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[Reelya]

Aerosols don't stay in the atmosphere for long, so it's just a temporary masking effect that requires constant commitment to maintaining (and increasing the amount in lock step with the accumulating CO2) - not a solution.

but that's actually a selling point. a short lived effect would be much easier to control and fine-tune.

And of course the goal is that you take steps to reduce the amount of CO2 in the mean time.

[MaxTheFox]

Guys I've got the best idea of how to solve global warming, we just have to knock the Earth out of orbit and get it out of the solar system, then once we're far from the sun global warming no longer has an effect as there isn't a sun to warm us, this also solves world hunger, pollution, COVID-19, and pretty much any other global problem I've forgotten about.

Where's my Nobel Prize for finding a solution to all this crap?

Why bother when we can just launch all of the world's nukes at once! Global warming can't damage the ecosystem if all multicellular life is gone!

[LordBaal]

I was originally talking about doing this with fridges:


And we started discusing how to blow up continents, slow down earth and whatnot....

Do you realize we are all pontential Bond villians?

[pisskop]

Well, blocking out the sun is an absolutely viable means of reducing global warming.

A solar shade might be worth our time.

[dragdeler]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was originally talking about doing this with fridges:


And we started discusing how to blow up continents, slow down earth and whatnot....

Do you realize we are all pontential Bond villians?

Yeah I imagined something like this, I wonder if there could be some relatively low power device that makes one room hot and another cold, maybe put it in the floor for efficiency. Maybe pantries could come back in style.

[LordBaal]

A solar shade could be used to ruin crops on whole places?

[Naturegirl1999]

If there are any aerosols that aren’t poisonous, we could produce those, while reducing greenhouse gas production

[pisskop]

I will operate under the presumption that if we had a functioning plan to build a solar shade we also had a reasonable way to determine its use.  Maybe we only use it once a week, or we build multiples to toggle them, or we use the UN or a similar coalition.

I do believe that the UN would at least attempt to fairly use such a device without abusing it.  For say . . . sanctions.  I believe they wouldnt do that.

A successful plan could also include large shipments of food being shipped into the most affected countries, while countries not at all affected could grow extra.


I think that a bigger issue is what to do with all that power we'd be able to theoretically generate with a functioning solar shade.

[Reelya]

One problem is said solar shade will lower the efficiency of all the solar panels, meaning you need to increase power production from other means.

I don't think compensating for that by beaming energy collected with the solar shade to Earth is going to help either, since that would in fact warm things up again.

[Bumber]

I think that a bigger issue is what to do with all that power we'd be able to theoretically generate with a functioning solar shade.

Build a microwave transmitter to destroy beam the power to Earth.

[Reelya]

I think the solar shade will never happen.

The point is for a solution to fix the problem until we can get on top of the emissions problem on Earth. So the costs of said solution must be lower than the costs of just fixing the emissions and/or a bit of carbon scrubbing. Also, the solution must be deployable quickly, AND deploying the solution must not involve us doing large amounts of things that actually warm the Earth.

Building and launching the shade will entail large energy expenditures, mining, emissions, and also cost a lot more than all the other solutions we're just not doing already because we're umming and ahing about the costs.

[LordBaal]

See... we could all be sitting in spinning office chairs while stroking a cat and cackling like maniacs at our plans to destroy the earth (where are we gonna live after that, no one cares).

Reelya
In theory a scalable space infrastructure could require a fraction of the fuel and space launches but would require far more time and initial developing and planification.

[Rolan7]

I think that a bigger issue is what to do with all that power we'd be able to theoretically generate with a functioning solar shade.

Build a microwave transmitter to destroy beam the power to Earth.

Ninja'd!  I was wondering about how that works though.  I guess the theoretical microwaves are of a frequency that passes particularly efficiently through the atmosphere, losing little energy to heat generation.  But the microwaves we use in cooking get intercepted by water vapor, right?  So I'm idly curious if there's a wavelength that dodges that issue, or if we just put the receivers in arid location.

also

I do believe that the UN would at least attempt to fairly use such a device without abusing it.  For say . . . sanctions.  I believe they wouldnt do that.

I think the UN would absolutely use this against nations violating human rights and international law.  And then perform humanitarian missions to mitigate the harm done to the local populace, as they do with sanctions today.  Economic sanctions are already a deadly weapon, but I believe the UN generally wields them responsibly.

A successful plan could also include large shipments of food being shipped into the most affected countries, while countries not at all affected could grow extra.

Exactly, I think this would be fundamental to the plan, ah, getting off the ground.  And not getting nuked.  Nations were threatening first-strikes over SDI defense systems, it would take an impressive feat of international cooperation for this to happen.  Not an impossible future, though.

I think that a bigger issue is what to do with all that power we'd be able to theoretically generate with a functioning solar shade.

Artificial fossil fuels or fusing elements for long-term energy production - fabricating useful fuel sources for long-term space exploration.
Actually, a lot of that could probably occur easier up in space anyway.

[Rolan7]

I think we're overthinking this.  Just summon Maxwell's Daemon.  Make all that heat work for us.  Run our society on perpetual Stirling engines.

Newton had to learn about gravity from an apple tree, why do we let him make the rules?  Other than his amazing hair, foundational work in physics and thermodynamics, and cool telescopes.  Other than that, what has he done for us!?

How can someone be sat under a tree for that long and not realize that time dilates.  Useless I say.  Repeal his 2nd law for a better future!

[Reelya]

Power beaming by microwaves has the difficulty that, for most space applications, the required aperture sizes are very large due to diffraction limiting antenna directionality. For example, the 1978 NASA study of solar power satellites required a 1-kilometre-diameter (0.62 mi) transmitting antenna and a 10-kilometre-diameter (6.2 mi) receiving rectenna for a microwave beam at 2.45 GHz. These sizes can be somewhat decreased by using shorter wavelengths, although short wavelengths may have difficulties with atmospheric absorption and beam blockage by rain or water droplets.

It sounds like we can have this as long as we're happy to have a city-sized hole that does nothing but receive the power.