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Comment by czbond | Hacker News Reader

You reminded me of a "midnight thought" on the topic. I wonder if Tesla starlink process could be used to create satellites with sails that block sunlight opening/closing as needed until we can remove enough carbon to do it right? The ring of satellites could be some distance above our current satellite flight paths.

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Have you ever seen the shadow of a satellite passing overhead?

For that matter, if it did work, would the satellites not reflect IR back to Earth? They might even hurt more than they help because they would be blocking sunlight on one side of the Earth only but would be blocking IR escaping on both sides.

Read about solar radiation management. Space based approaches aren't necessary. You can put the equivalent of sunblock in the upper atmosphere or seed more low clouds. It's relatively cheap but there is a lot of opposition to the science.

That's not "opposition to the science", that's a sane response to a madman's proposal to intentionally f*k with the biosphere at the grandest scale.

@dr_shiv & @DemocracyFTW (I don't recall if HN notifies of mentions)

Is the "opposition" mainly that the process as stated isn't reversible? Is there a way to improve the original idea to make it reversible in a short order?

Well, marine cloud brightening is small scale and involves lofting salt water in the air. It is immediately reversable.

The opposition comes from political signaling and tribalism.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02290-3

Thank you so much - very helpful

Considering the psychological effects of no sunlight, this is a terrible idea.

It doesn't require darkened skies --a reduction in incoming light is all you need. 10% reduction would be a lot.

I was suggesting, more like.... if they were programmed (for instance) to open over deserts, or barren U.S. lands, etc for short periods of time. Some parts of the globe might have some small amount of light blocked for 10 mins, 1 hour, etc - whatever. It would be like a cloudy "hour", etc.

Oh, you'll still get sunlight, assuming you pay your monthly sunlight bill to spacex.

My response isn't a HN "appropriate" comment, more Reddit - but this is gold! Made me laugh thinking of it.

Not sure how to phrase this, but: Are you aware of clouds? (The ones in the sky, not at FAANG...)

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