The real risk IMO is making the oceans acidic with all this co2. That has the potential to be really really catastrophic.
The amount of reflectors required would necessitate literally millions of conventional rocket launches. At 1 launch per day it comes out to thousands of years to accomplish a project like this- far too slow to effectively address climate change.
If you read my comment you would realise I didn't say we could use it to address climate change but that climate change would never become catastrophic (read runaway greenhouse effect) because we could do it as a last resort.
Ah, ok. Just a complete scifi fantasy plan will just happen to sprout out of nowhere in the future(tm). Guess we'll just do nothing now.
Catastrophic for 2100 is not the same as catastrophic climate change. Catastrophic climate change is much worse than even the worst case scenarios for the change between now and 2100.
What I was saying is if we get to a point where we are facing real catastrophic climate change then off course we will do whatever to stop it and it will be easy because we can stop the energy before it enters the system. Ocean acidification is a direct result of our carbon dioxide entering the ocean, unlike climate where sunlight is the primary input the carbon dioxide is the primary input. This is why it will be so much harder to stop catastrophic effects of ocean acidification compared to those of climate change once enough carbon dioxide has been emitted to make them happen.
Obviously we should still lower emissions. The thought I was saying we shouldn't is ridiculous. In fact what I'm arguing is we should be doing it far more aggressively because of the effects it has on ocean acidification and the difficulty in reversing those effects.
This is pretty much impossible. Catastrophic scenarios for 2100 expect pH = 7.8 (now: 8.0). pH is logarithmic and acidity would start below 7.
The way I see it when talking about our oceans they are systems rather than a liquid. The system has a preferred pH range and therefore can become acidic regardless of whether it's <7.
That's alarmism.
> The system has a preferred pH range and therefore can become acidic regardless of whether it's <7.
It's alkaline and will stay that way whether it sounds dramatic enough to you or not. What the preferred pH range is and how the complex system of the oceans works, we don't fully understand yet.