of atomic sodium (or whatever) into space, it will be easy to remove it or rearrange it if it turns out to do something completely different than we expect, such as trigger snowball earth or act in its own right like a layer of greenhouse gas between the Earth and 3 K infinity.
Oh, wait, those are all things we don't have, and can't do, and don't know. And I absolutely shudder to think of the price tag, both in dollars and in joules.
I swear, common sense is a lost art.
Let's go back to discussing orbital solar cells as a solution to both energy production and screening. Adding 64 MJ/kg (times a thousand or so) to the cost of solar cells by lofting them into orbit and giving world governments potential access to an orbital superweapon just to get to 1370 W/m^2 sunlight is sheer economic brilliance compared to this one. Oh, wait! Maybe we can combine the two! We can mortgage the next 100 years of human productivity to pay for it, no problem! It's not like we have anything else to do, like ending world poverty, preventing antibiotic resistant malaria from breaking out into a worldwide pandemic, embracing rational thought at the expense of the not-great world religions, and coping with leftover hypernationalism and colonialism from the cold war. So sure, let's do it! Solar cells AND making Earth a ringed or stratospheric smog laden planet!
What could go wrong!
rgb
You can't take the sky from me (Score:2)
My wife would be out of work (Score:2)
Besides, if we do this, we'll all end up xenophobic and composing songs that would make Paul McCartney weep. The first ET that landed on the planet would trigger a universe-wide genocide, all in the name of that which is not Krikkit.
Hubris... (Score:2)
"Fluoride seems to lessen the occurrence of tooth cavities, so let's just fluoridate all the water supplies!"
Fixing Climate (Score:3)
Great idea. First, we foster the greenhouse effect with aerosols. Second, we shield the atmosphere with more aerosols. Instead of breaking something and try to fix it by breaking another thing. It would be more wise to stop messing around. However, that would not be in the interest of the fossil fuel industry. And it is against the idea that a conservative can never do wrong.
Which Bulldozer? (Score:3)
Will confuse the Arctic tern (Score:3)
Reduced carbon storage (Score:3)
Ask Glidden, B.Moore, S.Williams and P.Lambert (Score:3)
Just paint the earth white - works during ice ages.
Re: (Score:3)
What climate mess?
I am convinced that the primary reason Bill Nye thinks that tech people tend to be scientifically illiterate is that he reads
Slashdot.
Re: (Score:3)
no not really, new theory suggests that Earth might once have been a gas giant the size of Neptune. Solar wind pressure burns off the hydrogen and helium, leaving behind a small rocky core and a tenuous layer consisting of nitrogen and argon, carbon dioxide and a little oxygen. Biological processes start and begin to liberate oxygen, and we're where we're at now.
Re: (Score:2)
9/11 happened and when the planes were grounded, the skies over California got a bit brighter.
(ref: BBC Horizon, "Global Dimming")
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
solar forcing has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE
Pretty much true. Solar forcing has some effect, but it's small.
So, what's your point ? Even though the solar output has remained very stable, doesn't mean we can't sit in the shade.
Re: (Score:3)
Global warming is largely considered to be caused by something called greenhouse gases. The most prominent one is CO2, which is generated by burning fossil fuels among other things. Earth is by and large heated by the sun's rays going through the atmosphere and hitting the Earth, heating the air and ground. A part of those rays, however, gets bounced off the surface or re-emitted. Those rays can then leave the atmosphere, not heating up the Ear
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing happened, I don't see the conflict. The atmosphere got hotter because of the amount of CO2 in it, not the amount of sunlight coming in. But reducing the amount of sunlight coming in can still cool it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Comprehension failure on your part. "Solar forcing" refers to the planet warming up because the sun is putting out more heat. Well, the sun isn't putting out more heat; the Earth is warming because it's trapping the heat better due to the increased amount of CO2 in the upper atmosphere. That is indeed settled science.
Now, reducing the amount of heat from the sun that reaches the surface will obviously cool down the planet. That's in no way in contradiction with the accepted science behind AGW models. I fail
Re:Light Pollution (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and did you notice that nobody -- nobody at all -- is calling for street lights to be turned off for good. Everybody's worried about burning coal, wasting energy, making resistance heating electric hot water heaters illegal as of this year (sheesh!). They want us to turn off the lights in our houses, they want us to spend $20-30 on LED bulbs because incandescents use too much energy -- but the streets are lit outside of my door with enormous halogen bulbs that burn all night even when there are no human eyes open to see their light. Empty parking lots blaze with halogen and mercury and neon. Cities string Christmas lights by the thousands along miles of road once a year. We pay for all of it, and yeah, it means that we can't see the sky particularly well even living on the rural edge of the city with deer in our back yard.
As a species, we're scared of the dark. We don't even consider turning off all of this completely wasted light (and saving some serious power, instantly) because then bad things would come out from under the bed and get us.
We're not even completely incorrect in this belief. One of the bad things is us and we are indeed scary as shit.
However, for far, far less than it would cost to loft crap into upper atmosphere or orbit, for far less than it would cost to even "commission research into" eventually lofting crap into orbit, we could start to actually use smart technology we already have and e.g. make street lights motion sensitive, or control crime (the usual excuse for having them, since "to prevent irrational fear of monsters" isn't an easy political sell for all of its truth) by actual robocop monitoring, looking for crime and not just putting up lights to nominally scare it off.
One could go down a rather long list of petty vanities that cost comparatively huge amounts of energy that we routinely pay for -- and waste. Billboards. Streetlights. The pointless annual time shift. Trucks vs trains. The utter lack of functional, safe, bicycle lanes in almost all the communities in the US. Electric cars. Living in borderline desert regions instead of water-rich temperate regions just because cheap, plentiful energy and long range importation of water makes it possible if unwise (as California and Las Vegas and the southwest in general may learn any year now).
Personally, I think that the evidence for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is all but nonexistent -- it is a simple matter of fact that the changes in climate from the mid-1600's to the present, whatever their cause, have been almost entirely beneficial and in any event are utterly lost in the noise of normal daily and annual variation (overall warming from that entire period is around 1 C, an a signal too small for people to even notice against the noise). If someone truly "believes" in it, however, in spite of the fact that the models that predict it suck and the IPCC itself in the third annual report admitted that the problem of predicting the climate was basically unsolvable so that it is no surprise that the models suck -- let's start by turning off not the lights in my house, where I live and use the light, but outside where all it does is help the deer find the best hastas and roses from my garden to eat late at night.
rgb
Re: (Score:3)
My city is putting in LED lighting for the streets and traffic signals.
Also, where are you getting your LED lights? I just picked up a bunch for $12 and had coupons from the provincial power provider for $5 off each one.