If they built a huge mirror around the equator, could that solve the problem of Global Warming?
Answer:
Yes it would. Very impractical though.
I do not know the needed size of it and there would be problems with the location. (waves on the ocean, covering land if placed on land.) I can imagine the cost of it and the needed raw material. It is interesting though. There are problems both with having it on the surface of Earth,or in space. It would be able to send radiation back in to space, however, just in the same way that those radiations (depending on wave length.) can reach Earth's surface.
The reason GHG's work is because the solar radiation is changed as it is absorbed, then re-emitted, by land or sea. Visible light, to a great extent, goes right throw GHG/s on their way in to Earth. The re-emitted IR radiation (longer wave length ) is absorbed by the GHG's. A mirror would reflect bach the radiation as visible light.
NO sorry.
Have you ever been inside a greenhouse? It is warm right?
Why is it warm?
Well high frequency radiation hits the glass.. some is reflected, some is absorbed but a lot is transmitted straight through.
The reduction in intensity as it travels through the glass changes the frequency of the radiation. The wave lengths get longer. This makes it harder to transmit through glass... so when it tries to get back out.. less of the heat can pass.. therefore the greenhouse warms up.
Now.. you can see that the earth's atmosphere works in much the same way... if you start putting lots of Co2 up there.. the heat can't escape as easily as it used to ... so the temperature of the air around the earth rises.
Mirrors will do nothing about that problem but reducing carbon emissions will. Your mirrors would be placed inside the greenhouse where they do no good.
It is great to keep thinking of ways to solve this problem.. but from my perspective there are 4 billion of us that are not doing enough. If we each did a little thing.. imagine the nett impact on the reduction to global warming.
If you believe that global warming is caused by man, then you would have to accept that the energy expended to create such mirrors would only result in an increase of anthropogenic greenhouse gases that created the problem in the first place.
Not bashing your idea, but focusing on reducing your own negative impact on the environment is the best first step.
want to try it?..
nice hat...
I was reading in a discover magazine about global warming and a company designed a screen that will be attached to sattelites. It will cover up the sun and it will also move when it has to... but it will only block the sun by like .5% and they say it will solve global warming and you wouldn't even be able to notice somethings infront of the sun.I dunno about mirrors. The thing is once the heat is in our atmosphere it's staying in. Because when the heat should be bouncing back into space..all the particles from our emmissions is bouncing it right back the earth... its acting like a blanket.
The principle isn't bad, but it wouldn't work like that. You'd need to put it in orbit to do any good. OTOH, you COULD introduce SO2 into the upper atmosphere, which would do the same thing.
Wouldn't you know it, cars USED to pollute the atmosphere with just the right compound, until the envirowackos insisted on catalytic converters. Ah, well...
And point it where ,we dont want to blow up the sun ,and we need some light for the weather and plants .
Bush has a better Idea ,he is gonna build a giant airconditioner for the USA.
The rest of the world is gonna fry ,that way it saves him on nuclear bombs
i think that would be very expensive and lead to the destruction of valuable natural resources. i overall think there are better ways to tackle global warming.
I agree the mirror needs to be in orbit, and it would take a lot of resources, and what if the globe enters a downturn phase...what then?
Maybe a sunshield that we could roll in and out like a venetian blind in space would help..we could check yearly and see if we needed more shade or less.
OR we make the mirror so it could swivel, to reflect the sun's heat back out into space, or more to the earth if we started to cool down.
Which will eventually happen in the natural course of things
Better suggest this to NASA and get your name as the originator of the idea!!
Oh, and if we made the mirror so it could be focussed, we could smelt metals in space, and get very high purity stuff to send back to earth for super structures. Get double duty outta the mirror!
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And to the comment on catalytic converters, I read that a lot of the 1950-75 drop was due to the dust emissions of the large plants coming into vogue, and the rise after the mid 1970's was when the dust was removed s a pollutant...so why not put controlled leaks in the dusts of various plants, and let measured quantities of dusts into the atmosphere so it reflected the right amount of heat to keep us steady where we liked it? Sell them dust credits for releasing the right amounts of the right dust!!
Simple, cheap, and easy.
I think emission reduction, micobial remediation, plant remediation, and conservation would work just as well.
I heard scientists are actually coming up with a way to do that now. with mylar material balloons that are mirror like material. that would go in the sky attached to satellites
Not really. The problem isn't too much heat coming in. The problemis that the excess CO2 in the atmosphere traps the heat, so it doesn't radiate off into space.
Awesome idea! Now only if it were that simple!
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