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posted by janrinok on Friday February 27 2015, @05:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-it-was-there-only-a-few-minutes-ago dept.

Anna North writes in the NYT that a report released last week by the National Research Council calls for research into reversing climate change through a process called albedo modification: reflecting sunlight away from earth by, for instance, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. But such a process could, some say, change the appearance of the sky — and that in turn could affect everything from our physical health to the way we see ourselves. “You’d get whiter skies. People wouldn’t have blue skies any more.” says Alan Robock. “Astronomers wouldn’t be happy, because you’d have a cloud up there permanently. It’d be hard to see the Milky Way any more.”

According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, losing the night sky would have big consequences. “When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger. There’s clearly a neurophysiological basis for that," says Keltner adding that looking up at a starry sky provides “almost a prototypical awe experience,” an opportunity to feel “that you are small and modest and part of something vast.” If we lose the night sky “we lose something precious and sacred.” “We’re finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people,” says Paul K. Piff. “In many ways it’s kind of an antidote to narcissism.” And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that’s available to almost everybody: “Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky.”

Alan Robock says one possible upside of adding aerosols could be beautiful red and yellow sunsets as “the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud.” Robock recommends more research into albedo modification: “If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision. Dr. Abdalati says that deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort adding that “we’ve gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we’re even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that.”

 
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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @04:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @04:17PM (#150512)

    I forgot that most people browse at +1.

    And this is why this place will not rise out of the cesspool of groupthink. How hypocritical of many here to boast of community and how we have such great conversation and exchange of opinions while at the same time have most people only look at comments the hive promotes. They should at least have the integrity to drop the facade that this is an open place to air points of view, or at least acknowledge that most people either rely on seeing comments from the ones who are already in the clique and/or only see the ones that only a minority group ever sees and deems worth of promotion. This place really should only let people moderate who are viewing at the -1 level for this very reason.

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