A Sunshade In Space To Combat Global Warming

ultracool writes, "While the only permanent solution for human-driven global warming is developing renewable energy, a temporary hack to counteract possible abrupt climate change is to build a giant sunshade in space. The sunshade would be launched in small pieces by electromagnetic launchers, conventional chemical rockets being far too expensive. The sunshade could be developed and deployed in 25 years, would last about 50 years, and would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by 2% — enough to balance heating due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." From the article: "The [trillions of] spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer... Sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun [at L-1], would be diverted away from our planet... The sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers [collectively] launching a stack of [a million] fliers every 5 minutes for 10 years."

They both did it

[gnoshi]

In the Simpsons, Mr. Burns built a giant sunshade to block the free source of energy that is the sun.
In Futurama, a giant mirror is launched into space to block the rays of the sun, and reduce global warming. A small meteor hits it, causing it to turn, focus the light on the surface of the Earth, and cut a swathe through the arena from which the scientists (and Nixon's head) look on.

Re:Ringworld

[arivanov]

Screw the superstrength wires. The reason ringworld was held together was that it was symmetric and the solar wind and light pressure on it from all sides evenly balanced itself (which even had to be sorted out in the second [or third?] book of the series).

Any objects which are light enough to be put in orbit in such quantities will be blown to hell and gone off orbit by the light itself in 2-3 months. Nasa already did the experiment 20+ years back with an inflatable aluminium foil sphere and there was a similar experiment prepared by amateurs to be launched on a converted Russian ICBM lately (it failed at launch).

Frankly pestering your local politicscritters until they stop approving cretinous suburbia developments that are designed to make trees impossible is a much better idea. Just look at most recent suburbia in UK (Cambouorne, MK, etc) and US. The utility supply lines are run deliberately in a manner which prevents anyone from planting anything larger then a small cherry or apple. And this is intended that way, allowed and approved by the bastards sitting on city council planning committees.

Re:Or..

[gomiam]

As you state, there have been global temperature changes before. But never at this rate. It is statistically reasonable to think that this is not just a coincidence. It might even be that global temperature was changing on its own to begin with, but the high rate probably means we are speeding it up.

About doing "enough harm", I would be worried after seeing what be managed with just a few years of CFCs. Unfortunately, the "more research is needed" line would be good... if there wasn't so much research already done that points to us being the most probable cause of this high-speed heating.

I would have said "You must be new here", but you already wrote this was your first post. Welcome to Slashdot. May your contributions be productive.

Re:Or..

[Capt'n Hector]

Welcome to /. I don't mean to be rude, but when you say "i think there should be more research into our contribution to raising the earths temperature", are you speaking from the perspective of someone in academia, preferably in a similar field, or are you just another bloke? Because I do know a few people doing climate research, and there in fact has been considerable investigation into this matter. And it's not controversial, either. Inside these circles, they're pretty much in agreement that humans are the cause of increased CO2, and this in turn is causing and will continue to cause global climate change.

Re:Sounds bad, but cool 1rst step to Dyson sphere

[init100]

I don't know where L1 is

L1 one of the Lagrange points [wikipedia.org], i.e. points in space where the gravity of the sun and the earth cancel each other out. Objects stationed at these points do not fall towards either the earth or the sun.

You mean to counteract the REAL cause ..

[SengirV]

... of global warming. You know, the sun actually putting out more energy in the last 30-40 years - http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_0 30320.html [space.com]

Why look for a scientific explanation when you can make it a political issue?