The sunrise you see here took place at 7:40 am this morning in south-western Ontario Canada, with the temperature at minus 18 C (a bit less than zero fahrenheit) as I took my photos.
Sunlight is the topic today. A couple of years ago I did a post on this site where I proposed that a set of venetian blinds (sometimes called now ‘blackout blinds’ or ‘zebra blinds’) that could be installed in geo-synchronous orbit, on the sunlit side of Earth, well out in space between the sun and our planet where they wouldn’t be visible, that could adjust the amount of sunlight reaching the earth, thereby reducing the planet’s temperature and the effects of global warming.
It’s not a new idea – more often the proposal is to use mirrors, which, if they too are adjustable, could be used to selectively reduce the sunlight. For example if sunlight headed for the Sahara, were redirected away from the Earth altogether, the temperature of the desert could be reduced enough to allow desert plants surviving around the edge of the Sahara, those that are currently being driven further south and north year by year by extreme drought and heat, to regain much of their old territory.
It could also be helpful if our sun suddenly starts running amok, threatening to toast us. Astronomers are well aware of the sun’s unpredictability, and that extreme events of that kind take place on other stars.
This is a simple idea, requiring no new science. It’s just an engineering problem, and not a particularly difficult one. Those of us who have thought about it find it hard to understand why it still isn’t underway, even the planning for it.
Well, finally this week, on the Canadian CBC radio science program, Quirks and Quarks, I listened to a description of such planned technology. But, to my shock, the plan is not to reduce the sunlight reaching the Earth, but to increase it !
A company in California, Reflect Orbital, proposes to put thousands of mirrors in orbit in a way that they will be suspended along the border between the night and day sides of the planet, which will allow them to redirect sunlight that would normally go past the earth, down to the night side of earth, increasing the length of the day for those who are willing to pay for it, or maybe lighting up cities all night, allowing them to reduce their need for outdoor lighting.
It never occurred to me that we might do exactly what we shouldn’t do, but I suppose I was just naive. Despite all that’s happening to the planet – deforestation, degradation of the oceans, reductions in wildlife almost everywhere while our own numbers climb – making money is still humanity’s main focus.
My hope here is that governments will see the need to block such technology. But why not block it, while offering to fund Reflect Orbital to reflect the sunlight away?
But that would require nations to work together, just when efforts to work together are breaking down. The argument, of course, is that we can’t afford to do the things we need to do. We say that as the world slides into increasing warfare, and somehow the money for that always becomes available. The world government that Einstein and other thinkers said was necessary 8 decades ago, that we so badly need now, seems more and more remote in the future.
The sun may be setting on civilization, not rising on it.
PS – if you want to read more about Reflect Orbital, here is a good article on the Smithsonian website.
Alan Conrad 