HOW TO COOL THIS EARTH

[spacesailor]

Lots of people Want to stop Global Warming, but other than stopping using certain products (In this country ). Not many positive solutions.

 

How about a few suggestions for our scientist to decry !.

 

First off the post, shade cloth is cheap as chips to manufacture.

 

Take a couple of rolls out into space & deploy between Earth & it's Sun.

 

rotating the object will keep the "Shade Sail" out-stretched.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[octave]

Lots of people Want to stop Global Warming, but other than stopping using certain products (In this country ). Not many positive solutions.How about a few suggestions for our scientist to decry !.

 

First off the post, shade cloth is cheap as chips to manufacture.

 

Take a couple of rolls out into space & deploy between Earth & it's Sun.

 

rotating the object will keep the "Shade Sail" out-stretched.

 

spacesailor

Not necessarily as daft as it might initially sound:

 

Here is an interesting talk on mega projects. Most of these projects require investments and leaps in technology which may be better-used to move us into the post-fossil fuel era however if the worst case scenario occurs it may be mega projects or lay down and die.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfRo8_RfefA:677

 

I think it discusses what you are suggesting at around the 12-minute mark but IMHO well worth watching the whole thing

 

 

[facthunter]

If the shade sail absorbs the heat it will just melt or destroy itself. In a vacuum it can't cool. If it reflects the light energy it will be propelled somewhere. Energy can't just disappear.. Nev

 

 

[octave]

If the shade sail absorbs the heat it will just melt or destroy itself. In a vacuum it can't cool. If it reflects the light energy it will be propelled somewhere. Energy can't just disappear.. Nev

It doesn't absorb (perhaps some), it reflects, a black object would absorb large amounts of energy but a reflective surface would reflect it. Remember when Skylab was overheating and they installed a reflective shade? I think the figure required is to reduce solar radiation by 2%.

 

The James Webb Space Telescope has a sunshade to keep it cool enough (when it finally gets launched) Also probes near the sun such as the Parker Solar Probe (6.9 million kms from the sun).

 

Also, consider solar thermal power plants which have banks of mirrors which reflect solar energy on to a central tower, the tower gets extremely hot but the mirrors do not.

 

However, for the record, it is not an idea that I can get enthused by.

 

 

[octave]

[Old Koreelah]

Methinks all these mega climate engineering proposals are just more evidence that our species hasn't yet grown up enough to accept we have to stop buggering up the natural world in order to prop up our wasteful lifestyles. As Octave suggests, it might be smarter and cheaper to quickly phase out the most damaging industries and invest in the promising new pallet of renewable technologies.

 

The right decisions could trigger the greatest economic boom in human history.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Dilute the Carbon !

 

by Plant more trees.

 

spacesailot

 

 

[octave]

Dilute the Carbon !by Plant more trees.

 

spacesailot

Planting more trees is of some help but there is a basic problem.

 

Other than micronutrients plants need water and nitrogen in the correct ratio as well as many other things and of course water. The point is you cant massively increase only one of those nutrients (Carbon) People are quick to point out that plants love carbon but they will only thrive if there is also an increase in nitrogen and other nutrients. To put it more simply if you put a plant in a greenhouse and give it huge amounts of carbon it will also require much more water and much more of the other nutrients required for plant growth.

 

Planting trees is still good but in itself cannot fix the problem.

 

 

[spacesailor]

I believe it was the Industrial revolution's tree burning, that started this global warming !.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[pmccarthy]

The tree clearing and burning started thousands of years earlier. The industrial revolution only became possible through burning coal, because most of the forests were already gone in the populated areas.

 

 

[facthunter]

How does the carbon cycle work without things like trees and sea grasses? Nev

 

 

[spacesailor]

I don't think so.

 

Man used charcoal to make Bronze out of copper !.

 

Even the first malleable iron Was made with the same charcoal in a forge.

 

which later became a blast-furnace with the use of coal. And it took a lot of tree's to make enough charcoal to melt IRON ORE.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[pmccarthy]

I don't think so.Man used charcoal to make Bronze out of copper !.

 

Even the first malleable iron Was made with the same charcoal in a forge.

 

which later became a blast-furnace with the use of coal. And it took a lot of tree's to make enough charcoal to melt IRON ORE.

 

spacesailor

All true. But man had started clearing forests way back. An industrial revolution could not be built on charcoal. The key was the invention of coal fired smelting in Ironbridge Gorge.

 

 

[facthunter]

Most of your ferro alloys are made in an electric furnace today. Coal is inferior to charcoal in steel making as it has more impurities like Sulphur which weakens it and makes it corrode more. Wrought (iron?) is made in a puddling furnace where the carbon is taken out of the surface by a reducing atmosphere and is/was scooped off the surface. It has to be worked and rolled back on itself in layers and you will see this in early marine wrecks.(anchors chains etc) where it looks laminated. That is the original and only wrought iron. It welds under the hammer and is resistant to corrosion. Swedish steel got it's good reputation being made with charcoal..Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

... Coal is inferior to charcoal in steel making as it has more impurities like Sulphur which weakens it and makes it corrode more... Swedish steel got it's good reputation being made with charcoal..Nev

The history of metal smelting has been a bit neglected; I'd like to know more about why Toledo Steel was so revered. Perhaps it too was produced using charcoal from wood. I guess it was never made on a very large scale, given the labour-intensive way charcoal is produced.

 

Spain's forests never recovered from being plundered to build the Armada.

 

I can't help going totally off thread; the Spanish Armada gets two mentions in this gem:

 

ALERTS TO THREATS IN EUROPE: BY JOHN CLEESE

 

 

[spacesailor]

"I'd like to know more about why Toledo Steel was so revered "

 

answer from above,

 

"That is the original and only wrought iron. It welds under the hammer and is resistant to corrosion. Swedish steel got it's good reputation being made with charcoal..Nev " Toledo steel is wrought iron !.

 

Glad it's not only I who knows a thing or two. LoL

 

spacesailor

 

 

[spacesailor]

". Coal is inferior to charcoal in steel making as it has more impurities like Sulphur which weakens it and makes it corrode more."

 

Coal puts Carbon into the iron which makes it not only less corrodable but a little brittle, hence the Titanic plate split rather than bending in. The cold also added to the brittleness of the iron.

 

OIL on the other hand puts more than a little sulphur into the mixing pot, when making IRON ALLOYS.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Yenn]

When you use charcoal, you are using wood that has just finished growing. When you plant trees they take up Carbon dioxide, but only for as long as they are growing. Once they die they are ready to give up their carbon dioxide at the first opportunity.

 

When you burn coal, you are burning it at a rate you could not match, burning wood. We burn coal at a far faster rate than it was ever put down and that is the reason for our problems.

 

 

[Bruce]

If our species was capable of diverting our military spending for a few years, we could pay farmers everywhere to make charcoal for burying. Every tonne of charcoal buried would be over 3 tonnes of CO2 removed from the atmosphere.

 

Of course we would also need to stop burning coal to make a reduction in the total.

 

Shade-screens in space would have to be really big to have an effect on the climate. But if it were done, there would be the side-benefit that the weather could be controlled by changing the shaded zones.

 

Wow that would make a lawyers breakfast huh, you could blame the shade controllers for the weather.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

So true, Bruce. As a species, we are more than capable of solving our problems. Unfortunately, as our global problems mount, we are far more like to descend into petty squabbling or worse.

 

Unlike other "carbon capture" schemes, Biochar has enormous potential for removing carbon from the atmosphere and also improve our overworked soils.

 

Biochar - Wikipedia

 

That technology was used across the Amazon Basin to create areas of rich soil, which is still productive centuries later.

 

Terra preta - Wikipedia

 

This rich soil supported millions of people across the Amazon Basin before Europeans and their diseases decimated those civilization. Stories of "Cities of Gold" all along the great river were long thought to be fantastic lies, after the great voyage of discovery down the river by a Spanish Conquistador five hundred years ago.

 

Recent aerial and satellite surveys have shown he was right.

 

Francisco de Orellana - Wikipedia