Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Earth Government

Scientists Boost an Idea Long Thought Outlandish: Reflecting the Sun's Rays (msn.com) 119

"The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the U.S. government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology," reports the New York Times: That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun's energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be.

"Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing," said Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and head of the committee that produced the report, referring to the need to emit less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Still, he said, technology to reflect sunlight "deserves substantial funding, and it should be researched as rapidly and effectively as possible." The report acknowledged the risks that have made geoengineering one of the most contentious issues in climate policy. Those risks include upsetting regional weather patterns in potentially devastating ways, for example by changing the behavior of the monsoon in South Asia; relaxing public pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and even creating an "unacceptable risk of catastrophically rapid warming" if governments started reflecting sunlight for a period of time, and then later stopped.

But the authors argue that greenhouse gas emissions are not falling quickly enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, which means the world must begin to examine other options. Evidence for or against solar geoengineering, they found, "could have profound value" in guiding decisions about whether to deploy it.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Scientists Boost an Idea Long Thought Outlandish: Reflecting the Sun's Rays

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward
    You don't fix something you fucked up by fucking it up more.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > You don't fix something you fucked up by fucking it up more.

      Like detonating a bomb over a oil well fire?

      • Re:Horrible idea (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @12:50PM (#61209118) Homepage Journal

        Except this is way, way, way more complicated. For example, atmospheric CO2 warms the troposphere but *cools* stratosphere. This will cool both, so it's not exactly like turning back the clock on climate change, instead it sends us in a different but equally new direction.

        Rising CO2 and temperatures are disrupting local ecosystems; this solution keeps the rising CO2 but replaces the rising temperatures with reduced sunlight. Again, this doesn't eliminate ecological stress, it changes its character.

        • It's also literal pollution.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

          For example, atmospheric CO2 warms the troposphere but *cools* stratosphere.

          It's nice of you to try and educate him, but warming alarmists can't get past the part where a heat lamp warms up the inside of a glass jar.

        • by shanen ( 462549 )

          Does that deserve to be the first "Insightful" comment? Mayhaps.

          I'd actually been thinking about this in an even more complicated form. Orbital mirrors that can be rotated to block sunlight or direct it to certain places. Imagine each of them as a large wire loop stretching a reflective film with gyroscopes to spin it to any orientation.

          Then we get the programming bug that fries Greenland like an ant. "Slipped a decimal point on that one."

          • by hey! ( 33014 )

            I don't know about "insightful". "Stating the obvious" would be closer to the mark.

        • by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @02:47PM (#61209572) Journal
          It presumably will also prevent or reduce photosynthesis which will prevent one of the mechanisms that reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from working properly. If we want to try geo-engineering then we should find ways to trap and remove CO2.

          Even then I am not sure we have a solid enough track record with deliberate ecological interventions to try something like this on the planetary scale when the intended side effects may be worse than the problem we are trying to fix.
          • Not if you reflect the solar radiation reflection using the human constructions (buildings, roads, parking lots, etc.) Trees will continue to receive the same amount of energy they need for photosynthesis. A very simple calculation model shows it is possible, and simple, and cheap. https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
            • Sadly the paper you linked to is a perfect example of why geoengineering is dangerous. The paper suggests that other than buildings, we should cover "deserted areas or lakes and ocean.". About 50-85% of the Earth's oxygen comes from phytoplankton [earthsky.org] which photosynthesize in the top layers of the ocean.

              As I said our track record of deliberate ecological intervention is not a good one because ecological systems are incredibly complex which often results in unintended side effects that nobody thought of. The p
        • MIT looked at this [mit.edu]. It would affect weather on a large scale.

          I better like the idea of radiative cooling [physicsworld.com]. It's not a complete solution but would clearly help, especially in cities. This could be added to the building code.

    • If we're as fucked by climate change as some seem to think, then any technological solution is probably worth a try.

      We need some sort of technological solution, as you're not going to convince the world to outright ban cars/planes and meat-eating and more. And breaking the taboo around discussion of world population is almost as unlikely.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Re:Horrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @01:18PM (#61209204)

          Standards of living are raising total consumption far faster than that can compensate.

          • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

            > Standards of living are raising total consumption

            Don't worry, the deficits caused by COVID spending will take care of that. (I wish that was sarcasm, but debt repayment either through increased taxes or inflation will drop middle class consumption.)

          • Oh noes, standards of living are going up almost everywhere! The horror.

            It will eventually be self limiting, but probably not any time soon. I doubt climate will be the limiter.
          • Standards of living are raising total consumption far faster than that can compensate.
            Actually, nope.
            Most energy is used by industry and in cold reagins for housing.
            And there is in China not much to change regarding standard of living.

            India has more problems in that regard.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Like putting a cast on your broken leg?

    • Condoms are not a substitute for abstinence.

    • ^^ This. But some humans, particularly the scientists in this article, are really fucking stupid.

    • Snow piercer is now a TV series isn't it?

    • by tragedy ( 27079 )

      It does seem like this is a very bad idea. As it is the world has already been dimming as a result of the same problems leading to global warming. The problem is, we need the sunlight. We need it to grow crops. Increasingly we need it for solar power. We also need it to keep the water cycle going. If we reduce sunlight in order to reduce global warming, that's just going to lead to desertification.

  • We should verify that the results of AGW will actually be worse than the results of darkening the sun before we try that. Science says AGW largely won't be that bad.

    • Science says AGW largely won't be that bad.

      It’s all relative. Sure, not bad compared to the global war that breaks out over the changing water accessibility and what crops can be grown where that will drive hundreds of millions of climate refugees. Like Carlin said: “The earth will be just fine, we’re fucked.”

      • the global war that breaks out over the changing water accessibility and what crops can be grown where that will drive hundreds of millions of climate refugees

        Yeah this is what I'm talking about. This idea is hyped but not well supported by science.

        • Large scale climate change destroys nations, and drives refugees into other areas. Large parts of the southern USA will become desert, and large parts of northern Canada will become usable farmland and forest. The USA will lose the ability to grow sufficient food (have to import it), and Americans will suggest diverting Canadian rivers to the southern USA so they can grow rice in the desert.
          • Large parts of the southern USA will become desert, and large parts of northern Canada will become usable farmland and forest.

            This is hypothesis, but some scientists will agree.

            Americans will suggest diverting Canadian rivers to the southern USA so they can grow rice in the desert.

            Your idea here is speculation (not science), but I'm really interested in the engineering idea you have to dig a river that flows from Canada to New Mexico. Which river are you talking about exactly, and how will you route it through the rocky mountains?

            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              Your idea here is speculation (not science), but I'm really interested in the engineering idea you have to dig a river that flows from Canada to New Mexico. Which river are you talking about exactly, and how will you route it through the rocky mountains? I have to admit, I'm interested in how that could be engineered as well, just from an engineering point of view. There seem to be two possible ways you could do it. One way is just to tunnel right under any mountains in the way and run the river through the

              • This seems like it would require a massive amount of power, and it would, however, it is important to remember that you can recover most of that power from the water running down the pipeline on the other side of the mountain. Looking at pumped hydro storage, they get better than 80% end to end efficiency, so it is entirely feasible to pump the river over the mountain using less than 20% of the required power from other sources such as solar and wind.

                Interesting point

                • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                  In general in smaller systems you can always get water from a higher hydraulic head to a lower one, even if you have to go uphill, but the pressure limit on how high you can siphon water is kind of a showstopper. Using electrical power generated as the water drops on the other end to power pumps is just one method though. While there are absolute limits (under standard Earth gravity anyway) to how high you can lift water with negative pressure, you can push it to basically any height with positive pressure

                  • For that you would need a functional government and a population that wants one.
                    But /. is full with posts from Americans who do not want a real government, claiming it is against the constitution, and we want to keep it like that.

                    Good luck to run a project - that is not a military one - that spans more than four presidential terms ...

                    • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                      Well, the context of the discussion is basically an apocalyptic situation and a war with Canada. I was really only considering the engineering, but I think we can probably safely assume some sort of military dictatorship, or at least an unusually empowered military in that situation. Not great for things like basic human rights, but maybe a situation where giant infrastructure projects can get done.

                      I would really like to believe that democracy and functional government are not mutually exclusive. It does se

          • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

            Don't be so stressed. Want to reflect light back into space, do it on the ground, instead of the ground absorbing light and converting it to heat. Make that surface shiny and reflective, now you people should have readily figured out how to do that over a very large scale and make it profitable.

            Put shiny solar panels on the roofs of every house in the burbs, any light being absorbed is converted to electricity and the panel should reflect light it can not use back up and out. Every house in the burbs, why

        • As you can see, you are wrong [realclimate.org]
          not only is it getting hotter as CO2 rises, it is doing so in the middle of the 40 year old projections
          • Well that's brilliant, I make a comment about climate refugees and you respond with a comment on climate models. Those are two different things, your comment is a non-sequitur, if you will. In other words, learn logic, scrub.

            Or at least learn to stay on topic.

            • You said, and I quote "not well supported".
              Yes, it is.
              • LOL you can't even figure out what "it" refers to. You don't understand context. You never learned how to stay on topic. Still, you're typing, which is impressive for an autodidactic lab rat.

                Next up for you: learn to understand the context, what "it" refers to. Also, if you think everything in climate science is equally well supported, you are wrong: it's not.

        • Well,
          I guess for no brainers one does not need science.
          And predicting where it will be dryer and where it will be wetter is not easy anyway.
          One ocean current changes a bit and all previous modelling is for nought.

          However last 2 years both Germany as well as Thailand were unusually dry.
          Most parts of Thailand could not do a second rice harvest.

          Despite the dryness, the singel rice harvest in 2019 was a record harvest for my wife, however 2020 even the single harvest had not enough rain, we only got like 50% fr

  • New costing system (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @12:48PM (#61209108)

    Should be by the number of F-35's this would cost. Using the price I found of an F-35C Navy variant being $117,000,00 this research program cost 0.85 F35's.

    Regardless of whether it's a good idea or feasible chances are we will get more human utility out of this research program than that single aircraft would provide.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      New costing system. Should be by the number of F-35's this would cost. Using the price I found of an F-35C Navy variant being $117,000,00 this research program cost 0.85 F35's.

      That's a really great way to put things into perspective. Thanks for the idea.

  • Hard to do (Score:5, Informative)

    by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @12:50PM (#61209112) Homepage

    The problem is that this is hard to do. Sulfate aerosols do cool the planet, but only temporarily: they drop out of the atmosphere on roughly a six month time scale. We know this because volcanoes sometimes emit megatons of sulfates, and when they are powerful enough to put those aerosols into the stratosphere (and only when they inject the aerosols into the stratosphere), you get a cooling blip that decays with a half life on the order of six months.

    Unfortunately, carbon dioxide has a half life in the atmosphere that's more on the order of a hundred years. So you'd need to keep injecting sulfate aerosols to counter an effect that keeps on running by itself.

    I'll also point out that reflecting incident sunlight will also have an effect on plant growth. This could counter the cooling effect by slowing the removal of carbon dioxide.

    The fact that Pinotubo injected an estimated twenty million tons of ash and aerosols into the stratosphere, and yet had only a year's effect, is somewhat daunting. https://earthobservatory.nasa.... [nasa.gov]

    • by kvutza ( 893474 )
      OK, thus doing it every spring; and only over continents (or their parts from which winds commonly come).
    • We just spent a fortune pulling the sulfur out of marine bunker fuel seffective 2020, our last major source of injected sulfate aerosol...

      On top of pulling sulfur / sulfates out elsewhere for the last 50 years at huge costs.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      "Tell me more about this so called blip..." -Thanos

    • they drop out of the atmosphere on roughly a six month time scale

      That can be a good thing, though. One of the big problems with CO2 is that it stays around so long, making it so that we're stuck with the consequences of our mistakes long after we make them. Something with a short half-life would give us a tight control loop, so we can start ramping it up, observe what happens, and start adjusting in either direction on a year-by-year basis, instead of across generations.

    • If we had an orbital ring we could put thin film mirrors into orbit to block some sunlight for cheap.
    • It will also do a number on all the solar generation that has been installed in response to Obama alarmism and subsidies, mostly the latter. Anything we do should be done with full knowledge of expected effects on other mitigation efforts. In this case they clearly have not thought this through.

      {^_^}

      {^_^}

    • by spitzak ( 4019 )

      Temporary sounds like a good thing. If this is a horrible mistake it will be detected and be able to be turned off quickly.

  • Will this not just result in making solar power generation less efficient?

    • It will also negatively affect plant and phytoplankton growth.

      • Will this not just result in making solar power generation less efficient?

        It will also negatively affect plant and phytoplankton growth.

        No worries. They know exactly how the climate all works, so they have thought of everything. (In reality, these people scare me much more than climate change does. They actually believe they know how it all works.)

  • Was that scientists real name Connor MacLeod? Sure, it may seem like a good idea now, but eventually the earth will recover but the evil corporation running the solar shield will hide it from people so it can keep making money...not to mention they will then go after killing all the immortals who proposed it in the first place.
  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @01:03PM (#61209156)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • All the remaining forests in the world store about 40 years of carbon emissions, I doubt storing even a year's worth with new forests is a realistic option.

    • by kvutza ( 893474 )
      Trees are good, for sure. The issue here is that you would need some long-term storage of them, so that they neither decay nor get on fire (and do not take place once they're grown).
  • by OneSmartFellow ( 716217 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @01:07PM (#61209168)

    . . . Everything !

    "Most ideas are wrong" - someone smart.

  • Of course the Venusian day is kind of long.

  • that the politicians will like is that: if you can reflect the sun's rays then you get to chose where to. Physical climate too hot: back out into space; political climate too hot: down onto the country that you do not like. Sounds like a James Bond plot that might become reality. Do we know which political leaders own white cats ?

  • if Climate Change isn't just the engine that provides welfare for rich lefty elites in academia. I Know I Know jumps in to fox hole ;)
  • We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky.

    He said scorched, but blocked is the same thing... no sunlight.

    Upper levels of government must have some really out of control AI now solar powered. Or, possibly an attempt to induce a new global ice age in order to stave off the lizard people for a while longer?

  • It's not a new idea, a "prestigious" USA University proposed putting an "umbrella" (yes) in the space to do so.

    Nonetheless, both idea that share the same core (blocking the so much needed sun required by the plants) is plainly put stupid.

  • An under-documented side-affect of this process is inexplicably bringing Sean Connery back to life. They must be cautious.
  • Real Fat Chance! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by I75BJC ( 4590021 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @01:37PM (#61209292)
    "techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere"

    Like, this will work Great!
    You think?

    Scientists, being human beings, don't see the "entire picture". And being human, tend to create many more "unintended consequences". Typical "unintended consequences" that end up create more damage than the consequence that they wanted to remedy.

    HIghlander II is the literary reference.
  • build a train that goes all the way around the world. So when the deep freeze happens, It can run continuously.
  • One thing that AGW opponents often claim is that any global warming is the result of a solar cycle. If it were true then you might well want to employ some sunlight-reflecting technology.

    But what we really ought to do is preserve and conserve our environment, because even if you could establish a new yet livable stasis the cost of the upheaval is incalculable.

  • I'm very close to giving up on humanity. What could possibly go wrong here? As a species we have an absolutely atrocious track record for predicting the negative effects of things like this -- how crazy would it be to unleash a bunch of aerosols into the environment confident that =this= time we definitely know everything about what we are doing? Ludicrous.

  • Switch the "carbon-heavy" power sources to orbital solar mirror based power. It would occlude much less of the sky, interfere _far_ less with weather and ecologies, and focus the affected areas to relatively safe microwave antenna farms, with far less pollution than current large-scale power sources. If and when large scale solar filtering would be necessary, the solar mirrors could be scaled up and point the relected power to desirable uses, not just block it. Since so much of the "carbon" pollution is fro

  • "Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing,"

    But it is probably going to have to be, since decarbonizing 1) is probably not going to happen and 2) is much too expensive if it did happen.

    Environmentalists tend to approach their hobby as a "money is no object" proposition, but reality sets in, and those that are already financially struggling when the hobbyists force the price of this or that higher cause the poor to die. Poverty is deadly. Higher energy prices cause increased poverty.

    • Poverty isn't deadly, the things surrounding it are. Lack of shelter, lack of quality food for example. Climate change will take these things from people directly, without needing to use money as an intermediary. But they will go broke too, having to replace everything that climate change took from them. If they even can do it.

      The "migrant crisis" that's going on all over the globe is just the beginning. Once they start running out of food and water, not just money? They won't be asking nicely anymore, they

      • Guns don’t kill people, low blood pressure does (from bullet holes)

        In other words, I don’t think the word poverty refers exclusively to exchanged currency, but the overall circumstances of people having the ability to obtain what they need in order to live well. So yes poverty is deadly, because it means a person doesn’t have the means to avoid death.

        Anyway, I agree with the rest of your post but the first sentence was very distracting.

  • concentrate sunlight for power production, use the heat to melt Si, turn that heat into electricity for the water purification plants, and watch as mis-aimed sunshine blows back out into space, cooling the planet.
    Mmm. Sounds reasonable.
  • You've got a self-balancing system that's arguably being thrown out of balance by human activity. I say "arguably" because human activity is only partially to blame and the extent to which it is to blame is uncertain. Science doesn't fully understand all the external forces that affect the climate. That's why climate study is ongoing. There are many factors that affect the climate: human activity, the solar cycle, weather, volcanic activity, natural methane release, etc... And the climate has never been sta

  • I distinctly remember reading an article a few years ago about Harvard attempting this as well as China planning it but backing down due to UN concerns.

    My memory isn't the greatest though.

  • Interglacials tend to last 10-20k years. Currently we're at ~12k in to this one. Lets not hasten the march towards ice ball earth by "it appears that we created a cascade effect by increasing planetary albedo in such a way that we can't reverse now that the feedback loops are operating.". Whoops doesn't really cut it. We're going back in to the ice age no matter what humans do, we just don't control enough energy to set the planetary weather (Kardashev Type 1). Geoengineering is probably best conducted on
  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday March 28, 2021 @10:05PM (#61210946) Journal

    We're going to need technological solutions. Bitching and blaming don't seem to be solving the problem.

    (Of course, some people don't want technological solutions ... because we lose all the religions aspects like penance.)

  • ... reflecting more of the sun's energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere

    How about using aerosols that contain the COVID-19 virus including all the regional variants, plus measles and polio. That way the anti-mask/anti-innoculation crowds can develop herd immunity.

  • Let's get a twofer, instead of space, light up the red planet in lieu of Musk's colony efforts.
  • ... motivation through fear leads to the acceptance of otherwise questionable decisions and actions.

    The scheme in this case is proposing changing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface. Think about what that means and ask yourself:
    a) are the means of doing so benign in every respect ... they don't know
    b) can the process be immediately reversed without collateral consequences ... no, esp. in the case of aerosols
    c) can the consequences be quantified in terms of what exactly they will be, how long they w

  • isn't this idea what plunged the earth into a global frozen wasteland in Snowpiercer?
    • by spitzak ( 4019 )

      Yes, this has been a common sci fi scenario for a long time. Larry Niven did one back in the 1970's (he wrote earlier things but seems to have confused global warming with waste heat from industry).

  • Because "tamper with the atmosphere to prevent global catastrophe" has always worked well in the movies. Thanks Conner!
  • And, the first recipients of the grants would be... drum roll... the scientists proposing that $100M be spent on it. Tada!

  • ...but they HAVE seen The Matrix, havenâ(TM)t they?!

  • We've talked about installing a Texas-sized array of solar panels in the Sahara Desert.
    We've talked about giant mylar mirrors at the L1 position in space.
    We've talked about aerosol injection into the stratosphere.
    We've talked about seeding the oceans with iron particles to stimulate algae growth.

    What about a Texas-sized strip of mirrors (or any extremely high albedo surface) at/near the equator? Wouldn't that be a (comparatively) low cost, low risk alternative to achieve similar goals? I've been pushing thi

Computer programmers do it byte by byte.

Working...