‘Giant mirrors in space’

January 30, 2007

Silly me, I’ve suggested on more than one occasion that the Bush administration doesn’t take global warming seriously and has no feasible plan to address the crisis. How wrong I was.

Brad Plumer notes this fascinating item from the Guardian about a low-profile strategy that was crafted behind the scenes.

The US government wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday.

Hmm, blocking sunlight… I seem to recall an episode of The Simpsons on this very subject.

Meet the administration’s new climate change czar: C. Montgomery Burns.

I’m investing my money in machines to make giant ice cubes to drop in the ocean;>

  • why don’t we all just move to underground caves?
    (but far enough inland that they won’t flood when the icecaps melt)

  • Let me get this straight. Here is the Bush line on climate change (inasmuch as he even acknowledges the topic). Global warming is not happening. The scientific evidence is questionable, and is just one part of a larger discussion. Also, if it IS happening, humans (especially Republican and industrialist and polluting ones) are certainly not the cause. I know this because I believe it very strongly. Um, but if it actually is happening then we are at the point of needing a “last ditch effort” like giant space mirrors rather than stopping anything that humans (especially Republican and industrialist and polluting ones) are doing to profit, err, cause, the problem.

    My head hurts.

  • Dust particles? Like particles that might be caused by nuking Iran? Normally I wouldn’t worry a President might think he could prove he is anti-global warming by nuking another country but this ain’t a normal president. I wonder if Holyburden already has a contract on the giant space mirrors.

    And is it any surprise that this Admin would focus on just one aspect of global warming: The actual temperature. Air quality, water quality, UV rays, who cares about that stuff?

  • Un effin’ believable! Pumping dust into the atmosphere!! Do they realize that the problem is not the sun shining upon the Earth, but its all the crap that we pump into the air that keeps the heat in.

    Maybe we should all run our cars with the A/C on high and the doors open. That’ll cool things down. Right? Right? That way, we’ll be blocking out the sun with all the emissions and pollution and spitting out cool air around us. If we keep it going long enough, the entire planet may be sheathed in darkness until everything dies, decomposes and can then, over time, be turned into oil which can then be sold again.

    Genius!!!

  • This makes perfect sense. Why would the Bush administration want to address climate change in a way that takes money out of its overlords’ corporate coffers (i.e., reduced emissions, higher CAFE standards, etc.)? Why not come up with an approach that would result in a massive outflow of money from the government into those same coffers?

  • Oh … my … gawd.

    So mirrors in space are a better solution than, say, batter powered cars that “fill up” using a solar filling station that can easily fit in a backyard? Or perhaps more efficient windpower technology to provide energy for our homes?

    These people are fucking insane. Seriously … 100%, absolutely, batshit insane.

  • Let me guess… Haliburton gets the contract, and they screw it all up but make piles of money anyway.

  • “Good news, everyone!”
    “We’ve decided to go to Halley’s comet.”

    I’d say the czar was either Professor Farnsworth or Wormstrom.

    Actually, it would be more like the world’s largest pair of sunglasses rather than a large mirror. Either way, it would be impractical.

    I study creation science
    I love my MBA classes
    I got a crazy leader, he wears dark glasses
    Profits are going great, and they’re only getting better
    I’m voting for Repubs, getting good grades
    The future’s so hot, we’ll rocket up shades

  • Better yet, instead of trying to deflect asteroids into hitting the earth, let’s direct them to…. hmmm…… I know, the Middle East. Then we can get the dust to reflect the sunlight, get rid of Arabs, and everyone can drive a Hummer. But how to get their oil before we fuck with the planet….

    Plan B, why don’t we fly Cheney to the moon to suck all the light bound for earth.

    Plan C, get Donatella Versace make some really big UV shades for the planet to wear.

    Plan D, fire up the old flux capacitor and take the Delorean back to January of 1946 and force Barbara Bush to have an abortion.

  • heaven forbid that we, say, stop driving these ginormous SUV’s in places where it hasn’t snowed in 10,000 years. or driving our cars two blocks to the corner store instead of walking. or look for alternative sources of electricity other than coal fired/gas fired generating stations. giant sunscreens will be soooo much easier on the poor people here on earth. after all, we wouldn’t want to have to sacrifice anything would we? and maybe we could beat skin cancer in the bargain. morons. absolute. fucking. morons.

  • I suppose we should give them credit for not proposing a giant beach umbrella – with naming rights going to Haliburton.

  • Giant mirrors in space at $10,000 a lb just for transport is silly, but unfortunately at this late date we must seriously consider some drastic steps.
    Atmospheric sulphates were the reason that many feared a new ice age a few decades ago. When concerns about acid rain led to reduction of the sulphates being pumped into the atmosphere this sun screen was reduced and temperatures increased. Pumping sulphates into the upper atmosphere could limit acid rain while reflecting much solar radiation back into space and for only a few hundred million dollars a year. There are likely other effects of acidifying the upper atmosphere and these need to be studied, but we could be coming to a point where we may need consider this as a better alternative than the effects of global warming that may otherwise be inevitable.

  • “Smoke and mirrors.”

    EXccccellent Smithers (fingers furiously tapping against each other).

  • One of the biggest catastrophic results of fossil fuel burning may turn out to be, not the greenhouse effect, but the acidification of the oceans.

    This “plan”, like most technological fixes, does nothing to address that problem.

  • I know! If we cancel daylight savings time, and spend more time in the dark, presto!

    Less sun = less global warming!

    Please forward my $30,000,000,000.00 grant as soon as possible.

  • Maybe we could have them reflect all the sunlight at Mars and warm up the planet enough to melt the underground ice, and create an atmosphere and make oceans and stuff. Then all the Dems could get the hell outta here… yeah that’s the ticket!

    I can just see the boneheads in the back room now. What a waste.

  • batter powered cars

    I know this is a typo but it made me laugh. And since the Simpsons have been invoked I thought “Mmmmm! Waffles!”

    And speaking of big fat asses, why not just sew a bunch of Denny Hastert’s briefs together and create and undie umbrella in space?

  • Actually, this is not a completely farfetched idea. While reducing carbon emissions is a goal for a number of reasons, especially security, global warming CAN by hypothetically reduced relatively inexpensively using reflective particles. Again, hypothetically, sea water could be sprayed over oceanic clouds to reflect sunlight which would have the added benefit of being relatively short term and having less environmental impact. We should not reflexively reject the idea just because it comes from the wrong source. Important here is that the idea be tested stringently. Let’s be realistic, if (big if) such an idea turns out to be feasible, it would admittedly be easier to implement globally then alternative strategies. If the end goal is really to reduce climate change, and this is a viable method to do so, then I think we have a duty to investigate it. Reduction of fossil fuel consumption can then be attacked from the angle of security which is an easier political sell.

  • This, of course, is nothing more than extending the magical thinking of missile defense into the realm of environmental problems. It gives the impression of doing something and pumps billions, if not trillions, into corporate pockets. Well, at least St. Ronnie would have loved the idea.

  • While in principle I agree with Mik that all options should be examined, plans that address the warming aspect of carbon emissions don’t necessarily address the problem of ocean acidification.

    (Such acidification may be a short-term worry: the ocean eventually buffers its pH. Key point though: ‘short-term’ in this context is relative to the geological — i.e., thousands of years — timescale.)

  • Smoke and mirrors? What else would you expect from this administration?
    Comment by Mike — 1/30/2007 @ 1:59 pm

    Love how you reduced this proposal to its essence. Have you considered running for Congress?

  • This makes it official: The George W. Bush administration doesn’t know how to solve problems whether domestic or global; rather, they excel only in knowing how to exacerbate already existing problems whether domestic or global. Let’s give them an excellent rating on screwing up everything they have a mind to.

    Let’s start an official countdown till the end of the George W. Bush administration.

  • So if we deflect enough sunlight to keep the planet from overheating, I’m sure the plants that are so critical for our food supply won’t mind the lost sunlight and it won’t affect our ability to eat. Just a thought.

    But the religious right I’m sure will object. After all, what if God gets blinded by all those mirrors shining in his eyes? He might give us all a good smiting for that.

    We need a new law, such as Godwin’s Law or Occam’s Razor, to explain Republican responses to complex problems. How about Bush’s Law: the solution most favored by Republicans to solve any problem will be the one that protects thousands of dollars of the business community’s campaign contributions by spending billions of taxpayer dollars for for the most insanely stupid option that can be conceived. Or maybe that the solution to every problem is very, very expensive magic.

  • no, petorado. bush’s law says the solution to every problem is one that puts lots and lots of taxpayers money in the hands of the very very rich.

  • I think the obvious result from this would be the complete and utter destruction of the sun. Everything this Administration touches turns to failure.

  • I remember watching Mr. Show on HBO awhile back and they had a skit where the government decided that blowing up the moon would really pull everyone together.

    I believe we are about 10 minutes away from Bush running that idea up the flagpole.

    –WKW

  • This plan also sounds amazingly like one of the plot points in Highlander 2: The Quickening, which I’m assuming is where they got the idea.

  • Hey, here’s an idea. Instead of mirrors in space, how about mirror-like panels on every rooftop that collects the sun and use that to power a giant laser to blow up the sun (forget the moon, that would be over in 3 days, 3 weeks or maybe 3 months). Or, if that doesn’t work, we can always hook them into the power grid and run our homes, cars and businesses off the resulting byproduct.

    I seriously think dubya needs to take the advise of his namesake from Seinfeld and do the exact opposite of whatever his instincts tell him to do.

  • We’re willing to block out the sun, but we’re not willing to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?

    Yeah, that makes a lot of sense…

  • OMFG!!!!

    All I want a friggin sharksd with “lasers” on their heads!!!!

    This is a total joke right?

    April fools?

    A bad dream?

  • This is so amusing. I actually pointed this out as an idea and the Bushites took it up. I laugh (I don’t cite. Not taking the time right now).

    Mylar balloons, silver paint and epoxy strengthener.

    But before we laugh our heads off too much, try to remember there is another danger from carbon dioxide other than global warming. CO2 exists in the atmosphere naturally at about 300 to 600 parts per million. That’s not a lot. It takes 10,000 PPM to make 1% (if I remember my math). The problem is that CO2 becomes a serious irritant at 2000 PPM and lethal at 5000 PPM. The way we are burning fossil fuels we are rapidly heading towards 2000 PPM in the atmosphere.

    The deadly part is that CO2 can easily concentrate in building. Heard of Sick Building Syndrome? Imagine coming back from vacation and finding that everybody in your building died from choke damp.

  • Talk,Talk,Talk. Y’all let the puppet masters behind this fool take over the country and appoint him your leader. And have let him keep that designation for six years now. Looks like your yapping is less harmfull that a toy poodle.

  • I don’t believe we have much chance of sufficiently cutting back our production of greenhouse gases to avoid catastrophic global warming, so I think we must start seriously investigating technological solutions to the problem. These smoke and mirrors schemes are perhaps not as farfetched as they at first sound, but I agree that (A) we can’t count on them working; (B) we can’t predict the side-effects, which could possibly be just as catastrophic as global warming itself; (C) they don’t address all aspects of the problem; and — most importantly at this stage — (D) believing sci-fi technologies will avert global warming is a great excuse not to invest in alternative energy sources or vigorously pursue conservation.

    Incidentally, I think we should beware of assuming that the solutions to our problems necessarily involve sacrifice, just because Republicans have been dishonestly assuring us for so long that they do not.

  • Huge mirrors. Tiny brains.

    I can’t decide if we are being led by Caligula or the Marx Brothers.

  • I suppose the administration’s response to the question of handling the costs of such a project would be, of course, to reduce taxes.

  • If the human race disappeared tomorrow, and all hydrocarbon emissions ceased, global warming would STILL continue for decades.

    So, puting soot particles into the upper atmosphere is not a stupid idea at all.

    It doesn’t obviate the need for long term change, but we need a short term fix too, because every year that the ice-sheets melt the albedo of the earth increases, which means MORE heat, like a runaway furnace that feeds on itself.

    It’s not just sea-levels rising, it’s global famine that could kill over 1/2 the human race, plus a series of global wars (people don’t just starve quietly).

    Thanks to the Republicans we’re now in a much worse case than we needed to be, but the earth at this point needs desparate measures.

  • We know what aerosol sulphates do in the stratosphere, and we know about how long they persist there, thanks to volcano history. When we do start eliminating coal burning power plants and reducing particulates which are incidentally somewhat mitigating the effects of global warming gases by scattering sunlight, we are going to have to look into this. Methane—20 times more potent than
    CO2 as far as global warming effects are concerned—persists about 4 years in the stratosphere, but CO2 persists for about a hundred years. Right now there’s an area about the size of France in Siberia where the permafrost is melting and releasing massive amounts of methane (and probably in Alaska and Canada too, for that matter). If we don’t put the freeze back on it we’re going to be (are?) stuck in a very bad feedback loop.
    If we don’t explore the purposeful terraforming options, then the loss of particulates (like the Giant Brown Cloud over SE Asia) is going to make earth even hotter. If you don’t like terraforming that’s too bad, because we’ve been doing it inadvertently for way too long. Now we have to do it wisely to get out of the mess we’ve put ourselves in. And it could be done very cheaply. Better, though, to have chemists figure out something we can spray up there that will chemically combine with methane and/or CO2 to precipitate it out of the atmosphere, thus removing the gases that we don’t want there. Probably doable, though I’m no chemist. But considering any of this without a good plan to halt our production of GHGs would be just plain stupid. As a short-term fix, though, while we convert to a GHG-free economy (very doable), it’s probably going to be necessary.

  • I believe the Chemtrails thing is stuff they’re seeding in the troposphere. We need to be thinking stratosphere here. Chemtrails is just for weather changing, as near as I can tell.

  • Nobody thinking that the reason THIS solution might fly is…

    Couldn’t it be used as a weapon? At least with minor alterations?
    Think of the kid with a magnifying glass terrorising ants…

    Think of using weather as a weapon.

  • With all respect to my fellow liberals here, this is an idea we are going to have to consider. We all know that Republicans are the party that hates science, but when did the Democrats become the party that hates engineering? Global warming is an Engineering problem. We need to engineer better cars, better power plants, etc. .. And in the event that this is not enough, that the CO2 in the atmosphere is already too much, then we need to engineer a solution to climate change.

    So lets walk into the future, shall we? Science in one hand, engineering in the other. Afraid of neither, but aware of the pitfalls of both. Stand up like adults and fix a problem we caused, even if that means blocking out some sunlight. Because guess what?? Volcanoes have already taught us that dust in the upper atmosphere works, and though there may be (perhaps dire) side effects to such a plan, it is almost certainly better than what climate change has in store for us.

  • While I can’t say that this is not a plot line from The Simpsons, I can say with certainty that it definitely was a plot from Futurama. Perhaps the writer confused Mr. Burns with and the equally spindly and elderly Professor Farnsworth from Futurama. In the “Crimes of the Hot” episode, the giant mirror that was supposed to save the Earth crashes into the conference of scientists (in Kyoto, of course). Al Gore has a bit part in it as well.

  • Cyga (51), I couldn’t agree more. I too am more than a little fed up with antiscience on the left. It’s frustrating when it comes from the right because they’ve been in power and have been able to abuse that power to quash science, but the left would and has definitely done the same, most egregiously in the case of nuclear power. Which is also, by the way, one of our aces in the hole in terms of global warming. More to come on all this in my soon to be finished book, which I’ll be sure to tout via CB once it’s ready to hit the shelves.

    Just a note regarding nuclear power: When my kids were tiny, most of our friends (hippies) asked us whether we were going to give them immunizations. Whether coming from them or straights, the question was almost always posed as a yes or no question, disregarding the fact that there were many different immunizations and one needn’t necessarily accept or reject them as a package. It’s a symptom of our society’s lazy thinking that we so readily shop for the package deal, whether in medicine or education or politics or energy. I’ve found most antinuclear advocates to be the same, yet there are several different types of reactor technology and some are better (MUCH better!) than others. Knee jerk reactionaries will not lead us into a better future, no matter which side of the political spectrum they’re on.

  • 30 below zero here in the last week and I am supposed to believe some guy that flies around in fuel gusseling exhaust spewing jets and rides around in limos when he says the globe is warming. He might be a tad more credible if he just used the internet he invented to make his bogus claims, wouldn’t that pollute less? Come on idiots, follow the money, it’s all about the money. You may be fooling yourselves but next year or next decade your doomsday claims will be the same, only a different mode of distruction will be the scam du jour ( 70’s global cooling, y2k, yeah whatever). Global warming alarmists are nothing but 21st century snake oil salesmen and you are all standing in line waiting to pay. The globes temperatures fill fluctuate like they have forever no matter how much money you let the alarmist tax you out of. Think about it, why did they name it Greenland 1000 years ago?

  • Wow, the reactions exhibited here to this proposal for further investigation are pathetic. Perhaps 5% of them included actual critical thought. The rest consisted of lame simpsons Jokes and cheap shots at the Bush administration.

    Granted, I am absolutely no fan of George W. Bush, but the comments I’ve been reading in response to this recent proposal on climate change are embarassing. I’m ashamed to think that many of you are probably part of the same political party I am (The Democrats). Talk about partisanship gone haywire! Go ahead and dismiss any climate change proposal from the Bush administration, but at least have the honesty to admit that you’re doing it out of spite.

    If these proposals really are so laughable then you must be quite the experts on climate modeling, no? Why don’t you come off your elitist high-horse for a moment and lay out some hard hitting scientific or logistical problems with this proposal. Tell us why it is such a joke. So far the only reasoning I’ve seen boils down to:

    “LOL! Tis propozall iz such a jok, duh bush prolly got’d thiz when he watch an episode of the Simpzons!! LMAO he is way 2 dumb!!111 Bush is sux evil polluter!!111oneoneone”

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