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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 $500 billion. Halo fans rejoice."
In this world of fantasy (which we do not live in) it would be nice...however I'd much rather my tax dollars going towards more enviromental regulations and research than some high tech sci-fi wonder.
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Wouldn't it be cheaper, easier, and more effective to, I don't know, build energy systems that don't release carbon? Just a thought.
What kind of a hair brained scheme is this??? What happens when global warming ends because we haven't any more money for cars having spent it all on this ring?
Of the 6 trillion, why not spend the$ 3 trillion on environmentally safe energy (fusion plants, geothermal, solar panels in the deserts) and spend $3 trillion to buy off all the oil megacorporations.
Besides, moving the earth further away from the Sun is a much more hair brained idea, so why not do that?
You can buy a lot of solar cells for $6 trillion dollars.
I think you meant to write "finding a way to eliminate dependence on foreign oil."
In other words, let's start using the energy we get from the sun to meet our current needs.
It's unbelievable that someone would suggest that we should restrict future energy delivery from the sun just so that we can keep on consuming energy stores from the past (oil) and pollute our sky with the smoke. Pure laziness. It's like a teenager cleaning his room by hauling his dirty laundry out of the house and burying it, wasting all the effort he ought to be using to just clean the clothes. Not that I've ever done this.
Because it's easier to convince people to let you put a bajillion microsatellites into orbit than it is to convince them to let you build another nuclear power plant.
Though the debate continues around global warming...
What an excellent opening sentence. The problem is, which debate is he referring to? Is he talking some real scientific debate? Or maybe a politically motivated debate based on non-science in which the powers that be try to confuse the public into believing there is no scientific consensus, with the goal being to maintain the status quo and avoid angering the energy lobby.
Because, scientifically, there is no real debate anymore over whether or not man is impacting the climate and causing global warming.
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lets spend billions of dollars to put a ring around the earth. tons of fuel would have to be burned to do this. they could just throw some glitter into orbit. heres a better idea. have everyone on the planet plant at least one tree. trees would help cool the earth. because they hold more water. trees also help water evaporate so there will be more rain. more rain = cooler weather.
How the hell do you actually estimate that something will cost 6 trillion dollars? Trying to get an estimate for something that can run upwards of a million dollars would be extremely hard.
I mean, sure, if you're off by a couple million then it's not a big deal in the scheme of things but has there ever been a more "pulled out of our ass" estimate ever?
Sounds like saying "We don't know but it'll be lots!"
If we were to cover 1/2 the land area we've paved in the US with solar panels of standard efficiency, we'd generate as much electricity as we consume in all forms of energy in the US. The rest of the world is quite parsimonious by comparison, though they could so too meet all their needs and live as profligately as we do without environmental impact.
It has been suggested by people not bothering to do the math that the change in albedo from the solar cells themselves would cause warming, but we've already paved twice that area.
Biofuels are relatively inefficient compared to solar cells, but fairly simple as well and carbon net-neutral. Biofuels and solar hydrogen could meet our mobile and nightime needs easily.
We can live as we do, with all the juice and cars and whatnot, so long as we do not too grossly expand our population, in a closed loop, steady state system. We could live quite comfortably if we overturned the Ford coup of the 1920s and reversed the graft-based decision to build roads and the 1950's military decision to build suburbs. With a predominantly urban population moving by train (or working close to home/at home) we could buy the solar cells with a few year's oil expenditures.
Unfortunately Solar doesn't have the profit margin of oil, so there's no political/industrial interest. There's $10 trillion worth of oil in Iraq we took ownership of for a mere $1 trillion in military expenditures (at the current burn rate, given the time it will take to pump it out). The usual profit sharing (if we chose to share with the Defeated People) is 50/50, meaning at least 5:1 profit on that adventure for the country as a whole, but since Haliburton is actually getting paid for their efforts (and then some) and the profit will accrue directly to the oil companies and not back to We the People, it's an amazingly shrewd business deal, the greatest heist in the history of mankind: $10 trillion. Almost the entire US gross domestic product for a year.
Nobody building solar factories is going to see that kind of profit, and without it they can't compete in the congressional auction. Laws aren't bought flat rate, they're sold to the highest bidder and no industry can outbid the oil industry.
It would be far cheaper to convert the global energy economy to solar (as a combination of solar-thermal, solar-electric, and solar-biofuel with the only other long-term viable power source as a backup--breeder nuclear, which (not ignoring the very real waste problem) is the only other energy source we have that can meaningfully contribute to our long term power needs) than to build a great space ring. The low range costs are small compared to the current value of the known oil reserves (roughly $80 trillion, proven plus mid-range USGS unproven estimates at $40/bbl).
It's technically easy to solve, but politically impossible.
Around the year 1000 for example, it was much warmer than today. There's a reason why "Greenland" is called that: it had thawed and the Vikings could colonize and farm it.
Then it cooled off some time later, and the colony was all but abandoned.
The fun part is, the humans didn't go extinct, the gulf stream didn't reverse, ocean fauna didn't all float belly-up because of melting glaciers being sweet water, etc.
Basically that's what gets me pissed off about this _political_ "waah, we're all DOOMED if you don't follow ME" hype about global warming. It's mis-representation and scare tactics.
As was said, it's only the bullshit media and political speeches where global warming is a certainty, and certain doom is just around the corner. The media loves a good scare story. That's what sells. Actual scientific facts don't.
The science part is a lot more ambiguous and not fully understood yet. It's not just that the earth has cooled off just fine before. It's also that:
- The "Global Warming" measured, that started the whole hype, was actually based on limited data from only a tiny portion of the world. And it was only a 1 degree Celsius over a _century_ increase.
- The Earth has periodic warming and cooling cycles, ranging roughly between 6 degrees Celsius cooler than today in the last glaciations, and some 6 degrees warmer in the times of the dinosaurs. Think roughly a sine wave spanning whole ages. With a lot of noise superimposed.
And we're roughly in the middle. It's _normal_ to rise slowly on the average. Not this fast, but basically a century of it might well be measuring just the noise in the real signal. Especially given that:
- Actual satellite data that covers a helluva lot more of the whole globe (you know, the "global" part of "global warming") actually shows a global _cooling_ for the last 20 years straight. There is actually a theory that we might be heading into a "mini ice age". (Not that it will stop journalists and politicians from presenting a _cooling_ as an effect of global _warming_.)
- Also for this last interval, there is data indicating that the average temperature on Earth just faithfully follows fluctuations in the Sun's energy output. Think, for example, how we got a very warm winter between 2003 and 2004, because of solar flares. We can actually observe and measure those things nowadays, and blimey, temperature on Earth seems to just follow them.
Is it that unbelievable, since Sun is where that heat comes from in the first place? We're talking some 0.3% temperature difference in this "global warming." It only takes _minor_ fluctuations in the energy input to produce that.
- Humans never accounted for more than 2% of greenhouse gasses. If not only we stopped driving cars, but if humanity as a whole even stopped breathing, it still just wouldn't make that much of a difference.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You have on the one hand a peer reviewed, falsifiable, reproducible study that says one thing by a bunch of folks (perhaps in lab coats) who studied and workd 8-10 years of their lives to get to the point where they could be 'peer' reviewed.
On the other hand you have something called a study with none of the above features (except the authors often have a TLA in something, though maybe not anything to do with atmospherics or even physics).
But the press thrives on conflict, so it reports both studies as being by 'noted scientists' or maybe one was a fictional tale by some guy who wrote alot of SCIENCE (fiction).
Most folks have no idea what 'falsifiable', 'peer review', or 'reproducible' have to do with anything important like the price of gas, so they believe the press when it tells them that the different 'studies' represent two sides of the issue (fair and balanced).
And with enough money on both sides to support new 'studies' the debate could well go on until every last icecube in Greenland turns into liquid oxygen dihydride.
Then the big controversy will be whether to build giant seawalls around the coastal cities or to run screaming for higher ground.
And you can bet the press will present that story with two nicely balanced sides, as well.