Would a massive shade between Earth and the sun help slow climate change?

Popular Science ^ | August 9, 2023 | BY JON KELVEY

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Some of the most exotic solutions to climate change are the various forms of geoengineering. Such proposals aim to reduce global warming by shrinking the amount of solar radiation that reaches Earth’s surface—by, say, injecting large amounts of sulfur dioxide or dust into the air to mimic the cooling effect of large volcanic eruptions. Or building catapults to launch lunar dust into orbit around Earth and intercept the sun’s rays in the space near our planet.

But University of Hawaii cosmologist István Szapudi has an even more far-out idea: place a 372,000-mile-wide sun shade tethered to a captured asteroid between Earth and the sun to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching our planet by 1.7 percent. His analysis is agnostic to the shade’s shape, though he imagines it could be a circular shade made of triangular segments, able to open or close like flower petals to allow variable amounts of sunlight through.

“It’s not going to cast a sharp shadow,” Szapudi says. ”Maybe with a telescope you could notice that there is something in front of the sun. But other than that, it would just be that people would notice that the weather is a little bit better.”

He readily admits that this concept would require millions of dollars investment in just preliminary engineering studies to see if it is really possible. “Of course, it’s unrealistic to actually do this, so hopefully, we will slowly give up fossil fuels,” Szapudi says, citing a much more mainstream goal to curb a source of climate change. “But that’s a very long-term process.”

[Osage Orange]

Would massive liberal farts,,,,,do anything?