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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."
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.
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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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 ---
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.