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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   1910 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Agreed on all points, maybe my original answer should have included the remark that both mirrors and sunshades are pretty dumb - but fun to think about.

I'm pretty sure that indiscriminate general shading of the planet would substantially disrupt crop production as well as wild flora.

To be pedantic, the sunshade-at-Lagrange-Point-1 idea would really just dim the sun by 2%. No matter if you use thousands of independent sunshades or one big one, when viewed from Earth it will only occlude a tiny part of the suns disk. Every spot on earth would receive 98% of normal sunlight. This wouldn't "substantially" disrupt crop production, it would just diminish it by around 2% (naively - except in cases where the limiting factor is available water or soil nitrogen/phosphorus or pests/weeds or ...). Making a sunshade that's larger but transmits the red and blue wavelegths relevant for photosynthesis would be smart, but probably even more ludicrously expensive than just having a thin film of aluminum on a polymere membrane which indiscriminately reflects all sun light.

Ultimately, if it matters you could also pretty easily "turn off" a sunshade by flipping it 90° (you probably need this capability anyway, because you have some degree of maneuverability in space using radiation pressure). If you really need a boost to the global growing season a little, you could always just turn it off.

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