Geoengineering Desert Mirrors For $280 Billion

[Eclipse Now]

a decent desighn and positioning of the building

Wishful thinking unless you've got links to peer-reviewed papers, not just links to the fan-bois. I wish vertical towers could work, but all plants need light: lots of it. There's only this version that might actually work, but it's not a skyscraper, just a high rotating greenhouse.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/11/4-story-tall-vertical-farm-that-is-up.html

 

When you get into actual skyscrapers, I love the idea but the light really is the killer. Read the Monbiot article above, slowly, twice.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Eclipse Now

[CraigD]

What do I do, as a lay-person, when different 'experts' say different things? The wiki I quoted has since been edited to compensate for a MAJOR shortcoming: it's not a one-off area: it's PER YEAR!

...

So who do I trust? T & S or this Alvia Gaskill?

I share your frustration.

 

Takayuki Toyama and Alan Stainer have published their paper in a refereed journal, International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, so are somewhat vouched-for, but neither are well-known, and both fairly common names – I can’t find much biographical data on Toyama (the scientist – most I found is for a novelist with the same name) or Strainer. Their paper’s abstract pages don’t have their titles or affiliations, so it’s possible they’re resource management academics than atmospheric or geophysicists, their paper a metastudy, rather than original primary science research.

 

Alvia Gaskill appears in a few newspaper articles (eg: the 2006 NYT article How to Cool a Planet (Maybe)), most from 5+ years ago. He’s the CEO, and possibly sole employee, of “Environmental Reference Materials Inc., a consulting firm in North Carolina that advocates geoengineering”, but I can find no more info about this company than I can about Gaskill. He’s referred to alternately as “Mr” and “Dr”, suggesting to me he’s not a trained scientist, but an enthusiastic advocate.

 

To Gaskill credit, however, he’s put his idea in public view here. This hypertext document’s “modeling” section is short, stating only “before any surface coverage is attempted, computer simulations of the proposed changes in surface albedo on climate must be performed”. While sensible, my impression from this is that Gaskill has not done, and is not personably able to do, such modeling, so his work will be of limited technical usefulness.

 

However, assuming the technical/scientific details can be and are worked out to something close to Gaskill’s working assumptions His cost estimates (here) seem reasonable, and yields a bottom line of yearly maintenance costs being about 25% of initial installation, with an ultimate yearly cost of about $107 billion. Assuming government and industry incentives to support it, this seems doable to me.

 

The devil is in the details, however. I wish I could see more of them, and fear there may not be many to see.

[CraigD]

but if you reflect the power at a tower that boils water, you can run a steam turbine, for a fraction of a the cost and resources of a solar pannel power plant, plus upkeep is more simple also

A good hypography homework problem for you, BL, is make a good quality estimate of the cost per unit area of various heliostat-using “solar power towers”. This is not too hard, as there are several in operation or under construction, some really spectacular. This wikipedia article is a good starting place.

 

However, the point I was trying to make answering your original question,

why not use that [Toyama and Stainer’s proposed ground-based sunlight reflector] to create electricity, and reduce ther amount of coal being burned

is that solar power collectors and Earth-solor-heating-reducing-reflectors are different, incompatible concepts. A good reflector sends solar power into space. A good power collector keeps it on Earth. With the exception of an insignificant amount that’s radiated into space, all of that collected solar power ultimately winds up heating the Earth, the same net result as if the sunlight it collected had hit low-albedo ground, such as dark pavement.

 

Moderator note: This thread has gone off on several tracks from the original idea of cooling the Earth with reflectors, so if there are no objections, I’ll split it into some different threads, so we can keep the focus (no pun intended ;)) on the original idea.

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

but if that light is focused on a tower, and it boils water, then it creates electricity,

 

 

 

i agree that global warming has gotta stop, however, if we use this as a resource, then we kill 2 birds with one stone so to speak

Oh I'm sure it will annihilate more than two birds extra crispy.

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Isn't the problem with greenhouse gasses that they don't allow reflected heat to leave?

[Eclipse Now]

First, thanks CraigD for all that work and research. Cheers! I hope more detail turns up for us all.

 

 

Second:

Isn't the problem with greenhouse gasses that they don't allow reflected heat to leave?

In layman's terms (as this is the only way I can understand things), I thought the idea was to bounce the sunlight back into space before it became heat.

 

That is, the sunlight shoots through space in tiny wave form and hits a dark pavement and (after some funky physics happens) turns into a longer wave form that is heat energy, which can't get through Co2 as well. Co2 let's sunlight in but not the heat energy back out. Otherwise, if the incoming energy were all heat (and not light) the Co2 might cause global cooling! (To the real scientists: is that a good way to describe it?)

Edited November 30, 2012 by Eclipse Now

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Ah, I see.

I tried plugging the concept numerous times, hadn't thought of using reflector fields. Focused more on reflective color or white roof, parking lot, road surface coatings, and roof top gardens/lawns as a means of preventing hard surfaces from absorbing as much heat. Most folks then and probably still just weren't/aren't interested in anything but combustion emissions...same folks eagerly prefer to ignore living critter emissions (such as CO2 released by people and the babies they seem so eager to create)...there also seems to be a big black hole of intentional ignorance around heat released by things surrounding us in our daily lives such as 5 or 6 billion people, lights, hot water heaters, furnaces, cars, computers, tvs, radios, industrial machines, power lines, power plants, foundries, etc. etc.

 

While there is no single magic bullet, I could definitely see mirror fields being a viable step in the right direction. Of course a better option would be to use the space that they would occupy as green space or a hybrid green/space mirror field which would not only reduce trapped heat but reduce CO2 in the atmosphere as well. In the desert I guess it wouldn't matter, though the shade underneath the mirrors might be adequate to support the growth of grasses or better low lying shrubs and grass. But, If they were focused/used to produce power as suggested massive amounts of heat would end up captured then released into the air, ground or water whichever is used for the cooling side of the power generation source. Even with photovoltaic (stupid spell checker!) cells a great deal of heat would be absorbed, released into the air and remain trapped by greenhouse gasses.

 

 

[Eclipse Now]

There may be another geoengineering approach: spread olivine around some cheap real estate or wilderness. It should cover about 5% of the land surface of the earth. Then a year later, do it again. Then again. Olivine reacts with Co2, fixing it, and 5% of the surface of the earth would remove ALL the Co2 we emit each year! See this thread to comment.

http://scienceforums.com/topic/27059-spreading-olivine-200-billion-year-to-fix-global-warming/