The science may not be sound, but it’s quite glamorous.
Scientists say that the administration tried to pressure them into downplaying climate change. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given the history of this administration. However, it’s obvious that this is like, totally not the case, since everyone knows that climate change is controversial and very disputed. I mean, it’s only the actual climatologists in every major scientific organization in the world that buys into it.
Thankfully, the good rational intellectuals over at the Heartland Institute has a real problem with this, and is skeptical. By “skeptical” I mean, “unwilling to acknowledge reality at all.” They claim that “experts” question the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says that yes, climate change is real and OMG IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW HOLY CRAP PEOPLE. We all know that there is no such thing as global warming, but even if there is, there could be benefits. At least so says the economist who wrote the thing. And he’s qualified to debunk experts in the field because he saw something about it on PBS one day. Or something.
But fear not! We have the solution! My fellow Americans, we can create giant space mirrors to block out the sun!
The US government wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Kewl! We can like, check our hair at any time of the day and still drive our Hummers! I was very worried about Haliburton–what if they go bankrupt with all this silly global warming worry? With this fabulous space age technology, they won’t, and we will save the deserving rich from poverty. This will be fabulous. (I’m sure that once the wingnuts realize that reflective dust is glitter, and glitter has lots to do with the gay, they’ll just push for the giant mirror.)
Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1% of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulphate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were “speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects”.
Well, the IPCC are a bunch of dour, lentil-eating, tree-hugging killjoys! What is this, a fascist state where you can’t have a party in space? I mean! Balloons! Glitter! And giant mirrors! We’ll be the Studio 54 of the solar system–possibly of the galaxy!
97 Responses to “Climate Change a Go-Go”
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http://boortz.com/
“Sorry…I’m still a skeptic. In no particular order here are just a few of the reasons why I’m not buying this man-made global warming scare:
The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short…I don’t trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world.
Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists.
Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don’t seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming.
The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars?
It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now.
It wasn’t all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about “global cooling” and another approaching ice age?
How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that’s frightening.
Because that famous “hockey stick” graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods … left them off the graph altogether.
The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world’s biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India.
The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world’s dominant capitalist economies.
Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon.
Because global warming “activists” and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree.
What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why?
Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying “we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?”
Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer?
In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.
There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.
Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years.
Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.
Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.
Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.
During the last 20 years — a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels — global temperatures have actually decreased. That’s right … decreased.
Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man?
Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?
On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled “Another Ice Age?” Here’s the first paragraph:
“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.”
GIANT MIRRORS IN SPACE??!!?!
Oh, lizard shit! Where do they GET these people?
exactly what i’m seeing in my head right now. far out, man
Why don’t we just get all the SUVs to expel their exhaust in the same direction at once to move the earth farther from the sun, thus eliminating the danger?
It could totally work! I saw it on Futurama!
Oh, lizard shit! Where do they GET these people?
Universities that teach science.
There’s nothing particularly risible about mirrors in space.
Oh. My. God.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7425T5KBMRU
So the right wing spends all this time complaining about gay people bringing about the end of civilization, and then their first substantive suggestion about global warming is to pump the atmosphere full of glitter and/or turn the earth into a giant disco ball. Right.
In the wake of staff changes here at Pandagon, we at the Lentil Advisory Board find the recent increase in derogatory comments regarding our product disheartening.
We miss Ezra.
But fear not! We have the solution! My fellow Americans, we can create giant space mirrors to block out the sun!
At least when “>Mr. Burns blocked out the sun, he was upfront about doing it for nefarious purposes.
Ezra — ah, yes, I remember him. He was the guy who suggested that we grow giant lentils in space.
And I, for one, really like the mirrors idea. Just so long as we all remember that certain comets and asteroids may be closer than they appear in the mirrors.
D’oh!
Mr. Burns!
We’re just lucky the Lentil Advisory Board doesn’t sue for defamation of legume…
BTW, the “Let’s put junk in space to block the heat absorption” idea is “interesting”…
Makes me think of somebody who puts too much salt on their food and thinks they can fix it by putting sugar on it. It ain’t that simple…
They could have suggested a method that hadn’t already been shot down by Al Gore !
Or you could think of it as somebody who has too much salt on their food and thinks they can fix it by reducing the amount of salt that gets on their food. Of course, that would be insane.
I would think that all properly worshipful Discoballmousetarians would be thrilled at the prospect of having an enormous Discoball (or discoball-like glittering things - that’s close enough for any True Believer) hovering above the earth. Surely this is a sign that we are truly blessed, for our earthly leaders have seen the light, and are leading the way!
Separation of church and state would probably require us to put an enormous label on the mirror saying “This is Not the Disco Ball”.
“But we do know it was us that scorched the sky.”
On the bright side, looks like the WAAGNFNP will be achieving its goals sooner than expected.
Thank you, Mr. Calandro. Now, I know that in Evolution/Creation debates, when the anti-scientist just reels off as many “facts” as they can in the (largely justified, since no one is an expert in *everything* and time is limited) hope that the scientist won’t be able to answer them all and uses any unanswered arguments to declare victory, it’s known as the “Gish Gallop”, after Duane Gish, who perfected the technique. I don’t know if it has a specific name in Global Warming Denial, but you’ve just given a fine example of it.
But you see, there’s a reason that Duane Gish refuses to engage in written debates, instead of oral debates in front of crowds packed with people who already agree with him.
See, here’s the deal: I suspect that you haven’t really done that much research into the Global Warming debate. I think that you just found a list of arguments against it, and reposted it here in hopes of setting us stupid liberals straight. My mind is open, however. I need you to convince me, though:
1)Who are the loud proponents of global warming who are confirmed anti-capitalists?
2)Who says that the Sun is currently warmer than usual, and what is their evidence? Have there been studies by other scientists that support or damage this hypothesis? Links will do.
3) Stats to show that it was warmer in the 1930’s? And was the Sun warmer *then* as well?
4) *Were* the same scientists warning us about Global Cooling who are now warning us about Global Warming? What are their names? Was the previous message *also* motivated by anti-capitalism?
5) No question - just a point - one degree (fahrenheit? Celsius?) of change in the total temperature of a system as large as the planet Earth actually *is* a big change. In any case, where did you get that figure?
6)Evidence that the “hockey stick” graph is a fraud? Articles? Exposes?
7) If the Kyoto Accords exempt major CO2 producers China (Communist) and India (Capitalist, US Ally), that’s bad. They shouldn’t be exempt. What does that prove about Global Warming itself?
8) The Kyoto Accords can be seen that way. They can also be seen as a desperate attempt to correct a global environmental emergency. Your statement gives no reason to choose between the two.
9) Almost *all* scientists depend on grant money for their livelihood. Why would the grant money dry up if they stopped announcing global warming?
10) George W. Bush, no believer in Global Warming, is the one who placed his supporters in positions to control the information released by scientific agencies that had evidence of global warming. *That* is silencing the opposition. The scientists simply keep announcing the ever-mounting evidence of global warming, very few honest scientists disagree.
11) Links to the graph a) with and b)without the Medieval Warming Period? In any case, they may have discovered new information in the five years between the two - getting accurate measurements for the Medieval period (certainly no one was *taking* accurate temperature measurements and recording them at the time) is probably difficult.
12) I don’t know why that scientist said “we must get rid of the Medieval warming period”. Who was s/he? Perhaps if we read more, we’ll understand better.
13) >In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.
I thought that the worldwide temperature had risen *one* degree in the past 100 years, and that you didn’t consider that to be very impressive.
14) Evidence that Antarctica and Greenland’s glaciers are increasing in thickness? Links please.
15) >There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.
How do you know that they’re growing *or* melting if they haven’t been measured?
16) > Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.
Evidence? And are they rising slower or *faster* now?
17) > Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.
When? How *much* warmer? Evidence?
18) >During the last 20 years — a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels — global temperatures have actually decreased. That’s right … decreased.
Evidence?
19) >Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man?
I don’t know. Which reporter did this? Still, a reporter looking for a sensational story, or one that supports their personal beliefs, has no bearing on whether or not global warming is real.
20)>Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?
They aren’t. They’re constantly finding additional information…that supports global warming.
21) >On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled “Another Ice Age?� Here’s the first paragraph:
“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.�
Title of article? Scientists quoted? Have you seen this article *yourself*?
>>Oh, lizard shit! Where do they GET these people?
>Universities that teach science.
And yet, when other scientists from Universities That Teach Science argue that global warming is real, they’re a bunch of anti-American whackos talking nonsense.
And personally, I think the idea of putting objects in space big enough to cover 1% of the Earth’s surface *is* pretty risible. Do you have *any idea* how huge that is? The kind of resources that would take? How much of a disaster it would be if one of them fell, or even covered the wrong area? What that would do to weather patterns?
>Or you could think of it as somebody who has too much salt on their food and thinks they can fix it by reducing the amount of salt that gets on their food. Of course, that would be insane.
No, it’s a great idea…but in an actually workable scenario, “reducing the amount of salt that gets on their food” = reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Go Seraph! You took the words right out of my mouth. I must admit that I also wondered how CC knew that undiscovered, unmeasured glaciers were growing, not melting.
btw, just an article I found at BBC after looking a grand total of 2 minutes. It contradicts several of CC’s points.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm
THanks, Bananaphone, but they’re not CC’s points. I just followed the link in his post, and it’s to the website for the Neal Boortz show.
Neal seems to be a wingnut of the first order, but I give him credit for this disclaimer on his website:
>>Don’t believe anything you read on this web page, or, for that matter, anything you hear on The Neal Boortz Show, unless it is consistent with what you already know to be true, or unless you have taken the time to research the matter to prove its accuracy to your satisfaction. This is known as “doing your homework.”>>
Looks like CC didn’t do that. He just showed up, posted the list to enlighten the stoopit librils, and took off. I doubt he’ll be back.
Damn, dive-bys are frustrating.
Oh, well. At least any lurkers got a lesson in debating techniques.
Bear in mind, TIME is a pop news magazine, not a scientific journal. News magazines are prone to providing an “objective” view through excessive even handedness, giving exciting new research equal time with established data, and between fringe scientists and the consensus opinion.
In other words Boortz is trying to claim that scientists have been wrong before, so they are wrong now (a logical fallacy) but dues so by citing a secondary source (an article about the research) as opposed to the research itself.
May there be mercy on man and machine for their sins.
Mirrors the size of 1% of the Earth’s surface.
Does anyone know how to answer the burning question that was prompted by that suggestion? Because I’m not the only one wondering: What country or geologic feature (Great Lakes?) covers 1% of the surface of the planet?
Baby, I been around the world an I, I, I…think it’s really f-in large.
But on the other hand, I’m so bad at estimating volume that I recently killed a microwave attempting to make oatmeal from a pouch without measuring, so maybe I’m wrong and this whole mirror idea is way more practical than running electronics at dairies off captured methane.
And personally, I think the idea of putting objects in space big enough to cover 1% of the Earth’s surface *is* pretty risible. Do you have *any idea* how huge that is?
It doesn’t have to cover 1% of the earth’s surface. It has to reflect 1% of the light that would hit the Earth. That’s still a fairly large surface area, but quite feasible.
The kind of resources that would take? How much of a disaster it would be if one of them fell, or even covered the wrong area? What that would do to weather patterns?
Resource-wise, it wouldn’t be that intensive. We’re not talking about six-inch thick glass a kilometer across; we’re talking mylar or some similar substance. Mylar is LIGHT - it’s like the plastic sheeting you can buy to put on your windows to darken a room without a shade. The positioning hardware and such would weight somewhat more, but could be permanent or semi-permanent; the sheeting itself would have to be replaced periodically.
Re-entry to the atmosphere would be the ordinary method of disposal when they wore out. If one of them “fell”, the disaster would consist of people saying “oooh, pretty” as they watched it burn up a hundred miles above the Earth. Hitting the “wrong area” would have the devastating effects we regularly see whenever the Sun goes behind a cloud.
The weather pattern objection is potentially valid, but we have to ask: compared to what? The weather pattern we’re messing with is already, per warming alarmists, the End of the World. Wouldn’t want to foul that up. In fact, the most likely place to direct the shadow cone from the mirrors would be the ocean around hurricane formation zones. Cool down that water and shut down the hurricane cycle for good - who says Republicans don’t care about New Orleans?
but in an actually workable scenario, “reducing the amount of salt that gets on their food� = reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
No, it wouldn’t. Greenhouse gases are not the problem, per se. Greenhouse gases, in fact, are by and large good for the planet and the ecosystem. (Ask a stoner what they pump into their grow room to promote healthy foliage.) The greenhouse effect results in the Earth retaining more solar input (energy) than it would normally - and a good thing, too, otherwise the planet would be a ball of ice. When there are more greenhouse gases than is usual for the epoch, we get a warming effect that is uncomfortably high, rather than what we’ve become accustomed to. The warming effect is being facilitated by the greenhouse gases, but it’s the solar input that’s creating the warmth in the first place. Less sun, less warmth, balances out the total solar input to the planet.
Which is a LOT easier than convincing a billion Chinese and a billion Africans that they don’t want cars or computers.
I hope y’all are willing to indulge my geekery:
To block 1% of the solar radiation reaching Earth would require a mirror roughly 1200 km in diameter. Using one micron thick material, that’s 1,100,000 cubic meters of material. Using a generous density estimate of 0.5g/cc, that’s about 560 tons of material. Not entirely insane. Even with more generous margins (thicker material, allowances for structure and so on) we’re only really talking about maybe 10,000 tons. There are credible proposals for a shuttle derived vehicle (shuttle-c) with a low earth orbit payload of over 100 tons, so we’re talking about only a few hundred launches.
I don’t think it’s a good allocation of resources, but it isn’t quite as nuts as it might seem. In a genuine “Oh Shit! Global Warming hurts rich people too!” scenario I suspect it would probably be tried.
[…] I have some more news to cause you to lose faith in humanity! While the Bushies have hemmed and hawed about global warming [it’s real, we’re causing it], it seems even they must face the mounting reams of evidence [or at least the pressure from the public which is facing it] and are asking scientists for help to offset the rising temperatures. I know you’re thinking, “So they’re funding them to reduce emissions through a variety of means?” Well, no. Perhaps alternative fuel research? Also, no. At the least, they have to be doing a PR campaign for conservation? Nope. Think more half-assed, last-ditch, mind-bogglingly grandiose and moronic at the same time… and see if you guessed correctly below the flip! If you guessed mirrors in space to reflect sunlight, you win! I’m not kidding, check this out: The US government wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insuranceâ€? against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday. […]
Two things. Many scientists think that geoengineering may be worth investigating. (I don’t know how they feel about the mirror thing in general.) None of the them think we know enough to go ahead and do it. The problem with global warming is not the temperature rise, but the consequences. Before you make a big change in the earth’s solar balance you want to check that out for unintended consequences as well. For example what would the effect on ariculture be? Also a number of effects of GHG concentration would not be helped mirrors. For example ocean acidiification. In short if you consider yourself an intelligent conservative, don’t be too quick to accept smoke and mirrors.
Robert - the main problem with the mirror plan is that while the total insolation remains the same, its distribution changes. It is variations in energy distribution that produce our weather. In a very real sense, weather is just energy redistributing itself towards equilibrium. The results of futzing with the distribution of energy input could well be F-5 tornados in Sao Paolo or Hurricanes that make Katrina look like a big wet fart.
I gotta ask: Why would spending all this money on researching and developing this massively complex mid-tech solution with unknown results be _LESS_ harmful to the economy than spending that money on public transportation infrastructure, increased CAFE standards, and strict environmental retrofits of existing power plants?
Me, I think the whole “Environmentalism hurts the economy” is a bunch of whining from corporations that don’t want to have their investors looking at the profits leaving their own coffers into companies doing the environmental refits.
To block 1% of the solar radiation reaching Earth would require a mirror roughly 1200 km in diameter.
Is there a way to place something(s) that size in orbit in a location that would be all upside–that is, preventing solar gain only in places that no agriculture is happening and that act as cold sinks for the remaining 99%?
It may not be nearly as stupid as it sounds at first glance. My experience trying to convince people in the developing world that they don’t need cars is that nothing sounds as stupid once you’ve made that pitch.
Of course enormous arrays of mirrors are possible. So are sulfate clouds, so are a bunch of other things. But the crucial thing about them from a winger perspective is that they take a lot of time just to study, much less to implement. So really it’s an excuse for not doing any of the obvious sensible things now, like raising fuel-efficiency standards, encouraging non-sprawl development, massively subsidizing energy-efficient development in developing countries, discouraging carbon emissions, blah blah blah — you know, all those ideas that would help mitigate warming if the hypertechnostuff turns out not to work. In short, it’s exactly as credible as George Bush’s support for hydrogen-fueled cars 20 year from now rather than fuel-efficient gasoline and diesel vehicles now.
(The other thing about the technofixes is that they’re pretty much all temporary. You have to keep doing them, and you have to keep doing them on an ever-larger scale as long as you keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The largest volcanic explosion of the past two centuries, for example, depressed world temperatures for all of a year and a half. So if you went the sulfate route you’d need pretty much a Mount Saint Helens a week of sulfate emissions to the upper atmosphere — which, by the way, has never been subjected to such a large longterm sulfate burden. Same thing with the mirrors: light things in low earth orbit tend to stay up for a few months to a few years before they hit the atmosphere and burn up. Oh, and they tend to need serious guidance and stabilization systems to keep them pointing the right way. And you really really don’t any significant number of them pointing the wrong way…)
Why would spending all this money on researching and developing this massively complex mid-tech solution with unknown results be _LESS_ harmful to the economy than spending that money on public transportation infrastructure, increased CAFE standards, and strict environmental retrofits of existing power plants?
It isn’t about harm to the economy; neither mirrors nor your laundry list would necessarily have any negative economic impact. By and large, reasonable “green” measures are fine for the economy, although you really have to watch what incentives are created.
The difference is that the mirrors might eliminate global warming. More metrobuses won’t do much.
The difficulty with gas reduction plans is that the quantities you have to reduce to get even a little tiny bit of relief are massive - and gas reduction, at our current technological state, translates directly into less economic activity, because most everything humans do economically speaking cranks out some gas. Gas reduction strategies that don’t call for China and Africa and India to remain at their current economic levels, or require the US and Europe to become Namibia, will have only the most marginal of effects, and are a problem-of-the-commons on a massive (and totally unpoliceable) scale. It’s just barely possible that western European political leaders might decide to forego quality of life improvements for marginal environmental improvement; it’s pretty inconceivable that people in countries where half the babies die will.
The other thing about the technofixes is that they’re pretty much all temporary. You have to keep doing them, and you have to keep doing them on an ever-larger scale…
We crossed that bridge in the paleolithic.
Well, since polar ice caps, which traditionally reflect sunlight back into space (not sure how much) are melting, we might as well build giant mirrors to compensate. It’s not like we can stop the melting en masse now, but we can try to reduce the amount of warming in the future so no more melting occurs.
I’m particularly concerned about the potential change in weather patterns that may push already struggling regions into outright famine and (more) social strife. Agricultural crises are the last thing they need. We should be concerned about this, if for no other reason, than that impoverished peoples may be the ones who suffer most from unpredictable climate change.
Hey, maybe we could take some really aggressive bees from Africa, and breed them to produce silvered wings to reflect the sunlight back into space. Then we can release them into the wild in South America.
We’ll stop global warming AND we’ll get honey too! Where’s the downside?…
This is even better!…
We can get that crazy Christo guy who likes to cover stuff with fabric.
We send him with a whole bunch of Mylar down to Antarctica and get him to cover the whole continent.
Christo gets to create another “work of art”, and we get saved from global warming and still get to drive our SUV’s!!!
Sounds like a Win-Win, right?…
Paul hits it: “But the crucial thing about them from a winger perspective is that they take a lot of time just to study, much less to implement.”
They also put money in the pockets of well connected folks like Lockheed and BAE. See also ballistic missile defense.
Christo gets to create another “work of art�, and we get saved from global warming and still get to drive our SUV’s!!!
A truly beautiful vision - three Alaska’s worth of plastic covering half the US. Ulch!
On the other hand, floating the dumb things on the ocean might be a little cheaper than going all the way to space. Like, by a factor of 1000. Of course, here it WOULD be an environmental problem - that crap would get everywhere. It would have to be something a lot more durable and maintainable than something built for zero-G.
It occurs to me that a fleet of floating reflective buoys - maybe a network of floating nodes with durable and strong reflective sheeting strung between them. Float it out in some out-of-the-way giant ocean (we have a couple of those, I think). It’s effectiveness would be reduced because of the stupid greenhouse effect, but it would still work.
Anyway, the point isn’t that any of these ideas are immediately feasible, right now. But they’re worth investigating, since they might end up saving our butts. Someone above mentioned the conservative predilection for waiting and seeing - well, there’s good reasons for that, when it comes to our governments. Remember the Great Depression? The government’s response - a decent, humane, and intelligently informed response made by men and women of goodwill and love for their country - turned a disaster into an enormous catastrophe.
We do have to be careful about the things that we do. That means study, and research, and exploring different theories and approaches. There are times when the crisis really is urgent and immediate (”200,000 German troops just marched across our border, sir.”) and you really do have to just jump into action without convening a study group or funding a Congressional subcommittee. When a problem is going to take a long-term approach and solution, however - and the environmental/geological condition of our planet would seem to be a long-term kind of problem - we want to see what we can find out, first. Maybe we DO have to make China be poor and become poor ourselves. Who knows? We don’t know, right now, and so we need to learn more.
Geo-engineering seems likely to be a major component of the new knowledge that we need to acquire, in order to survive here.
I’m particularly concerned about the potential change in weather patterns that may push already struggling regions into outright famine and (more) social strife. Agricultural crises are the last thing they need. We should be concerned about this, if for no other reason, than that impoverished peoples may be the ones who suffer most from unpredictable climate change.
I agree that this is an area which needs research, caution, and (for lack of a better term) moral action.
If we’re all going to toss around hypotheses about solar shielding, let’s at least put them in context. [Small PDF file]
This is a little better researched then “smoke and mirrors,” and the compelling factor seems to be the short time and low costs it would take to implement (especially when held against the logistics of global emissions reduction.) More research is required, but both the science and the implementation ideas seem sound. Certainly, at least, deserving of more than reflexive ungrounded jeering.
Good Heavens! Did someone take Lois McMaster Bujold seriously? (For the uninitiated, Komarr is a mystery and a feminist coming-out-of-a-shell story wrapped up in SF packaging. Komarr is a barely uninhabitable planet which is being terrraformed. There are six solar mirrors which, in this case, are designed to bring more sunlight to the planet — and someone destroyed one of them.)
It’s not a horrible idea, but jeepers creepers, it shouldn’t be the first thing people come up with.
i’d just like to point out the build-up of ice in the center of antarctica is actually a predicted consequence of global warming:
A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean.”
i’m sure that all of the other points can be similarly debunked, but i happened to remember this one because there was something of a controversy about it a few months ago when global warming skeptics tried to use the research as proof that global warming wasn’t happening and were promptly shot down by the people who had done the study.
metacomment noting that I was joking, whether Robert or anyone else takes it seriously or not…
Robert: The difficulty with gas reduction plans is that the quantities you have to reduce to get even a little tiny bit of relief are massive - and gas reduction, at our current technological state, translates directly into less economic activity, because most everything humans do economically speaking cranks out some gas.
Which is I think one of the biggest problems with arguments against source reduction. It assumes that dramatic improvements in efficiency are impossible. In fact, industrial revolutions have been driven by paradigm shifts in energy distribution and production driven by scarcity. There is also the basic assumption that developing nations will necessarily lag 30 years behind the first world in terms of technological solutions to problems, when the development of wireless communications in Africa and Asia suggest otherwise.
Solar energy is currently cheaper than many other solutions on a price/per watt basis when you factor in the costs of building distribution systems. It is quite possible that alternative models to those invented by Edison and Tesla more than a century ago might better fuel economic development.
Makes me think of somebody who puts too much salt on their food and thinks they can fix it by putting sugar on it.
So you’ve met my wife, then.
Robert: When a problem is going to take a long-term approach and solution, however - and the environmental/geological condition of our planet would seem to be a long-term kind of problem - we want to see what we can find out, first.
Well, there are a number of issues with this. First, there is the tricky issue of admitting that a problem exists that needs to be fixed to start with. This is a surprisingly baffling problem coming from conservatives who had taken leadership on environmental and energy conservation issues in the 70s.
Second, many aspects of climate change can be muted and mediated by early intervention, by adoption of measures that are currently reasonably cost-effective. Adoption of such measures can pave the ground in terms of market adoption for future innovations. The U.S. government as a large customer for goods and services can be an economic force for innovation and adoption of efficient technologies, in the same way that it helped to drive aerospace and electronics.
Third, it’s not a given that gains in efficiency will gut economies, especially not when you consider the economic costs of both climate change and probable problems with future fossil energy production. I’ll bet a quarter that the next economic superpowers will be the ones that successfully reduce their fossil fuel dependence over the next 30 years. This is a big gap in how climate change is treated around the world, the U.S. government says, “oh noes, our economy will just roll over and die” while European governments say, “developing these sources are essential for the next century of economic development.”
“See, here’s the deal: I suspect that you haven’t really done that much research into the Global Warming debate.
I’ve done enough to know that I’ve yet to see any convincing EMPIRICAL evidence to prove that Global Warming is caused by humans.
“I think that you just found a list of arguments against it, and reposted it here in hopes of setting us stupid liberals straight.”
Au contaire, mon frere. I reposted it here to see what certain members of the Left and the GroupThink crowd would have to say in response.
To your credit, you asked some good questions and made some cogent points. And you did so point for point, despite my employment of the “Gish Gallop” technique. (That’s sarcasm. Again, I wanted to see what items would be cause for reaction for readers of this blog.)
I’ll tell you one thing, Seraph, this particular rhetorical gambit is specious:
“I don’t know if it has a specific name in Global Warming Denial, but you’ve just given a fine example of it.”
Global Warming Denial?!?! Really?
So I suppose that’s akin to Holocaust Denial, huh? Nice.
“My mind is open, however.
As is mine.
“I need you to convince me, though:”
The feeling is mutual. And I’m gonna need to see more than what’s currently being put forth by the Environmental lobby and the media, of which I am a member.
“Damn, dive-bys are frustrating.”
Critical thinking and reasoned arguments are a bitch, aren’t they?
In all likelihood, I’ll be back to answer your questions and rebut some of your points.
Until then, ciao for now.
Good Heavens! Did someone take Lois McMaster Bujold seriously?
How could one not? [tapping fingers, impatiently waiting for my uterine replicator]
Er, no. A “drive-by” is someone who posts six hours apart and refuses to answer any of the questions put to him/her in the meantime despite repeated claims of his/her “expertise.”
You know, the way you just did.
Mirrors! Of course, Mirrors! The answer to any smoke problem.
Now I’ll keep my mouth shut for professional purposes.
I am not totally convinced about “global warming.”
Well, maybe not. Recent research out of Asia demonstrated that the “Asian Brown Cloud” that forms over India has been responsible for rice harvest dimunition when acting in tandem with the effects of increased temperature.
It breaks down like this:
lots of particulate pollution = reduced sun on plants
rising general temperature = warmer nights
particulate in atmosphere = less rain
Dryer conditions + less sun + warmer nights = LESS RICE.
In other words, don’t be that sending solar radiation back into space is necessarily a good idea. It might cool things down a bit, but plants need the actual photons.
http://www.99xwatch.org/2006/02/on_the_mend_cal.html , confirmation that he ain’t got much better to do with his time than be a drive-by (drive under?) troll.
I’ve done enough to know that I’ve yet to see any convincing EMPIRICAL evidence to prove that Global Warming is caused by humans.
Really?
When you walk into a room you’ve never been before, and you flip a light switch, and the lights come on - how many times do you sit there and flip the switch, searching for “empricial” evidence that it’s actually connected to the lights?
Do you rip open the walls, desperate to find any sort of wiring connecting the switch to the lights, before you’ll accept that it’s the switch that controls the lights?
Or, rather, isn’t it sufficient to you that the lights go on when you flip the switch, and you really only have to do it once to figure it out? The fact of the matter is that the warming trend occurred after a large amount of human-produced greenhouse gases. And we know what these gases do when their concentrations increase in the atmosphere.
We’ve got an indisputably anomalous warming trend. (Contrary to Boortz, the last time we saw warming like this was more than in the Cretaceous. We’ve already more than exceeded the oft-heralded Medieval Warm Period.) And right there in the same room is the smoking gun - anthropogenic carbon emissions, to the tune of 3-4 Mount Pinatubo eruptions per year. It shouldn’t take Columbo to put this together, but everybody’s a creationist about something, I always say.
And I’m gonna need to see more than what’s currently being put forth by the Environmental lobby and the media, of which I am a member.
Well, there’s your problem. You need to head to the primary research on these subjects. The media isn’t in the business of providing evidence; they report stories. But now that we know you’ve never even looked for the evidence, your assertions that you’ve never seen any is quite easily explained. Almost certainly your local university library has subscriptions to many of the preeminent climate science journals. Your time would be much better spent reading them than reading Boortz.
Climate scientists are nearly unanimous on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. You might want to ask yourself why that’s so, and why the deniers of such change can’t seem to marshal anything better than made-up facts and outright falsehoods.
>When you walk into a room you’ve never been before, and you flip a light switch, and the lights come on - how many times do you sit there and flip the switch, searching for “empricial� evidence that it’s actually connected to the lights?
>Do you rip open the walls, desperate to find any sort of wiring connecting the switch to the lights, before you’ll accept that it’s the switch that controls the lights?
Yo Chet. Talk about a massive oversimplification which is hardly analogous.
>Or, rather, isn’t it sufficient to you that the lights go on when you flip the switch, and you really only have to do it once to figure it out? The fact of the matter is that the warming trend occurred after a large amount of human-produced greenhouse gases. And we know what these gases do when their concentrations increase in the atmosphere.
And in the history of the planet, we’ve never seen a similar warming trend? You completely discount cyclical weather patterns which have also been proven by science. The earth has been this warm in the past…warmer…many times.
>We’ve got an indisputably anomalous warming trend.
There’s the thing, Chet; we don’t. It’s NOT indisputable. Your worldview wishes it were so, thus facilitating your arrogant and condecending tone, alas, the evidence is largely anecdotal.
>(Contrary to Boortz, the last time we saw warming like this was more than in the Cretaceous. We’ve already more than exceeded the oft-heralded Medieval Warm Period.)
Two eras in which we kept detailed weather records. Could I see those, Chet?
>And right there in the same room is the smoking gun - anthropogenic carbon emissions, to the tune of 3-4 Mount Pinatubo eruptions per year.
I’ve not seen the linkage between carbon emissions and the eruptions. Feel free to illuminate me.
>It shouldn’t take Columbo to put this together, but everybody’s a creationist about something, I always say.
Again with the arrogance.
>And I’m gonna need to see more than what’s currently being put forth by the Environmental lobby and the media, of which I am a member.
>Well, there’s your problem. You need to head to the primary research on these subjects. The media isn’t in the business of providing evidence; they report stories.
And therein lies the problem.
>But now that we know you’ve never even looked for the evidence, your assertions that you’ve never seen any is quite easily explained.
And the third time now with your arrogant assumptions.
>Almost certainly your local university library has subscriptions to many of the preeminent climate science journals. Your time would be much better spent reading them than reading Boortz.
Duly noted. But I do LISTEN to climatologists. See below.
>Climate scientists are nearly unanimous on the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
I take issue with that notion.
In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12,
http://podserv.jamesspann.com/wb041706.mp3
featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17,
http://podserv.jamesspann.com/wb052206.mp3
featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science.
On the meteorological front:
http://www.jamesspann.com/wordpress/?p=650
“I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them.”
Granted, climate scientists and meteorologists are two different beasts.
>You might want to ask yourself why that’s so, and why the deniers of such change can’t seem to marshal anything better than made-up facts and outright falsehoods.
And on the flip side, Chet, you might want to ask YOURself why people on your side of the argument seek to punish those who don’t think like them.
To wit:
http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html
“If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn’t agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns. It’s like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It’s not a political statement…it’s just an incorrect statement.”
Cullen wants the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the group that certifies TV weathermen, to decertify any weatherman who dares to question the “fact” that man is causing catastrophic global climate change.
Those of you on the left and in the media can hem and haw all you want about how Bush and the evil Republicans are “suppressing, diluting and interfering with scientific assertions about global warming, all elements of a campaign to muddy the causes of the environmental conundrum,” but I got news for ya, Chet:
It’s six of one and half dozen on the other.
There’s so much obfuscation I don’t know who or what to believe.
Well, the debate is pretty much over, and CC’s opinions aside, people who actually study this stuff day in and day out believe it is happening. This is like the right wing argument that Dubya knows best because he sees stuff we don’t. Applies here too. I don’t study climatology all day and I doubt if the people who throw out all those talking points about how this isn’t happening do either.
So since the question is no longer ‘Is it happening?” It now has to be ‘What do we do about it?’ Unfortunately this is a fairly recently discovered problem so ideas for solving or mitigating it are still in the early ‘let’s throw some ideas up’ stage, so they aren’t all going to be practical or well thought out.
Besides, there may not be anything we CAN do at this point that will keep the shiat from hitting the fan in a major way. Unfortunately.
Robert probably watched The Day After Tomorrow where the oceans got de-salinated, and thought, “Yannow, all we gotta do is dump all the table salt into the oceans and everything’ll be fine.”
:::Blinks:::
You mean Boortz wasn’t writing satire? The minute I saw the crack about Mars, I figured that’s what it was.
Oh, crap. Well then. It’s settled. We can all buy Hummers (the car, that is) and use all the oil we want to. In fact, to celebrate, I will breed a cow that farts more than usual just to mock the group-think enslaved leftists here.
My giant mylar mirror and I mock you all! We do! We WILL save the world and ONE DAY YOU WILL THANK US!
And in the history of the planet, we’ve never seen a similar warming trend?
You mean, a trend this steep and intense? No, we’ve never seen it. It’s something new. But we have seen more gradual warming periods in the distant past, always associated with a leading rise in CO2 levels. (As well as associated with an increase in extinctions.)
There’s the thing, Chet; we don’t. It’s NOT indisputable.
It’s indisputable according to the evidence. According to those driven by ideology rather than reality, of course, I guess they can dispute whatever they want.
Could I see those, Chet?
Again, if you want to see the paleoclimate record, you’re going to need to go to a library and look at the primary research - not fart around on a feminism blog. The evidence, after all, is in the peer-reviewed research.
Duly noted. But I do LISTEN to climatologists.
Great, but again, climatology podcasts aren’t primary research. You need to go to the primary sources. Why aren’t you?
Because it’s a hell of a lot easier to assert that “you’ve never seen any evidence” when you’ve never looked for any evidence. And I imagine if you turned to the primary research you would rapidly find yourself in the embarrassing position of having to admit you’ve taken a dogmatic position on an issue you don’t know anything about, and can’t comprehend the primary research in the field.
And the third time now with your arrogant assumptions.
Arrogant assumptions? No no, conclusions from your own statements - which you just now confirmed.
I take issue with that notion.
That’s fantastic. Find me a peer-reviewed primary research article from a legitimate climate journal that rejects anthropogenic climate change. Podcasts are not primary research; and your local affiliate’s meteorologist is not a climate scientist.
And on the flip side, Chet, you might want to ask YOURself why people on your side of the argument seek to punish those who don’t think like them.
I don’t see “punishment.” I see a certification board recognizing that accepting certain realities, rather than allowing dogma to dictate belief, is necessary to to be certified in a scientific field. I wouldn’t certify a cartographer who held that the world is flat; I wouldn’t certify a biologist who was a creationist; and I wouldn’t certify a meteorologist who denied the obvious, consensus-accepted fact of anthropogenic climate change.
I mean, hey. I guess in your world, if a neurology student held to ancient Egyptian belief that the heart, and not the brain, was the seat of consciousness and memory, he should just go ahead and be able to receive his medical license anyway. I mean, otherwise we’d be punishing him for his beliefs, right?
There’s so much obfuscation I don’t know who or what to believe.
Then go to the primary research. That you refuse to do so tells me that, contrary to your statement, you know exactly what you want to believe.
I supposed I’m late to the party, but…the “giant space mirror” plan has a few glaring flaws that would need to be resolved before I would be willing to do more than laugh at it.
1. Charge accumulation. Any object in orbit, especially one composed largely of mylar, will accumulate an enormous electric potential. If not dissipated, this charge will interfere with onboard electronics, such as attitude control systems, and on a large structure like, oh, a giant space mirror, may arc from one section of the craft to another. (You will have similar charge problems on other proposed plans, like dust and balloons. It will result in clumping.)
2. Attitude Control. The incident solar radiation will create a force on the mirrors, tending to move them from their required orbits, or, worse, if unevenly distributed (as when the mirror is passing the terminator), create a moment, applying torsional forces to the support structure. Solar induced moments are a problem that grows increasingly worse as the size of the structure in question increases. There will also be drag from the atmosphere, even at relatively high orbits, given the size of the structures required.
3. Terminator Crossing. As I mentioned briefly above, crossing the terminator will cause unevenly distributed solar pressure on a large structure, stressing the supports and leading to a decreased fatigue life (cyclic fatigue is the worst.) It will also tend to induce an electric current, which, combined with the charge accumulation, will be even worse for the electronics. To establish an orbit that avoids crossing the terminator requires constant thrust, a distinctly non-trivial problem for a large structure.
4. Deployment. Unless deployed below the Space Shuttle ceiling of 500km, the mirrors would have to be robotically deployed. If deployed at an altitude allowing human oversight, the problems in all three points above will be intensified, especially atmospheric drag.
5. Collisions. Earth orbit is filled with crud, much of it manmade. A large structure will be bombarded with bolts and paint chips and whatnot, and also stands the strong possibility of crossing the orbits of existing satellites, dead or alive.
These are just the objections that immediately spring to my mind over my first cup of tea on a weekend morning. I’m sure there are more. Megastructures are not a trivial problem in any environment, and Earth orbit presents special challenges of its own.
(Oh, incidentally: I am an actual rocket scientist.)
we at the Lentil Advisory Board find the recent increase in derogatory comments regarding our product disheartening.
Well, Chris, you must not be aware of the most recent umpiratical evidunce that global warming is all the fault of vegans eating lentil loaf?
’tis true! Eating lentil loaf, or three bean chili with seitan, or miso muffins without milk or egg makes you fart big lots! CH4 is a powerful climate forcing agent (greenhouse gas). Therefore, recent elevations in temperatures are both anthropogenic AND the result of vegan farting QED. Lentil loaf is among the most potent sources (particularly when your kids feed it to the dog under the table).
Christopher, if you want a concise compilation of the climate science behind this, I suggest you get ahold of a copy of the report released today and read it through. It is written for policymakers and should be understandable to any fairly educated lay person (if my IPCC friends shit me not) and pulls together information on climate trends, basic reasearch in climate science, measurements, and everything but the kitchen sink (unless you count the swirling of water down a drain as a coriolic model).
They have the latest up onthe IPCC WGI site. If the download is hammered right now, there is a lot there to read anyway. Keep in mind that the latest report released yesterday is only IPCC #4 for Working Group I - there are three other working groups yet to report (with Working Group II being of most interest to me).
Linky: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/
kadath:
Lagrange points, L1, like SOHO. That’s what I assumed right away. It would put them far beyond what could be reached by the Shuttle or anything like it, of course, but it would pretty much eliminate friction problems, and, while things are rather *ahem* dynamically interesting right around there, I think the tidal effects would tend to stretch them perpendicular to the Sun’s rays, rather than pointing at the Earth, like a closer conventional orbit would. The main reason, of course, is that then you only need about 1E12 m^2 total, instead of enough orbiting mirror to always have 1E12 m^2 between the Earth and the Sun, about twice as much at bare minimum.Now, pardon me while I get out a severe tin foil hat, and more literally than usual. It occurs to me that this mirror blocking 1% of the Earth’s insolation would be intercepting about 1.74E15 W. My first thought was, it would be nice if some of that could be converted to usable energy in some form, although if it’s used here on Earth, you have to add it back into the Earth’s energy budget, so you still need a surplus “useless” 1% to get the desired cooling effect. But it then occurred to me that, especially if it was lots of smaller, relatively maneuverable mirrors, another way to look at it would be as an array of mirrors that could focus the equivalent of 400 KT TNT per second on a designated area. Now 400 KT is pretty small change as thermonuclear weapons go, but you don’t usually clobber a target with one of those every second. Also, the effects would be significantly different from any kind of bomb, in that (according to some quick intuition, at least) there would be little or no blast damage, but lots of thermal damage, i.e. things burn and melt, like when you focus the Sun with a magnifying glass.
Now, can you think of anyone related to this proposal who might be interested in such a device? Star Wars, indeed.
Oh, it should go without saying, but of course, there would also be no ionizing radiation damage (the X-rays, gamma rays, neutrons that cause radiation damage, as opposed to e.g. light or microwave radiation), and no dangerous fallout—maybe a little ash in the atmosphere, to help keep things cool. You could move troops in as soon as it cools off, about which I’m making no estimates. (Yet.)
Yes, the weapon aspects of the idea are quite interesting. “OK, you don’t want to stop your nuclear program. That’s your prerogative. Oh, and welcome to eternal night/the frying plains of hell.”
Kadath’s objections are astute. These are problems that would have to be overcome. I think some of the problems would be solved or ameliorated by a fleet of small mirrors, rather than one enormous one.
OK, I left one thing out of my “doomsday weapon” scenario that lets me breathe a sigh of relief now. Unless they could focus the mirrors very precisely, far better than the Hubble mirror was supposed to be, the beam from the mirrors would spread out half a degree, since that’s the approximate angular size of the Sun from here (and L1). From L1’s distance, that would spread the beam out to about the size of the Earth, so it’d be pretty useless as a weapon from there. Might still be doable if they were in a lower orbit, though, let’s say 500km…. That could be focused on about a 4 km area, and you’d be limited to those mirrors that were above the target’s horizon. So probably not too dangerous. I’ll take off the tin foil now.
John Owens, too bad. You really had Robert excited about the weapons uses for a while…
I don’t see how we could ever have enough weapons.
John Owens:
L1 positioning would answer some, but not all, of my objections. Lagrange points, especially the stable ones, collect space crud as well, and charge accumulation and solar pressure will still be issues.
As for the weaponization of sunlight, you realized one of the problems right away. The other is aiming. My senior thesis involved a similar calculation for delivery of an aerocapsule (similar to the Genesis and Stardust missions), and required positioning accuracy beyond the capacity of available thrusters. This was for a spacecraft on the order of 100kg. The problem is greatly magnified for a megastructure.
Since we’re thinking big, a peaceful use of spaceborne mirrors could be power generation. We might as well fly solar panels, or semiconductors to make use of the Seebeck effect (as in RTGs). The trouble is getting the power back to the planet. Hmm. Let’s build a space station on the back side of the mirrors! There’s some real science that could be done there that isn’t getting done on the ISS.
Robert:
Formation flying is by no means a solved problem. LEO satellite constellations are one of the areas NASA is working on right now, but for formations of fewer than 10 spacecraft. A large enough fleet of mirrors is a megastructure in itself.
This is not to say that any of my objections are insoluble, but I question whether the research required solve them in the near term is the best use of our money, time, and expertise (despite the fact it would keep me happily employed.)
Of course, anyone who’s ever seen Futurama knows about the Magic Space Mirror and its likely outcome. I didn’t know Shrub was channeling Prof. Wernsterm’s thoughts. (This clip is about seven minutes long, so be patient).
Kadath:
We r in ur L1 spotz
Messing with ur insolation
No, someone took John Barnes’ Mother Of Storms seriously. (In Mother Of Storms, runaway global warming from the release of methane previously locked in ocean-bottom arctic ice causes a never-ending hurricane season, and a giant mirror of mylar balloons is Earth’s Plan B for emergency temperature reversal. Plan A involves breaking up asteroids and comets in the upper atmosphere to create light-blocking atmospheric dust.)
It’s actually a very good book, IMHO, but it could have done with less sex and violence and a slightly less literal deus ex machina.
And personally, I think the idea of putting objects in space big enough to cover 1% of the Earth’s surface *is* pretty risible. Do you have *any idea* how huge that is?
Let’s do a back-of-the-envelope guess, shall we?
The Earth is about 6,400 km in radius. A circle that size would be about 1.3 x 10^14 m2.
1% of this would be about 1.3x10^12 m2 - a circle about 640 km in radius (duh!).
Let’s say that this material is an average of 0.1 mm thick (the Echo satellites were 0.13 mm thick mylar) - that’s around 1.3x10^8 m3 of material. At roughly 1400 kg/m3, that’s 1.9*10^11 kg of material or 190,000,000 metric tonnes of material.
The Space Shuttle’s payload to LEO is around 24 metric tonnes. Doesn’t look likely it could be done this way.
However, there’s roughly 1000 near-Earth asteroids currently known, with the largest 1036 Ganymede being 3.3 x 10^16 kg. There’s an estimate of around 2000 NEAs larger than 1 km in diameter, which would translate to roughly 1*10^12 kg of material, assume it was rock/iron in composition.
So now we’re looking at the right magnitude of sources.
Suggested reading - John Barnes _Mother of Storms_.
I was thinking more of the “soletta” in Stan Robinson’s Green Mars, the second book of his incredibly long Mars trilogy; it’s a good read, but you feel that you’ve lived all 200 years of the characters’ extended lives by the time you finish.
I understand that this is one of Robinson’s bits of science that just don’t work — in the case of Mars the mirrors are used to focus the sun’s light and increase warming, not decrease it. Furthermore, Robinson’s Mars becomes the Marty Sue of planetary societies.
Here’s a question that one should ask conservatives about GW. If global warming isn’t real (a big “if”), does it really matter? I say this because the means for curtailing global warming (increased emmission standards) also cutrail other pollution-related problems, including O-zone depletion and poisoning the air. Now, surely you conservatives don’t actually APPROVE of increased rates of skin cancer (an after-effect of O-zone depletion), do you? Although, if you did, this wouldn’t be the first time. I predict Chris will do one of 3 things now.
1. He will ignore this post entirely.
2. He will refuse to answer the question.
3. He will give the response he thinks people want to hear, and then continue to whine about GW, missing the point entirely.
Place your bets.
[…] space mirrors, the next Star Wars Sheelzebub at Pandagon strikes again, this time with Climate Change a Go-Go. (Maybe I should just dedicate this blog to riffing on Sheelzebub’s posts.) […]
Wouldn’t the weapon utility of a mirror at L1 be limited by the fact that the Earth would always be in the mirror’s shadow?
Chet:
>Then go to the primary research.
I shall.
>That you refuse to do so tells me that,
I don’t.
>contrary to your statement, you know exactly what you want to believe.
No, actually, I don’t. Which is why I came to bat it around on this “feminist” blog, as you characterize it.
I appreciate most of your cogent arguments. You’ve certainly given me some things to educate myself about and ruminate on.
Ms. Kate:
I can’t even begin to take you seriously.
Finally, Zython, is it?
Tell your bookie to pay off the folks who bet on number two (2), on the grounds I refuse to dignify such a silly-ass question with a response.
On a personal note, thanks for reminding me why I’m a “recovering” liberal; I get so sick of assumptive, pigeon-holing language such as “you conservatives.” Admittedly, yeah, I’m a neo-con, but I’m one that voted TWICE for Clinton, and for Gore in 2000. And while I voted for Bush in ‘04, I’m not his biggest fan. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Vote for Kerry? Uh, no. I’m a pro-choice, pro-drug, pro-gay neo-conservative. God forbid I don’t tow the party line on global warming.
Liberals preach all sorts of tolerance, unless it comes to daring to question certain viewpoints, then look out! Here comes the vitriol.
Thanks again for setting me straight.
I say it’s been a pleasure, but not really.
Tell your bookie to pay off the folks who bet on number two (2), on the grounds I refuse to dignify such a silly-ass question with a response.
What, pray-tell, makes my question so “silly-assed’ as you so eqoquently put it? Or is that also a “silly-assed” question? All I’m doing is pointing out that reducing emmissions is a package deal, and that griping about global warming in no way defames the other parts of the deal.
Liberals preach all sorts of tolerance, unless it comes to daring to question certain viewpoints, then look out! Here comes the vitriol.
There’s a BIG difference between tolerance towards people’s race/religion/sexuality, and “tolerance” of viewpoints.
Christopher Calandro - “Ms. Kate: I can’t even begin to take you seriously.”
Chris, you’ve been mildly amusing (very mildly), but with that you just shit in the punchbowl…
Ms Kate has a background that many people would kill for, including MIT, and has recently recieved her doctorate.
Before you waltz onto somebody’s blog and start bashing the regulars, especially a well respected woman on a feminist blog, maybe you should: know something about the topic, who the regulars are and their backgrounds, and the blog itself…
If we’re using mirrors to reduce global insolation, and we’re controllling which areas are shaded, we can starve tropical storms of energy, preventing them from turning into hurricanes and/or steering them away from land. I think that would be pretty swell.
Thanks, Mike Ess. I appreciate that.
I hold a S.B. from MIT in engineering and recently earned an ScD in epidemiology. I specialize in air pollution and public health.
If mr. unemployed radio station phone answerer can’t take me seriously, well, like I care. If he just decides that the UN has it so out for the US that it would selectively recruit thousands of scientists from hundreds of disciplines and countries to do it’s evil bidding - or that it really COULD do that - well, he’s welcome to his delusions. From what I’ve seen of the IPCC process, which is global in scope and wide ranging in it’s synthesis of knowledge and published scientific information, such an ideological coup would really have to involve a deity capable of brainwashing fiat beyond the devine miracle of Jesus Herding the Cats.
Just ask PZ how he would handle a UN mandate to tell him what to think and say, for the sole purpose of embarassing a paranoid nation state. Or ask the Bush Administration, which has been trying very hard to push scientists around on multiple issues for the last eight years, according to my buddy Kevin at UCS (http://www.ucsusa.org).
I think that if there really were a conspiracy of scientists trying to shape public policy behind the scenes for shadowy purposes they are not willing to disclose publicly, that might be kind of cool. God knows there are plenty of other folks who behave that way, who have way more social power than scientists tend to, and way less smarts.
The idea that on the contrary it would be scientists who are being manipulated by someone else is silly, unless we account for the kind of manipulation that happens to all of us in a class society, which is quite universal. It’s perfectly clear on the face of it that any manipulation of public pronouncements to fit a preconceived and generally cynical framework rather than the facts is on the other side of the question.
I was in junior high school when there was indeed that wave of theories being bruited about, in the mid-1970s, that there was a general cooling trend and that we might suddenly pitch into a new Ice Age, with catastrophic results for all of us. It was being kicked around in popular science magazines and science fiction magazine science columns, which, along with some library books, is where I read them.
Actually a number of these theories relied on a precursor period of global warming, to trigger glaciation by increasing snowfall (AKA “winter precipitation”) in the North.
On a geological timescale, we are indeed about due for another wave of glaciation. In, oh, another thousand years or so. A geology professor in the mid-1990s, at a Cal State University, dismissed the various exotic theories of the glacial cycle I had picked up as a kid, on the grounds that a strictly astronomical cycle involving wobbling of the Earth’s rotational axis matched the 100,000 year cycle exactly and a reasonable mechanism for the advance and retreat of the ice caps could be deduced straightforwardly from that. But in that cycle, the approximately 10,000 years of interglacial warmth that has prevailed like the ticks of a clock amidst the more normal 90,000 year endurance of the big glaciers is indeed almost up, having run I think over 8000 years already since the ice last retreated.
None of this means that a timely injection of greenhouse gases would therefore be a boon to human civilization. For one thing, it isn’t quite the right time yet, and for another we just don’t know what the effect of the really large increases of greenhouse gases we have dumped into the atmosphere already would be, not to mention that there are reserves of such gases that could easily be triggered into being suddenly released on an even larger scale by moderate warming. These gases include water itself, and huge deposits of methane that are held in metastable formations on the continental shelves. If we could figure out how to safely mine these deposits (and didn’t worry about the greenhouse gases burning them would release) they’d dwarf the value of our oil reserves, but the thing is they are held in chemically unstable bonds, much as carbon dioxide is barely dissolved in an unopened carbonated soda, and subject to sudden avalanches of release, just as a soda can can “explode” and squirt foam all over the room. Except that this would be huge bubbles of methane. Probably enough, I gather, to suffocate all life over huge, continent-sized, reaches of territory when first released.
So messing around with them would be very tricky indeed. And one thing that can trigger their release is rising sea temperatures.
I have to agree with the reactionaries that fooling around with mirrors in space might indeed work out as more cost-effective than more down-to-earth methods. But it is very Faustian, isn’t it? As with nuclear power, you have to go beyond mere questions of accident and ask what might be done with this technology in hostile hands. Since we have yet to form any kind of Terran Federal Government that is accountable to all the people of Earth (and for that matter have a questionable grip on our 230 year old US Federal Government), we have to presume that this technology would be in the hands of various political factions, and that’s quite aside from the possibilty that some bad actors or other might steal control of some mirrors.
So, if you can radiate away 1 percent of the sunlight that would otherwise fall on Earth, you can also concentrate some or all of that light on a single point.
BTW–it wouldn’t be easier to reflect the light away from space, it would be harder. You’d have to put up a greater percentage of mirror area, since not every location in space is going to stay equally convenient for intercepting that light all the time. Perhaps if you set up shop at the Earth-Sun L1 point, which is the place between the Earth and the Sun where the Earth’s gravitational force plus the outward centrifugal force of an object keeping pace with Earth inside our orbit exactly balances the pull of the Sun, that would be most efficient. But since that point is going to be millions of miles Sunward from Earth you can see that the shadow of any object there would tend to spread considerably, which is to say that to achieve a given shadow density at Earth you need to spread mirrors over a bigger area than if you could just magically suspend them directly over the Earth. But in any other orbit, even one much closer to Earth, most of your mirrors are going to be out of commission until the brief period where they transit the Sun as seen from Earth. Note that only mirrors that are actually shadowing Earth can shade it, but any mirror in the general vicinity of the planet that is not actually in eclipse behind Earth (or Moon, with large enough orbits) can shine extra light on any point on its side of our planet. Thus, we had better put them at Earth-Sol L1 to minimize risk.
This is a big project. It may or may not be worthwhile, but there is no reason to dismiss other efforts for this Mylar pie in the sky.
MsKate, when I read what that idiot said about you I was genuinely outraged.
I couldn’t just let my blog-sister be insulted (in a stupid and personal way) and let it go uncommented on…
We Pandagonians have to stick together…
And oh my gawsh, perhaps part of the interest in cutting down on fossil fuel consumption is about more different problems than just global warming. After all, we have skyrocketing rates of urban respiratory tract diseases, an energy economy that may or may not crash in 50 years, and a wide number of social and health problems that appear to be linked to the development of suburban American car culture.
Problem I see is that Giant Space Mirrors are more realistic than anyone cutting down their gasoline use anytime soon. Many places need AC to remain livable and our cities are spread out to a level where automobiles are the only option.
One Science Fiction solution I haven’t seen mentioned yet is an ocean of binary algae which controls the Earth’s surface reflectivity via AI-controlled space station. Of course, as the algae eventually become a sort of super-AI itself, the problems may be apparent here. (This was the setup in the online game associated with the film ‘AI’; any problems in the science blame Sean Stewart, not me.)
Christopher Calandro- Get a copy of the report on Global Warming released on February 2nd and read it… but I’m guessing you’ll just deny it and claim it’s a conspiracy by American-hating communists? A guy like you doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.
Well. It seems that the “mirror in space” issue is more complex than I originally thought. I cede the field to those more knowledgeable.
Christopher Calandro - You have answered none of my questions and rebutted none of my points, and everyone reading this thread knows it. Your attempts to hide that fact by blustering and changing the subject will not work. *That* is why the techniques you’re attempting to use work much better in live debate than online.
On the off-chance that you’re serious about this, I urge you to do so. Ranting at us about how arrogant and close-minded we are convinces no one.
No, actually, I don’t. Which is why I came to bat it around on this “feminist� blog, as you characterize it.
Makes perfect sense to me! I guess I’ll see you down at your tax accountant’s office, picking his brain for advice on heart surgery.
Liberals preach all sorts of tolerance, unless it comes to daring to question certain viewpoints, then look out! Here comes the vitriol.
Oh, silly me. I should have realized you were the very height of civility yourself when your very first post was nothing more than a cut and paste from conservative rudeboi and mental midget Neil Boortz. You poor dear, to be greeted by such opprobrium!
On a personal note, thanks for reminding me why I’m a “recovering� liberal; I get so sick of assumptive, pigeon-holing language such as “you conservatives.� Admittedly, yeah, I’m a neo-con
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that completely accurate descriptions of your political affiliation constituted “pigeon-holing.”
And while I voted for Bush in ‘04, I’m not his biggest fan. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Vote for Kerry? Uh, no. I’m a pro-choice, pro-drug, pro-gay neo-conservative. God forbid I don’t tow the party line on global warming.
No one’s asking you to toe a line. You’re simply being asked to draw conclusions from evidence, not from Baldy Boortz’s misinformation. (But perhaps that’s a bit much to ask from someone who thought Bush, of all people, was the pro-gay, pro-choice candidate.)
re “There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting..”-
Will assume this was the kitchen sink- and had to be thrown in, for form…
the TRULY WORRISOME part is the MIRRORS. If you shine sunlight back at the sun, won’t it get too hot? Do we end up with a white dwarf, maybe?.. or a black hole?.. or a white dwarf in a black hole?.. or an unmanageable spate of solar flares? (Some social scientists believe that solar flares are a way for the sun to ask for help from… somewhere in the universe- and That’s why you hear them on the radio.)
BTW I am down with pigeon-holing… ^..^
The Guardian newspaper ran a series of Steve Bell cartoons starting on Monday 29th January commenting about technofixes like Mirrors in Space. The last two in series, on Wednesday 31st and Thursday 1st February I found hilarious. Better hurry, however, I think the cartoons are kept up on the site for only a week or so?
If you shine sunlight back at the sun, won’t it get too hot?
Not any more than pissing into the ocean makes the water level higher. Maybe you don’t quite understand how large the sun is yet…
Some social scientists believe that solar flares are a way for the sun to ask for help from… somewhere in the universe
Which ones?
Gads…
Folks, thanks for ripping CC a new one for me. I was too busy to do the research necessary. It amazes me how many people are so full of themselves that they don’t realize that “regurgitation of ignorant contrarian whining” is *not* the same thing as “thinking”. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that folks who do that sort of thing, when called on their gross ignorance and lack of critical thought, cry “help, help, I’m being repressed!”
Robert, you goombah, you’re as wrong about global warming’s solution as you are about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We can make the economy grow by pushing solutions to global warming. What will be lost are massive oil, natural gas, and coal profits. We will gain those back by spending on solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, tidal (and other) methods of energy production, by increasing efficiencies, and by brilliant solutions to old problems that we haven’t even thought about yet, because they’re not financially feasible because oil, coal, and natural gas are so dollar-cheap. As for China and India, saying “Because Kyoto isn’t affecting China and India, it shouldn’t affect the US” is ridiculous. “There are other people who steal, so why shouldn’t we steal?” isn’t a sound moral argument. If the US cleans up its act now, it will have lots of new technologies to sell to China and India to clean up theirs.
(Er, that is to say, not that anyone did it for *me*… but I did have a feeling that it was something that needed to be done. )
Chet (& herbert browne):
Personally, I was leaning towards herbert browne’s use of sarcasm there. But it’s hard to be sure about such things; I’ve read some of the stuff the electric universe, iron Sun people put out there. I want those hours back.