Space Sunshade To Combat Global Warming?

Blog posted by Mark Paquette

I'm always surfing the web, trying to find an interesting article to blog once a week about. Well, this week I found a doozy, right out of a science fiction novel! In this article posted on the website thefutureofthings.com, researchers at the University of Arizona are developing a space sunshade system that could reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by 2%, enough they say to balance the heating effects of the increasing amount of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere.

I won't get into details of the article, since you can read it for yourself. However, some questions that I immediately came up with and hopefully you the readers can read and comment on:

-Is this program or any idea like this worth the cost? We can't even agree whether or not global warming is/will occurr(ing), and we still debate if the earth is warming or cooling. I think alot more research needs to be done on the climate system before seriously pondering something like this.

-Don't get me wrong, I think looking into and researching programs, ideas and experiments like this is great, and it may be one day necessary to implement something like this, so why not be prepared? But are their more immediate concerns that these talented researchers can be using their time and money on?

-If something like this would ever come to fruition, what kind of battles would this start, both scientifically and politically? Think about, the US launches this systems and shades, say, Brazil. What kind of changes happen to say Brazil's farmlands, or even their tourism? Basically, who plays "God" and determines where, when and how many of the shades or put into orbit?

Thought you might find this article interesting....

Mark

Thanks to www.thefutureofthings.com for their article and the picture below of what this system may look like...