The controversial concept known as solar radiation modification is a potentially effective response to fighting climate change, but one that could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, some scientists say.
July 23, 2023
"White House cautiously opens the door to study blocking sun’s rays to slow global warming."
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But what about the people who invested in solar panels??
Since we're on the subject of doing things that can't or shouldn't be done, why don't we put some pandas on the moon? Surely unqualified non-experts everywhere will tell you that if you put pandas on the moon they will explode and make panda jelly, but who really cares at this point.
We've already crossed the Overton window and are literally discussing blotting out the sun like some cartoonish plot writer imagining an evil scientist trying to take over the world so let's go for broke and put frigging pandas on the frigging moon, watch them explode, and say it stops global warming. Hail Mary pass. Why not.
This would end well.
Insanity
Remember five years ago if you so much as suggested the variations in the sun affected global warming, you were called an idiot? That would be almost as stupid as believing that COVID leaked from a lab, just because Wuhan was publishing papers on research about brewing up new viruses out of coronavirus samples gathered from bats!
You can always heat the earth back up by burning oil.
Hunter has a deal with an entity ... he pockets 17 mil... and we get the bill.
Sun still glowing hot.
this is GREAT!
Let's pursue a catastrophic course of action, that costs $TRILLIONS, and has GOD Knows, What repercussions;
to combat a NON EXISTENT Threat!!! Sounds like a plan.. A plan a corrupt senile man might like!
Yesterday was the Hottest DAY, in OVER a hundred thousand million billion trillion zillion years
How Hot was it? The same as EVERY JULY
Yes, if those pesky citizens won't fall in line, let's just block out the source of all life and see how things go.
From the people who have cut oil and natural gas exploration and new leases down to the point where we're draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve and negotiating with Venezuela for their oil, from the people now looking to ban your gas range, your A/C, home gas generators, and gas water heaters, we're going to now watch as their fix for something that may not have or need a fix, is to...block out the sun.
It's going to be in the 90s today here in Florida. With a very high humidity. As it was 30 years ago when I lived here in July. As it was 100 years ago when people lived here in July. And yes- we had wildfires out west and up north 100 years ago as well. Guess what we didn't have? People living in those areas and cameras all around to record nature at work.
This is insanity.
Greenland was once green and the Great Lakes were once under a thousand feet of ice, so labeling someone a "climate denier" is almost never accurate. The controversy is whether or not the small contribution of man-made carbon dioxide is enough to upset the balance.
Blocking energy from the Sun is a reasonable approach compared to rolling back civilization to pre-industrial levels. I'd prefer a mechanical approach like satellite sun shades to chemical manipulation of the atmosphere. Blocking a minuscule amount of the light hitting the Earth would have a gradual effect over decades.
In the event that long-term solar cycles also effect our climate, sun shades could be deactivated if we enter a global cooling era.
Nuke the Moon!
Depending on how localized the effects might be, it could make one Hell of a military weapon.
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
What could possibly go wrong?
I told the OPPD Board about this a few months back. I think only $16m to do Nebraska.
One of the Board Directors started laughing while I told them.
DDB, “I see one of the Directors is laughing. Yeah, this is crazy. But only slightly more crazy than all this solar and wind you want to build.”
Begley’s finest minute.
"unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere"
Or, you know, from losing control of whatever they put up there to block the sun and NOT BEING ABLE TO FUCKING MOVE IT.
I oppose the death penalty for nearly everything, but the scale of misery and destruction so blithely contemplated by these people cannot be answered by anything but execution for anyone who takes a concrete step in the direction of implementing a plan to poison the atmosphere to make the earth colder.
No, I am not joking.
After regulating us out of hot water by making it impossible to build a reasonably-priced device, now these geniuses want to block out the sun, all on the premise that 0.04% of the atmosphere, that's 400 parts per million is actually controlling our climate. And never mind about science and evidence to the contrary, never mind that if it's much lower, photosynthesis will cease, and never mind that we're near a CO2 historic low across the coast of geologic time, that we're blessed with a moderate climate that allows agriculture to thrive so we can feed our populations. Why trust your lying eyes with so many experts in the room?
During the medieval cold spells, a third of the population was killed off due to crop failures and cold-related plagues. Starvation and plague. It's what's for dinner - after a cold shower.
Simpsons did it!
In the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s, utilities built coal-fired plants with tall stacks, up to 1000’. The logic was to disperse emissions into the upper atmosphere to minimize the impact on ground level air quality. But, in the late ‘80s acid rain became an issue, with the theory being that the emissions from the tall stacks were transporting aerosols across the country where they fell back to earth with the rain. The Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 required scrubbers at power plants, to negate the impact of tall stack emissions.
In essence, what the Administration is considering has been tried before. The unintended consequences were addressed through new rules. The idea of trying to block the sun will likewise bring unintended consequences. The impact on agriculture is unknown, as is the impact on the northern climate. Farmers and ranchers across the northern plains may not want a shortened growing season and residents may not want a longer, colder winter. This is a bad idea all around.
The idea of blocking the sun’s light is an admission that climate change is not a CO2 problem but a problem of solar radiation.
"Nuke the Moon!"
Love where your head's at. Love your enthusiasm. Pandas first. Then nukes. Deal?
The Democrats are big fans of addressing the 'root' causes of things. I propose they spare us the inevitable unintended negative consequences of this harebrained idea and go right to the source. Instead of wasting untold billions of dollars attempting to change our atmosphere, they should waste it figuring out how to make the sun itself burn cooler. They are going to waste it anyway, so why not waste it on something truly impossible. Heck, it worked with the war on poverty.
Keep this in mind - Climate Change is an implicit admission that the CAGW theory has been falsified. Climate Change can’t be falsified, because it really predicts nothing. More storms, fewer storms, higher temps, lower temps, more tornados, fewer tornados, etc. All can be taken as Climate Change. The funny thing is that the pseudoscience used to support the CAGW theory is almost identical to the supposed basis or cause of the Climate Change non-scientific theory. These “climate scientists” failed to prove that CO2 increases global temperature, so they just assume that it causes a shifting bunch of other things.
And then use panic over those possible (but probably unlikely) catastrophes as justification for imposing their utopian dreams, that include a significantly lower population and per capita GDP, concentrated in easily controlled urban shitholes, dysfunctionally served by mass transportation, with the elimination of private vehicles, along with large houses, air conditioning, gas ranges and barbecues, sufficient energy and food, etc. For most of us, a dystopia, not a utopia. Never mind that countries with rapidly advancing economies might make mouth noises about complying with these ideas, but really have little interest in really participating in self-harming actions that deprive their citizens of the advantages of modern economies. With China building coal plants as fast as they can, it just means that the rest of us will just have to sacrifice more.
The whole thing is nonsense, but dangerous nonsense. Sure, this scheme might result in the lowering of the Earl’s temperature a bit (notice how they are addressing falsified CAGW, but calling it unfalsifiable Climate Change). But is that even a Good Thing? There is evidence that we may be starting to slide back into an ice age. Humans evolved in a warm climate, and do better in warmth, than cold as a result. We sweat (a warm climate adaptation), but don’t have very much hair over most of our bodies (a cold climate adaption). So, why are we playing to our weakness, instead of our strength? Is the intent to kill as many humans as they can?
I love how the Left is pushing this idea. It is CAGW’s 2 + 2 = 5 moment.
Average people can see this is all insane.
What could go wrong with young people believing in the non-falsifiable climate theories of the socialist Left?
The Law of Unintended Consequences is crouching at the door.
Follow the money. This is just a way to pass consulting “study fees” to their buddies while virtue signaling “climate action”. Of course they could give the job to NASA and waste more money with that swamp. But let’s ban more gas stoves while our buddies in China build more coal plants for power.
Joe Biden is the real-life C. Montgomery Burns, but without the brains or the solid ethical core.
Do they know the last ice age was caused by a volcano that erupted in the Pacific and blocked out the sun?? Duh. Maybe he will provoke a nuclear war... you know a quickie nuclear winter!
Would you trust Biden with just about anything much less the security of the world?
Just dumb folks. And reckless.
This loony idea probably came from a Biden dinner party when someone told the old joke of the Italians* going to the Sun intending to land on its surface. When told of the unbelievable temperatures they will encounter, the Italians* said, "No problem, we're gonna do it at night."
*Com'n, fill in your favorite group.
“The idea of blocking the sun’s light is an admission that climate change is not a CO2 problem but a problem of solar radiation.”
Which is why physicists and astrophysicists were eliminated from the survey that showed that 97% of Climate Scientists believed that CO2 had (some) effect on climate. Some MBA types used multivariate regression to determine what were the major drivers of the Earth’s global temperature (which is, of course, a completely bogus measurement in the first place). Their major drivers included: Sun spot cycle (which drives how much solar energy the sun generates), distance from the sun, wobble and tilt of the Earth, and El Niño/La Niña cycle (reflecting deep ocean thermal currents). CO2 concentration was off in the noise, in the uncertainty of these major driving factors. What that means is that any attempt to use that requires first eliminating all known factors affecting the Earth’s climate, and the uncertainty there makes attempts at quantifying the effects of CO2 as statistical nonsense.
Public education is even worse than anyone imagined. Let’s fix K-12, then discuss this solis intercedo idea, mkay?
Hubris.
Won't end well.
This:
https://medium.com/@ghornerhb/heres-a-better-graph-of-co2-and-temperature-for-the-last-600-million-years-f83169a68046
If historical global temperature (blue) looks remarkably stable over the past 600 million years (aside from the ice age epochs), even over a CO2 range of 7,000 – 200ppm in the atmosphere, maybe it’s because Earth’s temperature isn’t controlled by CO2. Maybe the control of Earth's temperature is dominated by other things – like solar activity.
Photosynthesis grinds to a halt at 200 ppm CO2 concentrations.
"Unanticipated consequences" here we come ! These people are crazy.
Alex, I'll take Unintended Consequences for $600.
Creole Son.
The company that wants to do this claims that crop production will INCREASE.
Creola,
Acid rain in the 70s was mainly caused by Quebec Hydro's James Bay boondoggle/hydro scheme and environmental disaster
It also drowned 7,000 square miles (most of a new jersey) of Indian lands and mostly virgin forest.
They needed to cripple us power production to force us to import their power.
John Henry
Before undertaking something so drastic, shouldn't there be verified reproducible evidence that a heating planet is a bad thing? And that human activity is the cause of it?
First, we had the virologists playing God with their gain of function research which resulted in a mere 7 million deaths due to Covid-19. Now the geo engineers want to do them one better. Let experiment with blocking out the sun. What could possibly go wrong?
Is Mr. Burns the consulting scientist for this project?
Shouldn't we try throwing a virgin into a volcano first? That might be all it takes.
Talk about crimes against humanity!
I wanna see the sun
Blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted
Painted black, yeah
If Trump proposed or even thought out loud about this the left and MSM would be howling with derision.
If the Russians were saying that they have a plan to alter the atmosphere's chemical composition so as to block sunlight from reaching the planet, I would hope that our government would inform them that we would consider any concrete steps taken in that direction as acts of war.
Russians and Chinese are laughing out loud too.
Sort of like jet contrails. But do they reflect the sun's heat out or keep heat in?
Glad to see Charles Montgomery Plantagenet Schicklgruber Burns get some recognition.
I would laugh, except for the fact that they might try it. I have too much respect for real science to call these people Mad Scientists. They are Stupid Techheads.
The latest climate scam: Block out the Sun. What idiots. But what can you expect when Democrats voted for a senile, stupid influence peddler like Joe "China owns me" Biden?
There is no climate crisis, CO2 does not drive the climate. The so-called climate models don't include water vapor nor changes in Solar radiation, magnetic fields and cosmic ray screening. It's like Boeing creating an airplane model (either math or wind tunnel), and not including the wings. Water vapor is kind of important to the climate, don't you think?
We've had 50+ years of doomsday climate predictions. Not one has come true. The Artic Ocean is still ice covered, regardless of what Al Gore predicted. The Artic Ocean was ice free during the summer about 10,000 ya when it was much warmer than now. We survived. So did the polar bears.
The people running the Federal government are malicious and don't care about the country. They want to see us in poverty and them living as nobility while the peasant starve and shiver.
Joe Biden is the real-life C. Montgomery Burns, but without the brains or the solid ethical core.
I thought you were talking about Major Frank Burns, from M*A*S*H. He'd also be perfect for the role of Joe "China owns me" Biden.
Not to mention when the sun goes into its' cyclical solar minimum stage we'll all freeze to death.
It warms my heart to know that a small cadre of true believers are willing to sacrifice their own lives and the lives of countless others in pursuit of their megalomaniacal goals.
Didn’t Dr. Strangelove propose something similar. Provoking nuclear Armageddon so that he and a few buddies could retire to their bunkers with hundreds of beautiful women.
Was Hunter involved in this?
This idea has been around for a long time. No one wanted to talk about it because they were going to stop global warming from happening!!
https://www.wired.com/story/sci-fi-icon-neal-stephenson-global-warming/ "Termination Shock"
This was how HIGHLANDER 2 began.
OMG keep these idiots away FAR away from any geoengineering endeavors. They have a very poor record on predictions and their solutions reliably vacillate between the extreme poles of futility and catastrophe and this has the potential to maximize the latter. Further, Congress should act now to stop private entities from undertaking any global geoengineering projects on our behalf. The sun, like carbon, is essential to continuing Life on Earth and I oppose any atmospheric interference by anyone anywhere on Earth. Blocking the sun is a crime against humanity much like progressivism itself.
King Canute could not be reached for comment.
Interestingly, one version of the Canute tale turns Canute into a wise and humble ruler. The version concludes:
“But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person, and soaked his feet and legs. Then he moving away said: “All the inhabitants of the world should know that the power of kings is vain and trivial, and that none is worthy of the name of king but He whose command the heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws”.
(Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum)
There is always the Dyson Sphere idea.
These people have lost their minds.
"...could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere..." Fuck it, it's worth it!
The arrogant fools.
The proposal to block the sun's rays is easier to do than is imagined but requires some assistance from farmers and home gardeners. Since Johnathan Swift was able to prove that sunbeams are stored in cucumbers all that would be required would be a diktat by the Federal Farm Bureau or the Department of Agriculture to halve the annual cucumber crop and voila, the seas would recede and the temperatures drop. It is a modest proposal.
Aaaaughhh!
Posting without reading the other comments...
Is this why Oppenheimer is coming out now? Because of the whole "Well, there is a slight chance that the chain reaction won't stop, and could ignite the atmosphere and kill us all - but only a slight chance" thing?
Flying solar panels doing double duty!!!
Beam power to laser mounted on shark for third application.
Consider that total eclipses of the Sun only occur along a very narrow track along the Earth as rotates below.
For the rest of the planet the eclipsed Sun is only partialy blocked, or not blocked at all.
That's with the Moon momentarily blocking the Sun's rays.
So I need someone to explain how humans could build anything in space large enough to block the Sun all over the Earth (at least on the side facing it).
And I'm sure nations like Canada, Russia, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would object to reducing their agricultural growing seasons in order for American elites to save a few bucks on their A/C.
On reflection, I recall a "Calvin and Hobbs" scene where Calvin asks his dad questions about the Sun:
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/07/30
So apparently blocking the entire Sun is no biggie.
I regret my error.
YouTube: Is it a thinly veiled threat to Putin?
Hint: “we have always been at war with Eastasia”
Mike of S.
“Theory can only take you so far.” Oppenheimer.
I thought this was what the contrails are for!
Actually, it's a pretty sober report that acknowledges that there are many known and unknown risks involved with such tampering with Mother Nature and recommends that those risks along with any possible benefits should be studied in an organized manner, but overall is lukewarm at best to the concept.
The competition for federal grants stemming from the report, which was mandated by the last Congress, this should be epic.
I expect the purist section of the environmental movement will offer as much resistance as the "climate deniers" like me.
16 MAY, 2014
In an open-access paper published in the journal Science today, CERN’s CLOUD experiment has shown that biogenic vapors emitted by trees and oxidized in the atmosphere have a significant impact on the formation of clouds, thus helping to cool the planet.
Trees are often considered the lungs of the Earth, inhaling carbon dioxide (CO2), and exhaling harmless chemicals like water vapor and oxygen.
The CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) laboratory experiment during the last decade has permitted CERN to find the mechanisms through which the sun and cosmic rays influence the formation of clouds and thus the climate. The CLOUD project experiments use a high-energy particle beam from an accelerator to closely duplicate cosmic rays found in the atmosphere. This is the first time this technology was brought to bear on global warming, the most controversial scientific question of the day.
Also for the first time, very basic answers about the drivers of climate change surfaced to dispel the general paucity of data on the subject. “By studying the micro-physical processes at work when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, we are beginning to understand more fully the connection between cosmic rays and cloud cover,” CERN explains.
“Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth’s energy balance, and changes of only a few percent can have an important effect on the climate.”
Sadly, the liberals are attempting to dispel God's natural systems yet again. Sol's solar system planets are all warming because the sun is warming after a 22 million-year cold spell.
All is vanity.
All is vexation of spirit.
- King Solomon
I'm not religious. I go to a church maybe once every 10 years. But there are texts out there that are really quite useful in how to look at the World. One of those texts is Lao Tzu's The Tao Te Ching. Another, is Ecclesiastes, which is where the King Solomon quote is found.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that both Lao Tzu and King Solomon would look at what is being suggested here (blocking the sun), look at one another, and then shake their damn heads.
"And I'm sure nations like Canada, Russia, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would object to reducing their agricultural growing seasons in order for American elites to save a few bucks on their A/C."
Actually, they're trying to shut down agriculture. Witness the Netherlands. Saw a video clip of a 20-something declaring that we need to "shut down farming". That's the level at which these people are operating.
"Never mind that countries with rapidly advancing economies might make mouth noises about complying with these ideas, but really have little interest in really participating in self-harming actions that deprive their citizens of the advantages of modern economies. "
I would think that attempting to block the sun would be considered an act of war, with any country opposed, free to nuke such a project in the cradle.
"Joe "China owns me" Biden"
You misspelled "Cluster Bomb".
Try that in a small town.
Who is going to write the liability insurance policy on this one, well, the US taxpayer is. There will be reparations forever, the taking of sunlight. I expect at least $10MM in damages personally due to loss of enjoyment in telescopic observation of the sun. But a judge will tell me I don’t have standing because my PhD is in the wrong subject.
I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted
Painted black, yeah
-Jagger/Richards, 1966
How does opening the door to the White House Study block the sun enough to affect global warming? And wait, we are back to global warming and not just climate change?
Is this considered settled science yet?
Have they rounded up enough compliant college professors to create a fake poll that shows 97% agree with the giant beach umbrella approach?
Is that called "The Krakatoa Option?"
Ironclad said...
Follow the money. This is just a way to pass consulting “study fees” to their buddies while virtue signaling “climate action”.
This is the most likely outcome- gift a bajillion dollars to favored consulting firms to do studies and proposals.
These morons are going to get us all killed.
The Know Nothings are against the concept of "study".
[The] White House said in a statement accompanying the report, “there are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.”
So they’ve made up their minds to do it, right?
My old enemy: the Sun
"Try that in a small town."
Technologically speaking, they could actually block out the sun for a small town. That wouldn't be too difficult.
The problem is optics. 81 million people decided that a creepy old man who gropes children on film isn't a dealbreaker, but grandpa felonyfingers rubbing his hands together and laughing maniacally while blocking daylight for small towns is too much for even the likes of KJP to not take questions for. They had Maritz and RAND Corp. do focus groups, and the focus groups drew the line at feeding babies to horribly mutated puppies. Blocking the sun was too "dark lord Sauron" for them.
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature
Remember when Paul Krugman suggested the gov't should declare an imminent space alien invasion, and then spend our way to prosperity by fighting it?
Substitute "climate change" for "space alien invasion"
"Saw a video clip of a 20-something declaring that we need to "shut down farming"."
In his defense, he was only advocating the shut-down of farming, not supermarkets or hipster cafes.
Who’s gonna spend the money on this?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Anyone who would be so areogant and so dangerously stupid needs to die.
This may be the stupidest idea the government has ever had. Quite a high bar.
If fact, this idea is so stupid and dangerous that people should oppose it with force if necessary.
Blogger Randomizer said...
Greenland was once green and the Great Lakes were once under a thousand feet of ice, so labeling someone a "climate denier" is almost never accurate. The controversy is whether or not the small contribution of man-made carbon dioxide is enough to upset the balance.
Blocking energy from the Sun is a reasonable approach compared to rolling back civilization to pre-industrial levels. I'd prefer a mechanical approach like satellite sun shades to chemical manipulation of the atmosphere. Blocking a minuscule amount of the light hitting the Earth would have a gradual effect over decades.
In the event that long-term solar cycles also effect our climate, sun shades could be deactivated if we enter a global cooling era.
7/23/23, 8:42 AM
You are out of your flipping mind. Ever hear about killer bees? All this snakes in Florida that don’t belong there? COVID-10 SARS2? It ain’t nice to fuck around with Mother Nature.
41 PM
Blogger Anna Keppa said...
Consider that total eclipses of the Sun only occur along a very narrow track along the Earth as rotates below.
For the rest of the planet the eclipsed Sun is only partialy blocked, or not blocked at all.
That's with the Moon momentarily blocking the Sun's rays.
So I need someone to explain how humans could build anything in space large enough to block the Sun all over the Earth (at least on the side facing it).
And I'm sure nations like Canada, Russia, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would object to reducing their agricultural growing seasons in order for American elites to save a few bucks on their A/C.
The insane looneys that want to do this plan to use high altitude aircraft to spray a reflective powder into the stratosphere. They don’t want to build a structure. It’s some kind of ultra fine reflective aerosol. Problem is once you put that crap up there there’s no do overs. If you mess up there will be crop failures and famine and you might just trigger a new ice age. It’s crazy stuff and I agree with the writer above calling for execution of anyone who takes steps to do this.
The insane looneys that want to do this plan to use high altitude aircraft to spray a reflective powder into the stratosphere. They don’t want to build a structure. It’s some kind of ultra fine reflective aerosol
Sort of like the ash from Krakatoa in 1883. That was called "The year without a summer."
"Kalki" by Vidal.
I'm now hearing Mr. Burns' voice. "I bring you love!"
"Kalki" by Vidal.
I'm now hearing Mr. Burns' voice. "I bring you love!"
so taking mr burns and snowpiercer as strategies what could go wrong?
If you did that then I can guarantee you that a hundred years later, if it were no longer necessary, the idiotic conservatives would demand that it continue until the sky was blackened completely, and never to stop. (Sort of like they advocate with coal). Persisting in the commission of errors or problematic practices that may have been useful at one time or before they got out of hand is the whole reason cons have for being. They see coal as a form of power that they worship and whichever company got rich off of doing this they would worship too. They can only uphold power and lack the moral and intellectual capacity to look at anything in any way beyond that.
The insane looneys that want to do this plan to use high altitude aircraft to spray a reflective powder into the stratosphere. They don’t want to build a structure. It’s some kind of ultra fine reflective aerosol
So, Basically; the old Nuclear Winter deal.. But NOW! it's ALL GOOD!
Here's a thought:
If man's f*cking with the environment is BAD.. MAYBE man's f*cking with the environment is BAD?
"... we are back to global warming and not just climate change?"
Good catch! Except, as best I can figure out, it's been global warming all along, it's just that the global warming is able to manifest itself as global cooling, or hurricanes and tornadoes, or pretty-much anything weather-related. But it's still caused by "greenhouse gases", so it's still global warming.
"If you mess up there will be crop failures and famine and you might just trigger a new ice age."
Yeah, that's something to ponder. If the future is anything like the past, it contains another Glacial Era. And there is no way the Earth will feed 9 billion people with everything above 50 degrees latitude under a mile of ice, even if there is more land because the seas have gone down. So, in the long run, things are going to get ugly. But there is no need to hurry it along. If I thought increasing CO2 could actually stave off the Next One, I'd say we need to burn more coal. A lot more.
Has anybody done the math here? Not on shooting dust into near-space to increase the albedo in a random (and irreversible) way, but on launching a metric s*** ton of mirrors or sunshades. I'm guessing we would need enough to cover a good fraction of the entire face of the Earth that "sees" the Sun. The total area of that disk is pi x r exp 2, where r is say 6378 kilometers (I looked it up). So total area would be 127 million square meters. Suppose we decided to cover 1% of that area with sunshade material. That's 1.27 million square meters. How long would it take you to make that stuff, and engineer the struts and motors needed to deploy it in orbit and then orient it (and continue to orient it: things will drift) ? And how much will it weigh? If it's a gram per square meter, that's 127,000 kilograms or 127 TONS being lifted into high Earth orbit. How many TONS of CO2-burning rocket fuel are you going to need to achieve that? I haven't checked but I would bet a good sandwich and a warm domestic beer that such lift capacity does not exist; exceeds all the stuff we've ever launched since we started putting stuff into orbit.
I offer this "analysis" for your amusement only. The fools who want to take us all on this insane suicidal trip will not be able to follow the argument, let alone weigh it.
All we need to do is have today's global warming meet the '70s global cooling. Dink!
If I were a Conservative I’d be all for it. First off, it would crush solar power - which Republicons oppose. Second, in reducing the variable effects of sunlight geographically, it would stop the atmospheric fluctuations that power air currents and wind turbines - which Republicons also are against.
Finally, Conservatives have shown that they think agriculture should be compromised for the sake of industrial oil and gas, and this will would devastate agriculture.
But not completely. Crops could be moved indoors at great expense, which Conservatives also like - as long as huge agribusinesses are the chief beneficiaries. Small scale farms are a scourge to conservative ideology, and this would only entrench the power and wealth of the huge agribusinesses that would be in a position to take grow operations underground and indoors en masse.
So it has everything that a conservative would like. Sure, they’d complain about it at first - because it represents a change and conservatives are not capable of change. But then once it’s in place it would accentuate all the trends cons currently support, and then it would become too powerful an institution for them to stop and they’ll say they supported it all along.
Can you imagine the graft! It's going to make the high speed train to nowhere look like Sunday school.
The French engineering firm working with the state of California pulled out of the deal because California was too corrupt. They went to work in a less corrupt country, Morocco.
From a purely scientific point of view this is a truly crappy idea. From the screw the taxpayers and get rich point of view it's brilliant. If they can hide the costs.
"Blocking energy from the Sun is a reasonable approach compared to rolling back civilization to pre-industrial levels. I'd prefer a mechanical approach like satellite sun shades to chemical manipulation of the atmosphere. Blocking a minuscule amount of the light hitting the Earth would have a gradual effect over decades."
No it's not.
Yogi Berra actually said "In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is."
These climate hysterics actually believe the B.S. they're putting out. Let's start with spraying the White House with these chemicals and turning off all of the HVAC equipment. Keep the windows closed. See how Joe "I love cluster bombs and China owns me" Biden likes the new White House environment.
The cause of the resulting mass extinction won't be a mystery, so there is that.
A quick test of this idea would be to have a world wide nuclear war, and see if the modeled projections about nuclear winter are anything close to the reality. Could save a lot of time and trouble before we nuke the moon (blend a puppy and murder a hobo, while you're pulling up ancient attention-grabbing Frank James IMAO.com memes).
These morons are going to get us all killed.
Isn't that the point of it all?
There are two many people on Earth from their perspective.
Blogger hpudding said...
"If I were a Conservative I’d be all for it. First off, it would crush solar power - which Republicons oppose. Second, in reducing the variable effects of sunlight geographically, it would stop the atmospheric fluctuations that power air currents and wind turbines - which Republicons also are against.
Finally, Conservatives have shown that they think agriculture should be compromised for the sake of industrial oil and gas, and this will would devastate agriculture.
But not completely. Crops could be moved indoors at great expense, which Conservatives also like - as long as huge agribusinesses are the chief beneficiaries. Small scale farms are a scourge to conservative ideology, and this would only entrench the power and wealth of the huge agribusinesses that would be in a position to take grow operations underground and indoors en masse.
So it has everything that a conservative would like. Sure, they’d complain about it at first - because it represents a change and conservatives are not capable of change. But then once it’s in place it would accentuate all the trends cons currently support, and then it would become too powerful an institution for them to stop and they’ll say they supported it all along."
You have no clue as to what a conservative is.
hpudding's been watching too much Mushroom Media Complex news. He thinks conservatives would love this nonsense, when all the conservative commentators on this blog are saying what a stupid idea this sun-shade business is. It's an idea only Joe "I love cluster bombs and China owns me" Biden and his henchmen could come up with. It rates at the Joe Biden Intergalactic Stupidity level.
hpudding, stop watching CNN & MSNBC; they're gaslighting you. Go out and enjoy the sunshine before JB blots out the Sun.
They want an environmental moon shot.
They want to say I-told-you-so.
Joe Biden is profoundly compromised.
If you did that then I can guarantee you that a hundred years later
Considering how long it has taken NASA to build Bill Nelson's Senate Launch System, it might take the government a hundred years to start unit tests.
81,000,000 hpuddings out there? seriously?
I thought hpudding was a pure troll.
But he crossed me up with this: "Finally, Conservatives have shown that they think agriculture should be compromised for the sake of industrial oil and gas, and this will would devastate agriculture."
Apparently a true believer. The idea that we can feed more than a very small, very localized percentage of the worlds billions of people, or even our own country's hundreds of millions, without "industrial oil and gas" is pure, high-grade Luddite lunacy.
Which Luddite lunacy is currently being implemented in the Netherlands, with predictable results.
It looks like somebody was inspired by Neil Stephensen's novel Termination Shock.
BUMBLE BEE said...
"81,000,000 hpuddings out there? seriously?"
Yeah. Pretty much. He's pretty dense. I suspect he's a student or has a public sector job. Since he seems to have no idea how anything is made or where stuff comes from. The left is made up of some pretty stupid people.
Democrat hubris!
Rusty said...
BUMBLE BEE said...
"81,000,000 hpuddings out there? seriously?"
Yeah. Pretty much. He's pretty dense. I suspect he's a student or has a public sector job. Since he seems to have no idea how anything is made or where stuff comes from. The left is made up of some pretty stupid people.
7/24/23, 8:41 AM
It is likely, also, a testament of how easily democrats are brainwashed with rather simplistic propaganda ("republicans are Evil!" must be true, since two people I know said it!).
While there are some pretty 'dumb' people on the right, they mostly just want to be left alone and don't push their ideas on others. The same cannot be said of the left - they have no idea of their own stupidity.
At least they finally admitted that it's the sun that causes global warming.
At least they finally admitted that it's the sun that causes global warming.
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