Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/dimming-the-sun-to-cool-the-planet-is-a-desperate-idea-yet-were-inching-toward-it

by samizdis • 4 years ago

22 85 4 years ago

newyorker.com

xrayarx2• 4 years ago

From the article:

Andy Parker, British climate researcher:

Unless we find a way to remove carbon in quantities not imaginable presently, dimming would be the only way to stop or reverse rapidly rising temperature

Vosporos• 4 years ago

Ah yes, I too have seen The Matrix (1999)

tootie• 4 years ago

And Who Shot Mr Burns

hok• 4 years ago

I wonder if that could backfire if the reduced irradiation would reduce the plants' ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

beanjuice2• 4 years ago

Plants primarily photosynthesize visible light (400-700nm), wherein proposals to 'dim the sun' are speaking of infrared light.

rr888• 4 years ago

I think its a good idea and we should do it. I regularly see areas which were snow covered and white now brown and much warmer. Unfortunately its also the plot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer where it overshoots.

snapcaster5• 4 years ago

Are you serious? you don't have any concerns about the impact on animal life? plants? human quality of life? It seems completely insane to think this is a good idea

yreg3• 4 years ago

How about the concerns if we don't do geo-engineering? Seems difficult to guess which concern should be higher.

pfdietz9• 4 years ago

The point is that the effects of CO2 are so dire that even a very problematic half measure could be worthwhile. OF COURSE CO2 emissions should also be addressed; these efforts are just to emphasize how serious the problem is, that one would rationally have to consider such steps.

wolfram743• 4 years ago

It is possible to be concerned about the viability of the ecosystem and still want to do geoengineering, mainly by being convinced that current trends point essentially an unviable ecosystem on incredibly short time scales.

For example, the wet bulb thermometer temperature forecasted for large swathes of land near the equator essentially means it's uninhabitable for mammals several weeks of the year.

Its the perceived choice between 1) Do nothing and watch everything die or 2) try something risky and if it goes wrong, watch everything die.

hoseja• 4 years ago

It's totally doable in a limited way (low half-life blockers).

Jyaif• 4 years ago

Even if it works perfectly, there at least one way it may backfire. Right now the increase in temperature is unprecedentedly fast, but many organisms can still adapt because the rise is spread over decades.

If at any time during the next couple of thousands of years our society is unable or unwilling to send the required payloads to cool earth, then the temperature will increase by several degrees in a few years, and fewer organisms will be able to adapt.

kmeisthax• 4 years ago

The thing about solar geoengineering is that, if you stop spraying, the particles settle in a matter of years and we're back to +1.5C again. I'm tempted to say that the possibility of an overshoot is nigh-impossible; but it's more the case that it's quickly reversed because we're still fighting uphill against all the heat we trapped under a blanket of carbon.

pencilguin2• 4 years ago

Not just back to +1.5C, but to where you would have been by that time.

Meanwhile, the whole ocean ecosystem has collapsed as acidification continued on up. The primary protein source of a billion+ people has vanished. They do not starve quietly.

fredley• 4 years ago

If we dim the sun, the brakes are off for burning fossil fuels, especially as yields from solar will decrease.

Great news if you're in the fossil fuel business, bad news if the side effects of burning fossil fuels besides the carbon emissions bother you.

In particular, ecosystem/habitat destruction would only be amplified by the dimming.

pfdietz9• 4 years ago

Except, you know, for the change in distribution of temperature with latitude, and changes in precipitation patterns, and acidification of the ocean. And the aerosols will change the color of the sky. The sun will be surrounded by a bilious corona of scattered light. But all that is still better than unaddressed CO2 emission.

The decrease in solar yield will be quite modest.

Your argument is like "discovering imperfect treatments for lung cancer just encourages smoking."

moffkalast2• 4 years ago

"discovering imperfect treatments for lung cancer just encourages smoking"

Well yes, it does? The better the treatment the less reason to avoid it.

xrayarx2• 4 years ago

Quote:

it would cost Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest man, far less to fund such a mission than it did to buy Twitter—and he’s already got the rockets

waltbosz2• 4 years ago

I find it really interesting that today there are individuals who are able to fund projects that previously took the resources of an entire country to fund. It's got to be the invention of the Internet that has made this individual wealth accumulation possible.

Also, I'd like to see a list of all the suggestions that people have made for a better use of Musk's money than to buy Twitter.

fasteo• 4 years ago

>> Dimming the sun

What could possibly go wrong?

devnull255• 4 years ago

Wasn't it this kind of desperation that led to the apocalyptic conditions of "Snow Piercer" ?

pfdietz9• 4 years ago

This may come as surprise, but "the argument from science fiction" is not actually valid. For example, it's probably not realistic to have FTL spaceships.

danielrpa• 4 years ago

Won't we get less solar power as a result? Maybe it's what Nuclear needs...

SuoDuanDao2• 4 years ago

It sounds like the kind of big-centrally-planned-risk-unknown project the Nuclear lobby likes...

tamaharbor• 4 years ago

Wasn’t this a Simpsons episode? Montgomery Burns wanted to block out the sun to discourage solar power use.

waltbosz2• 4 years ago

Who Shot Mr. Burns?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Shot_Mr._Burns%3F

SuoDuanDao2• 4 years ago

"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky".

fourseventy• 4 years ago

For real. Sounds like a good way to accidentally kill ourselves

sliken2• 4 years ago

By replicating what volcanoes have doing since ... the earth was formed?

aa-jv• 4 years ago

Whatever we do to protect the Earth, can be turned against us to destroy it, too.

Before we develop the technology to do this earth-cooling properly, we need to establish the ethics to make sure it is done properly.

Too often we technologists invent something that changes the world for the better, only to have it weaponised to make the world worse.

I sure hope the space nerds are aware of this cold, hard fact.

bamboozled• 4 years ago

Geez, it would've been good if we cooled it on the burning of fossil fuels, 50 years ago.

Bit late now.

yreg3• 4 years ago

In addition to all the other popculture references in this thread, there is a book about a billionaire doing this, it came out last year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)

Written by Stephenson (Blue Origin, Cryptonomicon, …)

tgvaughan• 4 years ago

Not mentioned in the article, but sulphur-based geoengineering was the focus of Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Termination Shock.

AbrahamParangi3• 4 years ago

Why on earth would anyone think a cooler but darker Earth is less of a catastrophic ecosystem change?

This is so wrongheaded that I’m actually wondering if this story was pitched by some group that wants to smear geoengineering. I mean, geoengineering has a lot of ideas in it that are (while still out there) much less viscerally horrifying than blotting out the sun.

pfdietz9• 4 years ago

It would be a slightly darker earth. The net warming from CO2 addition is a few watts/m^2. Insolation is something shy of two orders of magnitude higher. Dimming sunlight by a few percent is not a large change.

SomeBoolshit• 4 years ago

I'm gonna wait until we're sure about the effect on every living organism on earth.

AbrahamParangi3• 4 years ago

Why would you consider a few percent of sunlight change to be meaningless whereas a few degrees (a smaller percent, temp should be considered in Kelvin) is extremely meaningful?

beanjuice2• 4 years ago

Not all sunlight is the same, and the majority of the heat comes from some of the lesser-utilized parts of that spectrum.

civilized• 4 years ago

Why on earth would anyone think a cooler but darker Earth is less of a catastrophic ecosystem change?

It seems possible to me, although definitely not certain.

The worst consequence would be less photosynthesis and less food, but we have surplus food production capacity on Earth. And maybe even that could be avoided if the blocking happens mostly in the infrared regime that causes most of the heating.

On our current path, we have areas of the Earth holding hundreds of millions of people which are projected to become too hot for human life for some of the year. Action that avoids that has something going for it, even if it also has downsides.

bwi4• 4 years ago

Can’t find the sauce, but MIT published a concept study about putting giant Mylar balloons at the L1 LaGrange point to reflect solar radiation as an alternative to aerosols.

samizdis• 4 years ago

A slight tangent, but there was an interesting experiment by Russia in the 1990s that involved solar reflectors on satellites to shine more light on the Earth. See Znamya (satellite): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite)

throwaway71271• 4 years ago

just in time for GPT4

hmate9• 4 years ago

Looks like men would rather dim the sun first than invest in nuclear energy. Sounds great.

jaggs2• 4 years ago

What's worrying is that these stupid suggestions keep popping up all over the place.

It's as if there's now a concerted effort to push geo-engineering on a wider level.

I wonder why? Could it be money, and the fossil fuel industry trying to muddy the issues?

occamrazor• 4 years ago

Geoengineering is our plan B, or even plan C.

It’s a bad solution, but I guess it’s good to have it ready in a drawer if things start going really wrong.

jaggs2• 4 years ago

I hear what you're saying. But it's more than just a bad solution, it's not a solution.

It doesn't fix the core issue, which is too many Co2e emissions. Unless and until we address that, we're going nowhere long term.

gedy• 4 years ago

Thinking aloud, I wonder how feasible a mechanical shield at the Sun/Earth L1 spot could be? Seems more adjustable and less risky than atmospheric manipulation.

pjc502• 4 years ago

In this thread, nobody seems to understand the concept of "slightly".

There is a dimming effect every time there is a sufficiently large volcanic eruption. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-dimming-volca...

This effect is slight - not visibly apparent, you'd have to use instruments to detect it. That would also apply to solar panels. But this is the same effect as global warming in reverse.

If we have a top-of-atmosphere insolation of, say, 1300W/m2, and an emission of 1299W/m2 (not exact numbers), that will cause warming. If we add reflection, can we get those numbers to balance once more?

And note that this stuff will fall out of the atmosphere over a period of time. It would be an ongoing expense to do.

I don't see it likely to happen, on sheer cost grounds.

An alternative slightly more long-term plan would be a solar shade at a Lagrange point. Could even be used for space solar power, although at this point we're into deep science fiction. The Mars trilogy posited a solar Fresnel lens which would be used to warm Mars.

pfdietz9• 4 years ago

not visibly apparent

In fact it was quite visible. I remember how odd the sun looked during that time.

I don't see it likely to happen, on sheer cost grounds.

The cost appears to be one of the things in its favor.

pencilguin2• 4 years ago

Gaslighting unwelcome.

It would be disastrous if a program in any way like this went ahead, because it would be seen as a substitute for fixing the root problem, would steal funding from the latter, and would do nothing to stop the ocean acidification that threatens the roots of the global ocean ecosystem.

ASalazarMX2• 4 years ago

Precisely. It's like installing plumbing to divert a roof leak instead of fixing the leak. "But we would have extra water from the leak!".

nickelcitymario2• 4 years ago

Serious but potentially seriously stupid question: If clouds cool the earth, and we have a fresh water shortage, what if we boil the oceans?

Hear me out.

What if we had large floating barges of dark surfaces floating in hot areas. And what if we set it up so the dark surface was just an inch under water. Wouldn't this cause the sun to evaporate more water than it normally would, thereby increasing clouds in the sky, and potentially addressing two climate issues at once?

There's probably a million reasons why that's stupid, but I can't think of them at the moment. Seems like a simple solution to a complex problem.

pjc502• 4 years ago

Low-atmosphere cloud causes more warming than reflection. The positive feedback loop between increased surface temperature and increased evaporation is part of IPCC modelling; the term you want is "radiative forcing".

If you want a ground solution, there's surprising value in painting roofs white and selecting light colored road surfaces. I believe there's even a material which is calculated to radiate in the less-absorbed bands, so it can have a positive cooling effect.

nickelcitymario2• 4 years ago

Thanks for this response, by the way! I forgot to reply. This was really helpful.

robomartin4• 4 years ago

The hubris in the climate change cult --because that is what it has become-- never ceases to both amaze and horrify me. Unbelievable.

I have said this here many times. If we continue to listen to these brainwashed cult members we are going to succeed at killing everything on this planet.

In a rational world, anyone proposing to control planetary-scale phenomena should be laughed off the stage. This cult has gained foothold in powerful political circles. This drives billions (hundreds of billions?) of dollars for research and general-purpose nonsense. The greedy among us (universities and private enterprise) jump on that bandwagon and promote the nonsense because it makes them millions of dollars.

It's a horrific positive feedback loop with potentially devastating consequences. The sad part is we are wasting time and obscene amounts of money that could be put to work on the reality of climate change, rather than the fantasies they continue to erect to keep the money machine going.

NOTE: In a rational world you should be able to get just as much funding from government to disprove or counter these hairbrained schemes. How much of that funding you think is available? Zero. Therefore, if you depend on research funding to make a living or a university depends on it to keep a department funded, guess what your conclusions are going to say, every, fucking, time?

Today, if you are a researcher or a business and dare go against what the cult has decreed to be "The One and Only Truth", your career is over and your business is going bankrupt. That should make everyone take pause. This is nothing less than Orwellian.

BiggsHoson• 4 years ago

Brilliantly put.

robomartin4• 4 years ago

It really bugs me that people don't realize research funding is only available if you say what they want you to say. That should be a red flag of massive proportions. Science isn't made this way. One could argue in science it is essential to fund and support every reasonable effort to discover holes in hypothesis. We don't do that, at all.

Good news is that it is very difficult to go-up against reality. Eventually physics wins, brutally so.

The closest I have seen to a refutation of climate change dogma is a private paper by Google Research dating back to 2014. That's right, we have understood some very important things about this issue since at least 2014...yet nobody talks about it and, much worse, none of this research is funded. They are looking for one, and only one, conclusion.

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

There are other realities that, once again, are brutally hard to avoid. For example, if tomorrow all of the US and China were to evaporate from this planet atmospheric CO2 would continue to increase. No effort to control this can produce a rate of change higher than about 100 ppm in 50K to 100K years. That's not a guess. We have known this for decades. All you have to do is analyze atmospheric CO2 ice-core sample data going back 800K years to reach this very simple conclusion.

Schroedingersat4• 4 years ago

Noone on the left wants this. It's a solution invented and pushed by people who want to keep using more energy and drag their feet in eliminating fossil fuels. We should be putting every ounce of effort we can into eliminating waste, transitioning to clean sourcez and better distributing the energy budget we have now so the people who have too little can flourish. Not coming up with reasons that those in the global north can consume even more.

ambientenv• 4 years ago

I wish I could recall (or find) the precise quote, but I do believe it was Mark Twain that said something like, "we are destined to outsmart ourselves.". No doubt we are a clever and creative species willing to tackle the thorniest of challenges. Except when it comes to changing beliefs and behaviours. With so much of climate change mitigation, we appear unwilling to change values and expectations, beliefs and behaviours. To drop our feelings of deservedness (especially relative to comfort and convenience and consumption) and to let go of human exceptionalism. No amount of extraordinary engineering will do as much for humanity as developing a reverence for the natural world and all that is in it rather than continue to hold values based on extraction and exploitation. We have a history of bad choices when meddling with nature [1]. I suspect there have been some successes, too, but we largely remain ignorant, to a grand degree, of the interconnectedness and dynamics of most natural systems and ecosystems.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/22/what-hap...

kytazo• 4 years ago

Sorry, who has such an authority over the entire globe? Totally ridiculous if you ask me... Some people trying to play god or w/e but they're not alone in the room.

mikedelago• 4 years ago

Why is it always a plan straight out of sci-fi rather than "yeah we'll use a mix of renewable and nuclear energies, heavily reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and create combustible fuels from renewable resources".

Obviously this plan is hard but is it harder than dimming the sun? the fucking SUN?

- is dimming the sun reliable?

- can the sun get too dim? What happens when a volcano erupts, dimming the sun's effect even more?

- Will we ever need to reduce the amount of sulfur in that atmosphere? how do we do that?

- How do we globally coordinate throwing sulfur into the atmosphere when we can't globally coordinate management of climate change?

- Does this help with air pollution in any way?

I want investment into the reasonable solutions to climate change that already exist. Telling the Koch family "Oh no, we can fill the atmosphere with sulfur and you can continue to dump garbage into the sky for 30 years" is laughable and it basically means that nothing but increased air pollution is going to happen for 30 years.

I'm not trying to be such a downer on this plan, and if it can safely and effectively help curb/reverse some of the effects of climate change that's incredible.

That said, we already have decades of research and billions of dollars invested into much more feasible methods to help curb climate change, and I can't really see why the top polluting countries of the world would start geoengineering when they haven't started implementing policies for the things that we know for sure work.

beardyw• 4 years ago

Reading elsewhere talks about using huge solar arrays to collect energy. Perhaps they would also block out some sun?

xavor• 4 years ago

It should be brighten the inhabitants to cool the planet

Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet

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