UK 'Not in Favor' of Dimming the Sun (politico.eu) 51
The British government said it opposes attempts to cool the planet by spraying millions of tons of dust into the atmosphere -- but did not close the door to a debate on regulating the technology. From a report: The comments in parliament Thursday came after a POLITICO investigation revealed an Israeli-U.S. company Stardust Solutions aimed to be capable of deploying solar radiation modification, as the technology is called, inside this decade. "We're not in favor of solar radiation modification given the uncertainty around the potential risks it poses to the climate and environment," Leader of the House of Commons Alan Campbell said on behalf of the government.
Termination Shock (Score:4, Informative)
If you're interested in this... the Neal Stephenson book Termination Shock is essentially about a tech bro type who decides to do this in a move fast and break things sort of way. As with all his books he's clearly done a pile of research into how you'd actually do it and what would happen.
Re:Termination Shock (Score:4, Interesting)
Fair warning, Termination Shock is extremely boring and difficult get through. Way too long. But the concepts are interesting,
"The Snow" by Adam Roberts is another one I can recommend, interesting concept about a "global cooling" technology got awry.
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Fair warning, Termination Shock is extremely boring and difficult get through. Way too long. But the concepts are interesting,
Stephenson writes books for advanced readers. Those who read quickly will enjoy them more.
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Nice one, it really helps when the characters are tedious and uninteresting too.
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We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky.
From the only matrix movie ever made.
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The Animatrix was pretty solid for its intent as a series of vignettes telling stories of human civilization throughout multiple iterations of the Matrix. Most relevant is
"The Second Renaissance Parts I and II" (viewable on YouTube).
In that pair of vignettes, you follow humanity's introduction of *actual* AI, it's abuse of that sentience, its refusal to acknowledge independence, the resulting war, and the blotting out of the sun to starve the machines of their primary energy source. That, then, required the
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I think their initial idea to use human brains to run aspects of AI was far smarter and more realistic than their quick jump to human batteries!
Sometimes the audience doesn't need to all understand the whole story; we try too hard to appease the lowest common denominator. It was such a stupid brushed over explanation, that I just assumed it was metaphorical rather than be too annoyed they didn't try harder and just confuse half the viewers instead of BS something that was actually confusing to most everybod
The century without a summer (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of hundred years ago a big volcanic eruption threw masses of dust into the atmosphere and blocked out the sun to the point where there was famine over much of the planet because many food plants couldn't grow.
Now the tech bros want to do that artificially because they're so smart they know exactly how to control the weather.
They're going to kill us all.
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I say: DO IT!
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I think I'd rather be nuked than starved.
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"They're going to kill us all."
Which is fine with them. An enormous population "correction" isn't just a possible consequence to them, it's a desirable consequence. Once you die, your property becomes theirs.
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"Once you die, your property becomes theirs"
or they can simply bankrupt you
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"Once you die, your property becomes theirs"
or they can simply bankrupt you
The unstated goal of all private equity firms.
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To be fair, they don't. They want to slightly reduce the sun's output, so that it offsets the greenhouse effect we have caused. So no famine, just less catastrophic climate change (which causes famine) than we would otherwise experience.
The two biggest dangers are that we screw it up and dim too much, with no way to undo it, and that we use it as an excuse to keep polluting.
Across the Atlantic... (Score:4, Insightful)
Overton window shift (Score:1, Offtopic)
The fact that this is even being discussed in a serious forum means we are not far from geoengineering
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"The fact that this is even being discussed in a serious forum..."
Citation please.
Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Sun Dimming Dust (Score:3)
Is it the end of the world or not? (Score:3)
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I don't understand your logic. We had a huge eruption of Mount Pinatubo [wikipedia.org] back in 1991. I was in high school and remember the effects that year. It had a really big impact on global weather patterns including dropping the temperature significantly, but it certainly didn't "kill a lot of flora and fauna." Yes, there was a lot of local damage around the volcano, but that was due to the ash.
We could just build more fission nuclear reactors (and we are now, finally). Fusion is still decades away, even though
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"Summer temperatures in Europe that year were the coldest of any on record between 1766 and 2000,[2] resulting in crop failures and major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere."
Reduction in light in general has a *HUGE* impact on vegetation. When the Canadian wildfires were putting smoke into the air, making midwest light tinge orange, I noticed I didn't need to mow my lawn, despite adequate watering. A lot of plants -- especially food crops -- need direct sunl
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Advanced Spaceflight (Score:1)
"And so we return again to the holy void. Some say this is simply our destiny, but I would have you remember always that the void EXISTS, just as surely as you or I. Is nothingness any less a miracle than substance?" – Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We must Dissent"
That's the tech that gets us solar shades, but launching them does require a Planetary Council vote. Looks like UK is on the wrong side of that vote. There will be other voters, though.
Furthermore, if a vote fails, you can try it again 10 or 20
Dimming the Sun (Score:2)
spraying millions of tons of dust into the atmosphere
Actually, my first thought from the title was "dimmer switch", which made me think of this Steven Wright joke.
In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything.
Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check.
Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Madagascar. She said, "Cut it out."
Sun Shade? (Score:1)
why not mylar at L1 - math (Score:3)
could be feasible (Score:2)
There are pros and cons to this, and they should be evaluated objectively. I am seeing startups that propose the release aerosols or micro-confetti into the stratosphere that presumably would bio-degrade and settle out over time. https://www.msn.com/en-us/scie... [msn.com]
On the pro side this could be a way to slow the march of global warming and give us time to reduce emissions. It may be a lot cheaper than enduring the ever-more-destructive instances of extreme weather that already cost a huge amount of money every
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There is no pro to doing it within the atmosphere.
We could potentially put something at L1 to reflect sunlight. An "angular soletta" was proposed in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. In that case it was for the purpose of increasing insolation on Mars, but the same nonexistent technology could in theory apply to reducing it on Earth. The idea was nested truncated cones of flexible, reflective material. Altering the angles of the cones would allow redirecting sunlight.
In a way this is a worse plan than so
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I'm not understanding how you could 'focus' an aerosol, or a vast cloud of micro-confetti. The idea here is to reflect sunlight back into space.
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I'm not understanding how you could 'focus' an aerosol
I'm not understanding why you thought that was a reasonable reply to my comment.
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There seems to be a lot you don't understand.
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You seem to be illiterate.
*That* UK ? (Score:1)
I'm not sure we should put much faith in their views on more complex issues.
Makes sense for the UK (Score:2)
THe Sun (Score:2)
How many people read that newspaper anyway?
Ask the Dinosaurs (Score:2)
Ask the Dinosaurs how well this went over when the big asteroid put up millions of tons of dust into the sky. Oh right you can't...
How's that working out for the Narns? (Score:2)
Thought so.
Venus (Score:2)
UK and sun? (Score:3)
The UK don't even have a sun. "The Sun" doesn't count because it can't get any dimmer.
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The UK don't even have a sun. "The Sun" doesn't count because it can't get any dimmer.
Nonsense, even John o' Groats gets its regulation 5 minutes of sunshine per day.
BTW, I love the Scottish summer, it's my favourite day of the year.
Stardust Might just Break the Green Biz (Score:1)
If it’s true, what happens to the solar, wind, EV subsidies, and all those carbon-capture startups burning VC money like incense? Suddenly they’re like: “Wait you can dust the sky and skip our entire performance art?”
If Stardust ever becomes real, the loudest screaming won’t be environmentalists. It’ll be the companies terrified that their whole “trust us, we’re saving the world, please buy our bonds” economy just got obsoleted.
And if it happens, everyon
sun? (Score:2)
Since when has the UK even seen the sun?
Stupid, Dangerous, & Useless (Score:2)
All these atmospheric and space-based climate engineering proposals are stupid, dangerous, and useless. Their effects are unknown. You can't experiment with it because we have a sample size of 1. Modelling such radical changes to the climate is difficult at best and these companies have very much not spent the time, effort, and money necessary to do them right.
Furthermore, you can get similar effects by simply painting every roof with titanium white exterior grade paint. Doing so will raise the albedo of t