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Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet
- danielrpa 4y agoWon't we get less solar power as a result? Maybe it's what Nuclear needs...
- SuoDuanDao 4y agoIt sounds like the kind of big-centrally-planned-risk-unknown project the Nuclear lobby likes...
- xrayarx 4y agoFrom the article: Andy Parker, British climate researcher: Unless we find a way to remove carbon in quantities not imaginable presently, dimming would be the only way to stop or reverse rapidly rising temperature
- Vosporos 4y agoAh yes, I too have seen The Matrix (1999)
- tootie 4y agoAnd Who Shot Mr Burns
- hok 4y agoI wonder if that could backfire if the reduced irradiation would reduce the plants' ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
- beanjuice 4y agoPlants primarily photosynthesize visible light (400-700nm), wherein proposals to 'dim the sun' are speaking of infrared light.
- rr888 4y agoI think its a good idea and we should do it. I regularly see areas which were snow covered and white now brown and much warmer. Unfortunately its also the plot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer where it overshoots.
- snapcaster 4y agoAre you serious? you don't have any concerns about the impact on animal life? plants? human quality of life? It seems completely insane to think this is a good idea
- yreg 4y agoHow about the concerns if we don't do geo-engineering? Seems difficult to guess which concern should be higher.
- snapcaster 4y agoIt's not hard to guess at all, i feel like everyone responding to my comment must be trolling. DIMMING THE SUN will have so many second and third order effects you have no idea about! this is madness
- yreg 4y agoI promise I’m not trolling. >have so many second and third order effects you have no idea about So has raising the Earth’s temperature, in addition to all the severe effects we know about. I don’t know how to compare those risks.
- pfdietz 4y agoThe point is that the effects of CO2 are so dire that even a very problematic half measure could be worthwhile. OF COURSE CO2 emissions should also be addressed; these efforts are just to emphasize how serious the problem is, that one would rationally have to consider such steps.
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- fredley 4y agoIf we dim the sun, the brakes are off for burning fossil fuels, especially as yields from solar will decrease. Great news if you're in the fossil fuel business, bad news if the side effects of burning fossil fuels besides the carbon emissions bother you. In particular, ecosystem/habitat destruction would only be amplified by the dimming.
- pfdietz 4y agoExcept, you know, for the change in distribution of temperature with latitude, and changes in precipitation patterns, and acidification of the ocean. And the aerosols will change the color of the sky. The sun will be surrounded by a bilious corona of scattered light. But all that is still better than unaddressed CO2 emission. The decrease in solar yield will be quite modest. Your argument is like "discovering imperfect treatments for lung cancer just encourages smoking."
- moffkalast 4y ago> "discovering imperfect treatments for lung cancer just encourages smoking" Well yes, it does? The better the treatment the less reason to avoid it.
- pfdietz 4y agoThe monstrous part is then saying we shouldn't look for lung cancer treatments.
- moffkalast 4y agoEh not necessarily. Not all lung cancers are caused by smoking, nor is it the only thing influencing the decision. I'd imagine the ever increasing prices of cigarettes and a ban from smoking in public places play a larger role in discouraging it.
- xrayarx 4y agoQuote: it would cost Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest man, far less to fund such a mission than it did to buy Twitter—and he’s already got the rockets
- waltbosz 4y agoI find it really interesting that today there are individuals who are able to fund projects that previously took the resources of an entire country to fund. It's got to be the invention of the Internet that has made this individual wealth accumulation possible. Also, I'd like to see a list of all the suggestions that people have made for a better use of Musk's money than to buy Twitter.
- fasteo 4y ago>>> Dimming the sun What could possibly go wrong?
- devnull255 4y agoWasn't it this kind of desperation that led to the apocalyptic conditions of "Snow Piercer" ?
- pfdietz 4y agoThis may come as surprise, but "the argument from science fiction" is not actually valid. For example, it's probably not realistic to have FTL spaceships.
- tamaharbor 4y agoWasn’t this a Simpsons episode? Montgomery Burns wanted to block out the sun to discourage solar power use.
- waltbosz 4y agoWho Shot Mr. Burns? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Shot_Mr._Burns%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Shot_Mr._Burns%3F
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky".
- fourseventy 4y agoFor real. Sounds like a good way to accidentally kill ourselves
- sliken 4y agoBy replicating what volcanoes have doing since ... the earth was formed?
- ASalazarMX 4y agoLet's hope volcanoes (or a a supervolcano) don't accidentally add to the effect then.
- sliken 4y agoThe impact is relative short. So sure maybe we'd engineer 1.0 C and a volcano would add 1.0C. So glaciers would start growing instead of shrinking, rain patterns would return to norms from recent history. The south pole would stabilize, and the major ocean currents would get healthier. I wouldn't expect anything too major though. Sure if it's bad enough we'd stop adding sulfer and wait for the temp increases to resume.
- User23 4y agoAn increase in ice caps can increase the Earth’s albedo and start a runaway cooling effect. Mass glaciation is a very real possibility. Most people don’t understand that we’re still in the Quaternary ice age. This is simply an interglacial period. Key geological requirements for mass glaciation continue to hold. The two big ones being the existence of a sufficiently large polar continent and multiple oceans, as opposed to a single large ocean such as during the Pangea period.
- aa-jv 4y agoWhatever we do to protect the Earth, can be turned against us to destroy it, too. Before we develop the technology to do this earth-cooling properly, we need to establish the ethics to make sure it is done properly. Too often we technologists invent something that changes the world for the better, only to have it weaponised to make the world worse. I sure hope the space nerds are aware of this cold, hard fact.
- bamboozled 4y agoGeez, it would've been good if we cooled it on the burning of fossil fuels, 50 years ago. Bit late now.
- yreg 4y agoIn addition to all the other popculture references in this thread, there is a book about a billionaire doing this, it came out last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) Written by Stephenson (Blue Origin, Cryptonomicon, …)
- tgvaughan 4y agoNot mentioned in the article, but sulphur-based geoengineering was the focus of Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Termination Shock.
- vt85 4y ago
- AbrahamParangi 4y agoWhy on earth would anyone think a cooler but darker Earth is less of a catastrophic ecosystem change? This is so wrongheaded that I’m actually wondering if this story was pitched by some group that wants to smear geoengineering. I mean, geoengineering has a lot of ideas in it that are (while still out there) much less viscerally horrifying than blotting out the sun.
- pfdietz 4y agoIt would be a slightly darker earth. The net warming from CO2 addition is a few watts/m^2. Insolation is something shy of two orders of magnitude higher. Dimming sunlight by a few percent is not a large change.
- SomeBoolshit 4y agoI'm gonna wait until we're sure about the effect on every living organism on earth.
- pfdietz 4y agoBecause that same standard is being applied to CO2 emission, right? What a double standard you have.
- AbrahamParangi 4y agoWhy would you consider a few percent of sunlight change to be meaningless whereas a few degrees (a smaller percent, temp should be considered in Kelvin) is extremely meaningful?
- pfdietz 4y agoWhy should I not? I'm at a loss to understand why you think you're making a good argument there. There are far larger changes in insolation over the day and over seasons. Life is obviously less sensitive to these flucuations, than life would be to changes in temperature.
- bwi4 4y agoCan’t find the sauce, but MIT published a concept study about putting giant Mylar balloons at the L1 LaGrange point to reflect solar radiation as an alternative to aerosols.
- samizdis 4y agoA slight tangent, but there was an interesting experiment by Russia in the 1990s that involved solar reflectors on satellites to shine more light on the Earth. See Znamya (satellite): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite)
- throwaway71271 4y agojust in time for GPT4
- hmate9 4y agoLooks like men would rather dim the sun first than invest in nuclear energy. Sounds great.
- jaggs 4y agoWhat's worrying is that these stupid suggestions keep popping up all over the place. It's as if there's now a concerted effort to push geo-engineering on a wider level. I wonder why? Could it be money, and the fossil fuel industry trying to muddy the issues?
- occamrazor 4y agoGeoengineering is our plan B, or even plan C. It’s a bad solution, but I guess it’s good to have it ready in a drawer if things start going really wrong.
- jaggs 4y agoI hear what you're saying. But it's more than just a bad solution, it's not a solution. It doesn't fix the core issue, which is too many Co2e emissions. Unless and until we address that, we're going nowhere long term.
- gedy 4y agoThinking aloud, I wonder how feasible a mechanical shield at the Sun/Earth L1 spot could be? Seems more adjustable and less risky than atmospheric manipulation.
- pjc50 4y agoIn this thread, nobody seems to understand the concept of "slightly". There is a dimming effect every time there is a sufficiently large volcanic eruption. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-dimming-volcanoes-partly-explain-global-warming-hiatus/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-dimming-volca... This effect is slight - not visibly apparent, you'd have to use instruments to detect it. That would also apply to solar panels. But this is the same effect as global warming in reverse. If we have a top-of-atmosphere insolation of, say, 1300W/m2, and an emission of 1299W/m2 (not exact numbers), that will cause warming. If we add reflection, can we get those numbers to balance once more? And note that this stuff will fall out of the atmosphere over a period of time. It would be an ongoing expense to do. I don't see it likely to happen, on sheer cost grounds. An alternative slightly more long-term plan would be a solar shade at a Lagrange point. Could even be used for space solar power, although at this point we're into deep science fiction. The Mars trilogy posited a solar Fresnel lens which would be used to warm Mars.
- pfdietz 4y ago> not visibly apparent In fact it was quite visible. I remember how odd the sun looked during that time. > I don't see it likely to happen, on sheer cost grounds. The cost appears to be one of the things in its favor.
- pencilguin 4y agoGaslighting unwelcome. It would be disastrous if a program in any way like this went ahead, because it would be seen as a substitute for fixing the root problem, would steal funding from the latter, and would do nothing to stop the ocean acidification that threatens the roots of the global ocean ecosystem.
- ASalazarMX 4y agoPrecisely. It's like installing plumbing to divert a roof leak instead of fixing the leak. "But we would have extra water from the leak!".
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- nickelcitymario 4y agoSerious but potentially seriously stupid question: If clouds cool the earth, and we have a fresh water shortage, what if we boil the oceans? Hear me out. What if we had large floating barges of dark surfaces floating in hot areas. And what if we set it up so the dark surface was just an inch under water. Wouldn't this cause the sun to evaporate more water than it normally would, thereby increasing clouds in the sky, and potentially addressing two climate issues at once? There's probably a million reasons why that's stupid, but I can't think of them at the moment. Seems like a simple solution to a complex problem.
- pjc50 4y agoLow-atmosphere cloud causes more warming than reflection. The positive feedback loop between increased surface temperature and increased evaporation is part of IPCC modelling; the term you want is "radiative forcing". If you want a ground solution, there's surprising value in painting roofs white and selecting light colored road surfaces. I believe there's even a material which is calculated to radiate in the less-absorbed bands, so it can have a positive cooling effect.
- nickelcitymario 4y agoThanks for this response, by the way! I forgot to reply. This was really helpful.
- robomartin 4y agoThe hubris in the climate change cult --because that is what it has become-- never ceases to both amaze and horrify me. Unbelievable. I have said this here many times. If we continue to listen to these brainwashed cult members we are going to succeed at killing everything on this planet. In a rational world, anyone proposing to control planetary-scale phenomena should be laughed off the stage. This cult has gained foothold in powerful political circles. This drives billions (hundreds of billions?) of dollars for research and general-purpose nonsense. The greedy among us (universities and private enterprise) jump on that bandwagon and promote the nonsense because it makes them millions of dollars. It's a horrific positive feedback loop with potentially devastating consequences. The sad part is we are wasting time and obscene amounts of money that could be put to work on the reality of climate change, rather than the fantasies they continue to erect to keep the money machine going. NOTE: In a rational world you should be able to get just as much funding from government to disprove or counter these hairbrained schemes. How much of that funding you think is available? Zero. Therefore, if you depend on research funding to make a living or a university depends on it to keep a department funded, guess what your conclusions are going to say, every, fucking, time? Today, if you are a researcher or a business and dare go against what the cult has decreed to be "The One and Only Truth", your career is over and your business is going bankrupt. That should make everyone take pause. This is nothing less than Orwellian.
- BiggsHoson 4y agoBrilliantly put.
- robomartin 4y agoIt really bugs me that people don't realize research funding is only available if you say what they want you to say. That should be a red flag of massive proportions. Science isn't made this way. One could argue in science it is essential to fund and support every reasonable effort to discover holes in hypothesis. We don't do that, at all. Good news is that it is very difficult to go-up against reality. Eventually physics wins, brutally so. The closest I have seen to a refutation of climate change dogma is a private paper by Google Research dating back to 2014. That's right, we have understood some very important things about this issue since at least 2014...yet nobody talks about it and, much worse, none of this research is funded. They are looking for one, and only one, conclusion. https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/43326.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-... There are other realities that, once again, are brutally hard to avoid. For example, if tomorrow all of the US and China were to evaporate from this planet atmospheric CO2 would continue to increase. No effort to control this can produce a rate of change higher than about 100 ppm in 50K to 100K years. That's not a guess. We have known this for decades. All you have to do is analyze atmospheric CO2 ice-core sample data going back 800K years to reach this very simple conclusion.
- ambientenv 4y agoI wish I could recall (or find) the precise quote, but I do believe it was Mark Twain that said something like, "we are destined to outsmart ourselves.". No doubt we are a clever and creative species willing to tackle the thorniest of challenges. Except when it comes to changing beliefs and behaviours. With so much of climate change mitigation, we appear unwilling to change values and expectations, beliefs and behaviours. To drop our feelings of deservedness (especially relative to comfort and convenience and consumption) and to let go of human exceptionalism. No amount of extraordinary engineering will do as much for humanity as developing a reverence for the natural world and all that is in it rather than continue to hold values based on extraction and exploitation. We have a history of bad choices when meddling with nature [1]. I suspect there have been some successes, too, but we largely remain ignorant, to a grand degree, of the interconnectedness and dynamics of most natural systems and ecosystems. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/22/what-happens-when-humans-meddle-with-nature-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/22/what-hap...
- kytazo 4y agoSorry, who has such an authority over the entire globe? Totally ridiculous if you ask me... Some people trying to play god or w/e but they're not alone in the room.
- mikedelago 4y agoWhy is it always a plan straight out of sci-fi rather than "yeah we'll use a mix of renewable and nuclear energies, heavily reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and create combustible fuels from renewable resources". Obviously this plan is hard but is it harder than dimming the sun? the fucking SUN? - is dimming the sun reliable? - can the sun get too dim? What happens when a volcano erupts, dimming the sun's effect even more? - Will we ever need to reduce the amount of sulfur in that atmosphere? how do we do that? - How do we globally coordinate throwing sulfur into the atmosphere when we can't globally coordinate management of climate change? - Does this help with air pollution in any way? I want investment into the reasonable solutions to climate change that already exist. Telling the Koch family "Oh no, we can fill the atmosphere with sulfur and you can continue to dump garbage into the sky for 30 years" is laughable and it basically means that nothing but increased air pollution is going to happen for 30 years. I'm not trying to be such a downer on this plan, and if it can safely and effectively help curb/reverse some of the effects of climate change that's incredible. That said, we already have decades of research and billions of dollars invested into much more feasible methods to help curb climate change, and I can't really see why the top polluting countries of the world would start geoengineering when they haven't started implementing policies for the things that we know for sure work.
- beardyw 4y agoReading elsewhere talks about using huge solar arrays to collect energy. Perhaps they would also block out some sun?
- xavor 4y agoIt should be brighten the inhabitants to cool the planet