Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Italian architect Paolo Venturella has proposed a gigantic megastructure to prevent global warming, though building it may present a few practical difficulties.
Our planet is going through the irreversible process of global warming, and even if various strategies have been planned to solve the problem, none of them provided a solution.
This is causing natural disasters all over the planet. The temperature all around the planet is increasing making the ice in the pole melt.
Only a “global strategy” can be adopted.
To cool down the temperature a huge greenhouse is placed in between the sun and us.
This works according the same principle of the “solar tower”. Thanks to the accumulation of heat in the glazed structure, air flows naturally from hot to cold generating rapid and strong flows. These flows bring hot air far from the Earth cooling down the temperature of the whole globe.
The air flows restore better climate conditions and moreover generate renewable energies by wind turbines placed inside the structures.
Read more: http://www.paoloventurella.it/global-cooling-skyscraper/
Its worth visiting Paolo’s website just to see the gargantuan scale of what he is proposing – a vast horizontal building touching the Earth’s equator, whose size appears to dwarf the diameter of the planet.
As I said, there are a few practical difficulties, such as smelting all that construction steel using wind power, finding a way to get a chunk of the Earth’s crust to support trillions of tons of building, handling the centripetal stresses caused by the Earth’s rotation, preventing the building from “seesawing” on its mount, and probably a host of other civic engineering issues.
Paolo’s diagram of what appears to be hot air venting into deep space also raises some obvious concerns about the long term impact of his proposal, even if such a structure could be built.
However, lets hope Paolo qualifies for his Cyclotron Road funding – in my opinion the megastructure proposal makes at least as much sense as some of the other projects being funded by the US government, and Paolo’s idea has a sort of cosmic grandeur.
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El stupido, esso bruciore!
Report from Tornado Alley USA: Well the second severe weather system of the spring is currently passing through Tornado Alley, and just like the first system, this one has proven to be low-energy, with very few tornadoes reported.
This, to me, means the atmosphere doesn’t have the heat in it to build up really big widespread thunderstorms. Remember: the hotter the atmosphere, the more extreme the weather, according to the Alarmists.
Lower tornado numbers have been the norm for the entire 21st century, compared to previous extreme weather decades. That would seem to me to mean the weather is milder now than then. Which means this “hottest year evah! hyperbole is just that.
The focus of the energy over the U.S. seems to be moving north and east, away from Tornado Alley. Which is a perfectly normal thing for it to do. Usually, the only variable is what part of the year this happens. Will it be early, like it seems to be this year, or will it be later in the year before the high pressure builds?
We like it when there are little or no tornadoes. 🙂
“though building it may present a few practical difficulties.”
Perhaps the understatement of the epoch.
better idea – a 93million-mile-long hose. We can put out the fire in the sun and end global warming forever!
A preposterous solution to a non-problem, but maybe good for a grant.
I still can’t get my head around how dumb that is. It’s surely got to be satire aimed at the Warmistas.
This is funnier than some perpetual motion machines, and doomed for the same reason: The developer is totally ignorant of several technical fields, such as thermodynamics, material science, fluid dynamics, gravity, etc. In another era he could have found a job as a writer for Looney Tunes, the only domain where such an idea might work.
LOL. That’s not even up to sci-fi standards.
I think what earth needs is a massive heatsink that’s easily able to swallow up the minor amount of CO2 ‘forcing’.
I suggest 1.35 billion cubic kilometers of water ought to do it. The advantage of a fluid over a giant finned metal structure is that it could transport the heat automatically to the poles where it would be radiated to space during the long polar nights. Furthermore, a large fluid heatsink could also be used for transport of trade and recreation. I don’t know this hasn’t been done already.
We already have such a structure. The Earth has an atmosphere with a troposphere with a natural lapse rate that does not depend on the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. It is already in place.
And millions of years from now, aliens discover an icy planet with signs of a formerly extant civilization, such as a giant heat sink reaching out of the ice into space. It is presumed that some long-past crisis triggered this construct.
Scientists have noted that the construct itself and the buildup of ice may have accentuated the planet’s “wobble” in its orbit and caused irregularities in the orbit of its single large moon, which is expected to collide with the planet’s surface in the next several thousand years.
That megastructure just dropped a window on a Tesla driver in Shanghai. What are the odds of that?
WSJ
Window Plummets from 76th Floor of Shanghai Tower, Injuring Tesla Driver
What a “GREAT” idea, why didn’t I think of it ?
And just think of it, it would cost only a few Trillion [$,$$$,$$$,$$$,$$$.00) U.S. dollars, and before President Obama leaves office, He could just call it another Presidential Executive Order and we won’t even need to have Congress on board (Again), “GENIUS” !
What an idea ?
Better yet, and for only another, say 100 Trillion or more U.S. dollars (When you think of it, this entire Global Warming fiasco is really the fault of the U.S. Congress, Corporations and Tax Payers?), why don’t We Earthlings just put a “Radiation Filter Blanket” around the Sun ???
The Sun is only about 100,000,000 miles in diameter, this is doable !!
We then could filter out the destructive Gamma Rays, High Intensity Xrays and Ultraviolet rays, especially the UVB Rays, I mean, who really needs a tan anyway, not to say Red Apple’s, doesn’t Green Apple’s taste just as good ?
Great Idea part ll !!!
Man, I can’t wait…
SpendOn
The internet discussion of the proposed structure has a silver lining. If Extra-Terrestrial Intelligences (ETIs) intent on destroying the Earth because via our CO2 policies conclude that we are abusing our home planet and lying about that abuse to boot (see the Journal Acta Astronautica (volume 68, 2011, pages 2114-2129, or https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/30/precautionary-principle-memo-ready-for-transmission/) intercept the Earth outbound radiation describing the proposed structure, he/she/it/they will turn their spaceships around and abort their destroy-Earth mission. He/she/it/they will come to the realization that there is no intelligence (malign or otherwise) on Earth to destroy.
This concept is eerily similar to the Underpants Business Plan
Which I meant to say:
Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/151040/the-underpants-business
Why has no one mentioned the obvious wonderful analogy with the Tower of Babel story from the Bible?
Genesis 11:1.9- ” The people of Babel said,” Come,let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the whole earth.”
I could go on ( and I’m irreligious) but I don’t want to give any spoilers as to how the story ends!
Mat, May 9, 2016 at 5:28 pm wrote: “@TA, Good info there. The ET would have been very nice indeed. But the scale I speaking of is closer to “2001 space odyssey”. You would need both zero and earth norm gravity.”
The ET has you covered, Mat. 🙂
If you take about 100 External Tanks (remember, NASA launched over 130) and connect them end-to-end and form them into a giant circle, you will have a 2001 Space Odyssey-type wheel-shaped space station about a mile in diameter.
Spin the “wheel” at one revolution per minute, and that will generate “gravity” on the outer rim of the space station that is equivalent to the gravity on the Earth’s surface.
Also, you could take two External Tanks and put each on the end of a mile-long cable, set them spinning like the wheel-shaped space station, at the same speed, and that generates one Earth “gravity at each end of the cable.
You could simulate the gravity of Mars or the Moon by placing your simulation experiment along the cable, closer to the center, to the appropriate spot for the “gravity” you desired.
Generating Earth-equivalent “gravity”, with this technique, would be highly desireable for making long trips to Mars. Or for living in space, in general. Humans have to have some kind of gravity.
For MarkW: The Option C ET spacestation design was an accepted, viable design and the hydrogen tank was not a problem.
Option C wasn’t rejected because of a flaw in the design. It was rejected because it was too cheap, and only required a few space shuttle launches.
NASA’s administrator at the time, Dan Goldin, wanted to create a monster space station program, and his way of doing it was to design a program that needed 100 space shuttle launches, required $100 billion and could be carried out over a decade or longer.
You can’t maximize the use of the space shuttle if all it takes you is a couple of launches to put a space station in orbit, or so Goldin’s thinking went (my best guess).
Goldin just didn’t think big enough. He could have created a similar big program but instead of limiting his scope to low-Earth orbit, he could have put in place space infrastructure based on the ET, around the Earth, Moon, on the Moon, Mars, and done lots of other things with them. ET’s would make good telescope mounts. How about a 27.5 ft diameter mirror.
Goldin could have had the same budget, used the space shuttle just as much, and had an ongoing long-term program, only in this case he would have developed the whole Earth/Moon/Mars system for about the same price as we paid for one low-Earth orbit space station.
The idea if messing with solar energy input is ludicrous and would actually cause real unimaginable man made climate change..
apparently this fix for imaginary man made climate change is creating real man made climate change.
The whole thing doesn’t stand up to even the most rudimentary logical examination
Typical architect. Toots his ideas trumpets and then leaves the
(important) detail to the engineers.
Anyone else notice there haven’t been a lot of noteworthy Italian architects? More form that content? Da Vinci stands out. Across the road there’s Paulo Solari. But really, are thee more than a handful?
Here’s an idea; if you want to block incident sunlight from reaching earth, consider a lightweight mylar film at a Lagrange point. That’ll cool things down really fast and it could actually be built.
Otherwise I suppose we could spend the next thousand years building something that couldn’t possibly work, but would put the Pyramids to shame.
If we did that or the “greenhouse” this would actually make man made climate change a reality, how ironic
The answer to the non existent question is a geo stationery positioning of reflective iron filings to shield the Earth from the Sun, these could be hoovered up magnetically after a day and an illustration of exactly how cold we would be with zero sunlight.
I have offered this solution several times and in several places but have yet to receive any offers or grants to fund my project. I was sort of hoping Virgin might consider it as he is a bit of a greenie , Virgin Shield has a certain , je ne sais quoi ,no?