Suppose you want to put a mirror in Earth orbit, to heat up an area the size of Virginia. How much would that mirror weigh, and how much will it cost to build? Also, why are there no articles mentioning using mirrors, to heat up the Earth?
You’d probably get some idea by looking at methods people have suggested for warming Mars.
Similar methods, using sun shades rather than mirrors have been suggested for cooling Venus.
Some of these ideas advocate very lightweight mirrors of less than 100 kg/km^2
If you look at the ‘weather’ over the last couple million years, it has been remarkably consistant – ~100,000 years of ice age followed by an abrupt change to a warmer period for about 10,000 years, slowly changing to another ice age for ~100,000 years. Wash rinse repeat. Almost like some sort of oscillator, eh?
P.S. Our current inter-glacial started about 13,000 years ago. I’m buying warm socks.
I saw a multi-part NOVA program on Australia that talked quite a bit about ancient geology, and they hit on periods where the Earth’s climate was radically different. Including “Snowball Earth,” which I didn’t know about, and much warmer periods, some of which had a much greater amount and variety of life than we have today. The latter point sometimes makes me wonder why the more extreme environmentalists (the ones who think humanity should leave Gaia altogether) don’t actually want a warmer Earth.
The whole point of modern Gaiaism is not about whether the temperature is warmer or cooler. It’s about their ability to control YOU.
Fallen Angels, anyone?
That’s a really fun book. And, how many books have cameo appearances by Gary Hudson?
Seems a little early to call it:
The graph seems a bit ambiguous to say whether the next Maunder Minimum when the Thames will freeze like the Little Ice Age is imminent.
Human (n.): a bipedal mammal which briefly flourished during an interglacial on the ice planet Earth.
Does the iceball cycle go back to the dinosaurs? If human intelligence was developed over the last 65 million years, why didn’t others that lived 100s of millions of years longer? Or ape to human intelligence in just 6 million?
How low did human population get during ice ages?
I don’t know about population levels during ice ages, but there is a controversial theory that the Toba supervolcano eruption about 70,000 years ago drastically reduced the human population, and there is some genetic evidence to support this.
According to the genetic bottleneck theory, between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, human populations sharply decreased to 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals.[32][33] It is supported by genetic evidence suggesting that today’s humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.[34]
It may well be that the frozen Thames was more to do with obstruction of the river than it being particularly cold. An earlier version of London Bridge significantly slowed down flow in the Thames, thus making freezing of the surface more likely.
It’s climate change, Rand. Don’t you get it?
Suppose you want to put a mirror in Earth orbit, to heat up an area the size of Virginia. How much would that mirror weigh, and how much will it cost to build? Also, why are there no articles mentioning using mirrors, to heat up the Earth?
You’d probably get some idea by looking at methods people have suggested for warming Mars.
Similar methods, using sun shades rather than mirrors have been suggested for cooling Venus.
Some of these ideas advocate very lightweight mirrors of less than 100 kg/km^2
If you look at the ‘weather’ over the last couple million years, it has been remarkably consistant – ~100,000 years of ice age followed by an abrupt change to a warmer period for about 10,000 years, slowly changing to another ice age for ~100,000 years. Wash rinse repeat. Almost like some sort of oscillator, eh?
P.S. Our current inter-glacial started about 13,000 years ago. I’m buying warm socks.
I saw a multi-part NOVA program on Australia that talked quite a bit about ancient geology, and they hit on periods where the Earth’s climate was radically different. Including “Snowball Earth,” which I didn’t know about, and much warmer periods, some of which had a much greater amount and variety of life than we have today. The latter point sometimes makes me wonder why the more extreme environmentalists (the ones who think humanity should leave Gaia altogether) don’t actually want a warmer Earth.
The whole point of modern Gaiaism is not about whether the temperature is warmer or cooler. It’s about their ability to control YOU.
Fallen Angels, anyone?
That’s a really fun book. And, how many books have cameo appearances by Gary Hudson?
Seems a little early to call it:
The graph seems a bit ambiguous to say whether the next Maunder Minimum when the Thames will freeze like the Little Ice Age is imminent.
Human (n.): a bipedal mammal which briefly flourished during an interglacial on the ice planet Earth.
Does the iceball cycle go back to the dinosaurs? If human intelligence was developed over the last 65 million years, why didn’t others that lived 100s of millions of years longer? Or ape to human intelligence in just 6 million?
How low did human population get during ice ages?
I don’t know about population levels during ice ages, but there is a controversial theory that the Toba supervolcano eruption about 70,000 years ago drastically reduced the human population, and there is some genetic evidence to support this.
According to the genetic bottleneck theory, between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, human populations sharply decreased to 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals.[32][33] It is supported by genetic evidence suggesting that today’s humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.[34]
It may well be that the frozen Thames was more to do with obstruction of the river than it being particularly cold. An earlier version of London Bridge significantly slowed down flow in the Thames, thus making freezing of the surface more likely.