Aw, ChristianKI, you got all the points I was going for, even the solar shades idea! I guess I’ll try to add some detail instead.
To Ic (the post author): Solar shades are basically just a huge tinfoil sheet that you stretch out once you reach space. The edges require some stability so gravity doesn’t warp the tinfoil in on itself, and it has to be in a high orbit so there’s no interference, but you basically just send up a huge roll of tinfoil and extend it to manually block sunlight. If things get really bad, we can manually cool down the planet with this type of space infrastructure.
You might also want to give her the book ‘Termination Shock’, which I’ve heard is a good discussion of a potential solution to climate change.
Climate change is more than just energy; pollution is a huge issue too. However, there are a number of companies using autonomous boats to clean up plastic in the ocean. I’m way more optimistic than most on the general issue of climate change since I think that it’s survivable by our species even in the worst case and not too difficult with stuff like advanced (not even general) AI.
My last mention is about the potential for enzymes that eat plastic. These apparently already exist, and could significantly reduce the waste we deal with.
Pollution is an issue but it’s not climate change. Stretching the phrase climate change to mean everything is not good to clearly talk about the issues involved in trading of different environmental issues.
Aw, ChristianKI, you got all the points I was going for, even the solar shades idea! I guess I’ll try to add some detail instead.
To Ic (the post author): Solar shades are basically just a huge tinfoil sheet that you stretch out once you reach space. The edges require some stability so gravity doesn’t warp the tinfoil in on itself, and it has to be in a high orbit so there’s no interference, but you basically just send up a huge roll of tinfoil and extend it to manually block sunlight. If things get really bad, we can manually cool down the planet with this type of space infrastructure.
You might also want to give her the book ‘Termination Shock’, which I’ve heard is a good discussion of a potential solution to climate change.
Climate change is more than just energy; pollution is a huge issue too. However, there are a number of companies using autonomous boats to clean up plastic in the ocean. I’m way more optimistic than most on the general issue of climate change since I think that it’s survivable by our species even in the worst case and not too difficult with stuff like advanced (not even general) AI.
My last mention is about the potential for enzymes that eat plastic. These apparently already exist, and could significantly reduce the waste we deal with.
Pollution is an issue but it’s not climate change. Stretching the phrase climate change to mean everything is not good to clearly talk about the issues involved in trading of different environmental issues.