Thirty five years ago, on this day, August 23rd, 1989,
WASHINGTON — Gigantic orbiting mirrors may offer a solution – albeit a very costly one — to Earth’s anticipated woes with global warming if pollution control efforts fail, a Swiss scientist said Wednesday.
In a letter published in the British journal Nature, Walter Seifritz said he thinks it is unlikely humans will do much in the near future to reduce pollution that threatens to boost the planet’s temperature.
Carbon dioxide and other gases generated by fuel consumption and burning of tropical forests warm Earth’s atmosphere by trapping solar heat like a greenhouse.
Many scientists predict if current pollution trends continue, Earth’s temperature could rise 4 to 9 degrees over the next 70 years. Such an increase would cause a marked rise in sea levels and dramatic climate changes.
If efforts to cut emission of so-called greenhouse gases fail and serious global warming occurs, Seifritz contends ‘a remote but feasible possiblity’ would be to lower temperatures by artificially blocking the amount of sunlight reaching Earth.
‘To compensate for a temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Kelvin (4.5 degrees Farenheit), the solar radiation must be reduced by about 3.5 percent. The task could be done by satellites bearing large, lightweight mirrors,’ wrote the professor from Switzerland’s Schurrer Institute.
Kolberg, R. 1989. Mammoth mirrors could offset global warming. UPI, 23 August.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone had been banging on about climate change for a year. And now, the techno-fetishists were getting in on the act, with the idea of space mirrors as part of the whole solar radiation management gimmick.
What we learn is that rather than look inside and examine our actual problems, we are far keener on looking outside and listening to people who point to “this thing of darkness we acknowledge is someone else’s” (That’s a riff on Prospero in The Tempest, btw). And technofixes are a really good example of that. Press bro would not be surprised.
What happened next, we still don’t have any space mirrors. We didn’t do anything to reduce the trajectory of emissions. And we are beginning to boil, metaphorically speaking.
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.
Also on this day:
August 23, 1853 – first International Meteorological Conference
August 23, 1856 – Eunice Foote identifies carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas
August 23, 1971 – nuggets of ecological wisdom from Nugget Coombs.