Earth Shading becoming a reality?!

[tigeralex]

Just read this article by Richard Harris and it's both thoughtful and concerning! What do you guys reckon?

Global Pollution and Prevention News:

Alex

[Rolypig]

To have a greenhouse effect, you have to have sunlight. With today's technology, it has to be possible to regulate the sunlight reaching the surface of the planet, in the way described.
If you're too hot sitting in the sun, what do you do..pull the blinds or move under the tree!
The simple solution is always best.
Within reason, the level of CO2 would be pretty irrelevant, then.
So-called third world countries could power ahead with updating their agriculture to reduce the terrible suffering of the starving.
Hang on, I bet the politicians will make a mess of it, though!..OK, back to population control, low carbon economies and war.

[b-baby]

Originally Posted by Rolypig

Hang on, I bet the politicians will make a mess of it, though!..OK, back to population control, low carbon economies and war.

Or the scientists, and we'll end up living in darkness...

[Mike]

seems like something from a real sci fi film!

I'd be worried about how permanent something like that would be. I mean what happens if it works too well....

[tigeralex]

I think it'd have to be concentrated, and a stepped process. We wouldn't want to stick a huge pair of sunglasses on the Earth then realise all our crops are dying.

However the article is true, we're a developed enough race to create techonology to help us. But as Rolypig said, it's limitation will be the greed of politicans and governments. It may allow Africa to become the strongest superpower, and that wouldn't go down very well would it.

Maybe they'd sell the shade for £100 per metre? If you default they remove the panel on the satellite :-P

[Greenbean]

I'm not sure how comfortable I feel about deliberately engineering the very scenario we were so scared of during the Cold War: Nuclear Winter. We'd have to be very, very sure we could "take down the shades" at need.

Also, it has political implications, in that it can be done by two or three nations working in conjunction, but it affects the entire planet! Right now we can't even get everyone to sign onto reasonable whaling limitations or the Kyoto Treaty - I'm not sure it's possible to get enough global accord to proceed with such a world-wide process with everyone affected being a willing party. (And if anyone is NOT a willing party, and we do it anyway? That's tyranny, isn't it?)

My third immediate concern is that such a solution would, as Rolypig says, make the level of CO2 irrelevant - which will translate into Big Corporation CEOs' heads as "Oh, we can pollute as much as we want again!" Because they have never been overly concerned with their effect on the air we breathe. Will we still be able to keep their pollution-generating tendencies under control without the threat of global warming to convince legislators to put teeth in regulations?

And if global shading means we can produce all the CO2 we want, what kind of renewed global warming effect will we endure when the "shades" must necessarily come down again?

Tread carefully, I'd say...