This is unsurprising to me. Global heat retention changes are mostly due to changes in the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases. While the rate at which those greenhouse gases is added has dropped due to the economic effects of the pandemic, the absolute concentration of greenhouse gases is still increasing. Combined with the destabilization of the polar vortex, I anticipate the ice melt rate to continue to increase.
Exactly. Carbon emission controls the second derivative of global temperature. What we've done is reduce the pressure with which the accelerator is pushed to the floor of the car, but it hasn't had time to spring back up yet and close the throttle.
FWIW: people were warning about this control problem (and even using that very metaphor) back in the 1980's.
With the falling costs of getting cargo to orbit, will it ever be possible to install solar reflectors that keep the polar regions from heating up? This would keep intact the reflective white poles for longer, a positive development.
How big would the reflectors have to be, would they be in the L1 lagrange point? Maybe if SpaceX keeps lowering launch costs it will eventually be a no brainier?
I'm just thinking the same thing.
BTW the excess energy can be reflected to orbit labs or moon to make something more interesting (reactors, generators, water electrolysis etc)
Reflective white poles that are covered up are no longer acting in a reflecting manner. If they are not acting in a reflective manner, since they're being covered up, what good are they?
In my mind, geostationary satellites with reflective properties are a solution to a symptom but not to the root cause. I was always taught to fix the root cause of problems, not their symptoms. Therefore I find your strategy to be sup optimal.
Having said that, I agree that if we find the root cause to be unsolvable, we should look into fixing some of the symptoms instead.
The poles would still prevent sea level rise. Or avoiding melt of the land based ice sheets would anyway.
I agree with you on solving root causes. If we don’t, the oceans will acidify with co2 and there may also be bad effects from higher co2 in the air. Emerging studies show cognitive declines.
That said, both of those are slower moving crises to some extent. We may face acute challenges from excess heat and changing weather patterns. So it’s possible we’ll require an emergency stopgap while we fix the underlying issues.
We can wait for private enterprise to build giant mirrors in orbit or, you know, lobby for subsidies for oil, coal and gas to end and become more sustainable, thus transitioning to a society that doesn't need giant mirrors in orbit to survive.
Maybe we need to do both. Green energy or carbon neutral is good, but cannot achieve instantly. Most countries are inside treaty, but stop oil, coal and gas will give countries outside treaty a unaffair advantage, making the goal harder to reach.
I did the math on this once out of curiosity. If we launch lots of bits of thin, reflective mylar film to the L2 Lagrange point with the sun, it will reflect incoming light and lower the Earth's insolation. About $200 billion worth of Falcon Heavy launches, all carrying mylar film to L2, would be sufficient to lower insolation by 1/20th of a percent, which would indeed halt global warming.
Obviously this would have tons of other consequences for the planet, and doesn't account for solar wind pushing the mylar out of position, etc.
Such as messing with rainfall patterns in the tropics. I imagine people would be a good deal less forgiving of dying because of famine if it was caused by an informed choice by the first world, instead of an unintended consequence of industrialization.
I briefly looked at this a while ago. The short answer is no, space mirrors (or lenses which focus light away and need less fuel to maintain position) are not a viable solution launched from earth. We'd be better off reducing emissions.
If you want to do large scale construction in space you need to get material from outside of a gravity well.
I can't wait for a world where economic sanctions are based on sunlight restriction.
Is there any science fiction around this concept?
Also, regarding your questions. It is possible to adjust the earth's temperature with that method, but aerosols seem to be cheaper. Regarding solving global warming. Kind of. There are some trade-off with sunlight reduction. See https://youtu.be/dSu5sXmsur4 for more detailed information.
Must every frontpage post contain an element of surprise?
I submitted it as a reminder that climate change is still occurring, there's still research being done, and is still an issue we globally need to address.
Climate change has not been surprising for decades. But it remains important.
> Note that I did not say it was not being addressed
That's exactly what you said:
> and is still an issue we globally need to address.
When you say something "needs to be addressed" it means to give attention to or deal with a matter or problem. Your initial statement inferred nothing was being done and attention needed to be given to the problem.
If you actually meant what you wrote in your response, then why not just say that? As opposed to inferring that nothing is being done?
They didn't imply (not "infer") that nothing was being done. They implied that not enough was being done and more attention needed to be given to the problem. That seems reasonable, doesn't it?
Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII (bbc.com)
Which makes sense, tons of unemployment and work from home means far less emissions to be expected. This must be great for climate change? How come we're losing ice faster? That doesnt make sense. It should be the coldest year for a long time right?
The effect of greenhouse emissions vs climate takes _decades_ to be seen. The paper here is not to be linked to the reduction in greenhouse emissions from 2020.
The negative effects of climate change are caused by the total level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not the current rate of emissions. The world reduced the rate of emissions by 10% last year. That's better than nothing, but the overall level of greenhouse gases still rose by a lot last year, so it makes sense that ice would continue to melt faster. This trend will continue until we have net negative emissions, which is pretty much only possible if we first have close to zero emissions from power generation, transportation, and agriculture, as well as cash subsidies for carbon removal and sequestration.
The fix to climate change has never been reduced emissions, it has been negative emissions or zero emissions if you're willing to accept a slower, inferior solution. Reducing emissions just buys a little bit of time (but not much, based on what most of the world considers "reduced").
Well, in some cases, much of the life on earth went extinct. It's also not clear how long it took to make earth a good place to live again. The planet's ecology might be able to "heal" the damage we're doing, but it's probabably more on the scale of centuries or millenia, than decades.
The fact that some of the crap spouts are slower doesn't mean the pool isn't filling.
You can think of it like this: There is an very large pool about 2/3 full of human crap, being filled by a number of spouts. Some of the spouts kinda stop ocasionally, but not for long.
There is a sinkhole, but it's not big enough, so it keeps filling.
When it fills up, you and everyone you love included, along with all of humanity, will have to drink from that pool forever as their sole form of sustenance, possibly dying of it. It's taking the plants and kelp with it, too, so eventually there will be nothing we can recognize as good.
The only way out is to make the sinkhole bigger or close every spout and try to make it _very_ clear what happened so future generations don't mess with it. Every other path leads to everyone and everything dying a horrible death.
The climate is changing because of the amount emitted. We've emitted a shit tonne. We're still emitting too much, even with covid and a recession. So climate isn't getting better.
I don’t think this post deserves the downvotes- it’s a statement of confusion, but the confusion comes from an honest, understandable place and there’s a clear answer to the question.
>I don’t think this post deserves the downvotes- it’s a statement of confusion, but the confusion comes from an honest, understandable place and there’s a clear answer to the question.
The data is clearly saying the opposite. Put that in the context that we had a short term trend of global cooling from 2016-2019. If 2020 is the hottest year ever surpassing 2016. There's no explanation other than there's something wrong. https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2893/nope-earth-isnt-cooling/
The one thing I wonder. Contrails have a beneficial effect on climate change. I wonder if the lack of air travel perhaps that's why the climate got so bad.
Lets step back though. I'm downvoted because you are not allowed to question climate change.
I am confused. Just because temperatures went down in the short term doesn't mean those weren't some of the hottest years on record. 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 are still unusually hot years, probably hot enough to melt ice.
This is, as was pointed out, a stupider question than mere chance or lack of knowledge would explain. You appear to be asking intentionally dumb questions in order to provoke us for some reason.
It's not an honest question, it's sealioning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning). Notice how despite demonstrating a lack of basic knowledge on the subject the followed up your post with more specific completely different question based one even more disinformation?
Sealioning is the favorite debate tactic of climate change "skeptics".
Its so sad but so human that this just seems to be ignored in large part. If we knew a massive war would come and kill a huge portion of the earths population in the next 50-100 years would we react any better?
It’s not comparable to a massive war killing a huge portion of people. That’s a more immediate, visible consequence that is clear on how to avoid.
It’s a slow moving extra/unpredictable hurricane/drought/monsoon/heat wave/cold snap that gradually reduces quality of life year after year, with no clear solution to prevent it and still enjoy all the modern trappings of life.
War might be one of the consequences of climate change. India and Pakistan both depend heavily on Himalayan glaciers for their fresh water (as do several other countries). Those glaciers are rapidly shrinking due to climate change.
It is not implausible that this could lead to war over control of the dwindling fresh glacial water. And they both have nukes. They don't have the really big nukes that the big nuclear powers have, but it doesn't take big nukes to cause a worldwide catastrophe.
This paper [1] (article about that paper here [2]) looks at the effect of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India with an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-size nukes between them (about 1/3 of their total arsenals) directed at their 100 most populated areas.
The nukes are of course devastating to those in the area they hit, but it is the firestorms that follow that are bad for the rest of the world. Based on the amount of combustible material in those regions, the paper estimates about 1.5 Tg of soot aerosol would end up in the upper atmosphere.
They used climate models to analyze that, and come up with a 1.8 C temperature reduction and 8% precipitation reduction for several years. They then used state of the art crop models to estimate the effect that would have on food crops. They found that the strongest effects would be in temperate regions of the US, Europe, and China for 10-15 years.
It would not be a collapse of civilization type event, but it would result in a decade or more of serious food shortages worldwide which would probably kill a lot of people. And since it would not just be hitting the poor, undeveloped countries like the usual famines do nowadays, it could trigger more wars involving the countries that do have the large arsenals of much much bigger nukes than India and Pakistan have.
I agree with the assessment of the risks that you present, but I disagree with this:
> but it would result in a decade or more of serious food shortages worldwide which would probably kill a lot of people. And since it would not just be hitting the poor, undeveloped countries.
If the price of food goes up dramatically because of a shortage, this affects poor countries the most. They won't be able to afford food at those prices.
If the country is a net exporter of food, which is not that common for poor counties, they could implement export restrictions, effectively subsidising local food prices. But where that doesn't happen, rich countries will effectively be buying food from them while they starve.
Most of the food exporters are rich countries. They will export less or not at all due to lower production.
Poor counties will get the worst end of it, as usual.
Remember that in the 1960s this was the consensus between policymakers and the public -- that there was a very real chance that the entire world would be annihilated by global thermonuclear war.
What did we do? Doubled down and continued building nukes.
We are completely fucked on this. If you don't hear that O&G companies are stopping the drilling machines, "X will stop climate change" is a lie and a farce.
We're never going to get climate change under control until we have carbon taxes. I don't get why conservative politicians aren't behind this? It's the definition of a libertarian free market solution! You could even make it revenue neutral by lowering income taxes. It's also arguably a better targeted tax. You tax the things you want less of. It's kind of silly to tax income when you could instead be taxing activity that's harmful to the planet. Far better for corporations to try and dodge taxes by emitting less co2 than offshoring to ireland.
Even better, a carbon tax would create a market for solutions of getting rid of CO2 in a cheaper way than the tax. Finally an incentive to put all that awesome entrepreneurial creativity that gave us all the benefits we are enjoying every day to work on saving the planet. Win-win...
It makes so much sense, it's just crazy to see how little support there is for the idea.
This and other things are starting to convince me that the average person is actually incapable of making smart policy decisions, and that if we used technology to implement a direct democracy, it would likely be worse than what we have now. I used to think it was a great idea, but I've lost some faith in humanity lately looking at people reacted to the pandemic.
I think if you put it to a straight popular vote it would pass. Unfortunately many things that have massive popular support are politically impossible, because of our deeply unresponsive political system which largely ignores the will of the people.
> I don't get why conservative politicians aren't behind this?
Because it doesn't benefit them. They're politicians. "Conservative" is just the label they've figured out will garner them the most votes. And "conservative" voters have been brainwashed over generations to believe this isn't a real crisis.
1. "Tax" is anathema to conservative politicians, in any form.
2. They're heavily invested in the "it's a hoax" stage to global warming. It's a more engaging narrative than later stages: not merely a disagreement over facts but an actual enemy to be defeated: the hoaxers, and by extension their political opponents on every subject. People who, I would note, they can project as "pro tax", and more generally representing a threat to your hard-earned wealth.
Ideally, libertarians would fall on the side of science. But there's heavy pressure to disregard the science and portray the scientists as failures. If there's no problem, then you don't need a solution.
I mean, if i were libertarian, I would much rather pay a carbon tax than have the government tell me what sort of car I can buy. Want a dodge viper that gets 10mpg? No problem, you just gotta deal with $8 / gal gas.
Sure, but even better is to have a 10 mpg Viper with $2.50/gallon gas, plus a few bucks a year contributed to a political candidate who tells you that the other political candidate wants you to pay $8/gallon.
It's a win for you and a win for that candidate. Classic win-win.
71 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadFWIW: people were warning about this control problem (and even using that very metaphor) back in the 1980's.
distance = Industraly caused temperature difference
speed = Co2
Acceleration = Co2 emissions.
There are no realistic IPCC models where the car starts to coast or decelerate before 2100.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp...
How big would the reflectors have to be, would they be in the L1 lagrange point? Maybe if SpaceX keeps lowering launch costs it will eventually be a no brainier?
In my mind, geostationary satellites with reflective properties are a solution to a symptom but not to the root cause. I was always taught to fix the root cause of problems, not their symptoms. Therefore I find your strategy to be sup optimal.
Having said that, I agree that if we find the root cause to be unsolvable, we should look into fixing some of the symptoms instead.
I agree with you on solving root causes. If we don’t, the oceans will acidify with co2 and there may also be bad effects from higher co2 in the air. Emerging studies show cognitive declines.
That said, both of those are slower moving crises to some extent. We may face acute challenges from excess heat and changing weather patterns. So it’s possible we’ll require an emergency stopgap while we fix the underlying issues.
Any thing interfering with enough sunlight to make a difference in global warming is a weapon, whether we recognize it as such or not.
TLDR: It's preposterous in just about every way, from the number of shades needed to the costs to the number of launches required.
"but-"
"ONCE AND FOR ALL!!"
Obviously this would have tons of other consequences for the planet, and doesn't account for solar wind pushing the mylar out of position, etc.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/09/harvard-group...
The problem is that it a) is tackling a symptom rather than the underlying problem,
b) may encourage "business as usual",
and c) may come with undesirable side effects.
Such as messing with rainfall patterns in the tropics. I imagine people would be a good deal less forgiving of dying because of famine if it was caused by an informed choice by the first world, instead of an unintended consequence of industrialization.
If you want to do large scale construction in space you need to get material from outside of a gravity well.
Is there any science fiction around this concept?
Also, regarding your questions. It is possible to adjust the earth's temperature with that method, but aerosols seem to be cheaper. Regarding solving global warming. Kind of. There are some trade-off with sunlight reduction. See https://youtu.be/dSu5sXmsur4 for more detailed information.
I submitted it as a reminder that climate change is still occurring, there's still research being done, and is still an issue we globally need to address.
Climate change has not been surprising for decades. But it remains important.
How are we not addressing the issue?
Note that I did not say it was not being addressed. But work obviously remains.
That's exactly what you said:
> and is still an issue we globally need to address.
When you say something "needs to be addressed" it means to give attention to or deal with a matter or problem. Your initial statement inferred nothing was being done and attention needed to be given to the problem.
If you actually meant what you wrote in your response, then why not just say that? As opposed to inferring that nothing is being done?
Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII (bbc.com)
Which makes sense, tons of unemployment and work from home means far less emissions to be expected. This must be great for climate change? How come we're losing ice faster? That doesnt make sense. It should be the coldest year for a long time right?
https://www.space.com/nasa-confirms-2020-hottest-year-on-rec...
So the fix to climate change is reducing emissions. We do that because of a pandemic and it makes climate change worse?
The fix to climate change has never been reduced emissions, it has been negative emissions or zero emissions if you're willing to accept a slower, inferior solution. Reducing emissions just buys a little bit of time (but not much, based on what most of the world considers "reduced").
We've dropped the second derivative of f(t) to the lowest value in decades. Why is f(t) not itself also low?
You can think of it like this: There is an very large pool about 2/3 full of human crap, being filled by a number of spouts. Some of the spouts kinda stop ocasionally, but not for long.
There is a sinkhole, but it's not big enough, so it keeps filling.
When it fills up, you and everyone you love included, along with all of humanity, will have to drink from that pool forever as their sole form of sustenance, possibly dying of it. It's taking the plants and kelp with it, too, so eventually there will be nothing we can recognize as good.
The only way out is to make the sinkhole bigger or close every spout and try to make it _very_ clear what happened so future generations don't mess with it. Every other path leads to everyone and everything dying a horrible death.
The data is clearly saying the opposite. Put that in the context that we had a short term trend of global cooling from 2016-2019. If 2020 is the hottest year ever surpassing 2016. There's no explanation other than there's something wrong. https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2893/nope-earth-isnt-cooling/
The one thing I wonder. Contrails have a beneficial effect on climate change. I wonder if the lack of air travel perhaps that's why the climate got so bad.
Lets step back though. I'm downvoted because you are not allowed to question climate change.
Sealioning is the favorite debate tactic of climate change "skeptics".
It’s a slow moving extra/unpredictable hurricane/drought/monsoon/heat wave/cold snap that gradually reduces quality of life year after year, with no clear solution to prevent it and still enjoy all the modern trappings of life.
It is not implausible that this could lead to war over control of the dwindling fresh glacial water. And they both have nukes. They don't have the really big nukes that the big nuclear powers have, but it doesn't take big nukes to cause a worldwide catastrophe.
This paper [1] (article about that paper here [2]) looks at the effect of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India with an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-size nukes between them (about 1/3 of their total arsenals) directed at their 100 most populated areas.
The nukes are of course devastating to those in the area they hit, but it is the firestorms that follow that are bad for the rest of the world. Based on the amount of combustible material in those regions, the paper estimates about 1.5 Tg of soot aerosol would end up in the upper atmosphere.
They used climate models to analyze that, and come up with a 1.8 C temperature reduction and 8% precipitation reduction for several years. They then used state of the art crop models to estimate the effect that would have on food crops. They found that the strongest effects would be in temperate regions of the US, Europe, and China for 10-15 years.
It would not be a collapse of civilization type event, but it would result in a decade or more of serious food shortages worldwide which would probably kill a lot of people. And since it would not just be hitting the poor, undeveloped countries like the usual famines do nowadays, it could trigger more wars involving the countries that do have the large arsenals of much much bigger nukes than India and Pakistan have.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/13/7071
[2] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-india-...
> but it would result in a decade or more of serious food shortages worldwide which would probably kill a lot of people. And since it would not just be hitting the poor, undeveloped countries.
If the price of food goes up dramatically because of a shortage, this affects poor countries the most. They won't be able to afford food at those prices.
If the country is a net exporter of food, which is not that common for poor counties, they could implement export restrictions, effectively subsidising local food prices. But where that doesn't happen, rich countries will effectively be buying food from them while they starve.
Most of the food exporters are rich countries. They will export less or not at all due to lower production.
Poor counties will get the worst end of it, as usual.
Remember that in the 1960s this was the consensus between policymakers and the public -- that there was a very real chance that the entire world would be annihilated by global thermonuclear war.
What did we do? Doubled down and continued building nukes.
We are completely fucked on this. If you don't hear that O&G companies are stopping the drilling machines, "X will stop climate change" is a lie and a farce.
This and other things are starting to convince me that the average person is actually incapable of making smart policy decisions, and that if we used technology to implement a direct democracy, it would likely be worse than what we have now. I used to think it was a great idea, but I've lost some faith in humanity lately looking at people reacted to the pandemic.
Because it doesn't benefit them. They're politicians. "Conservative" is just the label they've figured out will garner them the most votes. And "conservative" voters have been brainwashed over generations to believe this isn't a real crisis.
2. They're heavily invested in the "it's a hoax" stage to global warming. It's a more engaging narrative than later stages: not merely a disagreement over facts but an actual enemy to be defeated: the hoaxers, and by extension their political opponents on every subject. People who, I would note, they can project as "pro tax", and more generally representing a threat to your hard-earned wealth.
Ideally, libertarians would fall on the side of science. But there's heavy pressure to disregard the science and portray the scientists as failures. If there's no problem, then you don't need a solution.
It's a win for you and a win for that candidate. Classic win-win.
It really worries me that people think we're making progress. We're not, we're getting worse and the rate of worsening is accelerating!?