Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Whatever the virtues may or may not be in micromanaging an incompletely understood global chaotic system by adding further human input, you all might be interested in hearing it from the horse's mouth. In this radio interview. (scroll down for links) the good doctor makes the point that he is not advocating doing this now, but rather studying the possibility in the case that we find ourselves in an emergency situation where the currents get out of whack and crazy things, like the freezing of the Thames, start happening.
When we're done using barges to fight global warming, maybe we can use canoes to fight leprechauns!
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.
Narrator: Fortunately, our handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last-minute way to combat global warming. Ever since 2063 we simply drop a giant ice cube into the ocean every now and then.
Suzie: Just like Daddy puts in his drink every morning. And then he gets mad.
Narrator: Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time. Thus solving the problem once and for all.
Suzie: But-
Narrator: ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!
Leela: Well, we just need one of those big ice cubes. Someone should call the losers who are supposed to deliver it.
[phone rings]
Hello?
Read Pynchon.
At least they are not planning to use trees to fight global warming.
Or we could let the planet do what it's always done: rise and drop in temperature and water levels. Whatever you may think humans have done to the planet, it's gone through much bigger changes before we were ever here. How about we let nature take its course and we worry about changing ourselves instead of the planet?
Developers: We can use your help.
This sounds similar to the solution in Futurama episode #57, "Crimes of the Hot" where they used to drop a gigantic ice cube in the ocean. First Episode of Season 5
Why not just leave the refrigerator open? See, Mom was WRONG all those years! If all the kid's left the refrigerator open, it would cool the world! BWAHAHA!
Wait... you mean the world would actually get WARMER? BAH! The thermal engineers are trying to confuse me!
Wouldn't EXPENDING energy simply generate more heat? Even if the result *appears* to be a layer of ice over the oceans, this energy has to go somewhere else. I realize that the Earth isn't a closed system, but that's the problem - we've got energy input and not much energy output. Until we can fix this, any large-scale energy expenditure will NOT have a positive effect w/ regards to combating global warming, right?
(Ok, now some physicist type needs to come along and correct me, but still...)
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
I'm sure politicans are all following over themselves trying to spend 50billion dollars on this idea. I guess I'll stop building my house up on 10ft stilts .... i'm sure this will stop the massive climate change and prevent ocean level increases.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Eight THOUSAND barges pumping enough water to make a layer seven METERS thick? EACH YEAR.
I'm no scientist, but it seems to me we'd be pumping out some greenhouse gases somewhere in this mix...
Would these be nuclear barges? No greenhouse gases, but instead spent nuclear fuel to contain for a really long time.
They estimate $50 billion USD to do this, but they don't say if that is the ongoing yearly amount.
Maybe easier just to genetically engineer all the plants and animals to deal with the new conditions rather than try to control the ocean currents (and for the humor impaired -- that sentence is meant as a joke).
When the bought-off pundits, ideology-addled fanboys, and fossil fuel industry flaks run out of viable talking points in their F.U.D. campaign, the debate over global warming won't be over whether it is happening, but on the most effective and economical ways to slow it down and cope with its effects.
There won't be a one-size-fits-all fix. Conservation and more efficient vehicles will be a big part of it. Environmental remediation projects, like reconstructing coastal wetlands to help them deal with floods and storms, will be another.
Stange notions like seeding the ocean with iron filings, and this oddball idea, are another possibility for the "arsenal" of fixes. I'd definitely put some money into researching them. Figure out the kinks sooner rather than later, so they'll be available if we need them.
This scheme reminds me somewhat of some of the (intentionally) money-wasting schemes of the movie Brewster's millions. Large machines sent thousands and thousands of miles to mechanically move an almost unimaginable ammount of water, along with the fuel needed to do all of this large-scale de-facto terraforming (aquaforming?).
That...or the Futurama episode where it was revealed that global warming had to be fended off with giant ice cubes from Haley's comet every once in a while.
What this scheme ammounts to is a color shift of a rather small portion of the earth's ocean, for a rather small ammount of time, and enormous cost.
You could achieve the same dynamic by:
A) Using some cheaper coloring to semi-permanantly paint large portions of land environments with an already severely limited biological environment, including deserts, rocky areas, upper mountain ranges, near-permafrost (permafrost is already white most of the time), etc. Longer-lasting and cheaper than the ice-cube in the ocean effect. Could be undone with darker color later if needed.
B) Genetically engineer and feed cryophillic bacteria with light pigment in near-arctic ocean areas. Either have it continuously expell bouyant light-color material as part of the life cycle, or else have the body stay boyant and un-edible by further bacteria after death. If this is feasible, and self-sustainable, we'd have a meaningful, if limited engineered biological terraforming. Similarly can be undone with darker color later.
Those are just two quick ideas - I'm sure there's a lot others that would work to do color-based terraforming. Are there any special reasons why this barge idea would... hold water still above such ideas?
1. Stop selective de-forestation of the South American rainforest.
2. Find the fucking Europeans some other place to grow soybeans for their bio-diesel so they don't start de-foresting the Congo.
3. Build nuclear power plants.
4. Build breeder reactors and core re-processing factories so we don't have to bury as much radioactives.
5. Find a fucking use for all the radioactive by-product waste generated from 30 years of unabated plutonium weapon manufacturing. Vitrify it and use the barrel to de-ice sidewalks or something. Sheesh!
6. Use on-site hydrogen production to fuel automobiles.
7. Figure out a superconductor that can withstand 50C temperatures, and lay down an underground electrical grid across the country (be it US or EU or China or Korea or Japan).
8. Home school your children, because urban teachers' unions are fucking KILLING our literacy rate.
9. Buy Danish goods. Most butter cookies, but cheese and booze as well.
10. For the Love of God, please enroll Hillary in some anger management classes. That crying shit is waaaaaaayyyyyy too unbalanced for the nuclear football team.
Like his idea, this one will be shot down for the same reason: It might actually do something about the problem, doesn't funnel money to the climatologists pushing Global Warming as a means of securing ever-more funding, and it offends the the civil religion of environmentalism by allowing Western Civilization to escape suffering (in the form of a stagnant economy die to crushing greenhouse gas taxes) for its "environmental sins."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
5 Years Later, on Slashdot:
"Due to all the additionnal greenhouse gases created by having 8,000 barges continuously circumventing the oceans, the Alberta professor now suggests to add more barges... to curb the effect on global warming the old ones created."
Hot damn, I never thought of it that way! Thanks for calling us on that before we went through the trouble of sending several thousand barges out to sea.
Sincerely,
Dr. Peter Flynn
The original paper is unfortunately not available without a subscription, but it has considerably more detail.
The cost breaks down as a capital outley of 45 billion dollars for the barges and equipment; and operating expenses of 1.3 billion dollars per year. The barges would be wind powered for the pumping operations so no substantial CO2 is generated.
8100 barges, with a wind power system, a low volume pump and two high volume pumps per barge. 32 helicopters, 4 harbors, 4 air bases and 1 control center, for the Thunderbirds, I guess.
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.
Sure sounds easier than increasing gas mileage and cutting greenhouse emissions. Amazing some of the bone head solutions for avoiding dealing with the real issue. I remember a proposal of digging tunnels in the mountains around LA to blow the smog out. Gee let's spend tens of billions so we don't have to be responsible and cut emissions. When LA actually starting passing laws against polution it got radically better. Then a little thing called the SUV showed up and most of the gains were lost. Back in the late 70s you could hardly see the mountains at all for months at a time. By the early 90s heavy smog days were rare. Ten years later they are common again. We can make a difference it just requires effort and responsibility. People don't want to make sacrifics or accept change. Well things are changing so you better get used to it.
If we blew up the Sun, we wouldn't have to worry about Global Warming.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Global warming is not all about taking care of 'our earth'. It's about saving our own asses from extinction.
Earth has endured asteroid showers, meteor showers, major volcanic erruptions that produced ice ages and other effects of extreme proportion. Earth will contineu to self-maintain long after the human race died off, or nuked themselves. When a major earth shifting event happens, evolution begins again.
Leave the glabal warming, ozone holes, melting ice alone - It's evident that since we started reducing ozone depleting chemicals, introduced automobile emmission controls, and a bounty of other reversal efforts, that nothing is helping. I strongly feel that we are not causing these things - rather earth is evolving herself, and unfortunately her future plans may or may not include any of the current species. We're beating a dead horse!
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
This article (admittedly a little dated, 1997) claims that "for about $10 million, this method would offset the 1990 U.S. greenhouse emissions". (It also explores some potential side effects, and similar measures.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
How much new Greenhouse will burning all the fuel to run that plan create?
Of course the operation could be fueled with nonemissions energy sources. But with a contingency plan like that, the petrofuel industry will have even less inhibition in pumping emissions into the Greenhouse.
Any Greenhouse plan has to start by changing the system to reduce its emissivity. The best way to reduce the Greenhouse, and its unpredictable chaotic feedbacks, is to stop building it.
--
make install -not war
I have an even better idea. Why don't we use all of the extra CO2 in our atomosphere to make dry ice? Everyone knows that dry ice is way better than water ice at cooling things down, so it will be much better for cooling the planet down. We can even dump it in the ocean to replace the melting polar ice caps!
I was going to post some smart-ass/funny comment along the lines of...
go grab ebarge.com while its still available...
Then I checked and well... http://www.ebarge.com/
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
If "BIG IF" a housing/large apartment/buildings are required to install sabatier conversion unit and solar power unit? The energy input (+400C and some pressure) with CO2 and 4H2 intake (even at low efficiency), output would be methane, a source of energy which can heat up the house/building and excess production can feed into molten-carbonate fuel cell plants through existing gas pipe.
u elcells/fc_types.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_process
"Circle of life, Simba, Circle of life."
When the methane is collected and used where molten-carbonate fuel cells are used to further absorb CO2 and use methane as anode gas, it can be used to produce electricity at ~80% efficiency (at the most). Then the circle of life breaks for CO2 with energy conversion gain with less CO2 output as byproduct.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/f
Of course, there are problems with MCFC due to high temperature, but this can be easily overcome. I mean, it can't be harder than overcoming FUSION's crazy amount of heat.
Yeah... but I know... I could be talking about of my ass.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
According to a report on the projected annual costs of the Kyoto treaty to the United States, issued by the federal Energy Information Agency in October 1998, "The total cost to the economy can be estimated as the loss in actual GDP (the loss in potential GDP plus the macroeconomic adjustment cost) plus the purchase of international permits ... Total costs range from an annual average level for the period 2008 to 2012 of $77 billion to $338 billion 1992 dollars depending on the carbon reduction case and how funds are recycled back to the economy."
BTW, Kyoto is acknowledged even by its defenders as a mere regulatory icebreaker with little direct impact, intended to open a path for far harsher protocols to follow. A modern civilised economy is very energy-hungry, and strangling the main source of energy would brake the economy hard. That has real costs, both in money and in human suffering.
In other words, faced with those sorts of costs, $50bn starts to look like pocket change.
Just from an engineering perspective, surely you can see how a direct attack on the problem makes more sense? It's like the difference between dealing with a slow-dripping spigot that has flooded your floor by stopping the leak and letting the floor dry in its own time (Kyoto) versus mopping the mess up first (climate engineering).
I'll see your five year old national geographic fluff piece, and raise you a two year old government study.
Now, considering that fossil fuels contribute roughly 4-5 billion tons of C to the atmosphere annually, and we've got about 100 years of fossil fuels left... How in the hell is this not a perfect solution? Oh yeah, that's right... too many global warming chicken littles out there are going to have egg on their face if atmospheric C is reduced to pre-industrial levels and global temps are still rising thanks to the simple fact that the sun is getting hotter. We wouldn't want to actually test that "greenhouse gases cause global warming" theory, now would we? Better just stick to those computer models...
Oh no! I'm challenging global warming rhetoric with scientific studies! Damn!! There goes my Karma! *sniff* Goodbye sweet Karma <sarcasm />
Global warming looks just like y2k was for programmers - scary stories, inflated budjets. And noone ever apologised for all the hype. I bet in 100 years people won't hear the names of anti-GW proponents, and they'll all enjoy (posthumous) dignity they don't deserve.
This kind of large-scale
And on solar radiation increases:
Oh, and as far as "solar forcing" goes, you may wish to have a look at what RealClimate have to say. To sum up, there's very little good historical data on the topic, which makes it an easy copout for people seeking alternative explanations for warming.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)