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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."
... Someone please explain to me the need for SUV's and trucks when only a single person is driving in it...
For one oil lobbiests have modified our tax code where an American can get an SUV or truck free of charge if they are a business owner in tax refunds. So why not?
Second its because they can. They can afford to do so and are unaware that the rest of us pay for higher gas prices due to lack of supply while the rich like the comfort and safety of a big vehicle.
http://saveie6.com/
In a two-body system (earth/sun), there are five such points, of which only two are stable. Neither resides on the axis between the earth and the sun.
One might be able to keep a disc at an unstable point using active control, but that is a separate question. :)
Stationkeeping under these circumstances is very difficult. There are plenty of other concerns... heat rejection, debris, etc.
It was a good idea, but not feasible... at least not as feasible as the ring idea.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Well, technically, by funding such a massive project, you boost the economy... increasing the GDP of involved countries and boosting the values of involved interests.
That said, with out government and CEOs working together, they'd probably siphon all of the money out of the country into the hands of some country who doesn't care much for us... who would then proceed to nuke us into a sheet of glass.
Talk about fantasy land. You really think most SUV's in the last three years average about 30mpg? Let's see, according to your example, the Explorer should be at least mid-20's if they've been improving every year for the last seven - and yet, I'm confused. According to Ford (http://www.fordvehicles.com/suvs/explorer/feature s/specs/) the v6 gets 15/21 and the v8 gets 15/19 city/highway. How can that be??
And not trying to show you're a complete moron, but... staying with Ford, their Freestyle minivan gets 18/23 or 16/23 depending on the engine. Definitely not great, but certainly better than all but the mini-SUV's.
Maybe next time you should have a clue before telling someone they are wrong.
Fusion plants didn't melt down, that was the Nuclear plants. The Fusion plants were stable.
Of course, we all know the tornadoes were the best.
---
A guy walks up to his friend and sees him hitting himself on the head with a hammer. "Why are you doing that!?", he asks. "Because it feels so good when I stop.", was the reply.
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Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
No it doesn't get sent right back into the earth because 80% of it is lost in space in the solar cells to begin with!
Massive chemical cleanup from production, massive ramping up of existing infrastructure, massive use of land to meet required energy levels.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Because, scientifically, there is no real debate anymore over whether or not man is impacting the climate and causing global warming.
Your statement is true. The debate is over how much man in impacting climate change. The Earth has been through many, many periods in its history where it was warmer than it is today. This was before cars or factories. It managed to cool itself down.
There is still much debate about global warming in scientific circles. There is much less debate in the media.
Viv
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If that's really a problem, then use a large number of smaller objects in orbit around L1. (SOHO does this already, so you can't tell me its impossible.)
;~)).
;~)
:~). Not trying to be some cynical asshat shooting down what you say, although I do admit I probably come across that way in text mode. Technology like this *is* fun to consider :~)
:~)
Actually, I was a student of one of the primary engineers of the SOHO orbit. She discussed it in class, and showed us the orbits and the fuel estimates etc. I assure you that we DO NOT have the ability to model a large number of objects around L1. We certainly could create this capability, but you are talking worse-than-realtime calculation times in our current state of technology (for many-multiple objects that aren't allowed to collide). The problem is already 'intractable' in the sense that it is multi-body dynamics -- no solution, must model via iteration.
The SOHO craft's orbit looks like a seriously drunk dolphin chasing a drunk fish. Just looking at it made me fear going for a masters in orbital mechanics (which I didn't end up doing...hmmm
Thanks for the distances, had forgotten them. I really should do the math on the visual arc of the sun and compare to some random object at distance 'x', but I am really really lazy
I agree: it could be done. Iff we needed it. I just think that a better idea, in terms of preserving the human race, would be to get some people the hell off of Earth! Eggs in one basket and all of that.
The '100 years' thing I tossed out was related to your statement re: space-elevator: in 100 or so years, doing this will be stupid cheap/easy compared to trying it today. Not actually cheap, nor easy: just in comparison to today
Standard space craft solar cells do not really have an overheating problems in Earth orbit so I doubt this kind of a ring of cells would either. In space every direction except towards the Sun and the Earth is always much colder than the cell so the cell has plenty of scope for radiating its heat away even without any dedicated heat radiating panels.
While the science may not know exactly why the earth warms and cools over thousands of years.
It is to do with changes in orbits circularity and axis tilt.
The fact is that is does, and the last time I checked there were no cars around thousands of years ago during the last warming cycle.
The problem is not change, it is fast change. Current warming is occuring on a timescale of decades, not millenia.
As recently proven (look it up yourself), every time a volcano goes off it produces more green house gasses than mankind has ever created since the industrial revolution.
I have. This is nonsense.
From "Volcanoes and Society" published the University of Michigan:
"Carbon dioxide is one of the main causes of the Greenhouse effect, but there are not significant amounts for the carbon dioxide emitted from volcanic eruptions to contribute to the Greenhouse effect. Humanity is responsible for emitting 110 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, while volcanoes only contribute 10 billion tons".
So sure, we know green house gasses warm the planet and that pollution is bad on a local level, but if you think the small amount of damage mankind has done to the planet is going to raise global temperatures even by 2 degrees every hundred years, then your ego is about the size of most of the politicians baking the idea.
Pollution is bad globally. The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen more more than 30% in the past couple of centuries, and that is due to us, not volcanoes. This increase is getting much faster. Your '2 degrees every hundred years' could well be an underestimate.
The warming in the year 1000 was relatively local. The global average temperature has not been as high as it is now for, at least, hundreds of thousands of years.
There is loads of data of many different kinds. Many of them (like oxygen isotope rations in polar ice) measure average sea-surface temperature globally.
Your statement about satellite data is just plain wrong. Some cloud temperatures are lowering, but surface temperatres are rising.
The CO2 cycle is roughly 200 GTonnes in (before 1900 or so) a balanced cycle, about half in the sea, half on land. Humanity now releases roughly 9 GT/yr, and the increase in atmospheric CO2 suggests that roughly none of this extra 9 GT is being absorbed anywhere, so the cycles seem to be slow to regulate themselves.
Many of your other statements are simply wrong. See, for instance, the National Academy of Sciences report.
Greenland was not a farm country in the Viking age. The name was chosen to convince others to join the colony; it was a PR trick (that didn't work). Rember, Iceland was called Iceland by the vikings, not a sign of this region of the earth was very hot a 1000 years ago. Actually we are in the warmest periode in 10 000 years it seems, since the ice on Kilimanjaro for instance has not been as reduced as it now for the last 10 000 years. It is true that when the dinosaures roamed, Svalbard which is north of Iceland, was inhabitated by creates that needed warm weather. But that is millions of years ago.
Another misleading name by the vikings that settled the North American continent, is that Newfound land was called Vin-land (which means something like fertile land). (Some vikings settled in Newfound land but left for unknown reasons, the saga mention that the settlers there had problems with the native population. ) It is anyway not know what happened to the small colony of vikings that settled on Greenland. Some think that they had a bad winter and died. There is no historical account of the colony returning to Iceland or Norway. Another theory is that the vikings there joined the eskimos (or whatever they are called more politically correct) and became a part of their gene pool in a matter of speak.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
This is one of the things that frustrates me about "climate change"--all evidence is unritically adopted to support the theory. The change in terminology, from "global warming" to "climate change" is itself a shift designed to support exactly this sort of pseudo-scientific scullduggery.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Enuit. Eskimo is a racial slur that means fish eater. It's analogous to nigger.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
I think you need to familiarize yourself with Viking history and Greenland a bit more, probably through Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.
Greenland has a lot of lushness on the shoreline, but has always had harsh ice areas inland, with pockets that could almost be compared to an oasis in desert. Vikings farming and herding, mostly by clear cutting, let the very light soil be carried off by the wind as it originally would (volcanic activity outputs very light and nutrient rich particles). Overgrowth trapped that soil... clearing it for farming allowed it to be swept away...
Not going into excesive detail, because there are other factors, but it wasn't Climate Change that solely ended Viking societies in Greenland.
"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" - Touchstone,Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
Just a little tidbit incase it hasn't been mentioned yet. Not sure where the term Eskimo came from, or why it is bad, but I do know that "Inuit" in their own language simply means "The People" so it probably wins the PC genaric name award or something. I always refer to them as the Inuit the same way I would say someone is Native rather than Indian. I am not sure how many native people would take real offence to being called Indian (same with Eskimo vs Inuit), but it seems generally more excepted and correct so that is what is used. Anyway thats it! Though I will mention that I have some Native friends that seem to use the word "Indian" much the same was Blacks (African-American just seems wrong to me, kinda like vertically challanged should be short people) tend to use the word "Nigger" (I shudder even as I say it, for whatever reason I abhor saying that word, yes White guy here, though is "White guy" bad? Meh who knows...). Though I doubt Inuit do the same with Eskimo, though you never know.... ok now that I have kinda freaked myself out talking about race and names and stuff I am gonna leave... Please don't take offence and hurt me people *ducks*