this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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This does happen and it’s an effective way to decrease the temperature:
Might be difficult to implement at scale though.
That's literally a photo of it happening at the only scale that matters. The solution is that once the moon is there, we just need to stop it from moving away.
Problem solved forever.
But more importantly, what color should the curtains be?
Should they match the drapes?
You mean the carpet?
I just realized the saying is “Do the carpets match the drapes” but in my head I was thinking “Do the curtains match the drapes”. Even though curtains and drapes are similar. Brain fart.
A orbiting, remotely positional, moon-sized sun shade? That's crazy enough to work I think you've solved the heatwave here
Couldn’t we do this in a more localized way for large cities? Like a big ol’ shade satellite for areas being dangerously affected by heat waves? I know it’s just a bandaid but we will need these kinds of extreme weather mitigation techniques to keep us alive so we can solve climate change or die trying.
Ps I’m not a scientist, so this is a sci-fi idea only - as in idk the maths of what this would take.
The structure you describe is called a Soleta. If you are interested, space nerds have explored the possibilities in some detail.
Simpsons did it!
It's not really hard to implement at all but would just trade pest for cholera. We could just burn a lot of coal again, the dustier and dirtier the better. But that's pretty bad for air quality but it would seriously cool the planet.
Wouldn't filling the air with dark and absorbing gasses warm the planet?
Aerosols aren't gases in the classial sense and reflect sunlight. This works especially well high up in the atmosphere.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/climate-science/aerosols-small-particles-with-big-climate-effects/
There are studies that collect data around volcano eruptions and coal power plants getting online and offline. Long story short: Climate is complicated; I'm not a climate scientist and not to be trusted; it would work great at cooling the planet; we definitely shouldn't do it (yet?) because it masks the temperature problem and could lead to us not reducing CO2 because we "wouldn't have to", but it could be a tool if we might be on the edge of a catastrophic runaway effect that causes too much water to evaporate into the atmosphere.
Update: Btw, you are right about dark particles low in the atmosphere, those typically warm the planet. It's mainly sulfur dioxide aerosols byproduct that cool the planet (also mentioned in the NASA article)