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Earth

Geoengineered Climate Cooling With Microbubbles 114

Posted by Soulskill from the or-we-could-make-an-ocean-sized-mirror dept.
Rambo Tribble writes: Scientists from the University of Leeds have proposed that brighter ships' wakes, created by reducing their component bubbles' sizes, could moderately increase the reflectivity of our oceans, which would have a cooling effect on the climate. The technology is touted as being available and simple, but there could be side effects, like wetter conditions in some regions. Still, compared to many speculative geoengineering projects, "The one advantage about this technology — of trying to generate these tiny 'micro-bubbles' — is that the technology does already exist," according to Leeds' Prof Piers Forster.
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Geoengineered Climate Cooling With Microbubbles More

Geoengineered Climate Cooling With Microbubbles

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  • ...what percentage of the earth's oceans are currently ship wake?

    One millionth of a percent?

    • What percentage... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gumby ( 425 ) on Friday December 19, 2014 @05:07PM (#48637733)

      Not saying I believe the magnitude of the effect, but from the article:

      """The team used a computer model to calculate what would happen if 32,000 large ships - the current estimate of large vessels on the high seas - produced tinier bubbles.
      "If we were to successfully put these generators on to these ships, and the ships just went about their normal business, we did find there was potential to reduce the surface temperature by about 0.5C," Prof Forster said"""

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by plopez ( 54068 )

        How much would it cost to retrofit 32000 ships?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Falos ( 2905315 )
          TFA says the fitting was already being researched for fuel efficiency reasons, so that may throw a bone to the "what will it cost" crowd, results pending.
        • Ideally, nothing. Groups are already investigating the use of cavitators along the hull to reduce surface friction and fuel consumption. If that pans out, this would basically be a bonus effect.

        • How much would it cost to retrofit 32000 ships?

          How much it would cost the EPA to mandate the change? Nothing!

          • How much it would cost the EPA to mandate the change? Nothing!

            ...how many of those ships are US-registered? A quick guess would be way less than 10%, if even that. Hell, much (if not most) US-owned ships are often flagged in Liberia (or some similar country) for tax/inspection/regulation purposes.

        • Global Warming is long term, so you don't have to change 32000 ships at once, you can integrate the newer design into and new ship designs, or maintenance plans of existing vessels. Combined with other ideas I've seen such as green roofs (putting plants on billions of house roofs instead of tile, steel on concrete), this global warming challenge might be achievable after all.

      • 0.5C this year? Next year?

        Every year?!?

        • 0.5C this year? Next year? Every year?!?

          It is obvious that they meant the surface temperature would cool by 0.5C one time, and then stabilize and stay 0.5C cooler than it would otherwise be, as long as the system was used. I don't see how you could interpret it any other way.

        • They modeled the thing for ALL of the open sea being turned into bubbles.
          It's not happening.

          Geo-engineering is not the magic bullet.
          Nor do we have it, the gun to fire it from, the target to shoot it at and on top of it all we don't know how to shoot the said gun nor on which side of the gun do bullets go in and on which side of it do they come out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You'd be surprised [wiley.com] what kind of effect ship wake can have on ocean albedo. You should give that study a read! It's really interesting, even if you're not typically into geophysics.

    • Shutting down air traffic after 9/11 had a measurable impact on weather [pbs.org] over CONUS from the lack of contrails in the sky. It isn't unfathomable that ships can also have a measurable level of impact.

      • Exactly. So if we want it cooler, we fly more jets. If we want it warmer, less.

        BUT - The golden question is always - who decides if it should be warmer or cooler? If you live in the north, you want it warmer. In the south, cooler.

        • One reason I saw mentioned for why Americans tended to be more skeptical of global climate change than Europeans is that the warming happened at different times of year (it's been years since I saw this, so the pattern may no longer hold, and may not have been valid in the first place, fwiw). Europe tended to see more warming in summer, and the lower percentage of homes with air conditioning meant that this was perceived as a worsening of the climate. OTOH, North America warmed more during winter, leading t
      • To be fair, that's not a universally accepted answer. [phys.org]

      • what is CONUS???

    • http://iagp.ac.uk/sites/defaul... [iagp.ac.uk]

      Simulations of solar geoengineering
      Increasing the reflectivity of crops
      All grassland was made as reflective as possible in the model

      Increasing the reflectivity of deserts
      The model was altered to act as if all deserts were covered
      in highly reflective material

      Increasing the reflectivity of the seas
      The model was altered to act as if all open sea was covered in micro-bubbles

      Increasing the reflectivity of marine clouds
      Potentially cloud-altering particles were released over all tropical seas in the model

      Forming particles in the stratosphere
      Particles were formed in the stratosphere at the equator in the model

      Nothing to see here. Move along.
      Dropping a giant ice cube into the ocean is still more feasible.

    • Do ya think that's what makes this stupid? Well, consider the fact that a single ship polutes the atmosphere with more carbon in a day than all the cars in the United States in a year... then reassess this idea.

      • Do ya think that's what makes this stupid? Well, consider the fact that a single ship polutes the atmosphere with more carbon in a day than all the cars in the United States in a year... then reassess this idea.

        Oh come on. That statement doesn't stand up to the slightest snifftest.

        There are 250M cars in the US which means that you would need to have 365x250M (91 billion!) cars for them to emit as much carbon in one day as one of your ships supposedly does.

        Yet road transport still emits 5-6x as much as marit

        • quote>Oh come on. That statement doesn't stand up to the slightest snifftest.

          You shouldn't breath that black stuff... that's all I meant. Perhaps I exaggerated with orders of magnitude...what of it?

    • This is easily the stupidest idea of the century. Next they will propose painting black birds white.

  • Cue Don Ho!!!! (Score:3)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Friday December 19, 2014 @05:04PM (#48637713) Homepage Journal

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Chemshiptrails incoming!
  • Skinner: "No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."

  • Drive less. Ban incandescent light bulbs. Recycle more. Eat a little less meat. Turn down the heat. Turn up the AC. All which can be done with existing technology.

    • This doesn't actually work unless your ok with all the worlds poor continuing to be poor.

    • Drive less. Ban incandescent light bulbs. Recycle more. Eat a little less meat. Turn down the heat. Turn up the AC. All which can be done with existing technology.

      In order:
      1) How? Not possible without fixing public transit.
      2) Dead wrong. Historically, every single advance in lighting (cheaper better etc) has led to more lights being on longer.
      3) Recycle is the lamest of the 3Rs: "re-use, repurpose, recycle". Try at least to start at the top?
      4) Or, eat more Long Pig :-)
      5) Maybe, or just stop building noninsulated houses and living in extreme weather locations.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by vivian ( 156520 )

        I have replaced all my halogen down lights , 50w each, with LED lights that use only 5w, and actually provide better light.
        I typically have 15 on, 4 hours a day.
        As a proportion of my overall power usage, my lighting has dropped from about 15% to 1.5%
        The LED bulbs will last longer (10,000 hours) than halogens, and pay themselves off in terms of saved electricity, in 2 years.
        Electricity is $0.26 /kwh here, and each bulb saves 0.045 kwh every hour it is being used.
        it will take 777 hours for it to save it's own

  • World’s 15 Biggest Ships Create More Pollution Than All The Cars In The World
    http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/8182

    Making a pollution-spewing behemoth slightly cleaner is probably not our best use of time and effort. How about we buy less crap from China so we can mothball a few of these ships?

    • ...the biggest polluters *in some compounds* (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Friday December 19, 2014 @05:40PM (#48637983) Journal

      FTFA,
      "these powerplants are some of the most fuel efficient units in the world"

      "the 15 largest ships in the world emit as much nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide as the world’s 760 million cars"

      So it's not really the climate-affecting carbon emissions that make these vessels "polluters" but rather that they use a fuel which contains excess sulfur and inefficiently scrub nitrogen-based compounds from the emissions, things that autos don't contend with or do because of regulation. It turns out that instead of 50 million cars, the biggest ship in the world put as much carbon into the atmosphere as about 15000-18000 cars. (109k HP @ super high efficiency vs 100HP in your typical automobile, factored for 280days@24h/dy vs average car at 400h/yr)

      • ... vs 100HP in your typical automobile,

        What the heck do you consider typical? A Trabant?
        A subcompact Toyota Yaris is 106 hp. A Nissan Juke, which is smaller than most families can actually use, is 188 hp for the base model, going up to 215 for the upgrade models. A Buick Encore, another tiny SUV, is 138 hp. GMC Terrain, which is actually getting close to the "typical, average" car, is 182 hp for the base model, 301 for the upgraded engine.
        Any mid size car or minivan that any family actually can use is going to be at least 180-200 hp, and cou

    • Re:Large ships are some of the biggest polluters (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday December 19, 2014 @06:40PM (#48638417)

      World’s 15 Biggest Ships Create More Pollution Than All The Cars In The World

      This is nonsense. It is only true for sulfates and nitrates. But sulfates and nitrates are only a concern on land, where they are inhaled, or damage buildings or crops. When emitted by ships, they are funneled to the side where they stay low and quickly settle onto the ocean surface. Since the ocean already contains quadrillions of tons of sulfur and nitrates, this addition is utterly inconsequential.

      • The common refrain that the solution to pollution is dilution only works up until the point where you've put out so much pollution that you are actively damaging the entire planet rather than just a small location.

        People thought like you in the early part of the 20th century, the solution to the choking smog in the major eastern industrial cities was to put up huge smokestacks that pumped the smoke and soot above the cities where it would migrate hundreds of miles until it descended. It was a great solution

      • And sulphur dioxide condenses into an aerosol that counteracts the greenhouse effect. Those large pollution spewing ships are actually saving the planet! Screw hybrid cars and bicycles, everyone should drive a container ship to work!

      • Also, to add, they only use these fuels far from coastal waters. For instance, they aren't allowed to use these fuels within 100 or so miles of Los Angeles. Some shipowners have even stopped using the dirtier fuel entirely as a simplification measure.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • So, at most, this would help ameliorate 10 percent total of the increase in temps just this decade, which would still result in 25 to 50 percent crop failures?

    Great. But stop using fossil fuels. We have cheaper technology already.

  • sjeee.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Friday December 19, 2014 @05:59PM (#48638155) Homepage
    What could possible go wrong............. We don't even have the computerpower to precisely predict the weather, and they think they can change the climate with this without real consequences?

    • The climate is already changing, the goal is to reduce the amount of change.

      • The climate is already changing, the goal is to reduce the amount of change.

        The problem is the effort is not to reduce the amount, the effort is to send change, however slightly, in a VERY BAD direction.

        We already know the Earth will enter a glacial period again. It may even be tending to do so now, we really don't have the understanding of climate to say for sure.

        What we do know is that entering a glacial period is something we would vastly rather avoid over any of the climate warming models to date (now

        • The climate is already changing, the goal is to reduce the amount of change.

          The problem is the effort is not to reduce the amount, the effort is to send change, however slightly, in a VERY BAD direction.

          We already know the Earth will enter a glacial period again. It may even be tending to do so now, we really don't have the understanding of climate to say for sure.

          THIS. Somebody, finally, who fucking GETS IT!

          On geological time scales, there is no such thing as a stable climate. We WILL enter another ice age, sometime in the next 1000 years or so. When we do, there will be no chance in hell that earth will support its current population. I'd estimate that Earth's population will be reduced to significantly less than a billion, through starvation, disease, and resource violence. That's over 80% (probably 90% by then) of the world's population that will be wiped ou

      • The climate is already changing, the goal is to reduce the amount of change.

        The climate has been in constant flux ever since the earth formed from a cloud of dust. The idea that we somehow must be warming the earth with our activity, simply because it's a touch warmer now than it was in 1860 is the worst kind of arrogance.

  • Bubbles in Mineral Oil cooling (Score:3)

    by thatkid_2002 ( 1529917 ) on Friday December 19, 2014 @06:50PM (#48638497)
    People have inadvertently found while trying to make their computers look like aquariums that introducing bubbles (via a normal aquarium pump) reduced temperatures. The theory is that some of the heat is transferred into the air which rises to the top and allows it to escape the system faster.

  • There may be secondary benefits of doing this such as oxygenation of the oceans. Nanobubbles can be produced very inexpensively using the technology shown here here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]

    • Not just oxygen... We can accelerate absorption of CO2, SO2, and all those other nasty, evil gases in the atmosphere. We've found a solution! What could possibly go wrong?

  • Even if we humans ill-advisedly bugger around with geo-engineering things we don't understand, there will still be change. So why the drive to resist the change?

    The only logical answer is: for money. The people who are profiting from the status quo, want to continue to do so. Another group of people are seeking to profit from the fear mongering.

    We should be wondering why there isn't a push to come up with means of adaptation. If sea levels rise, how can we reasonably evacuate lowlands? What is the impa

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