/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #12438984

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Solution for climate change?

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 04:07:14 2020 No.12438984 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>12438992 >>12439120 >>12439206 >>12439780 >>12440045 >>12442689 >>12442709 >>12442851

So I've been toying with this idea and others seem to think it's viable: We make a really thin and light cloth that can absorb light and big enough to englobe the Earth (kinda like the atmosphere), we fold it up, load it on a spacecraft, then deploy it. We essentially shield the Earth from the sun for a few days and let it cool down, then we just take it down. Is this physically possible? What would it take? (I have an Earth sciences and comp sci background btw). Pic sorta related but obviously not how it would look.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:08:44 No.12438987 Report

Quoted By:

No idea if its possible.Interested to see what others have to say. Maybe someone with a Physics background

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:12:04 No.12438992 Report

Quoted By: >>12439008

>>12438984
No.

I think our best bet would be finding some way to manufacture a variant of graphene for production of solar panels and batteries. It'd be easiest to use photosynthetic microbes to produce the precursors (making sure they're not water soluble), then manufacturing the sheets maybe with heat, pressure and a catalyst? I've been thinking about it off and on for a couple years.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:16:54 No.12439008 Report

Quoted By: >>12439019

>>12438992
Say that's not a terrible idea, let the microbes do the work haha.

My main gripe with my theory is that it sounds crazy and everyone say "no because physics" but no one can seem to tell my what is stopping it exactly.

Once the cloth is up in space it's essentially in orbit and wouldn't have the gravitational constraint, right?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:23:54 No.12439019 Report

Quoted By: >>12439029 >>12439033

>>12439008
Well, you do realize gravity exists right? It wont be so easy as to just drape the cloth over the planet, the fibers of the cloth dont scale up, it'd be extremely easy to tear at the size of the Earth, in fact it'd likely just fall apart.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triphenylene
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenalene
My idea would entail producing microbes which produce one of those two chemicals out of CO2. It's not for carbon sequestration, but for a finishing process which might be able to produce sheets of graphene, which would then go into manufacturing of batteries. In fact, batteries made out of graphene far, far outclass anything we can manufacture currently, and they're EXTREMELY light and resilient. Also kind of the same thing with graphene solar panels. The problem is it would require a major feat in genetic engineering, and I'm not sure if microbes would even have the energy necessary to produce those compounds. You can't produce other carbon compounds as resonance structures fuck up the 2d structure of graphene.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:29:45 No.12439029 Report

Quoted By: >>12439039

>>12439019
Yeah definitely some challenges there, but if but perhaps we'll stumble upon some novel organism kinda like what happens with the serpentinization of ultramafic rocks resulting in the earlyest organisms on Earth.

Your solution is targeted at finding a solution for energy production but there are other important factors at play. I'm mostly thinking of the thawing permafrost releasing carbon n' stuff. We gotta find a way too cool it quick.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:31:10 No.12439033 Report

Quoted By: >>12439042

>>12439019
I would imagine producing the graphene itself would be easy, you'd just have to use a catalyst substrate to dehydrogenate the aromatic compounds under electrolysis? then find some way to force bonding on a 2d plane, producing hydrogen gas and graphene. Of course, I'm not a chemist, just some math person who took intro to chemistry.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:33:46 No.12439039 Report

Quoted By:

>>12439029
Problem numero uno is finding alternative power generation and storage techniques, i.e. batteries and solar panels, turbines, ect.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 04:35:27 No.12439042 Report

Quoted By:

>>12439033
Alas, my chemistry background is also quite limited, especially for an engineering problem such as this one. I'm afraid I can't contribute much to you theory though it sounds like it has some weight to it...

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 05:28:43 No.12439120 Report

Quoted By:

>>12438984
just iron seed the oceans for phytoplankton blooms. hopefully we overdo it and freeze the earth desu.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 06:07:45 No.12439206 Report

Quoted By:

>>12438984
Isn't that the idea behind aerosol cloud seeding?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 10:57:59 No.12439780 Report

Quoted By:

>>12438984
A sunshade would be parked at L1. The Larange point between the Sun and the Earth. Putting anything there blocks sunlight hitting earth and helps cool it down. Thing is, to have any appreciable impact, it needs to be HUUUUUUGE. Tons of atom-thick opaque sheets.

So there are engineering problems to overcome:

1) Scale. The sheer size of this thing and launching that much stuff into space.
2) Parking anything at L1.
3) Keeping it there with solar winds and shit
4) A material that's super-thin, super-light, sturdy, and opaque.

Then there's the question of what to do with the energy. If it's hitting this stuff, it's going to get hot. If it was reflective, and never absorbed the energy, that'd be great.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 13:38:01 No.12440045 Report

Quoted By:

>>12438984
lmfao this would just exacerbate the greenhouse heating effect: new energy comes from the sun, but actual heating is the result of energy retention in-atmosphere, i.e. the inability of the Earth to lose heat into space. Covering the earth with a blanket has the same effect as covering a radiator with a blanket would: it gets extremely hot.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 22:03:40 No.12442689 Report

Quoted By:

>>12438984
Easier to put a huge mirror in Lagrange L1,

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 22:05:19 No.12442709 Report

Quoted By:

>>12438984
Its been proposed before. It can work if the fabric is ultra thin like aluminim foil. It takes a lot of rocket flights.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 22:09:19 No.12442740 Report

Quoted By:

Destroy consumism by endi g subsidism, i.e. let companies that depend on government subsidies actually go bankrupt. We need to let the world run its course without having nany states that "protect the jabz".
Let people starve and population dwindle.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 09 Dec 2020 22:24:07 No.12442851 Report

Quoted By:

>>12438984
Ditching all feasibility or retardation arguments it would not really work. Climate change is a persistent effect and one time cooling the earth like this would not work. It would take a relatively long time for the heat to build back up (more than 24h) but it would build back up. Obviously there would be hilarious side effects with several days of global night causing all sort of whacky stuff from disrupting plant and animal life to messing with climate to the shield probably failing to deploy and dropping into the atmosphere and burning up. To get permanent effect from one time cooling you would need to do something akin to freezing the co2 out of atmosphere (which wouldn't really work on earth but good for venus) which obviously isn't something you can do.

It would be really retarded since it's probably the worst way to try to solve the problem, if you insist on space based shade solution then you would want a L1 shade, or rather many small shades. These would apply a small but persistent effect which can be controlled to achieve the target temperature, potentially even allowing for some regional adjustments too and would actually work. Space shade isn't even that bad of an idea, just not the way you suggest.
It's obviously not feasible

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