Geoengineering

luapenak

how about some geoengineering to solve the problems of global warming?
why dont we just pump millions of tonnes of sulphur into the upper atmosphere annually (costing an awful lot less than what the Stern report believes the cost of reducing green house emissions will be) which would then combine with other molecules and reflect 1% of the suns light.
Or we could put 55000 "solar sails" at the Lagrange point in the earths orbit, blocking 1% of the sun light.
I hadn't heard about this geoengineering field of research untill today when i read an article about it. I found it quite interesting. From what i understand, everyone, including researchers in this field would hate to see it getting to the stage where we had to pump sulphur into the upper atmosphere, as this would obviuosly have many a negative affect.
Do people think that it will come to this sort of last minute fix if things spiral out of control? If things did go awfully wrong with global warming would people then support putting sulphur in the atmosphere? Some of the ideas regarding putting "sun block" in orbit are quite likely to be impossible or would require huge investment and would still be unlikely to happen.
Do people think humans as a race will find some high tech solution or will we manage to cut are emissions through the available means?
Looking at the world today i think it high unlikely that us as a race (considering a large and growing size) will do enough to make much impact on global warming (if it is actually happening).

Capt'n Midnight

The Russians were testing mirrors to light up Siberia at night

But L1 is quite far away though 1.5 million Km , though you might be able to get from LEO by using solar sails.

The sails would not be stationery but would orbit around L1 or use tethers to hold them together.

Maybe you could use dichroic filters and reflect some of the UV wavelengths ?