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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.'"
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.
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.
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?
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.
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'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 />