Cloud Brightening Research Begins in California (hawaiitribune-herald.com) 60
Aboard the deck of a World War II-era aircraft carrier, University of Washington scientists flicked the switch on a glorified snow-making machine," reports the Seattle Times. They describe the scientists "blasting a plume of saline spray off the coast of Alameda, California... trying to perfect a shot of salty particles that would make clouds better at reflecting sunlight back toward space, and help cool the Earth.
"It's called marine cloud brightening." Compressed air was pumped at hundreds of pounds per square inch through a nozzle full of a salty mix with a similar composition to seawater housed in an apparatus similar to a snow-making machine. The New York Times reported the machine produced a deafening hiss, releasing a fine mist that traveled hundreds of feet through the air. The scientists wanted to see if the machine could generate a consistent spray of the right size salt aerosols, taking samples downwind with instruments mounted on scissor lifts, commonly used in construction.
"This study is not yet large enough to affect local weather," the article points out. Yet "the idea of interfering with nature is so contentious, organizers of Tuesday's test kept the details tightly held, concerned that critics would try to stop them," reported the New York Times.
If it works, the next stage would be to aim at the heavens and try to change the composition of clouds above the Earth's oceans..."I hope, and I think all my colleagues hope, that we never use these things, that we never have to," said Sarah Doherty, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington and the manager of its marine cloud brightening program. She said there were potential side effects that still needed to be studied, including changing ocean circulation patterns and temperatures, which might hurt fisheries. Cloud brightening could also alter precipitation patterns, reducing rainfall in one place while increasing it elsewhere. But it's vital to find out whether and how such technologies could work, Doherty said, in case society needs them. And no one can say when the world might reach that point.
More from the Seattle Times: Some scientists warn that human influence on natural phenomena has rarely yielded the desired outcome, and often comes with unintended consequences. But, as the fossil-fueled world hurtles toward the internationally approved global warming limit to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, some argue there's a need to study backup plans.
"When I started graduate school in 1995, climate change, global warming was on the horizon, but there was still time to do something like reduce emissions at a scale that would allow us to avoid serious climate disruption," program manager Sarah Doherty said in an interview. "I think it's come to the point where the science community recognizes that a fairly significant degree of climate disruption and damage and suffering is pretty inevitable...." Doherty and the team are not advocating that anyone try cloud brightening now, but instead are hoping to develop a foundation for research that future decision-makers could rely on if they are evaluating geoengineering as a means of reducing suffering.
More info here from Politico and San Francisco Chronicle.
The New York Times notes that Bill Gates began funding early research in 2006.
"It's called marine cloud brightening." Compressed air was pumped at hundreds of pounds per square inch through a nozzle full of a salty mix with a similar composition to seawater housed in an apparatus similar to a snow-making machine. The New York Times reported the machine produced a deafening hiss, releasing a fine mist that traveled hundreds of feet through the air. The scientists wanted to see if the machine could generate a consistent spray of the right size salt aerosols, taking samples downwind with instruments mounted on scissor lifts, commonly used in construction.
"This study is not yet large enough to affect local weather," the article points out. Yet "the idea of interfering with nature is so contentious, organizers of Tuesday's test kept the details tightly held, concerned that critics would try to stop them," reported the New York Times.
If it works, the next stage would be to aim at the heavens and try to change the composition of clouds above the Earth's oceans..."I hope, and I think all my colleagues hope, that we never use these things, that we never have to," said Sarah Doherty, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington and the manager of its marine cloud brightening program. She said there were potential side effects that still needed to be studied, including changing ocean circulation patterns and temperatures, which might hurt fisheries. Cloud brightening could also alter precipitation patterns, reducing rainfall in one place while increasing it elsewhere. But it's vital to find out whether and how such technologies could work, Doherty said, in case society needs them. And no one can say when the world might reach that point.
More from the Seattle Times: Some scientists warn that human influence on natural phenomena has rarely yielded the desired outcome, and often comes with unintended consequences. But, as the fossil-fueled world hurtles toward the internationally approved global warming limit to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, some argue there's a need to study backup plans.
"When I started graduate school in 1995, climate change, global warming was on the horizon, but there was still time to do something like reduce emissions at a scale that would allow us to avoid serious climate disruption," program manager Sarah Doherty said in an interview. "I think it's come to the point where the science community recognizes that a fairly significant degree of climate disruption and damage and suffering is pretty inevitable...." Doherty and the team are not advocating that anyone try cloud brightening now, but instead are hoping to develop a foundation for research that future decision-makers could rely on if they are evaluating geoengineering as a means of reducing suffering.
More info here from Politico and San Francisco Chronicle.
The New York Times notes that Bill Gates began funding early research in 2006.
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The real story here can be best summarized as:
This is a bad idea and we shouldn't be doing it, BUT, we can get research money, so we will continue to take your money and do research into this stupid unworkable idea, that we admit is stupid and workable, just so we can get your research money.
Re: oh boy (Score:2)
No, they said this is not ideal but may become necessary if we don't change course enough on climate change.
This is a huge mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
While I don't mind the small-scale experimentation in the name of science and understanding, this is not the kind of geoengineering solution to deploy against climate change.
It does not solve the issue of increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, it only masks one of the effects of them. This will encourage us to carry on as if everything is OK while the oceans acidify and we get dumber (literally, elevated CO2 causes cognitive impairment in humans by about 1000ppm and you have to remember indoor levels are always higher than outside levels).
And what happens if you stop? You've got all that old CO2 plus the stuff you've been adding since the cloud program temporarily alleviated the heat problem. You'll get a sudden increase in heat that will bring on all the remaining issues of climate change in an even shorter time than the very brief period over which we've caused the current changes. Ecological systems react poorly to rapid changes.
Any geoengineering technique that is not used in concert with something that is addressing the root issue should be banned as a threat to the future of our civilization.
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Actual intentional geoengineering is the biggest threat, man is far too ignorant to model consequences.
Also these moron "scientists" failed to realize water vapor is by far the most powerful greenhouse gas their is, the water might outdo the salt, so to speak
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It would be amazing if you, as a mere slashdotter, have found a flaw in their plan that despite their education and experience they simply overlooked despite being experts in the field. It seems far more likely that they'd done the math and predicted a net benefit.
As for actual intentional geoengineering being the biggest threat? No, that would be the unintentional geoengineering we've been doing for over a century and are accelerating even as we see the start of serious deleterious effects and have reaso
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Re: This is a huge mistake (Score:2)
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Think of it this way - you don't have a hope in hell of predicting 7 die rolls in a row, but if you roll 10,000 your prediction of the average is almost certainly going to be spot-on to several decimal places.
And no, we probably don't know all the cause-and-effect influences in play, but if we stick to reversing the more fundamental things we know we've thrown out of whack, we're only undoing damage we've already done. At that point, the issue would be the rate of change and we lack the ability to undo wha
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Re: This is a huge mistake (Score:3)
It is not unreasonable to decide that action is better than inaction in this situation.
In other words, It's more important to DO SOMETHING, even if we don't understand the ramifications?
Isn't that how we got into this situation? We burned fossil fuels for a century, some for two centuries, without understanding what it did to the environment long-term, now we have to start shooting things into the atmosphere because we need to be seen doing SOMETHING?
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We got into this position because people like you didn't want to be inconvenienced. We knew about the greenhouse effect of CO2 released by fossil fuel burning almost as soon as we started doing it at significant scale.
We know what the excess heat will do and we're already seeing it. We know what removing it will do, too. But you keep on saying we don't know because it means you don't have to do anything, and that's easier. Except for future generations, you're fucking them, hard.
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Why is there so much lunkhead denial of greenhouse gas physics? Because bigger lunkheads automatically reject every possible solution.
Build the nukes, seed the oceans, shade the upper atmosphere. If we want people to be serious about the problem, be serious about solutions.
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This is actually one of the best things about marine cloud brightening, compared to other forms of geoengineering. It's a very short term effect. As soon as you inject the salt into the atmosphere, it immediately starts to precipitate back out again. The effect lasts only as long as you keep the spray turned on. Turn it off and within two weeks the salt will all be gone and the clouds will be back to normal.
If you're worried about unintended effects from geoengineering, this is the method to use. If an
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As it happens real scientists decry geoengineering attempts and warn of dangers, would be amazing if you had enough brain neurons talking to each other to suspect this would be the case.
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Trapped heat is better than new heat that can become trapped.
Re: This is a huge mistake (Score:2)
It canâ(TM)t even offset the power consumption of the process itself. The amount of energy reflected by this would be minimal. Meanwhile operating a WW2 era vessel and the pump to get water to those heights isnâ(TM)t exactly power efficient.
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It does not solve the issue of increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, it only masks one of the effects of them.
The only thing we could spray into the atmosphere to get at the root cause would be an aerosol form of Depo-Provera.
Put that in a chem trail and we could be onto something.
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Yep. Now giant atmospheric scrubbers like you might see in a science fiction movie, using quicklime to create limestone? Maybe.
And of course there are the various chemistries for mixing CO2, water, and energy to produce syngas and close the carbon loop for liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
But right now it would be a more effective use of the required energy for those processes to simply replace the fuels being burned in the first place. The time for sequestering - an energy-negative process - is when we've stopp
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Yep. Now giant atmospheric scrubbers like you might see in a science fiction movie, using quicklime to create limestone? Maybe.
I think you may have missed something in the comment you're replying to. Depo-Provera is a contraceptive, and PPH was suggesting that an aerosolized form of it resulting in population reduction might be the only airborne solution to AGW that would actually work.
I don't entirely disagree with PPH. Population control could be a substantial part of cutting down on CO2-producing frivolities such as excess consumption of meat, cars, electronic devices, web-based entertainment, AI, crypto-currency, high-speed tra
This is the climate change equivalent to recycling (Score:1)
It's just so frustrating to see a playbook we've all already seen playing out again and working.... We never fucking learn a
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Oh shit...literally everything you just said is identical to when you talk about the economy. Though "nonsensical and silly" is putting it lightly.
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Oh shit...literally everything you just said is identical to when you talk about the economy.
Maybe that's because global warming is a direct consequence of an economy predicated on unlimited, unrestrained growth. Not to mention an economy in which corporations externalize costs without the explicit agreement and permission of those who end up paying those costs.
Just as the oil companies did when they knew 70 or more years ago about AGW and its consequences, and spent those years denying and gaslighting instead of finding and funding solutions.
On target! (Score:2)
Since we chose to refuse to address the real problem, let's create a bigger problem and see if we can do better.
The real problem is (Score:1)
Just ask Canadians how that is working out for them. While having minimal contribution to CO2, end-user energy costs have in some cases doubled, and some can no longer even afford their homes.
But id
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But idealists are gonna idealize, until the taxes take their homes too.
That's not how socialism works. The Party protects its elites.
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Don't you mean that's how Capitalism works, the party protects its elites? Here in Canada, the party of the rich is attacking the carbon tax as it causes hardship on the top 20%, by pretending that the bottom 80% will be better off without the rebate cheques. Unluckily simple slogans work well, just have to repeat it enough.
Re: The real problem is (Score:2)
Capitalism is based on entering into agreements with others based on mutual benefits. With no external coercion. Socialism is about using that coercion to obtain benefits for the party elites. If you want to become an elite, just have something to offer that others wish to buy.
Carbon tax rebates are just one method the ruling class uses to maintain the complacency of the ruled. Panem et circenses.
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Are you really claiming that my Credit Union and the local CO-OP use coercion to get benefits for some imaginary party elites? It's hard to take you seriously with claims like you make about socialism, though you are correct that they do offer products that people want.
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Are you really claiming that my Credit Union and the local CO-OP use coercion to get benefits for some imaginary party elites?
You've got that backwards. The party elites lean on your CO-OP and credit union to support their political agendas. Or your states auditors and regulators (probably populated by party apparatchiks) will begin the investigations.
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And how are Credit Unions and CO-OP's going to support someone's political agenda?
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You will hire our Party members. But not make them show up for work. You will not fight the unionization of your workforce. Who will pay dues, part of which will be skimmed off to support the Party's agenda and campaigns. You will do business with the Party's friends. And not their enemies (we have a friends/enemies list right here). And you will give the Party elites steep discounts.
Have I forgotten anything?
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And that actually happens where you live? Sounds like a pretty crappy 3rd world country just to have that many Party members, little well a shortage of ethics along with the enforcement of those ethics and voters that put up with that kind of shit. Perhaps only one party where you live?
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Perhaps only one party where you live?
Effectively, yes. Washington State is a proud, blue state.
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Oh, I see the denialists have stopped denying and have moved the goalposts from "human-made CO2 has no impact" to "the globalist agenda", "taxes sucking the poor dry" and "questionable carbon credits".
But so nice to see that all questionable policies, that were and are a result of the globalist oil-producing lobby's agenda, are now blamed on the climate change "alarmism" :)
Do I see evolution among the anonymous Saudi Arabian and ruzke stooges on slashdot?
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the globalist agenda's climate alarmist tactics used to impose a questionable carbon credits/carbon taxes system which while having no verifiable impact on climate will definitely harm the middle and lower-income classes by sucking them dry despite having no viable solution with a measurable success metric.
Just ask Canadians how that is working out for them. While having minimal contribution to CO2, end-user energy costs have in some cases doubled, and some can no longer even afford their homes.
But idealists are gonna idealize, until the taxes take their homes too.
Canadian here, the carbon tax rebate has been quite a help to my and 80% of the populations finances. Of course the 20% who lose out are not happy and have their right wing saviour and slogan of "axe the tax" while blaming the worldwide inflation on the carbon tax.
Meanwhile, with droughts, heatwaves etc, food is getting more expensive.
So what happens to the salt? (Score:3)
I thought salting the soil was something hostile armies did to make some territory unlivable.
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The oceans already do this. It's more accurate to say these are aerosolized saltwater droplets. The clouds have water vapor but on contact with these droplets, it will pull water out of the air into the droplets. Bigger water droplets scatter and reflect more light - the cloud turns white.
It wouldn't be a high enough concentration of salt to matter compared to the water already in the clouds, but doing it over the ocean is a perfectly reasonable location anyway, with the supply of limitless brine for the
Thar' she blows (Score:2)
What a Great Idea! (Score:2)
Let's spray salt into the air! That won't cause saltwater rain, will it? Because what would saltwater rain do to the environment?
Re: What a Great Idea! (Score:2)
For many proponents of these ideas, sabotaging agriculture making sure people starve to death en masse would be a bonus, not a drawback. We are talking about people that promote an ideology that allied with and killed more people than the Nazis in the 20th century.
Let's cast shade across the oceans, WCGW? (Score:3)
It's not like the photosynthetic life in the oceans needs the sunlight to convert CO2 into O2 for the aquatic animal life to use in metabolism or anything like that.
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Photosynthesis occurs near the coasts where there is upwelling and runoff to provide nutrients.
The central oceans are aquatic deserts.
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I don't disagree that there are large areas of the oceans where there is minimal life, but the north and south Atlantic, the north Pacific, and equatorial regions are not deserts in terms of their photosynthetic activity [wikipedia.org].
It's seems pretty unlikely that a geoengineering project such as this would be able to prevent the clouds from floating over the productive areas.
Back off (Score:2)
Mitigation like this doesn't get in the way of business, and so bears little fruit, waggle-finger-wise.
Better than sulphur (Score:2)
It might not help, but it sure beats spraying sulphuric compounds into the atmosphere.
Remind me ... (Score:2)
The scientists wanted to see if the machine could generate a consistent spray of the right size salt aerosols, taking samples downwind with instruments mounted on scissor lifts, commonly used in construction.
Yep, gonna need stuff like this (Score:2)
We aren't de-industrializing, so it's this or nothing.
(Well, yes, emoting, but that's functionally equivalent to nothing.)
Legal liability (Score:2)
What could possibly go wrong, go wrong, go wrong.. (Score:2)
[1] Take an extremely complex system you [the generic "you"] do not understand (that'd be the Earth and all its systems)
[2] Ignore the fact that you not only do not know what its "correct" temperature should be.
[3] Ignore the fact that you do not know all of its systems and mechanisms, and you are overwhelmed with data on the ones you know about. In truth, you do not know what you do not know (the "unknown unknowns").
[4] Ignore the fact that you do not fully understand the precise operations of the systems