Essay by Eric Worrall
Blowing bubbles in space to block sunlight could be the solution to our climate disasters, according to MIT researchers. But MIT, like all others, is ignoring a fundamental flaw in its solar geoengineering plans. Plants need sunlight.
MIT scientists propose space bubble to reverse the worst of climate change
Angely Mercado
Published 2 days ago: June 17, 2022 at 4:48 amA team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe we can mitigate the worst of climate change with… a space bubble. They outlined a strategy in which giant bubble raftcarefully positioned between the Earth and the Sun, will deflect sunlight (and thus radiate heat) to prevent further global warming.
“Geoengineering may be our last and only option. However, most geoengineering proposals are earth-related, which poses enormous risks to our living ecosystems”, a webpage exclusively for solution reads. “If we deflect 1.8% of the incoming solar radiation before it hits our planet, we can completely reverse global warming today.”
The bubble array shall be made of thin silicone inflatable shields or other suitable material, by group. The Bubble clusters will be placed in outer space at a Lagrange Point, where the gravitational pull of the Sun and Earth creates a stable orbit. The researchers also say that, if the plan comes to fruition in the future, the finished array will be roughly the size of Brazil.
They admit that one of the main concerns with their proposal would be the logistics of crafting a large film, transporting it into space, and then unfolding it to form a bubble raft. They proposed making the spheres in space to reduce transportation costs.
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The main website of the project is available here.
This project looks more interesting than other geoengineering favorites, like blowing sulfuric acid or lime dust into the stratosphere. But aside from the massive cost, all of these geoengineering fantasies suffer from a fatal flaw.
If deployed, solar geoengineering could cause global hunger.
Estimating the global agricultural efficiency of geoengineering using volcanic eruptions
Jonathan Proctor, Solomon Hsiang, Jennifer Burney, Marshall Burke & Wolfram Schlenker
abstract
Solar radiation management is increasingly seen as an option for global temperature managementfirst,2But the economic impact of ameliorating climate change by scattering sunlight back into space is still largely unknown.3. Although solar radiation management can increase crop yields by reducing heat stress4, the impact of simultaneous changes in sunlight availability has never been empirically estimated. Here, we use volcanic eruptions that have inspired modern solar radiation management proposals as natural experiments to provide the first estimates, to the best of our knowledge, on how the stratospheric sulfate aerosols produced by the El Chichón and Mount Pinatubo eruptions changed the quantity and quality of global sunlight and how these changes in sunlight affect to global crop yields. We found that the sunlight-mediated effect of stratospheric sulfate aerosols on yield was negative for both C4 (maize) and C3 (soybean, rice and wheat) plants. Applying our yield model to a stratospheric sulphate aerosol based solar radiation management scenario, we find that mid-21st century losses due to scattered sunlight caused by solar radiation management is roughly equal in magnitude to the benefit from cooling. This suggests that solar radiation management — if implemented using stratospheric sulfate aerosols similar to the volcanic aerosols it seeks to mimic — is in fact in practice. , will alleviate some of the global agricultural losses due to climate change. Our approach could be extended to studying the impact of solar radiation management on other global systems, such as human health or ecosystem function.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0417-3
The fact that there is no remotely reasonable level of global warming can put you at risk trying to reflect sunlight to cool the Earth.
Even if the conditions of Early Eocene (5-8 degrees Celsius warmer than today) back, tropical conditions most of the way to the North Pole and South Pole, plants still growing and farms still productive. Almost certainly more productive than it is today.
Our primitive primate ancestors dominated and prospered during the extremely warm period of the early Eocene, with primate populations exploding across Africa, Europe and Asia. So we have strong classical evidence that warm weather is not a threat to primates. We also know from the world today that the Earth’s tropics are some of the most productive regions in the world.
In contrast, solar geoengineering has the potential to disturb entire ecosystems and cause widespread famine and crop failure. Not only because cool periods are less productive, but also because plants are severely affected if they are deprived of sunlight – so much so that even a slight volcanic disturbance is enough to create resulted in a significant drop in production.
In my opinion, trying to obfuscate the amount of sunlight the Earth receives is far more dangerous than any potentially legitimate negative consequences from global warming itself.
Obviously this is a worst case scenario. The odds are negligible for a solar geosynthetic project like this to ever progress enough to pose a threat to the global ecosystem. But given the evidence of negative consequences, MIT scientists shouldn’t even be trying to promote this insanity, in my opinion.
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