Live at 1 pm Eastern: Space Mirrors to Save Solar Power? | The Climate Realism Show #194

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The Heartland Institute

It sounds like something a Bond villain would think up. A startup wants to put giant mirrors into space to reflect sunlight back toward the Earth at night. Why would someone want to do this? To disturb the sleep of everyone on the “dark side” of the planet? No, but that would happen. To help plants grow faster and feed more people? Nope. It’s to keep giant solar power installations going after the sun goes down. This is a stupid, harmful idea, and we will explain why.

Join The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, and special guest David Legates, Ph.D., who will be speaking at our climate conference next month. We will also cover other crazy climate news of the week, including how climate change is supposedly killing penguins while also making them thrive, how a huge field of solar panels in Indiana lost a fight with a tornado, and how a new independent temperature station in Reno proves that the world isn’t really as warm as alarmists say.

We will be LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook. Participate in the show by leaving your comments and questions in the chat.

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KevinM
March 13, 2026 10:43 am

Oh come on!! No sinking trees in the arctic to sequester carbon AND no space mirrors. This is just uncivil!
(Will listen to podcast later, but the flaws are obvious. Power of sunlight minus power lost in atmosphere minus power lost in solar panel reflection and conversion to electricity minus losses converting DC-to-AC minus distribution to customers equals almost no benefit delivered for one of the most expensive types of project humans can execute.)

March 13, 2026 10:47 am

From the above article:
“This is a stupid, harmful idea, and we will explain why.”

I’ll offer this little bit of math, coupled with some engineering commentary, to support the assertion of “stupid idea”.

At Earth’s surface, the full disk of the Sun subtends an angle of about 0.53 degrees. In terms of equivalent area as a function of altitude for reflective planar mirrors orbiting Earth and assuming insignificant-shadowing of such orbiting mirrors by Earth-eclipses, we have the following circular mirror area equivalents that equal 0.53 degrees subtended angle:
altitude = 1,000 km: total mirror area = 67 km^2
altitude = 5,000 km: total mirror area = 1,700 km^2
altitude = 10,000 km: total mirror area = 6,700 km^2
altitude = 20,000 km: total mirror area = 27,000 km^2
altitude = 35,800 km (geosynchronous): total mirror area = 86,000 km^2

And the above figures are based on the mirror being mostly normal to both Sun and Earth . . . the areas would of course be significntly higher for Sun-mirror-Earth angles greater than about 30 degrees due to cosine dependence.

We currently have NO TECHNOLOGY that can deploy even a 10 km^2 area planar reflective surface into Earth orbit and keep it oriented reflectively Sun-to-Earth as that angular relationship changes continuously.

Cost of producing and launching any such hypothetical mirrors into Earth orbit to the extent of providing even a 0.001% increase in sunlight averaged over 24 hours? . . . don’t ask!

ferdberple
March 13, 2026 11:25 am

How about a frcking giant space mirror to sunzap old man winter.

Musk could orbit millions of these mirrors to heat and/or cool directly.