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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.
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/
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
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" -
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."