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1,500-Ship Fleet Proposed To Fight Climate Change
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to UK and US researchers, it should be possible to fight the global warming effects associated with an increase of dioxide levels by using autonomous cloud-seeding ships to spray salt water into the air. This project would require the deployment of a worldwide fleet of 1,500 unmanned ships to cool the Earth even if the level of carbon dioxide doubled. These 300-tonne ships 'would be powered by the wind, but would not use conventional sails. Instead they would be fitted with a number of 20 m-high, 2.5 m-diameter cylinders known as Flettner rotors. The researchers estimate that such ships would cost between £1m and £2m each. This translates to a US$2.65 to 5.3 billion total cost for the ships only."
Two days of war?
Fleur de Sel
I saw this on the Discovery Channel. The rotor-sails look very interesting.
One question for any Chaos Theory fans: what are the long-term effects of creating large, man-made clouds over the ocean?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Where's the obligatory whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag?
I mean, come on, use your imagination: a autonomous robotic fleet of cloud spewers gone astray?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
And here I thought dropping an ice cube into the ocean was a really far fetched idea and nobody would take it seriously.
-- What did Spock find in Kirk's toilet? The captain's log.
A bad doctor treats symptoms without addressing the underlying ailment. With China and India (1/3 of the world's population), and other parts of the world booming, the release of greenhouse gasses is only going to accelerate. If we took this money and invested it into researching and implementing green alternatives to our current fossil-fuel infrastructure instead, more progress would be made in the long run.
"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." - Sir Issac Newton
I, for one, am curious about the effects of moving all this CO2 into the oceans. Surly this will not be without it's consequences. Just as moving this CO2 that was locked for millions of years underground out into the atmosphere has had its effects, so to will this.
Still, I applaud the effort to help solve the problem and this "solution" would, at the very least, buy us some time but it will come at a cost that has yet to be known (and I'm not talking the direct fiscal cost talked about here).
Pure genius. Take a system you don't really understand, but depend on for living, and drastically modify a variable to see what happens.
At least, after that, the farmers affected with drought, or torrential rains, or whatever, will be able to sue somebody.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_ship/
Jacques Cousteaus' ship the Calypso was the first ship of this style that I had known about.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
The GW money making machine is in full swing, ripping off as many taxpayers as possible. Great job, you con artists!
solving the problem once and for all.
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
It will be interesting to see if this idea gains more ground, and if there will be a general scientific consensus on this proposal. Personally, I wonder if this method could actually cause MORE problems. But I have absolutely no credentials and nothing to back this up with. So, what will the consensus be?
Am I the only one who assumed that these would be pirate ships?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So, the problem isn't global warming, but that our clouds aren't reflective enough? It's a chrome-plated bandaid.
Being as WATER VAPOR is the #1 greenhouse gas, I fail to see how SPRAYING WATER into the air would be helpful.
I believe we have found a new definition for Hubris......
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
And how will this deal with the rapidly depleting fossil fuel supplies?
This sends out the wrong message, that we can continue on unchanged.
You are crazy. This is a such a small amount of money, and could alleviate fallout from global warming. If it works, it would be money well-spent. It makes no sense to turn up you nose at this kind of technology as part of the solution to global warming.
I'm kind of fond of the resurrection of the lime idea, in part because it addresses at least 2 problems at once, though I don't know what the economics of it are in comparison to this. In addition to reducing CO2 overall, it also makes the sea more alkaline, which is good for sea life, in particular, coral. A lot of coral has been wiped out because of increased acidity in the ocean (due to, surprise, increased CO2 absorption).
Earth's climate system is self-adjusting and self-healing. Its the only way life could be possible for so long- if it wasn't it would be stuck in some extreme, like Venus.
While prone to saying this might mess things up with that system, I'm leaning more towards "this will overall do absolutely nothing except waste money".
1500 Ships spewing salt water into the sky. What could possibly go wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PBDL4DF4AI
We require more Vespene Gas.
God spoke to me.
Sometimes, only RTFA can help you.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
the US government gave a few hundred billion dollars to the upper class today, by buying out freddie and fannie ...
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I've got a better idea.
Lay pipelines from the ocean leading to the desert and spray saltwater over the desert & let nature do the rest of the work.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Apart from the fact that we would be seriously screwing around with a system we only partly understand, do we really think the whole world actually wants the climate we create ?
Answer: Of course not. Some other parts of the world will not like this change because it not only cools down the planet, it will also have all kind of other effects on the global climate.
Other nations will be compelled to counter our counter-measures and before you know it we have a "climate war" on our hands with even more devastating consequences for the global climate than doing nothing at all.
What if mother nature takes care about the CO2 emissions without us interfering?
One way or another, she will. But the kick in the balls is, we may not like how she takes care of it.
How exactly are you so sure the earth biosphere is 'self healing'? Seen from the Venusian point of view, earth is stuck in an extreme, not venus. But 'life' is not a person, so don't attribute reason, self-awareness and purpose to it. It just is, and it will most likely continue, wether we manage to extinct ourselves or not.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Before I could be convinced to vote for a project like that, it would be necessary to show me that carbon dioxide is, in fact, responsible for global warming.
Read the news, folks! Not only is it far from proven, there are other theories that are a lot more likely. And if THEY have any truth, then this would be a vast waste of money.
Not that the war isn't.
...the war will outlast two days.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I always said that global warming would not be a problem until the day industry could find a way to fight it and make money off the government to do so.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
What could definitely go wrong if we don't?
Because the world is going to have a surplus of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for decades to come one way or another, even under very aggressive carbon-dioxide emission reduction schemes.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Where will the ships get the salt water from?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
But say goodbye to the Caribbean Islands before you do.
Millions of tons of sand from the Sahara are carried across the Atlantic and deposited on the Caribbean Islands every year. Start seeding more then the normal amount of clouds in the Atlantic, and you risk blocking this sand transport mechanism.
If that happens, erosion will soon destroy those Islands.
Mind you, if these hurricanes continue, they'll cease to be habitable anyway, so it may be they're screwed whatever happens.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
There are some funny aspects to this design: Why would they choose flettner rotors over conventional windmills? I am pretty sure you can use windmill in the same way as an autogyro to provide propulsive force, the same as these magical rotors. The advantage would be that the rotation of the blades creates big G-forces, and thus pressure if you happened to run a waterpipe to the blade-tip. This pressure then could be used to atomise seawater into a large volume of air.
If there was some easy process to store the electrical energy from the windmills (like a giant battery, hydrogen is much too voluminous), one could let these ships loiter in windy regions harvesting energy instead of only spraying some saltwater in the air.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
The earth is already taking care of Carbon Dioxide levels on its own: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/09/050251&from=rss What we need to worry about is Carbon Monoxide. Why does everyone always get this so wrong???
Don't forget to add to your list... water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
Name: Mr. Anon E Mouse; SSN: 555-55-5555
The warm ocean temperatures of the tropical Atlantic make for a huge buildup of atmosphere-cooling hurricanes. I propose that we simply warm the oceans and and let already existing phenomena create ever-massive storms. They can lift and transport a huge amount of water. We'd have a quickly-cooled streak of weather that would barrel westward into the southeastern US - yearly!
I think this plan is great, and we simply need a way of warming ocean temperatures just a degree or two. Perhaps if we melted down one of the ice caps...
Actually that is really, really cheap compared to other methods. And other methods won't even work, because the politicians will never be able to agree upon quotas much less enforce them (India, China, Brazil). Their population is so indoctrinated by propaganda about the evil west that they would think global warming is a western invention to prevent them from attaining equal status.
But in such a complex system, where would you spray the water? I heard the climate is so vast and complex that there are even places where it gets colder because of climate change.
Please stop with he "let's not mess with nature route." We already are. Every time you do basically anything (turn on a PC, drive, brush your teeth) you are doing something "unnatural" and, in a tiny way, contributing to climate change. Also, this is not a solution, it's a cheap, elegantly simple stop-gap. Of course, we need to reduce emissions, but this will take decades. This type of system will t least temporarily reduce temperatures and it can be turned off if something goes awry.
I for one welcome our new cloud spewing global warming abatement overlords!
Not the U.S.S.A. That money is need to fund the Wars On Everybody.
P.S.: Vote For Flight Safety: Vote AGAINST John McCain
But it is also a bad doctor who treats the underlying cause without treating the symptoms if it will take a long time for the disease to go away and the symptoms are bothersome.
Only this is like treating baby's "symptom" of screaming it's head off due to teething and possible gum infection by rubbing some cocaine into kid's gums.
There sure is going to be some apparently beneficial effect, and once the kid stops teething and the infection subsides - it might even seem as perfectly clever thing to do in the future.
So much that some TV hack like say... Oprah... or Dr. Phil might promote it on national TV.
Which would lead the lower part of the IQ curve to jump on that "treatment" for nearly any kind of pain their kids yell about in the future.
And... just like pumping large quantities of salt water in the air - only years later would we see the full consequences of such "treatment".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This is insanity.
I agree. It's a nice thought experiment, but nobody is going to do this unless we were really, really desperate to change our climate. I hope we don't see this implemented, because it would probably mean that we'd have gotten in trouble of Hollywood-esque proportions.
surely that would kill plants and create another disaster in failing crops...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Let's tell the politicians they'll be able to buy their way out of it .... using untried methods which could easily make things worse, not better.
Which part of that previous sentence to you think a politician will hear? Which part will be blocked out?
No sig today...
A chaotic system can't be completely controlled forever, but parts of it can be controlled for a while. Nonlinear dynamic systems are everywhere. Controlling small aspects of these systems is the essence of technologically driven change. We'll get a new problem after the ships are deployed, but unintended consequences have been occurring all along with every change we make. Our descendants will do what every generation has done before them, take the planet as they receive it and carve out the best life they can for themselves. It's not up to us to solve their problems for them, but rather to give them good tools and knowledge to fight for themselves.
Contrary to common belief, the greenhouse effect may have more to do with water in our atmosphere than gases such as carbon dioxide http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/17402
I can't believe that SlashDot people are hating on this idea. ROBOT FRAKIN SHIPS THAT MAKE CLOUDS! A fleet of em' Screw the environment, we need these things because it is uber cool. Period.
So what happens when they find out that these automatic water sprayers suck up an inordinate number of endangered West Java Sea Trouser Trout? I'll pledge $50 for the pay-per-view featuring the Greenies vs the Global Warming Freaks.
You are thinking of Alcyone. A turbosail ship.
Flettner's rotor ship was quite similar to that.
Only thing is... neither ship was powered by these "tube sails" alone.
Both Alcyone's and Buckau (renamed later to Baden Baden) used some other engine to POWER THE SAIL.
So, it does not go on windpower alone.
Alcyone was supposedly using about 30% less fuel then conventionally propelled ship of that size... but that is it.
And Flettner's Buckau was reported as having "less efficient than conventional engines".
My guess is that whoever is planing on building this "cloud seeder" fleet is probably thinking of combining rotor sails with solar and gasoline/diesel powered engines.
Which would probably run on gas/diesel most of the time (how much sun are you getting when you are in business of making cloud cover?) - except when the crew is giving interviews to the press.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Let's make a pile of pollution creating these ships to seed the "clouds" to make it rain, and thus dissipate the clouds and let in more sunlight. Good plan.
Was this proposed by a ship builder who sees his business diminishing if there is no more sea war?
This is all true but just think of the false economy it would create. Just thing of the money that could be made.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Lets face it guys, it is highly unlikely that our dependence on fossil fuels will be reduced anytime soon. What we can do instead is build a big ass exhaust system that will pump the CO2 outside the earths atmosphere and to another planet's orbit. The money invested in such system will be recouped from the factories that will connect to it. Of course all this piping in the atmosphere might interfere with flight navigation but there are a number of proposed solutions to this obstacle.
How exactly did we come up with 2.65 million USD from £1m? The current exchange rate is 1GBP = 1.77USD -- and even during the high in 2007, this was only about 2.10USD. What am I missing?
Cause the sun is still in the 'off' position, putting us into a little ice age. One of those 'inconvenient facts' that the 'carbon trading' profiteers don't want you to know about. And if you don't get outside much, you probably aren't aware of the cooling.
Conventional "windmill" generators need to be mounted on a mast, and need to be pointed into the wind. They're more "generator" than "propulsion system," which is what a Flettner Rotor was designed for. I think this vehicle design is more "futuristic concept" than practical application. A Flettner Rotor generates a force perpendicular to the incident wind compliments of the Magnus Effect. Since the rotor is a vertical cylinder, you don't need to "point" it into the wind. You will, however, need a keel of some sort to push against (like all other sailing ships.)
The main problem I see is that they intend to turn the rotor using the incident wind. That'll cause all sorts of localized turbulence, and require rather large "buckets" to catch the wind. One thing wind-power proponents consistently (conveniently?) neglect is that the power available from the wind is a function of wind velocity AND intercepted area. Discovery Channel recently ran an episode of their Planet Earth series with a guy in Virginia trying to float wind-harvesting balloons. Aside from the guy apparently having a really poor grasp of aerodynamics, he was completely dumbfounded that his big airship wouldn't rotate in a 10mph wind. They were ecstatic at generating 20W in a 12mph wind, barely turning. The problem involves the teeny tiny rotor vanes on the balloon. They don't intercept enough wind area to generate substantial power, much less overcome the fundamental drag created by the airship frame.
The Flettner Rotor is a propulsion device. Spin the rotor with a motor, and generate thrust by passing wind over it. If you want to harvest power from the wind, you'd be better off with something that sweeps out a large area. Have a look at a Darrieus Turbine or some of the other Vertical Axis Wind Turbines.
Why do you want people to starve? Is it because they are in a different country and a different color?
H2O is a greenhouse gas as well.
Doesn't anyone else find it foolish of our culture to think that, while we cannot accurately predict the weather 100% of the time, we still think we have the power to bend it to our will?
Farmers in New Zealand have been doing that for almost 100 years. They earn more from subsidies and "compensation" than they do from growing stuff. They are the wealthy Landed Gentry, and have been for a long time.
Why take precautions (and do work) to protect farm animals from forecast droughts, floods, snowstorms, etc, when the compensation from governments afraid of the vocal farming community is higher than the actual value of the animals and crops lost?
A stupid doctor treats the wrong symptoms. Doesn't anyone else know that we are in a global cooling phase?
Doesn't anyone read history? The medieval warming period was a time of plenty. The little ice age was a time of death and starvation: the black death and the Irish potato famine.
Global warming is a good idea. Global cooling is just asking for death and war on a scale not seen in a long time.
... guarded by frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their frickin' heads!
Read up on how lime is produced. It's problematic -- one hint is how much heat is required to produce (and therefore fuel of some sort to produce the heat), let alone the energy requirements for digging up the raw materials and transporting to processing facilities, etc etc. It's definitely *not* carbon-neutral.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
This will take decades to implement and much like solar power it will stop true solutions.
... just wait a little more ... say 20 years
Voice of reason: We already have zero emissions abundant energy with minuscule amounts of pollutants it is called Nuclear energy.
Greenie: Now, let's go for Solar/Wind/Shove carbon under the earth/Fusion. All we have to do is burn money and effort and time making them work
Climate change is inevitable.
The extinction of humanity from the universe is inevitable.
Why must we struggle against nature and the universe?
What made you think that the Earth's climate was going to remain static forever?
They calculate that they can reflect 3.7 Wm-2 back into space via this Twomey effect. I have no grounds to doubt that, but would it be better to try to harness that energy thus cooling the oceans and generating energy at the same time?
I think solutions that address more than one problem are better than such one sided approaches.
Floating superstructures / solar farms along the equator could generate massive amounts of electricity and utuilize the surface of the ocean to everyone's net benefit.
--
Um, Vieques at least (and the big island of Puerto Rico proper) has an awful lot of nice, solid bedrock forming the bulk of the landmass. I don't think sand transported from the Sahara has much of anything to do with Vieques geology.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
We also don't know what salty clouds will do to the world. All the clouds at the moment have only fresh water. What would happen if the clouds (and rain) became salty? Will all the world's farmland be poisoned slowly?
Almost as great as the one during the last global cooling panic, where suggestions were made to cover the ice caps with black soot to make them absorb sunlight and melt.
Proof positive that global climatologists are never ever wrong.
would be if she does not like how we try to take care of it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
this reminds me of a daily WTF called "The complicators gloves". utterly insane complication of a situation.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
What's a troll? Saying this is a wacko idea that will never fly, or saying that this is typical /. type news? Is that wrong? Anyone?
This is yet another colossal waste of money that will render zero solutions and contributes nothing but background noise along with a host of other quack solutions that hides other more practical and legitimate solutions.
And, this seems to be the status quo of "news" that tickles /. fancy while more concrete news is ignored. Reminds me of that latest Micro$oft commercial - absolutely pointless.
...I actually RTFA. And I still think it's ridiculous.
Each of these ships weighs 300 tonnes (which I presume is close enough to a ton for engineering), or 600,000lbs. You're telling me you can build a ship for $5 a pound? I call bullshit. Steel is one of the least expensive materials, and raw steel is running close to $1/lb delivered, with absolutely zero fabrication, zero assembly, zero testing, zero commissioning, and zero operation. There's no way you can build a durable, seagoing ship for $5/lb.
Second...what powers these things? Oh, sure they use rotating sails. Bullshit. That was scrapped long ago. It has all the drawbacks of powered propulsion (you have to spin them with motors) and all the drawbacks of sails (if there is no wind, you have to propulsion). Every first year aero engineering student learns about these things.
No, even if the concept works (which is, imho, questionable), I predict it will cost at least an order of magnitude greater than planned. Why not spend the money to advance solar collection techniques and battery/storage technology to avoid both the CO2 problem with fossil fuels, and the inherent limits to fossil fuel usage?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The next step is to demand that we make 1000 times this number of ships.
No, I agree. Plus, the first paragraph of this section indicates that a number of other Caribbean islands might indeed be mostly sand.
On a side note, I've also heard / read that the lushness of the Amazon is supported to some extent by mineral nutrients blown over from the Sahara. A quick Google search seems to find a number of relevant links.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
the global warming effects associated with an increase of dioxide levels by
Since when has global warming been associated with breathable oxygen?
Have we tried all feasible methods already? I don't see any solar panels or wind mills in my neighborhood. OK, go ahead, produce billions of kilowatts of energy to melt steel to make into giant boats that will roam all the oceans to do some ineffective mumbo-jumbo. That way at least it'll be over quickly. Couldn't stand another few millenia with you guys. Sheesh.
But the solution to the CO2/Global Warming problem is not a superficial band-aid solution such as this but changing our way of thinking entirely.
We need to get off our fossil fuel energy addiction which is the cause of the problem and onto new technologies we have available to us right now. Solar, wind, hydro, wave, bio-fuels, hydrogen fuel cell and hydrogen itself.
-----
RNC = Racists Nazis Criminals
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Wow, another insane idea from the GW peanut gallery.
But what if it changes global weather patterns in a nasty way? It would be better if we could fix the temperatures without affecting global cloud cover. In theory it could make the Sahara green again while turning the US into another Sahara.
IMO, the only valid claim made by global warming skeptics is that we really don't know for certain what will happen globally when something forces a significant change in our atmosphere, the ocean, etc. From what I've read, our weather modeling programs are maintained mostly by "reaction". The scientists can't experiment globally with controls and variables to make sure their equations are perfect, so they have to guess based on past data. When the data doesn't match the model, they try to fudge it by tweaking the equations and "magic constants" they've come up with, which would mostly be meaningless if conditions in the atmosphere changed.
Has anyone given any thought to what will happen if humans manage to demonstrably change the climate? Every perturbation or hiccup in weather would be attributed to the change. Drought in Darfur? Typhoon in Tijuana? Hurricane in Hueneme? Flood in ... well, you get the idea. The screams of "It's YOUR fault!" and "I'm sueing!" would fill the air. As soon as we're successful, the bitchfest, lobbying for reparations, and lawsuits start. And never end.
The failure of the environmental movement is that is continues to tie economic and "social justice" issues with the *fact* that our planet is warming and *the fact* that the ice caps are melting and the sea is going to rise.
Those are *facts provent by science*. Quite frankly, I dont care who is at fault for the globe heating up and the sea rising. I *do* care if my city is going to be under 20 feed of water a hundred years from now.
*It DOES NOT MATTER WHO IS AT FAULT FOR GLOBAL WARMING* what matters is *GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL*. So thank you, activist environmentalists for raising awareness, but dammit... at this point it doesn't matter if volcanoes or SUVs are what is raising the global temperature. The fact is that it is happening and the question is, should we do something to save our cities. Global warming is a threat to national security, and *that* is something that should be talked about, not blaming SUV's or coal factories.
There's an old aphorism that says something about making assumptions...
I actually clicked through your link, but my browser only pulled up the "Global Warming Stopped By Adding Lime To Sea" article thread (which I read through when it first showed up), but the browser view failed to jump to any specific comment. Perhaps your link wasn't correct?
If you intended simply to link through to the article, a number of people in that thread pointed out notable flaws with the suggestions of TFA. Solar would be the only possible way of heating lime kilns in a carbon-neutral manner, but any non-solar lime kiln would involve burning something, which increases CO2 emissions. Besides which, any lime production process at all will release CO2 anyway as it's driven out of the base material (generally limestone) during calcination. Reversing the calcination process, which is what would happen with the lime added to seawater, would generally only suck up as much CO2 as was originally driven out of the raw limestone to begin with. Which leaves us with a very labor- and energy-intensive process to create the lime and cart it out into the ocean, which in the best possible scenario would end with no loss or gain in CO2 levels. Kinda pointless, unfortunately...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
There is no free lunch.
Manufacturing 1500, 300 ton ships will generate more pollution than the ships can remove in their lifetime. That is alot of steel, coal, oil(lubricants), and electronics, at the very least.
You guys don't trust your expert meteorologist's weather over the next several days. Please stop trusting your politicians about weather over the next several decades.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
yeah... the whole time I was reading the article, I was thinking 'this isn't an environmentalist's dream... it's a boatbuilder's dream'
Pure genius. Take a system you don't really understand, but depend on for living, and drastically modify a variable to see what happens.
At least, after that, the farmers affected with drought, or torrential rains, or whatever, will be able to sue somebody.
My first thought was what happens when all that salt rains down on our farm lands. But I'm sure they've thought of that and considered all the ramifications :)
-[d]-
So we lose Florida and other low sitting coastal areas. The equatorial regions get worse. But suddenly canada and asia are loaded with HUGE amounts of brand new arable land.
Is it possible that global warming could be a POSITIVE change? Doesn't the global warming scare really just come down to "WE FEAR CHANGE"?
Paramount Pictures has levied a lawsuit against these researchers, citing prior art.
My first impression of this thought is "OK, somebody wants to waste other people's money".
Typically I try to have an outlook that any sort of government spending is mainly harmless... especially if it is out right corruption and embezzlement. Typical pork barrel type projects are just methods of wealth transfer to somebody better connected politically, even if along the way some sort of "public good" is created that can prove beneficial. At the very least it keeps the government busy gazing at its own naval instead of trying to screw up my own life with some sort of oppressive program.
Unfortunately, this proposal fits more into the worst possible nightmare for those who hate big government: A big project that will not only transfer a huge amount of wealth, but that in the long run may do far more harm than good. There is absolutely no reason at all to believe that those who are proposing this sort of concept can honestly suggest that they understand the global climatological systems to a level to understand what exactly this sort of proposal to modify the weather might actually do.... provided they actually succeed and can influence global temperatures.
My only hope with something like this is that the contractor will churn up a bunch of activity and run massively over budget, and eventually the whole thing will get dropped like a NASA manned launch vehicle.
As long as none of these ships actually make it out to sea, I won't mind. But the second it starts to actually happen is when I might just have to get into action, politically or otherwise.
Even assuming the most wild predictions do come true, that it does start to influence and change the climate in a positive manner (who gets to decide that again?), there will still be maintenance of these ships and continued funding for this project once it is up and going. Dare I suggest that ships in the sea may sink? What about "radical right-wing elements" going along and deliberately blowing these things up? How about ship-builders themselves paying to have these vessels sunk... perhaps covertly? Or planned obsolescence by ship builders that will happen faster than they can be built?
Even more important, what is going to be the "hook" to keep political support for continuing this project regardless of the long-term consequences? That was something decidedly missing from the Apollo project, and that had support from both conservative and liberal parts of the American political landscape. This is a political hot potato that I don't see will happen at least on a completed level of operation, although I have no doubt that money will be spent on something like this in some form or another and simply be a waste of resources and money.
And all of this will happen because of the "environmental movement"... what irony.
From somebody that is thought of as an authority on weather.
Dr. William Gray has been recognized as one of the world's leading climatology experts, best know for his annual Tropical Storm Forecast where he predicts tropical storms, named storms, typhoons, hurricanes, and intense hurricanes.
According to Dr. Gray, "It is is not possible for a doubling of anthropogenic greenhouse gases by the late 21st century to cause global warming as much as 2-5oC as indicated by most of the Global Circulation Models (GCMs). These numerical models are compromised by two basic flaws: 1) the assumption that an increased hydrologic cycle leads to large increased upper-level water vapor and reduced long wave radiation to space - the opposite occurs and, 2) inability of the GCMs to realistically simulate changes in the globe's deep ocean circulations, which, in the authors view, is the primary driver of the global temperature change of the last few centuries. More analysis will, I believe, show that the recently proposed run away anthropogenic global warming scenarios have grossly overestimated the warming threat. Observed global temperature increases during the last 30 and 100 years have been largely a result of deep ocean global circulation changes resulting from global salinity variations. Doubling of atmospheric CO2 will likely cause only modest global warming (~0.5oC) and such small warming may be more beneficial to humankind than harmful."
Seriously, do not post any more articles from this walking bag of plagiarism. Post the original article and write a new summary please editors.
I wonder if each ship would be able to cancel out its own carbon emissions from Burned Fuel, and of course multiply that by 1500 ships.
Wow. Not only could you not be bothered to Read The Fucking article... you couldn't even be bothered to Read The Fucking Summary.
RTFA, they're wind powered. Although I can forsee a lot of people commandeering, or riding upon those ships for their own use. What an amazing change to the global economy that will present!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
No. Really. Please stop posting until your intellect develops more.
The white fluffy clouds will reflect the short wavelength visible light into space instead of allowing it to warm the Earth and be emitted as long wavelength IR. I'm still somewhat skeptical about AGW but what the scientists are talking about is quite a bit more plausible, then what the Global Warming as religion morons are able to understand or explain; they really do their cause a disservice with their incoherent rantings and ravings.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Go look up the co2 ppm levels from the dinosaur era(s).
I won't give you a link (google your own) or you'll dismiss it as biased but levels were roughly 20x higher than today.
Have fun with your religion, believe anything you want, just don't force your unscientific beliefs down other's throats, please.
Thanks.
Cooling the earth for a few billion dollars is chickenfeed. What if some large country (us, China, India, Brazil, just for example) decides that they'd like a little extra cooling? Too bad for Canada, eh? If this (or any similar "cheap" cooling technology) works and is deployed, it will make for some interesting negotiations.
CO2 concentrations taken from ice cores and elsewhere DO show a correlation between CO2 and temperature, much as shown in the famous graph that superimposed the two in Gore's famous "Inconvenient Truth" movie.
/. a few weeks ago. I do not feel like finding them again. But you can search the archives and find the links I posted here, or find them yourself on Google... neither should be difficult.
But here is an inconvenient truth he did not tell you: in that correlation, the higher CO2 concentrations followed the temperature rises by about 300 years!
THEIR OWN DATA indicates that rising CO2 is a symptom of higher temperatures, NOT a cause! How is that for something that is "inconvenient" for the CO2 theory?
Now... I promised you another theory, and here it is: Not only is sunspot activity even more strongly correlated to temperature than CO2, there is NO delay of 100s of years, AND there is no question of cause-and-effect, because higher temperatures on earth sure as hell are not affecting sunspots!
(Just so you are aware, the correlation is a negative one: more sunspot activity means cooler weather.)
Look it up! It's true! You can find all the supporting papers and evidence in a couple of moments using Google.
I posted a bunch of relevant links here on
would we get a heroine to inspire such a fleet? She would have to be 50% more beautiful than Helen of Troy...
This is not "fringe" science. Claiming that it is only shows that you do not know the subject well.
/. You can go find them if you want, it should not be difficult. Or you can find them yourself on the Internet using Google or some other search engine, in about 10 seconds.
I posted a whole bunch of links here in the last big discussion of global warming on
The NEWS might still be claiming that CO2 is the most likely culprit, but scientists -- even the majority of scientists -- are not. The last guy who made the claim you just did to me shut right the fuck up once he saw the evidence I posted. Again, you can prove it to yourself quite easily. Just go find the links I posted before. Or look it up on Google. Sheesh, even the UN's IPCC committee has retracted their former stance on CO2! You are behind the times.
How about we just plant more trees? They would capture the carbon dioxide. It's much cheaper than building these ships that could be stolen by pirates. The wood could be harvested and put at the bottom of a lake or something.
http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/can-six-tankers
for the slightly cheaper approach with fewer ships.
(and just as far fetched)
Thank you for the additional link, very interesting stuff, if a bit perplexing how to pull it off, or what the impact on ocean chemistry might be. Going back through the materials for my previous reply got me curious again, and I did some more digging, and went through to the calcium bicarbonate article on Wikipedia; this Cquestrate site is clearly working from the same idea, that calcium oxide in solution will actually become calcium bicarbonate instead of just calcium carbonate (limestone), ionically attracting an additional carbonate and thereby sucking up more carbon dioxide than is possible outside of solution.
CaO(calcium oxide) + 2(H20) >> Ca(OH)2(calcium hydroxide) + H2O
Ca(OH)2 + H2O + 2(CO2) >> Ca(HCO3)2(calcium bicarbonate) + H2O
Oh yeah, *aqueous*. (slaps forehead)
So provided that solar furnaces or some similar solar approach is used to calcinate the limestone, the missing piece of the logistics puzzle is finding a carbon-neutral means of distributing the lime in the oceans. Perhaps as solar power technology improves, either fuel-cell or electric vehicles and equipment could be used for extraction and transportation.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If we'd just declassify the sequin mines outside Las Vegas (Area 51) and then
grind the stuff up into micro-glitter before adding it to all oil and coal we're
burning, we'd make the earth look from space like a giant disco ball, reflecting
an enormous quantity of solar radiation back into space.
Keep our Solar System beautiful!
Hide all sigs: Click HELP+Prefs (top), VIEWING (last on right), DISABLE SIGS (3rd on left) and SAVE (hidden at bottom).
It will be awesome when the ship navigates over the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Your first argument is a flawed one I have encountered before. Whatever the cause of higher temperatures was in the past, it does not mean that the cause of today's higher temperatures is not carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Everyone agrees that the cause of increased carbon dioxide in today's atmosphere is human burning of fossil fuels and forests, and everyone agrees that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will raise temperatures, because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.
Also, in the past, the Earth's temperature depended most on small forcings such as solar output and changes in the Earth's orbit. Today, the increased carbon dioxide causes a larger forcing, so much so that we will not have another ice age with so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, unless perhaps volcanoes, nuclear war, or a comet or asteroid collision kicks up so much particulate matter that too much sun gets blocked.
I don't see any papers making the claims that you're referring to. I see some blog posts. You can look up the results of Peter Norvig's experiment to see the claims of scientific papers, which do not disagree that global warming is due to carbon dioxide.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Check out the nice video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg7J8P-uXqM&feature=related
...you are wrong.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Are you nuts?! You can't put them out there without people on them - you know what's going to happen - some pirates and terrorists are going to hijack them and then we have to call Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis and Matt Damon (assuming he can remember where he parked the rowboat) - baaaaaaad idea.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I think Farnsworth came up with this in Futurama
but settled on the giant parabolic mirror to reflect the sunlight away from the earth until it got
hit by that pesky meteor that turned the mirror
towards the earth as a death dealing heat ray.
I think Nixon's head had the best idea to save us
from global warming, a big
robot party and then kill all the robots.
By the hair on Agnew's headless body, what other
goofball ideas will they think of next?
or spread the smog?
tag asseenontv
Uhm... good! Am I to take it you are pro-ice age? I'd rather have sea level rise a few dozen feet than half a half mile slab of ice come rolling through town.
Shooting clouds of salt water 1km into the air from 1500 ships worldwide sounds potentially problematic for airlines.
What about the logistical nightmare of maintaining 1500 automated unmanned ships whilst ensuring none of them are captured and used for "less than savoury" means? The idea may be based on good intentions but leave it to someone to turn the idea into something for their own agenda. Toxic clouds on demand anyone?
Also of note. Weren't the Chinese shunned by many for altering weather patterns for the Olympics with cloud-seeding guns? That was just a localised area for two weeks! Now someone wants to develop a global climate alterating system and there are people okay with that?
So (summarizing article) water vapor as part of a cloud is OK, because the greenhouse effect of the water vapor is counteracted by the albedo of the cloud?
More research is needed. Wider-scale experiments to see if the predicted and unpredicted effects are OK.
BTW, if you want to do something about the Earth's albedo today, you can always order a T-shirt.... or a mouse pad ---- 50 million mousepads should just about cover Texas.
(This is an old Freeman Dyson joke)
http://www.cafepress.com/albedoproject
Rational people like Bjorn Lomborg have done the math and concluded that the money that would be spent reducing carbon dioxide emissions would be better spent elsewhere.
[...]But I have absolutely no credentials and nothing to back this up with.[...]
Good.
That puts you on equal footing with the rest of the world, whether we'd like to believe it or not.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Just kill off 6.4 billion of the existing 6.8 billion population. That should do the trick. Oh, that's right, that's what the greenies really want. Of course, they are in the surviving population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_ship
They use rotating pillars as sails. You still need energy to make the pillars rotate.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Sure, it's wind power to spray the water but I assure you that The engines for propulsion will use fuel
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
it was just invented at the time when the industries who were resisting global warming measures had failed to make anyone believe 'solar cycle' bullshit.
Read radical news here
Who's going to pay for all of this?
You don't need ships, It'd be more cost effective to put immobile or floating pump stations across the ocean and let the currents do the work. The bigger problem is what's going to power the pumps. Lets not even get in to the ramifications of artificial weather.
Did I ask who's going to pay for all of this?
Everybody knows that it's more effective to put a giant shade between us and the sun. All we have to do is pump our garbage in to space and vola free sun shade! Or blow up the moon for the same effect.
sorry, i don't understand but... yes the ship itself sounds like polluting-free. but wouldn't the process of building the materials be pollutin.... oh wait... i am guessing that it'd be outsourced to CHINA. nevermind.
I say we just load up the ships with pirates. Should have roughly the same effect.
I mean, look at this chart!
Warning, knife is sharp. Please keep out of children.
but I don't own or drive a car and I run my house on 100% solar because I don't really want to find out.
To be fair, I think this is probably just part of a major brainstorming session on how to solve our problems with climate change.
Personlly I think we now have little alternative but to endure the changes and try to adjust; we might save the situation IF there had been the polical will to make the sacrifices necessary, and IF everybody in the world genuinely saw the need. But we don't. However, it still makes sense to get rid of burning fossil fuels and wasting resources that cannot be replaced - we will need that skill. And it still makes sense to put an effort into saving bio-diversity everywhere on the planet, because we will need every bit of it that we can save.
But this idea - like the ideas with the space mirrors and spreading particles in the atmospere - is simply stupid. It's like paying off a debt with a loan - it isn't necessarily a bad idea, but before you engage in that, you want to be absolutely sure that it doesn't leave you worse off. I can see a lot of problems with this scheme without even having thought about it: we are spraying salt water up in the air - where is that salt going to end up? Or rather, how big a part of it will end up on land, where it could potentially be a problem?
And how many sea creatures - fish, jelly fish, dolphins etc - will this scheme kill by shredding them and blasting the up in the atmosphere? If we implement this, we will want it to have significant impact - but then the unintended side effect will most likely also be significant. As far as I can see, we can probably adjust somewhat to the worst of global warming, simply by not living beyond our means.
If you think about it, a little bit of money, and Bill Gates would be the curer for Global Warming. Or any company wishing to do a little PR enhancement. Seriously though, this is nothing compared to what the U.S. (not even the world) could spend to "fix" the problem. That is to say this would fix it completely.
Anything and Everything about the Net
The argument is not flawed. Granted that it does not prove that CO2 does not cause warming. But it DOES show that the majority of the so-called "evidence" for CO2-based warming that has been shoved in your face by so many sources so far is, in fact flawed. That was the point.
/. the last time this subject was brought up, then I guess you are just too lazy to learn the truth. You get your "science" from the daily news, huh? Do you expect the papers that support views that do not agree with "NBC Nightly News" to magically drop into your mailbox? No? Then you must understand that you are not being fed the truth... you have to go find it.
And if you had bothered to look up the links I posted in the last big discussion here re: global warming, you would know that your claim that "everybody agrees" is simply false. It is not even an exaggeration... it is simply false.
Your assertion that temperature was based on "small forcings" has no scientific basis. In fact, sunspot activity has a STRONGER CORRELATION to temperature than CO2 ever did, without the confounding factors of several-hundred-year delays. There is no possible cause-and-effect confusion there, as there has been with CO2.
If you can't bring yourself to bother to look up the links I posted here on
In this case, it is pretty easy. Google will point you to some real science. It only takes about 10 seconds. Or just look up the links I posted last time, and actually read them.
... power the Flettner rotors from a wind turbine?
The rotors depend on a nonzero wind velocity to work at all, so the wind will be present when the rotor is in use. ... just need to work out details....)
A windpower system might also be useful to provide pumping power for the sprayer system ( hmmm... spray nozzels on the tips of fast moving rotor blades; rotor powers pump to pressurize nozzels... when wind is blowing, windpower system IS sprayer system
Excellent point; one that I have brought up myself before. Global temperature, within recorded history, has been both warmer and cooler than it is now, for extended periods (more than 100 years). The preponderance of the evidence (actually, the only real evidence) indicates that the warmer periods were also wetter and more fertile, with LESS desert rather than more, and more habitable land area, rather than less.
... that modders would mark this "troll" when it had already generated a good amount of serious discussion. Just goes to show... ah, heck. All about modding has been said already. There should be a solution somewhere, however.
"No. Really. Please stop posting until your intellect develops more."
Do you know how childish this makes you sound?
Rotating pillars of salt
girl:
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
in antarctica, inland ice is increasing, not decreasing, its still we below zero, close to mars temps or lower. Its not going to melt unless the earth axis changes. Thats another possibility but not caused by man.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/05/27/antarctic-ice-a-global-warming-snow-job/
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Wind -> Electricity -> Propulsion + Spray
Diagram understandable?
- These characters were randomly selected.
Global warming is a hoax. For the past few months, we even have Global Cooling. The Solar Cycle Theory ain't exactly wrong either. The coincidence are quite strong. The solar minimum started on January and the number of sunspots until now is still very low, which coincides very well with the drop of temperature since the beginning of the year. Even the previous warming coincides with high activity in the Sun.
An increase of 0.01% in CO2 is never a problem. Even if we have 0.1% C02, temperatures won't change much. The green house theory only work if only we have significant amount of C02, which is something like 10% or more. Temperature of the Earth had always been chaotic and will continue to be so regardless of CO2. The experiment can be done by any lay person with enough initiative.
Renewable energy isn't doing much either. We have been hearing people and government pouring money into the research for at least a decade and we seen very little improvements (it took less than a decade to develop nuclear).
The economic aspects doesn't even end there, the solar rooftops for example took more energy (in terms of electricity) to manufacture (equates in CO2) compared with the energy (electricity) it could potentially saved given in an ideal situation. The installation cost would only redeem its value after 200 years of electricity saving.
The ships idea is equally stupid too... Using wave energy to pump water and windmill to spray it in the air, makes it a suspect for violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Dreams will always be a dream like always.
We haven't even start to calculate the amount of energy (equals CO2) it would require to produce that armada of ships and the amount of CO2 it would trap....
To cut the amount of CO2 effectively with the rising world population, dissolving all means of transportation just wouldn't cut it anymore. We have to massacre all farm animals, stop eating meat, destroy all rice+wheat fields and even impose a quota on the amount of breath you can take per minute. Otherwise sending some nukes to India or China will also achieve similar result although temporary warming is expected.
To summarise it, i would like to inform the general populace that global warming is a hoax created by advertising company to rip off money from your wallet. Just observe how money is cycled in eco-organizations, most will actually be used for "educational" purpose, which is another term for advertisement. The few left are used by club members activity (or recreation), organizing protest and hiring lawyers. Sometime they will spend it in some pet research that never produce anything and even if it does, it will have no significant impact. Most major research still came from the government that rips the general taxpayers. Greenpeace is a good start for those who would like to investigate the practices of this organizations.
If not, then you won't like the high carbon atmosphere.
If you don't care about human life as long as some life is there, then kill yourself and let the plants grow.
If I read this right, the salt particles that are spewed into the clouds remain there until it rains...
Surely these guys must know that salt is a herbicide...
No water in the mid-continental US?
When did the Missouri and Iowa Rivers dry up? ;)
[Looks out window, nope Ol' Misery still there]
For you're information water runs down hill, that includes the Mississippi, the Missouri, and all the water that melts from the Rocky Mountains, not to mention all the water that comes up from the Gulf as rain. You must be thinking of the area in the Western Continental US between the Rockies and the Sierras. Yon know on the *other* side of the Continental Divide.
Of course, you're right that the idea of putting in canals from the polar region to the US won't work.
For one thing, how will we be able to separate the melting freshwater polar cap from the underlying saltwater ocean. The canal idea almost sounds like a troll.
Funny how the venus atmosphere at 40km up where it is at 1PSI, is about the same temp as earth 25c.
Besides... more c02 means plants grow bloody faster. Remove all c02 and they die. We're talking about as much c02 as there is ants on your ass.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
as its quite hot under the crust, we have more insulation now.
How did the crust grow? Part volcanism, but dust/rocks falling from the sky... 1mm per 10years does add up doesnt it. And also part due to plants/animal waste mixing with soil.
Theres always lots of factors, but wouldnt you have to say that earth is slowly cooling over time? It cannot stay hot for ever really.
c02 by itself will not make 230c temps.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Lets just hope Greenpeace doesn't read this the wrong way...
Some of the evidence that has been used to support anthropogenic global warming is flawed. That does not mean all evidence for global warming is gone. In fact, the best evidence is still there. Therefore, your claim that this shows that other theories are more likely to explain global warming is flawed.
Not everyone agrees that most of the global warming has been due to carbon dioxide. But everyone (and I'm talking about scientists, not deniers who completely contradict every graph of global temperatures) agree that temperatures are rising. Everyone agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and all things equal, the more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the warmer it will get. At least I've never seen even a denier try to deny that basic fact.
I get my science directly from the scientists. I still have yet to see one who doubts anthropogenic global warming. I have done searches on Google. Perhaps you could point us to those links again, because we cannot find them.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It is kind of pointless to argue with me unless you are willing to go look at the evidence I have already presented. Until you make the effort, I am done with this conversation.
My mistake. You said "global warming". I thought you were referring specifically to the CO2-based model. I do not dispute that the globe is warming. That would be silly. My argument is against the bad science behind the CO2-based warming model.
We just spent a minimum of $25 billion bailing out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. What's another few billion dollars to help save the planet?
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
This fleet of climate changing ships could work much faster if we equipt them with powerful engines instead of whimpy little vertical sails!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Allright this proposal requires about $3 BLN in funding, DO IT. I'd be willing to pay that not to hear people just bitching to ME about this.
I've always been sceptical about this stuff (I suspected a rebound system and felt that humans didn't have the ability to make the effects climate change warranted) and I'm slowly coming around on the science but the solutions... MY GOD has everyone lost their fking MIND?!
What an excuse to act holier than thou, just STFU science is gonna solve this and all you enviro whiners are just wasting our time.
If you had your way the LHC would go down, then mainframes, then the PC and then if we still weren't in their glorious environmental utopia they'd take our pencils.
Yes, the West is a giant corrupt ball of hedonism, but it's also enabling the world with new technology every day so STFU suck up the feudalism, agrarian, agriculture, manufacturing, IP model of civilization upgrade and stop biting ankles. It's unbecoming, and you'd be better off rubbing the Wests nose in things it does that are hypocritical, unfair, or just plain stupid. There's definitely enough of those out in the open without manufacturing silly ones.
War on weather? Nice move.
Whether or not we would recreate the past is beside the point. ... it's really beside what the atmosphere's been like some million years ago and what algae or bacteria might have enjoyed it. They were not even close to human physiology.
Sure, "life" could exist in almost any conditions that could develop on earth, but that doesnt neccessarily mean it would be comfortable or even inhabitable by HUMAN life.
I dont give a crap what species go extinct or what new ones come up, except for how dangerous or beneficial they are to humans, and if the earth heats up significantly, we'll probably be looking at a lot of parasites and terminal diseases, plus the temperatures themselves might push human life to the limit and beyond.
So
So if humans were stupid enough to f*ck up the planet, who's to say that humans are smart enough to fix it? How do we know we're not going to f*ck it up even more?
While the rest of you go on about what these ships cargo may or may not do, did any one of you think about the technology that could keep these ships up in the air all the time with a cargo as heavy as water could also be used as a platform for communications that usually sit on towers and satellites?
If so, this could be HUGE and solve the problem of coverage between sats, with their RTT and needing to track them outside of geo orbit, and towers and mountains, with their limited coverage! WLL or high-speed Internet over rural areas, as well as re-establishing communications in an urban area during an emergency, would be a piece of cake with something like this. Or how about, outside of the major cities, you could have your broadcaster sitting up there and no longer need a translator for most areas.
Mike
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12052171
Same for the ice fields on Greenland & Antarctica. Sea levels will be affected by global warming, but not by voodoo math.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Since water is much more reflective to infrared and ultraviolet than visible light, ocean plants should be unaffected.
If petroleum companies want to fund such a project all by themselves, fine, but no taxes should be spent treating their pollution one symptom at a time. Instead, governments should fund replacements: solar, wind, cellulosic ethanol and maybe nuclear power.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
The only way to deal with this problem is to bankrupt our economies in a rush to implement untested solutions that, even if successful, only put a tiny dent in the problem. If you are suggesting further study of the problem, and deep analysis of any proposed solution, you're clearly in the pocket of big oil.
Instead of being a traitor (see a certain Kennedy for details), get with the rest of us and call for irresponsible actions, and an end to the scientific method.
This was on Project Earth on the Discovery channel about a week ago. They couldn't put together a method for separating salt water particles into small enough groups to get into the clouds before airing the episode, so instead of that they set off 300 salt-flares to get a simulated effect.
The funny thing about this method is that it is deliberately putting tons of salt into the air. The episode that aired previous to the cloud-seeding (instant air dropped forests) explained that many coastal forest areas had died out due to salt water rains. It seems to me that this project might cause a lot more problems than will solve them.
Attention wannabees: Please do not screw with cooling off the Earth. There's debate whether global warming is even a problem (I mean that it occurs, but isn't a problem even so.)
But accidently inducing an ice age? Now that actually will kill billions.
So, buffoons, pleeze, stop it. Just stop it.
Gene Wilder Willy Wonka Resignation Voice: Stop. No. Don't do it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
whatcouldpossiblygowrong Folks who are seriously considering cloud seeding on a global scale to fight what has been a 1-degree C temperature change are quite batty, IMHO. Around $5bn to fight a phantom enemy? Since 1999 global temperatures have been DECREASING.
When you talk about the size of a ship, you're talking displacement, not weight. In this case you're talking about 300^3M of water displaced at maximum load capacity. Most river barges are at least as big as that - 10MX30M w/ a 1M draft is small - and cost substantially less.
The ratio of weight/displacement also plays a role in how seaworthy a ship is - too close to 1 & it swamps easily. Too low & it rides too high & becomes top heavy. The obvious is over 1 & it's called an anchor.
Are these people smoking crack?
How much would it cost to build 1500 ships?? More than the GNP of most countries for 1 year.
How do you know this will not screw up the global warming even worse? You are trying to suddenly fix something that has been in gradual decay for decades. I would re-think this guys. Why don't you the guys to just fire up that LHC collider, run it at full power, then maybe we won't have to worry about this global warming mess.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Shouldn't we be spending more time and money fighting the cause of the problem than individual symptoms? Fight the causes of global warming--too many people burning too many hydrocarbons. And of course the "too many people" bit is also responsible for groundwater toxification, deforestation, resource wars, overfishing, traffic jams, etc.....
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
... global wetting?
I'm sure increasing the humidity of the Earth's atmosphere will have no unintended side-effects, like (say) the moistening of the Sahara Desert.
And the ocean will be otherwise unaffected by these amazing ships. No increase in noise level for the marine life at all.
With Wind sails like that, you will need some really good propulsion
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Or at least it would be, if you were a subscriber. My "assumption" was that you were a /. subscriber. But since you claim that you looked and could not find my entry, my assumption was probably wrong.
Still, you should have no problems finding refutations of CO2-based global warming on Google or some other search engine. I had no trouble at all.
I have already supported my arguments. Your failure to find them proves nothing.
Did your mommy always prove everything to you before you would believe it? You couldn't do your own homework?
It is sad that you could not find past references, but I am not about to spend another 45 minutes copying links and pasting them here just because your sorry ass can't be bothered to do a little research yourself.
I am NOT going to re-do everything just because you are being a lazy, whiny little shit. I don't owe you anything. Go actually DO something, or shut up.
People can mod this any way they want, but the fact is that in fact I do not owe you anything at all. Why should I do this for you? Because you don't believe me? Who gives a shit? I was interested in educating you just because I am a nice guy, but it doesn't bother me overmuch that you would rather believe the popular view rather than do any research into the subject on your own. You are exactly the kind of person that I do NOT want to bother with.
Have a nice day.
i remember this view..redalert 2. well if they want to cool down earth they better do it now. while there is still ice in the artic.
So am I the only one worried about this system creating salty rains?
If a cloud created by these ships passes over land and turns into rain, all the salt in the cloud will end up in the soil. We've had trouble with acid rains killing our forests already (which was blamed on cars / industry, iirc) so it does not seem too far fetched...
As for the consequences, most plants, in particular those we use for food, don't like salt. If this is done on a large enough scale to have an effect on the global weather, won't it also have a global effect on our cultures? (Not to mention the wildlife's ecosystems) Or did the scientists study this *non-climate* issue?
I did not ask you to, as you well know. I posted some links a while back, here on /., and you said you could not find them. THEN you claimed that you did find them, but you did not describe them accurately. (At least one of those two times, you had to be lying... you can't have that both ways.)
I did not ask you do to anything at all. YOU insisted that I re-do all the work I had already done by re-posting all my links again. And I refused. I was not being lazy... I had already done the work. YOU were too lazy (or unable, or something) to look it up.
You can try to twist this around all you want, but you are not convincing anybody. You changed your story at least once, you claim NOW to have found the links I posted, yet you have not bothered to post ONE of your own to actually refute anything.
I would not have answered you at all this time, but this was so amusing I thought I would encourage you some more. I am saving this "conversation" to show my friends.
That is really pretty funny.
Okay, fine. You weren't the person who claimed he couldn't find them. My mistake there. One. 8 or more posts ago. Big deal.
But at least the last 8 posts have been exchanges between you and I, and the rest of my comments stand. If you found my links and read the articles, why did you not describe them accurately? (The obvious answer would be: you didn't actually do any of that.) And YOU complained that I wanted to make people jump through "Google hoops", when in fact I did nothing of the sort. I just said that IF you wanted to find the material, you could do so easily if you would just bother.
Why did you complain, or at least criticize, if you actually DID find the mentioned links? That doesn't make much sense.
Why have you been doing nothing but slinging invective, when if you wanted any real credibility, or wanted to make any reasoned arguments, all you would have to do is REFUTE at least some of what the articles and papers state?
You're just adding to my list, guy.
Thanks for some comic relief in my day.
I see. So you have a grudge, eh?
Your allegations are ALL false. First, I did NOT insist that people google for information. I supplied information (a LOT of relevant information) via links in earlier posts, and I suggested that readers go find those existing references. You see something wrong with that? I do not understand. Why would you insist that I re-do the work that I had already done before, just to satisfy some nay-sayer who had nothing relevant of substantial to say himself? Your argument seems to be that I am obligated to work my ass off because someone else is too lazy.
I did make this point before, but I did eventually "give in" and post links that anyone else with reasonable typing skills could have found on Google within a couple of minutes. (It took me less than 30 seconds.) Thus proving the point I was making.
The links were indeed articles by scientists and engineers who are involved in the global warming situation. Your claim that there was little or no science in them is simply false. I posted a link to Naomi Orestes' meta-study, for example, claiming that there was a near-total "consensus" among climate scientists that global warming was human-caused. I also posted 2 (possibly 3) links to other studies by reputable scientists who state that Orestes' study is fatally flawed due to blatantly obvious bias. I posted links to statements by at least 2 scientists who were quoted in the initial IPCC global warming report, who withdrew their support for the report due to political and scientific bias.
I posted other links to data that point to the fact that the CO2 model is also fatally flawed. It DOES in fact require warming of the upper atmosphere in order to be viable... warming that is simply not happening. Your claim that this is "wrong" only proves that either you misunderstand how the claimed CO2 warming mechanism is supposed to work, or that you are simply contradicting me because you like to contradict me. I suspect the latter. Either way, you have not actually refuted anything. YOU HAVE NOT ONCE PRESENTED ANYTHING HERE THAT HAS REFUTED EVEN ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE I PRESENTED. You even admit that I presented evidence. Evidence that you, yourself, insisted upon. Well, again you can't have it both ways. Refute my evidence or shut the fuck up. You are wasting bandwidth. Though I admit that I am having some fun with this. You are really looking like a fool. My friends encourage me to keep this up because they want to see what kind of BS you will try next.
I am willing to discuss or defend my points. I have yet to see ANY EVIDENCE HERE, any links, any reasoned arguments, ANYTHING... that refutes any of the evidence I presented. I did what you asked. I presented evidence. THEN you insisted that I do it twice. Yeah, right. You have not even lifted a finger to try to refute any of it. You lose, dude. If this were a debate or scientific discussion -- formal or informal -- then by any rules of either scientific evidence or debate that I have ever seen, YOU LOSE. Why are you having such a hard time understanding that?
As I stated before, I suspect that you are just trying to goad me until I get pissed off or something. That isn't going to happen. If that isn't it, then I have to wonder why you continue to spout obvious falsehoods that anybody can recognize. Unless you enjoy playing the fool. Maybe you do. I don't know.
I didn't ask you to spout 600 refutations. But you could have bothered to try one. Another false allegation.
I did not post random links. I posted links to actual articles by reputable scientists who work for reputable institutions, about the subject at hand. Another allegation that is false.
I have never seen any refutation to ANY of the science links that I posted, so how could I refuse to argue??? There was nothing to argue about! Another false allegation.
You never posted a refutation to ANY links that I posted. Nobody else did either. I have never seen even one. If you did indeed post such a th
"Of course you did, many times."
Old news, from BEFORE I posted those links, and which has nothing at all to do with the current thread. You argue like an old woman.
Once again, you state "I reminded you" and "I posted", yet I have not seen ANY of those reminders OR any of those posts you claim. My post of those links was the last post I saw in that thread.
Last time: in the spirit of YOUR own insistence that I re-post my work, why don't you? Show me these posts and links that you claim. Prove that I am wrong, instead of just sitting there talking out your ass. That is what YOU insisted that I do... why not lead by example?
You can't, because your statements are false. You have not been willing to lift a finger to do the very things that you insist that I do, and you have not posted even ONE refutation to any of the articles that I linked to. All you do is sit there and say that I am stupid and that I am wrong. And that is not sufficient.
Like I said at least twice before: yes, I keep intending to leave this conversation, because you have stated exactly nothing cogent or useful. You have not specifically refuted anything that I have stated, other than to say it is "wrong". Dude... that's not how it works. But... I have kept coming back because your blathering has been so amusing.
Old news, from BEFORE I posted those links, and which has nothing at all to do with the current thread.
Examples from this thread where you mention your old post which you insisted they Google for, or else go and Google the original information in the links themselves, rather than simply telling them where your post was: here, here, here, here, here.
Once again, you state "I reminded you" and "I posted", yet I have not seen ANY of those reminders OR any of those posts you claim.
Because you're an idiot who can't keep track of who you're talking to or what you're talking about.
This isn't really hard. If I say "I reminded you in my last comment", any person of near-human intelligence would look at my last comment, where I reminded you that "When it finally became clear that you would never actually do that, I picked one point at random and pointed to you a number of citations which refute it. And you STILL refused to discuss the science."
This would be a clue to read the posts before that.
But it DOES show that the majority of the so-called "evidence" for CO2-based warming that has been shoved in your face by so many sources so far is, in fact flawed.
No. First, ice cores are neither the majority nor the strongest evidence of CO2-based warming; that comes from physics and modern observations. Second, it's not flawed either: the glacial-interglacial temperature/CO2 data strongly supports CO2-induced warming. The lead of temperature was predicted long ago by Milankovitch theory; it doesn't somehow contradict the greenhouse effect. And the amount of temperature change visible in the record cannot be explain without appealing to the extra warming induced by the CO2 feedback.
In fact, sunspot activity has a STRONGER CORRELATION to temperature than CO2 ever did
Not during the recent warming period post 1970 or so, where it is either uncorrelated or even anti-correlated with temperature, which is one of many reasons why that warming is not attributable to solar activity. Not to mention the fact that the solar forcing trend is far too small in magnitude to account for the warming: regardless of what you think of CO2, solar activity is not the explanation. Try Foukal et al.'s Nature paper from 2006 to begin with.
Let me be clear here: when I say "anti-correlated", I mean "correlated oppositely from the trend necessary to explain the warming".
I suggested that they go find the old post here on slashdot, which should be very easy (if you are a subscriber and can see posts that old). Then, when I was told that someone could not find the post here, I mentioned that the information is very easy to find with Google. It is. Once again, it took me all of about 30 seconds to find those links, which proved THAT point. But I did not "insist" that anybody do anything, and my suggestion was to find the post here, where all the information is in one place. I only suggested Google for those who (for some unknown reason) had trouble finding it here. I was trying to make things easy for them. Sorry that you can't appreciate that.
Further, I admit that I was not especially friendly to those, including yourself, who expected me to re-do all my work rather than lift a finger to go look themselves. Which I have freely admitted here, several times. But in your last post, you were claiming that I was "insisting" that people Google for all the information, or above where you state that I insisted that they "Google for" my post, which is simply false. At no time did I insist that anyone Google for my post. That would be silly. It is here on slashdot.
I continue to wonder why you have a problem with me asking people to spend a few seconds or a minute trying to find information that is already there and easy to find. Your attitude seems to be that I should be happy to spend 1/2 hour or an hour to duplicate work I have already done, just because others have been too lazy to look at all. That's a pretty strange attitude, guy.
As for your comments that you reminded me of things, and that you posted things, those were things you stated BEFORE I posted those links to the evidence that supported my claims. You did not "remind me" or post refutations after that, as you seem to be claiming, and when it might have mattered. In fact, nobody did. I watched that thread for 2 DAYS to see if anybody would try to refute the evidence I presented, but nobody did. Not one person, not one sentence.
So, I repeat: what you are arguing here is old news that is no longer relevant, now that I have supported my claims with science, and you failed to refute any of it.
And it never "became clear that I would never actually do that", because I did, in fact, do that (post links to my evidence). In that thread. And once again, you failed to refute any of that evidence. But you want to bring it up now, weeks later, STILL without any evidence that refutes mine, and you are STILL arguing that I am being difficult and not keeping things straight. You post all those links above to THIS thread, and claim that it means something. Well, this thread has been about almost nothing except you blathering untruths about what I did in that OTHER thread, which you have completely failed to refute. THAT is what this is all about, dude. But all you have done is sit there and tell me how stupid and wrong I am, and link to things where you THOUGHT I was saying something but was really saying something else, and you seem to think that is some kind of evidence that *I* am some kind of an idiot because of that.
Sheesh. You are a real piece of work.
I am going to try this one last time, to see if you can understand. My guess is no, but I will try anyway. Here goes:
These facts are indisputable: in a DIFFERENT thread, you argued with me about global warming. You did not like the fact that I told people that the information to which I referred was easily found via Google or some other search engine. You insisted -- repeatedly -- that I link to my evidence or shut up. (This is not a viable argument, since the information was, in fact, easily available in the public domain.) But I broke down and accommodated you anyway, posting somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 links to articles and scientific papers that supported my arguments.
AFTER that, you did NOT refute ANYTHING. You did not once re
I will state up front here that I made a mistake by stating "you" in the adjacent post. The "discussion" I was having at the time I posted those links was with TapeCutter.
:o)
But once again, the main topic here (which YOU did bring up) was the links I posted to that other thread. You seem to have thought that when I was referring to that other thread, I was referring to this one. Perhaps that is where some of the misunderstanding came from.
Just trying to help.
And now we've got the data that was missing from our last discussion (I also posted this there).
This year's thickness data shows that, just as I said, "Arctic ice cover is following a trend of becoming younger and thinner each year". The lead on the article:
So now will you please stop peddling your "Arctic Ice Is Increasing" bilge and other "Global Warming Is A Myth" nonsense?
--MarkusQ