/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10057581
The nazis planned to do this eventually. Just with the mirrors pointed in the other direction, as needed.

>>10057581
oops i said teflon. i meant mylar

>>10057581
radiation pressure would push them into orbit over time

>>10057581
>global warming

>>10057591
Shills are not welcome ITT

Because sunlight is GOOD and trapped heat is BAD. We need sunlight.

Also there is no way this would cost less than just reducing emissions.

>>10057599
sunlight is good for photovoltaic farms near centers of population (power transmission is sadly inefficient) and for farms. putting it in orbit over the sahara just reflects away sunlight that is definitely not useful

>>10057588
the radiation pressure would be very small. a little booster rocket once every few years would suffice

>>10057607
OK good point. Still I don't think it would be anywhere near the same magnitude of cost as the 2.5% World GDP per year till 2035 that the IPCC estimates for just reducing emissions and investing in alternative energy.

>>10057618
I find that hard to believe, and even if I’m wrong whatever is politically viable wins.

>>10057618
OP here and i'm not this guy:
>>10057624
but i tend to agree that alternative energy and (importantly) better energy storage is still not going to live up to the task in the timeline of a couple of decades, especially given the ridiculous power of the oil titans and the political nightmare that we've made very little progress with over the last 35 years that scientists have been warning everybody

if we just have an apollo program scale project to make the space mirror, it can operate happily outside the capriciousness of politicians and shills, and the economy can go chugging along happily doing what we're doing, keeping everybody fat and stupid and happy without needing to reinvent the structure of the economy

>>10057632
Well this is all just silly talk without numbers. I know the idea has been floated around and nobody took it seriously. My intuition says its because it would be massively more expensive.

>>10057658
>The estimated $54 trillion in damage from 2.7 degrees of warming would grow to $69 trillion if the world continues to warm by 3.6 degrees and beyond, the report found, although it does not specify the length of time represented by those costs.
$54 trillion would definitely be enough

This will imbalance Nature even further.
The solution is not technology. It is abolishing industrial society.

>>10057581
because you need a mirror the size of fucking India to get any results

>>10057664
those costs are preposterously high

>>10057581
Just reduce the population. Much easier and cheaper.

>>10059112
>genociding 90% of humanity
>easier

Nope.

>>10059091

This. Kill'em all nao.

>>10059091
That is like curing the disease by killing the patient. Without industrial society there is no point to humanity existence. Extinction is preferable to living like animals.

>>10057581
I for one OP find this a good idea.

scientist are gonna fuck up our cycles someday trying to improve processes. let the cycles run

>>10057658
okay, so this guy is a real astronomer, he has a different idea (probably better than mine) that places a bunch of deflector robots at the L1 point:
http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/103/46/17184.full.pdf

and he estimates something like $750 billion

>>10057581
why a mirror? why not use solar panels instead so we can get a return on investment

>>10059317
because they're too heavy and expensive, plus, how do you get the electricity back down to earth?

>>10059333
Microwave beaming, and there are light weight ones we can send up
compared to the cost what sending up the mirror would be, the increased cost of panels would be within acceptable parameters, as the former gives you absolutely nothing back, while the latter give you energy to sell

>>10059338
Would need a massive array somewhere on the ground to collect the energy built first but sounds rather okay.

Solar mirrors are practical way to manipulate climate both here and beyond but only if the promised by spacex launch cost reductions become reality.
Currently not when you are limited to a hundred tons/y at astronomical costs and global efforts.

>>10059101
This: it would have to be ridiculously large.

would be easier to just paint everything white

>>10059483
I read a while ago that this isn't as effective as you might expect, because the reflected energy heats up particles in the air on the way back out into space. But it wasn't necessarily a total loss, because of the energy saved on air conditioning.

Also there was just an article about some new kind of magic paint that reflects more of the spectrum. Some kind of plastic.

>>10059479
with asteroid mining, that becomes piss easy to do
Megastructures in space are fully feasible to build, since they don't suffer the same stresses that a construct on a planet would
a rotating habitat doesn't start rotating and putting strain on the supports until it is completed and safe

>>10057581
We would have to make a mirror much larger than the moon. The moon is a mirror and it only has 0.00003412% affect on the climate.

>>10059301
That looks pretty clever; note that his price tag is based on EM launcher to LEO at $50/kg, which we don't have anything like yet. However, if the BFR hits its estimates launch price, it will cost not much more. 20 million tons to orbit would be ~133k BFR launches. If the $7 million dollar marginal launch cost is achieved, then it would cost $930 billion to launch, plus cost of the satellites.

There are some other options, closer to home for blocking sunlight. Marine cloud brightening looks interesting; it would have wind powered barges spraying finely misted sea salt to induce more cloud formation, thus reflecting sunlight. And the current estimate for the price of this method is only $9 billion a year to block the predicted warming. Its also has the advantage of using benign sea salt to work its effects, rather than having to mess around with sulfur aerosols.

>too much sun is causing global warming
>warming is the only effect of anthropocentric pollution

>>10059101
Move it closer to the sun/source of light, then the India sized mirror is now N. American sized in blocking light. However you need to probably expend all available resources to build a prototype

>>10057581
I think we should get a big reflective tarp instead. Just cover the entire earth. Make it happen NASA.

>>10060012

The better plan that's been proposed is to put a bunch of lenses out in space like sunshades.

>>10060020
>133k BFR launches
at that point, we might as well just focus on space mining instead since that amount of launches just ain't sane nor possible in a reasonable time frame

we have to simply use CRIPR to genetically engineer a species of algae with reflective skin that procreates rapidly to cover the entire ocean surface

After stress vomiting plenty of times over the consequences of the Earth warming in just the next thirty-fifty years to come, I've come to accept that the people of Earth are fucked. Oh well, there were great extinctions before, guess this is the beginning of a new one. So close and yet so far to figuring out some amazing things on how to function on renewable energy entirely and how to store electricity. Oh well, better luck in another 100 million years. Whatever comes after us, if anything, might be able to figure it out. Nice knowin all you guys.

Go back to to the shithole you came from, poster above
your kind do not belong here

>>10060593
Well, that works out to 250 BFRs launching once a week for 10 years. A large number, but not impossible; consider that there are about 100,000 commercial airline flights every single day. And having that many BFRs on hand would be a gigantic military asset, which would help with getting politicians to fund it.

That said, your idea of setting up a space mining/construction project could easy end up being cheaper. Might make for a good "practise" project to develop human space construction skills.

>>10057581
The massive scale on which these mirrors would have to be in order to be effective makes this idea a bad one.
Consider this: Our moon orbits around our planet already causing gravitational affects on our tides and quite possible our own rotation and tilt, if you begin placing things in orbit around our planet on such a large scale, they too would begin to affect our planets rotation and tilt as well as having effects on the tides.
I already suspect that the satellites we place into orbit are having an effect on the planets rotation and tilt. though however small it may be, a butterflies wings fluttering can cause a typhoon half way around the world.

>>10061651
you're being retarded on purpose
are you too stupid to comprehend how fucking massive the earth and moon are?
all human constructions combined don't clock in at a quadrillionth of a percent of the mass of earth

>>10061651
And that's without considering the fact we throw away Earth's mass into space, which is what those sats AND their fuel are...
Scary.

>>10061707
Im aware of their mass. Are you aware that everything is connected? I noted that the changes could be small. I thought science was meant to explore all possibilities not act like a superior prick with no proof?

>>10061735
>I thought science was meant to explore all possibilities not act like a superior prick with no proof?
You are confused. This is /sci/. Shitposting is encouraged.

>>10061735
hownu.ru

>>10057607
Use less power, kid.

>>10059101
How about we send India towards the sun?

>>10061735
Yes, they would be small. We don't have equipment precise enough to measure the changes satellites make on the Earth's rotation. We make adjustments for the affects of the moon on our rotation by adding leap seconds every couple of years

>>10059091
fuck off kazinsky

>>10057581
>so why aren't we trying to design a real space mirror yet?

Because it will benefit to everyone and we are selfish morons

why wont you go back to the shithole you came from
it's where you belong, you namefagging mongrel

>>10057586
why do they call it the xbox 360?

>>10064428
because when you see it you spin around 360 degrees and moonwalk away, like a pimp.

>>10059091
this. all this """progress""" will be the end of humanity and the start of being zombies.

>>10059153
not having heavy industries != living like animals. You can live a good life without having factories pumping out worthless junk and pollution. do you really think humanity is pointless without having our shitty chink phones and our bing bing wahoos? yikes

>>10059120
not saying this is really doable considering everything involved, but we could just nuke major population centers in india and china and get rid of a few billion people. it would probably be doing humanity a favor

>>10057618
>just reducing emissions
yeah bro just stop emitting what's the big deal???

Because that's stupid

>>10060147
no way to hold something that big in place unless it's parked at the Lagrangian point L1

>>10057581
people who are really into this topic do not use the word global warming. the earth's temperature is slowly but always changing. the word you wanted to use is global climate change and cutting the sunlight off won't help us. you should really learn more about this and then come telling your dumb ideas to 4chan.

>>10065917
fucking retard
climate change is local
global warming is, duh, global

>>10065922
seriously just read a few papers about this before you unleash your stupidity to the internet

>>10065917
>please use big-oil-approved euphemisms
>please?

>>10065925
>i have no argument

>>10057581
>okay, tell me how retarded i am
very, just calculate it and you will see it's a stupid idea

also we want as much sunlight we can get, here on earth we got much better ways to use mirrors to fight global warming, solarthermic plants can replace coal

>>10065930
if we get so far we can set up giant space mirrors, we will soon be able to farm solar energy in space, which is very efficient. Also we can reflect infrared light only.

>>10065945
>Also we can reflect infrared light only.
boy, you don't have a clue how the greenhouse effect works, do you

>>10065930
>>10065949

leave OP alone he is clearly an idiot.
or this is a bait

>>10057581
Of humanity put all of its resources into building the largest mirror, and somehow managed to get that into space, how much of the sun could you realistically block? 1%? Probably less? Look at solar eclipses. The moon is 1/6th the size of the earth and barely blocks any sunlight in relation to the whole world

>>10057581
hey OP I just realized, why dont we simply dig ourselves into the ground? SUN BLOCKED!

>>10059112
Nice morals man

>>10057594
Yeah so OP should fuck off

>>10066021
you think you are trolling but thanks to the efforts of our Lord and Saviour, His High Eminence Elon Musk and The Boring Company (tm) this will soon become a feasible reality

>>10065992
>Look at solar eclipses.
You mean the things that cause a drop in temperature locally of tens of degrees?