Value chain · CLM-0937
In plain terms
A 2024 law review article quotes a 2011 assessment's figure for how much solar power satellites would warm the Earth. The assessment said "less than 0.006 degrees C". The article says the systems "would likely cause a 0.006 degrees C rise". Dropping "less than" turns a ceiling into a prediction, and it is not flagged as a change. Everything else about the citation is correct, and by luck the changed version is nearer the true figure than the original was.
The claim as recorded
A 2024 law review article converts a published ceiling into a point estimate without marking the change. SRC-029 p.100 writes that 15,000 GW of SPS "would result in less than 0.006 [degree sign]C increase to Earth's temperature". SRC-014 p.13 cites that source and renders it: "thousands of SBSP systems delivering approximately 15,000 GW would likely cause a 0.006 [degree sign]C rise in Earth's temperature". "Less than X" has become "would likely cause X". The citation is otherwise accurate - the right source, the right power figure, and the preceding clause preserves the source's own "preliminary" framing - and the substituted quantity is arithmetically closer to the reproduced figure than the original wording was (CLM-0936, CALC-108). The defect is not in the number but in the modality: a bound and an estimate are different objects, and the reader of the citing document cannot tell which they have been given.
Evidence behind this: T4 by the weakest-source convention, taken from SRC-029, although the convention is a poor fit here and the record says so rather than quietly setting something better. SRC-014 is T2. This record asserts nothing about the world - only that one held document renders another held document's sentence in a particular way - so both spans being verified first-hand is the whole of its evidence, and neither source's authority about SBSP limits it.
Scope and limits
THIS IS A SMALL DEFECT IN AN OTHERWISE SOUND CITATION AND MUST BE RECORDED AS ONE. The article names the right source, quotes the right power figure, keeps the "preliminary" framing and directs its reader onward accurately. NO CLAIM IS MADE THAT ANYONE UNDERSTOOD THE BOUND AND CHOSE TO HARDEN IT - the register has no evidence of intent and none is needed for the record. THE SUBSTITUTION HAPPENS TO IMPROVE THE FIGURE, since 0.006 as a point estimate is nearer the reproduced 0.0062 than "less than 0.006" is, and this record must not be read as saying the article's number is wrong. It is not. A CEILING ARRIVING AS AN ESTIMATE IS THE DEFECT EVEN WHEN THE ESTIMATE IS BETTER, because the next reader inherits a quantity whose status has been silently changed. One hop is also not a trend: this is a single instance in a single article, and nothing here measures how often the class occurs.
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
Both spans read from the files rather than from an inline string, and both verified on registration. SRC-014 PDF p.13: "thousands of SBSP systems delivering approximately 15,000 GW would likely cause a 0.006[degree sign]C rise in Earth's temperature". SRC-029 PDF p.100: "would result in less than 0.006 [degree sign]C increase to Earth's temperature". BOTH DOCUMENTS PRINT THE DEGREE SYMBOL AND THIS FILE IS ASCII, SO THE CHARACTER IS REPLACED BY ITS NAME AND NOTHING ELSE IS ALTERED, the same treatment applied at CLM-0936. THE ATTRIBUTION IS CORRECT AND THE CHAIN IS SOUND, ESTABLISHED WITHOUT NAMING ANYONE: SRC-014's bibliography at PDF p.24 carries an entry for the 2011 IAA assessment whose stated URL ends in sg311_finalreport_solarpower.pdf, which is the filename of the document this register holds as SRC-029 - so the resolution is made on the file itself rather than on an author line, and DN-19 is satisfied without weakening the check. SRC-014's preceding clause, "Such preliminary reports suggest, for instance, that", carries the source's own hedge about the study's maturity. The hedge that is lost is the one attached to the quantity, not the one attached to the study. Related records
- Answers question
- QST-008 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0937
CLM-0937, Energy Aperture, as of 2024.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-014
- CLM-0942Three documents held here give three different sizes for the same satellite's transmitting antenna. The patent says 1 to 1.5 km across and...CLM-0944A 2024 legal article about the law of space solar power talks about radio spectrum exactly once, in half a sentence, and gives no source...CLM-0945The article asks whether the orbital slot a solar power satellite sits in counts as a "space resource" under the Outer Space Treaty. If it...
- Also from SRC-029
- CLM-0928In 2011 an international study group said the last whole-system analysis of space solar power was done in 1997. The American National...CLM-0929A search of the 2011 international assessment finds no power-density limit set by the ionosphere, and it mentions the ionosphere only twice...CLM-0936The IAA's 2011 assessment says that enough solar power satellites to supply the whole world would warm the Earth by less than 0.006 degrees...