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AudaciousSpacePirates / reality

If reality were open source, what bugs would you report? What features would you request?
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Missing snow for christmas this winter.... #2

Open Bjamse opened 6 years ago

Bjamse commented 6 years ago

oh shoot.... Thats gobal klimate change, right?

jakimfett commented 6 years ago

In my zone we had snow over the midwinter festivities. But we normally don't. I think there's some climate chaos happening due to various factors, but because of #1 there's no way for non-wealthy to meaningfully change the source of the problem.

Thoughts on a space-based option? Maybe reflective disks in a "ring" configuration around Sol III to reflect some of the solar energy away until the root cause can be fixed?

woozalia commented 6 years ago

The wise heads seem to think this would be a bad idea, but I'm not at all sure why. It certainly shouldn't be done without some kind of substantial input by the top experts in the field, and it should probably be done very carefully at first. Something like:

  1. Propose a particular class of minimum change -- one solar shade covering one area in the middle of the ocean for a short amount of time, for example.
  2. Work up models to predict what the effects of that change would be.
  3. Tweak the change (size of shade, length of time, etc.) to produce the smallest detectable deviation from the baseline model.
  4. Implement the change for the designed length of time.
  5. Check to see how well the models are predicting the outcome.
  6. Repeat. As models improve at prediction, carefully increase the size of the change. Over time, it should be possible to reach sufficient magnitude to reverse the overall warming trend while also having a good idea of what you're doing.
jakimfett commented 6 years ago

I'm very much on board for approaching this problem carefully.

In an ideal world, we could just reduce the total solar input by using a 0.05% filter (that also generates energy for use elsewhere) in the form of a solar sail positioned in earth/sun Lagrangian.

Practically speaking, it could be accomplished with "frisbee" style micro-satellites, which can be rotated to obstruct solar energy (and thus, charge themselves) and then rotated to be "on edge" again once they are charged or to almost eliminate the obstruction.

A flat disk, with a bulge in the center, that deploys a flexible solar film once in orbit, and uses hydrogen ion engines for navigational adjustments and orbital correction.

Geostationary orbit is definitely possible, which would allow us to "spot check" the longer term effect of a reduction in overall energy.

Functionally, in the earliest iterations, it'd be about the same as a slow moving cloud. I wonder what the microsat cluster diameter would need to be, at the Lagrangian point, if it's going to cast a 1km circular shadow?

Moving slowly and carefully is good when such a complex ecosystem is involved. Unfortunately, that mindset and methodology doesn't seem to be necessary for current manufacturing to be legally allowed to operate, so I'm going to do some math, draw up some designs, and see if I can get a hotfix proposal ready.

Snow for winter festivities is actually pretty easy to do, on a local basis, at least once the general weather conditions are in place. A little extra daytime cooling of the air, courtesy of the 'anti-warming-array', and a high altitude flight to seed the clouds over the target area, and we've got snow-on-demand, fresh each morning until we decide to turn it off.

The problem is, now we have to protect against Distributed Precipitation Denial of Service attacks.

:sigh: