1,500-Ship Fleet Proposed To Fight Climate Change 692
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to UK and US researchers, it should be possible to fight the global warming effects associated with an increase of dioxide levels by using autonomous cloud-seeding ships to spray salt water into the air. This project would require the deployment of a worldwide fleet of 1,500 unmanned ships to cool the Earth even if the level of carbon dioxide doubled. These 300-tonne ships 'would be powered by the wind, but would not use conventional sails. Instead they would be fitted with a number of 20 m-high, 2.5 m-diameter cylinders known as Flettner rotors. The researchers estimate that such ships would cost between £1m and £2m each. This translates to a US$2.65 to 5.3 billion total cost for the ships only."
Genius (Score:5, Informative)
Pure genius. Take a system you don't really understand, but depend on for living, and drastically modify a variable to see what happens.
At least, after that, the farmers affected with drought, or torrential rains, or whatever, will be able to sue somebody.
Re:That's what? (Score:1, Informative)
1) Clouds are not a limited resources. Generating some clouds some places won't mean regular clouds won't appear.
2) No, we're not 100% sure. So?
3) Yes, richer (or powerful) countries may try to get more water (I'm thinking Israel and China here). That doesn't mean poor countries will get less.
4) "Mother nature" is a fucking piece of rock. If you think a piece of rock will take care of anything, you're an idiot.
5) What if it doesn't affect things that much? Nothing. Let's try...
6) Easier to stop fossil fuel? Are you out of your mind? Our whole society and our way of life is based on this. Changing a whole society is certainly not easy. Particularly changing every trucks, cars, ships, planes, as well as a lot of heat generating systems (particularly in industries) and so many other uses for fossil fuel is a daunting task. Why not just kill 5 billion humans so pollution won't be a problem anymore. It certainly would be an easier task.
There are dangers for playing with meteorology and I have my doubts about the project. But all your arguments are dumb.
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas (Score:2, Informative)
Umm... No. Different ship, different tech. (Score:5, Informative)
You are thinking of Alcyone. A turbosail [wikipedia.org] ship.
Flettner's rotor ship [wikipedia.org] was quite similar to that.
Only thing is... neither ship was powered by these "tube sails" alone.
Both Alcyone's and Buckau (renamed later to Baden Baden) used some other engine to POWER THE SAIL.
So, it does not go on windpower alone.
Alcyone was supposedly using about 30% less fuel then conventionally propelled ship of that size... but that is it.
And Flettner's Buckau was reported as having "less efficient than conventional engines".
My guess is that whoever is planing on building this "cloud seeder" fleet is probably thinking of combining rotor sails with solar and gasoline/diesel powered engines.
Which would probably run on gas/diesel most of the time (how much sun are you getting when you are in business of making cloud cover?) - except when the crew is giving interviews to the press.
Re:That's what? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, that ought to be just a cheap, quickie little fix ...
The proposed cost of the Alaska Natural Gas pipeline which is supposed to run between 800 and 1000 miles is around 20-40 billion dollars. That's one weeney little pipe, not a canal.
Going from Southeast Alaska / Western Canada (where all the water is) to anywhere in the midcontinental US (where is water isn't) has to go at least 1500 miles and through such minor obstacles as the Rocky Mountains.
Call me negative, but I don't think it will work.
Re:conventional windmills instead of Flettner roto (Score:3, Informative)
The main problem I see is that they intend to turn the rotor using the incident wind. That'll cause all sorts of localized turbulence, and require rather large "buckets" to catch the wind. One thing wind-power proponents consistently (conveniently?) neglect is that the power available from the wind is a function of wind velocity AND intercepted area. Discovery Channel recently ran an episode of their Planet Earth series with a guy in Virginia trying to float wind-harvesting balloons. Aside from the guy apparently having a really poor grasp of aerodynamics, he was completely dumbfounded that his big airship wouldn't rotate in a 10mph wind. They were ecstatic at generating 20W in a 12mph wind, barely turning. The problem involves the teeny tiny rotor vanes on the balloon. They don't intercept enough wind area to generate substantial power, much less overcome the fundamental drag created by the airship frame.
The Flettner Rotor is a propulsion device. Spin the rotor with a motor, and generate thrust by passing wind over it. If you want to harvest power from the wind, you'd be better off with something that sweeps out a large area. Have a look at a Darrieus Turbine [wikipedia.org] or some of the other Vertical Axis Wind Turbines.
Saharan sand != all of the Caribbean (Score:4, Informative)
Um, Vieques [wikipedia.org] at least (and the big island of Puerto Rico [wikipedia.org] proper) has an awful lot of nice, solid bedrock forming the bulk of the landmass. I don't think sand transported from the Sahara has much of anything to do with Vieques geology.
Cheers,
Re:First things first. (Score:4, Informative)
So much more likely that only fringe scientists believe them?
Carbon Dioxide is the most likely culprit and that is backed up by decades of research and computer simulations.
Eitherway. Your arugment is dumb beyond explanation. If you accept there is global warming at all then you also have to accept that warming is the result of increased energy in our climate system.
The 1500 ship solution does one thing and one thing only. It reduces the input energy from the sun by reflecting it back into outer space.
IF it works as advertised then it would in fact counter every single possible imagineable form of warming by reducing the intensity of the sun.
Which means if it's caused by farts, carbon dioxide, the earth's core warming, an increase in talk show blowhards or even a decrease in pirates the outcome would still be cooling.
Unless you're suggesting that other theories are a lot more likely such "God is willing it."
This sounds so ridiculous... (Score:4, Informative)
...I actually RTFA. And I still think it's ridiculous.
Each of these ships weighs 300 tonnes (which I presume is close enough to a ton for engineering), or 600,000lbs. You're telling me you can build a ship for $5 a pound? I call bullshit. Steel is one of the least expensive materials, and raw steel is running close to $1/lb delivered, with absolutely zero fabrication, zero assembly, zero testing, zero commissioning, and zero operation. There's no way you can build a durable, seagoing ship for $5/lb.
Second...what powers these things? Oh, sure they use rotating sails. Bullshit. That was scrapped long ago. It has all the drawbacks of powered propulsion (you have to spin them with motors) and all the drawbacks of sails (if there is no wind, you have to propulsion). Every first year aero engineering student learns about these things.
No, even if the concept works (which is, imho, questionable), I predict it will cost at least an order of magnitude greater than planned. Why not spend the money to advance solar collection techniques and battery/storage technology to avoid both the CO2 problem with fossil fuels, and the inherent limits to fossil fuel usage?
Re:Ok, go ahead (Score:3, Informative)
Well, considering 1920 to 1970 was a silent period for hurricanes, the increased hurricanes are probably nothing new to mother earth.
Re:A Bad Doctor (Score:1, Informative)
You're having an asteroid belt problem. Even if you were dumb enough not to program the ships to avoid known shipping lanes (Incredibly Unlikely), you are still talking about 390,000,000 square miles / 1500 ships = 0.000003846 ships/square mile. They would be rattling around like a handful of ball bearings in an aircraft carrier.
Re:She will. (Score:5, Informative)
The reality is that all co2 that is stored in oil comes from the athmosphere. Therefore even if we burned all of the oil in all of the earth's crust right now, we'd only recreate the athmospheric situation of the age of the dinosaurs, a time when animals roamed over more regions of the earth than they do today.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen modded to +5. The carbon stored in oil was locked up in plants and animals before it became oil - it wasn't ever all in the atmosphere at the same time. And it didn't suddenly all become oil at the same time either.
It would be perfectly liveable, and probably even more comfortable, for humans.
Since that amount of carbon has never been in the atmosphere at once we have no idea what it would be like. It may be enough to tip the atmosphere into a runaway state that would result in a Venus-like atmosphere. But that's beside the point. The question is not whether increased global temperatures would be liveable or comfortable. The question is whether the economic costs of adapting to the new conditions outweigh the costs of try to reduce or prevent the change.
Re:She will. (Score:5, Informative)
You're wrong about the fish and algae.
Read here, about algae blooms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom
As water heats up, the amount of oxygen it can contain decreases (which is why trout prefer cold/mountain water.) If it gets too warm, then the water may not hold enough oxygen to support life (e.g. fish)
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/predicting-DO.shtml
If a lake gets too warm/shallow during summer, it can kill all of the fish in it.
Note that really large game fish, e.g. tuna, prefer cold, deeper, water than warm water. If you're thinking that "look at all the pretty fish" in warm tropical water means fish do well in warm water, you probably need to rethink your strategy because if the water becomes too warm, they'll die as the reefs do:
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/oct/25/nation/na-coral25
Given that your comments about water are completely wrong (and I'm afraid my comments will never be seen since they're anonymous), I'm very afraid for the accuracy of the rest of your comments.
Re:How Much Fuel for those Ships (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder if each ship would be able to cancel out its own carbon emissions from Burned Fuel, and of course multiply that by 1500 ships.
Wow. Not only could you not be bothered to Read The Fucking article... you couldn't even be bothered to Read The Fucking Summary.
Re:She will. (Score:4, Informative)
Step 1: Turn the ships off.
Step 2: Wait two weeks for all the water vapor to precipitate.
Do I get my $15b now?
Water vapor doesn't stay in the atmosphere for very long at all — maybe a week or two. Other greenhouse gases vary: Ozone lasts a few weeks, methane, about a decade, CO2 and fluorocarbons, close to a century.
But in each case, "cleanup" is just a matter of waiting. The hard part is stopping production, but in the case of these ships it's as easy as flipping a switch.
Re:She will. (Score:0, Informative)
"The carbon stored in oil was locked up in plants and animals before it became oil"
You're both under the faulty assumption that petrol comes from plants and animals. The material is formed from Kerogen. It's an organic compound (organic as in it contains carbon) but it wasn't created from life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerogen
Re:She will. (Score:5, Informative)
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen modded to +5. The carbon stored in oil was locked up in plants and animals before it became oil - it wasn't ever all in the atmosphere at the same time. And it didn't suddenly all become oil at the same time either.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen modded to +4. The carbon stored in oil was all in the atmosphere at the same time before it became locked up in plants and animals.
Think. We're talking about the conditions when the oil we're digging up now was formed. The plants and animals it came from didn't appear overnight. It wasn't all carbon in the atmosphere one day, half of it in the biosphere the next. Life has been locking carbon into the crust since it appeared. I.e. the last time all the available carbon was simultaneously in the atmosphere was the end of the Hadean eon 4 billion years ago.
The suggestion that we can burn all the oil in the crust without regard for the consequences just because that carbon was in the atmosphere 4 billion years ago is moronic in the extreme.
Since that amount of carbon has never been in the atmosphere at once we have no idea what it would be like.
It would be like the conditions when life first started.
The surface temperature then was about 230 degrees C. The atmospheric pressure was high enough to allow liquid water despite the temperature. Does that sound attractive to you?
It may be enough to tip the atmosphere into a runaway state that would result in a Venus-like atmosphere.
Unless you believe in abiotic oil creation, we will not reach Venus scale Atmo.
That's only true if the sun's output is the same now as it was 3 billion years ago. But it's believed that the sun was 1/3 dimmer then. The fact is that we don't know what it might end up like. We do know it wouldn't be good for us.
Re:US$2.65 to 5.3 billion is peanuts (Score:2, Informative)
How's that giving billions to the upper class again? That's giving trillions in debt to all taxpayers, actually.
Let's use some round figures to guesstimate.
1) 1M people get a 1M bailout each. (1MM)
2) 300M people get a 3.3K debt each. (1MM)
Now the first 1M people get 1M-3.3K=~996K each.
That's how the few profit by giving the many debt.
Re:That's what? (Score:5, Informative)
The German paper used the same models but with slightly different assumptions and they arrived at similar conclusions about the long term trend (post - 2015). It's an interseting paper but the Germans themselves would agree it's complete nonsense to say it "means most all of our previous models are wrong".
"I would love it if someone has a link to an article about an accurate computer model of the weather system, but I've never found one."
There is no single accurate model and there never will be. Accuracy is a function of mankinds future actions, the precision of observations and the resolution of the numerical analysis amoung other things. The models themselves are basically Finite Element Analysis [wikipedia.org] models, thus the need for very powerfull number crunchers. They account for forcings and some of the major feedbacks but cannot account for feedbacks we know very little about ( thus the hand-wringing about "tipping points"). It's generally agreed that at best they can only predict large scale climate changes (ie: continental proportions).
The MET office [metoffice.gov.uk] in the UK is a good source of info on models and even has a computer program you can tinker with yourself (I will let you find that yourself). Thier list of climate center sites is also very useful. [metoffice.gov.uk]
The IPCC site [www.ipcc.ch] has become close to useless since it's last redesign and it is difficult to find stuff on it. However the MET office provides an accesible way to read the reports [metoffice.gov.uk]. The IPCC does not conduct science, it reviews it. The RANGE of conclusions in the report are derived from thousands of simulations from various models and are distilled down to worst, best and most likely senarios.
Yes I know the MET is a single source, it just happens to be a good one and will point you in the right direction. If you are looking for a good climate mythbusting site then you might want to try realclimate [realclimate.org].
"[TFA] makes me cringe."
Ditto!
Re:She will. (Score:5, Informative)
Only 2?
Probably, but hard to predict, and different in in some areas than others.
Sure, when Antartica was near the equator, many, many millions of years ago.
And release large quantities of methane, which, pound for pound, has a more powerful greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.
Not at all clear that those will occur. E.g., one of the main ways that nature actually is limiting the carbon dioxide buildup so far is by dissolving carbon dioxide. This changes the PH of the ocean, and affects the marine life. Also, since when does more algae and more fish go hand in hand, and how in the heck does oxygen countermand CO2 production?
The reality is that all of the carbon came from somewhere (comets, asteroids, volcanoes?) before some of it entered the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, and also that all that carbon locked up in fossil "fuels" may have never been in the atmosphere all at once. It is not at all clear that we would only recreate the past by burning all the fossil fuels. In fact, in eras past (not sure about dinosaur times) Oxygen levels were much greater than they are now.
Re:She will. (Score:5, Informative)
How did this comment get modded +5? It didn't once talk about actual timescales or carrying capacity. Do Slashdot moderators really know this little about how the planet will respond to global warming?
Yes, as the CO2 concentrations increase, plant respiration will become more efficient and some locations will see denser plant growth. But at the same time, some of the most efficient places on Earth for plant life will become converted to grasslands or deserts, releasing their stored carbon by plant decay. And the rapid rise in CO2 will also cause acidification in the oceans which will counteract much of the positive gains in biomass due to temperature rises. But in any case, these numbers are really insignificant. There is about 600 Gt of carbon in all of the biomass on the planet. There is about 760 Gt in the atmosphere. There is about 37,000 Gt dissolved in the oceans. There is about 10,000,000 Gt stored in sediments on the ocean floor. And there is about 40,000,000 Gt stored in limestone.
Any description of changes in CO2 needs to take into account all three carbon cycles: the organic carbon cycle, the inorganic carbon cycle, and the geochemical carbon cycle. To the climate scientists who have actually done the calculations with knowledge of all three cycles, there is virtually no support that plants and algae are going to have any significant effect. The consensus is that the method that CO2 will eventually be removed is by slow sedimentation. The efficiency of this will be slightly reduced by increased weathering of carbonates and will be almost completely unaffected by the organic carbon cycle. The timescale for optimists is several thousands of years.
Re:She will. (Score:5, Informative)
Since that amount of carbon has never been in the atmosphere at once we have no idea what it would be like.
There have been many times that amount of C in the atmosphere. About 500 million years ago, Earth went through an ice age with CO2 levels 8 to 20 time higher than they are presently. [palaeos.com]
The largest sink of carbon on the planet is not organic. It is limestone and dolomite. Those two absolutely dwarf the C locked in fossil fuels. All the fossil fuels on Earth [bucknerweb.net] sum up to about 9x10^15 grams. Total mass of C in limestone [eoearth.org] on the other hand is around 3x10^22grams. Soooo, about 3 million times as much C in limestone as in fossil fuels. Most of that was in the atmosphere. Most of that is now in the ground as a result of plankton and ocean sedimentation.
It may be enough to tip the atmosphere into a runaway state that would result in a Venus-like atmosphere. But that's beside the point.
It isn't beside the point... it is one of the stupidest thing you could possibly say. Who fed you that? Just saying something like that damages any credibility you might have. The atmosphere of Venus is 96.5% CO2. The atmosphere of Earth is roughly 380 parts per million (0.038%). In a hundred years of burning fossil fuels non stop, we've witnessed a rise in atmospheric CO2 of about 100ppm (0.01%). In the link above, you'll see that if you burned all the known fossil fuel reserves today, it would add roughly 77% more CO2 to the atmosphere for a total of what.... 0.07%? That's not even close to the Ordovician atmosphere, much less the Venusian.
Re:She will. (Score:4, Informative)
Picture a swimming pool with a plank across it. Supported on this plank is 2.9million cubic kilometers of ice. When the ice melts it will run off the plank into the pool and the tiny creatures that live along the water line will have to move. In this analogy, the pool is the World's oceans, the plank is Greenland which is not floating but an island. And the 2.9 million cubic kilometers of ice is 2.9 cubic kilometers of ice. It's not floating at all, it's supported on an island which is nothing more than a high point of land in the middle of an ocean. The melting ice is running down from it now and will continue to do so. The tiny creatures... they's us, I'm afraid,
Re:She will. (Score:3, Informative)
You are correct when you note that the melting of sea ice isn't the primary method that will cause sea levels to rise. In this century, the main reason that sea levels will rise will be due to the thermal expansion of the oceans. But in the next century, it is expected that the melting of the ice cover over Greenland and Antarctica will have a significant effect.
The main fear over losing sea ice, especially over the North Pole, is that it will reduce the salinity in the oceans and partially disrupt certain thermohaline circulations. The largest worry is that the Gulf Stream will reduce and rapidly cause an extensive regional climate change in northern Europe. Ireland and the UK would be hit the hardest since they have latitudes over 50 degrees.
Re:Global Warming is a Hoax (Score:3, Informative)
Global warming is a hoax.
And this comes from someone ...
For the past few months, we even have Global Cooling.
An increase of 0.01% in CO2 is never a problem.
Ah, we're dealing in absolutes ("never"). Very scientific. And is that an absolute or a relative 0.01% ? It also doesn't take atmospheric pressure into account - 0.01% at 1 atm is different from 0.01% at 2 atm.
The green house theory only work if only we have significant amount of C02, which is something like 10% or more.
With 10% CO2 in our atmosphere, our worries about climate are over. Permanently.
The experiment can be done by any lay person with enough initiative.
What experiment ?
Re:That's what? (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody will die without fossil fuel
Yeah, cuz 19th century agricultural techniques (Tractors? We don't need no stinkin' tractors!) will really scale well enough to feed 6.7 billion people.
What could possibly go wrong?
Re:That's what? (Score:3, Informative)
When a certain species of animal overmultiplies, and Mother Nature brings a drought, food becomes scarce & animals starve.
Pretty soon Mother Nature will be doing the same to the animal known as Homo sapiens. The drought will be scarcity-of-oil, the food shortage will be caused by idle farming equipment, and the U.S. and E.U. will no longer be able to sustain their 250 and 500 million citizens.