Slashdot Mirror
A Sunshade In Space To Combat Global Warming
ultracool writes, "While the only permanent solution for human-driven global warming is developing renewable energy, a temporary hack to counteract possible abrupt climate change is to build a giant sunshade in space. The sunshade would be launched in small pieces by electromagnetic launchers, conventional chemical rockets being far too expensive. The sunshade could be developed and deployed in 25 years, would last about 50 years, and would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by 2% — enough to balance heating due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." From the article: "The [trillions of] spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer... Sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun [at L-1], would be diverted away from our planet... The sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers [collectively] launching a stack of [a million] fliers every 5 minutes for 10 years."
I wonder what else this would stuff up? Less light for photosynthesis for example.
We could just cut down on our insane energy usage/wastage.
But hey, that would involve personal effort and we can't have that, can we.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Well they did.
Maybe we could just... uh... plant some trees? I figure it'd save us a few trillion dollars in the long run. -_-
Damn, so close to frist psot.
What about the super strength wires to hold it all together?! (Sorry, just finished the audiobook).
Excellent, will it come with my -1.75 prescription?
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/xhtml.html
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
At least they're not using a giant space mirror. A project like that could possibly be retrofitted into a giant space laser and used to destroy all the robots on the planet only to be narrowly avoided by moving the planet away from the sun, legthening our year by a week. I know at the very least Al Gore would be against such an action.
A tinfoil hat for the earth.
The trouble is with things like that are the unintended consequences that it'll undoubtedly have. The real fix is that we start living sustainably. The sunshade won't fix problems such as that which will be caused because we're using 4 barrels of oil for every new one discovered.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
But if they're going to do it, then why not make it photovoltaic and get some energy out of it.
Blocking/decreasing photosynthesis would be bad, since it's one of only ways to decrease the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
We need to plant more trees to replace the devastation going on in South America, limit our CO2 production. America would be smart and try to help polish it's now tarnished reputation by taking a lead in this, and start by decreasing the amount of SUVs on the road.
..........FULL STOP.
If it were done on Venus or the moon and no alien lifeform comes to object then it's not a problem. But a shade in space affecting everyone on the planet is politically not a good idea. Seeking methods to find solutions down on earth is much better and longer lasting and can't be used to blackmail an entire planet. Ever consider turning the Sahara desert into a large Oasis by giving the plants desalinated water? This would surely cool the planet as it's taking the carbon back that came from desert places in the first place. This would be a multinational effort as well and not necessarily controlled by a single entity.
... as I'd imagine the packages would have to fire at supersonic speeds to reach orbit.
... ugh!
A sonic boom every 5 minutes for 10 years
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Seams like we already have our global sunshade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Various means of producing power causes pollution.
Pollution = Greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases cause global warming.
Humankind puts up giant sunshade.
Earth gets less light.
Less light means solar power becomes obsolete.
People need to burn more fossil fuels to get more power.
Global warming picks up.
Humankind builds a bigger sunshade.
Okay, that is a big exaggerated, but my point is that we need to invest in solar power and stop using fossil fuels which are just so obsolete. Maybe we should work on fission.
I don't care if I get modded down for this. I want to bring up this subject to discuss intelligently when I have time to reply.
Umm hello?
1 &cid=16732829
Well the sun is making us hot so let's block it out. WTF?
That Sun also keeps plants alive, and guess what? Those plants provide our OXYGEN.
So did they figure out how much LESS oxygen will be produced when they block out 2% of the sunlight?
I'll bet it's significant. So we get less oxygen, and guess what. That means a higher percentage of greenhouse gases relative to "beneficial" ones.
Net result. Zero. We still fry.
Like a previous poster already said- http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20493
"We could just cut down on our insane energy usage/wastage.
But hey, that would involve personal effort and we can't have that, can we."
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
"conventional chemical rockets being far too expensive"
Hilarious that cost should be an issue when it comes to saving the world.
F
I can't imagine the astronomers will be too pleased with this either.
A similar shield is described in the book 'Sun Storm' by Arthur C Clark & Stephen Baxter. http://thebestreviews.com/review27301
This will just kill off the planet. Great, it lowers the temperature, but the majority of life of the planet (read: algae, plants etc) requires sunlight to live and hasn't been that greatly affected by the temperature change (yet). The amount of light they get has not changed (yet) due to global warming so they keep producing oxygen. Reduce the sunlight by 2%, and the e
The Americans (and I can say this because I am one) need to get a wake up call and start thinking about the environment. I'm not suggesting everyone become as radical as the Green party or anything, but we should at a minimum try to align with the rest of the world. Instead of trying to think up bizarre (and expensive) ways of blocking the sun, why not just reduce emissions and then try to harness more solar power?
Oh yeah, that would be bad for large companies. Also doesn't require 200billion of government spending to said companies to implement either.
Feint
========================
Do the right thing for once...
Their talking about putting millions upons millions of small objects into one of the lagrange points, isn't that likely to make other space travel just a little more difficult? Hell they already change the oribit of the ISS to avoid paint flecks and what knot.
bad idea, getting press because it's a bad idea, kinda like dumping fertiliser in the worlds oceans to create an algae blume to convert co2 into o2...
Might be just as difficult, but at least it is something people can understand.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In the Simpsons, Mr. Burns built a giant sunshade to block the free source of energy that is the sun.
In Futurama, a giant mirror is launched into space to block the rays of the sun, and reduce global warming. A small meteor hits it, causing it to turn, focus the light on the surface of the Earth, and cut a swathe through the arena from which the scientists (and Nixon's head) look on.
If we used that 2% of solar energy as a substitute for fossil fuels, we wouldn't need any fossil fuels anymore.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
.. does anyone else think the only people we have working on a solution to global warming are 12 year olds who read far too much science fiction and people who smoke crack?
God Be Gone
Get real! That's complete science fiction.
"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Note: this anonymous coward has no idea what to make of all this
Angel is a brilliant mirror designer, but given that's what he spends his time thinking about, how much credibility would you give his ideas on fixing global warming? He is probably about as qualified to make suggestions on the subject as Mrs. Guy Ritchie. Or me.
Pining for the fjords
If the sun were no more than a big space heater (no pun intended), then sure, maybe this would be useful - though as others have pointed out, it sounds like a mindbendingly stupid thing to do, when you consider the cost of it. But the Sun does more than just give us heat.
Maybe you've all heard of a little process known as photosynthesis? It's that pesky thing plants do using sunlight by which the carbon is fixed out of CO2 in order to release O2. Since we need to breathe oxygen to survive, its continued abundance is kinda important.
So, we reduce the amount of sunlight coming to Earth - we reduce the amount of energy flowing into our system - and end up with diminished growth on Earth, as well as a diminished ability to fix carbon and pull CO2 out of the air. Anyone else see the problem?
By reducing levels of sunlight, we raise the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, heating up the Earth even more.
Not a plan.
I'm the assistant manager of a state park during summers, so I spend at least eight hours a day outside. On sunny days I've often joked that I needed some sort of orbital shade to keep the glare out of my eyes and to keep me cool. Admittedly my idea of a giant sun glasses lens in orbit was a bit crude, but a man can dream right? Finally my dream can come true...
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
Well, at least by the time we develop robots with really good AI, and depends heavily on solar energy, we already have the tech to scorch the sky we'll know how to get rid of 'em, or else we're all gonna be batteries.
We are all doomed! Just watched a show about dodging asteroids. Now we are talking about sun shields. What is next? Armageddon 2, the vicious cycle.. coming soon to a theater near you! Alien invasion my arse! What self respecting alien race would not come down to this planet and look at us and say, "we really screwed up that one, $%^^&" I told you they couldn't function with only 2% !"
/. readers have any 'wise' comments about this one. Shouldn't you be working anyway, so you can consume shit and leave it on my doorstep? I know what you will say, " he is a ranting idiot", now use your +/-2% and convince me that you aren't some armchair jockey with all the answers. Maybe some college professor will open a book and quote something at me trying to be papa brain. God forbid the Christians start in on me with all that BS.
What is quality of life? Can someone define it for me please? I sure as hell can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone. Wait let me go start my F350 king cab and check country radio, maybe they know. Or, I will just ask Al Gore. He seems to know everything. I think I will leave W. alone, he has enough to worry about. Hey Joe America, Jane world ! Do you know what the secret to life is? What is happiness and should I feel guilty to feel it? Seriously, where are we as this human race to be so screwed up in such a short time. 100 years it took us to need sun shields. Maybe the ignorant college kids know, at least they have passion.
Now I know what the guy at the bus stop preaching from the camera manual and flinging doo doo at the passing cars is thinking. Screw it ! Now let's see if
Sounds like they saw Highlander 2, which has a similar idea, an artificial ozone layer. The movie was not very good as well.
It's not the first time in the Earth's history when climate is changing. In fact it's changing constantly.
look at this
http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
I see a couple problems with this "sunshade idea".
1. wouldn't they act like solar sails and eventually plummet towards the earth (or away from earth orbibt, or into an unuseful position, etc.)?
Maybe some sort of transparent material would be better; scattering rather than reflecting/absorbing light. Or would that also act as a solar sail?
2. Electromagnetic space launches aren't quite there yet. It's just how it is. Maybe later on.
Far as I know, this idea isn't even remotely possible until they get that particular tech to a usable/fundable level. No work, no funds. No funds, no go.
3. Expensive.
Even with a fantastically efficient launch method (as electromagnetic/laser launching seems to promise), 2% of all the light headed towards earth means a lot, a very large lot, of mass to put into orbit. I'm not sure I can impress this on everybody. It's a FANTASTICALLY large amount.
4. Alternatives.
There's stuff we can do RIGHT AT THIS VERY MOMENT. It's very hard to identify just what one can do to reduce emissions, and many end up doing the exact opposite just in trying. But here's a few tips: Be efficient. Find ways around obsolescense. If at all possible, don't waste more than you need. This should all be terribly obvious by now, even though it isn't to many.
I can see the guys running the sun shield doing the same - charge countries for letting light shine on them in the daytime.
Where is it? Someone has to quote it. I would have thought it was an inevitible thing. Come on. It's a Mr Burns one too, everyone loves Mr Burns. Where is it?!
I have a better idea; let the Earth's ecosystem fail, bring on the global climate change!! I'm picturing a post apocalyptic world, with no more free rides for the weak techno-dependent. Kill off 75% of the world's population, the last 25% will be the strongest & most deserving to survive, though they'll live in a miserable, forsaken world where every day is a struggle to survive!
Schatten Teufel
There is nothing "Common" about Sense
It's all well and dandy to reduce the light coming to earth so the greenhouse gases don't trap as much heat. Problem is the last 50 years the amount of light reaching earth surface has been reducing following research by Israeli, Australian and other scientists that were also doing research on rainfall and evaporation rates. They found air pollution was a major factor as it made more water droplets form which absorbed some light. I have no idea how it affected the greenhouse effect though. If only the main greenhouse gas layers were lower than many of the water drops formed because of the air pollution then we could just pollute the air with more nitrogen based compounds to reduce the greenhouse gas effect. The old beat up car fuming badly could be prolonging life as we know it :)
This is clearly a dumb idea, but its wrapped up in a way that will make sense to dumb people in power: Can't stand the heat? Get in to the shade!
But along similar lines I was thinking about using hydrogen for fuel. There is a serious by product of creating hydrogen from oceans: oxygen. Oxygen is poisonous in high concentrations, but perhaps more worryingly its also a catalyst for fire. Isn't there a real chance that creating that much oxygen and pumping it into the atmosphere is going to take us from the relatively safe 2.5% up to the scary-fireball-of-death 3% oxygen levels?
I know at the moment is seems like wacko talk, but if they had said 80 years ago that using coal and oil would make the planet warmer they'd have been laughed off Ye Olde SolidusPeriod. I understand this is a closed system (at least in theory) and most of the hydrogen that is release will be oxidized, but what about the little bit that isn't? How big a scale of industry would it take before we had a serious problem with O2, H2 and H20 levels in the atmosphere?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
``The real fix is that we start living sustainably.''
Yes. And biofuel is a good start. As I've said before, biofuel is carbon-neutral, cheap to produce, does not create a dependency on foreign countries, and we can produce enough of it to power the whole USA using just a fraction of all the desert land there. It probably also doesn't produce as much nuclear waste as nuclear fission does (but I don't have any data for that).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If there are 2 proposed solutions to a problem - one boring and sensible (e.g. "let's stop wasting so much energy") and one that sounds as though it's the brainchild of a 12-year-old on crack - the media will emphasize the second one.
The goal of today's journalist isn't to inform; it's to attract attention and get a response. Because that's what pleases the advertisers, who are the customers who count.
i remember seeing something like this on futurama, and i remember it not going to well for them.
portfolio
A launch every 5 minutes for how 25 years? Do you kow how much energy that will use?
Where are they going to get it from? Oil so it creates more emmissions? Sun maybe, nope sorry we'll be blocking that too!
The trillions this would potentially cost would be better served as investments in renewable energies.
How about some long term solutions rather than band-aids?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
I tried this once, but I got vetoed by the Gaians, Spartans and Morganites. =(
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
Carbon Dioxide + Water + Light energy Glucose + Oxygen + Water
Isn't there a way we can do this on a massive scale and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? And I don't mean plant forests because that isn't likely to happen due to the space they require. Synthesize our own chlorophyll and do it much more efficiently than plants can? Or perhaps skip chlorophyll altogether and go with some other means of using light (or even use nuclear power if some other energy source would be more efficient) to implement the carbon reduction reaction in an even simpler way than chlorophyll does it which can allow us to sequester the carbon.
Or perhaps it would be simpler to find some way to store carbon dioxide. But because it is a gas that sounds troublesome.
Looks like the guys at MIT and various people in industry are looking into the problem: http://sequestration.mit.edu/
Ultimately humanity is going to have to take active control over the climate of our planet. Nothing can be left to nature anymore because as part of nature we would destroy ourselves.
"the last 25% will be the strongest & most deserving to survive, though they'll live in a miserable, forsaken world where every day is a struggle to survive!" You make that sound like a bad idea. I mean, who wouldn't want to be Mad Max? ... Oh, ok, so even Mad Max himself wouldn't want to be Mad Max, but still... Post-Apocalyptica rules!
Now we've found a way to destroy our planet on a global scale!
so now we can continue to thin, pollute and otherwise destroy the atmosphere, all the while causing climate and weather changes on a global scale, blocking out sunlight that supports the plant life that generates our oxygen, and tons of other fun consiquences.
just imagine the military uses for a giant space based device for blocking sunlight!
you could modify weather patterns to flood or otherwise destroy problematic nations by generating stationary supercell storms over them.
you could starve their crops of sunlight, or rain depending on it's placement.
simultainously you could put america at an economic advantage on all levels of production, from generateing rain in previously dry regions, take energy away from storms that could be otherwise devistating (example being cooling off the gulf to destroy a hurricane) you could even increase fish populations in us watters by setting them to the optimal temperture year round.
Make a section refelective(which it already is) and angel it towards canada and alaska to essentialy terraform them into pristine growing or grazing land with just enough rain and warmer weather. then just send them a letter of acceptence of their surrender and expand our nation's size.
make the rest of the world dependent on us for food, for watter, for sunlight, for oxygen, for life, forever.
fuck everyone else
jk(atleast I hope not)
have they discussed this with the sunblock manufacturers?
They might think that this planet belongs to them also, and that their advice could to be requested...
Morpheus: We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky.
Looking at the picture in the article, it looks like they're planning to put 100 millions CDs in orbit to reflect the light.
If so, I think I have enough AOL CDs in my drawer for the mission to go ahead right now.
it would target him too! :)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No kidding.
According to Dr. Crutzen, a Nobel laureate, we can counter the warming by creating a global haze by ejecting thousands and thousands of tons of SO2 into the stratosphere to produce a shaded earth that would counter the effects of global warming. Note the word - stratosphere, which is a bit higher up than where we are pumping SO2 currently :).
I got this from: http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/1 0/23/5718
As alternatives consider this:
* Drop a few nu-cu-lar bombs on rogue nations... so we get nucular winter
* tickle mt. st. Helens, Krakatoa, Tambora - ps: Tambora erupted 1815 and it is estimated it spewed out 150x more ash than miss Helen... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora
This reminds me of the book Sunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, of course there they're sensible enough to only activate the shield during a very intensive solar storm. The shield is a nice idea, but as others have mentioned, it will kill vegetation that does need the light for photosynthesis. The same goes for the idea to combat the global warming by creating a small scale nuclear winter, which would be the cheap and easy version compared to the shield at L1. In this scenario, a few (10-100 ?) nuclear weapons, fission or fusion bombs as you choose, are used in some location which is not too populated and the resulting increase of dust particles in the atmosphere lowers the global temperature. Again, any vegetation dependent on photosynthesis will be negatively affected by this, so the amount of CO2 that vegetation takes from the air will be lowered. The advantage of this scenario over the shield scenario, apart from far lower costs and total lack of technical difficulties, is that one can instead choose to use the bombs in densely populated areas, thus lowering the overpopulation and human energy consumption, and as an added bonus this lowers the global nuclear weapons stockpile.
Isn't Earth's orbit relative to the Earth's mass? Make it lighter and it will move a little way further from the sun. Moving the Earth further from the sun will surely reduce Earth's temperature. So... the answer is just send the heaviest people into space. Lots of them.
Most of the "rest of the world" doesn't care a bit and has very little to zero environmental safeguards in place. The US may use a lot of energy but at least we really are addressing the problems, slowly but surely. Outside of a few european nations, comprising very little total land mass and not all that much humanity (out of 6 billion and change), the" rest of the world" has no functional EPA-like establishment (they might on paper but it is mostly a joke, take...asia for instance, or africa or south america, they don't give a rat's ass basically) or any functional environmental protections in place-they just burn whatever and dump whatever and do not care about it at all. The US just happened to have a lead in technological living, because we actually cooperated, we had the largest common language sized nation (that's being completely destroyed on purpose now by the multicultural morons and are now totally insane immigration policies), we had the most freedom to innovate (going away fast, why we have such a skewed balance of trade, we don't insist on quid pro quo with the massive polluting nations-see "most of asia" again), and quite readily we made the most money, which we then spent-exactly the same as "the rest of the world" does when they make money. It's not our fault they choose to be tribalistic, insist on some screwy different language every ten miles, and can't function without dictators (although we are catching up there too, sad to say).
Now I am a pretty strong conservationist, and one of the very, very few slashdotters here with some solar power (I put my money where my mouth is), one of the few who actually does lant trees and work with "nature", but I'll call bogus on the constant US bashing over the environment. At least we are aware of it here and are trying to deal with it WITHOUT totally destroying our own economy in the process. You want to see massive filth, no safeguards, degraded environment, no awareness, no caring..go to just about any other nation outside the aforementioned small handful of european nations. Not all of europe, just a few. Population wise and land mass wise, it is pitiful outside the US (and canada) for the environment. The rest of the planet needs to catch up to the US in at least awareness, and they have a golden oportunity to learn from our mistakes and leapfrog a generation (or three most places, they need to crawl out of the middle ages socially and intellectually first) if they want a non hypocritical leg to stand on when it comes to the environment.
(posted anonymously - i'm no karma whore!)
But University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel thinks about it.
Angel, a University of Arizona Regents' Professor and one of the world's foremost minds in modern optics, directs the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory and the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics. He has won top honors for his many extraordinary conceptual ideas that have become practical engineering solutions for astronomy.
For the past year, Angel has been looking at ways to cool the Earth in an emergency. He's been studying the practicality of deploying a space sunshade in a global warming crisis, a crisis where it becomes clear that Earth is unmistakably headed for disastrous climate change within a decade or two.
Angel presented the idea at the National Academy of Sciences in April and won a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant for further research in July. His collaborators on the grant are David Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nick Woolf of UA's Steward Observatory, and NASA Ames Research Center Director S. Pete Worden.
Angel is now publishing a first detailed, scholarly paper, "Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near L1," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The plan would be to launch a constellation of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the sun, called the L-1 orbit.
The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer. About 10 percent of the sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun, would be diverted away from our planet. The effect would be to uniformly reduce sunlight by about 2 percent over the entire planet, enough to balance the heating of a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.
Researchers have proposed various alternatives for cooling the planet, including aerosol scatterers in the Earth's atmosphere. The idea for a space shade at L1 to deflect sunlight from Earth was first proposed by James Early of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1989.
"The earlier ideas were for bigger, heavier structures that would have needed manufacture and launch from the moon, which is pretty futuristic," Angel said. "I wanted to make the sunshade from small 'flyers,' small, light and extremely thin spacecraft that could be completely assembled and launched from Earth, in stacks of a million at a time. When they reached L1, they would be dealt off the stack into a cloud. There's nothing to assemble in space."
The lightweight flyers designed by Angel would be made of a transparent film pierced with small holes. Each flyer would be two feet in diameter, 1/5000 of an inch thick and weigh about a gram, the same as a large butterfly. It would use "MEMS" technology mirrors as tiny sails that tilt to hold the flyers position in the orbiting constellation. The flyer's transparency and steering mechanism prevent it from being blown away by radiation pressure. Radiation pressure is the pressure from the sun's light itself.
The total mass of all the fliers making up the space sunshade structure would be 20 million tons. At $10,000 a pound, conventional chemical rocket launch is prohibitively expensive. Angel proposes using a cheaper way developed by Sandia National Laboratories for electromagnetic space launchers, which could bring cost down to as little as $20 a pound.
The sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers launching a stack of flyers every 5 minutes for 10 years. The electromagnetic launchers would ideally run on hydroelectric power, but even in the worst-case environmental scenario with coal-generated electricity, each ton of carbon used to make electricity would mitigate the effect of 1000 tons of atmospheric carbon.
Once propelled beyond Earth's atmosphere and gravity with an electromagnetic laun
It would be way easier to modify earth's albedo instead.
Man has modified albedo in two directions: polar caps are shrinking, decreasing albedo, and forest is shrinking also, increasing albedo.
But by actively modifying the albedo of part of the sahara and the other big deserts, for example, you could feasibly dump into space the few percent required to equilibrate earth's climate.
A combination of controled deforestation with desert "painting" could also do the trick.
All this seems far more plausible than sun shades.
You cannot proceed from the informal to formal by formal means
Building a sunshade will not fix any problems, it'll only make the situation worse.
This is like publically taking a shit in the park, reason with everyody that it's fertilizer and then convince everybody to shit in the park themselves. It doesn't make the shit go away.
Seriously, if this is all it takes to get a frontpage slashdot news-story, then I can come up with equally worthy alternatives : I suggest using sunblocker, I suggest blowing off a part of the sun with a trillion nukes, I suggest mounting giant thrusters to the earth and put it farther away from the sun, brainfart, brainfart.
I'd much rather see a comparison about the effects off everyone switching to diode light bulbs or hybrid cars, IF indeed this is about the environment and not a dork who want to showcase his ability to think up idiotic uses for an alternative propulsion-systems.
At least this shows that anyone who considers burning trees as a good source of energy (Hint! Renevable!) cannot handle advanced physics concepts like light pressure.
Guess there's no limit to imagination when it comes to thinking of alternatives to building more nuke plants to replace coal/oil.
...of Global Salvationism
Before we go do a really stupid thing and imperil everyone on the planet, perhaps we should do a little checking? Just to make sure that we haven't been misled?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Doesnt anybody with a lick of sense read these articles before posting them?
-Mr. Burns already did that. No one liked him for it.
...yeah
-Futurama did it, too. Uh,
Maybe they should just hire on Matt Groening to NASA or something. It'd be cheaper than sending a few scientists through college.
My name would be Pi_r_[]ed, but this stupid thing wouldn't allow it. Well, at least now you know.
Paint Texas white.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't want to be a pessimist, but I hope they also plan for a way to bring it back down in a hurry if it has some unpredictable side-effect. Like some kind of auto-destruct mechanism or something.
...man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out!"
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Iron seeding is way cheaper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization.
Also, it will start working almost instantly - as in matter of months, not years.
1. Create a massive array of booster rockets to push the earth into an orbit 2% further from the sun.
2. Rig up a massive solar panel to block out the sun. This solar panel will collect energy to power a 3000 mile square array of heat lamps. By using an addon heat lamp controller we could could control the heat output - or make it flash like disco lights! The project would be funded completely by periodically displaying advertising for sony or mcdonalds.
3. Deep drilling would enable us to plant a heatsink close to the earth's core. Attached to this heatsink would be massive heat pipe extending to the moon. As an added bonus the heat moving through the heat pipe could be used to push pellets of rubbish to the moon or create a perpetually powered train to the moon opening up space tourism. eventually the moon would be turned into a massive greenhouse.
4. More booster rockets. But even more massive this time enabling us to each an orbit behind mars. Then we vaporise mars creating a permanent dust shield.
5. The evaporative air conditoner. Position massive mile wide fans around antartica. It would make life a little more humid but it would just be like the caribbean all year round.
6. or just don't care about it at all. We'll all be dead by the time the earth is unlivable.. not my problem.
... the Nautilus Pirates hold the UN presidency at the moment, and they always veto any proposals to Launch Solar Shade. You'd think they wanted the sea levels to rise dramatically...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
So if we would build this giant sunshade and it would save earth from global warming. After that we would be dependent on the sunshade and imagine if something would happen to the sunshade and all the sun light would be let in again. Plus if the emissions of green house gasses would continued at the current rate, the result of that would atleast be a Hollywood movie.
we know it was us who scorched the sky...
I'm sure there was something like this in highlander II.
Stupid idea. We'd need loads of energy to construct and launch this thing.
Why don't we bite the bullet, and adopt the clearly only viable solution - kill off a large chunk of the Earth's human population?
...but not all that surprised.
Environmentalism (which this is not an exercise of) is not about combating symptoms of bad environmental practice, but about stopping doing it in the first place! In all our history of stuff-ups, screw-ups, and short-sightedness, one thing seems to ring true about the environment: it works the best if you just leave it alone (as much as feasibly possible). What about other factors, such as the necessary UV radiation that comes from the sun? We need it for our daily vitamin D. What about plants, using the sunlight for photosynthesis? Don't we need photosynthesis to breath, and thus survive?
Please, for the sake of the Earth, no more stopgap cheapskate measures.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
once in place, I'm assuming this thing would be capable of generating quite a bit of solar energy beyond what it needed for any corrective propulsion... would it be enough to be worth trying to send somewhere else?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Before you invest so much time into ridiculous secondary "solutions", take the problem at the source. How about finally signing the Kyoto protocol? Just for a change?
With no offense,
- Martin
Atleast we will be prepared when my mechanical overlords take over.
"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard! "
Electromagnets surprisingly enough require.... Electricity.
Despite good intentions most electricity production still kicks out a load of CO2 and other gasses. I would imagine the energy demands on the magnets to launch the payloads over 10 years would consume a fair bit of electricity consumption so increasing the problem the shield is trying to solve in the fist place.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Why is such an idea a temporary hack? Such a device would be like a thermostat that could be changed in minutes, instead of CO2 levels which can only be changed over decades. Similar mirrors have been considered with other planets to heat (Mars) or cool (Venus) them.
Another unfortunate fact is that he calls the nanosatellites "fliers" - they don't fly.
An additional factor I don't think was considered is that a substantial portion of the payload would have to be used on a Booster to high/L1 orbit. I suppose that the "fliers" could eventually boost themselves up using the sun, but it would take at least years, or decades. The drag might be too great to get out of low earth orbit.
With such an uncertain launch technology, you might as well consider more monolithic shade designs and other launch methods, such as the oldie-but-goodie space elevator.
and let a smile be our umbrella.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
How are you going to solve that one now, science!? Make the Earth warmer!? The shades are in space - fucking space!
Aaaaaaargh! (Flies out the window)
I spend most of my time in bed, darling.
Too late... Simpsons already did it.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
... could they please try it out on a planet less valuable to us ? Venus, maybe ?
Put mirrors on the ground. It is well known that snow and sand reflect more energy back out into space than a rainforest does. Just put mirrors on top of every human construction. There's your 2%. And to make it commercially viable, use solar panels and put them in lots more places!
... of global warming. You know, the sun actually putting out more energy in the last 30-40 years - http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_0 30320.html
Why look for a scientific explanation when you can make it a political issue?
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
No, particle pollution counters the greenhouse effect. Removing all the particle filters from our power plants and cars, and staring burning the fossil fuel at a lower (and less efficient/clean) temperature, could probably more than offset the greenhouse effect of the CO2.
Of course, most people (dying of lung diseases) would probably consider the cure worse than the disease.
"...a mod who drives an SUV and sporting a twin GFX card monster PC muttering about how no commie liberal...
/. before, it's a crackpot idea stolen from a simpsons episode, nothing has changed 'cept it's a bit older and less funny the second time around.
More likely he's the mod with 187 trillion AOL cd's, muttering about how NASA are going to launch them to build this thing. Seriously though, this has been on
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Is this where Bush's "Save The World Through Tech not Kyoto" plan takes us?
Good job. Not.
All this because nobody wants to put any personal effort into saving the world. Nice. Thanks.
J1M.
I think it's funny that every one has an opinion about this, and many of you spout off all of this "scientific" information that you probably just pulled from your ass.
Here's my opinion:
The people who are doing this are smart. Significantly smarter than you or me. So before all you "geniuses" at home there start bashing probably some of the highest paid scientists in the world, just remember... they're smarter than you.
Oxygen makes up about 21% of the atmosphere.
Stolen from myself:
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that global warming is not happening. I'm saying that I don't know. If I did know, there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do about it and certainly nothing at all that I should do.
You see, about 10,000 years ago, the world was very cold. Today, we call it the "ICE AGE" (Austin Powers Finger-Quotes here). It was much colder during this "ICE AGE" than it is today. However, sometime between now and then, the earth warmed up and the "ICE AGE" ended. So if we lived 10,000 years ago, would we be freaking out about global warming? Would we be assuming that we were the cause? Absolutely. Would we be correct? NO, just like we are probably not correct today. The earth warms, the earth cools all on its own with no help from us. It's called weather. There's not a damn thing we can do to change it on purpose, so it's highly unlikely that we are doing it on accident. Changing weather patterns are 100% natural and normal. However, we should freak out if the weather stops changing. Now THAT would be unusual.
There was a song we used to sing at camp many years ago:
Spring would be a dreary season, were there nothing else but Spring would be a dreary season, were there nothing else but Spring would be a dreary...
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I can't believe they want to put up a reflective wall to change the global warming situation. Only we would spend that kind of money to make something artificial instead of just curbing our lifestyle a little bit. It makes you wonder about that part in the Matrix where agent Smith talks about Humans being parasites and consuming a planet's resources until there isn't any left, and then moving onto other planets. Aren't we trying to scope out mars to see if it could be a potential place for us to live someday? We don't need another planet, or a solar shield. We need to live in balance with what we've been given and stop being so greedy.
itll be hilarious when it accidentally blocks 20% of the sunlight instead of 2%.
That's a really wacky solution you know. Why a giant shade? Who comes up with those exotic solutions? And why not a giant fridge with a giant ice tea in it. This would at least be stylish, you know!
In the future, Highlander Connor MacLeod must prevent the destruction of Earth under an anti-ozone shield.
(Highlander II)
It doesn't make sense to simply shade the earth. If you're going to the trouble of sending stuff into space you might as well set up a huge solar array that generates electricity and beams it down to the earth.
Sure, it sounds much simpler to launch thousands of thin shells in space than just changing our behavior. :-/
By the way, supposing this would have the expected effect on global warning, without side effects, even in the mentionned case of getting back to coal, this would do nothing against pollution itself.
"I think we are heading a wall."
"No problem, we'll design a fancy system to turn our car into a plane so we can dodge this wall."
"Can't we just slow down?"
"No, we are not ready for that."
Increase green house gasses by 90% and use the earth as one big steam engine. At last thats what it seems everyone is doing.
Just drop a giant ice cube in the ocean every now and then, thus solving the problem once and for all. Once and for all!
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
The National Academy of Sciences looked at a ton of geoengineering ideas several years back, and ultimately decided the solar shade method is NOT cost-effective at all. Instead, shooting inert particulate dust up into the stratosphere with big naval guns will reduce the amount sunlight getting to Earth for a lot fewer 0 figures on the price tag. (There's precedent, too - from naturally-occurring volcanoes and the like.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
you're an idiot.
learn something about what you're talking about or shut the fuck up.
the opinion on global warming of someone who doesn't even know the definitions of "weather" and "climate" (Austin...) is not just worthless, but actually causes a noticable drop in your country's GDP.
If the plan is to launch these things using electromagnetic launchers, then I guess you'll need a shitload of electricity to do this... How is this energy going to be produced in a way that doesn't increase global warming substantially anyway? If the answer is a whole bunch of nuke plants, wouldn't opening said plants allow global warming to be reduced dramatically by closing fossil plants, making electric cars more economical, etc.?
This cannot be allowed to happen.
Imagine a future where Christopher Lambert is humanity's only hope from absolute destruction !
shakes
Once again people are spouting the usual lib party line and yet we still have no proof that humanity can affect global warming in the slightest. Give me proof not junk science and political correctness (proceed with the ad hominem attacks).
www.ThatPoliticalBlog.com [URL="http://www.thatpol
I'm not even going to RFA because this is blindly ignorant and it sounds like the kind of amateur science that comes from former tv repairmen(no offense to former tv repairmen). If you could launch a damn window shade of that enormity why not just launch a giant solar panel (google it - we have the technology) and fix the whole issue of global warming, climate change, fossil fuels, blah blah, feed the children,blah blah world peace. Instead of building a band-aid the size of our planet and hurling it into space further highlighting our colossal stupidity. A solar panel array of that size could provide all our power needs and remove the relevance of the oil economy. I guess sometimes people become so entangled with treating the symptoms that they forget the original problem.
Does this look a very stupid solution just to me? Isn't it easier and cheaper just to control and significantly reduce CO2 emissions ?
there's a lot of more promising techniques out there which would be much cheaper and easier to do. In order to cool the planet all you need to do is increase the earth's reflectivity, which doesn't have to be done in space. The object is to prevent photons from releasing their energy as heat. There's a many ways to do this:
- convert the light into electricity, ie. solar panels.
- increase clouds. Clouds reflect photons instead of absorbing them as heat. If you increase clouds you increase reflectivity
- Most heat comes from photons hitting the ground. If you cover enough earth with reflective material you'll increase the reflectivity of the earth. Think lots of white paint and mylar film. It sounds dumb but it's a low-tech solution that can be easily mass-produced.
The technology sounds interesting but it's pie in the sky, we should focus on developing methods of cooling the planet that don't rely on undeveloped technology as primary, while developing future technology as a backup.
Anyone posting on this topic that doesn't follow the party line is subject to serious moderation difficulties. ... Mods if you don't like what I have to say here, get a life or comment yourself against it. Otherwise don't shut up a serious discussion of what is really going on.
For those who have argued no global warming. Sorry it is happening. For those who argue it is the result of CO2 emissions check out the data and you will find that there isn't anything to support your contention. The top Greenhouse gas on the planet is water. The CO2 emissions of today are fossil fuels. They once were in the atmosphere. Get a life folks it isn't going to end life if the carbon gets out and about again. The parent post's discussion of S02 brings up an interesting note. We have been scrubbing that stuff out of our smoke as of late.
Now there is a genuine threat to life if we burn these products too fast. We may well reduce the oxygen level critically. It already is happening locally in some areas of the world.
Now I am going to get out and tell what is really going on. There is an electrical universe out there. The temperature of the earth is related to the electrical current flow in near space to the earth. This is complex but it allows the earth to be cooled or heated radically based upon this flow. Yes the earth could be burned to a cinder or it could be crashed into super cold state by this electrical flow. Nothing we do on earth could even really affect this reality. At this time the earth is gaining energy rapidly from space. This gain is not by radiant energy from the sun. It is due to the electrical field around the earth. (Cosmic plasma forces) The primary methodology for this energy to be transmitted is by dielectric transmission. This method allows massive currents of energy to be passed by plate voltage potentials without any apparent conduction through the plate. The dielectric of the atmosphere and the surface of the earth is doing this. The currents here are massive beyond belief.
Do I support cleaning up the pollution of the earth. Yes. I think trashing our earth with any trash is awful. Do I believe that CO2 is warming the earth? No! Are we doing damage to the earth and the conditions that support life on it? Absolutely! Should we reign in the oil and coal industries? That was needed decades ago. Should we pass out trash science in order to get things done? No! We should actually talk about the real problems and deal with them honestly.
Again if you don't like what I say please get a life!
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
It's global warming related, it's new frontiers, it's firing ridiculous amounts of junk into space with futuristic technology to block the sun.
Did anyone consider that NASA might just need some funding?
Slashdot is powered by your submission.
...to just switch to cleaner sources of fuel for cars, businesses and electric plants?
Bearded Dragon
Since we screwed up the Earth with pollution we are going to solve the problem by polluting space!
Cooling the planet by shading it (or any other means of reducing the sun input) won't help correcting the imbalance. There are _at least_ two major effects of increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere: 1) Global warming: The sunshade might help. 2) Acidic oceans, and a chemically imbalanced biosphere: Shading basically doesn't help at all.
Conclusion: Shading the Earth just leaves you with an Earth with less solar energy available for photosynthesis, AND it still leaves you with a seriously acidic ocean, with possibly disastrous effects on the biosphere. We'll go from bad to worse.
what if we just put the shade over the ice caps, to slow down the melting of the caps, that would keep the sea levels at bay.
I love our Sun. And I want to see it every single day. At 100%. Not at a mere 10%! Imagine to live on a dull planet with 10% Sun light. I somehow wonder how crap like this ends up as serious "news".
Who will pay for it?
Anyone read Stephen Baxter's Sunstorm? This is straight out of it.C -Clarke/dp/0575078014/sr=8-6/qid=1162822823/ref=pd _ka_6/203-8104224-7318347?ie=UTF8&s=books
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sunstorm-Gollancz-Arthur-
Just remember, there can be only one.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Think you well illustrate where the public relations divide is. There are a large number of people in our culture who assume that Nature is something like a beneficent Earth Mother who is all-powerful and would never let harm come to Her favorite children - us ... or something like a Jehovah with similar power and intentions. There is another group of us who look at examples like nuclear bombs and the view from space of how thin the biosphere is upon the rind of this rock, and historical examples like the deforestation of Easter Island and North Africa (a couple of thousand years back - there didn't used to be nearly so huge a desert there), and conclude, "Wow. The Earth's fragile; we're powerful but often short-sighted and accident-prone; we could really fuck this up!"
The first group, however you dress up its beliefs, is essentially betting on a religious view - and not just any religious view, not one with angry deities or out-of-control demons or End Times, but rather one where the Powers strongly favor the conditions conducive to the continuation of 20th Century American suburban lifestyles. The second group, we like to think we're more realists, believing in physics and chemistry and the records laid down in rocks and ice. A small amount of plutonium can, used a certain way, produce a nuclear bomb capable of destroying many square miles; and some several thousand of those bombs of producing nuclear winter. A small increment of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, input over years, globally, can produce similar large results from a small thing. And a germ can fell an elephant.
When a baby plays with matches it's not his fault - exactly - when the house burns down. So maybe it's not 'man's' fault either. But it still burns down, and the baby still did it.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Until we stop putting out CO2 or the species dies off, plunging the earth into a permanent ice age. Not only will we have screwed it up for us, we'll have screwed it up for any other species that might have evolved intelligence and taken our place once we've killed ourselves off.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How much extra Greenhouse gas and climate change will trillions of manufactured and launched spacecraft add to the problem?
And how many other nonlinear, unpredicted problems will meddling with the chaotic system of which we've barely become aware, and don't really understand, inflame?
Global industry and aerospace has gone from denying the Greenhouse could possibly exist, to launching trillions of spacecraft to blot out the Sun, in a couple of years. Who could possibly trust these greedy, hamfisted dreamers with anything like the survival of our climate?
--
make install -not war
the time, manpower, brainpower, and hundreds of millions of dollars required to make this happen (it's probably do-able) would be better spent on a permanent solution here on earth.
anyone have other ideas on what we could spend all those resources on?
I say they buy all the rainforest land that's already been destroyed and plant trees.
Of course when those trees mature the US would be making $ from all logging operations.
I'd prefer if they found a way to turn one of the deserts into another rainforest or at least make it no longer a desert.
If you mix rotting garbage with desert sand do you get fertile soil?
This is one of those statistics that boggles my mind in terms of the universe's size. We'll launch, stacks of shades, every 5 minutes, for 25 years and block out only 2% of the suns light? Oof, that thing must be hayuge.
This idea will never happen, such a waste of energy. We'd do better to launch those "shades" off in another direction and start work on a Dyson sphere.
The frantic, hyperbolic, hysterical, barely-scientific side of the argument is that global warming is controllable, and caused, by-and-large, by humans. However, much of the scientific community believes that global warming is:
Otherwise, how do you explain that Mars, that dead, uninhabited planet is warming? (And here, too.
I'm sorry, but there a bigger fish to fry. We are expending an awful lot of goodwill on democratic voter bases by distracting them with this stuff when we should be hitting them with what really matters:
None of which will be solved by getting my neighbor to give up his 2 trucks, '66 Charger, '66 Mustang, and 3 boats. None of which will be solved by Daryll Hannah driving a grass powered Geo.
Let's focus on what we CAN fix and not expend energy on fear driven philosophies, adopted by those who don't realize the origins of the argument are from a much more nefarious origin.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Except you needed a 10 million tons of sulfur a year to be shot into the stratosphere. That's a shot about every three second, CONSTANTLY. Forever. Then there are the photosynthesis effects of turning down the sun, and also all the hydrocarbon emissions from firing huge guns every 3 seconds. The cooling effect of volcanoes only last about 2 years, so this sort of thing would have to be done constantly. How about we just stop running around burning things so much?
Hey, why dont we just put a giant mirror in space to reflect the sun's rays like they did on Futurama? How did that work out again?
Kyoto isn't about personal effort. It uses arbitrary boundaries(political borders) to assign 'responsibility' for co2 production and creates responsibility free zones. The net effect is that economic activity that produces co2 will move into the free pass zones(China and India) and away from everywhere else, but co2 production will only be cut where it is cheaper than moving to China. Perhaps a nice gain, perhaps not.
A more effective plan would place responsibility on consumers of anything that caused co2 emissions, in the form of a tax. Imagine a scenario where GM vehicles carried an environmental tax of $3000, an environmental rebate of $2500 for the trees that GM planted for $100, and Ford vehicles carried an environmental tax of $2000. Plenty of people would pick GM over Ford on price alone; the shiny happy warm feelings would pull in a bunch of other people. GM cuts the effective price on their vehicles by planting trees. Neat. Probably even workable.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Why is it always in space? Why spend billions upon billions of dollars to put a mirror into orbit?
We have MILLIONS of square miles of desert ON EARTH (no need for rocket fuel) that are largely empty to begin with, and account for a large portion of the light that is absorbed by the earth.
A few thousand square miles of mirrors in the desert, and you can easily reverse the half-degree-per-decade warming...
What's more, we should ALREADY be doing this in cities, painting roads and roofs either white or other highly refelective colors to reverse the urban heatsink effect, and its byproducts.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
so let's take a closed system (earth) and get rid of 20 million tons of resources every 50 years.
Where are all the environmentalists? Oh yea, I guess you can't blame this idea on Bush, so no one is saying,
"you can't do that! you're depleting the earth's supply of natural resources"?
This is the most idiotic thing I've heard lately. What kind of lunatic thinks its more practicle to invest billions of dollars in a giant space umbrella rather than invest the money in public transit and force people to use it. God almighty.
Fast forward a some millennia, and you'll see scientists scrambling to fight global cooling:
"Now that we're on the down slope of the natural ebb of the planet's temperatures, we have a more serious problem, because of all of those naive attempts to subvert global warming. Since they succeeded in preventing the earth from getting up to its normal non-ice-age temperatures, our next ice age will be unrecoverable!"
Didn't humans try to darken the sun in the Terminator movies? I can't see this ending well...
Wasn't this done in a 'Highlander' movie, as well as 'The Matrix', both with great results?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
This is simply stupid. Is this supposed to be better than simply taking the issue seriously and stop dumping megatons of CO2 in the atmosphere each year? Is this the kind of harebrained scheme the climate-reactionaries seem to prefer rather than doing the obvious thing. Yes, I call then 'reactionary' instead of 'sceptical' because the word 'sceptical' implies that you have thought about things and still don't feel convinced, whereas 'reactionary' means that you have closed your eyes and ears and simply use your brain to think up any excuse for not accepting reality.
1 956569.ece. It's just an article imagining headlines at points in the future, and they are not all that unlikely either. It is not nice things that await us, even if you don't go with the worst possible scenario; so why do we resist doing what we all know we have to do in order to avoid the problems?
Yes, yes, I know, this is probably not thought up by one of the climate-reactionaries - since it actually seems to accept that our climate is actually changing, but it is none the less something along the same line of thought: anything to avoid having to address the real problem, because it might cost us money in the short term; never mind what happens in the future or to other people.
Have a look at this article - http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article
Remember how in India they were taxing light energy? Can you imagine the UN declaring rights over sunlight and charging each country for its use? After all, a sunshade is expensive to keep.
Hmm.. and then who gets the remote control?
Have you read my journal today?
You're both right! Put the fans on the trees and turn them into flying trees.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This may make the problem worse:
Plants absorb carbon dioxide (the most abundant greenhouse gas) and turn it into oxygen, effectively neutralising it. To perform this process (photosynthesis) they need light from the sun. All the plant life is slowing the onset of global warming, folks.
Global warming isn't a problem with the amount of light reaching the earth, it's a problem because the infra-red radiation re-released by the Earth is trapped. The plants cannot use this kind of radiation.
That said, the sun's output does vary over time, and the measured 'level' of global warming correlates well with changes in the suns's output. There would almost certainly be an optimum amount of solar radiation to shield the earth from.
Regardless of changes in the sun's output, global warming is very real, and will have extremely detrimental effects over a roughly 35 year time-frame. Approximately a 90% cut is required to avert these effects, but this need not alter our quality of life seriously. What it will require is serious technological commitment from Governments globally into moving almost energy generation to renewable or low-carbon options.
An interesting option in combating global warming is geosequestration. Plant growth can be used to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If this material is then pumped into depleted oil or gas reservoirs, it will remain there indefinitely. The engineering solution to the problem!
"We don't know who stroke first: us or the machines. But we know that it is us who clouded the sky."
(The quote may not be exactly accurate.)
perception is reality
I first thought you were trying to make a joke, but you seem serious. Now I'm wondering if you're just trying to troll, but I'm curious and I'll bite since you have good karma. I think you would find a much better audience if you would, you know... post some published data to back up these claims of yours. Just because I say the earth is warming because of kittens doesn't make it so. Seriously, I'm trying to understand how this could work. I believe I read once that the average temp of space is only a few degrees above absolute zero, mainly due to background radiation. Where does this energy of which you speak of come from? If the Sun isn't the primary source of a planet's heat, then why aren't the planets in our solar system more uniform in temp (after taking the atmospheric conditions into consideration, of course)?
That doesn't make it impossible, that just means that people would be unwilling to do it.
If by "unwilling to do it," you mean, "will starve to death in a matter of days," then you're right. You display a remarkable lack of understanding of economics. The GDP is the Gross domestic product. The grand total. The maximum. If a project's cost is greater than the grand total of everything you are producing, then that means everyone would have to give up their entire income, plus produce more, and give up that income too. Meanwhile, they have no money for food and shelter. The other things that they'd normally spend money on would suddenly see their revenues drop to 0, since everyone (their own owners and employees included) are suddenly devoting their entire income to the project. Since stores can't stay open without customers, every single industry (except the "Sun Umbrella" project) would have to close down, and lay off all their employees. Suddenly, your entire population (again, except for the "Sun Umbrella" employees) are unemployed, cold, and hungry, yet must still find a way to contribute MORE money than they were making before they lost their job.
Of course, it's even far more complicated and dire than I just described. With all the business closed down, they're not paying any taxes anymore, so the burden on the (unemployed) citizens rises even more dramatically, even though nobody has any income anymore. Are you starting to see how ridiculous this is?
Spending more than your GDP on a single project is not just a matter of "convincing people." It literally is, just plain impossible to do.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Look, genius, we KNOW how much fossil fuel we are burning and how much CO and CO2 that produces, we KNOW how much deforestation we have caused and are causing and we KNOW how CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen. We KNOW what we're producing, and we KNOW where it's going. In case you didn't KNOW, no-one was sucking oil and gas out of the ground before us - and then burning it, and no-one else deliberately cut down forest for farmland.
I think we all know the horrible effects this "sun shield" would have, as demonstrated in the movie "Highlander 2: The Quickening". It will wreak havoc upon the Earth, and we'll need an immortal warrior to start chopping off people's heads in order to fix the damn thing.
There, I said it. ahahaha
I had a realization the other day:
Which is worse for the environment: An SUV that drives 6000 miles/year, or my car which drives 23000 miles/year? An SUV typically gets, say, a generous 15 mpg. My car gets 36 hwy. Over the course of a year, that SUV will use 400 gallons of fuel. My car will use almost 640 gallons (at best). And if, say, I tried to use my car to do what a truck could do in 6000 miles, would I have to take more trips? If so, then the SUV might still come out on top, depending on usage.
People complaining about type of vehicle are barking up the wrong tree-you have to look at total impact, not just the "shock" value. Now, per unit distance, sure, an SUV is less efficient than my hatchback. But what really matters in terms of energy consumption and pollution is over time, not over space! So you want to be more efficient: live closer to where you work, shop, and recreate. (Incidentally, I'm in the process of doing that, because I can't stand my commute - and the environmental/economic benefits are a nice bonus and do factor into my consideration, but I admit they are not the primary driving factor.)
In other words, this post has been brought to you by the Make Sure Your Assumptions are Correct and Your Comparisons are Valid Coalition.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
...when this happens.
Anything can, could, and will happen.
Maybe I'm smoking crack here, and suggesting something INSANE, but wouldn't be cheaper to may be grow some PLANTS?
The advantage of plants is that you don't have to send them into outer space. And you can eat them.
How long would it take for us to set up some high-density plant parks (from kudzu to cactus to kelp) around the world and get serious about protecting them? 25 years? And how much would it cost? Maybe a little less than this project?
If we are going to throw something this expensive into space, shouldn't it be solar collectors?
too much Highlander 2.
Reading the OP and all the modded up posts so far, clearly none of you have taken a thermodynamics class.
Imbecile.
Okay, so how many pounds of hydrocarbons would we release into the atmosphere by launching trillions of light spaceships? Isn't this just dealing with symptoms instead of providing solutions to the core problem of global warming? I understand the need to have a many-pronged approach, but this seems pretty far fetched and very specific in application, whereas other solutions have broader applications.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Again with the Insane in the Membrane ideas....
Just goes to prove having a PHD isn't all its cracked up to be...Ruin the planet, refuse to stop and then reach for a solution that has nothing to do with the problem....
The last thing we need is billions of "space debris" floating around up there.
There's no conceivable way we'll ever be able to control, track and explain
why space travel ended because of an error which cause our ionosphere to
be "mined".
Am I the only one that sees a sea of fast moving particles....
(read debris from silly project)...
Sometimes I really wonder if they just release these stories to get us going.
The general public has no idea how many dangerous hair brain ideas get tossed around every year by their respective governments...
End of Line.
It is a pity the same cannot be said of the number of Highlander comments in this article.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Because soot is such a good reflector
It is. Because it acts as a seed for vapor condensation and liquid water is really a good reflector.
That said, I think that those who believe that Global Dimming is countering Global Warming have it all wrong.
Reflection works in all directions. Those reflective atmospheric particles don't just reflect energy away from the planet. They also reflect it back to the planet. And there is no reason to believe there is any sort of balance there. The heat reflected back is in a different spectrum than the light reflected away and this likely results in a different percentage of total energy getting reflected.
And there is also the fact that condensation is a function of temperature. There will certainly be more condensation at night than during the day. This means a "Thicker Blanket" at night. Keeping more heat in during the cooling hours.
So it could very well be that Global Dimming is a contributor to Global Warming, not a mitigator.
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
I understand it's monday morning, but calm the fuck down
Global temperature varied before man showed up. Global temperature is changing again now. Therefore, it cannot be a result of man's actions.
Let me just say that this is not stellar logic, and no one should be swayed by it.
Simple fact: CO2 concentrations have increased dramatically and at an accelerating rate.
Simple fact: Global temperature is rising.
Simple fact: The link between greenhouse gases and atmospheric temperatures has been known since the mid-1800's, and has never been credibly disputed. The mechanism showing how CO2 increases temperature has not been in dispute for a long time, so the whole "correlation != causation" argument is wearing pretty thin.
Simple fact: Humans pump about twenty billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Rush Limbaugh's denials to the contrary, this is vastly more than is produced by volcanos.
More worrying graphs. That sudden spike in graph 2, right when the automotive revolution took off? Very unlikely to be a coincidence.
If you truly believe that man is not changing the climate, and is incapable of doing so, then you are foolish. Oh, and weather isn't climate.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Maybe RayBan would care to sponsor the sunshade mission.
and if it is determined that the sunshade is a BAD idea? Who's going to go up there and clean up the mess? Nobody. It's just going to hang there in orbit, while the Humans Die Off.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Fantastic post. I wish I had mod points today, but don't. So I'll just post here and say, cheers.
Okay, so say it all works exactly as planned, they all make it up into orbit at the costs expected and work perfectly to counter the effects of doubled CO2 in this crisis situation.
So people finally get their act together because of this crisis that required this drastic action, and say the CO2 starts going down, back to normal or maybe even lower.
Then we have normal CO2 and this solar shade that's going to last at least 50 years according to the article, and maybe a heck of a lot longer. Does this start a global cooling? How bad could that get? How do we get rid of a 20 million ton cloud of 1 gram space crafts?
I think that's something that better be planned on before sending anything like that up there.
If Sid Meijers Alpha Centauri is any indication, if this needs to be done to control the climate... it is already too late.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
My little part in the effort was to only have ONE child. Please get the word out: wrap your rascals, get the big 'V' and/or tie your tubes. Earth can't support any more. Giving birth is no longer a right, breeding is putting us all in peril.
*** Don't be dull.***
Wouldn't millions of high speed launches over ten years cause massive localized heating due to friction? A why just use it as a cloud why not convert that lost energy into something that can be sent back to earth?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
So this would send large amounts of mass into space using electromagnetic launchers. Which would consume electricity. Which we primarily obtain from burning fossil fuels. Which releases carbon dioxide into the air. I'd guess that this project would use a large amount of electricity.
Presuming that carbon dioxide causes global warming (I'm not saying that it does or doesn't), would this project have a net gain or loss in global warming?
I'm sure this is how the Dyson sphere got started...
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
The scary thing in this is the word 'temporary'
Now China and India are producing goods for us without any
considerations for the ecosystem.
We are not even implementing any Kyoto type of approach, so let's
say we get done in 20 years.
Then China and India will get it in maybe 50 years from now.
Then it will be the turn of other emerging countries in Africa.
And they'll take also at least 50 years.
And during that time this 'sunscreen' main pupose will be to hide
from the light the real issues.
We should tax all goods imported from countries whose approach to
manufacturing is less thna desirable for the ecosystem. But in
order to do that we first have to start to implement concrete
solutions.
Then we die — because there is no practical way to get rid of a structure like this once it is in place. Monolithic shades around the earth are one thing; one would presume they could be taken down and/or adjusted, perhaps in angle, as effects become apparent.
A bunch of discrete micro-shades that cannot be recalled seems like an entirely bad idea, especially when the "problem" remains free of consensus among scientists (I know environmentalists have made this the cause du jour, but taking the word of an environmentalist on climate is like taking the word of a priest on sex; they'll have really strong opinions, but without appropriate training and practice, they're going to mostly get it wrong, anyway.)
If shades are to be deployed as a solution to this may-be-a-problem, then my feeling is that they have to be able to be taken down or otherwise made ineffective.
Money isn't really the problem. The US national economy, for instance, is embodied in negative 8.5 trillion dollars with a GDP of about two trillion, where a huge portion goes towards service of that debt (a situation you would never tolerate in your household.) We just make it up when we want more. But that's the just the government's debt; most households have their own debt that isn't accounted for in that number. So, seeing as how our "we have money" economy is entirely imaginary as is, the real question here is, could we actually do it? And the answer is, yes, we could. We have the food, the raw materials, and the people. We'd just end up with more debt, and no one seems to care about that enough to do anything about it, so does it really matter in terms of undertaking such a project? Not really.
However, very much like suicide (on several levels), one observes: Just because you can do such a thing, doesn't mean it is the optimum choice.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Am I the only one reminded of Highlander 2?
The correct attribution for this quote is Dorothy Parker (that's an about.com reference, watch out for pop-ups.)
Tom Waits is one of the world's absolute worst vocalists; the man has a voice like a garbage disposal with a raggedly toothed reduction gear. Please don't make the situation even worse by crediting him with other people's creative works.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Make it past the editors here at slashdot?
Anyone think of the MASS involved here? Or the EFFORT? Not to mention the strip mining of the planet!!
At least they're finally starting to recognize that global warming comes from the sun, that it's not man made and that NOTHING done here on earth is going to change it. I'd like to see some serious research to determine if it's even going to be a bad thing, we had the middle ages warming period that was rather beneficial for the earth, something along those lines would be good for us, not bad.
Enough with the Junk Science already though!
they'd have to be REALLY careful how they deploy it because if they just started at one corner or side and worked their way over, that would make one giant area significantly colder and leave another gigantic area the same warm temperature, which as I hope you all learned in middle school, wold cause strong winds, tornados, hurricanes, floods, and other massive weather problems. It'd be kinda hard and rather ugly when we look up at the sky to have them deploy it in pieces in a progressively denser checkerboard pattern like 1, 1 sq mile shade in each 100 sq mile block then 2 then 3 etc and you'd have to keep moving the ones that are already up to make it balanced. Then there's the whole meteors hitting it thing...
Is it just me or is it not going to upgrade to Vista in here?
Why not use some of that heat for a more productive applications? For example, collecting it and beaming it down to Earth in the form of microwaves, or having Sterling engines both in orbit and on the ground? Heat can be incredibly useful -- why simply re-radiate it into outer space?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Why don't we just blow up the sun? That would be the long term solution to solving all our global warming and enviromental problems. It would go a long way to solving some of our other problems too, like war and famine.
Remember, there is no problem that sufficient explosives cannot over come.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
that this will give the US gov. and the oil inudstry the mechanism/excuse to keep polluting the earth at the same or higher levels instead of actually dealing with the problem..
I remember this from "Highlander 2" with Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert...
Science has shown that the earth is billions of years old. We have been able to find data for the climate conditions for only a few thousand years, we have only been able to measure temprature for 300 years, and measure CO2 levels for maybe 100 and getting some speculated data from ice cores for the last 4000-10000 years. And remember, thats 10,000 out of billions. We can't possibly have a big enough sample of data.
Seems to me that this would be like calling a Republican victory after only asking 1 voter how he voted.
The truth is, that we don't and can't possibly know all the cycles this planet has gone through in its existance, and when you find out that there are natural contributors of greenhouse gases that contribute more in a single event than humans have contributed since they appeared on the face of the planet, it seems more like junk science to me.
I am not saying we should no reduce pollution, but to say we have any control over the climate seems a bit egotistical with as little evidence as we really have.
I have to run now, 2 people gave me a dime each in a span of 30 seconds, and based on this data, I will have been given $17,280 30 days from now.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Just so I'm clear on this, even though we can't convince governments and industry to spend the cash needed to retrofit thousands of coal burning plants in order to combat global warming, we're somehow going to be able to convince them to build "trillions" of spaceships to block the sun... Sounds like a viable plan! If only we could manufacture evidence that the sun has WMDS!
Life needs more saving throws.
This would a perfect follow on to the Star Wars alternative defense system suggested in Bloom County.. instead of orbital laser platform just sew together a net of 100 dollar bills that would circle the planet in orbig to catch russian nukes!! Apparently it will also save us from global warming!! Yay money net!
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
the poster meant poignant, methinks
I mean, a lot of *practicable* solutions are ready to be used. The thing is that we simply have to start doing it!
Wouldn't a cheaper and better solution be to require all buildings to have white roofs and therefore reflect the sun's energy back into space? If that plan turns out not to work, just return them to their original color. It'd be a lot cheaper in the long run, faster, and easier to implement (bar the legal side).
That "global temperature is rising" graph shows that temperature was as far under what the graph identifies as the norm for the last hundred years as it currently has been (briefly) over it. Since they want that middle line to be the "norm", the graph requires a period of above-the-line to make the normal land where they claim it belongs by its placement in the graph. Since there were no extended instances of the temperature being even at the "norm" in the previous 130 years before 1990 or so, one wonders where the idea of the "norm" for the graph even came from — presumably, from a warmer set of temperature excursions they're (conveniently) not showing. Or else they made it up, which is worse, scientifically speaking, than just hiding it.
That is entirely aside from the fact that the "terrifying" temperature rise on the graph is a whopping .47 degrees C above the center, or, if you really want to get hysterical over nothing, a whole degree C of variability over 140 years. Ooooo.
The temperature extremes where I live (2300 ft elevation in Montana) swing from 110F in the summer to -50F in the winter; we survive both just fine. I look at your puny half degree C and frankly — I mock you. Oooo... water might rise... Oooo... its gonna get warmer... maybe a couple whole DEGREES! Christ, Martha, grab the kids and run for the hills before OUR FACES BURN RIGHT OFF AND OUR SUNGLASSES MELT!!!
We now return you to your regular hysterical environmentalist indulgence in the politically correct fear-mongering of the day.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The Earth's climate is not exactly stable... It fluctuates between hotter and colder periods that are pretty pronounced (when compared against the narrow band of temperatures that the earth is habitable for most life).
Now in the past, it's not the hotter periods that have been the problem. With higher temperatures life generally flourishes. It's the *colder* periods that the great extinctions take place during and life in general has it's hardest time.
So say we do this, and it's successful. We send all these trillions of small spacecraft up into L1 orbit....... and then the Earth goes into a cooling period (even a small one). Won't this make the cooling period even more pronounced then? Being that cooling is a hell of a lot tougher of a problem to live with - what are we going to do when we suddenly are in the midst of a suddenly nasty global cold snap and need to remove trillions of sattelites in a hurry?
Larry Niven's Ringworld has demonstrated the feasibility of this solution already. Now, if we can just figure out how to create shadow squares and shadow square wire and then place the whole thing in solar orbit, we'll be all set.
Call me when the Pierson's Puppeteer shows up with the General Products hull-based spaceships.
Anyone remember the iron enrichment experiments? This is just as ridiculous- not all of the side effects are known but let me assure you, there's plenty.
Those of us old enough to remember are highly amused by the current global warming scaremongering. This is the same set of climatologists who in the 70's were saying that another ice age was around the corner, supported by the same alarmists who at that time were saying that by 1990 the world would be out of oil and we'd all be living in dirt huts without electric lighting, riding our donkeys to work if a global thermonuclear war didn't break out over the last few barrels of crude.
For the (apparently few) rationalists out there, one gentle reminder: climatologists have an (unadmitted) vested interest in spreading this type of hype. You don't get grants to do climatology studies if everything's copasetic. Nor do you get an article published if all you have to say is "nothing to see here, move along."
Since the sun is the primary form of energy input to our ecosystem, any harebrained scheme to tamper with it would inevitably end up in disaster. Who thinks this stuff up anyways? The temperature of the Earth is on a 600K year cycle that happens to be near the end of a warming trend, if the goal was to reduce the light level and starve humans out of existance, then this would probably be a pretty good solution. Sort of reminds me of the situation where the idiot keeps hitting the fuse on a high explosive dud in an effort to get it off, while a forcefull means to a solution may seem acceptable, it doesn't always end up as planned.
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!
> The sunshade could be developed and deployed in 25 years,
> would last about 50 years, and would reduce the amount of
> sunlight reaching Earth by 2% -- enough to balance heating
> due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."
I don't want any fuckheads messing with the amount of energy reaching earth. If the wildest of global warming comes true, people have to move inland over the course of a few hundred years.
If these guys goof and initiate another ice age (we are in an ice age cycle the past few hundred thousand years) then billions of people die. And given they think ice ages might be able to start in just a few years, this is definitely the road to hell.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The idea I had a few months ago was ballons in the air reflecting solar energy out to space. The ballons could also be solar powered and move as you needed them. So there would be some potential for weather control.
They could also act as huge cellphone towers in the air.
Would 3 Trillion dollars not buy enough (however inefficient) solar cells to place ON EARTH to convert some % of the suns heat energy into electricity? It would take a lot of surface area to come anywhere close to 2%, but at least we would also be getting something out of it.
Homo Sapiens is a true parasitic specie.
Unlike other species it totally lacks the ability to adapt and interact with the environment in a durable way.
Maybe it is time for us to step down and let evolution rectify this mistake.
- Reduce energy consumption to a sustainable rate
- Stop breeding like rabbits
- Remove religion from politics
- Remove politics from government
- Replace government with computers
Use fat people's fat for fuel. Its a renewable resource.
Fixed.
I'm dead serious.
Now don't you wish you had bit the bullet and solved the problem at the source (the CO2 and other pollutants that we continue to pump out)? I think 90% of us will be dead in 100 years because we're too stupid. Natural selection will get us in the end even if the Earth has to wipe and recovery to eliminate the disease. I think our growth is already too malignant (too irreversible) for anything else. "We can fix the atmosphere in time!" Yes, and meanwhile our boundless population growth will result in 10 billion of us stripping the Earth to a naked husk like so many locusts of old. Underneath all the issues we face today is that one issue: too many people, but no one wants to face that one. Politicians certainly won't. We have such an array of powerful organizations prepared to step in and clobber that one. Fucked.
How many nukes do we have to set off so that the effects of nuclear winter offset global warming? Inquiring minds want to know.
From the article: "The [trillions of] spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer... Sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun [at L-1], would be diverted away from our planet... The sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers [collectively] launching a stack of [a million] fliers every 5 minutes for 10 years."
the article left out [trillions of], and [a million]. If you think it is a bad idea fine. Don't change the facts to get others to share your thinking.
Do I think a big filter would help the earth? No idea I need more data to make a desision. And besides this big filter is going to be hit by a lot of other things drifting through space at a million miles an hour. So it may not last that long.
i'm all for synergy with these giant scale evil-scientist style public works projects, and there's an obvious idea here that i'm certain has been missed. i propose that instead of a giant, monolithic system that will only last 50 years and require so much assembly and attention that instead, we launch all the AOL cds into loose orbit at the Lagrange point between the earth and the sun. this would diffuse the solar energy by several percent (there's a lot of these CDs... we could make a pretty big cloud with pretty dense coverage), and reduce the terrible impact on our landfills and post offices.
it's probably 5 years to late to make an AOL CD joke, but the principle still stands. just getting something reflective up there is all that matters. the reflective thing doesn't have to be steerable, repairable or otherwise sophisticated at all. it only has to bounce away a percent or two of the sunlight.
There is still a basic limit to productivity. The methods you discuss could raise the GDP. Let's say all the students, unemployed, etc become productive enough to do all the distributing, governing, food production, etc. That lets every person currently working now devote themselves to the cause. In this case the equivalent of the GDP is devoted to the project. If the project takes more than the GDP in cost, it means after everyone gave all their effort, there will still be work to do. See? On a personal level think of it this way. If I tell you to build a car in 5 minutes, you will not be able to regardless of how hard you try. You have a maximum productivity level.
as in sid meier's alfa centauri...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
we stop burning freaking coal and oil
such a cloud would be virtually impossible to maintain and control over the long term, and will ultimately present a nasty navigation hazard for other spacecraft. Bad idea, I'd say.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Thanks for making me take a second look at the graph.
The midline is not supposed to represent any sort of "norm". It represents the 1961-1990 mean global temperature, nothing more. If anything, the norm they chose understates the nature of the change.
Now, as you're intent on pretending that climatologists are overreacting to a 0.5C change, let's put that half degree into perspective. The difference between our current climate and the last big ice age was a whopping 5-8C, and our global climate has stayed within a 0.7C window since it ended. Half a degree every twenty years should start to look like a big deal, unless you're amazingly shortsighted.
Finally, saying "water might rise" severely understates the magnitude of the problem. Do you know how many trillions of dollars of... screw it. Do you know how many cities there are located less than eight meters above sea level? If global warming ends up melting the Antarctic and Greenland caps, take a look at the new state of Florida. While it might not happen suddenly enough to cause direct loss of life, we can't just sit idly by and let this happen. America just can't deal with that many blue-haired refugees.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Earth is hot on the inside: http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/fichter/PlateTect/he athistory.html (think fission)
And as a side note - electrical heat is mumbo-jumbo. There is an electromagnetic mantle surrounding earth which is generated by the rotation of the earth's magnetic core. It's very useful as a solar wind deterrent - except for that tiny bit called the Aurora Borealis. It's not doing much(any) heating.
And as another side note: You might want to lookup the fact that this protective field is on the decline - so at some time in the not-so distant future we'll get hit by the solar wind - dead-on - that's bad for us living things. (but the bright side is - the field is doing cycles - so it'll get up again later)
I meant fusion.
Sounds like the plot (part of it, anyway) of "Sunstorm" by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter.
I have read a lot of global warming and I am genuinely scared. However, I realize that there is not much we can do about it due to geopolitical pressures. We seem to forget that countries, since the beginning of time, are always trying to outdo each other and beat each other economically, militarily, etc... and to do that they need OIL. Even today, India is trying to one-up Pakistan, China is trying to one-up Russia, Iran is trying to dominate the middle east, etc... While we would all wish that the nations of the world could come together in a common forum and work out their energy problems, it will never happen because countries are too self-interested. Why should Russia give way when China won't? Why should America compromise when Japan will not? Sure, people care about the environment, but they care about themselves more (or in the case of governments, their people) I know that the main obstacle to these compromises is the U.S. right now, but why should the U.S. stifle its own economy to let its competitors grow? People forget that we we were at war with Russia less than 20 years ago and Japan and Germany were our hated enemies in World War II. No country is going to want to give up its world leadership position. Furthermore, it would be ludicrous to expect that the millions of starving people in China would accept China putting a stop to their economic development because of the Kyoto treaty or that American industrialists would accept pollution reductions while Iran industrialized itself with its oil revenues. And given that most alternative fuels are not economically feasible yet, I see only two solutions:
1- One common hegemon needs to control the world's entire energy supply and ration it wisely. Many countries are trying to do this but I nominate the United States, for obvious reasons. They might very well be attempting this right now with their adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, this will probably never happen because the people of the Middle East desperately want to sell their oil reserves and enrich themselves
2- Let the worldwide oil supply run out. I know that sounds catastrophic to some, but I don't think it would be that bad. It would definately solve the geopolitical program and allow the earth to heal itself if the damage is reversible. Sure, our economy would greatly decline and our standard of living would be much, much lower, but is that a bad thing? Science, and philosophy, and the whole of human knowledge would continue to exist and people will just find other ways to live. The human race has overcome worse, even in the past 1000 years (Black Death, anyone?).
These are just my random musings. Tell me what you think.
Nonsense. The norm they chose was specifically chosen to move a local low into the middle so that a local high would look like the end of the world. If they (for instance) had factored in the medieval warm period (accurate bottom graph, includes relevant 20th century average line) instead of presuming the (VERY inaccurate top graph) hockey stick graph the climate change folks have been clinging to, then you'd see that the current temperature changes are entirely unremarkable in both excursion and scope. Furthermore, CO2, historically speaking, is a lagging indicator, not a leading one — it is complete misdirection to use it backwards and point at history to attempt to validate this. Next, we're not looking at half a degree every twenty years, not by a long shot. Why do you think they have to divide the output of the climate models by three? It's because they are way overly biased towards warming. They're not even accurately predicting the current conditions (off by 300% too high!), and that's surely not a very good indicator for what they can say about a hundred years from now.
Um, no. No, it hasn't. Again, see the bottom graph, you know, the one with all the data on it. The one that doesn't conveniently edit out the medieval warm period.
Eight? EIGHT? How in the name of all that is superstitious did you get to worrying about !8! flipping meters of sea rise? Eight? Excuse me (Bwahahahahahahaha!) There, that's better. 8? (Bwahaha!) Sorry. Ha. :-)
Look here, little red riding climate, even the known to be bad climate model only predicted a fraction of a meter rise over a hundred years. That's right, less than one. Eight? Holy leaf-a-roni, what are you smoking?
Actual measured sea level rise is about an inch every fifteen years, which if it continues will result in a little over 6 and a half inches (about 16 cm) over 100 years. Eight meters. That's some bad-ass kool-aid, there, son. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Seriously? Its time for another stupid and totally unrelated analogy.
If you saw a man tied to the ground and another guy kicking him in the nuts.
Would you A) Try and do stop him from getting kicked in the nuts by advising the second man of the pain / potential future damage he is causing?
B) Offer him some panadol, or if that doesnt work some canabis, still pain heroin....
I think this solution reeks of column. B
In the MATRIX anime, didn't the humans try to defeat the machines with a similar plan to blot the sun from the sky?
I suppose this would also reduce the capacity of solar collectors.
You're obsessed with the lower graph and its medieval warm period. The problem is, the graphs are looking at two separate things. The upper graph is estimating the global temperature, while the lower one is looking only at conditions in Europe. It's quite possible for one area to cool because an overall warming trend has changed local conditions. Even today, climatologists are speculating that global warming might leave Europe cooler by diverting warm ocean currents away.
Further, why are we even talking about the graphs from the Telegraph article? The graph I was referring to, the one you claimed had a suspicious norm, was this one. You remember how you claimed that they must be taking the average from some other, warmer set of data that they weren't telling us about? You stopped a half inch short of calling them a bunch of frauds. In fact they said exactly how they chose the zero line: by averaging the global temperature from 1960-1991. Had they been trying to make the same chart with devious intent, I would have used 1860-1960, to make sure there was as much red on the last half of the graph as possible.
But no, you had to go out of your way to divine all sorts of nefarious intentions. Then you got yourself confused and started talking about a completely different graph that stretched all the way back to 1000AD.
CO2 may have been a lagging indicator in past warmings. So what? Does that mean that CO2 concentration has no effect on global temperatures? Of course not. Nobody this side of Exxon is denying that. All it means is that dinosaurs and British peasants weren't burning coal and oil to power their automobiles. The initial temperature rise was caused by something else--perhaps increased sun output--and that released more CO2 into the atmosphere by melting ice and raising sea temperatures. What follows is a positive feedback loop, as increased CO2 and increased temperature feed back on each other, until a new equillibrium is reached.
Eight meters is the absolute, scientifically accurate figure you get when you calculate how far the sea will rise if you take all the ice currently locked up on the land of Greenland and Antarctica. You take the current rate of sea rise and project it out ad infinitum, and you're right: the situation sounds too gradual to worry about. But lots of carbon and methane live in that ice, both of which would accelerate the melting once it starts. I don't know how fast the ice will melt once it gets going, but there is little doubt in my mind that it will be much faster in the future than it has been in the past. Most important, even if it takes a thousand years to reach that endpoint instead of a hundred, that's still an evolutionary blink of an eye. Humans will adapt easily to such a change, but ecosystems will not.
So you can take your bwahaha-ing and shove it up your own rectum. While you may consider me misinformed and foolish, and I certainly consider you the same, I think I've been much more sympathetic to the notion that there is a reasonable human being on the other side of this conversation. Cut the attitude if you hope to convince me (or any potential readers) of anything.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The data that produced that was taken from a much wider swatch of the world than just Europe. You — and many others like you — would just as soon sweep that under the rug, but that's not going to happen here. That data is a perfectly good summary of a *worldwide* warming that is *known* to have happened, and furthermore, it is a much better data set than the one that swamps everything else to make the "hockey stick." The graph shows European temperatures; but the data comes from all over the USA and agrees completely; between Europe and the USA, you've got one heck of a broad set of samples over a huge geographical area, and the fact that those samples are insignificant with regard to the picture the hockey stick paints should be a huge, fluttering red flag to you. It certainly is to me.
We're talking about it because they're the same information, your graph is the very tail end of the dataset, scaled and tweaked to look frightening, and the bottom graph that I provided for you from the Telegraph is a much more accurate summary of climate over a much more meaningful range, AND we're talking about it because you made an incorrect assertion that global temps had not varied more than .7C since the last ice age, which claim is disputed directly by the record of the MWP.
I'm truly sorry, I thought I had called them a bunch of frauds. I guess I'm too subtle for my own good at times. To be specific: They did leave out a warmer set of data — it is called the medieval warm period, and without that data, the graph looks like only now are we warming up, and ooooo! Boogyman! Furthermore, you swallowed this hook, line and sinker, and made it clear with your claim that we'd not changed more than .7C since the last ice age, which is a patently untrue assertion. The fact is that we've been warmer, and we've been colder, and we've seen changes like this before, and the current data, by which I mean measured temperature as opposed to speculation, does not support getting worried.
No. It means that its presence in the past is not an indicator of coming global warming, per se. It's a gas that in a very minimal way (as compared to water vapor, methane, and a number of other things) can trap heat. Since water vapor (just for one example) can vary *enormously* based on all manner of feedback systems in the atmosphere, CO2 by itself is swamped; so (a) it is not a precursor indicator, as many people think, and (b) it is highly unlikely to be a direct causative agent because it is so low in the hierarchy of atmospheric heat trapping agencies.
No. Again, CO2 is very near the bottom of the hierarchy of heat trapping mechanisms that exist as mutable systems in the atmosphere. Water vapor has many orders of magnitude more effect than does C
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Thank you for the response, thank you for forcing me to read more deeply, and thank you for the partial reality check on the rising sea level. Now, according to the paper I read earlier today, the Antarctic ice shelf is increasing in mass, and can be expected to do so for the near future (if, as they predict, climate changes increase precipitation over the continent). The Greenland shelf--it is claimed--is starting to trickle away, but much slower than I'd believed.
The paper goes on to predict that a 3C increase in the temperature around Greenland is reasonable to expect, and would eliminate the continent's ice (representing 7 meters rise in sea level) over the course of two or three millennia. So while I think I wasn't too far off on the end result, I was terribly far of on the time scale.
You still misrepresent me in a couple of places. You say that I've claimed the sun is warming. I haven't. I've heard that it might be, but I only speculated that a change in the sun's output might have kicked off warming events in the past. The other misrepresentation is that you keep saying I said "no doubt" when I actually said "little doubt." It's a small thing, but important to me.
I'm not a scientist, and certainly not a climatologist. Despite your obviously impressive familiarity with the arguments of the contra-global warming folks, you're not a climatologist either. If you were, I'm sure you'd be too busy doing research for Exxon to be slumming on Slashdot. I'm having trouble believing that the overwhelming majority of scientists are in on a grand conspiracy. The idea that they might be saddled with groupthink seems more plausible, but I'm still not buying. When science reaches a consensus that is just plain wrong, there is too much incentive to turn that sacred cow into tasty burger (especially given the white hot public debate).
As I've been led to understand things, some studies have indeed been throwing out the tree ring data, claiming it to be less trustworthy. I understand that it looks suspicious. But I also think it looks suspicious for GW debunkers to demand that everyone focus on the one set of data that seems to support their position best, when it seems that several other data sets tell a slightly different story. I'm hardly qualified to judge between the two, but it appears that (broadly speaking) the most qualified people involved in this debate are supporting anthropogenic global warming.
Finally, I do recognize that I have more than a little emotional investment in global warming. Part of me wants it to be true, not because I want us all to drown and burn to death, but because I think there are so many other things out there that are going to require intense levels of international cooperation, and lots of reasons to start thinking about ways to preserve and sustain the planet. Maybe this just seems like a good place to start. If global warming is being grossly exaggerated, then the reasons I described aren't sufficient reason to believe.
So I'm going to fold, because I'm tired and I'm late for something and whatnot. I'm sure I'll be back, as obnoxious as ever, next time the subject comes up. Because this is Slashdot, the place I come when I want to get pissed off. But I'm pissed out for the day, and trying to be a bit reasonable. It's been enlightening.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Nice post. You have a good one. Sorry if I took your words (re solar output) out of context. Wasn't intentional. It is something I have been convinced of for quite some time now, between the official solar reports and things like the amazing and unprecedented X28 class solar flare in 2003. Now, that got my attention. The only good news about that puppy is that it didn't hit us. Anyway, thanks, and good night. I ramble. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
so it is very likely that we can use this to beam power and not heat up the earth.
..........FULL STOP.
I am quite serious and not one bit troll. I do get a bit tired of the processes of moderation where if you disagree with the political correct beliefs you are to be moderated down rather than answered as you have done.. Don't worry about audience I really have tired of trying to prove much to anyone. I speak up to stimulate thinking and hopefully redirect attention to what is really going on.
The mechanism for heating or cooling the earth by dielectric transmission of energy is not secret or some other similar thing. This is the mechanism by which a diode/capacitor ladder steps voltage in the back of a CRT display. It is standard plasma or solid state mechanisms. Just because most people have not heard of them or the effects doesn't mean they are not real. I got introduced to these by my father who was a radio technical person working with high power transmitters in Alaska for the US Army in 1950's. The short story is that large oil filled capacitors will recharge without external source if their temperature changes dramatically. The process works in both directions. It is the principal behind several novel refrigeration technologies of today. The atmosphere and surface of the earth is a capacitor set with periodic breakdown. I know about these and the level of the currents because my father also worked on buried cables. Rest assured there are more than adequate currents exist to either freeze or cook the planet. In one test cable from Spokane, Wa to Seattle, Wa they measured a current of 20,000 amperes at something in the order of 15,000 volts to the inch. (Figure that current out if you want... its about 5,037,120,000,000 Kw.) These currents are not atypical with major solar events.
Without trying to get too deep the Faraday Unipolar or homopolar generator format is what you are looking at in space surrounding a star or the earth. If the magnetic field of such a device is generated by fixed magnets on a rest, the device converts torque into a current. If the magnets rotate with the disk the device still generates a current but in this case it does not convert torque into current. No torque load exists. This is DePalma's N-Machine. It works. Replications have been shown and you can find them or build your own. The resulting device sees a massive current pulling items to the perimeter and to the polar region of the axle. The nature of large currents conducting down a plasma will produce some very predictable plasma effects. These will appear being carried along the exterior surfaces of the ecliptic plane disk. These will accelerate objects at increasing speeds away from the disk center as observed on the sun and earth and all other planetary bodies. These are what produce the currents between Jupiter, Saturn and their moons. The effect will be vortex storms above and below the ecliptic a modest distance (15 deg or so to 30 deg). These will have higher latitude harmonics. (Oppositely charged) On earth these are hurricanes, the sun they are sunspots, Jupiter and Saturn these are spots, etc. The polar exit will produce displays which are vertical vortex structures in a circle around the pole. These are also observed in all locations both in the solar system and outside of it.
No I was not being troll. The non-uniform temperature question is really funny. There is a lot of evidence that our planets etc may not be the temperature we suspected. X-Ray telescopic (Chandra) observations of the planets and other places say vastly different temperatures. This also explains storms in places where solar heating doesn't support them like Saturn and beyond.
Actually the whole issue of what we know and what we think we know about the sun and the solar system is a real problem. Spectrograph data for 250 years has told us what the sun was actually made of. Contrary to the published claims of a hydrogen and helium star, those are actually trace elements. The spectra and you can see it on SOHO shows that the sun is primarily IRON. That's all that pretty green spectra (f
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
* seeding the ocean with iron filings to stiumlate growth of CO2-converting algae.
* floating reflective matts on the north pole, should the ice cap wholly melt.
* atmospheric processors, a la Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars
* scattering ash on the ice caps (to the opposite end), back in the 1970s when worries were about globalm cooling.
ps - please hold off the climage change opinions. there's so much of that already here. just curious about how far this thinking has gone.