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I'm somewhat confused as to why nobody ever seriously discusses geo engineering as a solution for these problems. If we could block some percentage of light fro

by Dig1t 5y ago

I'm somewhat confused as to why nobody ever seriously discusses geo engineering as a solution for these problems. If we could block some percentage of light from the sun hitting the earth would that not go a very long way in solving the problem?

curtis3389 5y ago
> We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. Generally, the hope is that we don't have to further destroy the world that we know to keep it from killing us.
pietrovismara 5y ago
No thanks, sounds too much like the matrix. This is the kind of irreversible action that could very easily destroy us. Before doing something like this I'd rather give up our modern lifestyle or reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control. Given that most of the world's population is under 30 years old[0], even if you could get every country in the world to simultaneously ban child birth tomorrow, the world population wouldn't even halve by 2070. (You also need to take into account global life expectancy changes that far into the future[1]). [0] https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-population-is-under-30-social-media-on-the-rise/ https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-po... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-life-expectancy/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-...
  - tda 5y ago
    Better get on with it then. There is not a single solution, we must pursue each and every viable path. But in the meantime our religious leaders are still advocating against anti conception and against abortion. Reducing population growth will not magically solve anything, but ignoring it would be foolish IMHO
inkywatcher 5y ago
You are confused why people do not want to discuss pulling levers attached to arguably the most complex system of which we are aware? Especially if it is going to be the same caliber of person pulling those levers as allowed it to happen in the first place?
WorldMaker 5y ago
I've seen some very serious discussions about it. Most of which revolve around the cost: any sort of massive space project is still hugely expensive by mass/weight (even with recent advances in private/commercial space flight bringing LEO costs down surprisingly quickly), especially when some of the best options are to try to get enough mass for a big enough Fresnel lens (or diffusion grate or some other relative proposal) to L1 (the Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun). SpaceX and Blue Origin and everyone else are helping us get costs down to at least LEO (low earth orbit), but the rocket/mass costs and construction costs to do a massive engineering project at L1 are outside of all current space corporation's and Nasa's budgets combined at current back-of-the-envelope math. (Maybe if we saw major surprise breakthroughs in inflatables or low mass self/automated-construction systems?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade (ETA: And as the sibling comments point out, all of that is after the related serious discussions about the ethics of that sort of project to begin with and if it is a sledgehammer approach to a problem that needs a scalpel and a deft hand.)
- Dig1t 5y ago
  Right, putting many small mirrors or small spacecraft at L1 seems entirely plausible to me. Especially if we're talking seriously about doing things like colonizing Mars, this is in fact much easier to do than colonizing another planet. From the Wikipedia article: "Creating this sunshade in space was estimated to cost in excess of US$130 billion over 20 years" Honestly that's not very expensive at all when both compared with things like the current infrastructure bill that the US is trying to pass and also considering the impact something like that could have. Yes its expensive, but it seems to me that that this is something that the governments of the world could afford to do. Engineering and launching a bunch of spacecraft seems considerably easier than changing the behavior of most people on the planet.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    We don't need to change the behavior of most people on the planet: we need to change the behavior of the wealthiest people (and corporations) on the planet. It should be a smaller project than directing a lot mass towards L1. One of the problems is the wealthy misdirecting the blame to "average people" and that we all just need LED bulbs or EV cars or what not. Those are drops in the bucket of industrial carbon waste and always have been. All the finger pointing "it's the consumers' faults, we just need them to buy the right things" is marketing/propaganda at its finest. (Well and also bitcoin/cryptocurrencies have managed to claw back every individual gain anyway in LED efficiency or hybrid/EV gas mileage, so it may take a few more people to convince to stop investing in those schemes. Though there again it is rarely the "I own a couple Satoshi" masses that need to stop it's the biggest and wealthiest miners. And yeah stopping the wealthiest miners would destabilize the currencies because of the Ponzi scheme effects they are built on top of, but that's why it's a lousy investment and, uh, too bad? I'd rather keep the planet than the silly digital money, don't know about y'all.) Convincing a couple hundred billionaires and couple hundred massive crpyto mining farms to stop should be a much easier problem to solve than the orbital mechanics of a massive L1 project. The fact that we don't think that it is probably says a lot more sad things about our sociopolitics in this age than we'd like it to. (ETA: That's assuming of course we aren't already on the wrong side of snowball effects and stopping entirely now would hit a hysteresis effect. Pessimistically, sure, it may be too late. But if we are past that "point of no return" a sunshade can't help us either because the snowball effects likely happen even if we lessen the additional energy pouring in from the sun.)

by Dig1t 5y ago

curtis3389 5y ago

> We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. Generally, the hope is that we don't have to further destroy the world that we know to keep it from killing us.

pietrovismara 5y ago

No thanks, sounds too much like the matrix. This is the kind of irreversible action that could very easily destroy us. Before doing something like this I'd rather give up our modern lifestyle or reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control.

dane-pgp 5y ago
> reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control. Given that most of the world's population is under 30 years old[0], even if you could get every country in the world to simultaneously ban child birth tomorrow, the world population wouldn't even halve by 2070. (You also need to take into account global life expectancy changes that far into the future[1]). [0] https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-population-is-under-30-social-media-on-the-rise/ https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-po... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-life-expectancy/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-...
- tda 5y ago
  Better get on with it then. There is not a single solution, we must pursue each and every viable path. But in the meantime our religious leaders are still advocating against anti conception and against abortion. Reducing population growth will not magically solve anything, but ignoring it would be foolish IMHO

inkywatcher 5y ago

You are confused why people do not want to discuss pulling levers attached to arguably the most complex system of which we are aware? Especially if it is going to be the same caliber of person pulling those levers as allowed it to happen in the first place?

WorldMaker 5y ago

I've seen some very serious discussions about it. Most of which revolve around the cost: any sort of massive space project is still hugely expensive by mass/weight (even with recent advances in private/commercial space flight bringing LEO costs down surprisingly quickly), especially when some of the best options are to try to get enough mass for a big enough Fresnel lens (or diffusion grate or some other relative proposal) to L1 (the Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun). SpaceX and Blue Origin and everyone else are helping us get costs down to at least LEO (low earth orbit), but the rocket/mass costs and construction costs to do a massive engineering project at L1 are outside of all current space corporation's and Nasa's budgets combined at current back-of-the-envelope math. (Maybe if we saw major surprise breakthroughs in inflatables or low mass self/automated-construction systems?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade (ETA: And as the sibling comments point out, all of that is after the related serious discussions about the ethics of that sort of project to begin with and if it is a sledgehammer approach to a problem that needs a scalpel and a deft hand.)

Dig1t 5y ago
Right, putting many small mirrors or small spacecraft at L1 seems entirely plausible to me. Especially if we're talking seriously about doing things like colonizing Mars, this is in fact much easier to do than colonizing another planet. From the Wikipedia article: "Creating this sunshade in space was estimated to cost in excess of US$130 billion over 20 years" Honestly that's not very expensive at all when both compared with things like the current infrastructure bill that the US is trying to pass and also considering the impact something like that could have. Yes its expensive, but it seems to me that that this is something that the governments of the world could afford to do. Engineering and launching a bunch of spacecraft seems considerably easier than changing the behavior of most people on the planet.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  We don't need to change the behavior of most people on the planet: we need to change the behavior of the wealthiest people (and corporations) on the planet. It should be a smaller project than directing a lot mass towards L1. One of the problems is the wealthy misdirecting the blame to "average people" and that we all just need LED bulbs or EV cars or what not. Those are drops in the bucket of industrial carbon waste and always have been. All the finger pointing "it's the consumers' faults, we just need them to buy the right things" is marketing/propaganda at its finest. (Well and also bitcoin/cryptocurrencies have managed to claw back every individual gain anyway in LED efficiency or hybrid/EV gas mileage, so it may take a few more people to convince to stop investing in those schemes. Though there again it is rarely the "I own a couple Satoshi" masses that need to stop it's the biggest and wealthiest miners. And yeah stopping the wealthiest miners would destabilize the currencies because of the Ponzi scheme effects they are built on top of, but that's why it's a lousy investment and, uh, too bad? I'd rather keep the planet than the silly digital money, don't know about y'all.) Convincing a couple hundred billionaires and couple hundred massive crpyto mining farms to stop should be a much easier problem to solve than the orbital mechanics of a massive L1 project. The fact that we don't think that it is probably says a lot more sad things about our sociopolitics in this age than we'd like it to. (ETA: That's assuming of course we aren't already on the wrong side of snowball effects and stopping entirely now would hit a hysteresis effect. Pessimistically, sure, it may be too late. But if we are past that "point of no return" a sunshade can't help us either because the snowball effects likely happen even if we lessen the additional energy pouring in from the sun.)