The Ultimate Solution

 The  Ultimate  Solution                                                                     9

 It is easy to study, analyze, compute and complain about global warming but let’s do something about it.

 Can Global Warming be reversed ?    Yes !

 The cause of global warming is “Thermal Pollution”:   Earthly activities, require the burning of various fuels equivalent to 230,000,000 barrels of oil per day which causes over 15.4 teraWatts of heat energy to be released into the earth and atmosphere.  A simple heat balance shows that this amount of heat causes an increase in global temperature of  1 C° (1.6 F°) per 100 years which is close to the average of various estimates of the amount of global warming.

The Global Heat Balance

The earth receives  1,367 W/m2 of solar radiation – that is the well established “Extraterrestrial Solar Constant”.   The earth has a projected area of  128 million square kilometers (49 million sq.mls.) so the total amount of solar energy received by the earth is 174 quadrillionWatts. (58.9 quintillion Btu/hr).

Let’s look at the numbers:

		Metric Units				U.S.  Units
	Extraterrestrial Solar Flux	1,367			W/m2	429		Btu/ft2h
	Diameter of earth	12,742			km	7,918		ml
	Projected area	127,516,118			km2	49,240,321		ml2
	Heat Absorbed	1.74E+17			W	5.89E+17		Btu/hr
	Heat from Fossil Fuels	1.54E+13			W	5.26E+13		Btu/hr
		15.40			terawatts
	Percentage of Absorbed Heat	0.0088%				0.0089%

The 15 teraWatts of excess energy causing global warming is only 0.01 percent of the incoming solar flux. Eliminating that very small imbalance would reverse global warming.

 

Lagrangian Points.

The force of gravity pulls all objects back to earth but, as a spaceship recedes from the earth, the force of terrestrial gravity decreases    If our spaceship travels directly towards the sun the solar gravitational force increases and the earthly force decreases till they become exactly equal and opposite at a point about 1.5 million km (930,000 ml.)from the earth.   That is a “Lagrangian point” and an object placed in a Lagrangian point will remain balanced there orbiting the sun at the same rate as the earth.   That object will cast a permanent shadow on the earth; reduce the amount of solar energy absorbed, and counteract global warming.

If we place a large enough sun-shade at the Lagrangian point it will remain in place,  till it drifts away under various interferences such as solar wind.  It will however, reduce solar energy absorbed by the earth, and solve the global warming problem.

This is not a new concept.   Prof Angel of U. of Arizona, James Early of Lawrence Livermore, and researchers Rebecca Shafer of Reed, David Miller of MIT, Nick Woolf of U. of Ariz. and S. Pete Worden of NASA have made similar proposals but each depends on solid objects reflecting solar rays or casting a physical shadow.

The shade would have to be 0.01 percent of the earth’s area – 5,000 sq,miles.  This is a formidable undertaking.   One researcher estimates that to construct such a shade  over 100 rocket shots per day for 20 years would be required.

But all of those concepts depend on particles large enough,– over 1,000,000,000 molecules each, to cast a significant physical shadow.  This writer investigated using carbon black (soot) the lightest, most opaque, readily available material and found that the mass of the sun shield would be over 1 billion kg.   Still impracticable.

But we can use molecules such as carbon dioxide, water, acetone, and other organics that individually absorb infra-red radiation.  One molecule could be as effective as a dime sized mirror 1/10,000 cm thick that contains 6 x10¹⁸ atoms.   A cloud of those molecules would absorb millions of times more radiation than a physical sunshade.  The same technique is used every day, as infrared absorption by laboratories analyzing for trace components in gases.

That approach may be practical –  three scientific observatories are already positioned at the L1 Lagrange point  showing that a small mass can be placed in that orbit. Of course there would be many difficulties to overcome including the geopolitics of a global venture and the maintenance of a stable molecular cloud.

My friends call this the MacGrangian solution:

 

 

© 2011 G. W. G. McDonald.