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Space Ring Could Combat Global Warming
telstar writes "Though the debate continues around global warming, a new proposal suggests building an artificial space ring around the Earth to block the light of the sun and bring a balance to solar radiation, cloud cover, and heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The ring could be comprised of particles which would scatter the sunlight, or be built by an interconnected ring of spaceships aligned to block the light. The former proposal is estimated to cost anywhere from $6 trillion to $200 trillion dollars, while the spaceship solution would run approximately $500 billion. Halo fans rejoice."
Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun...
How could this go wrong?
This would not work. Other planets would become jeleous and greedy, all of them wanting to get The Ring from us. There would be wars, many would die, and entire civilizations would die. What we need to do is get a neutral planet, one without such greed, who can take the ring, and hurl it into Jupiter. Then, the universe will be free.
And in related news, Al Gore has ridden the mighty moon worm.
I thought we could combat global warming with giant ice cubes mined from Haley's comet.
Honestly, how much would it cost to require an SUV to get 30+ MPG instead of 15?
It would actually costs less than an SUV, you'd just have to dump half the steel to cut weight, which would reduce its size significantly. I propose we call the result the "carr." Or something like that. I don't know. I'll leave that to marketing, but I'm gonna get my company on top of this. We'll make a fortune.
Will this be anything like Mr. Burns sun blocker thing in the simpsons?
They want their article back.
The entire world becomes depressed, due to the absence on natural light, kills themselves or simply stop having sex. Doesn't apply to humans only, most higher forms of animal life ceases to exist.
Of course, linux users are as chipper as ever due to the fact that they never seen natural light to begin with so they aren't as affected.
(As someone with seasonal affective disorder, I see this as a death sentence)
Get your Unix fortune now!
For some reason, I'm getting an image of a charred barren hillside a few miles from the collector. A bunch of people are running around on fire. Oh, wait, that's a SimCity 2k screenshot. Nevermind.
For those who don't remember, the sport-utility robots (Bender included) get on a single island and blow fuel from their exhausts (read: asses) to propel the Earth away from the sun.
That episode freakin' ruled.
Besides, moving the earth further away from the Sun is a much more hair brained idea, so why not do that?
Your other ideas were hopeless, but this... this might get you some funding.
The enemies of Democracy are
Now, let's orbit these solar cells at 500 km altitude, i.e. a diameter of 13,756.3 km or circumference of 43,217 km. The article doesn't say how wide the ring should be, but to block 1.6% of the sunlight to a circle 12,756.3 km in diameter would require a strip about 160 km wide. That's 6.9 million square kilometers of solar cells in the full ring.
Now the silicon wafer in a solar cell is really quite thin, typically around 300 microns thick, so that's only 2.074 cubic kilometers of silicon all up. Density is 2330 kg/m3, so that's 4,833 megatonnes of silicon required, or about 0.0000005% of the earth's resources. I think we have enough.
Of course, the energy required to manufacture that sort of area of solar cells would be pretty high, but think of the returns. The earth receives about 1370 W/m2 in orbit, so multiply that by the area of cells facing the sun (2.04 million square km), and you get about 2.8 billion MW of incident radiation :-) Let's say these cells aren't particularly efficient, maybe 10%, plus transmission losses of another 70%, and you still have 84 million MW of usable energy, all day, every day.
Now, in 1997 we used 380 quadrillion BTUs, globally, or about 111 quadrillion watt-hours. That's an average consumption of 12 million MW, comfortably within our budget for some time. An energy-producing system with a capacity of 7 times the entire global requirements is worth quite a bit.
There's only one downside to this - if we divert all this energy down to earth & use it, it all ends up as heat in the end, which completely nullifies the original purpose of the ring (if you remember) of preventing global warming! D'oh!
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
What global warming?
I have it from a super-reliable source (George "Dubya" Bush) that there is no such thing as global warming. It is all a knee jerk, radical left wing fantasy designed to throttle the American economy (says he).
On the very miniscule chance that "Dubya" is wrong, what exactly is wrong with global warming, anyway? The neo-Con(artists) always look at the silver lining in that dark cloud - a longer growing season, less need for winter heating, new opportunities for real estate development (sea-walls, dikes, new ocean-front property, and vast new markets for SPF-1000 suntan lotion. What's not to like?
that's enough money to keep the Iraq war going until the year 9188
Cool! Then we can have oil *forever!*
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
This is exactly why you'll never make a good super villian. You think too small.
Come on! No one is going to make a Highlander solar shield comment!?!?!
Now that's a death ray!
Let me be the first to welcome you to the world of deficit spending. Please remember not to stand in front of the fan.
**insert favorite profound quotation here**
Sucks to be a species that can't adapt. Thankfully we have AC.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Then where will all the good posts come from?
http://www.andashdesigns.com/
You are accusing me of being disingenuous (note the spelling -- this is the second time you make that churlish mistake) for offering a candid interpretation of the post in question. This is absurd, by the very definition of the word disingenuous.
You claim that my use of the term "modest proposal" is unfounded. Of course, I never did say that it was the intention of the originator of the idea to use space rings to create a modest proposal. What I did say is that the article acts like a Modest Proposal, which causes people come out and say that it would be cheaper to curtail the introduction of carbon into the atmosphere than it would to implement such an absurd idea. Indeed, a cursory glance at the thread in response to the article reveals that this very point was raised at least a dozen times. Absurd schemes like the one presented in TFA have the effect of making people think of alternatives. This is an empirical truth, regardless of the author's intent.
So I'm right. You're wrong, either through willfull misinterpretation or crap reading comprehension. If you really want to see whose dick is bigger, I'll warn you: mine is.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Uh-oh, I'll bet it's not...
have everyone on the planet plant at least one tree.
This could be going in the right direction...
trees would help cool the earth.
Yes, okay, and now for the science...
because they hold more water.
... Okay, not what I was expecting, but let's go with it...
trees also help water evaporate so there will be more rain.
But, I thought we were storing water, not helping it evaporate? There must be some logical reasoning behind this...
more rain = cooler weather.
Oh. Dear. God.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Even if the climate change is natural, we may have the power to keep our planet at the temperature we want it at.
After all, don't you like tropical islands? A working gulf stream?
What if we could alter the amount of solar radiation received and tailor it to our needs to make more of the planet inhabitable and comfortable.
More than that with a ship ring, we could get all the annoying people to crew the ring (or at least serve prison sentences on it).
Enough to power an evil robot army and virtual reality prison, that contains profound philosphical answers?
C'mon Dad, how many times do I need to ask you to stay off the internet when you're drunk?
I think, therefore I am. I think?
We'll just put it on a credit card. Duh!
}It's possible that fuel cells will reverse "global warming". With more water vapour in there air, one can only assume there will be more cloud cover. Before too long there will be people screaming that fuel cells are going to bring the new ice age.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.