[HN Gopher] MIT researchers propose Brazil-sized fleet of "space...
___________________________________________________________________
MIT researchers propose Brazil-sized fleet of "space bubbles" to
cool the Earth
Author : excalibur
Score : 155 points
Date : 2022-06-29 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.freethink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.freethink.com)
| charliea0 wrote:
| Seems like the key consideration is the mass of the bubbles. If
| they are light enough then this could be feasible.
| charliea0 wrote:
| By comparison, direct air capture of CO2 costs something like
| $600/ton. At 40 billion tons of global CO2 emitted per year it
| could cost 24 trillion per year to remove current emissions.
|
| That said, I would bet there's better economies of scale /
| ability to innovate lower cost zero-carbon energy sources with
| direct air capture rather than a giant space project.
| ncmncm wrote:
| And, removing carbon delays global catastrophe, while space
| bubbles bring it sooner.
| charliea0 wrote:
| My napkin math is that a bubble with a shadow the size of
| Brazil and made out of graphene weighing 0.77 mg per square
| meter would weigh about 25 million kg. Using multiple smaller
| bubbles could reduce this by at most a factor of four.
|
| At a cost of $1,000-$10,000 per kg it seems possible to get
| this to space with a total cost on the order of hundreds of
| billions of dollars.
|
| You could do a estimate of the graphene itself but I think the
| cost would be similar.
| [deleted]
| ncmncm wrote:
| Disaster is disaster, however much money you save.
|
| Civilization collapse is cheapest of all, but has perhaps
| undesired side effects.
|
| Every bit of money and attention spent on this or any other
| "shade the earth" scheme just brings collapse nearer.
| eloff wrote:
| This is a solution for climate change that's been tossed around
| for a while in various forms.
|
| I think it may just be one of the most viable thanks to SpaceX
| bringing down the cost of space launch. With starship this might
| just be one of the cheapest solutions. Certainty cheaper than
| building seawalls around all our coastal cities - something that
| no reduction in emissions will save us from now.
|
| To be clear, we have to reduce emissions, but it's obvious now to
| me that it will be too little, too late. We'll need something
| more radical as well. Currently emissions are still increasing
| and the rate of emissions is even accelerating still. We're
| pretty fucked overa long time span.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Each dollar spent on window dressing is a dollar that cannot be
| spent on the actual problem.
|
| But disaster comes on just as fast, however much you make it
| look like it is not.
|
| Blocking sunlight, by whatever means, is a disastrously bad
| idea.
| cletus wrote:
| Eventually we're going to have to reduce the sunlight hitting the
| Earth because the Sun is getting ~6% hotter every billion years
| [1]. The Earth is set to become uninhabitable in ~1.6 billion
| years [2] because of it.
|
| Here's what I think will actually make sense: put space orbitals
| and power collectors at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point (roughly
| 1.5M km from Earth). This is readily accessible in terms of
| planetary distances, will involve minimal communication delay
| with Earth and if you build enough of them you can reduce the
| solar output hitting the Earth however much you want with little
| to no visible impact from Earth.
|
| [1]: https://usm.maine.edu/planet/sun-getting-hotter-if-so-why-
| wi...
|
| [2]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/weve-
| got-15-billio...
| philipswood wrote:
| Why does everyone want these at L1?
|
| The first time I saw the plans for the Starlink fleet I started
| wondering if you could use a fleet of satellites to manage
| incoming solar radiation:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18474244
|
| Maybe more an idea for a science fiction novel than a serious
| plan, but I like the sound of it.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Great, do that a million years from now, instead of distracting
| us from work to prevent imminent global catastrophe.
| artingent wrote:
| Given that we've already crossed the point-of-no-return, I think
| some form of geo-engineering is the only way to prevent rising
| sea-levels, inhabitable conditions and human extinction. But I
| hope there's a way to do some sort of controlled experimentation
| first before committing to a "solution" and statements like this
| aren't very comforting: "Once those aerosols were released,
| though, we wouldn't have a straightforward way to recapture them
| if the plan didn't work or had unforeseen negative consequences."
| [deleted]
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Cool. A big umbrella for earth !
| myshpa wrote:
| Maybe we should stop searching for solutions in outer space and
| look for solutions already existing and proven. Plants "geo-
| engineered" the planet once and could do it again.
|
| Animal husbandry is one of the main culprits of global warming,
| pandemics, deforestation, ocean pollution, world hunger,
| destruction of ecosystems, continuous extinctions, and much more.
| That's the fact.
|
| With stopping "the burning machine" and also "the killing
| machine", we could reforest most of our agriculture lands (more
| than double our forested lands) and solve all this problems in
| one go.
|
| It's THE HACK we need.
|
| https://climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-po...
|
| tldr: https://climatehealers.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/09/Climat...
|
| P.S. If you live in Europe and would like to support two days old
| initiative "End the Slaughter Age" to transfer animal ag.
| subsidies to alt-protein (plant-based & cultivated meat/dairy),
| read more & sign at
| https://eci.ec.europa.eu/025/public/#/screen/home and
| https://www.endtheslaughterage.eu/
| undert0wn wrote:
| Why not add solar cells and capture energy to power satellites or
| other space vehicles?
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Curious, I couldn't find any information on how to make bubbles
| in space. I assume it will need compressed gas from Earth? Did
| they determine how much gas? The actual MIT website is fancy, but
| lacks specifics.
| undersuit wrote:
| A gas will fill the container it is in. The pressure of these
| bubbles would be very low, maybe just enough to counter the
| gravity of the balloon.
| intrasight wrote:
| I had pitched a similar idea here on HN a few years ago, and
| have recently done some more design. Rather than "bubbles", I
| would have a robot go capture metallic asteroids, and use them
| as the raw material to build a sun screen. I personally cannot
| think of any viable alternative to building some kind of sun
| screen at L1.
|
| My new design envisions a robot spider which basically weaves a
| web.
| ncmncm wrote:
| A disastrously bad idea by any other means remains a
| disastrously bad idea.
| intrasight wrote:
| Alternative?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Build out renewables. Displace fossil fuel burning.
| Unblock capital for building out renewables. Stop
| subsidizing fossil fuel extraction. Tax fossil fuel
| extraction _and_ burning, and use the money to subsidize
| build-out. Outlaw fossil fuel burning where taxes would
| not suffice.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Amazing how what we will consider so we don't give up fossil
| fuels.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Fossil fuels aren't going to be given up even remotely soon.
| They'll still be in use a century from now... because the
| alternative is pre-civilization, and nobody's going to go for
| that. Nobody. Billionaires are definitely not giving up their
| private jets, their 300 foot yachts filled with Russian whores,
| and their 15,000 square foot mansions that show just how grand
| and powerful they are.
|
| _Normal_ people aren 't giving up their 70 degree indoor air
| conditioning in the middle of Florida, Texas, or California
| summers of 100+ degrees, either. You know what else us normal
| people aren't going to give up? Going to the store and getting
| a ribeye steak.
|
| Technology is going to have to come up with solutions that we
| can live with, and we're going to have to accept some of the
| negatives of climate change. Period, end of story. Rich people
| aren't going to voluntarily suffer. And most of the Western
| world is "rich".
| spockz wrote:
| At this point it isn't about giving up fossil fuels anymore and
| more about acting to revert the damage already done. We appear
| to already be to late to prevent the 1.5degree global warming
| and even 2.5 which could cause a runaway effect. The only
| viable option is to let less energy hit the earth.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Making "less energy hit the earth" brings on disaster just
| that much more quickly.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| That is because giving up fossil fuels is very difficult.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "How did you give up fossil fuels?"
|
| "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
| baggy_trough wrote:
| A fossil fuels bankruptcy is not in the cards.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Collapse of civilization will sharply reduce CO2 output,
| with some side effects.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Yes it would, but that's not in the cards either.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is, if not very deliberately prevented. Distraction
| from what must be done only brings disaster nearer.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I believe that is very unlikely indeed.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Disaster is always the easiest course. If you don't
| believe it, just shut your eyes driving on the freeway.
| Please.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I'd love to know the mechanism because I just don't see
| that. And leave out the death wishes if you are capable.
| parkingrift wrote:
| Planet scale geoengineering that may or may not be possible with
| existing or near technology.
|
| Or
|
| Just blast sulfur, calcium carbonate, or some other particles
| into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight. Elon Musk could do
| this by himself. Single digit billions with technology we've
| perfected decades ago.
|
| Waiting patiently for a a majority of people to realize it's the
| only realistic path to buy us enough time to transition to
| renewables.
| status200 wrote:
| The article mentions the fatal flaw with the particle
| technique, but may I request your source that leads you to
| believe that we have "perfected" deploying particles in our
| atmosphere on a global scale?
|
| Also, please don't give Elon any ideas, he already has enough
| futile showboats.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It utterly fails to mention the fatal flaw of both schemes.
| Neither addresses the problem, which then carries on until
| the ocean ecosystem, thence civilization, collapses.
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| It's scary how little you think about the unintended
| consequences of messing with a complex system like that.
|
| This truly is horrible reductionism ala "it will be fine,
| NOTHING will go wrong, TRUST me".
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| The article address that a bit, bubbles are safer and
| reversible if needed. The particle injection is not reversible.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Bubbles are not safe. Reversing it partway is far worse than
| not starting. Even starting would be disastrous, to the exact
| extent it distracted from doing something that works.
|
| We know what works: cut CO2 emission. Nothing else does.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Blocking or reflecting sunlight does not seem like a great path
| forward for wind or solar energy, considering that both require
| that sunlight that's being blocked. Hydroelectric, nuclear,
| geothermal, maybe. Until we get a nice little ice age and the
| water freezes too much. Maybe a better solution here would be
| to just accept that civilization as we know it needs to adapt
| rather than forcing the entire planetary ecosphere to adapt
| around us.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I always said climate change would not do us in as the 'Geo-
| engineering' zealots would beat it to the punch for the price of
| a few publications and a fistful of VC spin-out capital.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| The article suggests that the bubbles are reversible if
| something does go wrong, and one of the safer options out there
| for reducing the amount of energy that is being captured by the
| atmosphere. It seems pretty hopeful to me, which is what we
| need right now. The climate trauma is intense these days. This
| is hope.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Reversing it at that point would make things radically worse.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Human civilization could collapse to the point where we lose
| space exploration, then we're stuck with some space bubbles
| limiting how much sunlight the planet gets. As effects of
| climate change wear off, we are slowly plunged into an eternal,
| global ice age. All life on earth is exterminated, save for
| some most resilient microorganisms.
| marshray wrote:
| Make them so that they automatically pop after a time unless
| they regularly receive a command from earth.
| ncmncm wrote:
| On the plus side, even attempting it guarantees civilization
| collapse. So there's that.
| NortySpock wrote:
| The proposed location for this space bubble system, Earth-Sun
| Lagrange Point 1, is gravitationally unstable.
|
| Any device located there must actively maintain its location
| , using calculated thruster firings, generally on the order
| of months, or it will drift out of position in less than a
| year.
|
| So we're safe from that scenario. If the satellite loses
| power, it will just drift out of our line of site of the sun.
| No intervention required.
|
| Other active spacecraft located at L1: NOAA's DSCOVR climate
| observatory, and NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer
|
| Edited to add a visualization of the ACE spacecraft L1 orbit:
| https://izw1.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/DATA/browse-
| html/gse_color....
| mrfusion wrote:
| We should consider using this on Venus or mercury.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| It's been considered
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtTLj0E9ODc
| malikNF wrote:
| I think the only reason this idea is getting posted all over the
| internet is because someone at MIT decided to propose this. Whole
| thing sounds like someone trying to fix a badly written, buggy,
| slow program by adding more ram.
|
| We need to fix the root of the problem, we need to find
| sustainable alternatives to energy production, protect natural
| ecosystems, find sustainable ways to make use of resources, not
| put some god damn sunroof over our heads and get an extension on
| dealing with this problem.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes: creating shade instead of removing carbon means the ocean
| ecosystem collapses, and access to protein for a billion+
| people vanishes. Among other things.
|
| We cannot "do both" because money is fungible. Spending on a
| space boondoggle means not spending those dollars on PV and
| wind generating capacity that displaces fossil combustion.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| We need both since climate change has already advanced too much
| for comfort.
| [deleted]
| lesstyzing wrote:
| Why can't we do both? We clearly need more time so why not try
| to get it if we can while still also trying to deal with the
| root causes?
| zwilliamson wrote:
| Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson covers this topic well via
| some insightful sci-fi story telling. I think his concept of a
| sulfur cannon(s) is more realistic and likely to be implemented
| in near future.
| jpindar wrote:
| It's also a fail-safe solution since we could stop sending up
| more sulfur as soon as any unintended consequences were
| noticed.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It would bring global climate catastrophe that much closer.
|
| And, the moment you stop, things get much worse much faster.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| I don't see anywhere in the article what they would do about
| micrometeoroids?
|
| At what rate would they expect bubbles to get punctured? Would
| those punctures result in movements as the trapped gas escapes?
|
| The JSTW at L2 has already been hit by 4 as of June 11th [0]. Are
| we expecting fewer at L1?
|
| [0]:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2022/06/11/th...
| brokencode wrote:
| What happens if you set this up and then something (like a comet
| or asteroid) suddenly knocks those bubbles out of L1?
|
| I assume that Earth would heat up more rapidly than ever in human
| history. This would be especially bad if we keep on emitting vast
| quantities of greenhouse gasses in the meantime.
|
| Seems like a misguided idea to me, and one which wouldn't solve
| the root cause of our climate problems.
| troutwine wrote:
| In a crisis the name of the game is triage: solve enough
| incidental problems to buy yourself time to deal with
| systematic issues. This proposal, ignoring whether it's
| suitable or not, appears to be squarely in triage territory.
| ncmncm wrote:
| No, it is strictly disastrous. There is no possible desirable
| outcome.
|
| Unless you really like the idea of ocean ecosystem collapse.
| troutwine wrote:
| I think you might be responding to something I didn't
| write. I was trying to draw attention to the distinction
| between triage and the projects that go into triage versus
| work that addresses issues systematically. The GP's comment
| correctly noted that the idea under discussion doesn't
| necessarily address the systematic problem at hand, which
| is true, but that doesn't mean that triage is not valuable.
| I also specifically said that the proposed bubbles in space
| idea may or may not be viable; it's irrelevant to the point
| I was making.
| ncmncm wrote:
| A "triage" response that makes the situation strictly
| worse is no triage at all. It is just more harm piled on
| top.
| troutwine wrote:
| Right, well, like I said the merits of this particular
| idea are outside the scope of what I was trying to get
| at.
| civilized wrote:
| I understand people's concerns about this, but I think we need to
| get real here.
|
| This is what the world's yearly CO2 emissions look like:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...
|
| For us to not fry the planet, this graph needs to start going
| down. _Fast._ And it needs to go into _negative_ territory.
|
| Now look at what's happening in the world today. Russia invades
| Ukraine. Gas and oil supplies get disrupted. Now inflation is
| running rampant, the people of the developed world are angry, and
| their leaders are desperately looking for fossil fuels to keep
| their economies moving. They're decommissioning nuclear plants
| and bringing _coal_ plants back online. Biden wants to kill the
| gas tax to keep from getting swamped in November. Meanwhile,
| China and India are being flooded with cheap Russian oil.
|
| Does this sound like a world that is moving in the right
| direction to imminently push that emissions curve way down?
|
| Pie-in-the-sky moralizing about what humanity _should_ do does
| not keep the planet from frying. Let 's consider other options
| and accept some risk in exchange for the opportunity to avoid a
| looming, inevitable catastrophe.
| sjtindell wrote:
| There is no centralized way to drive that change on the needed
| scale. Most humans don't even view what we're doing in
| civilization as shared project, let alone agree that this is
| required to protect it. I think they fundamentally lack the
| abstract thinking required. They won't change until they feel
| the pain themselves. A poor fit for an abstract, not quite
| "here yet" problem. In the United States we can't even get them
| to agree it's a problem at all. But I think once we are
| collectively feeling the pain, solutions will be swift and
| surprising.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Your "other option" means certain disaster, sooner.
|
| We already know what to do: build out renewables. Tax and
| otherwise cut burning fossil fuels. Renewables are already
| radically cheaper than any energy source ever devised, so the
| faster they are built out, the cheaper it gets.
|
| Anything else is a dangerous distraction. Any big enough
| distraction is disastrous.
| civilized wrote:
| > Your "other option" means certain disaster, sooner.
|
| I see no evidence or reason to believe this at all, let alone
| with such extreme certitude. Shouldn't we try harder to have
| a realistic scientific assessment?
|
| > We already know what to do
|
| But it's not happening and it isn't going to happen. That
| means your plan doesn't work. That means that, however well-
| intentioned you are, your plan is do nothing and fry the
| planet.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It _is_ happening, just not fast enough. Renewables are
| already cheaper than anything else. Building out more saves
| money. Only social inertia slows it. Distraction adds to
| inertia.
|
| Doing things to increase inertia makes things worse.
| Distracting people with pies in skies makes things worse.
|
| The planet fries, regardless, if CO2 is not brought down.
| Fooling around with anything that does not brings
| catastrophe nearer.
| civilized wrote:
| > Only social inertia slows it. Distraction adds to
| inertia.
|
| I don't buy the armchair social psychology here. People
| think they are much, much better at predicting how the
| population will react to things than they actually are.
| This led to a lot of terrible decisions during the
| pandemic, like telling people masks don't work on the
| baseless folk theory that wearing masks would cause
| people to take more risks. That theory, by the way, was
| very similar to the one you're advancing with such
| certitude.
|
| We are moving too slowly to avert potentially
| catastrophic climate change. The armchair theory that,
| somehow, not buying more time with geoengineering will
| somehow... I don't know, somehow cause people to be more
| focused and move faster?... is barely believable even as
| a folk theory, but on top of that, is very clearly not
| coming to pass. Look around at what's happening in the
| world.
|
| We need to get real.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Getting real means displacing CO2 production.
|
| Anything that fails to displace CO2 production is, at
| best, wankage. Anything that steals capital from
| displacing CO2 production is much worse.
| civilized wrote:
| You're just layering folk theory upon folk theory with
| baseless, utter confidence. This is not the sort of
| problem we can just bluff our way through with gut
| feelings. We need to consider the options in a
| comprehensive, systematic, thoughtful, scientific
| fashion.
| ncmncm wrote:
| A comprehensive, systematic, thoughtful, scientific
| fashion that _displaces CO2-emitting processes_.
|
| Fail to displace CO2 emission, and it is all just so much
| hot air.
| cmarschner wrote:
| Guess what happens if they decide to build that fleet of space
| bubbles: Hooray we can just continue what we were doing. Let's
| burn more oil! Let's build bigger cars! Party!
| theptip wrote:
| I always find this viewpoint perplexing. Isn't continuing to
| do the things we want to do a good thing?
|
| These things are not bad in and of themselves, they are bad
| because of their externalities.
|
| If we can find a way to offset the negative effects of
| burning coal, that's great; it means poor countries can spend
| more GDP on healthcare and education, and less on upgrading
| to clean power.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes. Even imagining it would work brings disaster closer.
| lukeplato wrote:
| Or we develop a way to regulate incoming sunlight while
| continuing the (slow) migration off fossil fuels and
| developing better carbon capture tech
| dorgo wrote:
| Global warming is the primary, if not the only, reason for an
| expensive transition to renewables. If global warming is
| stopped/reversed then there is no reason to not to burn more
| oil, is there? I don't like it, but I won't argue against
| fossil fuels with abstract moral reasons.
| civilized wrote:
| Cynicism feels wise but sometimes it isn't.
| cebu wrote:
| How comparable was getting an mRNA vaccine to market in a year to
| these type of geoengineering moonshots?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| What impact might this have on astronomers both professional and
| amateur? _Thinking about recent Starlink complaints_
| tgv wrote:
| Most probably don't look at the Sun. And TBH, if it would be a
| really great idea, I wouldn't care about astronomy.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I cannot believe that there is not a single critical comment yet
| from supposed logical HN programmers.
|
| Maybe we don't know how to engineer the earth and we should just
| focus on terrestrial efforts before we die from HUBRIS of
| something this drastic.
|
| jeeze.... that don't look up movie had it right.
| mhh__ wrote:
| You can't read very well then. I see at least a few with a time
| stamp older than yours
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Terrestrial efforts are just as drastic if not more. What makes
| this hubris but not those?
| ttiurani wrote:
| Reminder that the problem isn't just "too much GHG", but crossing
| most planetary boundaries[1] at the same time.
|
| I get why MIT has done the research, but this publicity is poised
| to create yet another distraction and delay necessary actions. We
| have to stop focusing on the symptoms and have the courage to go
| after the root causes.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
| conductr wrote:
| What if you think that collective human courage is not even
| feasible? I'd venture to say it's naive to even believe we're
| able to restrict ourselves to the magnitude required. Even if
| one country found a solution, they'd have no control to exert
| it on other countries and it would almost certainly come with
| massive switching costs or limitations. Humans have too many
| tribal motives and politics to support a single cause like
| this.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| yes restraint against structures is impossible, but if you
| change the structures to be still beneficial for humans and
| sustainable, thus not requiring restraint, youre good
| conductr wrote:
| That's not really a strategy or even a tactic. It's a
| dream. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.
| jahnu wrote:
| Not to mention the effects on our ability to think as CO2 goes
| up.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Fortunately that is already evidently nil, in aggregate.
| hiidrew wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this wiki article, I found it fascinating to
| skim.
| kbenson wrote:
| > this publicity is poised to create yet another distraction
| and delay necessary actions.
|
| More knowledge and options are always better. It's up to the
| people we've chosen to lead us to actually choose an option and
| follow through, and I don't think one more option there is
| really what's preventing that.
|
| Preventing more options from being presented is just a way to
| attempt to control the populace by restricting information.
| Necessary action won't be taken unless there's strong
| leadership willing to make it a priority, and there's already
| enough options on the table that whether none or 100 new ones
| pop up, it makes no functional difference to getting started
| seriously, but it does possibly allow for a better option to be
| chosen when we do.
| runarberg wrote:
| > It's up to the people we've chosen to lead us to actually
| choose an option and follow through
|
| So far this strategy has consistently lead to complete and
| resounding inaction. The stronger the leadership the more
| likely we are in actually going in the opposite direction
| (see e.g. Businaro in Brazil or Trump in the USA).
|
| More options have also shown to be a major distraction at
| best and actively damaging at worst. Take carbon offsets as
| an example of an option which actively hinders climate
| action.
|
| What climate justice activists have consistently been calling
| for since at least COP 15 in Copenhagen 2009 is International
| agreements, carbon tax, and green infrastructure. There has
| always been fierce resistance from polluters in any of these
| three items, and so far the political class has consistently
| cited with the polluters. Then they use distraction policies
| with questionable results (like cap-and-trade, carbon offsets
| or magic bubbles) as an excuse not to enact proven policies.
| guhidalg wrote:
| More options is too simple. I hope you agree there is a
| difference between "Humans cause climate change, we need to
| get rid of humans" and "Humans cause climate change, we need
| to reduce human impact to the planet". Presenting the first
| one is an option that wastes everyone's time.
| henearkr wrote:
| Just for the sake of contradicting you, we (all the Humans)
| could move outside of the biosphere, e.g. on the Moon or
| Mars. That would completely remove our influence on the
| biosphere, the atmosphere, the oceans...
|
| However that would request so much Earth resources to
| launch everybody and everything (and thus would
| definitively destroy the biosphere in the process), that it
| is just not feasible.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Exactly: a distraction, so strictly worse than not
| hearing it.
| henearkr wrote:
| Yes, but there may be a benefit to launch _a part_ of the
| Human world outside of the biosphere, e.g. the most
| polluting industries.
|
| It is worth thinking whether it is a good thing or not
| that a very risky industry (for which an accident could
| be really disastrous) can take place on the Moon.
|
| We can also launch a bare minimum, and then let
| _automated builder robots_ unroll the industry from local
| resources (e.g. lunar silicates, other metals,...).
|
| This can be how huge photovoltaic grids could be built on
| the Moon, for example.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Maybe do that _after_ global catastrophe had been
| averted.
| henearkr wrote:
| Of course we cannot rely on that, because photovoltaic
| facilities built by builder robots would take too much
| time to be of any relevance for the current crisis.
|
| If it is launched now we may be able to use it a few
| decades later.
| ncmncm wrote:
| If it is launched now instead of building out renewables
| as fast as we possibly can, civilization collapses, and
| then it never happens.
| ckastner wrote:
| > _More knowledge and options are always better._
|
| That's not even true in theory. Given a simple problem A,
| when adding more options, at some point, choosing among the
| options requires more effort than solving the simple problem,
| if only by brute force. There's a reason why RDBMS sometimes
| skip indexes.
|
| And in practice, GP is right: with humans, too many options
| eventually only distract from the problem.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Well illustrated by Munroe as always. https://xkcd.com/309/
| ragle wrote:
| > Given a simple problem A, when adding more options, at
| some point, choosing among the options requires more effort
| than solving the simple problem, if only by brute force.
|
| Hick's Law, more or less:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick%27s_law
| niclo wrote:
| But you are considering an increase only in options without
| the increase in knowledge to better evaluate options parent
| is suggesting, and you are putting the constraint that only
| single option at time may be adopted while in reality
| multiple may work in parallel/together just fine.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Given a simple problem A, when adding more options, at
| some point, choosing among the options requires more effort
| than solving the simple problem
|
| Only if you require that every option must be assessed. You
| can always choose a random subset, or the first X entries,
| as use those as the solution space. Additional solutions
| provide for additional strategies in choosing a solution,
| but at any time you can ignore additional solutions and
| treat them as if they don't exist.
|
| > And in practice, GP is right: with humans, too many
| options eventually only distract from the problem.
|
| The whole point of government is to provide a structure
| such that decisions like this can be made be reducing the
| set of people that needs to reach consensus to a manageable
| about. Those people can choose to accept or ignore any
| solution presented, and call on whatever expertise they
| need to make that decision.
|
| The whole idea of there being too many solutions only makes
| sense when you you apply it towards the general public and
| people whose job _isn 't_ to make such a decision or be
| domain experts. Since those people aren't the ones actually
| making the decision, providing too many solutions to the
| problem to them is a non-issue, and for the actual decision
| makers and domain experts they have on call, additional
| solutions are beneficial.
|
| Whether you or I are getting overwhelmed with the possible
| solutions is irrelevant. We aren't ultimately the ones that
| will decide what action to take (at least directly), and we
| aren't the domain experts advising those that will decide
| the plans (or present the ultimately small set of options
| that are valid). At least I don't think so, unless you're a
| domain expert, but even then, your role would just be to
| provide advice (or if you're a politician in charge of
| making this decision, but that's even less likely).
| dllthomas wrote:
| If you're choosing a random subset, then new worse
| options may crowd out existing better options, so it
| remains the case that more options isn't always better.
| roughly wrote:
| > Only if you require that every option must be assessed.
| You can always choose a random subset, or the first X
| entries, as use those as the solution space. Additional
| solutions provide for additional strategies in choosing a
| solution, but at any time you can ignore additional
| solutions and treat them as if they don't exist.
|
| This presumes that options are of equal value, or at the
| least that there are more than N actual viable solutions,
| where N is sufficient to ensure whatever sample size
| you're using includes one of the viable ones. "Ignoring
| additional solutions" presupposes that you know which
| solutions you should ignore and still requires some form
| of assessment of the solution space.
|
| As for the rest - while indeed it is the job of
| government to structure these decisions, recent history
| suggests that the opinions of the broader public still
| play a role in those decisions, that decisions are rarely
| made based purely off their technical merits, and that
| snake-oil salesmen can still do measurable harm to
| decision-making in representative governments.
| kbenson wrote:
| > This presumes that options are of equal value, or at
| the least that there are more than N actual viable
| solutions, where N is sufficient to ensure whatever
| sample size you're using includes one of the viable ones.
|
| That _that_ presumes we 're looking through ideas
| sequentially and thus are actually limited with the
| number of choices we're generally presented with, when
| really it's more akin to mapreduce when assessed at the
| level of leadership and domain experts. Between billions
| of people and thousands of domain experts, I don' think
| we're actually reaching any real limits, given the
| logarithmic nature of filtering good ideas in this way.
| What that means is that in effect there's a pool of
| solutions already filtered for viability and usefulness
| to choose from.
|
| All we're doing by entertaining the idea that we should
| stop looking for and presenting solutions is giving
| people an excuse to prevent ideas they don't agree with
| from being spread to others. The whole idea of one person
| thinking that because they think an idea doesn't have
| merit that others shouldn't see it is itself harmful.
|
| > while indeed it is the job of government to structure
| these decisions, recent history suggests that the
| opinions of the broader public still play a role in those
| decisions, that decisions are rarely made based purely
| off their technical merits, and that snake-oil salesmen
| can still do measurable harm to decision-making in
| representative governments.
|
| There are many possible reasons why we don't see progress
| from our leaders on certain issues. I'm not convinced
| that there being 1000 possible solutions is any worse
| than there being 10. I suspect that the same forces that
| prevent progress work the same in both cases, and if
| we're talking about less than 10 possible solutions, then
| I think we haven't examined the problem well enough. In
| any case, I don't think the problem of there being too
| many solutions and too much information is as obviously
| the problem as others are presenting it, and would want
| to see a real argument presented and defended before I
| would accept it at face value. That's not because I'm
| trying to be overly argumentative, just that as I noted,
| I just don't think it's as obvious a conclusion as others
| seem to.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Only if you require that every option must be assessed._
|
| The point is putting a given option into the public eye
| results in the assessment process being activated.
|
| _...but at any time you can ignore additional solutions
| and treat them as if they don 't exist_
|
| Scientists in the lab can do this, should do this and not
| publish half-baked solutions. Randos reading these ideas
| can't do this given they don't have technical knowledge
| to sort them.
|
| _The whole idea of there being too many solutions only
| makes sense when you you apply it towards the general
| public and people whose job isn 't to make such a
| decision or be domain experts._
|
| We live in a democratic society. If you can bs to some
| number of average people, they may elect people who go
| with the bs and force bs decisions. Especially when doing
| nothing, despite disastrous consequences, serves the
| interests of powerful. This is happening, this is the
| mess we're in. It's frustrating people putting forward a
| delusional idea of the decision process around these
| event. That also doesn't help. IE, no, the decisions
| haven't been and won't be made by unbiased, non-partisan
| actors but rather they have been made by political forces
| in a highly partisan and self-interested fashion. That's
| why we're facing catastrophe (that there's a large fire
| burning a bit North West of me doesn't help my mood
| here).
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's a matter of framing the problem.
|
| If the cause of climate change is heat gain from the sun being
| higher than cooling via radiation to space, then GHG reduction
| works by changing the second part, and partially blocking
| insolation works by changing the first.
| ncmncm wrote:
| ... and brings global catastrophe via ocean ecosystem
| collapse nearer. No. Just no.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| atwood22 wrote:
| Whether or not crossing planetary boundaries is a problem is a
| matter of debate, not a settled fact. If we can treat the side-
| effects of human disruption on the planet, then why is that not
| sufficient?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Because disaster comes on at the same rate as before, but now
| you are not doing anything about it.
| OliverJones wrote:
| 'Cmon. "MIT" didn't propose this. A group of researchers
| affiliated with the Institute proposed this.
|
| It's an idea. Not a budget request. Let's not blow it out of
| proportion.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The space is already filled with ideas and zero action. It's
| annoying that people affiliated with the university are using
| it's name to capture journalists and simply put yet another
| incomplete idea out there.
|
| If this is truly a "life and death" situation as some people
| cast it, then this is less than useless behavior and is
| probably an actively malicious plan to just make money off the
| whole morass.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes. A pernicious distraction. We know what must be done.
| Distractions slow or prevent that.
| kokanator wrote:
| Not the first time MIT has proposed pushing a cloud of debris
| into orbit:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
| cirrus3 wrote:
| [deleted]
| TedShiller wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong?
| salimmadjd wrote:
| We spent $6 trillion on the "War on terror" [0]
|
| We do know we've had mini ice age as a result of "Grand Solar
| Minimum" [1] (in addition to volcanic activities) which means
| reducing the solar output does reduce surface heat.
|
| At this point we need to really focus on taking action an
| approaching this from many facets. As cutting of greenhouse gases
| alone will not work. It requires the entire globe (at least the
| G20) countries to invest in such endeavors.
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-taxpayers-
| spent-8000-each...
|
| [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is-
| no-i...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _At this point we need to really focus on taking action an
| approaching this from many facets._
|
| Right now, we're effectively lying about how much action we're
| taking in just one facet. Adding "many facets" just allows
| those who fail to make hard choices to hide their bullshit in
| more places. Only once there are strong controls on carbon
| emissions could doing other things make sense - not just
| because carbon emissions are the source of the problem but also
| if we allow geoenigeering to be done to the standard of "carbon
| credits" and other worthless hokum, it too will be hokum. We
| need something - a popular political movement, strong
| institutions, a coalition leaders, something - that force this
| stuff 'cause the failure is now and visible.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Anything that is not cutting CO2 input to the atmosphere brings
| global climate catastrophe, civilization collapse, and mass
| extinction nearer.
|
| Dressing up temperature helps not at all, but makes it look
| like something is being done as it steals capital from doing
| anything actually useful.
| excalibur wrote:
| I hate to burst their bubble, but it's unclear how they intend to
| keep their bubbles from bursting prematurely. They could easily
| be popped by space debris, or solar flares, or projectiles
| launched by a rogue state, or just because that's what bubbles
| do.
| sholladay wrote:
| Looks like they are optimizing for having the ability to easily
| destroy the solar shield if, for example, the cooling effect is
| greater than intended. I think that's a wise precaution. If the
| bubbles can also be produced easily, which seems plausible,
| then perhaps losing some of them to harsh conditions won't be
| such a big deal. With reusable rockets becoming a thing,
| replacing them could become more cost effective and simpler as
| time goes on.
| dtx1 wrote:
| Build a bubble machine that constantly replaces popped bubbles
| nomel wrote:
| I wonder if they could use a material that would "dry" or
| "freeze" in the shape of the bubble. Maybe harden from the
| UV.
|
| If the James Webb telescope gives a reasonable indication for
| the amount of stuff floating around these Lagrange points, it
| would be popped around once per month [1]!
|
| 1. Four hits after 5 months:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/06/james-
| we...
| jsty wrote:
| Perhaps it's as simple as "blow another one" - since they
| propose constructing them in space one might keep the
| construction mechanism nearby to replace any that are
| prematurely popped
| beanjuice wrote:
| Space debris, solar flares, and rogue states are issues that
| would impact other solar-shield type solutions (unlike
| popping).
|
| What the bubbles do address immediately is the manufacture of
| something in space with a high planar surface area compared to
| the volume and density (for getting it into space).
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| They are proposing putting the bubbles out at the Earth-Sun L1
| point which is far outside where most of our current satellites
| are. Space debris is not really a concern there and I wouldn't
| put projectiles launched by a rogue state up there (there's
| plenty of closer things they would want to hit first).
|
| There are plenty of inflatable space-based structures that have
| been proposed and some number of them tested (large inflatable
| antennas, inflatable elements to increase drag and bring space
| debris in, inflatable space habitats).
|
| Granted, nothing is even within a few orders of magnitude of
| what they are proposing building so there are certainly still
| technical challenges.
|
| Edit: Another technical challenge is the L1 lagrange point is
| not a stable point, so the bubbles will require some sort of
| control system (i.e. thrusters) to perform small orbit
| adjustments and remain in that spot.
| yupper32 wrote:
| I agree that space debris isn't too much of a concern if they
| have a very large grid of these bubbles. A percentage popping
| over a decade will be calculated in.
|
| But L1 doesn't mean it won't get hit. James Webb has already
| been hit at its point in space.
| piyh wrote:
| Reducing sunlight to slow warming seems like the most desperate
| move with unintended consequences. The planet has evolved for
| billions of years with a constant amount of sunlight. Greenhouse
| gas sequestering is the most direct reaction to a Greenhouse gas
| problem.
| staticassertion wrote:
| One of the main claimed benefits is that this is easily
| reversible, if it goes badly.
| ncmncm wrote:
| If it goes badly, reversing it makes it _even worse_.
|
| And going badly is guaranteed, because CO2 would continue on
| up, and the ocean ecosystem would collapse. There are quite
| dramatic fossil records of such events.
|
| But civilization would collapse first, so there is that.
| daenz wrote:
| Not to mention one of the risks that they mention seems pretty
| disastrous:
|
| >One of the most serious potential risks of solar
| geoengineering is termination shock. If we were to use solar
| geoengineering to suppress global temperatures, but we didn't
| do anything about CO2 emissions, and if for some reason you
| were to stop suddenly, all of the solar geoengineering, then
| those temperatures would suddenly spike back up. And that would
| mean that human and natural systems had less time to adapt to
| the new conditions.
|
| So if it works for awhile, and then for some reason stops
| working, we end up shocking every system on earth. I appreciate
| that the scientists are hammering "we need more research" but I
| don't think we are capable of identifying all of the
| catastrophic failure modes.
| TSiege wrote:
| I think this argument really suffers from the fact that
| aerosols from the burning of fossil fuels is currently
| suppressing the full amount of warming we should be
| experiencing given the composition of the atmosphere. In
| other words, we're already masking some of the warming and as
| we move globally off coal we're going to see warming spike.
|
| Source: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092021/global-
| warming-j...
| daenz wrote:
| It sounds like you're making an argument for slowly
| decreasing the aerosols from fossil fuels, so that we avoid
| the risk of termination shock, rather than an argument for
| adding more risk to termination shock by adding space
| bubbles.
| TSiege wrote:
| My point is that we will have to do some sort of solar
| management given the fact that we are currently doing it
| without even putting any thought into it.
|
| Arguably we are currently experiencing a "termination
| shock" given the move away from coal and other fossil
| fuels to clean energy. But honestly I don't even
| understand what "termination shock" really means. Does it
| matter if removing aerosols happens over the course of a
| decade or a century when the rise itself is the issue,
| not the speed of which it happens. 10 years or 100 years
| is too soon for any ecosystem or species.
| ncmncm wrote:
| False. Soot increases solar absorption. Cutting coal has
| multiple desirable effects.
| ominous_prime wrote:
| Except it hasn't. Solar irradiance has steadily increased over
| _billions of years_ , and fluctuates regularly with the solar
| cycle. I'm not saying that this couldn't have unexpected
| consequences, but you can't start from the premise that solar
| irradiance has always been constant.
| treeman79 wrote:
| It also changes with snow cover. More snow means more
| reflection, meaning cooler temperatures. A reason the Earth
| spends such long periods in ice ages. We are still coming out
| of the last one.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| The net solar flux hasn't changed. What you are talking
| about is increased albedo in specific areas. This is
| lowering solar flux globally. How will this effect
| agriculture? Plant life? Ocean life in twilight zones?
|
| This is radically dangerous, and is only being proposed
| because we refuse let extractive industries die or change
| our lifestyles even slightly.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "This is radically dangerous, and is only being
| proposed because we refuse let extractive industries die
| or change our lifestyles even slightly."
|
| So much exactly this... I hear people talk so much about
| how intelligent and adaptive humans are, and how we're
| sure to survive almost anything because of that
| adaptability and intelligence, but then comes time to
| change something small to _actually adapt_ to a _big deal
| situation_ (like climate change for one example among
| many) and nearly all of humanity bands together to _fight
| against_ even the tiniest change in how we do things,
| because apparently "the way it's always been done" is by
| far the best (even when it's _provably_ wrong or bad). I
| truly hate humanity at this point because of this (among
| many other quite valid reasons I won 't go into here).
| The Universe will be a better place when we're all gone.
| dkn wrote:
| From the perspective of users of solar energy on Earth,
| wouldn't an increase over billions of years appear constant?
| My intuition tells me that evolution is much faster than
| that, and any fluctuations due to solar cycle dynamics would
| already be mitigated as expected by the same process, if it
| is indeed so regular.
| ominous_prime wrote:
| What I was getting as is that you can't start with a false
| claim to make a convincing argument. I didn't see what the
| expected reduction is from the MIT research, but if it
| falls within known effects of the solar cycle, Milankovitch
| cycles, and recorded volcanic activity it's less risky than
| stating that it's a change that the earth has never seen.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Even attempting it is disastrous, either way.
|
| The only winning move is to shut down every attempt at
| such distraction. We know what we must do. The only thing
| remaining is to do that.
| lukeplato wrote:
| Not my area of expertise, can you please share reasoning
| as to why reflecting sunlight is disastrous. also please
| share evidence that attempting multiple strategies is
| guaranteed to lead to failure or is even
| probabilistically worse than only relying on current
| trends of attempting to decrease co2 emissions
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Solar variation is pretty significant and fast.
| Milankovitch cycles are upwards of 10% solar radiation
| change as fast as 5 or 10k years.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
| mritchie712 wrote:
| how long did it take to change in the past though? Seems this
| would cause the change to occur quickly vs. over millions of
| years.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 10-15 % change in radiation over 10k years is pretty common
| for earth.
| runarberg wrote:
| Nuclear winters occur somewhat regularly in earth's
| history, usually after a very large volcano erupted but
| also sometimes after a large asteroid strikes. Unless I'm
| mistaken the last such natural nuclear winter was after the
| Pinatubo eruption in 1991, which caused a small but
| significant global cooling effect of 0.5@C between 1991 and
| 1993.
|
| Volcanoes of the same scale happen around every 50 to 100
| years, but larger ones with more sever global cooling
| effects happen every 1000 or so years. Every 50 000 years
| we can expect a mega-colossal super volcano. The Youngest
| Toba eruption over 70 kya caused a nuclear winter for over
| 5 years with an accompanying cooling which lasted possibly
| for another 1000 years.
|
| Even though these events are natural and happen regularly,
| they are usually devastating for the life on earth, usually
| with several species going extinct as a result. There are
| theories that the Toba eruption almost wiped out all of the
| human races and created a "bottleneck" in our evolution.
|
| So evidence suggests that a quick dimming event range from
| being insignificant to catastrophic for the life on earth.
| There is for sure a reason for caution here.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| That seems on par with claiming global warming is no big deal
| because the earth has been warmer or cooler at some point in
| the past. Those billions of years are irrelevant.
| TSiege wrote:
| RE "constant amount of sunlight", this is actually untrue. The
| suns energy output is increasing roughly 10% per billion years.
| So it's actually never been stronger. It also means that we
| have much less habitable time on earth than we thought
| zaik wrote:
| > 10% per billion years
|
| So it's about 0.000029% more since humans have evolved?
| treeman79 wrote:
| Sea has risen 100 meters in last 20,000 year.
| function_seven wrote:
| An annual sunlight increase of 0.00000001 % is close enough
| to "constant" to make no difference. And I didn't even bother
| with compounding, so the real number is even smaller. It's
| dwarfed by other solar cycles, and those are dwarfed by the
| near-doubling of CO2 in our atmosphere.
|
| I'm not automatically against geo-engineering approaches, but
| we _do_ need to consider them desperate moves compared to the
| reduction of the GHGs
| shallichange wrote:
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Solar luminosity goes up 1% every 100 million years roughly.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Geoengineering in general is a high risk. But one aspect of
| this form of geoengineering, unlike pumping something into the
| atmosphere, is that it can be reversed quickly.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > unlike pumping something into the atmosphere, is that it
| can be reversed quickly
|
| Isn't that a fundamental claim made by those who support
| pumping sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, however?
| That if you stop pumping, it quickly degrades and the
| atmosphere returns to baseline?
| ncmncm wrote:
| No, it means that temperature shoots up even faster than
| before. Meanwhile, the distraction from fixing the root
| cause brings disaster earlier.
| shagie wrote:
| We _did_ do that experiment once before. We grounded the entire
| US air fleet following 9 /11.
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set...
|
| https://www.wired.com/2002/05/hot-on-the-contrails-of-weathe...
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.cl...
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_...
|
| > NARRATOR: For 15 years Travis had been researching an
| apparently obscure topic, whether the vapour trails left by
| aircraft were having a significant effect on the climate. In
| the aftermath of 9/11 the entire US fleet was grounded, and
| Travis finally had a chance to find out.
|
| > ...
|
| > DR DAVID TRAVIS: We found that the change in temperature
| range during those three days was just over one degrees C. And
| you have to realise that from a layman's perspective that
| doesn't sound like much, but from a climate perspective that is
| huge.
|
| > NARRATOR: One degree in just three days no one had ever seen
| such a big climatic change happen so fast. This was a new kind
| of climate change. Scientists call it Global Dimming. Two years
| ago most of them had never even heard of it, yet now they
| believe it may mean all their predictions about the future of
| our climate could be wrong. The trail that would lead to the
| discovery of Global Dimming began 40 years ago, in Israel with
| the work of a young English immigrant called Gerry Stanhill. A
| trained biologist, Gerry got a job helping to design irrigation
| schemes. His task was to measure how strongly the sun shone
| over Israel.
|
| The thing with contrails (and we can turn it up by running
| rich) is that we have seen that we can turn this on (and off)
| relatively fast (days).
|
| --
|
| Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
| javajosh wrote:
| Indeed. The amount of photosynthesis going on is proportional
| to inbound sunlight. So you might be able to reduce the
| temperature of the planet in this way but you will also reduce
| the amount of photosynthesis happening.
| manmal wrote:
| If the bubbles can be coated, then the filtered spectrum can
| be influenced. Eg if 20-300Thz is filtered out, then we only
| lose heat that's probably not really useful to plants.
| javajosh wrote:
| Yes, this would be ideal (although I've rarely seen light
| measured like that - isn't wavelength almost always used?)
| If you could have a bandpass filter allowing in ~400-700nm
| light that would be kind of awesome - definitely a have-
| your-cake-and-eat-it-too moment. (of course with our luck
| there will be some process we need that we don't know about
| that requires the rest of the spectrum too)
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| And with less photosynthesis happening, less CO2 is being
| absorbed from the atmosphere.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Is it? This assumes the the vast majority of plant growth is
| limited by sunlight, not nutrients, water, or anything else.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Depends where you reduce it though. Theres not a ton of
| photosynthesis happening in the middle of the REALLY brutal
| deserts and reducing some sunlight would also reduce the heat
| and maybe increase plant life and photosynthesis. Thats
| assuming you can control it that granularly though.
| guelo wrote:
| A shield at Langrangian L1 can't be very selective, it
| would basically shade the whole planet.
| vfclists wrote:
| The usual expensive boondoggles most of these shill organizations
| pretending to be think tanks and expert institutions come up
| with.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes. Even promoting the idea brings global catastrophe nearer,
| as it distracts from what we already know we must do.
| credabablity wrote:
| lukev wrote:
| This is a radical and somewhat risky plan. But I think we should
| fully explore it.
|
| The _best_ plan, Plan A, would be drastically and immediately
| decarbonize and cut CO2 emissions globally.
|
| However, we have ample evidence that that is not going to happen,
| or at least not fast enough. This is a tremendously difficult
| problem because it requires a supermajority of actors to agree on
| a course of action, despite some game-theoretic reasons not to.
| Without a dramatic geopolitical shift, it's simply not going to
| happen.
|
| Geoengineering is Plan B, strictly inferior to plan A. But it has
| the advantage that one sufficiently wealthy state or actor can do
| it unilaterally, meaning there is a non-zero chance of it
| actually happening.
|
| Right now I am pessimistic enough about Plan A that I expect Plan
| B may be necessary if we want to avoid the horrors of a +4.5c
| climate change. And I sincerely hope someone eventually has the
| balls to do it (after a massive amount of scientific due
| diligence to mitigate risks like termination shock.)
| ncmncm wrote:
| Plan A + Plan B is strictly worse than Plan A, however much
| success Plan A has. Anything with Plan B in means certain
| catastrophe.
|
| But promoting Plan B demonstrably generates enough sick
| fascination to distract from determination to make Plan A work.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Your Plan A is not the best plan because it ignores human
| nature and is consequently unrealistic, as you recognize. The
| best plan should be achievable.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| So you think that the obstacles in front of the worldwide de-
| industrialization stem only from game-theoretic reasons and
| have nothing to do with massive economic consequences that will
| disturb the welfare of all people on Earth including precarious
| populations?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Worldwide transition from extractive to renewable energy
| would bring on prosperity like nothing else you can imagine.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > drastically and immediately
| sandbx wrote:
| if it could act like shutters and open and close it would be very
| useful to controlling the climate for humans
| samiam_iam wrote:
| problem solved. moving on.
| kosyblysk666 wrote:
| tacticaldev wrote:
| Did they not see the Matrix Movie(s)?!
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| It might probably be more productive to cover the Sahara desert
| in mirrors
| ncmncm wrote:
| That would be radically cheaper, but equally disastrous.
| taylorius wrote:
| I read that reforesting large areas would help reduce the CO2,
| which makes sense. Is that considered a viable plan these days?
| (At first glance it seems a less risky strategy than blocking out
| the sun with a load of space bubbles.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| Correct me if I am wrong here: trees are part of the regular
| carbon cycle. They don't live very long on a geological scale,
| and when they die their carbon is repurposed. The big issue is
| that we are taking a ton of carbon that was effectively
| sequestered and releasing it into the atmosphere. There is no
| known biological mechanism to resequester that volume of
| carbon.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Reforesting doesn't take that much CO2 out of the system long-
| term.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Short-term is good if we are also doing something about long-
| term.
|
| If by the time the new trees fall and rot, we have stopped
| burning coal, then they won't matter.
| jpindar wrote:
| It would help, but maybe not enough. Humanity isn't the only
| reason the planet isn't covered in trees, they just don't grow
| in many places such as deserts, mountaintops, etc.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Forestry is amongst the land-use mitigations which are
| discussed in the IPCC AR6 WG III report.
|
| See page 84 of the Technical Summary, "TS. 5.6 Agriculture,
| forestry and other land uses, and food systems"
|
| https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_FinalDraft_...
|
| Keep in mind that _net emissions_ is the concern, and simply
| _stopping ongoing deforestation_ would contribute much. The
| total Agriculture, Forestry, and other Land Uses (AFOLU) sector
| accounts 13--21% of present greenhouse gas emissions (2010--
| 2019), and could absorb about 1 /3 of total human emissions.
|
| So yes, forestry, _among other land uses_ is a _partial_ and
| probably _necessary_ but not _sufficient_ mitigation.
| natch wrote:
| How do they plan to deal with small bits of rock that tend to be
| out there hurtling at high speed on various trajectories?
| tuyguntn wrote:
| So, instead of fixing the problem, we are introducing temporary
| patch? As usual "temporary" becomes permanent.
|
| I wish this solution won't be implemented
| ncmncm wrote:
| It could not be permanent, as civilization would collapse
| shortly after.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Russia tried to opposite of it in the 90's: orbited a mirror to
| warm Siberia:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/12/science/russians-to-test-...
| cs702 wrote:
| Interesting, but the title borders on _linkbait_ , making it
| sound as if an important institution, MIT, is formally proposing
| launching a giant fleet of bubbles into space. Nothing of the
| sort is happening. The reality is much less newsworthy, much more
| mundane: A group of researchers at MIT is exploring a radical new
| technology to cool the earth. In other words, this was an
| ordinary day at MIT.
| ncmncm wrote:
| More ordinary than you know: ignorant half-measures, half
| thought through, but promoted already.
|
| Fewer ordinary days at MIT would be a plus. A few days of
| actually thinking beyond hare-brained scheming would improve
| MIT and its graduates.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Somewhat related on the geoengineering front, see
| https://www.meer.org/global (via
| https://jembendell.com/2022/03/31/where-wisdom-and-geoengine... )
| ParksNet wrote:
| Excess CO2, and the impacts on human cognition from it, are the
| great threat to civilization. We need geoengineering to strip CO2
| out of the atmosphere. Iron seeding* and global Carbon Taxes seem
| like the best options.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
| tjr225 wrote:
| gravypod wrote:
| Cody's lab has a great video on this topic. This would also, in
| thousands of years, create new deposits of oil.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| the rich will be able to afford CO2 scrubbers for their
| airtight houses. Way cheaper
| ParksNet wrote:
| Indoor CO2 scrubbers (even just to separate CO2 from inside
| air and exhaust it outside) would be a great technology right
| now, since it would allow us to reduce ventilation
| requirements and thus save on heating/cooling costs.
| easytiger wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the general atmospheric co2 will be
| so high air will be unbreathable?
| pastor_bob wrote:
| They can rise high enough that general indoor levels (which
| are usually higher) will be high enough to cause constant
| cognition problems
| easytiger wrote:
| Modern building techniques and energy efficient designs
| can ensure that anyway. Regardless of external co2
| levels.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Civilization will collapse first, so no.
| john-radio wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if it's in your house or not; the
| problem is global warming that's caused by the greenhouse
| effect that's caused by the CO2 in the upper atmostphere. I
| like the cut of your gib though.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| What is the benefit of a bubble over a super thin reflective
| sheet?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Civilization collapses either way, so that is a wash.
| [deleted]
| kristov wrote:
| It does assume we will be capable of popping these bubbles if we
| need to. We can not guarantee we will retain the capability to go
| into space. It would be better perhaps to engineer it so it
| naturally falls out of its location after some X years.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Since it would bring on global catastrophe and civilizational
| collapse, spaceflight would end too.
|
| Fortunately, it would collapse and blow away before long.
| Unfortunately, that would make things even worse, for a while.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Seems like simulating a volcano eruption would be preferable to
| shooting stuff into space. It will naturally decay in a
| predictable amount of time, and you don't end up wasting energy
| on as many launch vehicles and creating space debris.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Actions like this, (or sprinkling iron fillings in the ocean to
| breed carbon-fixing cyanobacteria or aluminium dust in the
| atmosphere to reflect back sunlight) are all valid geo-
| engineering _and all can look like aggressive military / eco-
| system attacks_ even if you are only mildly paranoid.
|
| The issue is not having MIT do it, but the Russians and chinese
| and indians and Jakarta and Alberta and ...
|
| The UN would be a good place to put a geo-engineering shared
| facility where all these ideas are experimentally tested, with
| scientists from dozens of countries so they can go home with
| accurate models and say "yeah nah, that's not an attack".
|
| And while we are at it we can set up panels on reducing car use,
| better routing of airplanes to avoid contrails (see recent
| podcast from freakonomics).
|
| We have the answers - but there is no single solution - just
| intelligent long term society wide changes that are not sexy or
| populist and won't pay off for decades. We might struggle to find
| politicians
| titanomachy wrote:
| Wow, I was totally unaware of the climate impact of contrails!
| I knew that airplanes release a lot of greenhouse gases, but
| I'd never heard that the contrails themselves are a problem.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58769351
| tonmoy wrote:
| The linked article does not give absolute numbers in tons of
| CO2 equivalent but rather says reduce impact of contrails in
| climate by 60%.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Note it's iron rust that helps breed carbon-fixing
| cyanobacteria. Not iron filing.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Sorry, out of the loop, what's the deal with Alberta?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Anything Alberta does is a provocation?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I meant Ottawa (cold place, somewhere up there waves hand) -
| basically just any capital of any of G20/50/100/192
|
| Doing something like Geo-Engineering _may_ be an important
| and vital stop-gap to mitigate the worst effects of climate
| chnage. But it is also dramatic and potentially causes other
| side effects from crop failures to god knows what.
|
| So when things get so bad that humanity says "yeah let's
| block out the sun for a bit" we really really want to have
| studied it hard and have as many countries in the world to
| have signed up to pieces of paper that say "we tried this
| crazy thing with our best scientists and it seemed ok, so we
| trust that it's not a deliberate way to F%%k us over"
|
| The UN might have better wording.
| prashantsengar wrote:
| A list of things that can go wrong
|
| - the wind patterns on Earth change, resulting in climate change.
| Seasons will alter. Rains will be affected. Widespread famines
| and floods.
|
| - Point 1 rendering a lot of solar and wind energy farms
| unusable.
|
| - Less sunlight results in less photosynthesis. This again causes
| chimate change, loss of biodiversity.
|
| What else?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Civilization collapses shortly after the ocean ecosystem, as
| acidification continues on up. Then, CO2 levels off as input
| falls off. Over millennia, CO2 declines. Over millions of
| years, biodiversity recovers.
| headcanon wrote:
| There's a good video on this that talks about how a similar
| technique might be used to terraform Venus over hundreds of years
| [0]
|
| The main physics problem I see is that Langrange points are
| naturally unstable [1], so the bubbles would need to be
| constantly correcting their orbit. This problem would be
| compounded by solar radiation "blowing" the bubbles back to
| Earth. There are clever ways to mitigate this for other designs
| which are addressed in the video, but I don't see it addressed in
| the article.
|
| Edit: it looks like it is addressed somewhat in the source
| article linked in another comment, by placing the bubbles a bit
| further towards the sun than the L1 point to compensate for solar
| winds. Also, If a bubble does eventually become unstable, they
| may be cheap enough to destroy it and send another one up.
|
| However, the primary problem I see with this approach is that we
| are simply not politically ready as a species to attempt a
| global-scale engineering project like that. Some countries may
| find that climate change actually benefits them [2], or may even
| impact a geopolitical rival even worse. These countries may be
| inclined to send a few missiles toward L1 if thats the case.
|
| Edit: Additionally, even if this does succeed, countries may see
| this as an excuse to keep burning stuff despite the additional
| negative consequences of carbon emissions [3]
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_orbit#:~:text=In%20p...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russ...
|
| [3]: https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-
| co....
| yupper32 wrote:
| > However, the primary problem I see with this approach is that
| we are simply not politically ready as a species to attempt a
| global-scale engineering project like that.
|
| What's the point of bringing this up? Are you saying that their
| research is futile and that they shouldn't bother? That we
| should be funding something else?
|
| There are separate groups of people working on the social
| aspects. Let MIT and other research institutions deal with
| coming up with solutions, and let politicians and activists
| deal with getting the world ready.
|
| From everything I've seen, it'll take a global-scale
| engineering project of some sort to solve this problem. Might
| as well have the group of solutions ready for when/if the world
| is ready.
| headcanon wrote:
| > Are you saying that their research is futile and that they
| shouldn't bother?
|
| Not at all! We should absolutely be researching and
| developing this type of solution. I fully believe that
| eventually every populated planet will have some form of
| solar mitigation strategy like this, but our political
| structures would have to evolve as well.
|
| I sincerely hope we're able to politically and societally
| support such a project this century, but I'm not optimistic
| on that timescale.
| ncmncm wrote:
| That is not the primary problem.
|
| The primary problem is that even attempting it would bring on
| global catastrophe just that much faster.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I like your venus idea a lot - always seemed like the better
| planet to terraform anyways. Probably a LOT more chemicals and
| gasses to work with and of course more sunlight / heat. It has
| to be easier to remove shit we don't want than it might be to
| ship it all the way to mars.
| njarboe wrote:
| Too bad Venus' day is 243 Earth days long. Quite a
| terraforming project to spin it up. It's gravity is quite
| Earth like, unlike Mars.
| Devasta wrote:
| It really is easier to imagine the end of the world before the
| end of capitalism.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Wasting a lot dealing with a symptom while still failing to
| address the real problem is the kind of solution that is not
| solution at all.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| So does posturing. People disagree on the real problem: some
| think it's fossil fuels, some thinks it's overpopulation, some
| think it's industrialization. Can you be briefly specific about
| your focus and preferred outcome?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| There are plenty of "us" still working towards addressing the
| real problem too, there is hope here.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Please do make videos so that we can quickly forget the one
| from the article which is totally absurd...
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean it's fine for a system where the only thing that matters
| is the symptoms. The only reason we care about the extra CO2 in
| the air is because it's effect on the planets temperature; if
| we fixed that who cares about the CO2?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Everything that depends on the ocean, which is everything.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Civilization collapsing might be considered an effect.
| chmod600 wrote:
| There's also ocean acidification.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes. Ocean acidification -> ecosystem collapse -> global
| civilization collapse.
|
| There is only one way that works. All others mean disaster.
| englishrookie wrote:
| We need a quick fix. I'm based in the Netherlands, two thirds
| of which is threatened by a sea level rise within the next
| hundred years. If that sounds far away to you: my grandmother
| died at age 99. There's a very reasonable chance my children,
| teenagers right now, will live through this.
| natch wrote:
| Yes I expect unfortunately Netherlands real estate prices
| will be crashing hard very soon.
|
| People who like looking ahead when investing should be
| thinking the same about all coastal and low lying regions.
| Resale value will be nil.
|
| By the time a 30 year mortgage is over, the next buyer will
| be looking to the end of their own 30 year mortgage, and what
| they see won't look good.
|
| So there will be no buyers.
|
| People don't want to leave worthless property to their
| children, so the smart people who foresee this chain of
| events will get out now.
| rdevsrex wrote:
| Ok, for that to be true, what degree of warming will cause
| the sea to rise more than mitigations can be put in place?
|
| If we keep warming to 3 degrees, do you think the sea works
| will not be enough?
| natch wrote:
| It seems likely the sea rise will be a multi-century,
| unrelenting, ongoing event of rise upon rise that will
| not stop at the levels envisaged by anyone planning any
| mitigations. So, no.
|
| There is a reason scientists are concerned.
|
| On the positive side for the Netherlands, their expertise
| will be coveted worldwide as hapless nations futilely
| seek to forestall the inevitable stage by stage.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It won't matter, because civilization will collapse when
| ocean ecosystem does, before then.
|
| Collapsing civilization is bad for property values. And
| for the concept of property as such.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There is no "quick fix".
|
| Attempting any sort of "quick fix" guarantees quicker
| failure.
|
| Civilization collapsing would anyway slow CO2 rise, but at
| substantial... cost. Probably mass extinction would happen
| either way.
| sauwan wrote:
| Why can't we address the symptoms as well as the causes?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Because addressing symptoms costs money that can then _not
| be_ spent on the causes.
|
| And, addressing symptoms does not actually put off
| catastrophe.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Fantasizing that we can eliminate and reverse fossil fuel
| emissions without dramatically affecting global standard of
| living (acutely in less developed societies) is also a non-
| solution. We are going to have to deal with slowing but non-
| zero emissions for a long time, which essentially implies we
| will need to "deal with the symptom" as a primary remediation
| action.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > dramatically affecting global standard of living
|
| What's wrong with that ? That's the issue many have and
| fortunately, you tell it like it is. People don't want to
| change.
|
| Public transportation, changing the "dream of traveling" into
| another one, having electronic that lasts for 10 years
| instead of 5, better insulation, and the list goes on. Yes,
| one can change the global standard of living into _other_ not
| lesser global standard.
|
| Or you think it's already too late and then, well, it's
| effectively too late.
| concordDance wrote:
| > What's wrong with that ?
|
| It's not a vote winner.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Energy security is mainly what I was referring to.
| Inconsistent access and/or prohibitively expensive
| electricity and gas is a huge problem for personal health,
| healthcare, education and access to economic opportunities.
| ncmncm wrote:
| And, ready access to renewables is a a great boon for
| everyone.
|
| Civilization not collapsing immediately, maybe moreso.
| elefanten wrote:
| You can't expect a majority to understand, much less
| accept, the probabilistic systems thinking required to
| conclude (and act on) dedevelopment.
|
| Ambitious (and probably also clueless/disbelieving)
| ideologues will spin junk food narratives that move the
| masses.
|
| And you will have war everywhere.
|
| So it makes sense to roll the dice on remediation and hope
| slow social change takes. The only alternative is a
| horrible age for humanity, one way or another.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Economic forces are not slow. Renewables are radically
| cheaper than any other energy source. Getting out of the
| way of such change is all we need for it to happen very,
| very fast.
|
| Distracting people with things that will not end up
| working brings catastrophe nearer.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| > What's wrong with that?
|
| I should think that was fairly obvious. People do not like
| to be "dramatically" poorer, or even just a little.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Well, if we could wave a magic wand then it is obviously
| better to stop climate change even if it means reducing the
| global standard of living simply because out-of-control
| climate change will harm living standards much more. But we
| can't and developing nations are likely to go full steam
| ahead, like we did back in the day.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They will do what is cheapest. Now that means building out
| renewables.
|
| Anything that interferes with building out renewables as
| absolutely fast as they can be brings global catastrophe
| nearer.
|
| Global civilization collapse would be hard on people.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| The oceans will boil before air conditioning, McDonald's Big
| Mac, and a new iPhone each year are taken from the hands of
| Americans. Mark my words.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Is air conditioning a real problem? It probably emits a
| good bit less CO2 to cool a home 20 degrees than it does to
| heat it 40 degrees in the winter.
| manmal wrote:
| ACs can be coupled with solar power, with only a very
| small battery (reducing CO2 a lot). Or, as has become
| common in some European countries, an electric air heat
| pump could both heat and cool housing. With the
| additional benefit that you get hot water as a side
| product in cooling mode.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Obviously we cannot sustain current global standards of
| living.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| That is not obvious at all.
| mekoka wrote:
| Keeping with your medical analogy, palliative care exists
| because it's just practical to acknowledge that treating a
| disease is also about dealing with human nature. You can't just
| focus on the illness and ignore the discomfort it (and the
| treatment) will create. Every effort counts.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Perhaps obvious, but the title would be less clickbait-y if it
| were "MIT _researchers_ propose..."
| Bantros wrote:
| MikeHolman wrote:
| Even if we did somehow get the political will to fund a project
| of this magnitude, it could never work. The bubbles would get
| blamed for every single snowstorm, unseasonably cold day, and any
| other weather that happened after it was put in place.
|
| I don't think it would last a year before it was taken down,
| regardless of whether or not it did what it was supposed to do or
| was responsible for any meteorological event.
| tyleo wrote:
| I like this take. I think I agree with it, though I wonder if
| there is a limit. For example, if warming gets bad enough that
| there are obvious issues causing millions, would it be enough
| for folks to realize, "the negative consequences are worth it"?
|
| I truly don't know.
| ncmncm wrote:
| I do. It would make things strictly worse, as CO2 continued
| on up, poisoning the oceans until its food chain collapses.
|
| That has happened before, immediately before massive global
| extinction events. It would be a mistake not to avoid that.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Better direct link (and cooler page):
| https://senseable.mit.edu/space-bubbles
|
| For those who think this is absurd, this is a "what if, emergency
| solution" as it explains.
| gpm wrote:
| Their website has a direct link to the press release and
| associated material if you want to get information straight from
| the horses mouth
|
| Dropbox:
| https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gk415yke8shtb84/AADfZbzC8xISX-lTm...
|
| Press release:
| https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gk415yke8shtb84/AAAaHVK7WNKCUN2rl...
|
| PDF with more information:
| https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gk415yke8shtb84/AABLA5kYXUrrZfidU...
|
| ---
|
| They don't give more information about the size than "brazil",
| they do state the density as ~1.5g/m^2. Just multiplying that by
| the area of brazil we get 1.3x10^13 grams or 13 million metric
| tons.
|
| That's a ton (heh) of mass, but within the realms of what SpaceX
| is claiming they want to make possible (at least if they launch
| it over a decade or two): https://wccftech.com/spacex-aims-to-
| haul-more-than-a-million...
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > but within the realms of what SpaceX is claiming they want to
| make possible
|
| Is it possible to talk about space faring without mentioning
| spaceX theories? Why not talk about companies that have been
| sending stuff up there for decades?
| gpm wrote:
| For this amount of mass, no.
|
| No one else has suggested that they are anywhere close to
| lifting this amount of mass, or even have any future plans
| that might change that. For reference, all time total mass to
| orbit so far is < 20k tons.
| philsnow wrote:
| Lunar regolith seems to be about 20% silicon (by mass).
|
| We could try to lift that much silicon from earth's gravity
| well, or try to build a refinery and launch system on the
| moon, with ~1/6th the gravity of earth.
| gpm wrote:
| Theoretically, but to make that work you're talking about
| a far greater advance in space capabilities than "just"
| launching from earth. You're still talking about
| launching 10 millions tons of material, and you're going
| to need local infrastructure to do everything like "make
| launch vehicles and fuel" if you want it to be an
| efficiency win over launching from earth.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Oh look, another reason to favor fission energy.
| edgefield wrote:
| Or instead of relying on essentially magic we could deploy
| current and known solutions that will solve the problem, but we
| will have to invest real $, conserve, and consume less. Sadly,
| there's no chance practical solutions that require worldwide
| coordination will work as humans, especially those with money and
| power, are generally selfish.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Current known solutions cost _much less_ than carrying on as we
| are. Current economic winners, who are personally responsible
| for the looming catastrophe, would take in less.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| This seems like an overengineered, cost-ineffective solution
| compared to just building big white rafts in the ocean to raise
| Earth's albedo. Same end result with much less engineering
| challenge.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Just start making all single-use plastics white and you've got
| your ocean raft!
| ncmncm wrote:
| Cheap or expensive, invited disaster is disastrous.
| jyounker wrote:
| This does nothing for ocean acidification, nor the fundamental
| restrictions that decreasing O2 percentages have respiration
| tracheal respiration systems.
| witrak wrote:
| Short question: how these bubbles can be kept in the proper
| place? Did the proponents consider the effect of light pressure?
| Such a bubble is a classic solar sail, right?
| conductr wrote:
| Anyone else thinking of Mr. Burns' sun blocker?
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