Asteroid Dust to Fight Climate Change?

[tacoman25]

http://news.yahoo.co...-132248031.html

Now instead of having a dust cloud floating by itself in space, researchers suggest an asteroid could essentially gravitationally anchor a dust cloud in space to block sunlight and cool the Earth.

"I would like to make it clear that I would never suggest geoengineering in place of reducing our carbon emissions," Bewick told LiveScience. Instead, he said, "We can buy time to find a lasting solution to combat Earth’s climate change. The dust cloud is not a permanent cure, but it could offset the effects of climate change for a given time to allow slow-acting measures like carbon capture to take effect."

The idea would be to place an asteroid at Lagrange point L1, a site where the gravitational pull of the sun and the Earth cancel out. This point is about four times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

The researchers suggest outfitting a near-Earth asteroid with a "mass driver," a device consisting of electromagnets that would hurl asteroid-derived matter away from the giant rock. The mass driver could serve both as a rocket to push the asteroid to the L1 point and as an engine to spew out sun-shielding dust. [5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids]

The researchers calculate that the largest near-Earth asteroid, 1036 Ganymed, could maintain a dust cloud large enough to block out 6.58 percent of the solar radiation that would normally reach Earth, more than enough to combat any current global warming trends. Such a cloud would be about 11 million-billion pounds (5 million-billion kilograms) in mass and about 1,600 miles (2,600 kilometers) wide.

[Snow_Miser]

This is a little better than some people saying that we should inject pollution in our atmosphere to help "stop" Climate Change.

[Jonger]

BioChar and this.

http://www.betterplace.com/Our-Story

[donsutherland1]

http://news.yahoo.co...-132248031.html

Three big problems:

1. The biggest issue is that there currently is no technology available to move asteroids, much less shift them over long distances into precise spots (not to mention over an adequate timeframe). The so-called "mass driver" is nothing but an untested concept at this stage.

2. Even if an asteroid were inserted into the so-called Lagrange Point L1 cited in the article, that does not assure that it would maintain an unchanging orbit. Other bodies, particularly the moon would exert a tiny but non-zero gravitational impact and the subtle impact would accumulate over time.

3. There is no assurance that the asteroid's dust cloud would remain static given the reason cited in #2.

In short, the idea is not a credible option for geoengineering over the next few decades, and might not be viable at all.

[Jonger]

This is ridiculous. First of all: climate change is insignificant in mid latitudes. Second of all: sequestration and electrification of society is far easier and cheaper.

Jon