Block out the sun to stop global warming? Is this true?

Question

Does anyone not find this a little scary?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/us-urges-scientists-to-block-out-sun/2007/01/28/1169919213362.html

For those who believe we should do just that, do you know what the end results will be?

Answer 1

Heh... in this case "The US" almost certainly means the Bush administration, which is not long for this world.

Answer 2

Global warming is a scam.

My 2 cents.

Answer 3

This is just one example of what we are doing to fix something that is not broken. We are going to mess around and really make a problem where none exists.

Answer 4

the end result is everything will die, everything has to have sun light , and yes this is getting outta hand  people need to wake up and start fighting against this before the government kncoks all of us off

Answer 5

Yes that's extremely scary. The people who think this is a good idea are certifiable. Do they not realize if we put enough dust in our upper atmosphere that we could bring on a less desireable affect?

Go ahead people do a computer simulation where you block the sun completely. Since none of you want to take my word that all life on this planet would die if the sun were to burn itself out.

I'm not saying this would happen, but you could, by putting too much dust in the upper atmosphere bring on a major Ice Age if not a glaciation period.

Edit: Pegminer - Think of all the money that would be wasted when the believers are proven wrong if we funded a project like this.

Answer 6

Yeah i think this is a bit tooooooooo much sci fi to believe

Answer 7

Think about it for a second. Although technically it sounds good, the end result would be the planet dying completely.

Without the protective layers (IE stratosphere, atmoshpere, etc) we would not have any oxygen, and carbon dioxide. All plant life would die. With oxygen and hydrogen (water) no mammal could survive. It's akin to throwing the bath water out with the baby!

Answer 8

Back in the late 1980s when scientist where heavy into this issue (Global Warming), I though someone had mentioned at a meeting I attended a French plan to place some kind of mylar balloon on orbit to reflect sun light away from the planet.  It would be sponsored by corporations that could have the balloons configured to advertise their products!  I have never seen any such plan published so this is only rumor.  But still, those crazy Frenchies!

The concept is fine - if less sunlight reaches the planet, there is less to warm it, and less heat given of by the planet to be absorbed by the CO2 (and other gases) in the atmosphere.  From a plant ecology point of view it may not work so good though.  Since ALL life on earth depends on the ability of plants to convert sunlight to energy, it might be good to think about such plans carefully, someplace other than Yahoo "Answers".

Answer 9

YOU CANT BLOCK THE SUN THEN WE WOULD DIE FROM LESS HEAT DUH

Answer 10

What so funny about that concept, it's not the most off the wall idea I've heard of. The NAS in days foregone had some really weird ones about nuclear waste. The final solution was to bury it in a mountain. I haven't ran across any links, but I do believe if one lets nature revert back to it's natural habitat in certain areas. The albedo effect along with photosynthesis might do the same thing?

Answer 11

The reason that some people are thinking about this is that they are wondering what we might do if we cannot stop global warming any other way.  It is intended as a measure of last resort if we keep putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and things start going catastrophically wrong.  It is extremely scary, of course, that is why it should be avoided at all costs. No one wants it to come to this, but some scientists believe we should have a backup plan in case nothing else ever gets done and we're facing a global ecological catastrophe.

Think of it this way, when the people that deny anthropogenic global warming finally realize that they were wrong, this may be the only option left.

EDIT in response to Michael's question:  You are right, we cannot live without the sun, but I think that article might have misled you, the idea is not to block the sun completely, but to dim it just enough to compensate for the increased downward radiation from greenhouse gases. You could do that by injecting particles high in the atmosphere that would reflect sunlight.  I believe that Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen and others have suggested various schemes like that.  Again, it would be very risky, and not something we'd want to do unless it was forced upon us.

Mikira: to study such an idea costs very little.  Like I said, this is something that would only be tried in the most dire of consequences: worldwide crop failure, rapidly rising sea levels, etc. It's something that would only be done when the world is collapsing around us, so don't worry about money being spent on it until then.

Answer 12

BLOCK OUT THE SUN, THEN NOTHING GROWS, LIKE FOOD.?????????????????????????

Answer 13

If the sun was blocked out then our planets temperature would drop so low that you could live in a furnace and still die from cold in a matter of minutes. If not seconds.

All plant life would cease to excist.

Witch kills all herbavores.

And without herbavores there can be no predators(including us).

So not only would the earth be completely frozen.(entire oceans would freeze).

There would also be NO food to eat. Not even bacteria could survive. Or roachs(witch can survive nuclear fallout).

So block out the sun will stop global warming.

But it will also kill anything the is affected by global warming

Answer 14

It is possible.

I would find polluting less to be a bit less scary.

Answer 15

They already doing that (supposedly spraying the skies to create a protective sunscreen).  It's being taught in schools!  And even the news reports that as a fact sometimes.  I guess it's to make us feel better that we're breathing in dangerous aluminum and barium particles that we weren't breathing in before from normal jet exhaust.

http://www.willthomas.net/Chemtrails/Art...