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UN May Ban Blotting Out the Sun
Supervillains and Mr. Burns are among those to be most affected by the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity decision on space sunshades. Even though organizations like NASA have been looking into them as a possible way to slow climate change, the UN is expected to limit research into the technology or ban it outright. From the article: "The Convention may consider banning or limiting research into space sunshades. Some question their wisdom. A space sunshade would have a rapid effect on global warming and provide time to develop more permanent measures, they say. The technique has already received serious attention from NASA and other organizations. But others, such as the ETC group, an environmental and social advocacy group, fear simply blocking the sun is a bandage, meant to cover up the problem, and allow humans to continue using fossils fuels. Another fear is that geo-engineering, as techniques like this are called, could have unforeseen consequences on the weather, ecosystem and agriculture."
UN bans shadows!
we already blocked out the sun 500 years ago to try and kill the machines, but they won anyways and we're all just blue pills lying in our pods
That when you try to fix one problem, you almost always invent a new one? Prime example, using cats to get rid of mice....but than theres to many cats right? well lets roll in the dogs.. what? now too many dogs? ok lets bring in........ Some things are just better left alone
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
UN ban Eclipse, Oracle rejoice
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
I don't want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the shade of a Satellite
I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of sunshine like the mayor say
I don't want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the moon from Google Earth
I don't ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart
There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That NASA has taken away I'm done
Gigantic shades in the sky, with patterns of light coming through them. Just think of the sponsorship opportunities! Every time you look at the Sun, you could see an Apple or Coca Cola logo.
Clearly, they aren't thinking this through. The monetization could be extraordinary!
Reflective rooftops have some conceptual similarities, but are somewhat less drastic.
But others, such as the ETC group, an environmental and social advocacy group, fear simply blocking the sun is a bandage, meant to cover up the problem, and allow humans to continue using fossils fuels. Another fear is that geo-engineering, as techniques like this are called, could have unforeseen consequences on the weather, ecosystem and agriculture.
Wow, so let's block research to prevent knowledge. Because information is evil. And we don't agree with this line of thinking, so let's ban it. Hypocrites.
But others, such as the ETC group, an environmental and social advocacy group, fear simply blocking the sun is a bandage, meant to cover up the problem, and allow humans to continue using fossils fuels.
I think this should lay to rest any doubts as to the motives of some of our friends in the Green community. Their primary concern is to cause humans to stop using fossil fuels. The actual need to do so isn't strictly relevant. They'd rather there not be any conflict of interests, so rather than mitigating the issue in any other way, they'll continue to press their agenda.
This should be seen as problematic. If for no other reason than it illustrates that the actual problem (dead humans) is secondary to their agenda.
Food for thought.
Does any Nation actually listen to the UN?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
What about blanketing large tracts of land in solar-cells? Is that still okay?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The problem with that is that the shadow does not always point straight down. It points in the direction normal to the sun; EG, even a geostationary shade would have a shadow that moves around thousands of miles as the angle of incident with the sun changes due to the earth's rotation.
Much more interesting would be to deploy something like this on Venus, to halt the greenhouse effect and cool it down.
Where are they going to make billions from letting their well-connected friends sell carbon offsets if we just build a giant shade?
if a sunshade were installed installed then global warming could not be used as a tool to control people and governments. I hate to bring up tinfoil hat topics, but sometimes I wonder if the UN has some dishonest ambitions when it comes to the topic of global warming. a centralized system of carbon credits and regulation to limit carbon footprints including mechanisms to enable inspection by some central authority seems like crazy conspiracy stuff, but it also seems plausible to me.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's the only way to get the votes needed to stop this. We can raise sea levels and recover the Unity core while we're at it!
Demand for oil and natural gas is still increasing faster than production, so even if you ignore the CO2 problem there is still the question of where we'll get our energy from. Unless you want to expand coal mining significantly, we have to switch to non-fossil fuel anyway.
There are people who oppose geoengineering, some of them have good arguments, some of them are worthless pieces of garbage that need to die before they spread their diseases any further.
People with good arguments say things like "we need to think about this a lot more", "a environmental benefit for one nation state may be an act of war for another" and "please, please, for the love of all that's good in the world, don't try anything that's irreversible". You can deal with people like that, study the issues together, strike bargains - and the part about no irreversible large scale prototyping just plain makes sense.
People who need to be removed from serious conversation with a hazmat suit and a chainsaw say things like "it's unnatural", "we need to leave this to God" or, my favourite, "you shouldn't goeengineer because it might work and that would prevent the collapse of western consumer capitalism". That's the people who think we deserve to suffer for knowing too much, asking too many questions or having too much stuff. They think there's something inherently wrong about wealth and technological progress, something that removes us from nature, destroys out humanity or makes us impure. They cannot be reasoned with as the source of these views is usually their own sexual maladjustment. Working with people like that is always about minimizing the damage they cause. I suggest using dynamite - rectally.
(I've been watching a lot of George Carlin lately, in case you were wondering.)
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
1) And orbital sun blocking system is totally reversible, unlike some of the more idiotic suggestions like pumping chemicals into the atmosphere and crossing your fingers while hoping there are no side effects.
2) The fossil fuel thing is a self-solving problem. Believe me, in 40 years or so, it's contribution to global anything will be insignificant, since there won't be enough affordable, positive EROEI liquid or solid hydrocarbons being used as an energy source to matter. We may still be using natural gas, and while it does cause some pollution, it's quite a bit less than either coal or oil.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I propose a simpler project, get the UN off of Earth. And the IMF and CFR. They are threats to freedom, democracy and national sovereignty.
Exactly, this is just like the chapter in Freakonomics that pissed everyone off. If we can find a way to have our cake and eat it to then lets do that. Reducing consumption simply for the sake of reducing consumption is pointless, the reason we are doing it is because without some new scientific leap we can't sustain current levels. The ideal future to me is everyone on earth living exactly the life that they want to. I get the impression from some of these people that their ideal future is everyone living in Tee-pees, eating nothing but tofu, and dying of old age at 40. Liberals is the wrong word for these people, they are fascists more than anything.
What has happened here is that the organization has confused it's goals and long term plans with being "right". The reason CO2 building up in the atmosphere is a problem is mainly due to the heating effects. But the climate change folks in the UN have had long term plans to force everyone to cut their carbon emissions for decades to solve this problem. These folks now see the CO2 emission itself as evil, not the effects of it.
Another example : what if a drug chemist created a recreational drug that was perfectly safe, almost impossible to overdose on, and the effects could be reversed with a simple injection of an antidote. The DEA/Congress would still
make the drug illegal and throw in prison everyone involved in supplying it. They would hire scientists to "research" the drug who would "discover" that it was in fact incredibly dangerous and that taking it was putting your life into your own hands. Again, the organization confuses it's purpose (protect people from the harm of dangerous drugs) with it's implementation (throw anyone in prison caught with any substance declared to be illegal)
A final example : those electronic cigarettes. There is talk of making them illegal, not because they cause harm, but because the government's advisors sees smoking/nicotine addiction itself as being evil. The electronic cigarettes are many, many times safer than the burning paper ones, yet the government wants to ban them because the devices are not intended to help a user quit their addiction.
The reason for getting people to quit smoking was original because cigarettes are dangerous, but now the goal has been perverted into being an end in itself.
Banning the use of such devices I can see... until we more fully understand them, and the potential un-intended impacts.
But to ban RESEARCH on such subjects??? The whole idea of research would be to understand these issues in the first place. Since when is better knowledge of something undesirable (in a "free" state, at least)?
Maybe it's an issue with the summary, and I should have RTFA... but I'm stunned that a global body would be so naieve and ignorant.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
You know, I think the combination of science and politics is a lot like the combination of rock music and religion. It makes both worse.
"OUR SCIENTISTS WILL BLOT OUT THE SUN!!!"
"Then our factories shall spew in the shade."
(stupid yell filter.)
We destroyed civilian human lives and then came in to mop up the remains of a culture of beauty and philosophy, a culture that still understood the difference between a "warrior" and a "soldier." Now Japan is a land of broken, childish merchants, of bright lights and unbelievably ridiculous things.
No... no you didn't. Tentacle porn existed way before WWII, as one example of an unbelievably ridiculous thing which survived the atomic bombs. The Japanese now would be extremely annoyed by your shitty stereotyped classification of them. Japan is not broken, as you'd know, if you knew anything about it. Also note that the culture of beauty and philosophy, as you put it, had diabolically bad POW camps... perhaps they missed that bit of honor.
The fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo alone (each lasting a few days at most) killed more people than the atomic bombs did. Many other cities were firebombed too. Just focusing on the atomic bombs when other bombing raids killed way more people smacks of sensationalism.
They expected military retaliation after this; unfortunately, what they got was "Strategic Bombing" ... no, not just military installations, but CIVILIAN installations. We blew up schools, churches, houses... that's called terrorism today. It pissed them off, too, because attacking non-combatants is an honorless act of cowardice.
I'd suggest reading up on the Japanese bombing of Bombing of Chongqing:
A conservative estimate places the number of bombing runs at more than 5,000, with more than 11,500 bombs dropped, mainly incendiary bombs. The targets were usually residential areas, business areas, schools, hospitals (non-military targets).
Note the beginning date of the bombing campaign, 18 February 1938 (and that the bombings were covered in the U.S. media). In addition, bombings of other cities such as Shanghai and Wuhan took place, but Chongqing was probably the hardest-hit target.