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Using Barges to Fight Global Warming
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Peter Flynn, Poole Chair in Management for Engineers in the University of Alberta Department of Mechanical Engineering, has developed what he would like to consider a fall back plan to help combat the effects of global warming, in northern Europe. Flynn proposes using 'more than 8,000 barges moving into the northern ocean in the fall, speeding the initial formation of sea ice by pumping a spray of water into the air, and then, once the ice is formed, pumping ocean water on top of it, trapping the salt in the ice and reaching a thickness of seven meters. In the spring, water would continue to be pumped over the ice to melt it, forming a vast amount of cold, salty water that sinks and adds to the down-welling current to re-strengthen it.'"
Wouldn't be better to spend this tiny amount of money with measures to prevent and control the emission of CO2 at the atmosphere? This barges things looks like a hack to me... a really expensive hack. Would this have to be done every year? I think it is better to leave this kind of "ultimate" solution to when there is no option at all. Until then, let's try to fight the roots of the problem, not just patch it from the outside and adjourn the disaster for a few years.
That's true. However, at some of those times this planet has been just about totally uninhabitable by humans. Are you suggesting that in the worst case we just kill ourselves off and then wait for the planet to recover so some new species can evolve to take our place?
That makes too much sense and it absolves Capitalism and the United States from guilt. There is no room in the Global Climate Change arguement for past climatic shifts or any evidence of the Sun rising in output or cyclical events.
e s/ApJL/v549n1/005748/005748.web.pdf_ variationo n#Pleistocene_glacial_cycles
"At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities, two Duke University physicists report.
The physicists said that their findings indicate that climate models of global warming need to be corrected for the effects of changes in solar activity. However, they emphasized that their findings do not argue against the basic theory that significant global warming is occurring because of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases."
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issu
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1001-duke.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Solar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciati
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
Nope, we can't talk in this arguement about how the planet's climate has shifted in the past, but must blame the US, George W. Bush and/or Capitalism for Global Warming.
The TV sitcom "Dinosaurs" was such a wonderful show. It was an excellent satire, paralleling the Dinosaur's "modern" world with our own. As soon as I read this article, I immediately thought of the final episode of this sitcom.
In the final episode, a comet is heading towards the planet, and the "We Say So" corporation devises a way of destroying the comet using "modern" technology, only to find that it has a consequence. Each "solution" cause a larger and larger problem, only to be "fixed" with another "solution", causing an ever-growing problem. I forget the entire sequence of events, but in the final stage, they kill all the plant life on the planet. They figure that to bring the plant life back, they need to make it rain. Rain is formed by clouds. Clouds are formed by erupting volcanos. So, naturally, forcing all the volcanos to erupt will cause clouds to form, causing rain to fall and restore the plant life for all the earth. The episode finishes with the corporation detinating bombs inside volcanos, causing all the volcanos to erupt, blackening the sky, causing the start of the ice age.
Words of wisdom from Dinosaur Earl Sinclair: "It's so easy to take advantage of nature because it's always there, and technology is so bright and shiny and new."
Let the Earth take care of nature. We're so focused on manipulating nature for the survival of every single life on Earth, we lose site of the fact that every now and then, nature has to correct our mistakes to restore its own balance, whether in the form of a plague, a change in the weather patterns, or an ice age.
At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities, two Duke University physicists report.
I think you'll find the last IPCC TAR concluded much the same with regard to the effects of increased solar output. Of course they also concluded that the majority of observed warming was most likely due to anthropogenic CO2. Take a look at this chart showing how well CO2 correlates with the historical temperature record and realise that on that scale current CO2 levels are almost 5.5: that is quite literally off the chart. Given that we have good reason to believe in causation (absorption spectra of atmospheric CO2) it should be of concern. Yes the climate has fluctuated quite a bit in the past. Yes it is a complex chaotic system. That doesn't mean messing with it more is a good idea.
Nope, we can't talk in this arguement about how the planet's climate has shifted in the past, but must blame the US, George W. Bush and/or Capitalism for Global Warming.
I'm not sure attacking a strawman helps either. I don't think anyone with an actual clue is blaming George Bush and Capitalism for causing global warming, and certainly people with a clue will readily accept that historically the climate has been variable - that doesn't mean the the current trend in variation is going to in any way beneficial (or even necessarily neutral). Sure there are all those people without a clue who follow the issue as a politicised debate. There are equally shrill and stupid voices on both sides of this argument though. Just ignore them - the more attention we pay them the more pointlessly polarised this debate becomes.
Jedidiah.
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