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Solar Geoengineering Could Lead To Whiter, Brighter Skies
cylonlover writes "We've heard reports that placing small, reflective particles into the upper atmosphere could actually improve crop yields, but would also significantly reduce the amount of electricity generated by solar power plants and do little to arrest the acidification of the world's oceans. Now another potential side effect has been theorized by Californian researchers, who say that solar geoengineering could lead to brighter, whiter skies, and sunsets with an afterglow (abstract)."
Don't you dump the heat on it too, a la Bender in "Godfellas" which set the crops on fire, not to mention increased global warming because how you have a mirror instead of gasses trapping light in?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I am sure for both amateur and professional astronomers that this would result in horrible seeing conditions as well. Please look at http://www.darksky.org/. Dark night time skies are hard enough to find due to light pollution even now. Better than global warming I guess!
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Thanks, guys.
The effect they describe can be seen in Atlanta on particularly bad days (although it also sometimes has a greenish yellow tinge in the spring when the pollen counts get insanely high.) What really hit me in the gut, though, was seeing the city from atop a mountain a hundred miles away. The Blue Ridge mountains around us were all surrounded by clear blue skies, but Atlanta to the south was shrouded in what looked like a gray-violet miasma. The same smog that turned the skies white inside the city was gray from a distance.
I think we need to be more concerned with pulling crap out of the atmosphere than putting more stuff in it.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Fucking with the earth. Maybe in 200 years when we could simulate this at the atomic level we should spend resources on these ideas...
Is this where our college tuition is going?
I really don't know why this is even being considered.
For reason that should be plainly obvious, it also reminds me of the Matrix... just with the opposite color.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This has been happening for at least the last ten years. They are called chemtrails or persistent contrails.
Well almost every time. Like the damming of rivers which kills fish and blocks the natural flow of sediment. Or levees that make rivers flow faster and, when the flood happens, is far worse than a natural un-leveed flood. Or putting-out forest fires such that, when a fire happens now there's massive overgrowth that turns a small blaze into an inferno that makes the ground into glass.
Isn't it about time we learn to LIVE with nature, instead of trying to engineer it and screwing up? Over millions-of-years nature has reached a natural balance with its flow-of-rivers, floods, and the occasional fire (trees developed fire-retardant bark). All we humans manage to do is frak it up.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Oh great. As if amateur (and some professional) astronomers don't have enough light pollution to deal with! This would extent twilight and thus reduce the useful observing time.
solar geoengineering could lead to brighter, whiter skies, and sunsets with an afterglow
It would probably also interfere with ground-based astronomy and our view of the night sky, by direct absorption/scattering of starlight, and by worsening Skyglow effects, increasing scattering terrestrial sources of light back at us. Life-long urban residents already have no idea what a proper view of the Firmament looks like (not even knowing the Milky Way is something you can see with your own naked eyes!), never having seen more than the moon and a pathetic handful of dots.
The summary makes it sound like "whiter skies" is a good thing, but the article itself makes it clear that the researchers are presenting this as a bad thing. Ie, attempts at solar engineering will make everywhere look like your hazy urban cities.
And the positive crop effect is actually not due to more light, but the reverse. Diffusing light apparently makes photosynthesis more efficient.
With too much sun(>10 hours) , potatos yield seed instead of tubers. Specifically, they flower and die. Brightening the sky would also increase the effective day length, destroying the staple crop of much of the world's poor. I think there is a huge arrogance popping its head up again.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I can see the tagline now: "Geoengineering with a smile!"
...I have to say this is a really stupid idea. It would absolutely prevent ground-based solar observation of the corona, important to astrophysical studies and space weather. To give an idea of how difficult it is already, one must image or analyze brightness levels on the order of a millionth of the brightness of the solar disk to do real science, on time scales of five minutes or less, at very narrow wavelength bandwidths. There simply aren't enough photons to average out the noise with sky brightness levels above around 20 ppm on time scales that are meaningful, and detector noise makes measurements above 30 ppm sky brightness pretty much futile.
There are not very many places on earth with the necessary to make even part-time measurements as it is.
The night time folks will be screwed as well.
The winners will be a few large multinational corporations with the funds to corrupt policy. The losers will be the rest of us.
So who in their right mind is suggesting that we even need to do such a stupid thing as adding more sulfates to the atmosphere on purpose? To grow more food? Not likely. Reduce solar heating and counteract Global Warming? Seriously?
Pumping sulfates into the atmosphere is basically what causes acid rain and purposely pumping tones of this stuff into the air is not a good idea for the environment. Besides the quickest way to do this would be to return to burning high sulfur coal for power...
This is clearly just another scientist trying to secure or justify funding for investigating some crazy hair brained "Global Warming" snake oil fix. It is like funding the "free energy" science schemes or searching for the fountain of youth.
This is nothing but a huge waste of money and time..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
your tinfoil is powerless here.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
should care more our planet and our planet is terible
[url=http://www.taringa.net/posts/economia-negocios/14886307/como-emprender-en-Internet.html#comid-906941]Raul Salomon[/url]
This would negativly affect all kind of wildlife as well. Not all forms of lifee would be able to handle such a thing in apositive way
... rife with unintended consequences. If you're going to turn UP the lights, you'd damn well better have a way to turn them back DOWN again. Large repositionable mirrors in space would do this. Throwing crap into the atmosphere because it's cheaper would not.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Google is working on a pair of sunglasses that will make the skies bluer than ever. Rainbows coming in v2.0!
Remember to brush and floss your skies twice a day.
Everyone knows it's impossible for mere humans to modify God's atmosphere. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that we could ever do that would make the slightest degree of difference in how the climate operates, ever. Anthropomorphic climate engineering is a myth.
Painting roofs white could do much more than these risky geoengineering boondogles.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/30/492153/how-painting-roofs-white-can-help-turn-off-the-world-for-a-year/
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Depends on the crap. You could create something with a life expectancy. Or something that's easier to collect and store then CO2
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They have been doing this for years now, project cloverleaf anyone? hence the reason monsanto has the only patent against aluminum in their GMO products, (which were recently banned in poland for causing CCD). THis would actually DAMAGE crop yields, as it kills the bee's which are needed to pollinate.
Large repositionable mirrors in space would do this.
NASA studied using mirrors in space to illuminate the jungle at night during the Vietnam War; they would have launched a cut-down LEM with a large folding mirror attached which would unfold when it was in orbit.
I thought that was cool. OK, it was also stupid and insanely expensive, but I'm sure plenty of soldiers would have preferred to spend their Vietnam War service sitting in orbit pointing a mirror at the jungle rather than being shot at down in said jungle.
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Seriously, have these guys never seen the matrix or highlander?
So we need to avoid any potential sequels ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The term acidification as used in the summary always drives me crazy. In no other field of science would any describe the process of "becoming more neutral" as "acidification." Who uses that term? An alarmist who wants us to imagine that we are turning the oceans into battery acid. We are not. The ph of the ocean has gone from 8.1 (pre industrial) to 7.8 (right now). Yes, we are talking a change in ph of just over .3 units. I wonder what the error bars are on the 8.1 ph calculation... Until the ph of the ocean goes below 7, using the term "acidification" is just alarmist, unscientific nonsense.
And about the ridiculous idea about fucking up the atmosphere for some putative effect on crops... pretty sure there are easier, cheaper, and more reversible ways to gain the same effect.
Crop yields are a non issue. As the earth warms, large tracts of tundra in northern latitudes will become available for agriculture. We might end up having a surplus of arable land.
Now, if you happen to be a farmer in Texas or Oklahoma, you're screwed. But this is a global issue. Some will win, some will lose, but in the final analysis, mankind benefits.
Have gnu, will travel.
Can't imagine any geo-engineering idea EVER being implemented. We can't get international agreement on basic climate/human cause issues, such as CO2 generation effects. If we can't even agree that everyone should reduce carbon emissions, how could everyone agree that agressive, direct geo-engineering actions (mirrors in space, iron in the ocean, particles in the atmosphere...) would work?
As any fan of Charlie Sheen's[*] oeuvre is well aware, chemtrails are created by the ancient aliens. They're terraforming (sic) Earth to be more like Zeta Rediculi.
This also explains reality teevee.
[*]oh yeah, that's right, I went there.
The alien disinformation smear campaign is just rutheless.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
For whiter, cleaner atmospheres!
I'm posting to undo accidental moderation on a different post. Your arithmetic is wrong by a factor of 15. 100W by 15 rooms is 1.5kW, which would result in an annual cost of $2500 or thereabouts.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Russians did a bit more with Znamya 2
Something that could be deployed internationally, something cheap, something that could be initially shipped in a small package, something that only required solar power and water to absorb CO2. Perhaps something that even released oxygen into the atmosphere, provided shade, grew some sort of sweet, nutritious fruits or nuts and and was shaped in a way that small children could climb in the summertime.
Alas, such an advanced device is well beyond the realm of our science, or our scientific imagination.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
why on earth people are considering dumping non-native particles into the atmosphere. Why chance the fuck up of a beautifully running system? That this is touted as a solution seems misleading. I believe those that would advocate do so in ignorance, idiocy, or malice.
That being said, there's all manner of manmade chemicals making their way there, and has it really helped? It's changed things, but I am reminded of that island that had an infestation of rats eating the native birds, so they threw on cats, too many of those eventually, then threw on dogs, and the rats came back. Hell, I forget the specifics, but things didn't work out for those poor birds, and there are glimpses of this pattern everywhere - such as the fiscal world's idea of subsidizing crops. Paying a farmer not to grow things, or to grow certain things that are in demand, is great for the farmer but not so great when we realize a large chunk of the assets we assume debt to 'cover' is for the benefit of one person/company losing their livelihood and the detriment of everyone else and the economy as a whole.
But back to the point - don't fuck up the planet, because despite what everyone says about going to Mars, we're here for now and the Earth is a reflection of ourselves as much as we are of it. And seeding the atmosphere with particles that do strange things to the light may not refract well on the humans that dwell on its surface. Emphasis on the 'frak'.
And this is different from smoke stack pollution how? Did our clean-air activity over the past score of years cause warming? Should we all go back to coal heating in our homes to save the earth? Do ecologists know any more than any body else? I'm going to start smoking cigars again to save the planet.
. . . . from the blue screen to the blue screen --- please, just say no to Bill Gates and his geoengineering the earth schemes.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/31/what_gets_declassified/singleton/
....that the Jonah-swallowed-by-the-whale was nothing more than an alien abduction scene, and that the so-called Rapture event recounted in the bible (people flying into the air and sky) was nothing more than the wobble of the Earth, which occurs infrequently, once every 12,000 to 26,000 years.....
... isn't the sky supposed to be BLUE?
This comment was so off-topic I was expecting that somehow they were going to weasel MyCleanPC in at the end.
see the title
"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky." Morpheus: The Matrix
[End Of Line]
Wouldn't it be easier to reduce emissions as recommended by every decent scientist for decades? I am tired of all the oddball solutions that are being put forward instead of a mature response to the problem. The leaders and voters get to avoid the hard decisions because they believe the magic solution is just around the corner. We need to face up to the problems we have created and work towards solving them, not looking for the "magic" solution that will make all the bad news go away.
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
Would this make the sky the color of a TV set tuned to a dead channel? Just curious.
actually yes i agree it was offtopic BUT it was something very interesting i did not know before, i would not mind finding more "cool facts" like this on slashdot