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Pitch

This the least expensive method for managing solar radiation that I could think of.


Description

Summary

 It uses Satellites to deploy and maintain a large surface area of reflective material in a grid pattern.


Category of the action

Geoengineering


What actions do you propose?

The main components of this shield would be satellites and a thin reflective material. What you would do would be to build pairs of satellites. Each one would take a large roll of light-weight, but strong reflective material. This would be attached to each of the satellites. They would pull-apart to deploy the material as a reflective surface. The process would be repeated until enough surface area is created to work as a solar sheild.


Who will take these actions?

Governments will need to either get it started working with the international community and/or contract with private companies to build enough of these components. It could also be done by a group of wealthy inviduals or by organizations. They would still need to get the necessary permits from Government.


Where will these actions be taken?

On Earth and in Space.


What are other key benefits?

New research led by Carnegie's Julia Pongratz examines the potential effects that geoengineering the climate could have on global food production and concludes that sunshade geoengineering would be more likely to improve rather than threaten food security. Their work is published online by Nature Climate Change Jan. 22.


What are the proposal’s costs?

Difficult to caculate because a lot of the infrastruce and organization for the project would need to be built in addition to the project. Probably somewhere in the billions per year range.


Time line

However long it takes.


Related proposals

Other proposal for managing solar radiation involve using Aerosol particles. I think my method is has a lower environmental impact.


References

My blog post:

http://ideasforanewage.com/2013/11/24/how-to-build-a-planetary-solar-shield/

IPCC 5th assessment

http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

NASA New Imagery of Asteroid Missions

http://www.nasa.gov/content/new-imagery-of-asteroid-mission/#.UpH0dOL3PjM

Asteroid Mining

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_space

Geo-engineering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo-engineering