Thirty four years ago, on this day, August 17, 1989, more silly technofixes got proposed.
A giant and costly space screen to reduce sunlight and the effects of global warming is proposed by a Canterbury University scientist.
**FULL_TEXT Mr Michael Mautner writes in a letter in yesterday’s Washington Post that if atmospheric means of reducing the effects of greenhouse warming fail, “it may be possible to erect a space screen that would reduce the incident sunlight on Earth.”
Anon. 1989. Space shield plan to cut sunlight. New Zealand Herald, 17 August.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was everyone was running around with their pet opinion about the greenhouse effect and “technological solutions”. The prospect of an international climate treaty was rising, and the need therefore for technological fixes was becoming apparent (because Gaia forbid that you do anything about imperialism and consumerism).
What I think we can learn from this is that the dream of controlling the weather and planetary engineering had been around at least since the 1950s as a realistic prospect (see for example all of the effort around weather modification in the 50s and 60s see Jason Fleming’s book for this).
People always reach for the outlandish and eye-catching because it will get them attention.
What happened next
We still do not have space mirrors but the idea of solar radiation management from seeding clouds with sulphur still seems to have a life see for example the journal environmental politics and it’s articles about solar geoengineering.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.