496,805 square kilometers of solar panels would power the Earth

[T'Girl]

Would have cost trillions. Great example of stupid science.

--- As expensive as oil sometimes seems, it still one of the cheapest ways of generating elecrtical power. Cost per kilowatt/hour generated by oil will continue to increase, cost from alternative will decrease, at some point in the future these costs will meet and pass each other. Only then will we switch over in a large way to alternete energy.

I was very serious about one of my suggestions. I love the idea of drilling into the volcanic caldera at Yellowstone park, pumping in water from yellowstone river, and hooking up steam generators. Tie the whole thing into the power grid. They've been doing this for years in Hawaii on the big island, on a medium scale. Yes yes yes, it's a natural park.

T'Girl

 

[Australis]

I think this is a good idea, but... there's always concerns about Yellowstone blowing the Big One. There was some doco-drama on Discovery iirc.

Anyway, your scheme could be a good thing, easing the pressure and stopping something that would tear the lid off a huge portion of the park. OTOH, it could make things worse and accelerate it. As long as they investigate thoroughly beforehand, it's all good.

A link for the orbiting window plan. Sounds like sucky science to me:
http://www.androidworld.com/prod60.htm

 

[Miss Chicken]

Iceland, which is very volcanic, gets more than a quarter of it electricity from geothermal power plants. The rest of their electricty is hydroelectrical.

EDITED TO ADD - and the majority of Iceland homes are heated by geothermal heating.

 

[Holdfast]

1 square kilometer of land used this way would be able to receive around a 1.21 gigawatts of solar power...

And when that kilometer hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious shit.

496,805 square kilometers of solar panels would power the Earth

Awesome.

Where are we taking it?

 

[T'Girl]

A link for the orbiting window plan. Sounds like sucky science to me:

http://www.androidworld.com/prod60.htm

Since the shield will orbit the Earth, it will only intercept sunlight when it is on the sunny side of the Earth. Thus the effect of the shield will be to reduce incident radiation from the Sun by about 3%.

--- That would only be if the "shield " was in earth orbit. If the shield were placed in the first Lagrangian position it would never move in our sky. We would not have a large shield interfering with orbiting satelites, because it's always in position it could be much smaller and still do the same job, because of the distance you'd never see it with the naked eye. This shield could be flimsy, not heavy built.

Stopping only one percent or less of the solar radiation to start might be better.

These are the five 'Lagrangian' positions, the first position is shown between the earth and moon. This diagram show the earth and moon, but it works the same for the sun and earth.

Iceland, which is very volcanic, gets more than a quarter of it electricity from geothermal power plants. The rest of their electricty is hydroelectrical.

--- The geothermal generators are very very noisy.


T'Girl

 

[Australis]

For $10 bil (though it would end up costing a lot more), an ortbital shield isn't so good - if something goes wrong, it's not exactly in reach to fix. Better to spend that money fixing up things we can micromanage here.

 

[T'Girl]

For $10 bil (though it would end up costing a lot more), an ortbital shield isn't so good

how much are we going to spend on various global warming brain farts? This most probably wouldn't work because we really don't understand the problem.