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...With the advent of the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, we have MORE than enough resources to reduce incident solar radiation via a mega-constellation of satellites at a L-point (compare to Starlink) as a solution to a runaway greenhouse event....
Not sure why you suggest "comparing to Starlink." The nearest Lagrange point is at an altitude of 1.5 million km. On the other hand, SpaceX has proposed lowering the operation altitudes of future clusters of Starlink satellites from 1,110-1,325 kilometers, its previous range, to 540-570 kilometers. So the Lagrange point is over 2,500 times farther away than one of the Starlink satellites.
It's pretty apparent we ARE effecting the earth in ways that are different than if there were no people. That holds true for all life, you can't understand the geology of earth unless you understand how the biosphere impacts the lithosphere.
I recently heard 20% of all eroded sediment no longer hits the ocean due to dams and other factors. Also, look how much more evaporation is occurring now in the Great Plains with irrigated crop circles than was happening before it was cultivated. These are both certainly profound changes that definitely compete with volcanic eruptions with regards to changes to earth. I think less erosion and more water in the atmosphere are both positive effects.
The question is what sort of effects are you looking for? Usually geoengineering means someone is interested in trying to reverse climate change, which I think is a bit foolish as climate change has pros as well as cons. Is the cost of reversing warming + the lost pros of warming + potential side effects worth it? Not in my book.
This sounds to me like a recipe for global disaster. Human beings have a history of creating such disasters in attempts to manipulate nature -- the quickest example that comes to my mind are the results of introducing invasive, non-native plant and animal species into various environments around the world.
I'm not so sure that introducing "physical or chemical solutions" into our atmosphere won't similarly backfire on us.
This is an interesting topic for discussion/debate that you've started!
Interestingly enough, while on Earth that may be a bad idea, it’s been suggested as a way of terraforming Mars , in order to make it more habitable for humans.
Interestingly enough, while on Earth that may be a bad idea, it’s been suggested as a way of terraforming Mars , in order to make it more habitable for humans.
If there's any possibility that we may someday develop the technology to do that, then I would enthusiastically be in favor of that. As long as it's also firmly established that there are no complex life forms on Mars, of course. We may not know for certain until we get there.
Interestingly enough, while on Earth that may be a bad idea, it’s been suggested as a way of terraforming Mars , in order to make it more habitable for humans.
Ha. Let's just try to get people to live in northern Canada first. Geoengineering Mars is purely science fiction at this point, and a pointless endeavor with what we are able to do now.
Ha. Let's just try to get people to live in northern Canada first. Geoengineering Mars is purely science fiction at this point, and a pointless endeavor with what we are able to do now.
No no! Please, let's not. It's a very delicate ecosystem that is already in trouble and we don't want a lot more people coming to live in northern Canada trashing it and endangering it even more than it already is. We all know that's exactly what would happen.
Ha. Let's just try to get people to live in northern Canada first. Geoengineering Mars is purely science fiction at this point, and a pointless endeavor with what we are able to do now.
Science fiction has long been a medium for proposing new ideas that have eventually turned into science fact. Even if we were to get people to live in northern Canada, there is still the matter of providing for the energy needs of the resulting communities. Besides, northern Canada may not be everyone's idea of paradise (no offense intended towards any Canadians here -- it's beautiful country, but it may not remain so beautiful once people start crowding in).
Even the possibility of geoengineering Mars and other planets and moons within our solar system may not be the best solution for humankind. More ideally, humankind may someday take to space to live in fully autonomous communities within O'Neill cylinders, as envisioned by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill (1927-1992).
"The classical science-fiction idea, of course, is to settle on the surface of the moon or Mars, changing the conditions there as desired. It turned out that there were several things wrong with this, however. First, the solar system doesn’t really provide all that much area on the planets—a few times the surface area of Earth, at most. And in almost all cases the conditions on these planets are very hard to work with... Also space is not an empty, hostile environment. It is a culture medium, rich in energy and in the resources needed for life. An artificial world in space gets solar energy full time, without the day-night cycles and the atmospheric absorption of a planet. Further, planets have strong gravity fields against which a spacecraft must fight. The earth’s gravity is strong enough to have the same effect as a hole, 4000 miles deep, out of which we must climb. If we wish to colonize the surface of another planet, we are just climbing up a deep hole, passing through the sunshine of space—and then going down another hole." Quoted from Colonies in Space, by T. A. Heppenheimer.
The National Space Society has generously made the complete text of Colonies in Space available online, free to all. Click on this link to view book
As for what these colonies might look like, this video provides a compilation of artists' renderings of various designs for these communities in space, supplied by NASA.
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 11-30-2020 at 01:12 AM..
No no! Please, let's not. It's a very delicate ecosystem that is already in trouble and we don't want a lot more people coming to live in northern Canada trashing it and endangering it even more than it already is. We all know that's exactly what would happen.
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Ha again! The largest and least biodiverse ecosystem, the taiga, cannot be as fragile as smaller, more diverse ones. Yes stuff grows slower, but there's less inter-dependencies than other ecosystems due to the harsh nature of the climate. It's the same type of ecosystem as Colorado mountains, lodgepole pines and willow bush things. Look at Leadville CO or Breckenridge CO, both areas were TRASHED by mining, and 100 years later you wouldn't really even know outside of the tailings piles (which are continually being reclaimed). The fact that a ski resort with ritzy homes rests on a pile of environmental trash shows you how fast things can be reclaimed where people and nature work together. That is geoengineering, albeit on a micro instead of global scale.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rachel NewYork
Science fiction has long been a medium for proposing new ideas that have eventually turned into science fact. Even if we were to get people to live in northern Canada, there is still the matter of providing for the energy needs of the resulting communities. Besides, northern Canada may not be everyone's idea of paradise (no offense intended towards any Canadians here -- it's beautiful country, but it may not remain so beautiful once people start crowding in).
Even the possibility of geoengineering Mars and other planets and moons within our solar system may not be the best solution for humankind. More ideally, humankind may someday take to space to live in fully autonomous communities within O'Neill cylinders, as envisioned by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill (1927-1992).
"The classical science-fiction idea, of course, is to settle on the surface of the moon or Mars, changing the conditions there as desired. It turned out that there were several things wrong with this, however. First, the solar system doesn’t really provide all that much area on the planets—a few times the surface area of Earth, at most. And in almost all cases the conditions on these planets are very hard to work with... Also space is not an empty, hostile environment. It is a culture medium, rich in energy and in the resources needed for life. An artificial world in space gets solar energy full time, without the day-night cycles and the atmospheric absorption of a planet. Further, planets have strong gravity fields against which a spacecraft must fight. The earth’s gravity is strong enough to have the same effect as a hole, 4000 miles deep, out of which we must climb. If we wish to colonize the surface of another planet, we are just climbing up a deep hole, passing through the sunshine of space—and then going down another hole." Quoted from Colonies in Space, by T. A. Heppenheimer.
The National Space Society has generously made the complete text of Colonies in Space available online, free to all. Click on this link to view book
As for what these colonies might look like, this video provides a compilation of artists' renderings of various designs for these communities in space, supplied by NASA.
It's all in relation to the time horizon. Putting people in self sufficient pods is a long ways off from where we're at now, just as long as the need to put people in them due to earth running out of resources and space is. 25% of the planet is still pretty much untouched by people.
The question is what will be the scenario between now and self sufficient pods? The answer, look at Nebraska, the quintessential example of geoengineering; transforming a portion of Earth that was largely unused and open into highly modified and productive land. To get Nebraska from an open plain to todays version, vast amounts of earth moving, water moving, genetic engineering, and infrastructure were put in place. That is geoengineering, which is much more than adjusting parameters of our atmosphere as many people conjure when they hear the term.
This same activity, replicated across other portions of the earth, are what stands between us now and the future. This activity enhances the productivity of land and also makes places that were once uninhabitable liveable. Look at Denver, the city only exists because of water pumped across a continental divide, power is brought in from many different locations, an an interstate / rail system provides all the food for a city which can grow none of it's own (besides barley for beer ).
Can we do this to the atmosphere as well? Yes, though looking fallout of geoengineering rivers and water, there are many, many political pitfalls when 1 nation does something that effects another. For the atmosphere, it's ALL the nations that have to be considered instead of a couple, so THAT is the hurdle and why so many precautions need to be considered.
The question is, can humans actually control the climate using physical or chemical solutions? Is this ably possible and is it even morally ethical to do?
Humans can never control climate, but they can destroy the world attempting to do so.
Yes, it is possible to destroy the world.
Background: Earth has an atmosphere that is divided into the lower atmosphere and the upper atmosphere. The lower atmosphere varies from about 11 miles to 13 miles in height and consists of the troposphere, tropopause and Ozone Layer. The upper atmosphere is the stratosphere, mesosphere etc.
The Ozone Layer is important, because it protects Earth from Sun's UV-A, UV-B and UV-C radiation.
A little UV goes a long way on Earth.
Periodically in Earth's history, there have been cataclysmic volcanic events such as out-gassings or eruptions. Think Mount Pinatubo, Mount Saint Helens, Krakatoa, Toba and the like that have resulted in global temperatures cooling several degrees for a period of time.
Those are distinguishable from garden-variety lava flows (like Kilauea) because they eject two forms of matter into the upper atmosphere.
The first form is particulate matter such as sand, dust, dirt, debris and the like. The second form is chemical compounds in aerosol form, such as Sulfur compounds.
With respect to particulate matter, a nominal-sized particle (~42 microns) will fall at a rate of 2,000 feet per hour, but that's only true in the lower atmosphere. In the upper atmosphere, where wind speeds are always greater than 60 MPH and commonly reach 200 MPH, it takes them longer to fall.
That isn't really relevant, because there's no real practical way to inject particulate matter into the upper atmosphere (although atmospheric nuclear weapons tests did).
The chemical compounds stay longer in the upper atmosphere, because they'll bond with Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and other gases (but not Noble gases).
This matter in the upper atmosphere functions just like the Ozone Layer by absorbing, scattering or reflecting (back into Space) the Sun's UV radiation.
The Earth receives less UV radiation and cools as a result.
The problem is aircraft generally cannot travel higher than 60,000 feet or about 11 miles.
You would need an aircraft that could travel at 60,000 feet, carry a liquid cargo, and the machinery necessary to turn the liquid into an aerosol and eject it with sufficient force so that it travels another 2-3 miles into the upper atmosphere.
Another possibility would be to use spacecraft. You could launch something sub-orbital (the same flight path as an ICBM/SLBM) that could disperse the liquid then maybe a controlled re-entry to destroy the spacecraft.
However, that would be not only immoral and unethical, it would also be criminal.
No one understands Earth's climate.
Global warming is a lie. Period.
Palaeo data suggest that Greenland must have been largely ice free during Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS-11). The globally averaged MIS-11 sea level is estimated to have reached between 6–13 m above that of today.
“Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and leader of the NEEM-project.
As you can plainly see from the scientific evidence, sea levels rise during Inter-Glacial Periods because temperatures are supposed to rise.
There is nothing unusual or abnormal about sea level rise at present.
Well, wait...that's not entirely true.....sea levels are lower now than in past Inter-Glacial Periods, so that is abnormal.
An attempt to geo-engineer the climate is sufficient to warrant a civil war or any conflict necessary to prevent it.
During the Mini-Ice Age 400 years ago, Millions of people died.
Millions of people died because the top 3-4 inches of soil froze at the end of August and stayed frozen until until the middle of July.
The tiny 6 week period people had to clear fields, plant seeds and harrow couldn't produce enough food and Millions starved to death.
The colonists living the 100+ colonies in the New England region damn near starved to death because they only had 6 weeks to plant and harvest crops.
They were saved by the Virginia, Georgia and Carolina colonies that could still grow some food.
B-b-b-b-b-but wait! We have tractors!
Yeah? So freaking what?
American farmers do the same thing farmers the world over do: A soil test.
You take a half-inch rebar rod and you hit with a 2-pound sledgehammer.
If it goes into the soil at least 2 inches, you can start planting.
If not, you have to wait until the ground thaws. Your big John Deere tractor can't plow squat when the ground is frozen.
Temperatures fluctuate wildly on Earth for reasons that are simply not understood.
One of the more recent intriguing findings is the remarkable speed of these changes. Within the incredibly short time span (by geologic standards) of only a few decades or even a few years, global temperatures have fluctuated by as much as 15°F (8°C) or more.
For example, as Earth was emerging out of the last glacial cycle, the warming trend was interrupted 12,800 years ago when temperatures dropped dramatically in only several decades. A mere 1,300 years later, temperatures locally spiked as much as 20°F (11°C) within just several years. Sudden changes like this occurred at least 24 times during the past 100,000 years. In a relative sense, we are in a time of unusually stable temperatures today—how long will it last?
If there's any possibility that we may someday develop the technology to do that, then I would enthusiastically be in favor of that. As long as it's also firmly established that there are no complex life forms on Mars, of course. We may not know for certain until we get there.
There may very well be bacteria on Mars, but I doubt you’ll find anything more complex than that. Mars also has a very thin atmosphere.
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