Hack the Planet: How I solved Global Warming in my sleep | Hacker News Reader

Hack the Planet: How I solved Global Warming in my sleep

blog.mathgladiator.com

That solution was raised a few years ago, proposal was using hundreds of thousands of small aluminium very thin foils to somehow decrease the amount of sunligth coming to earth, I believed they shelved it for two reasons, first was not being able stop blocking the sun after a given amount of time and the second reason was the blockage will effect different parts of the world very differently north climates can freeze to death and milder climates can see total environmental destruction due to very quick fluctuation in temperatures.

It was a good idea even then but massive water evaporating ships ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=geoengine... ) was better IMHO at least you can stop doing it whenever you want :)

And it doesn't address the ocean-acidification aspect of climate change either.

Thank you, there are a wealth of links contained in that link.

I think there may be more practical benefits to aluminum in the sky if we can control it. If we could control it to the point where cities can limit their sunlight to reduce energy needs, then it could be a huge win and a commercial success.

There's a saying in Spanish (haven't read it or heard it an English) which translates to: "you can't cover the sun with a finger." It means you shouldn't pretend to be solving huge problems by, in some ways, denying them and doing too little.

However practical this solution may be (it's definitely clever), it does not really address the biggest problem--our increasing dependence on fossil fuels. It is creating more than just climatic problems (pollution, wars, etc), so why not find hacks to alleviate such "addiction" and kill many birds with one stone.

I think we should promote hacks when they address the root of a problem--otherwise you create a bigger mess in the long run, but then, would they still be called hacks?

I should write more on this, but I'm thinking the world needs a super project to solve/build together to learn to work together. Only when the world works together will the root of all problems start to fade and become solvable.

The Sun isn't a point light source, so the further away from Earth you get (and hence the closer to the Sun), the larger your aluminium sheet needs to be.

Think of it in the limit - at the surface of the Sun, the sheet would need to be almost as large (in diameter) as the Sun itself to block it out.

A remote-controlled moon would be cool though.

You wouldn't want to block the Sun out entirely. Indeed, you wouldn't want to reduce solar flux by more than 10%, or so.

From the article:

So, how do we block out the sun? If we go far enough out into space, then the projected distance of whatever we build would leave a larger shadow. Think of an eclipse where the moon blocks out the sun. If we go out farther, then we don't need to build a moon. (Although honestly, we need to build a moon and control it; how cool would that be).

I was just replying to that. Obviously you wouldn't actually want to block out the sun completely, unless you were a Bond villian.

Any deep analysis of geo-engineering spills a plethora of questions onto the table.

e.g.

* Who is in charge? China? the US? England? India? * If the governments of the world can't get things done in Copenhagen, why would they get things done with geo-engineering? * What happens when one country feels its agriculture would benefit from more sunlight and wants to reverse a process or otherwise change something?

and so on

There have been a number of proposals for geo-engineering to solve global warming. The problem with most of them is that they involve filling the atmosphere with something to reflect IR, and the consequences of that are unknown.

There was an article I read a while ago that speculated a low lying country could unilaterally decide to do geoengineering, and it's not clear how other countries would respond.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com