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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)."
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.
The light's not going on the crops though - it's being sent back out into space. I guess the crop yields improve because the soil is cooler, and retains more moisture and nutrients.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
All ideas should be considered, no matter how ridiculous. Not all should be practised though.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
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.
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.
For the meme, obligatory http://xkcd.com/966/
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
This idea should be considered idiotic :)
Clearly the correct (and most feasible) approach to us putting too much CO2 into the atmosphere is to put less CO2 into the atmosphere, not embark on some other massive experiment with mother nature whose outcome we can't really predict. Between solar, wind, and nuclear it's not hard to do, it's just not very popular with the big oil interests that control our politics.
...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.
Between solar, wind, and nuclear it's not hard to do, it's just not very popular with the big oil interests that control our politics.
It's also not popular with the people that protest against oil and oil interests. They won't let us invest in new nuclear reactor technology or build new plants, then complain when all the nuclear plants we have are old and outdated.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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
Clearly the correct (and most feasible) approach to us putting too much CO2 into the atmosphere is to put less CO2 into the atmosphere
Yep. That's why I never exercise. Clearly the correct and most feasible approach to putting too much food into my mouth is to put less food into my mouth.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
... 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.
RTFA
Photosynthesis is more effective in diffuse light.
Easy to imagine that with light coming in from many angles the particles in plant cells that have the chlorophyll are illuminated from more sides therefore more efficient.Also leaves that aren't perfectly lined up with the sun get more light than they otherwise would.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
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
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
"Photosynthesis is more effective in diffuse light."
No, it's really not. Chlorophyll has a neat mechanism by which light tends to (usually) work in one direction. You can test this for yourself. Obtain a test tube of chlorophyll in a suspended liquid solution. Take an incandescent light. If you put the test tube directly between you and the light at eye level, you will see it as mostly red. Any other direction, you see it as green.
Also, making the skies BRIGHTER (as per TFS and TFA) means increasing photon flux density. The current limit for most plants to withstand light falls between 1500-1800umol. After that, you rapidly begin approaching photosynthetic poisoning (AKA bleaching0 of plant tissues. Many food crops, especially vegetative ones, don't tolerate very high light levels. Most lettuces prefer roughly 300-600 umol, and start doing undesirable things at anything much higher, like bolting and not creating a compact head, or outright turning white.
This is one of the worst ideas I've heard coming from Californian scientists in a long long time. Makes me glad to be working with better-educated European horticultural companies.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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."
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.
"Photosynthesis is more effective in diffuse light."
No, it's really not. Chlorophyll has a neat mechanism by which light tends to (usually) work in one direction. You can test this for yourself. Obtain a test tube of chlorophyll in a suspended liquid solution. Take an incandescent light. If you put the test tube directly between you and the light at eye level, you will see it as mostly red. Any other direction, you see it as green.
Absolutely true...
But what the hell do you imagine that has to do with how effective photosynthesis is for a particular illumination environment? Yes, chlorophyl absorbs blue and some red, and reflects green -- no matter WHAT direction it comes from. You can test this for yourself -- same experiment as above, but rotate both the light source and the observer around the tube (or rotate the tube, if you like), and note that the color effects depend on the relative angle of the incident light and your eye, and nothing to do with chlorophyl "work[ing] in one direction".
Also, making the skies BRIGHTER (as per TFS and TFA) means increasing photon flux density. The current limit for most plants to withstand light falls between 1500-1800umol. After that, you rapidly begin approaching photosynthetic poisoning (AKA bleaching0 of plant tissues. Many food crops, especially vegetative ones, don't tolerate very high light levels. Most lettuces prefer roughly 300-600 umol, and start doing undesirable things at anything much higher, like bolting and not creating a compact head, or outright turning white.
The point went that-a-way, if you hurry maybe you can head it off at the pass.
Yes, making the sky brighter, and the sun dimmer, means increasing diffuse photon flux density. But (since all that light is reflected away from its original path) that means decreasing the direct photon flux density. And since some of the light gets reflected off to space, the total photon flux density is reduced.
Net result? Leaves directly facing the sun (at any given time of day) see much less photon flux density. Leaves in oblique sun, or in shade, get more. Net result for most plants, in most situations, is a reduction -- it's only a net increase for plants that spend most of the time in shadow, and those can be dealt with by providing additional shade (either from the sun for more hours, or from the sky as well)...
Yeah, it'd (maybe) be a problem for lettuce, that would cost some amount to deal with. Over all crops, it'd be a definite win, and it would save us from global warming for a century (plenty of time to run low enough on fossil fuels that the scarcity reduces their use to planet-friendly levels). So... though it's surely not to be undertaken lightly, I'm not seeing any reason to write it off. But maybe that's because instead of "working with better-educated European horticultural companies" (what a qualification!), I actually took a couple B.S.es and a M.S. in engineering, and picked up enough physics to understand light propagation... Oh wait, everything I needed to write this post came from fucking high school.
"And that one link right there blows the rest of your argument away."
I don't really see how it does. He got the color spectrum of light absorption by chlorophyll wrong, but he's correct that you got the law of conservation of energy wrong. Claiming that a single error disproves everything someone said, even the parts unrelated to the error, is a logical fallacy, and claiming so in an arrogant manner just makes you sound like an ass and makes people more inclined to distrust what you have to say.
Do yourself a favor, either learn how to discourse in a more polite manner, or stop trying to "help" by arguing in a manner that's just going to drive everyone away from what you're trying to convince them of.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Correct, yes. Most feasible, probably not, because there are plenty of people making money on the status quo, and a fair amount of "economic value" depends on burning fossil fuels that are still in the ground (a scary amount -- http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175499/ -- search for "value" to skip chit-chat about the climate). Assume that something similar holds in China. Given this, there's going to be a powerful economic incentive to stick with business as usual, and plenty of money whose jobs, wealth, or pensions depend upon the continued consumption of fossil fuels. Politically, it may not be feasible to cut back until we start to see unambiguously negative outcomes (not predicted outcomes, not reports endorsed by a mere 95% of climate scientists, but actual bad stuff), and maybe not even then, if they only happen to poor people in countries we don't care that much about.
So given that, it's sadly prudent to consider a plan B, and perhaps a plan C and D.
I'm not sure what an "actual bad outcome" would be. How bad would a drought or a heat wave have to get before people quit claiming it was just "natural variation"? Sea levels right now are rising at 3.3mm/year; if the rate suddenly doubled to 6.6mm/year, climate scientists' hair would spontaneously catch fire, but most people would not notice for years.