RFC - Active Climate Management using Solar Sail materials

IIRC, the Soviets investigated the use of giant orbital inflated
optics to make Siberia warmer. Although the concept never left the
"paper study" phase, I believe that they were on the right track.

At present, there is much discussion on global warming. There is a
vast political movement to "do something about it", based on some
computer projections that show serious consequences within a century
if some trends proceed as expected. The universal demand is to reduce
anthropogenic CO2 emmissions.

Attempting to regulate the climate by regulating the amount of
man-made greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere is highly
inefficient. Effects of even draconian measures would take decades to
propagate, and could possibly produce undesirable weather in many
heavily populated regions. It is almost entirely predicated on the
idea that "nature knows best".

There is a better way.

Imagine a global weather control network, capable of adjusting
temperatures, winds, and precipitation levels, worldwide. Some people
would claim that such a system is beyond our technical/economic
abilities, but I would propose to demonstrate that such a system could
be put in place for a "reasonable" cost. A weather control service
would have the potential to deliver large economic benefits to most of
the world's economies.

The Earth's albedo is 0.39. This means that 39 percent of the incoming
solar energy is immediately reflected back into space. This gives us
a logical starting point for controlling global temperatures. Merely
by varying the global albedo between 0.35 and 0.45, it should be
possible to compensate for a huge variety of climate-related events

The primary "gadget" in the weather control network would be a large
(~4 km^2 when expanded), simple, unmanned, remote controlled, very
high altitude airship that I call a "stratospheric umbrella". It would
consist of seven semi-rigid balloon segments, supporting a hexagonal
shape 'blanket' of perforated aluminized plastic film. The airship
would transform between two geometries by selective inflation and
movement of ballast along cables. The first shape would be
"retracted", in which the six secondary cores and the vast reflective
perforated blanket are dangling directly below the primary core. In
retracted form, the airship would present a minimal cross-section, and
would appear as a mere dot in the sky. The other, more interesting
shape would be "expanded", in which the six secondary cores would form
a hexagon around the central core, and the perforated aluminized mylar
"blanket" would be clearly visible as a large hex-shaped cloud to
anyone beneath. When expanded during the day, these airships would
reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the ground, causing cooling.
However, when they are expanded at night, they would reduce the amount
of infrared energy escaping into space, resulting in warming. By
modulating the expansion/retraction of hundreds of these airships in a
given area, significant changes in the overall climate can be
achieved. In order to provide climate control over most of the earth's
surface, hundreds of millions of these airships would need to be
flying continuously. Tens of millions would need to be manufactured
and deployed each year while in operation, to replace the ones that
normally wear out.

The second device that would be instrumental in allowing control of
the winds would be what I call a "Venetian Wind Farm Kite". It would
take off like an electric helicopter with a giant extension cord. At
high altitude, it would lower dozens of layers of wings with wind
turbine blades on them, and rotate the blades into the windstream.
When deployed, it would resemble a giant horizontal venetian blind,
about a kilometer across, tethered by kite string. This design has
already been proposed for large scale power generation, but to my
knowledge has not been considered for weather control.

By precisely taking energy out of the windstream, it would be possible
to slightly adjust the speed and direction of the major jetstreams by
a few percent. This part of the network would also have the benefit
of producing commercially useful amounts of electricity. Each watt of
generating capacity is worth a solid fraction of a US dollar per year.

The final component of this proposal for weather control is a device I
call a 'Vaporizer'. It would be an inexpensive cylinder designed to
float on the surface of the ocean, and on remote command can
drastically increase the amount of water vapor released into the
atmosphere. Normally, most of the solar energy that hits the ocean
ends up heating its upper layers. By permitting the sunlight striking
the cylinder to warm only a small quantity of thermally isolated water
at a time, a much higher percentage of the solar energy would end up
providing heat of vaporization.

---

Questions? Comments?