A gaggle has been formed to review and promote a space-based sunshade to assist fend off global climate change.
The concept has been discussed for years, however the Planetary Sunshade Foundation is cranking out papers that support the concept and highlight the practicality of the approach.
A planetary sunshade, the Foundation advises, could possibly be the perfect solution for solar radiation management and needs to be viewed as a key part of world efforts to counter ongoing climate change on Earth.
Related: Experts are certain 2023 shall be ‘the warmest 12 months in recorded history’
A matter of degrees
Undoing the worst effects of climate change might rest on three pillars: Emissions reduction, carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management.
There may be a global agreement to strive to maintain the world’s average temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over current averages. However the cold fact is that the lower the common temperature increase, the lower the climate impacts.
That said, climate change researchers have reported that our planet might cross 1.5°C in the subsequent decade. Within the meantime there at the moment are increased incidents of utmost weather, trends in sea level rise, widespread fires, together with melting ice caps.
Coupled to those warning signs is political pressure to counter climate-change calamity.
Livable planet
Morgan Goodwin is the Executive Director of the Planetary Sunshade Foundation.
As for why the group is pursuing the initiative, Goodwin is obvious that current decarbonization strategies are mandatory, but they’re insufficient for a livable planet.
Decarbonisation is the lessening of carbon dioxide emissions by means of utilizing low carbon power sources to achieve a lower output of greenhouse gasses permeating Earth’s atmosphere.
“To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the world should rapidly phase out the usage of fossil fuels, remove gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, and limit the incoming solar radiation,” Goodwin told Space.com. Of all of the methods broached to scale back solar radiation, he said, the sunshade has many benefits deserving of investment within the concept.
Construction strategies
Touted as a “megastructure” in space, a sunshade can be installed on the Sun-Earth Lagrange-1 point. Once in place, it could reduce radiative forcing — the trapping of warmth within the atmosphere as a result of greenhouse gas emissions — by reflecting sunlight back into space.
The muse says that construction of a Planetary Sunshade is feasible, drawing upon initial solar sail technology already flown. “The rapid technological progress of space launch systems has resulted in the fee of sending materials and folks into space dropping fast, changing the scope of what is feasible.”
Based on the muse, there are two possible sunshade construction strategies.
“We’re pursuing each options, and think that if a planetary sunshade is built, the initial phases of construction shall be an Earth-launched architecture while the later phases will use space resources and in-space construction,” the group’s website explains.
Hands-off Mother Nature?
But there are those who hold tight onto the assumption: “You should not idiot with Mother Nature!”
Goodwin responds by stating that humans are messing with Mother Nature at a grand scale through state-sanctioned and infrequently state-subsidized industrial practices.
“Our survival as a civilization is determined by our ability to properly and intentionally change how we interact with our planet,” said Goodwin.
Indeed, previously 12 months, the White House published a congressionally mandated report on geoengineering governance pathways, Goodwin said, a document that takes “a small but solid step forward,” he added, into making a framework for further investment in geoengineering research.
Report takeaways
In June of this 12 months, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released the Congressionally-mandated report on solar radiation modification.
As for report takeaways it cautions that any potential comprehensive research program must encompass the societal in addition to the scientific dimensions of solar radiation modification.
The document highlights several key priority areas for further solar radiation modification research, including determining climate and environmental impacts of solar radiation modification deployment; assessing potential societal outcomes and ecological consequences; and the necessity to examine how research is likely to be done in cooperation amongst international partners.
That report also acknowledges that research on solar radiation modification impacts up to now has been ad hoc and fragmented, fairly than being the product of a comprehensive strategy. Because of this, substantial knowledge gaps and uncertainties exist in lots of critical areas.
Uncertainties, risks, challenges
Earlier this 12 months, the Global Commission on Governing Risks from Climate Overshoot (the “Climate Overshoot Commission”) issued their report.
This independent group of world leaders advisable a method to scale back risks should global warming goals be exceeded, that could be a “climate overshoot” that crosses the 1.5 °C threshold.
Within the commission report, they broached space-based reflectors; stratospheric aerosol injection, cirrus cloud thinning and marine cloud brightening — all solar Radiation Modification (SRM) techniques.
“But SRM would counter climate change imperfectly and poses serious uncertainties, risks, and governance challenges,” the commission study reported.
“The governance gaps for SRM are probably the most acute,” that reported said. “How can it’s researched and evaluated without distracting from essential reductions of greenhouse gas emissions? Who decides whether to undertake SRM and under which conditions? How could countries’ differences on this query be resolved?”
Goodwin of the Planetary Sunshade Foundation concludes that this 12 months will close as the most well liked 12 months ever recorded, replacing 2022 which in turn took that title from 2021. “As the speed and impacts of warming increase, an increasing number of tactics and perspectives shall be dropped at the table.”
Whether or not a sun-deflecting, “made-in-the-shade” sail stays a shiny prospect on that discussion table is yet to be determined.