Imagine a solution to global warming, a simple yet effective solution that can be implemented very soon using current technology to create monitor and maintain a devise that will be able to regulate global temperatures on a short, medium and even long term basis, depending on what is needed. Imagine no more, the solution is at hand. I, Zax Vagen open my hands and freely extend this as a gift to humanity.
In order for one to understand how the pinpoint barrier works, several simple concepts need first to be understood:
1)The part of the Earth which is effected the most by the Sun, is the equatorial belt at mid-day.
2)The part of the Sun that affects us the most is the closest part of the Sun to the Earth.
3) The closer an object is held to a source of light/heat the bigger the shadow made by the object, but if the object making the shadow is smaller than the source of light/heat then there is an optimum distance between the source and the shadow.
4) Global warming has become a reality with a temperature increase of between just 0.4 – 0.7 Kelvin (not much but too much)
5) When the Sun is eclipsed by the moon the moon makes two different types of shadow, we know them as total eclipse and partial eclipse.
The “Pinpoint Barrier” is simply a large sheet of highly opaque material like mylar, spread over a frame that orbits the Sun between the Sun and the Earth at an optimum distance so as to create a permanent partial eclipse of the Sun. The secret to it’s success is not in it’s size but in it’s position and the length of time that it casts it’s shadow.
A second option to the optimum distance is the L1 Lagrange point,
A Lagrange point is, basically, a parking spot in space. If you put a spacecraft at a Sun-Earth Lagrange point, it remains in a fixed position relative to the Sun and Earth. 18th-century mathematician Josef Lagrange showed that there are five such points.
Earth-Sun Lagrange pointsL1, located 1.5 million km sunward of Earth, is a good place for solar observatories. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), for example, is there now and enjoys a 24/7 view of the sun. The pinpoint barrier can be placed there.
L2 lies in the opposite direction, 1.5 million km above the nightside of Earth. A key advantage of L2 is that the Sun, Earth and Moon are concentrated in one small part of the sky, giving any telescope located there a wide and unobstructed view of deep space. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is stationed at L2 and others will eventually join it.
Nasa has proposed A telescope satellite bus
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/space_telescopes.html
Quote from NASA website;
“L2 is a place in space where we want to place a lot of telescopes,” Stahl continues. So “why don’t we treat it as a mountaintop?” with the telescope’s satellite bus providing all the services of a real mountaintop facility.
Another satellite bus can be constructed at the L1 Lagrange point to accommodate the pinpoint barrier, a solar observatory, a space station or whatever we find need for.
Here are some numbers: In South Africa one square meter of solar power is equal to 1 kilowatt per hour, that is after the Sun’s rays pass through the atmosphere, the ozone layer, moisture, dust, and the magnetosphere. Let’s assume though that in outer space one square meter is bombarded by 2 Kilowatts of sunlight per hour. if we (humans) install The “Pinpoint Barrier” at an initial size of one square kilometer, or one million square meters then the barrier will stop 2 Gigawatt’s per hour of heat from hitting the earth. Thats 48 Gigawatt’s a day, or 17 532 Gigawatt’s a year.
OH remember we only want to drop the temperature by about 0.5 Kelvin. Okay, to answer your question on why i used “Kelvin” absolute zero temperature is zero kelvin, zero degrees Celsius is 273 kelvin also only pegged at the point at which H2O freezes. 30 degrees Celsius (average African temperature) is 303 kelvin. My point you ask is that the ratio in difference between 0.5 degrees Celsius and 30 degrees Celsius is 60:1 and the ratio between 303 kelvin and 0.5 kelvin is 606:1 so in kelvin terms the earth is only 0.001650 recurring, percent too hot, which means we only have to block out from the sun 0.001650 recurring percent of the sun’s rays in order for us to attain our goal of normalization, until such time as we (as humans) can clean up our act.
in Celsius terms 0.5 degrees Celsius too hot is 0.01666667 percent
if we block out 0.01666667 percent of the Sun then hell it’s self will freeze over.
All we need now is for somebody to do it.
How About it NASA?
email me at [email protected]
Zax Vagen
That’s an amazing concept, Zax.
We have piped water to our houses, a device to heat it nicely, a fruit’n’veg store and a butcher across the road, a car in the garage to get us from point A to point B. We work in highly stressed environments and when we got home in the evenings, we are irritated with the kids and the spouse, we don’t feel like playing with the kids or helping them with their homework and we don’t feel like making love to our partners… For crying out loud, we got up at 4 o’clock this morning to make time for gym so we stay in good shape…
It’s all fuptside-down! If we got up at 4 in the morning to milk the cow and fetch water, and spent the day tilling the land, and went for a horseride to the neighbour’s place to swop some butter for some corn, we wouldn’t need those gym contracts or money to go and buy food that has been genetically reduced to little more than a polymer mush and Long-Life Milk and Long-Life Juice that has less nutritional value than a scoop of beach sand. And we would have the entire day to teach our children the wisdom of fetching water and chopping wood.
Ooooh! Don’t forget to take your vitamin supplements and mineral supplements.
JKJAMBSJ
So I know about the long term and short term solutions to solving global warming, and i know that there isn’t much a single individual can do in the face of such a planet changing crisis…blah blah blah,
SO… i have set out on a “one man” quest to prove that most people’s attitudes stink, and that they are simply lazy, (like a friend of mine said years ago, “90% of all the people in the world are stupid, the other half are lazy)…I digress.
Here is what i did: I was getting a bit fat, so i decided to get some exercise, instead of going to an energy INefficient gym, i took a walk… in the felt, with a small shopping bag (exercise routine #1) then i found an indiginous tree (podocarpus falcatus) and worked for an hour filling the bag with seeds. Then i walked home, dug a big wide trench in the back garden (exercise routine #2) tilled in some compost (exercise routine #3) and then planted over 400 sorted healthy tree seeds (they are now growing beautifully) not only am i growing over 400 trees now to save the ozone layer, capture CO2 blah blah blah, but the trees(podocarpus falcatus) is the first cousin to the South African national tree (podocarpus Latifolius) both endangered, and they sell for around $50 dollars each at an age of 4 years, so i am making money, saving the rain forest, saving an endangered species, fixing the ozone layer, reversing global warming, and i lost 2KG in 2 weeks.
I also run a “handyman business” in my town and i have recently added “solar geyser installations” to my portfolio of skills and services, we also do solar pool heaters, home insulation and make money doing that too. and for every ton of timber we use (from forestry plantations) we donate 5 trees to local community parks.
AND we drive smaller cars, walk to the shop when we can, and our lives are better for it.
NO… i do not propose the anti global warming pinpoint barrier as an “alternative” solution to cleaning up our act, i propose it as an “interim” solution until we FINNISH cleaning up our act.
What are you doing?
Zax Vagen
You wrote: “i wonder where they got their idea of the solar shield”
It can’t be an uncommon idea. I just found an article that was “Written” in Jan 2007 before you posted this blog.
http://radio.seti.org/past-shows.php
The articles are listed in descending date, the one on 17 Jan 2007: “Engineers Gone Wild” – in the description they mention a giant sunshade in orbit, though I haven’t listened to the sound clip yet.
JKJAMBSJ
I was reading designs of space settlements last night and came across a story with a solar shield the size of Texas, designed and installed at L1 for the purpose of controlling global warming, in the story it tells of the “solar shield as being part of a massive space habitat with tens of thousands of people living on there. i thought that was innovative and should post it. but i wonder where they got their idea of the solar shield from????
Zax Vagen
Zax vagen’s anti global warming pinpoint barrier will soon be getting it’s own interactive website with animations, diagrams, calculators, photo’s the lot. so watch this space.
Zax Vagen
good question, i am happy to answer it, sure the mylar sheet can tear, move off course or fail for some reason, but the greater problems of global warming come in not from the suns rays but their long term effect, ie: the polar ice caps melting and the oceans warming gradually over years, so it might take a few years too cool them back down to “par” and refreeze the icecaps, but a sudden failure of the pinpoint barrier will not even be noticed, by anyone, only people with the right instruments will be able to pick up a problem if there is one and then they must know what to look for, as i say and rephrase here is that global warming is a problem of “locked in” energy and not suns rays, of course the proper solution is clean energy, but… need i say more.
I understand that what you want to say is that this would be a temporary stopper, not a permanent solution. However, most people like to think that when we put in the amount of effort which is required to put a gigantic sheet of mylar into space at a certain point, that it must and will be the end to all our problems. That is clearly, not the case. Although the the Earth may cool slightly when we put this sheet into space, the rate of CO2 emissions will NOT automatically lower itself because of that.
However, if this sheet suddenly fails: whether it be because of space debris or solar wind or anything, for that matter: all of the sunlight that would normally have reached Earth would suddenly start to reach it again, and this would have catastrophic effects with a CO2 level that could be double or even triple what it is today.
And it must be remembered that nothing is failproof, and there is always a chance that something could go wrong.
it is widely recognized that the earth is shielded from the sun by a special shield called a “magnetosphere” it is also widely recognized and proven that the earth’s magnetic poles can and have changed poles several times, in fact the Mayan calendar starts with one of these events and ends at another, the effect of this on the ecology of the earth is devastating, research has recently discovered that earths magnetic poles are due (some schools of thought believe “overdue”) for another pole swap in during which the magnetosphere is rendered ineffective, Zax Vagen’s anti global warming pinpoint barrier is a partial solution to the problem as it can be erected temporarily to cope with the bulk of harmful rays aimed at the earth’s middle.
PS: some years back i watched a documentary about the failing magnetosphere and the scientist on the program said that he was confident that humanity will find a solution, Zax Vagen’s anti global warming pinpoint barrier could be one of the solutions.
i just wanted to discuss some of the other potential uses for a pinpoint barrier,
the most important one probably being of terraforming,if we find a habitable planet that is just too hot, or too cold, or needs a short term jump start like mars (too cold) or Venus (too hot) then a pinpoint barrier will come in useful to either block solar rays from or reflect solar rays to the the area of need, other uses could be to shield spacecraft, or if the large area of the “shield was covered with solar pannels can generate electricity on the sol side and shade on the other.
just a thought
Zax Vagen
well, i think the point of a pinpoint pin is pointless, but the idea of “seeding ice grouth is a novel idea, and as it is un tested and un reasearched the science might prove it to be vialble, well at least the idea is out there.
Zax Vagen
i also pondered the copper spike theory before i wrote about it and decided that i am not god and shouldn’t “not write about something that is untested, if the idea has merit then get it out there, i think the idea of many is merity and could be explored, maybe a spike would be ineffective, maybe a long wall of copper or aluminum would create an effective “seed” and also a wall will have a shadow at least for half a day where it could get even colder, remember that the main idea behind the spike, is to refreeze the icecaps.
Zax vagen
Zax,
Hahaha! I think it’s a little fanciful having TWO of the things planted neatly AT each of the north and south “poles”, though it would be obviously more efficient if there were plenty of them, and absolutely inconsequential exactly WHERE they are planted. It could be a bit tricky planting and anchoring them in thick slabs of ice the size of a small continent, but the concept has merit.
Furthermore, as the ice covers the Copper Spikes, wouldn’t the actual extremely cold surfaces of the spikes, being covered with ice, defeat themselves? The surfaces of the copper spikes would be covered with ice, and obviously any further condensation thereupon would have to be on the covering layers of ice, which would not be as cold as the Copper Spikes themselves and efficiency could be quite compromised.
JKJAMBSJ
thanks for the comments, they take a while to clear seems like, interesting point you have with the “asphalt road theory” i wonder how much there is and how much heat it absorbs, would be an interesting calculation to do, huh. i know that the bright white icecaps reflect radiation and dark asphalt absorbs radiation and locks it in, last thing we want is a “black planet” black should be banned, we should all paint our house roofs with reflective silvery paint, imagine the impact of that? better than spraying water vapor into the air, who’s idea was that? that’s not sustainable, is it?
Mmmm. Good point. Assuming that the earth is like – self-healing? That the effect that man has had on the atmosphere, causing The Hole In The Ozone Layer and The Melting Of The Icecaps and so on and so forth … has caused a chain reaction: the weather patterns are changing and we are to assume, by what you are saying, that this is Mother Earth’s way of setting things right again.
I wonder whether humans are humble enough to accept such a theory, that their attempts to stem the damage they are causing are actually futile, and that we should leave things be, and it will all eventually sort itself out?
But even if this was so, surely there’s a limit. We have realised that we are destroying our atmosphere, and should change our sorry ways to be more environmentally friendly and aid Mother Earth, so that the weather pattern changes and stuff She comes up with to heal Herself don’t have to be so radical.
HEY! That’s just made me think!
WHAT IF … What if we’ve got the wrong end of the stick? And we should be more worried about why the ice-caps ARE FROZEN, and all that fertile arable land that is going to waste because it is hidden under a layer of ice?
Maybe we should rather be thinking about ways to MAKE the ice-caps melt so that we can farm the land, and work the land and move in with our houses and buildings and be fruitful and multiply and prosper. The temperatures at the equator should COOL DOWN if this happens, but they’re not. They’re warming up. So therefore? Therefore the ice caps are not melting FAST ENOUGH. If we can make them melt fast enough so that they bring the temperatures at the equator down sufficiently, AND mend our environmentally unfriendly ways in time…
Maybe, just maybe, THIS is the real solution.
If it is the real solution, I’m afraid costal settlements would have to succumb to it. Cities make coastlines ugly and dirty anyway. And to the pioneers of New Orleans and the Netherlands and the likes … um… WTF were you thinking anyway? (Here’s your sign)
JKJAMBSJ
i was recently introduced to this “other bizarre” idea, of the copper spike, the theory is sound and has it’s own unique benefits,
1: as the atmosphere gets hotter, more water evaporates and makes the atmosphere thicker and therefore prone to more, evaporation, viscous circle,
2: the ice caps are melting…, bad news,the oceans are getting thicker, and hotter and bigger leaving larger areas for water to evaporate from,
the installation of a “massive” copper spike (or other high heat conductive substance) on the poles, north and south, as a “seed” for airborne moisture to condense on, the right material will be planted and positioned in such a way that it will always be much much colder than ambient temperature and always well below zero, water vapor will constantly freeze onto the spike creating a giant ice mountain and effectively refreezing the poles.
Zax Vagen
3:
During the day, cities become meteorological stove-plates, as the sun beating down on dense road networks forms bubbles of heat around cities.
Once again I remind you that deflecting radiation INSIDE our atmosphere, like painting our roofs silver, only contributes to the greenhouse effect.
Is it better to paint them silver to deflect the heat or to paint them black to absorb it? Black roofs make for hot dwellings!!
Draw those two points together : hot black roads and spraying water vapour into the air: the city of Johannesburg, South Africa appears as a tropical forest from outer space. The reason for this is that Johannesburg IS the largest man-made tropical forest in the world. Johannesburgers love to make gardens and plant trees, and they irrigate a lot. Johannesburg is webbed with hot, black roads and the combination causes quite an atmospheric stir. Johannesburg also boasts the most beautiful sunsets! This is because of air pollution; the smog makes the sunsets all gold and red and spectacularly romantic.
JKJAMBSJ
“Space advertising is the use of advertising in outer space or related to space flight … there have been several proposals to advertise in space, some even planning to launch giant billboards visible from the Earth…”
Take a look at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_advertising
While I am very surprised that the US nation objected to this advertising technique – and I applaud it therein – the merits of littering the sky with objects that would obstruct solar heat are worth considering in this … er … light :-)
However, the article hyperlinked above makes mention of the billboards being ‘as bright as the moon’ and it would seem they would only be intended to orbit on the night side of the earth which would defeat the object.
JKJAMBSJ
we should put some sunscreen on the equator lol
Nice idea. Could work too. But Global Warming is not such a bad thing. It brings with it more of the same changes that the world has seen for millennia. Those changes that have brought us to the state of existence at which we currently are. It happens in cycles, and we just happen to be at a point in the astronomical timeline that sees increased solar activity, and therefore warmer temperatures on Earth.
There is no solid evidence to support carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. There is however, plenty to suggest it is affected by the Sun.
In my opinion we should be cutting our carbon MONoxide emissions more than our carbon DIoxide emissions, but still – it can’t hurt to use energy saving lightbulbs. It saves on energy bills at any rate.
I believe that the optimum location of L1 would be the intersection of lines from one side of the sun to the other side of the earth. If this is what you meant, I did not understand. I am not great with trig so I couldnt figure the exact distance. but I think it would be around 850,000 miles from earth toward the sun.
I think this is a great idea and believe that this will be a reality within the next 100 years because of the expansion of the sun and the heating of the earth.
I see that some do not fully understand this concept. We would be blocking an enormous amount of energy from reaching the earth, simply by deflection.
Thanks