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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.
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.
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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.
The history of the planet has shown that there is a history of global temperature change. How is this any different? I can see how people could think that we are polluting the planet (we are dont get me wrong) but do you guys really think that 'man' is actually doing enough harm to this planet?? Im not saying that this article is nuts or something all im saying is that i think there should be more research into our contribution to raising the earths temperature before we start making it colder without knowing what will really happen. ps. this is my first slashdot post!
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.
Screw the superstrength wires. The reason ringworld was held together was that it was symmetric and the solar wind and light pressure on it from all sides evenly balanced itself (which even had to be sorted out in the second [or third?] book of the series).
Any objects which are light enough to be put in orbit in such quantities will be blown to hell and gone off orbit by the light itself in 2-3 months. Nasa already did the experiment 20+ years back with an inflatable aluminium foil sphere and there was a similar experiment prepared by amateurs to be launched on a converted Russian ICBM lately (it failed at launch).
Frankly pestering your local politicscritters until they stop approving cretinous suburbia developments that are designed to make trees impossible is a much better idea. Just look at most recent suburbia in UK (Cambouorne, MK, etc) and US. The utility supply lines are run deliberately in a manner which prevents anyone from planting anything larger then a small cherry or apple. And this is intended that way, allowed and approved by the bastards sitting on city council planning committees.
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Um...
/., actually) that they did a study and the amount of sunlight that actually reaches the surface of the earth has decreased by a whopping 10% since 1950. That alone puts a pretty huge dent in your theory. This is probably due to the fact that...
1. I'm pretty sure that I read (on
2. Life forms are surprisingly adaptive. You act as if plants are completely helpless in the face of a minor 2% change. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some long-term consequences (more to do with specific species thriving/suffering as opposed to planet-wide climate change) , but a permanent, perfectly linear/proportional drop in oxygen output is unrealistic.
3. Sunlight is only the energy source--plenty of other factors are involved in oxygen production.
4. I'm not at all sure that the greenhouse effect depends on gas proportions. You imply that the overall level of greenhouse gases could stay the same but if the relative amounts of other gases dropped, we would warm up. That's entirely possible, but that's not how I assumed it worked. Mars is pretty cold, and its thin atmosphere is composed (IIRC) mostly of CO2, so that seems to be another dent in your theory. Venus, on the other hand, has an extremely thick atmosphere of C02 and it's hotter than Mercury. From this, I would hazard a guess that raw quantities of greenhouse gasses are more important than percentages.
5. Even if greenhouse gases did have a proportional effect, the missing oxygen might very well be replaced by other inert gases. Plants aren't simple oxygen machines; they give and take in ways that I simply cannot recall (nor be bothered to Google) at 5:30 AM.
Oh, and personal responsibility doesn't work. Sorry. Wish it did... but it doesn't, so let's not completely neglect the worst-case-scenario plans, eh?
About doing "enough harm", I would be worried after seeing what be managed with just a few years of CFCs. Unfortunately, the "more research is needed" line would be good... if there wasn't so much research already done that points to us being the most probable cause of this high-speed heating.
I would have said "You must be new here", but you already wrote this was your first post. Welcome to Slashdot. May your contributions be productive.
te be fair, how do you know the GP wasnt posting using lynx on his toaster, watch, llama or something? I mean, it *is* slashdot...
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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.
Welcome to /. I don't mean to be rude, but when you say "i think there should be more research into our contribution to raising the earths temperature", are you speaking from the perspective of someone in academia, preferably in a similar field, or are you just another bloke? Because I do know a few people doing climate research, and there in fact has been considerable investigation into this matter. And it's not controversial, either. Inside these circles, they're pretty much in agreement that humans are the cause of increased CO2, and this in turn is causing and will continue to cause global climate change.
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L1 one of the Lagrange points, i.e. points in space where the gravity of the sun and the earth cancel each other out. Objects stationed at these points do not fall towards either the earth or the sun.
I agree. One problem is called global dimming, and means that our earlier pollutants (such as soot) have been reflecting sunlight out of the atmosphere and thus hiding the effect of the greenhouse gases. When we move to cleaner energy systems (not in terms of CO2, but other light-reflecting pollutants) the hidden effects due to global dimming might accelerate global warming faster than our current CO2 emissions can account for.
Another factor is the sea. The sea is currently acting like a buffer solution, taking up a certain amount of the emitted CO2. This may not last forever. And besides, the effect the more and more acidic oceans has on the seaborne species are still mostly unknown. One should worry, since the oceans are the primary supplier of oxygen on this planet (as opposed to the Amazon rainforest that some people think) and a critically important source of food.
"But if they're going to do it, then why not make it photovoltaic and get some energy out of it."
They would either have to invent a way to transmit power wirelessly, or make the world's longest extension cord.
Ah, ok. Well just for the record, I think the idea is stupid too. We should fix the problem by fixing the problem, not by launching a sunshade. But still, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means if we're dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, it's going to raise the global temperature. It is indeed a big deal.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
... 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?
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Hi, welcome to slashdot.
I love this logic:
1. The climate has always been variable.
2. Therefore, man is not having an impact on today's climate!
QED, right?
Here's an exercise: Explain to me how increased levels of CO2 (which are rising due to humans- I challenge you to find an explanation that has not been debunked from here to Shanghai and back), which Arrhenius demonstrated over 100 years ago could cause climate change, can't possibly be causing climate change?
Hey, climate science is uncertain, and questioning it's results are fine. But if you are going to do so, please find a coherent argument why the current thinking is incorrect (again, please stick to the stuff that hasn't been shown to be wrong 100x over). So please go read RealClimate, debunk them, and then we can talk. Debating from ignorance is... ignorant.
PS I think this proposed solution, like most geo-engineering quick fixes, is f-ing nuts. For starters, it doesn't exactly have an 'Undo' button.
PPS Let's forget about climate change. How does changing the pH of the ocean by half a point grab you? We're doing that, too (the excess CO2 is going into the oceans), and we don't really know what the impact will be, b/c it'll reflect conditions the oceans haven't seen in a loooong time (and I'm not talking 1000 years. If memory serves, it's been several hundred thousand to millions of years. We do know that calcifying species will likely not be so happy, which some might argue is a problem. But hey, we couldn't possibly harm the planet, could we?
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"...It's like making a complex solution to a simple problem ..."
The weather system of the planet is about as far from "simple" as you can get. We have no clue about how the ecosystem of our world actually works. All this rancor about the "problem" of global warming and possible "solutions" are built upon an alter of such vast ignorance that I often find the discussion and "debate" of the topic to be the epitome of absurdity. The one prevailing predicate of almost every discourse about global warning and/or global climate change, is an unspoken implication that we (the human race) understand how the environment we live in works. WE DO NOT. And there exists a vast amount of historical evidence demonstrating that very notion.So the proposal of building a "shade" system for the planet to "cool it down" is so laughable due to the vast amount of hubris required to give it any consideration at all.
Perhaps we should work first on understanding the problem before coming up with solutions. Yeah, that means that the "I said it first" mentality will be hamstrung, but that, in my opinion, would be a good thing.
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The solution is a bit nuts. But it could have an undo button. If each of these little craft opened up some sort of large, deployable shade, then when we decided it was a bad idea, we could simply have them fold back up.
Also, replace the shades with solar panels, and you'd have a huge electric grid that could be used for extraterrestrial mining and ore refinement. Of course, then you have to steer asteroids towards Earth to run them through the process, which sounds like another screwed up idea.
We should probably just start taking the bus instead. Mass transit is not just for illegal immigrants and crazy homeless people anymore!
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That we're here to worry about it, for one. Climate changes that occurred 50 million years ago didn't affect human civilization; the one we're undergoing now, will.
Today's CO2 concentration is the highest seen since the emergence of Homo sapiens, and likely the highest in the past 20 million years.
It is the scientific consensus that human activity is likely a significant factor in global climate change, yes.
There are a few, mostly industry shills, who argue very loudly that this consensus is wrong. Unfortunately they receive press coverage far out of proportion with their numbers.
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> 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.