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Scientists Blocking out the Sun
Ashtangiman writes to tell us The New York Times is running an article about geoengineering in which many solutions to global warming include decreasing the amount of sunlight that the planet sees. The ideas are not new, many have been around for quite some time, however they have been relegated to the fringes of science and many have never been published because of this. From the article: "Geoengineering is no magic bullet, Dr. Cicerone said. But done correctly, he added, it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding."
Simpsons did it! Simpsons did it!
--Matthew
"If the lights of Broadway blind me, I won't mind..."
After all, Launch Solar Shade is one of the techs you pick up along the way.
.....in the Matrix? Where are the robots?
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
Cool, it works! :D
This won't be an issue after the world reaches peak oil production, since humanity will lack the energy to pollute on a massive scale. (and no dirty old coal is not going to replace light sweet crude)
Isn't this already happening?
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
...this impacts floura/fauna how? last i checked a lot of stuff here needed the sun to live... start shortening the growing season by enough to cool the planet. sounds like a bad idea.
always mosh clockwise
Given that the most reasonable "something-other-than-humans-caused" global warming hypothesis I've heard so far is that the sun's energy output is increasing, (incindentally, this would also explain Martian global warming, which by some evidence matches terrestrial warming), this seems like exactly the way to go. A more direct and exact correction could not be found (if this is, in fact, the cause of global warming) without changing the energy output of the sun manually, which is to my knowledge impossible.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding ...and what will be our insurance policy against what happens when you fuck around with with nature on a massively global scale?
Blotting out the source of almost all energy for life on Earth doesn't seem smart to me, perhaps we should be working on ways to adapt to new and changing environments instead of trying hopelessly to preserve this one exactly the way it is now.
This idea is totally not new.
The only problem is, last time we simulated it, humanity ended up enslaved by robots.
This is the problem. We see this as a possible (though as TFA states, it is more "insurance") solution, act on it like a fad diet, and then wonder why our planet starts acting funny in a way never thought of before, or to continue to metaphore, we wonder why we die of a coronary...
How to Cool a Planet (Maybe)
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place.
But now, in a major reversal, some of the world's most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious look because of growing concerns about global warming.
Worried about a potential planetary crisis, these leaders are calling on governments and scientific groups to study exotic ways to reduce global warming, seeing them as possible fallback positions if the planet eventually needs a dose of emergency cooling.
"We should treat these ideas like any other research and get into the mind-set of taking them seriously," said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.
The plans and proposed studies are part of a controversial field known as geoengineering, which means rearranging the earth's environment on a large scale to suit human needs and promote habitability. Dr. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist, will detail his arguments in favor of geoengineering studies in the August issue of the journal Climatic Change.
Practicing what he preaches, Dr. Cicerone is also encouraging leading scientists to join the geoengineering fray. In April, at his invitation, Roger P. Angel, a noted astronomer at the University of Arizona, spoke at the academy's annual meeting. Dr. Angel outlined a plan to put into orbit small lenses that would bend sunlight away from earth -- trillions of lenses, he now calculates, each about two feet wide, extraordinarily thin and weighing little more than a butterfly.
In addition, Dr. Cicerone recently joined a bitter dispute over whether a Nobel laureate's geoengineering ideas should be aired, and he helped get them accepted for publication. The laureate, Paul J. Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, is a star of atmospheric science who won his Nobel in 1995 for showing how industrial gases damage the earth's ozone shield. His paper newly examines the risks and benefits of trying to cool the planet by injecting sulfur into the stratosphere.
The paper "should not be taken as a license to go out and pollute," Dr. Cicerone said in an interview, emphasizing that most scientists thought curbing greenhouse gases should be the top priority. But he added, "In my opinion, he's written a brilliant paper."
Geoengineering is no magic bullet, Dr. Cicerone said. But done correctly, he added, it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding.
"A lot of us have been saying we don't like the idea" of geoengineering, he said. But he added, "We need to think about it" and learn, among other things, how to distinguish sound proposals from ones that are ineffectual or dangerous.
Many scientists still deride geoengineering as an irresponsible dream with more risks and potential bad side effects than benefits; they call its extreme remedies a good reason to redouble efforts at reducing heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. And skeptics of human-induced global warming dismiss geoengineering as a costly effort to battle a mirage.
Even so, many analysts say the prominence of its new advocates is giving the field greater visibility and credibility and adding to the likelihood that global leaders may one day consider taking such emergency steps.
"People used to say, 'Shut up, the world isn't read
that plants now receive far less light. Less light, means slower growth, less uptake of CO2, etc.
Off hand, all the solutions (CO2 sequestering,etc) that allow us to keep our oil/coal dependancies will probably come back to bite us. Far better to bite the bullet now, and switch to nukes(fission and fusion) and alternatives.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Dr. Cicerone demands $10000000000 or he will plunge the Earth into eternal darkness!
Jesus said to his disciples: "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one" - Luke 22:36
...then the flamewar from this thread will start it.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
We'll be having rave parties 24x7 then. Cue the Matrix soundrack. Where are the hot chicks in post-apocalyptic skimpy outfits? I see these scientists have started using their recreational drugs even before the raves have started!
I've often thought that regardless where you stand on the cuases of climate change, the fact is conditions on this planet have been in the past, and probably will be in the future, pretty inhospitable for us. So thinking long-term, the only safe thing to do is start to establish some sort of control, preferably in ways that have an effect on a shorter scale than controlling emissions.
;)
Now I'm off to read TFA, and see whether I'm on-topic or not
Oh no... it's the future.
I'm all for blocking anything that continuously melts my snow toilets.
FTA:"Geoengineering is no magic bullet, Dr. Cicerone said. But done correctly, he added, it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels, coastal and flooding..." ...not to mention solar powered sentient robots bent on exterminating the human race.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The geo-terrorists can use science too.
A threat to disperse a fine layer of soot over the polar ice would do the trick. The black layer increases the heat absorption, and in a few years the sea level is a hundred metres higher.
Paid Q&A/Research
Now that we might be able to block out the sun, its ok to burn fossil fuels.[end sarcasm]
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
... a cure against skin-cancer ... and an increased possibility of slashdotters mating.
Everybody will be as pale as we are! Yey!
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
...solutions like this because they seem intuitively like they would work; I've often wondered if we couldn't simply coat large parts of the poles in tin foil as a way of cooling the area down by effectively stopping radition of heat. Restricting the light could cause problems but if it was controlled in such a way that made it easy to start/stop then we could just use bursts every now and again
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
"Mankind has always dreamed of destroying the sun" -- Mr. Burns
This plan has already been covered
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Didn't Al Gore discover Martian Global Warming?
Fight Spammers!
It is about time some of these ideas are seeing the light of day.
Sorry, could not help myself
DK
Haven't we learned anything from The Simpsons?
If we block out the sun, Mr. Gates will die at the hand of a lollipop suckling 2 year old as he attempts to rench it away.
And that, would be bad for all the starving children he's saving with his foundations.
Won't somebody, please, think of the children!!!
'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it...
"This giant mirror will block out 30% of the sun's rays, thus cooling the Earth."
"Wormstrom!"
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Wernstrom!
8==8 Bones 8==8
"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun"
-Morpheus
Date line Aug. 17th, 2017:
NASA has confirmed that it was an error converting metric to imperial measurments that caused the death of almost seven billion people and the started our current ice age.
In other news; Today's high is expected to reach -65 celcius.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Surely this is a much simpler and more practical solution than just buying a Prius!
Given that we don't conclusively understand the way the earth works, it strikes me as insanely arrogant to think we can CONTROL the biosphere. We should work on controlling our own (that is, INDIVIDUAL) actions before we try to tell "mother nature" what to do ..
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
Seems like a lot of people want to avoid the one fact that sticks out like a sore thumb. Just as nature adapts to the environmental effects of humans, humans need to adapt to the environmental effects of nature. Instead of trying to stop the ice caps from melting, maybe it's time to move the houses on the shorelines back a mile or two and put in better flood control.
we'd have to deal with the growing numbers of vampires wandering about.
This be overseen by people in Washington, which says it all.
Even the "think tanks" and scientists do not know enough to start tinkering
with the weather on a large scale. It is not understood fully.
One screw up and we have the next disaster movie, in 3-d.
Fight Spammers!
What's wrong with spending that money on engineering to reforest the huge deforested areas of every continent? Just replanting the native vegetation sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere, increases energy absorption by the greener surface, and produces material to consume. And lets the plants do all the hard work. Without another risky meddling in the poorly-understood, vastly complex feedback system we all depend on.
Instead we should blot out the Sun? That's insane, and therefore even more likely to burn us harder and faster.
--
make install -not war
Some people just don't get it. Perhaps the earth is supposed to get warmer. What happens when they decide block the sun and the earth cools too fast, or photosynthesis doesn't occur like it's supposed to?
The same people who can't get beyond the Rule of Unintended Consequences want to something like this?
Can I take the next ship to another planet now? Either let it evolve or destroy it, but try not to do both.
Why is it the same people who love evolution are the same people who want to keep everything the same?
Please don't forget to make it reversable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Setting aside the question of whether any of these solutions are at all practical, (AND the still larger question of whether there'll ever be a real climate crisis to necessitate them), I wonder how measures like the ones proposed in the article could be implemented, practically speaking, on a global level. Who would pay for this, for one thing? And what governing body exists capable of giving permission to tinker deliberately with the whole globe? Seems to me that geoengineering on a realistic scale would require pan-global organizational and economic structures that simply don't exist at present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming
We were able to terraform LV-426, and that place had some real problems.
The whole problem with global warming is there is no real share holder gain in stopping the cause. However, a project like blocking out part of the suns rays. Well that will cost a pile of cash. Lots of shareholder value there. Not to mention political kickbacks/campaign contributions.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
> if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding.
Sorry dude, but the Great Meltdown has been in progress for years already. Go count the glaciers at Glacier National Park, and then look up how many there were a few decades ago.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That was revisionist history. The robots knew tnat sunlight could have given them the energy they needed, and they knew that humans blotted it out. They put two and two together and came to the conclusion that the humans blotted it out to spite them.
Geoengineering is no magic bullet, Dr. Cicerone said. But done correctly, he added, it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding
Or we could leave it alone and let the planet take care of itself like it always has for the last 40 billion years or so.
Every time humans get involved with monkeying around with the ecosphere, the net results are less then positive.
What I don't understand, is that we can't stop floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or related natural disasters from destroying homes and lives, but we're arrogant enough to suggest that we can simply put a giant parasol in space, manufacture 'special' clouds, lace the stratosphere with sulphur, or my personal favorite "Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases" and expect to be able to accurately control the planet's climate.
I never really considered this as a thing to intentionally do. I've thought about it as a side-effect of orbiting solar arrays beaming power back to the surface, and contemplated what overall impact cutting down incident light would have on the planet... ...but only in terms of whether it's something we could live with, not whether it's something we should hope to accomplish.
Which implies that, turned around, power generation could be a side-effect of blotting out the sun. Although you'd have to exclude the energy you're beaming to the surface from your percent sunlight blocked calculations, of course.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
With as many other screw-ups as other "geniuses" suggested (frogs in Austrailia, kudzu in Southeastern U.S, Seinfeld), I think somebody suggesting we need to "fix" the Earth by a giant umbrella just smacks of a screw-up in the making--especially when we keep hearing that this may not be a man-made thing. I saw a story where they were complaining that the glacier on Mt. Kilimonjaro had been up there for 11K years, but was disappearing. So, it must be our fault. Of course, the fact that it was not there 12K years ago must also be our fault.
My son and his teenaged friend are beginning to refer to all unexplainable events as a natural result of Global Warming.
"What's wrong with your girl friend?"
- Global Warming
"Why do fat women insist on wearing low-cut jeans?"
- GLobal Warming.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Now if we only had some Scrith to make it out of. It worked for the sunshade on the Ringworld. And was useful for a lot of other things.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Heaven forbid we should actually attack the cause of the problem and not merely the negative consequences. The simplest solution's usually the best.
> are we contributing to climate change? its just too uncertain to say... possibly. But concidering how much the atmosphere changes its chemical composition from volcaic activity alone, i think its a bit presumptuous to think that our tiny contribution (in comparison to volcanic activity) means jack shit.
Amazingly, thousands of climatologists have the brass to disagree with you.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is already happening (accidentally). Scientists believe that global warming would be much worse right now if it wasn't for the large ammount of light which gets reflected by airplane contrails and particulate matter which we have introduced into the atmosphere. After 9/11 (when airplanes were grounded) this theory was confirmed.
0 394553407
Here's a (google video) link to a Nova program on the topic:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=736942431
It's possible that as we remove contaminants from our existing emissions, it could actually make the situation worse by accelerating the rate at which global warming takes place...
Not that we should avoid doing so, but we should also reduce CO2 emissions at the same time (or faster).
Isn't this the same idea as terraforming. Is there a difference or did we just get a new 'engineering' word. "I'm not a terraformer, I'm a geoengineer."
and dandilions--LOTS of dandilions
It's been, what? two, three days?
I propose we create a giant mirror and place it in orbit, thus reflecting the rays of the sun away from the Earth.
In fact, I've taken the liberty to place one in orbit right now! Certainly, no small thing such as a pebble in space would disturb this gigantic mirror array, turning it on the unsuspecting populace in the form of a giant space laser.
I'll take my moon sapphires now, thank you very much.
It was also in Highlander 2
I refer to Oliver Wendell Jones' plan to circle the Earth with a net of dollar bills. Not only would this prevent the imminent attack by a nuclear capable third-world nation, but would also stop some of the global warming problems.
Similarly, his electro photo-pigmentizer would end racism and skin cancer.
A few years later: Tokyo is 'lost' after the giant sunscreen is blown to earth by solar winds, covering up all of Honshu island... The giant reflective shield blocks out all heat, light, radio signals, air, but conducts elictricity so many are electrocuted. All of the worlds scientists whom built the block would figure out a way to help the dying/freezing/suffocating Japanese but the world is too busy laughing.... Imagine it, most of Japan destroyed by a giant sheet of mylar. Is known to future generations as the Great Tokyo Jiffy-Pop Disaster.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
...until such time as it is repaired by Symbiosis, resulting in transparency to gravity and total instant telepathy with others in Symbiosis.. StarDance/StarSeed/StarMind, Robinson, Spider and Jeanne
(I'm guessing/hoping you're also a fan)
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
I seem to recall that the Overlords in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End had this ability. I, for one, welcome our new Overlord overlords.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Yes, because we're obviously just stading there going "Nature, you will cool down by five degrees Centigrade! By my mandate as master of beasts, I command it!" Definitely not approaching it as an engineering problem by researching the underlying mechanisms and tweaking them or anything.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Oh right, a really bad sequel.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Rather than making the sunshade orbit earth, wouldn't it be easier to put the shade at some point between the sun and the Earth? Say at one of the Lagrange points?
It wouldn't have to be a solid shade, either -- just truck a lot of water out there and spray it out through a nozzle, and create a cloud of ice crystals. They'd diffuse the incoming light rather than blocking it completely, and as a "fail safe," perhaps you could put them in a slightly unstable orbit, so that over time they'd stop shadowing the planet. If the system wasn't refreshed every few years, it would stop working. (Or maybe the solar wind would push it out of the Lagrange point and cause it to fail eventually...?)
I'm sure there's probably some better fluid to use than water (maybe something lighter?), I was just using it as an example. Maybe even we could use a material that absorbs at particular wavelengths -- diffusing infrared while letting visible light through?
We're only trying to block light here, it seems like a solid shade would be overkill. Why not make a cloud? They do a good job at blocking light inside the atmosphere.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
they will suddenly discover that they've invented a Tox Uthat ? ;-)
:-D
:O
Hm, better idea: just skip a few steps and go directly for the totally sci-fi approach:
Let's build a Dyson Sphere to feed our Matrioshka Brain.
Hmm.. thinking about this, I think Google's new data center is starting to scare me
damn it...u had to ruin it for me!
I was trying to get Keanu's butt out of my mind....thx man...thx.
melting icecaps, [...], rising sea levels and coastal flooding
It looks like water is the main problem. Ironic, as it's our origin.
You can see that in all facets of life, and thus in weather as well. However the weather used to be that's "normal" in the minds of most people so when it changes in any way that's "abnormal" and thus a problem. Even if they intellectually understand it most people don't really grasp that the only constant on the world is change.
I will say that such a plan, as a last resort isn't a bad idea because regardless of what the Earth would naturally do we want to keep it habitable for humans. The Earth may go through a natural cycle that would kill us off and we want to stop that, if we can.
However in general we shouldn't screw with things like this because it's clear we have a very poor graps of how climate actually works.
And thousands of climatologists agree with this poster... as do I. Plenty of holes in the global warming THEORY remain. It's a shame fearmongering surrounding this issue will always win out in the media, a headline story suggesting we can all stop worrying about global warming just won't get the ratings at this point. This article is just plain scary... whether or not the global warming theory is true. God help us if society ever decides to trust the lives of everything on this planet to a group of scientists arrogant enough to claim they can tinker with the global climate on this scale.
To think that dumping billions of tons of CO2 (and slightly less H20) into the atmosphere over the last 30 years alone (rough calculations indicate around 130 billion tons from early 70s to early 00s), while simultaneously deforesting much of the world's forests as fast as they can be cut, has little to no effect on the environment is the height of ignorance. CO2, the #2 greenhouse gas out there, right with H20 (which also comes from that gas combustion). And lets not forget that even modern gas engines aren't 100% efficient, so there's all that waste heat and energy dumped into the atmosphere that was previously buried underground. And this is only considering gasoline produced in the past 30 years. Figure the long-term gas use/production, not to mention coal and natural gas, and it is enough to make you sick (if you care, that is).
What we need are real solutions to undo what we've done and at least bring the global temperature down a bit. Remember that article about how the temp is as high as it has ever been for as long as we have accurate records? Yeah, what we're doing is real, you can feel it when you walk outside. Blocking the sun just gives us an excuse to keep doing as we've been doing, not to mention F'ing up the ecosystem in the process.
I guess we could build a dome and live in it to escape the environment that we created.
Of course you have to carefully control population inside of a dome.
The problem is that switching to nuclear energy sources -- whether nuclear or even that Holy Grail of free-energy, fusion -- really only postpones the problem. Or rather, changes its immediate cause.
Right now we have global warming because of CO2 production and the "Greenhouse Effect." Fair enough; but I can easily imagine a future, particularly one where we develop a source of basically free, limitless energy, where that energy itself begins to become a problem.
If you set up a 1,000 MW power plant, whether you're burning oil or cracking atoms (or smashing them together) to get that energy, that's a billion watts of power going into our ecosystem that wasn't there before. And it all ends up as heat. Greenhouse effect or no greenhouse effect, pour enough energy in the form of heat into an essentially closed system, and the temperature's going to rise.
Especially if we think that we might discover fusion, or some other new source of energy, we need to know how to regulate the other big energy input to this planet: that of the sun. If we started doing a lot of mass-to-energy conversion, we'd probably want to offset the energy that we're dumping into the biosphere from our power plants by decreasing the input from the sun a little. So basically, we figure out our energy production, and "dial down" the solar radiation by that amount. My favorite crackpot idea for doing this involves a cloud of ice crystals at the Earth/Sun L1 point, but you can pick yours.
In the long run (what I call the 'steady state'), solar-input regulation seems to be the only way to prevent climate change, if future developments allowed for more energy production than the planet radiated into space at night without increasing in temperature.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I don't know about you, but I think the solution to screwing up the environment by altering a chaotic system in ways we don't quite understand is not to alter it further, hoping we understood correctly, but to stop (or rather to slow down) altering it.
Otherwise, we're falling into the same trap we have over and over again where the environment gets knocked out of whack -- such as the accidental introduction of a new species which proceeds to take over -- and we try to take a two-by-four and whack it in the other direction -- say, by introducing a predator to control that species -- and every time we're surprised when instead of correcting the course, it goes off careening in another direction -- the introduced predator ignores the target species and overruns the ecosystem itself.
Take the ozone hole, for instance. We thought CFCs were these wonderful inert compounds that we could use safely. A few decades later, we find out that the one thing they do interact with -- ozone under high-UV conditions -- is extremely important to our continued health. The solution was not to launch some new UV shielding particle into the upper atmosphere -- god knows what side effects that would have had -- but to stop using CFCs, switch to something else, and let things sort themselves out.
Until we know a hell of a lot more than we do about climatology, we're better off minimizing our interference than trying to counteract it.
Do you also advocate moving away from places like Canada and Norway rather than building heated homes?
In the context of humans adapting to nature vs. adapting nature to humans, there is no fundamental difference between preventing the icecaps from melting and putting in better flood control. We are still adapting nature to our needs (i.e. controlling nature), not the other way around. In fact, preventing the ice caps from melting is an example of better flood control.
for subjects like this, you should consider using other resources of discussion than slashdot... especially because the original news is more detailed, has references and is earlier announced than on slashdot ... have a look here:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004608.html
Rather than making the sunshade orbit earth, wouldn't it be easier to put the shade at some point between the sun and the Earth? Say at one of the Lagrange points?
The further out you put it, the larger you have to make it. The L1 point is about twice the distance from earth to the moon, so it'd have to be larger than 12,000 kilometers (diameter of the moon).
The L1 point still requires some orbital maintenance, and I imagine as the size of the thing goes up, the cost of that maintenance goes up too. Smarter heads than mine would have to figure out the scale of cost as distance increases.
What is this sun you speak of; is it caffienated?
According to the University of California, Santa Barbara:
Larry Niven did this in his novel "A World Out of Time" published in 1976. Damned internet generation.
I like the "increased underwater volcanic activity" theory myself. Saw a pdf by a climatologist somewhere... When I find it again, I'll submit a story.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Photons are enegy packets. If an object absorbs it, it heats up. If that object were a baseball bat, I'd pummel you with it. Then I'd find any moderator who marked this 'Interesting' and percussively sterilize him with it.
It's one thing to say something ignorant; it's another to raise that stupidity above my reading threshold.
Bemopolis
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
The WHO recently announced an alarming spike in the number of people worldwide suffering from SAD ...
I play Nerd-Folk!
We finally start to recognize the negative consequences of some change that's happening in nature. There happens to be a preponderance of evidence that certain actions of human society are responsible for this change. So do we all say "Hey, I guess we need to change our habits" and try to fix the problem at it's most probable source? No. Instead, some of us say "Well, if messing around with part of our ecosystem without having a clue what we were doing got us into this mess, then, by golly, maybe messing around with a different part of our ecosystem without having a clue what we are doing will get us out of it!" This really is a sad indicator of human psychology. Even when we recognize our problem, and even when we recognize that we our the source of that problem, we try to fix things by doing anything other than changing ourselves. Mess with the oceans, mess with the clouds, put sun-shades in space, but certainly don't make humans alter their behavior or make society adapt to a new way of meeting our energy needs!
We genetically engineer a giant cane toad to block out the sun!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Gaia is just getting a little fever, like you do when you are sick. When all the bad germs are gone, bring on the global frozen daquiris again for the next ice age...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It's time for an obscure movie reference folks!:
;)
Is Connor McCloud of the clan McCloud the chief scientist behind this all?
It's time for the immortals to fight.. wohoo!
Look up in the sky... After I first heard about the "chemtrail" phenomena, I started paying attention. Interesting how some jet's vapor stream dissipates quickly, while others hold together for some time.
Activist web sites alledge that some planes get atomized aluminum powder in their jet fuel, which passes through the engine okay. Aluminum in the air reflects sunlight back into space.
Atomized aluminum in the ground wrecks havoc with the ecosystem. The bastards who started this program ought to be shot, if it indeed exists as charged.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
these guys can get it delivered to custom size in only 3 days
That way, when the next Ice Age or nuclear winter comes, they can just switch modes...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I have to admit that I didn't read the article (yet)... but this begs the question... what about "global dimming". Haven't heard of global dimming? most people haven't. For a good overview, visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Reducing the amount of sunlight that hits the earth is already happening with some negative side effects.
Scott Dowdle
www.MontanaLinux.Org
so the next thing that will happen is:
Maggie will shoot Mr Burns...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
If we don't try, we'll never know.
How we know is more important than what we know.
We keep hearing about this supposed "problem" when GLOBAL WETTING is already upon us!
Uhhh, there's a temperature at which humans are comfortable, therefore that is what the temperature should be. Personally I'm for undoing some of the inclination of the planet too - get rid of these pointless seasons. It'd also be nice if we could make it rain less in the cities and more in the agricultural regions.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Who will protect Metropolis then? Everyone knows that Superman is powerless without the sun!
A climatologists would know what a theory is.
Also, it's not thousands that disagree, or even hundreds.
Go lie elsewhere.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They will build a great big sun blocker way out in the L-Point between here and the sun. Then, they will use a giant super duper computer to control the thing since they will need to keep it in the L-Point....Let's not forget it will also be a HUGE solor sail! Plus they will have to rotate the thing!!! I am pretty sure this was in a book I just read. I think maybe it was stephen Baxter.
anyhow, it worked in the book so it must work in real life!
Well then, I , for one, welcome our new sun-blocking overlords.
Block it over Arizona and the Sahara desert if you must, but could you please leave it alone in the Pacific NW - we don't get enough sunshine as it is and we still buy more sunglasses than the rest of the country!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
In a related item, the Bush administration is chastizing the Gray Lady for, yet again, publishing news about a possible new secret weapon against The War On Terror.
Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the country's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times - the reporters, the editors and the publisher."
"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Of course they do. Subtitles.
Nah, remember the article a few weeks ago about meteors? And how often they enter Earth's atmosphere & burn up? All those megaton-equivalents of energy have to go somewhere, the usual result is heat.
We should just reduce the solar output by dumping neutron absorbers directly into the sun. Now all we need to do is find a source for about 2 x 10^29 kg of Boron-10, a ship large enough to move it, and an energy source for said ship.
The problem is not too much Sun it's too much heat. The reason the heat's there is that we've got greenhouse gasses. Were it not for the greenhouse gasses this planet would be a freezing ball of ice and rock. We have too much greenhouse gasses. Carbon dioxide is one of, if not the, biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect. Chloroplasts absorb and convert carbon dioxide during the light stage, however, during the dark stage they actually produce carbon dioxide. The overall effect of the two stages is that carbondioxide is reduced. If we reduce the amount of light being recieved by these plants the ratio might be altered and plants won't be able to absorb as much carbon dioxide as they currently do, perhaps even giving off more than they absorb. The plants will also not be able to make as much energy and will die. Decomposing plants give off more greenhouse gasses that'll just cause more of a problem than we currently do.
And don't say that moving the planet further out is going to make a difference, if Mars and Venus were switched they'd pretty much retain their current climates. Venus too hot for most solid metals, and Mars too cold and variable to sustain much gasseous carbon dioxide...
"I am still looking for a reputable scientist that believes in global warming, and isn't caught up in the hype."
t ent_623803.htm
Duh. Are you really looking, or just saying you're looking? Maybe you're blind?
For example, less than a week ago: How about Stephen Hawking (the 'weelchair guy').
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-06/22/con
He said he was afraid that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid."
I don't think anybody posting here has what it takes to call Stephen Hawking wrong.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
What we need is more smog to blockout all that sunlight LA style.
while sco {
wget -O
}
Won't somebody please think of the plants and photoplankton? I'm no scientologist, but I'm pretty sure that limiting the amount of light coming from the sun would wreck any biocycles nature has developed. Call me an alarmist, but suddenly deciding to reduce the output of a near static light source (within 1%) that has been around for millions of years would probably be a "Bad Thing" (tm).
"Geoengineering" is a cool sounding term, but only completely conceited egomaniacs would think that they have enough scientific knowledge under their belt to start tinkering with the Earth's switchboard. The scientific community can go play God on someone else's ecosystem, Earth already has enough problems without ambitious Ph.D's playing doctor with the world climate. There are less potentially dangerous ways to control carbon dioxide emissions and global warming than giving the Earth a brand new set of Oakley's.
[For added emphasis, I've replaced certain parts of the obligatory Simpsons reference with pertinent madlibs]
QUIMBY
For stopping global warming, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.
Skinner talks to Lisa.
SKINNER
Well, I was wrong. The earth sized sunglasses are a godsend.
LISA
But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by glasiers?
SKINNER
No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of nuclear weapons. They'll wipe out the glasiers.
LISA
But aren't the nuclear weapons even worse?
SKINNER
Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of bacteria that thrives on radiation.
LISA
But then we're stuck with mutant bacteria!
SKINNER
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the bacteria simply freezes to death.
This would be a much cheaper, easier, and more direct method then say, changing the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards to curb emmisions! And of course, the fuel expended to boost millions of square miles of mirrors into orbit would have no effect whatsoever on the environment!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.
Maybe they bioengineered humans to be a better source of energy than the garden-variety humans found these days?
Why block the sun when people can raise the Earth's albedo? More white and reflective buildings, more concrete roads and sidewalks.
I assume there's some really obvious disadvantage but I'd really appreciate if some expert could point it out in a reply.
Am I the only one who thinks buzzwords like
burns, simpsonsdidit, whoshotmrburns, fud
are a total waste of screen space? I can't think of a single instance where this tagging has provided any useful information whatsoever.
A: determine honestly to the best of our ability what and when and how ( leaving if on the table ) we humans will be affected. and no dilly dallying or politicing, or hiding heads in sand.
B: once we know that, decide how we semicollectively want to respond. options seem to include getting us off the earth, and letting it go the way it wants to, while we terraform lifeless ( hopefully ) planets elsewhere, space stations, etc, etc. Or deciding to taylor earth better to our liking ( would not be my first choice ). and think of other strategies.
C: Put the plan into action, if one is needed.
D: PROFIT!Hey, this damn atmosphere is causing some serious problems. MAJOR greenhouse effect... Yeah let's add another, thicker layer to the atmosphere! That should solve allllll our problems.
OK, ok, I know it probably wouldn't really happen like that. In the end, if we did this right, we would be able to let sunlight in when we wanted to (not we as in us but as in the people but governments and stuff) creating something of a climate control for the Earth! Can't really tell if we're going to add to the problem are get a useful extra that we can advertise to aliens that might want to vacation here.
But concidering how much the atmosphere changes its chemical composition from volcaic activity alone, i think its a bit presumptuous to think that our tiny contribution (in comparison to volcanic activity) means jack shit.
Aside from the other poster pointing out that volcanoes put out an average of millions of tons of CO2 a year while human CO2 production is in the billions, the fact remains that if we continue to dick around pointing fingers at WHY this is happening, it won't get fixed and mankind will be in deep shit.
that anyone would think that they know "the temperature the earth is supposed to be" is the height of arrogance.
Scientists know what temperatures corn grows at. They know at what temperatures wheat, rice, and a lot of other crops grow at, as well as the grasses eaten by grazing herds, and the temperatures those animals are best suited to. If we want to continue to eat corn, wheat, and animals raised on those crops, then we know what temperature the parts of Earth where those things grow have to remain at.
If Global Dimming continues, we won't need to go to any trouble to block the sun.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Ok, it's not as clear cut as that. Look at the dates: Josie and the Pussycats
Mind you, I do agree with the sentiment that overall people (not just slashdot, but, people) are becoming more illiterate and, well, just less wise in general. TV has replaced many levels of learning.
http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/printout/0 ,23657,944914,00.html/
Perhaps we should give the scientists a cooling off period before we start messing with climate control?
Remember, Odgen Wornstrum tried this and failed.. We just need all the robots to vent their exhust and move us about a degree to the left..
Jimi Spier
www.jimispier.com - My tunes
Trying to engineer our climate doesn't count as adapting, it is as foolhardy as a little kid trying to cool his bedroom in the summer by breaking out his dad's power tools and cutting holes in the walls.
I'm a historian, and I can tell you for a fact that the earth has been much warmer in the past than it is now, and I really do not think that we are responsible for the climate warming that we're observing now. Applying systems theory to the data doesn't work because our instumentation hasn't been good enough for long enough to really tell us much; we could be looking at a perfectly natural rise in temperature that cycles every few thousand years. The astronomers up the hall from me say that the surface of Mars has been increasing in temperature at the same rate as Earth's for as long as we've been able to observe it. They think that our climate is reflecting a cycle going on in the Sun. It could be so. In any case, a warmer climate is nothing new and nothing to worry about as long we can adapt.
And Kim Stanley Robinson used (and I'm making a dramatic simplification) a sunshade/mirror in orbit in his Red/Green/Blue Mars books... first, to warm Mars up, and then to cool Venus down. Damned internet generation, indeed.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
1 a boatload od energy is reflected back from the surface
2 5% is not enough to account for the total warming. Not by a long shot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Did anyone else read the "whoshotmrburns" tag as "Who's Hot Mr Burns"?
I've experienced all kinds of things blocking out the sun - clouds, trees, tall houses, annoying people who decide to set up camp right in front of you on the beach, but never scientists. On the whole, scientists tend not to be all that gregarious and prefer to be in their labs than out in the sun. So whatever is blocking it, it's probably not a bunch of scientists.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Well not exactly the reverse, but how about using a series of lenses to warm up the northern hemisphere during winter? Them equator types probably wouldn't mind missing a bit of heat during December and we Ohioans could use an extra 20 degrees 3-4 months of the year.
A certain amount of the flora and fauna of the north depends on low temperatures, as I've understood it, and there are repercussions in that regards. On the other hand, it's a relatively easy sell environmentally--a 20 degree increase in temperature for the Northern United States (during winter) would reduce the resources used to heat homes and offices significantly--thereby reducing the accompanying pollution.
that the Simpsons is fully 3 /. mod point points funnier than the Angry Beavers.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
> Plenty of holes in the global warming THEORY remain.
Spoken like a true creationist...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Water weighs roughly 8.34lbs/gallon or 1kg/liter. Silk screen or fabric would weigh far less, and cover vast amounts of space compared to water of the same weight.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Ask someone who lives at the coastline, like in Manhattan what they think about climate change.
They paid a lot for that land.
Whether it's natural for the Earth to get warmer or not, there's a big reason to fight it.
Could it have seemingly random consequences? Yes. But global warming will have random consequences too.
Also, just because people believe in evolution doesn't mean they love it. Evolution involves the unfit dying. Few people want their relatives to die just because they don't have perfect health.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Would you happen to have the name of a reputable scientist that claims solar output variation is responsible for global warming, by any chance? Note that even over the 14-year sunspot cycle the variation is less than 1%.
You do realize that the Earth doesn't need to receive double the radiation to go from 30F to 60F, right?
When viewed on the Kelvin scale, I would suspect the temperature variation due to global warming is MUCH LESS than 1%.
Blocking the sun on a planet scale would be a typical human response by addressing the symptom, not the contributing causes within our control.
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
And in Glen Cook's Darkwar trilogy, the opposite is done: mirrors are used to keep the planet out of an ice age.
A film major I knew back in 2000 claimed that the only reason for that movie was so that somebody could write off a dozen sets of 12 different colored lens. Apparently those things ain't cheap.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
WD-40 is a superlubricant and it's made from oil, ergo, organic superlube. Pity I'm not getting my fusion laser along with it.
But where are my synthetic fossil fuels?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld
Didn't humans block out the Sun as a means of depriving the machines of energy?
-- Subvert the dominant paradigm. Repeat as desired. http://ownlifeful.com/
We could always launch a few hundred of those nukes we have and use the nuclear winter to offset the global warming...
Is the internet as bad as television?
Duracell was willing to pony up more product placement dollars than AMD or Intel.
It would have made much more sense if the machines wanted us for that nice neural net between our ears.
Someone had to do it.
For starters it is very possible that global warming is the only thing keeping us out of the next ice age, which - going on the last couple of interglacials - is due right about now. And even if the seas do rise, from an Australian perspective this represents a huge improvement - it will greatly disadvantage most of our competitiors, it will drown most of our lawyers and it will give us back the world's largest estuary, an ecological bonanza if ever there was one. Most of our remaining landmass will become coastal, with greatly improved rainfall. You in the northern hemisphere have trashed the ozone layer over us, and we suffer for your sins. Now we will profit from them. It's only fair.
What a load of horse shit. The world has been in constant flux and many organisms have been on the arse end of it. I'm for making sure we don't join them.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Can't we just push the moon over a little bit?
A 0.01 mm thick circular sheet of mylar with the same radius as Earth would require only a billion tons of carbon.
Isn't that a bit ironic when compared to our greenhouse gas emissions?
(I'm not saying that would be a good design, but it's an interesting figure to start with.)
This is one of the coolest inventions I've seen in awhile.
*slides on his cool guy sunglasses*
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Brilliant. What are these guys smoking, and where can I get some ?
Some people believe that efforts are already being made to block the sun by releasing chemical particulates from jets, causing their con trails to abnormally spread out in to sun blocking clouds.
see chemtrail "theory"
This explanation smacks of pure denial (or outright lying) to me. CFCs have been proven to deplete ozone. We have a seen an exponential rise in CFC emissions over the last century. We have seen holes in the ozone lazer. We know that the greenhouse effect works. And the other explanation is... the sun, which has been around for billions of years, has suddenly gotten out of whack, but it's not our fault? I'm all for keeping an open mind to other possibilities, but that doesn't mean accepting the other possibilities when they're plainly motivated by other factors than reason.
Nothing has ever been done right or we wouldnt be in this situation.
If its even a situation.
When man co-opts planetary behavior to sell soap, please kill me. No literally, please kill me.
In the context of humans adapting to nature vs. adapting nature to humans, there is no fundamental difference between preventing the icecaps from melting and putting in better flood control. We are still adapting nature to our needs (i.e. controlling nature), not the other way around. In fact, preventing the ice caps from melting is an example of better flood control.
We can't even decide what will happen from the current trends. Some say we can get a new Ice Age because of global warming, others say the planet will fry. Some say the water will rise because of ice melting, others say the water will sink because of ice melting in the north pole.
Some has a timeline of 20 years, 50 years and some 3000 years.
We have no clue what could happen to the streams in the oceans, for without the Gulf stream, Europe would mostly be unhabitably cold today.
And you're suggesting we're controlling nature?
I just find it so incredible... Liken it with debugging a program. We don't know where the bug is or what result it gives. Neither do we know how the program looks like in its entirety, not even how complex it is. Heck, we don't even know if the current trend is a bug at all!! Global cooling and warming has been part of earths natural cycle for millions of years.
We don't even know what effect we're contributing: How much is caused by humans and how much is part of a natural cycle.
If we put in a counter-effect, and the twig snaps, then what?
What we do know is that it would take earth very little to shake us off, and leave civilization in crumbles, compared to what has occured in the past of earth's history. And that there's nothing we can do about it.
Humility is in order here, and trust in the order of nature.
If you ask me, the best we can do is leave earth's bussiness to earth itself as much as possible. Our CO2 and other gasses should be minimized, because we know scientifically they have an effect.
Population should be controlled, not nature.
Society should be more localized, not made more and more fragile and global just to save a few bucks now.
With some forethought, we should be able to survive most calamities if not prevent them. Our society is on the brink, not because of nature, but because of us and millions of people's inaction and laziness.
Last but not least. We should trust that everything is happening as it should be. No matter what. Controlling and manipulation, everything done out of fear, will only come back and haunt us.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
This idea seems rather dumb to me.
We already have "Global Dimming" going along with our global warming, which is already reducing the warming effect, yet we still have warming.
This proposal seems to be to radically increase the dimming we're already experiencing. The question is how much more dimming can the planet take without badly affecting the ecosphere? More dimming could make life for plants much harder, leading to an increase in desertification, making the warming problem worse.
It also of course doesn't address the root causes of the warming problem. As I see it this is a band-aid on a broken leg approach.
They never thought about building those solar collectors slightly above the clouds.
On the third installment of the matrix trilogy (revolutions?), notice when neo and trinity fly their hovercraft towards the sky and into the black clouds while trying to evade all the squidies?
yes, when they reach the black clouds and took a peek of the shining sun above the clouds, all the squidies died and so does their hovercraft. the black clouds generates something that destroys electronics (emp perhaps?). that's why they crash land to the city of zero-one (where trinity got impaled on the ship's debris).
so, you see, the machines can never get past the black clouds and harvest the sun's rays. so they settle on the human batteries.
Obligatory adaption:
"My swarm of sunray-reflecting mirrors has now been installed in orbit around earth. However, they are as I speak being turned TOWARD EARTH ITSELF. Global warming will be worse than ever, unless...... YOU PAY ME ONE MILLION D$LLARS!!!!!!! BWWHWHWHAHAHHAHAHAAAHAHAHAAAAAA.. (whisper) (whisper) Oh.... I see...... I mean: ONE FANTASILLION-DILLION-MILLION D$LLARS!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAhahaha ha ha ha...."
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
They've been doing this for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrails
The sun is already being blocked by particulate pollution. This has actually been obscuring the full effect of global warming.
There was a good Nova on Global dimming, "Dimming the Sun":
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
I remember attending a seminar that Dr. Cicerone put on at my college (1974) where he told us with straight face that ozone holes would be giving everyone skin cancer by the 1990's. Now he wants money to block the sun. How about if we just lay this numbskull off he never gets it right. Bad science run amok when conjoined with public funding. He and Paul Erhlich should retire and tell each other the apocalyptic fantasy stories. Maybe we should start capping volcanoes and build umbrellas over continents. Just another public sector clown that has never had a real job.
Block out the sun NOW!
It blocks out my monitor...
Defining Statistics and Social Research
How about Stefan-Boltzman, then? Last I've checked it was still accepted in reputable science circles. There's this law that says that the energy radiated by a black body's unit of surface in a unit of time is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature.
Now let's look at global warming. A 1C temperature increase in a century is a 1K temperature increase. Let's say Earth's average temperature is 300K, or at least so close to that as to not make much of a difference in the maths that follow. A 1K temperature increase is a, pay attention, 0.33% temperature increase.
Yes, I know that bullshit save-the-earth rhetoric describes the change as "huge", "unprecedented" and other emotional hyperboles, but that's how much it is in actual science units. A whole 0.33%. A third of a percent. Which is just as well, since if you actually had a "huge" increase in SI terms, you'd be cooked. Literally.
Now let's plug that into Stefan-Boltzman's formula. The relative increase in radiated energy is (T2/T1)^4. The constant would be present both above and below the fraction line, so it neatly goes away. So since T2/T1 is 1.0033, we have an increase in radiated energy equal to 1.0033^4 = 1.013. A whole 1.3% increase.
Now let's also remember that equilibrium is reached when the radiated energy equals the the incoming energy. So, yep, there you go, you only need a 1.3% fluctuation in the Sun's energy output, or again a 0.33% difference in the Sun's temperature (Stefan-Boltzman applies there too), to account for the _whole_ global warming.
Note that I'm not saying that that's necessarily the case. Maybe, maybe not. Hell if I know.
_All_ I'm saying is just that, seriously, you don't actually need huge numbers to account for a 0.33% difference in temperature. Sometimes about 1% is really all you need. Sometimes just because political speeches describe something as "huge", it doesn't actually need huge numbers.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It was... *narrows eyes, and shakes fist* Wornstrum.
... visiting slashdot. Duh!
So instead of applying technological genius to fixing the cause (pollution) they will treat the symptom? I love it when people do everything they can to avoid having to change their behavior, like some lung cancer patient sneaking cigarettes into their hospital room. I guess self-control is a challege beyond human skill.
The article stated that it would affect visible light. How would less sunlight affect crops? I assume it would decrease plant growth and last time I checked we still needed plants to stay alive. Plus less plant growth means less CO2 consumption by them. What about countries who don't appreciate having their skies shaded? Or local weather pattern disruptions or even seasonal changes?
I can see them proposing giant sun lamps for crops to counteract the shade, all powered by coal plants. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
A:That's no sun blocker, that's a space station!
B:It's a trap!
Just what do these mental Neanderthals think they are doing wanting to block out the sun to treat global warming? Stopping natural photosynthesis isn't the answer. Lowering the global temperature and light is not the answer. How about working on the solution instead of the superficial symptoms? Eliminate the use of fossil fuels just like the use of freon was eliminated. And don't give me that crap that it can't be done because we all know that it can be done. It may not be the most popular solution, but it's the one that will work the best. Stop burning garbage, stop polluting rivers, and stop electing Republicans.
... in knowing that scientists understand completely the workings of climate and, in detail, the short and long term repercussions of their proposed actions. I mean they must, right?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Filed by Hughes Aircraft Company in 1990....
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Assuming the charts are relatively accurate
2 88.htm
t ml
Non-OPEC production:
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/PAPRPNT.gif
OPEC production:
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/PAPRPOP.gif
Gallons of gas in a barrel of oil:
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng99
CO2 (and H20) in a gallon of gas:
http://www.terrapass.com/terrablog/posts/000181.h
I just shot an average on the productions and added them together, using 60,000,000 barrels per day total production. Multiply by 365 days a year, 30 years, 19.5 gallons of gas in a barrel, 20 pounds of CO2 in a gallon of gas. Divide that by 2000 lbs in a ton and you get somewhere around 130 billion tons of CO2. If you use the same source for CO2 in a gallon of gas, which says roughly 8 pounds of water come from burning a gallon of gas, then you're talking about around 50 billion tons of water vapor. Add those together and (with the figures from Phase Shifter) and you're talking about 3.6% of the existing mass we've produced in the last 30 years alone. I tried to dig up some figures on the deforestation but didn't have much luck, but trees (which we're cutting) and grass (which we're paving over) are large consumers of CO2 and H20, so losing them is compounding the effect.
I guess that's better than the reverse.... Talk about blocking out the sun!!!
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
nuclear reactors don't themselvs produce CO2. but the production of uranium sure does. mining the stuff it makes me wonder, how much energy does nuclear actually net? this site doesn't have all the information but it sure has some nice pics.
in this paper, the authors calculated that with high quality ore, the CO2 produced by the full life of a reactor is about half to one third of an equivalent sized gas-fired power station. but once high quality ore is not available (it's getting rare) low quality ores are used, requiring more energy to mine and refine, and the CO2 produced by the reactor becomes equal to that produced by the equivalent gas-fired power station.
but a station built to run on natural gas could be retrofitted to be fueled by something more carbon neutral, less radioactive.
fear is the mind killer
Note that even over the 14-year sunspot cycle the variation is less than 1%. Note that 14 years out of the Earth's 2 billion is a insignificant sample size to be using. That works out roughly to a 95% confidence level with a confidence interval of almost 30%. So, ignsinificant and useless.
Haven't these scientists learned from the various cartoons that feature this idea? It is quite possibly the worst idea ever. "Gee, it's pretty hot around here, why don't we just block out the sun har har har!" The amount of money it would take would probably be more than, say, creating a cleaner source of energy and letting our natural sun ray blocker to restore itself after awhile.
"Global warming did occur! Nuclear winter just cancelled it out."
The only reason that nuclear produces this amount of CO2 is because most of the uranium enrichment plants in the U.S. are fed with energy from coal burners in the Midwest, some of the dirtiest power plants in the country. On top of that, our current nuclear reactor design (Light-Water reactor) only "burns" about 2 percent of the total nuclear fuel that it actually has, so the rest ends up as waste and we have to mine a load of stuff that just goes to waste. Other types of reactors can safely and effectively solve these problems to a great extent (such as the Integral Fast Reactor, http://cbll.net/articles/ifr ). If we ran the enrichment plants using nuclear energy instead of coal, CO2 emissions would come only from the building of the plant and a tiny amount from transport and mining.
Natural gas just puts our electricity supply in the hands of Russia, Middle East, etc. since U.S. natural gas has already peaked and continuing to expand gas-fired generation probably isn't a secure thing, even if it is cheap, cleaner than coal, and more accepted/"safer" than nuclear. There's always wind, solar, geothermal!
I believe this would fall under "blocking out the moon"
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez