Our modern-day Icarus
The story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and whose wax wings melted and caused his death, is often considered a warning against hubris.
So that’s why I refer to people such as this – and he is not alone – as a modern-day Icarus. It’s not a compliment.
The title of the NY Times article is “”Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis? Interest in sun shields, once a fringe idea, has grown. Now, a team of scientists says it could launch a prototype within a few years.” Here’s some of the text:
“To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina”….A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5 million tons — too heavy to launch into space, [Dr. Rozen] said. So, the project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would not completely block the sun’s light but rather cast slightly diffused shade onto Earth…. Dr. Rozen said his team was ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration.
There will be more of this sort of thing. How will it be regulated or stopped? Will it be regulated or stopped?
Someone will try this eventually.
The only bit of good news about it is that it should be relatively easy to bring down by anyone who can get something into orbit. Wouldn’t want to be under it when it came down, though, assuming it didn’t burn up in the atmosphere.
Yes to what junior said.
Didnt we learn anything from the simpsons and mr burns
I definitely think we should put giant shades or iron filings into the atmosphere, or anything else that might potentially help with some possible problem or another. Just in case. Under no circumstances should we consider any harm that might be done by these plans. Plus, this is our only chance to see if we can undo the last billion years and get back to the ideal state of “Snowball Earth”.
Humans have wanted to control the weather for a long time. Rain and warm temperatures meant good crops. Good crops meant more food and full stomachs. In years past that was a positive thing.
Attempts at controlling the weather involved various human and animal sacrifices as well as incantations to please the weather gods. None worked very well.
Then came Dr. Irving P. Krick. His great idea was to increase rainfall by seeding clouds with dry ice or silver iodide. It worked, but not well enough to become common practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_P._Krick
Air pollution in the form of sulfur dioxide was believed to cause cooling of the atmosphere. This was most often caused by volcanic eruptions, but exhaust from coal burning power plants was also fingered as a cause.
This is what NOAA has to say about aerosols:
” Aerosols have a direct effect on climate because they scatter
incoming sunlight and, as a result, they can cool the Earth’s
surface immediately below them. The amount of cooling de
pends on the size, shape, and composition of the atmospheric
particles, as well as the texture of the underlying surface.
Aerosols can also absorb incoming sunlight and warm the atmosphere. The warming is greatest when the surface beneath the aerosol layer is bright such as a cloud layer or
desert.”
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/135640main_aerosols_trifold21.pdf#:~:text=Volcanic%20eruptions%20release%20tons%20of%20aerosol%20particles%20and,and%20cool%20the%20Earth%E2%80%99s%20lower%20atmo-sphere%20and%20surface.
So, aerosols do affect the weather.
“Microsoft’s billionaire founder Bill Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that would potentially reflect sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/01/11/bill-gates-backed-climate-solution-gains-traction-but-concerns-linger/?sh=74b68fe9793b
This interest in controlling the weather (and climate) is deeply ingrained in human DNA. Because of that fact, we know quite a lot about the way weather works, but we don’t know a lot about why it works the way it does. We’re making headway, but as long as we have a closed-minded cult that believes CO2 is the big, and only boogey man, it’s much harder to make real progress. At this point the data is not strong enough to recommend either eliminating fossil fuels or to putting up massive sun shields.
In climate science as in medicine, a good rule of thumb is: First, do no harm.
I had a minor victory with Chat today:
__________________________________
huxley: I wonder if human impacts might be preventing an Ice Age.
ChatGPT: … In essence, human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and other actions that increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, have altered Earth’s climate system. This anthropogenic effect is likely preventing the planet from entering the next phase of the Ice Age cycle that would otherwise occur due to Earth’s natural climatic rhythms.
__________________________________
Of course Chat returns to the script on the Importance of Reducing Greenhouse Gases.
Nonetheless, during the last Ice Age 2.6 million years ago upper North America was covered by a layer of ice two miles thick. Ouch!
We only started coming out of that disaster 18.000 years ago. Frankly I worry more about the next Ice Age, because they are recurrent. If driving our cars will help prevent that, I say, Roll On, Mighty Internal Combustion Engines.
Grift. Follow the money.
In a more innocent age, a true genius, the physicist Freeman Dyson, proposed just the opposite of what these grifters and second-raters have started to push for: a method of capturing and making beneficial use of a greater proportion of our star’s energy output.
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output.[1][2][3]
Throwing energy away is usually not a clever strategy. I will put my money on Dyson before I give my money to those who want us to freeze in the dark and eat bugs.
Those of you who can tear their eyes away from Denise Richards in the shower can see an example of a Dyson sphere in the movie Starship Troopers.
Since he climate cult is not about climate but about creating an authoritarian state, if this would work the climate cult will find a reason not to do it.
They are bound and determined to end the Human Race, and All Life on this humble Planet.
That was probably dina meyer but where at space dock
https://twitter.com/_ClimateCraze/status/1753268828463825374
I feel the need to point out that what Dyson actually proposed (as opposed to what people heard) is less a ‘structure’ than a constellation of satellites; this latter is often referred to as a ‘Dyson Shell’ to distinguish it from the one-piece sphere.
A shell is more realistic, both because you don’t need to build it all in one go (you just keep putting up satellites until you capture all the sunlight) but because it trades out a nigh-impossible amount of structural material (we’re talking disassembling nearby solar systems) of an improbable strength for a complex orbital traffic control.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Alexander Pope
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” Stephen Hawking
“Nearly all of our disasters come from a few fools having the courage of their convictions.” Coventry Patmore
Better example was a tng episode with james doohan
Boobah:
Excuse me, I must ask … are you a Cererbus fan?
”How will it be regulated or stopped?”
Nearly all countries, including the United States, are signatories of the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty makes a country’s national government responsible for the actions in space of its citizens. Because of this, Americans are required to have a permit from the federal government (currently the FAA) for each payload they launch into space.
”I feel the need to point out that what Dyson actually proposed (as opposed to what people heard) is less a ‘structure’ than a constellation of satellites…”
That’s because, like a ball balanced on top of a cone, a Dyson sphere is gravitationally unstable. The slightest disturbance will cause one side or another to crash into its star. A swarm of satellites avoids this problem.
Is it strange that there are at least two well-known SF films that show how plans to stop global warming go wrong and cause a new ice age and no well-known movies (so far as I know) showing the disaster of global warming? Maybe science fiction is trying to tell us something.
One square mile is 27,878,400 square feet.
One million square miles is 27,878,400,000,000 square feet.
At $10~20 million per 100 square feet, that’s a lot of money. (2.78~5.57 ×10^18 dollars.)
Let me guess: we make it up in volume.
There was another crew planning to seed the atmosphere with silver particles that would reflect sunlight and would remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years a while ago.
Same thought: hubris.
Same second thought: what could possibly go wrong?
JJ, just saw your comment. GMTA
Day after tomorrow was the most irwin allenish and there was a whole score of them on syfy of course theres waterworld which was patently ridiculous
Some of the former are oftem dubbed into spanish
Nuke the sun!
and I was being charitable with irwin allen, he would never have a super hurricane and an ice storm in quick succession,