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."
Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw this on the Discovery Channel. The rotor-sails look very interesting.
One question for any Chaos Theory fans: what are the long-term effects of creating large, man-made clouds over the ocean?
For every action... (Score:1, Interesting)
"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." - Sir Issac Newton
I, for one, am curious about the effects of moving all this CO2 into the oceans. Surly this will not be without it's consequences. Just as moving this CO2 that was locked for millions of years underground out into the atmosphere has had its effects, so to will this.
Still, I applaud the effort to help solve the problem and this "solution" would, at the very least, buy us some time but it will come at a cost that has yet to be known (and I'm not talking the direct fiscal cost talked about here).
Re:That's what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two days of war?
Or more to the point less than the cost of cleaning up after one hurricane.
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see if this idea gains more ground, and if there will be a general scientific consensus on this proposal. Personally, I wonder if this method could actually cause MORE problems. But I have absolutely no credentials and nothing to back this up with. So, what will the consensus be?
Ahoy there matey! (Score:5, Interesting)
Lime... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm kind of fond of the resurrection of the lime [slashdot.org] idea, in part because it addresses at least 2 problems at once, though I don't know what the economics of it are in comparison to this. In addition to reducing CO2 overall, it also makes the sea more alkaline, which is good for sea life, in particular, coral. A lot of coral has been wiped out because of increased acidity in the ocean (due to, surprise, increased CO2 absorption).
Better idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Lay pipelines from the ocean leading to the desert and spray saltwater over the desert & let nature do the rest of the work.
Re:That's what? (Score:4, Interesting)
When it comes right down to it, no we are not 100 percent sure, richer countries WILL try to get more water if it does work, mother nature is a non-existent entity, that's what expiriments are for and it probably will, probably but it probably won't do the job.
In the end having the data and knowing if/how we can alter the climate will be far more beneficial than not. We're changing the environment without thought, this is changing it with thought.
Re:Headline (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't disagree with you that we should reduce CO2 levels, but you need to do some more reading on what chaos theory implies.
It doesn't say it's impossible to control in any way a complex system. It doesn't say any attempt to do so will result in unforeseen consequences. It says nothing about catastrophic results. It doesn't say that it is possible to predict the future of complex systems.
Ok, go ahead (Score:5, Interesting)
But say goodbye to the Caribbean Islands before you do.
Millions of tons of sand from the Sahara are carried across the Atlantic and deposited on the Caribbean Islands every year. Start seeding more then the normal amount of clouds in the Atlantic, and you risk blocking this sand transport mechanism.
If that happens, erosion will soon destroy those Islands.
Mind you, if these hurricanes continue, they'll cease to be habitable anyway, so it may be they're screwed whatever happens.
A desperate measure (Score:3, Interesting)
Salty rain??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's what? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is interesting as I've been wondering if making huge lakes by excavating / pumping salt water in the desert would make more predictable weather for the great plains or if it would cause more volatile weather.
Re:That's what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Would it be cheaper to just mitigate the change? Build irrigation canals from Alaska and quadruple the levies on the Mississippi? I think we should do whatever is cheaper in the long run. I don't think it will be trying to change ourselves to fit the planet, I think we should embrace global warming and finally take control of the environment itself and put the final nail in Gia's coffin. Stories like this help give hope that there are people out there actually trying to solve the problem by moving forward instead of advocating a return to the 1930's
BTW to the "environmentalists" out there, their isn't a "natural" environment anywhere in the US, small things like the introduction of earth worms and bee's and fire suppression have dramatically changes the very nature of our forests, even before that, the Natives engaged in controlled burns and selective harvesting. The entire planet is a garden people have been modifying. I just want you to know that nature has been dead for a long time. when you protect the trees and the forest it is exactly the same as if you were debating whether or not to pull up the daisy's in your back yard. Environmentalism is a luxury like gardening. Though I still agree with you when it comes to green spaces in cities and arsenic and Mercury in the air.
It's not the money (hey, that would create jobs) (Score:1, Interesting)
Let's make a pile of pollution creating these ships to seed the "clouds" to make it rain, and thus dissipate the clouds and let in more sunlight. Good plan.
Was this proposed by a ship builder who sees his business diminishing if there is no more sea war?
Re:That's what? (Score:2, Interesting)
What about the Sahara?
Reclaim it, plant a forest, and it becomes a huge carbon sink, and possible farmland.
Re:That's what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Would it be like, you know, much "easier" and safer to stop using fossile fuel? Even if it would put development backwards "a bit" for the moment?
Short answer? No.
Even if the political will existed in the first world, China is clearly not interested in playing ball on environmental issues. And with the population as high as it is in China, whatever the first world does isn't going to be enough. And the first world doesn't have the will anyway.
Eventually mankind will eliminate its dependence on fossil fuels. Oil prices will continue to rise, while research continues on alternatives increasing their efficiency and lowering their cost, and when it makes economic sense we'll change, but not before. In the meanwhile, given that stopping oil use altogether is not going to happen, it might be worth considering alternatives. We really don't know exactly what the costs involved in global warming will be (though we have estimates), but if the costs turn out to be high enough, schemes like this one may turn out to be our best option.
I don't like it either, but this 'can't we all just tighten our belts' attitude is naive and unhelpful. It won't happen, and if it somehow did happen it would probably slow development and lead to ultimately greater cost.
Wait what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sigh, I don't imagine you could spend some time in science class actually studying things.
The theory behind this is reasonably sound, the issue like with most others is that it's expensive and nobody knows whether it's going to be cost effective when compared with other possible options.
This has nothing to do with CO2 directly and everything to do with temperature. What they're trying to do is reflect back more of the incoming solar radiation to lower the temperature.
Suggesting that there are consequences of that sort is kind of silly because the most likely outcome is nothing. Additionally any affect is only going to last as long as the ships continue to spray the mist. It isn't going to go on indefinitely.
Re:That's what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Tss, bullshit, the average american or european consume waaay more energy and resources than someone in china, why would they have to cut down the most? Or even at all? If we would have want to make it "fair" we would have to cut down much more on consumption and luxury in the western world first.
Also IF it will happen bad things who will suffer the most? For sure not the most rich people, maybe in materialism loss but I would believe that the poor people will take the hardest hit, since they can't afford to travel and maybe can't get into other countries and don't have a good education and so on so on. So in that case if we do anything they will suffer the most, and they wasn't the ones causing it in the first place!
Sure doing something about it will affect people in the western world the most, poor people in africa without electricity, a car and so on will probably not even notice the difference, or only slightly, but that is the most fair and correct way to solving it.
(And while doing it may I suggest to reserve say 1/2 of the area in every country for the wild life to?)
So please stop this "omg I think so much about the poor so we can't hinder them from reaching our standards"-bullshit.
The solution, or not doing anything, MAY cost more than to do something. Same with nuclear power, who knows in the end what it will cost? Sure it's efficient now, and seems like a good deal, but who will know for sure in the end? With wind and solar power you know they are "more expensive" for now but at least there isn't many hidden costs or future risks. You know the price.
I agree with you that most of the planet isn't wild life / nature longer, a very huge area is crops and such and all the elephants, tigers, lions and shit probably lives in small reservates, it's not how the live in whole continents.
Is global warming all bad? (Score:2, Interesting)
So we lose Florida and other low sitting coastal areas. The equatorial regions get worse. But suddenly canada and asia are loaded with HUGE amounts of brand new arable land.
Is it possible that global warming could be a POSITIVE change? Doesn't the global warming scare really just come down to "WE FEAR CHANGE"?
Ignorant (Score:3, Interesting)
Go look up the co2 ppm levels from the dinosaur era(s).
I won't give you a link (google your own) or you'll dismiss it as biased but levels were roughly 20x higher than today.
Have fun with your religion, believe anything you want, just don't force your unscientific beliefs down other's throats, please.
Thanks.
And if it DOES work, who sets the thermostat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense. You have not done your homework. (Score:3, Interesting)
I posted a whole bunch of links here in the last big discussion of global warming on
The NEWS might still be claiming that CO2 is the most likely culprit, but scientists -- even the majority of scientists -- are not. The last guy who made the claim you just did to me shut right the fuck up once he saw the evidence I posted. Again, you can prove it to yourself quite easily. Just go find the links I posted before. Or look it up on Google. Sheesh, even the UN's IPCC committee has retracted their former stance on CO2! You are behind the times.
Re:She will. (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it wasn't all in the atmosphere at the same time. Most of it was in the ocean, same as most of the carbon dioxide is in the ocean now. Isn't this how the scientific theory goes: There was heaps of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Primitive plants developed, which absorbed the carbon dioxide, and produced oxygen. This switched the atmosphere over from a mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a mix of oxygen and nitrogen. Therefore, before the plants, the atmosphere had a huge amount more carbon dioxide than it has now. [nih.gov]
And yet, despite the much higher levels of carbon dioxide than we have now, life flourished. Mosses and ferns grew to gigantic sizes in the carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere. Then they died and got squished and turned into coal and oil. So if anybody tells you that we have to "save the planet" from carbon dioxide, ask them why the planet wasn't destroyed when the carbon dioxide levels were much higher than now. Where did the coal, oil, and all fossil fuels come from? From plants and animals which got their carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the ocean. Isn't that the standard scientific theory?
The objection that "it wasn't all in the atmosphere at the same time" is interesting. It implies that back in the olden days, when the coal seams and oil reservoirs were forming, the carbon dioxide was "somewhere else". Where was it then? How did the plants and animals get it into their bodies? Surely it must have been in the ocean or the atmosphere for a plant to absorb it, and from there an animal could eat the plant to get it.
The objection also implies that if we burn coal, oil, and gas, that all of the carbon dioxide will end up in the atmosphere at the same time. Of course, that won't happen. Think about the carbon dioxide from all the coal people have burned in all of human history. Where is it? Is it all in the atmosphere right now? No it isn't, a lot of it has been absorbed by the ocean, by plants, and by rock formation. Therefore, all the carbon dioxide we've released into the atmosphere isn't all still in there. So it can't all be in there at the same time, can it?
Secondly, all of the carbon dioxide from all of the oil, gas, and coal won't be in the atmosphere at the same time, because we haven't burned it all yet. We don't even know where all of it is, and of the stuff we do know about, we haven't dug it all up and burned it. There is still heaps left. For example, you may have heard of coal fields with hundreds of years of supply left. If we've got hundreds of years of coal left, obviously all the carbon dioxide won't end up in the atmosphere at the same time, because it's still locked up in the coal, in the ground.
So what's different about now than in prehistoric times? One difference is that there are much more efficient plants living here. Back when the coal was formed, it was giant moss and suchlike that were dominant plants. Look at moss now, it only grows a few millimetres high. Now we have plants like C4 plants and CAM plants, that can really suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. They are best at absorbing carbon dioxide from even very low concentrations, and when it's hot. When carbon dioxide concentrations are high, then even the not-so-efficient C3 plants can easily absorb it.
Therefore, if we burn the fossil fuels, we should expect to see increased plant growth. If we collect up things like plant fibres and use them for long term things, this will store the carbon from the fossil fuels in a non-atmospheric form. One technique for doing this is to build a house and furniture out of wood. We could grow plantations of trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Then we could cut down the trees and use the wood. So if we have plantations of various plants which produce large amounts of carbon-rich fibre, we can harvest the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Pretty simple huh.
Or we could believe all the doom-and-gloom merchants.
Re:She will. (Score:3, Interesting)
The cause for climate change does not matter. It is happening.
But remember the change is very slow. The changes are going to occur over the next few hundred years. Not next year or even in the next couple of decades. It will be hundreds of years.
During that time we will adapt. We will build flood walls around key cities. We will move populations where building flood walls does not make sense. We will shift farming to land that can now sustain plants. We will change and adapt to the climate as it shifts. It is a SLOW process and we have lots of time to adapt to it.
Spending billions of dollars on something that most likely will harm the environment more (has anyone asked how much pollution will be generated to build the industrial base to build all those ships?) is a silly thing to do. It will cost 2 to 3 times the highest estimate anyone throws out there.
Spend that kind of money to develop economical space capability so we can start mining the moon or asteroids and shipping material back to earth.
We would be better served doing that than wasting tremendous resources on a project that at best would do little to change things and at worst would damage the environment more than anything else we have done.