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Needs more cowbell.
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Launch a space mirror into GEO and focus sunlight on terrestrial crops at night. This should extent their growing period.
Agriculture needs an efficiency boost. People are wary of genetically modified crops, and nitrogen fertilizers are becoming ultra-expensive. So we need other options to get the
most out of the land we use.
Just extending sunlight a bit might improve growth in a significant manner.
Space Mirror
http://news.bbc.co....sci/tech/272103.stm
Prior art [8th of 7, Jul 13 2008]
Light and length of growing period
http://www.fao.org/...lt/gif/hr/map07.gif
Map [django, Jul 19 2008]
[link]
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I'm not sure your central premise here is sound. The problem with food production has nothing to do with lack of efficiency rather it is lack of consistency and distribution. In the USA farming is so efficient that farmers have worked themselves out of jobs, where as in Africa they can't grow enough food. |
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//In the USA farming is so efficient ... where as in Africa they can't grow enough food.// is the problem in Africa lack of efficiency or just bad climate/soil? |
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By increasing the overall amount of the sun's radiation hitting our planet, wouldn't this speed up global warming? |
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In Africa, men with guns shoot farmers and take the food. The next season, the dead farmers show a distinct lack of efficiency, as do those attempting to farm with guns. |
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The Russians have already started to experiment with this <link> |
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Already thought of, and a contributor to global warming. |
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//In Africa, men with guns shoot farmers and take the food. The next season, the dead farmers show a distinct lack of efficiency, as do those attempting to farm with guns.// |
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At least with this idea they will be able to see better. |
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//In Africa, men with guns shoot farmers and take the food// |
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Well then, clearly the solution is to supply massive amounts of guns and ammunition to the farmers. |
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//supply massive amounts of guns and ammunition to the farmers// |
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Except that today's freedom fighters become tomorrow's terrorists. |
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totally baked! James Bond movie Die Another Day has a giant satellite that warms the earth to grow crops. Except that the guy is really EVIL! and uses it to try to kill James Bond instead. |
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//wouldn't this speed up global warming?// |
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To fix this problem, don't we just need a giant space petri dish to grow crops in? |
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Is making a giant space garden a really
good idea? I mean, actually, a really good
idea? Hold on, where do you get the water
from? |
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//Hold on, where do you get the water from?// Same place Earth got its water from? |
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To all those who have fishboned this idea, beware: you will all be incinerated soon by a concentrated beam of sunlight, while you are sleeping in your beds. And your smoking biomass and bones will be used as cheap fertilizer for the crops. |
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Beware!! All your base are belong to us! |
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Chhhzzzzzz... czehhhhhhhhhzzz [i.e. sound of incinerating fishboning bitter human populace!!] |
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This is not a threat. This is merely a warning. Czeehehzzzzz!! |
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The idea is doable in principle if you use mirrors made of 100 nanometer thin films. |
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But the bottleneck in agriculture isn't really solar energy. The bottleneck is water for irrigation. |
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Also, agriculture does NOT need an efficiency boost. Last time it got one (the green revolution) the world's population simply grew to match output. |
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What the world needs more is effective family planning. |
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Plants need darkness to generate the hormones which make it produce fruit. This happens later in the summer/fall when the days and nightsw are of almost equal length. |
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If these plants get light in the night, they willl not flower/fruit, and you will have vast fields of unedible biomass. |
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Agree with manicdictator. |
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But I like the mirror to help evaporate more ocean water, and in turn convert some more deserts to useful land. |
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Putting sunlight on the crops at night will also put the light everywhere else. And this will freak the birds out. [-] |
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pointing trillions of watts of solar
energy at the ocean should create more
clouds. these clouds would reflect solar
energy back into outer space reducing
global temperatures. we can then burn
as much oil as we want. Using wind
mapping and chinese style cloud
seeding, we could engineer more rain
over saharan countries, dam
construction could reduce our
dependance on fossil fuel power plants.
The mirror could also help block out say
40% of the sun on hot sunday
afternoons in summer. certain large
cities might PAY for this on-demand
partial eclipse to avoid hefty air
conditioning bills. |
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You can't move thousand-tonne structures into a new geostationary orbit for the afternoon, you know... |
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Water isn't that much of an issue. In fact, there's too much of it in the regions we're aiming for (Siberia, Northern Canada, Greenland, etc). |
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We want to lengthen the growing period in areas that don't receive enough sunlight [see map of growing periods]. |
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Greening the deserts would diminish their albedo effect, thus increasing global warming. Very dangerous. |
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