Space sunshade might be feasible in global warming emergency
Angel, a University of Arizona Regents' Professor and one of the world's foremost minds in modern optics, directs the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory and the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics. He has won top honors for his many extraordinary conceptual ideas that have become practical engineering solutions for astronomy.
For the past year, Angel has been looking at ways to cool the Earth in an emergency. He's been studying the practicality of deploying a space sunshade in a global warming crisis, a crisis where it becomes clear that Earth is unmistakably headed for disastrous climate change within a decade or two.
Angel presented the idea at the National Academy of Sciences in April and won a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant for further research in July. His collaborators on the grant are David Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nick Woolf of UA's Steward Observatory, and NASA Ames Research Center Director S. Pete Worden.
Angel is now publishing a first detailed, scholarly paper, "Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near L1," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The plan would be to launch a constellation of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the sun, called the L-1 orbit.
The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer. About 10 percent of the sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun, would be diverted away from our planet. The effect would be to uniformly reduce sunlight by about 2 percent over the entire planet, enough to balance the heating of a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere...cont'd
http://www.physorg.com/news81795874.html__________________________________________________________________________
Australia turns to sunshades, water spray to save Great Barrier Reef
Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said the government was looking at funding the use of shade cloths to protect vulnerable parts of the giant reef off the coast of Queensland state, after a promising two-year trial.
Scientists warned earlier this year that high ocean temperatures linked to global warming had caused severe coral bleaching in parts of the reef, said to be one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
Bleaching occurs when the plant-like organisms that make up coral die and leave behind the white limestone skeleton of the reef.
"We're very concerned because this is a 5.8-billion-dollar (4.5-billion-US) tourist industry on the reef employing 33,000 people," Bailey told the Australian Broadcast Corporation.
"So, obviously, we're tackling this issue from both ends -- the cause of the problem and also trying to find very practical ways where we can mitigate the problem."
The shade cloth, which is being developing by marine researchers in Queensland, would be held in place by floating pontoons...cont'd
http://www.physorg.com/news81836210.html___________________________________________
An observation from here in Texas: Planes are laying down several parallel, equi-distant lines of 'cloud material' in a grid pattern with some frequency of late. The lines quickly spread out and combine, becoming one solid haze. At first I thought they might be seeding clouds (which is also being done with some regularity in this state, probably due to drought conditions), but now I wonder if the purpose is to act as a reflector, sending the sun's rays back into space?
Why won't anyone with the state talk more openly about this? I've only seen one article in the city paper about the cloud seeding program.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
