They War-Gamed Dimming the Sun. It Went Worse Than You Think

Augi

Full Article: https://archive.is/mipdD

Shitty-kitty

Both the U.S and China would rather see the world burn then have the other in-charge of the global-thermostat.

lopsotronic

They're going to need to figure it out at some point. Just throttling hydrocarbons isn't going to cut it anymore. I mean, it's not exactly a surprise, we've known what was going to happen for more than a century. Selectively volatize all the carboniferous hydrocarbons[0] and that's gonna happen. Big industrial cooling methods will be needed[1]. Earth's been a lot warmer. That's not the problem. It's the rate of heating that's the problem from a systems perspective. So you want to buffer that without hitting the rate of photosynthetic production too hard. Any cooling will kill off crops, but you can seek the optimum for the lowest level of disruption from either heat or famine. That kind of precision really asks for direct control of total insolation - dumping piles of dust doesn't give you that kind of fine tuning. I personally like "The L1 Space Parasol", but realistically . . . it'll probably boil down to extremely-poorly-thought-out biotech spraying[2]. I think megaprojects like the L1 Parasol are going to be beyond us for a while. Not beyond China though I bet. Maybe they'll save the world and charge the rest of us rent. [0] If only we stuck with horrible garbage coal for our cars and airplanes and ships, maybe the poisonous dust would have helped with total insolation. WINK. [1] Alongside hydrocarbon throttling, or else you're in a worse situation, with less photosynthesis and even more carbon. Sure, it's colder, yay, but you're going to be dialing the temperature down over and over since the carbon's still jacking the heating up. [2] Or the thermonuclear bonfire, as equatorial populations force existential geopolitical conflict. Which would have the same effect as taking a guy dying of a 105/41 {deg} fever and dropping him in a swimming pool filled with ice. Good news! He doesn't have a fever anymore.

kps

Maybe I'm too literal-minded, but the article only talks about partly blocking sunlight. (Dimming the Sun remains an unsolved problem, but is slightly less urgent.)

yifanl

The real world isn't a Sid Meier game, just advancing down the tech tree can't solve every problem.

ChrisArchitect

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103988

krunck

Reducing trapped heat at ground level by increasing atmospheric albedo also reduces the amount of solar energy available on the ground. Agriculture and solar PV arrays would be impacted. As would the rest of the global ecosystem. Remember the "half-sun" from the Canadian wild fires? Yep. You'd get more of that. While Termination Shock (Neal Stephenson) was a fun read, I hope we don't go there.