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Solar Geoengineering Could Lead To Whiter, Brighter Skies

Posted by Soulskill on from the cheaper-than-a-giant-annular-mirror dept.

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)."

5 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Night lights. by sackbut · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

    1. Re:Night lights. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Informative

      I turn-off the lights when I'm not in a room..... and even if I'm in a room, I typically just use the glow from the TV and my computer's CRT.

      You must have some phenomenal eyesight there. I don't know about you, but my eyes don't cope very well with extremely high contrasts. If a screen were so bright as to be usable as a light source in a dark room, I would be unable to read the text on it because of the overall ambient darkness to which my eyes would be adapted under the circumstances.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Re:Nothing new here by DanTheStone · · Score: 3, Informative

    This has been happening for at least the last ten years. They are called chemtrails or persistent contrails.

    No, "chemtrails" are an urban legend that claims our government is drugging us from the sky via chemicals dumped from airliners.

  3. Re:The haze is white in the city, violet from afar by localman57 · · Score: 3, Informative

    You haven't seen a fucking forest fire, have you?

    Nope. The people around me cut down all the forests in this area decades ago.

  4. Posting to undo moderation by Kupfernigk · · Score: 3, Informative

    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."