Hacker News Reader

Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

It’s quite clear that in 2019 it is not possible to get all powerful entities in the world to work together on an issue like climate change. We should focus on band-aid solutions like reflectors in space above the poles that prevent sun from hitting the earth at all. We are past the “if only everyone bought electric cars” phase of solutions and need special projects that assume the amount of CO2 emitted stays the same or increases.

View on HN

We probably don't want all powerful entities in the world working together on anything anyway. Nothing good can come of that. A diverse range of localized solutions reacting to local experiences and problems is better than top-down central-planned solutions.

It should not be an either-or proposition when the stakes are so high. We should work full time to have governments work on breaking climate change speed (reduce/limit emissions, alternative energy, carbon tax, etc.) while at the same time work on scientific methods to fight climate change, if possible (e.g. Prometeus, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240.

There's no stationary orbit over the poles

If we’re living in “reflectors over the poles” fantasyland, I’m sure we can come up with a way to put continuously firing boosters on it to keep it over the pole.

I have no idea if that’s possible, what I mean is we should stop trying to get the US and China to agree on anything let alone climate change so we need grand silver bullet solutions.

China does accept the reality of climate change and is enacting policies against it. It might not be nearly enough but it's not fair to lump them with the USA on this one.

80%+ of the plastic in the ocean comes from China. It's not fair to lump the US in with China.

"They recognize it and want to do something" doesn't mean shit when you're by far the worst part of the problem. Especially when "wanting to do something about it" and "doing something about it" are ridiculously different things.

Have you been to Beijing? China is in a class all of its own when it comes to pollution. It’s not fair to lump the US in with China.

Have you bought products manufactured in China? That's your pollution.

Also, the snow is pretty reflective. And silver-plating any exposed rock is cheaper than going to orbit, per kg of silver/kg-to-LEO.

well, technically you need less silver in orbit since you can use extremely thin films which just wouldn't survive on the ground. but yeah, it's still a very impractical proposition.

the latest climate-engineering proposals for sunshades involve placing a cloud of reflective or diffracting solar sails at L1, not in close earth orbit over any specific region.

I don't see the word "orbit" used at all, except by you.

Sounds like you'd imagine a permanent eclipsing body is something that would employ an orbital insertion into earth orbit, which is your own assumption.

Please explain how you put "reflectors in space" without putting them into orbit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com