Category: Climate Change

Could we shade the Earth or at least some cities now that Starship is working?

by philg

Elon Musk wants to go to Mars on Starship. What can the technology do for those of us who aren’t interested in living on Mars? How about improving our beloved Earth, or at least the biggest and richest cities, via space-based sunshades? If we wanted to help everyone on the planet we could put a 35kTon shield at the L1 Lagrange point (#Science).

But if we’ve learned nothing else from the Climate Change (TM) experts we’ve learned that the climate righteous don’t care about everyone on the planet. Greta Thunberg, for example, cares only about the noble Palestinians (today she sails to Gaza from Spain). Climate change alarmists in New York City were in favor of open borders when migrants invaded Texas and against open borders (“a crisis”) when migrants began showing up in NYC by the busload to claim their right to taxpayer-funded housing.

What about space-based sunshades funded by the richest and most densely packed cities that are aimed at cooling off only folks in those cities and only for the hottest months of the year? Grok says that New York City could be shaded for less than $5 billion. If we assume that 1 million NYC residents (out of 8.5 million) pay non-negligible taxes, that’s $5,000 per taxpaying New Yorker, essentially nothing. It’s also nothing compared to the NYC government’s $115 annual budget. Maybe Grok is wrong about the likely cost? Or Grok is budgeting for 20 years of improvements in technology?

Unlike air conditioning, a solar shade for the elite has the advantage that it will also cool off non-elite regions of the Earth, at least to a small extent. The constellation of sun shades for NYC could move to provide relief to equatorial cities in the spring and fall and then be repositioned to provide shade to Southern Hemisphere cities during their summer. Maybe a city could still hit 95 degrees due to being near a warm air mass, but there wouldn’t simultaneously be a blazing hot sun. Grok says we can get a 3.5-7-degree F local temperature reduction.

Where else could this work? I.e., what other cities tend to be too hot for some parts of the year, are densely populated, and are rich? Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv (cue the Jewish Space Lasers!), Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Miami, Doha, Tokyo?

Here’s Grok’s answer after I asked about shading all of Florida and then just NYC:

Technical FeasibilityBuilding a space-based sunshade for New York City (NYC, approximately 800 km² land area) that deploys seasonally from June 1 to September 15 is theoretically possible but would require significant advancements in solar sail technology and orbital mechanics. Unlike global sunshades at the Sun-Earth L1 point (1.5 million km away), a city-specific system would use a constellation of smaller, lightweight reflective sails or mirrors in Earth orbit to provide targeted shading. This draws from early concepts like Hermann Oberth’s 1920s-1970s proposals for orbiting mirrors (100-300 km diameter) to weaken solar radiation over specific regions.

Modern adaptations could leverage “statite” configurations—solar sails that balance solar radiation pressure against gravity to “hover” over fixed points, such as high latitudes.

Design and Deployment: A constellation of 10-50 sails (each 10-50 km², depending on orbital altitude) could achieve 20-50% insolation reduction over NYC during summer daylight hours. Sails would use ultra-thin materials (e.g., polymeric films with SiO₂ nanotubes, areal density ~1-4 g/m²) for reflectivity. For seasonal use, sails could be oriented edge-on to the Sun (non-reflective) outside summer, or maneuvered into storage orbits using onboard ion thrusters or solar pressure. Deployment might involve launching folded sails from Earth, unfolding in orbit, and positioning via solar sailing—reaching operational orbits in weeks to months.

Orbital Configurations: To maintain persistent shading over NYC (40.7°N), sails could use inclined geosynchronous orbits (24-hour period) or Molniya-like elliptical orbits to linger overhead during daylight. Statite modes could allow quasi-stationary hovering by tilting sails to counteract gravity, enabling seasonal activation without full repositioning.

Studies on L1 sunshades show orbiting disks can mitigate seasonal temperature variations by ~0.5-1°C globally, suggesting adaptability for targeted summer cooling (e.g., reducing NYC heat by 2-4°C).

Size and Materials: Total sail area might be 500-2,000 km² for effective shading, far smaller than global proposals (3-4 million km²). Advanced sails (reflectance >90%) could minimize mass to 1,000-5,000 tons, deployable via reusable rockets like Starship.

Challenges and LimitationsEngineering and Launch: Solar sail tech is nascent (e.g., NASA’s Solar Cruiser prototype); scaling for precision control over a city requires breakthroughs in attitude control and collision avoidance. Launching via 50-100 missions (at $50-100/kg) could take 5-10 years, with risks of orbital debris exacerbating Kessler syndrome.
Cost: Estimated $500 million to $5 billion, based on scaled-down global figures ($5-10 trillion for planetary-scale).

This includes R&D ($100-500 million), launches, and maintenance. Seasonal operations add complexity, potentially increasing costs by 20-30% for repositioning fuel/thrusters.
Environmental and Ethical Issues: Targeted shading could alter local weather (e.g., reduced rainfall or photosynthesis impacts), affect solar energy production, or cause uneven cooling in adjacent areas. Global governance is needed, as unilateral deployment raises international concerns. Sudden failure (e.g., solar storm damage) could lead to rapid warming.

Current Status: No prototypes exist for regional shading; efforts focus on global concepts via groups like the Planetary Sunshade Foundation.

Implementation might be viable in 20-30 years with investments in reusable launchers and in-space manufacturing.

In summary, while conceptually sound and more feasible than Florida-scale due to NYC’s smaller size, this remains speculative geoengineering. Ground-based alternatives (e.g., cool roofs, urban trees) offer quicker, cheaper relief.

Sustained R&D could make it a complementary tool for urban heat mitigation.

Related:

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Americans who will reverse climate change can’t maintain a video display

by philg

The giant brains of New York University ($100,000/year to attend?) are going to reverse climate change. In “Follow the Carbon: Communicating the Path to Net Zero,” they will be assisted by experts from the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia, from the folks at PBS who never received any federal taxpayer funds, and from politically neutral NBC. Following this meeting of experts people can sit through the Global Climate Change Film Festival. Here’s the video display these intellectually superior humans put together. Note the failure to raise the window shade sufficiently to uncover some of the segments and the Blue Screen of Death in the lower left corner:

Based on their demonstrating success at mastering the technology of video display, who is ready to give these technocrats the $50 trillion in funds that they seek for helping our beloved planet?

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Should Donald Trump get an award for Earth Day?

by philg

Happy Earth Day to those who celebrate…

I’m wondering if Donald Trump should get the top award this year for environmentalism. Nothing accelerates climate change faster than moving a person from a low-carbon-output society (e.g., Haiti, 0.3 tons per person annually) to a high-carbon-output society (e.g., the U.S., 14 tons per person annually). Thus, by opening the U.S. border, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did more to accelerate climate change than anyone in the modern era. Donald Trump, by contrast, has done more to prevent climate change than anyone (WSJ):

Similarly, although I am not personally a fan of Trump’s recent tariff efforts (even the immensely capable of Germans had trouble fighting on all fronts simultaneously; I think that perhaps Trump would have been more successful fighting one country at a time), it is unarguable that higher tariffs serve as a consumption tax and thus preserve the Earth’s resources, reduce CO2 output, etc. If doomsayers are correct and the U.S. is headed for recession/depression as a consequence of the tariffs, that’s even better for the environment.

So… here’s to Donald Trump, the World’s Greatest Environmentalist!

In other news, Bernie Sanders and AOC were apparently observing Earth Day from FL410 in a Canadian-made Challenger 604 private jet:

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Federal government weighs in on a 15-year-old pupusa dispute (Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia)

by philg

Our energetic government employees have been vilified for inefficiency (most recently by the notorious DOGE), but the example of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia shows that federal workers can be very energetic indeed.

CNN:

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, entered the US illegally sometime around 2011, but an immigration judge in 2019, after reviewing evidence, withheld his removal. That meant he could not be deported to El Salvador but could be deported to another country. A gang in his native country, the immigration judge found, had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”

(“could be deported to another country” is inconsistent with what Democrats on X and Facebook are saying, i.e., that the noble Abrego Garcia had the right to permanent residence in the U.S.)

ChatGPT, regarding the value (in 2025 dollars) at stake in this deadly dispute:

​In El Salvador, pupusas are a beloved and affordable staple. Typically, a standard pupusa costs between $0.25 and $1.00 USD, depending on factors like ingredients, size, and location.

A federal employee, in other words, determined that a gang member who didn’t like a pupusa ten years earlier (maybe the gang prefers panes rellenos?) was lying in wait for Mr. Abrego Garcia to return to El Salvador so that he could be executed. Therefore, Mr. Abrego Garcia could stay safe in the U.S.

(It’s unclear to me why Mr. Abrego Garcia is safer in Maryland than in El Salvador. The murder rates in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. are more than 20X higher than in El Salvador. The border was fully open for four years and any Salvadoran, including cornmeal-hating gang members, could enter the U.S. and stay permanently temporarily (latest extension by the Biden-Harris administration, oddly in conflict with the fact that the State Department rates El Salvador as safer for American travelers than France or my beloved Sweden (see below).

Additionally, Mr. Abrego Garcia would be at risk in Maryland from his wife, with whom he apparently has a history of physical violence (ABC). Suppose that she has availed herself of her 2nd Amendment rights during Mr. Abrego Garcia’s sojourn in El Salvador? He returns to Maryland as a hero to all Democrats and is promptly filled with lead by the wife.

Surely the United States is now home to far more non-imprisoned violent Salvadorans than El Salvador itself (which successfully exported nearly all of its violent criminals to the U.S. and then imprisoned the rest).)

I’m at a loss to understand how Americans imagine that our English-speaking government workers are capable of sorting out what happened in a pupusa exchange 15 years ago.

Separately, here’s a hero of climate change alarmism:

According to Maryland Sen. Van Hollen, we’re in a “climate crisis” exacerbated by a “climate emergency.” What’s the right thing to do in that situation? Tap into a lake of Jet A and fly roundtrip to El Salvador without first making any appointments (nytimes):

It wasn’t possible to meet via Zoom or phone?

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If consumption taxes and carbon taxes are good, why are tariffs bad?

by philg

We’re informed by America’s expert class that Donald Trump’s tariffs, money paid to the government when an item from overseas is purchased for use here, are disastrous.

We’ve been informed for 30 years by America’s expert class that consumption taxes, such as sales taxes, airline ticket taxes, gasoline taxes, etc. are good. In fact, one way to make America better would be to have a European-style 20 percent value-added (consumption) tax, i.e., money paid to the government when an item from overseas is purchased for use domestically (and also when a domestically produced item is purchased). Trump’s 10 percent general tariff plus California’s 10 percent sales tax rate (varies a bit by city/county) comes pretty close to the European average of 22 percent consumption tax (VAT).

Our elites also say that what would really deliver us the paradise on Earth to which we are entitled is a carbon tax. We consume too much, especially of transportation, and the result is epic CO2 emission. A consumption tax, especially for things that have to be transported long distances, would go a long way to healing our beloved Spaceship Earth. A tariff, of course, isn’t a laser-targeted carbon tax, but it is most certainly better than no tax at all for plastic being made in China and then shipped across the wide Pacific Ocean.

Finally, we’ve been told by experts for at least 20 years that we are undertaxed (our structural annual budget deficits certainly lend some credence to this theory!). The government needs more revenue of all kinds so that it can do great things for us.

Trump’s tariffs may simply be a prod to negotiating lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers in other countries to U.S. exports. But even if they were to be applied long-term, based on everything that elites and progressives have previously said, shouldn’t they be a positive for both the U.S. and for the world? Why the hysteria from Democrats when higher tax rates, carbon taxes, and more government revenue are precisely the things that they’ve been asking for?

A neighbor’s house this morning, below. Why wouldn’t a progressive celebrate discouraging the importation of a gas guzzling Porsche 911 like the one in the photo (daily driver parked on the street because the homeowner’s garage is presumably full with the valuable cars). This homeowner could have used a nudge in the direction of a planet-healing domestically produced Chevrolet Bolt instead.

The whole situation is almost as confusing to me as climate change alarmist Senator Mark Kelly’s switch from Tesla to pavement-melting gasoline-powered Chevy Tahoe. Trump has seemingly delivered almost everything that elite progressives have asked for and yet they’re forecasting a doom spiral.

Related:

  • “Trade, Firms, and Wages: Theory and Evidence” (Amiti and Davis 2011), in which economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Queers for Palestine University (a.k.a. “Columbia”), and NBER, found that high tariffs boosted wages for workers “at import-competing firms”
  • “There’s a Method to Trump’s Tariff Madness” (New York Times! Guest essay by a young history professor): “They are the opening gambit in a more ambitious plan to smash the world’s economic and geopolitical order and replace it with something intended to better serve American interests. … it seeks to improve the United States’ global trading position by using tariffs and other strong-arm tactics to force the world to take a radical step: weakening the dollar via currency agreements. … some sort of reset of the economic order probably makes sense for the United States.” and then the more familiar NYT perspective… “But the slash-and-burn approach of the Mar-a-Lago Accord isn’t the answer. For one thing, it is hard to find an economist outside of Mr. Trump’s inner circle who thinks it is a good idea. But even if, despite all the chaos it will unleash, the United States eventually prospers as a result, we will have traded away the core economic and political values that make America truly great. … The most valuable asset of the United States is not the dollar but our trustworthiness — our integrity and our values. If the world envisioned by the Mar-a-Lago Accords comes to pass, it will be a sign that not only our currency but our nation has been devalue” (My rating for this last sentence: Completely FALSE! Our most valuable asset is the entire continent that we stole from the Native Americans! As a thought experiment, imagine if the roughly 350 million Americans lived on the territory of Sudan. How rich would we be?)
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Hurricane season reality vs. prediction

by philg

The Righteous say that we should substantially reduce our standard of living in response to climate models that show the Earth’s climate trajectory for the next 75-200 years. (This will be effective because there is no way that China and India, for example, will continue to output CO2 once they see us cutting back.) Let’s see how climatologists did with a three-month forecast of hurricane activity.

The climate/weather nerds at Colorado State University have a page at https://tropical.colostate.edu/forecasting.html where they issue and update forecasts for the hurricane season and then, remarkably, report on how accurate they were. Here’s an excerpt from the “verification”:

In August, they said that we’d have 120 days during which a Named Storm was in operation. In fact, we had 77 such days. The Net Tropical Cyclone Activity (NTC) was forecast to be 240% and it was instead 189%. NTC is defined as “Average seasonal percentage mean of NS, NSD, H, HD, MH, MHD. Gives overall indication of Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane activity. The 1991-2020 average value of this parameter is 135.” The definitions needed to make sense of NTC, from a forecast:

I’m not sure whether (so to speak) to be impressed by these weather soothsayers. They overpredicted hurricane activity, but they were correct that hurricane activity would be greater than the recent average. Their results don’t seem to be tainted by going back so far that recordkeeping and measurement techniques were radically different. (See “Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century” (Nature) for the dangers of fooling oneself when using older historical data; the authors of the Nature paper concluded that we aren’t having more hurricanes and we aren’t having more intense hurricanes than we did in the 19th century.)

If the Colorado guys, who might never have seen a hurricane, got the big picture right in 2024 maybe we should have faith in the 100-year forecasts and go green by buying… Tesla Cybertrucks! There is no better way to save our beloved planet than with a 7,000 lb. eco-vehicle. I’ve seen a few without wraps here in South Florida lately and the stainless steel looks fine.

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Hurricane Helene Holiday…

by philg

…. for the schoolteachers here in Palm Beach County. The forecast called for some rain, winds of about 20 knots, and for the storm to track off Florida’s west coast (i.e., “the other coast”) and then, in a move sure to delight Democrats, directly over Ron DeSantis’s house in Tallahassee (Greta Thunberg may have moved on to Queers for Palestine, but the Wrath of Climate Change God is still just).

With all of the spinning air there was a tornado watch, but that could be a reason to keep schools open. For many teachers and children, school is a far safer place to be during a tornado than home, especially if the home was built prior to the statewide Florida Building Code of 2002.

Every business was open, except for a few restaurants with primarily outdoor seating. We did not lose power even for one second (thanks to the grid hardening initiative approved by Governor DeSantis in 2019 and opposed by Democrats?).

A few palm trees shed fronds in our neighborhood, but this won’t damage even a parked car. It is nothing like being in the Northeast where an oak tree can destroy a house due to the weight being substantially near the top of the tree. (A friend’s house in the Boston suburbs was recently assaulted by an oak tree (fell down on a calm wind day). The removal of the tree via crane cost over $5,000 and only now is he beginning to contemplate roof, window, and siding repairs.)

The event was an interesting study in media-driven fear. A dozen friends and relatives called to see if we had survived the apocalypse. They knew that we lived on the east coast of Florida and that the hurricane had traveled off the west coast, but the media reports that they’d consumed made it sound as though most of Florida was threatened/trashed.

Related… if Americans vote correctly in November, Naples, Sanibel Island, Sarasota, and Palm Beach will be on track for extra federal taxpayer assistance. After Hurricane Ian trashed wealthy west coast barrier island beachfront property in 2022… “VP Harris slammed for saying Hurricane Ian aid will be ‘based on equity’” (New York Post):

Vice President Harris came in for a torrent of criticism after telling an audience that “communities of color” would be first in line for relief in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Ian.

“We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity,” she said during a discussion with Priyanka Chopra at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum on Friday.

“If we want people to be in an equal place sometimes we need to take into account those disparities and do that work,” she added.

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NASA at Oshkosh (saving our planet with plastic bags)

by philg

From nasa.gov:

The NASA pavilion at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2024:

(These are the plastic bags that are good for the environment?)

What else was going on? NASA arranged to have a Boeing Starliner parked in front:

The NISAR mission was featured. This was supposed to be launched in January 2022 and will supposedly be able to measure displacements of parts of Earth’s surface as small as 3.5 mm. I’m not sure if this includes vertical displacement, e.g., to see whether sea levels are indeed rising to the point that owners of multi-$billion lower Manhattan and Boston real estate portfolios need to be bailed out by taxpayers in the Midwest. The satellite will supposedly be able to watch glaciers and ice sheets moving. I don’t think that it can measure sea level directly because the Science Users’ Handbook says “Provide observations of relative sea level rise from melting land ice and land subsidence.” How many migrants could have been housed for the cost of this mission? “NISAR launch slips to 2025” (July 29, 2024) says “with NASA alone spending more than $1 billion in formulation and development of the mission”. Taxpayers spend about $200,000 per year per migrant family welcomed in New York ($140k/year for food and housing and then let’s assume another $60,000/year for health care and other benefits). So if we hadn’t spent money on NISAR we could have supported 1,000 additional migrant families for five years.

NASA was also featuring the X-66, a collaboration with Boeing on an airliner that could possibly cut fuel burn by 30 percent, mostly via high aspect ratio wings (as you might see on a glider). We’re in a “climate crisis” according to our ablest minds, e.g., Kamala Harris, and “communities of color are often the hardest hit”. When will communities of color see some relief from the X-66? NASA says that if everything goes perfect the X-66 might get into the air as soon as 2028 and then, in the year 2050, we’ll be in a net-zero phase for aviation. The United Nations forecasts that world population will grow to approximately 10 billion by 2050. So we’ll have more people taking more trips, mostly in planes that were built to current designs, and the result will be much less environmental impact.

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Climate Change: the Science is settled and also was “completely overturned” in mid-2024

by philg

We’ve been informed that, when it comes to climate change, “the Science [was] settled” as of no later than 2007 when Professor Dr. Al Gore, Ph.D. talked to fellow Scientists in the U.S. Congress (state-sponsored NPR). Science’s climate models generate accurate predictions of Earth’s future temperatures, storm patterns, hurricane frequency and track, etc. These models depend critically on submodels of ocean behavior. According to Scientists at the World Bank in 2022:

Oceans are the largest heat sink on the planet. They absorb 90% of the excess heat caused by climate change. Oceans are also a very efficient carbon sink, absorbing 23% of human-caused CO2 emissions.

Here’s some July 2024 news from MIT:

“By isolating the impact of this feedback, we see a fundamentally different relationship between ocean circulation and atmospheric carbon levels, with implications for the climate,” says study author Jonathan Lauderdale, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “What we thought is going on in the ocean is completely overturned.”

As it happens, “complete overturning” of what had been settled Science requires a higher level of panic:

Lauderdale says the findings show that “we can’t count on the ocean to store carbon in the deep ocean in response to future changes in circulation. We must be proactive in cutting emissions now, rather than relying on these natural processes to buy us time to mitigate climate change.”

“My work shows that we need to look more carefully at how ocean biology can affect the climate,” Lauderdale points out. “Some climate models predict a 30 percent slowdown in the ocean circulation due to melting ice sheets, particularly around Antarctica. This huge slowdown in overturning circulation could actually be a big problem: In addition to a host of other climate issues, not only would the ocean take up less anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere, but that could be amplified by a net outgassing of deep ocean carbon, leading to an unanticipated increase in atmospheric CO2 and unexpected further climate warming.”

Expected the unexpected, in other words, even when Science is settled. (Separately, with the Science having been settled prior to this “complete overturning”, why does the overturner refer to “some climate models” making a prediction and not others? With settled Science, shouldn’t all climate models agree on the major points, just as all models of orbital mechanics agree on when Halley’s Comet will return to our charred planet?)

From Nature Magazine:

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We’re suffering a “climate crisis”, but it isn’t so critical that we’d want to discourage driving and spewing CO2 while stuck in traffic

by philg

Today was the day that New York City was supposed to be decongested (with about $700 million in tax dollars spent in prep, according to the Wall Street Journal).

From New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s web site:

As Governor, Kathy is committed to ensuring that New York leads the transition to a clean energy future and advances climate justice. Since taking office, she has led efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions … She has also invested millions in climate justice fellowships for historically disadvantaged communities. Governor Hochul is working tirelessly to ensure that New York is a global leader in the fight against climate change, and she will continue enacting policies to protect our communities and the next generation of New Yorkers from the growing threats of the climate crisis.

From her official governor’s site:

“We have a moral obligation to leave this extraordinary planet better than we found it,” Governor Hochul said. … These issues, if not addressed collectively with great urgency, pose existential threats to humans and other living beings, as well as the ecosystems they depend upon.

CNN, June 5… “NY Gov Hochul delays controversial NYC congestion pricing plan ‘indefinitely’”:

New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday she is indefinitely delaying the implementation of congestion pricing in New York City’s borough of Manhattan just weeks before the plan was set to take effect, … New York’s congestion pricing would have been the first of its kind in the United States. Similar programs have been implemented in London and Stockholm. The New York City version has been years in the making and was scheduled to begin June 30th. As part of the plan, drivers would have paid $15 to enter Manhattan south of 60th street, with commercial vehicles and trucks paying steeper tolls.

So humanity is doomed if we don’t stop spewing out CO2 while sitting in massive traffic jams and also we shouldn’t do anything to discourage people from spewing out CO2 while sitting in massive traffic jams. We’re in a “climate crisis” that isn’t one of those critical crises in which we might want to take action.

Related:

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