Mood:
quizzicalTopic: Pseudoscientific Musings
Global warming got ya' down? Not a problem! Why bother messing with the Earth when we can, instead, mess with the amount of energy imparted to us from that lovely spherical life-giver above?
"Solar sails"?... right...
the idea's more than a little half-baked (and not because of logistics, mind you... unless we're talking about the real world and not the same one occupied by my sci-fi series...)
Okay: besides the MASSIVE damage this would deal to agriculture worldwide (not to mention the rest of nature at large; you think we've left a big footprint before? Hoo-boy...) BLOCKING sunlight, or even merely altering the frequency of the light that passes to Earth, would have unforseen consequences that would extend to realms beyond our imagination.
Even the less outlandish plots are suspect, like the 'Sulphur shield'...
Quote:
"Such a barrier, Crutzen predicted, would reflect approximately one percent of the sun's heat back out into space, sufficient to counter the effects of current atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide."
a ONE PERCENT REDUCTION in solar radiation to the Earth, caused by clogging the atmosphere with sulphur? This guy's either insane, or just lookin' for a massive grant (to his credit, he doesn't currently advocate this project...).
By the way: there ARE planets out there with thick, tough-to-penetrate atmopheres. You wouldn't want to live there, I don't think: it doesn't do much for 'em in the long run...
The overall ideology is suspect, too: instead of trapping all of our pollutants and cleaning-up our messes (of which even I agree there are a few) we're basically talking about cutting the Earth's life-support back by a factor of lumens. Ecosystems don't tolerate the idea of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul', they live on Chaos Theory (that might not be the correct way of explaining it, but you get my point...). The Earth thrives on the light it currently HAS with the ATMOSPHERE it currently has, and altering one to fix a deficit in the other is a disaster waiting to happen. These aren't two variables: they're two SETS of variables containing a few thousand factors apiece.
Of course, changing your life isn't the end-all, be-all either (which explains why 'Mister Tubbs' is always hanging around his mansion or driving in a limo and never seen talking a walk a-la Subway's Jared: Al Gore is not a hippocrite, he's a visionary!)
Seriously: the planet's woes need people with genuine solutions (and not wankers who live like kings and break their own rules, all the while bribing other to keep quiet about their largess). We DO need real solutions and real ideas on the table...
but sheltering the Earth from the sun in any way, shape or form is NOT one of them.
Frankly, we're nowhere NEAR ready to be weaned, yet...
But please note that I do say 'not yet'...
