Is global cooling the answer to global warming?

Though increasing effort goes into combating the worldwide effects of pollution, will it be enough? And if not, then what? Roger Angel, University of Arizona Regents Professor and the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory's director, suggests not interposing a great big sci-fi type mirror between us and the sun, but trillions of tiny "flyers", in a glistering silver shield to break up the sun's rays and disperse them (or better still, in some future generation, absorb that power and turn it into something usable by man). Flyers are transparent sheets 60cm in diameter and vastly thinner than a human hair, each weighing about a gram, which would be launched in a cloud encircling the earth, with a diameter of about 100,000 kilometers. If we start now, and launch one every five minutes, by 2017 it would be entirely in place. Or, Angel says, we could just do a better job of cleaning up the place now. [GT]

Technology Review: Cooling the Planet

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