Ask Ethan: Could We Just Build A ‘Space Sunshade’ To Counteract Global Warming?
The Earth is warming, and humans aren’t doing nearly enough to combat it. Could partially blocking the sunlight be the solution?
It’s 2020, and not only is the Earth warmer than it has been in over 100,000 years, but the concentration of greenhouse gases that drives this warming continues to increase unabated. If we want to cool the Earth down, perhaps it’s time to look beyond simply advocating for clean, green energy and an end to reliance on fossil fuels. Perhaps, instead, we should be thinking about geoengineering solutions, like going to space and intercepting some of the Sun’s light before it ever reaches us. That’s Dan Goerke’s idea, as he asks:
[A]s a fan of terraforming options in the solar system, especially Mars, I thought that I would leverage my knowledge to assuage the fears of innocents. In this case, I thought to myself “If global warming is such a critical issue, why don’t we do something ‘cheap’ and ‘simple’ like building a solar shade at a Lagrange point?”
It’s a clever idea with a lot of potential. Let’s take a closer look.
