Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
The reality is that all co2 that is stored in oil comes from the athmosphere. Therefore even if we burned all of the oil in all of the earth's crust right now, we'd only recreate the athmospheric situation of the age of the dinosaurs, a time when animals roamed over more regions of the earth than they do today.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen modded to +5. The carbon stored in oil was locked up in plants and animals before it became oil - it wasn't ever all in the atmosphere at the same time. And it didn't suddenly all become oil at the same time either.
It would be perfectly liveable, and probably even more comfortable, for humans.
Since that amount of carbon has never been in the atmosphere at once we have no idea what it would be like. It may be enough to tip the atmosphere into a runaway state that would result in a Venus-like atmosphere. But that's beside the point. The question is not whether increased global temperatures would be liveable or comfortable. The question is whether the economic costs of adapting to the new conditions outweigh the costs of try to reduce or prevent the change.
You're wrong about the fish and algae.
Read here, about algae blooms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom
As water heats up, the amount of oxygen it can contain decreases (which is why trout prefer cold/mountain water.) If it gets too warm, then the water may not hold enough oxygen to support life (e.g. fish)
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/predicting-DO.shtml
If a lake gets too warm/shallow during summer, it can kill all of the fish in it.
Note that really large game fish, e.g. tuna, prefer cold, deeper, water than warm water. If you're thinking that "look at all the pretty fish" in warm tropical water means fish do well in warm water, you probably need to rethink your strategy because if the water becomes too warm, they'll die as the reefs do:
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/oct/25/nation/na-coral25
Given that your comments about water are completely wrong (and I'm afraid my comments will never be seen since they're anonymous), I'm very afraid for the accuracy of the rest of your comments.
How did this comment get modded +5? It didn't once talk about actual timescales or carrying capacity. Do Slashdot moderators really know this little about how the planet will respond to global warming?
Yes, as the CO2 concentrations increase, plant respiration will become more efficient and some locations will see denser plant growth. But at the same time, some of the most efficient places on Earth for plant life will become converted to grasslands or deserts, releasing their stored carbon by plant decay. And the rapid rise in CO2 will also cause acidification in the oceans which will counteract much of the positive gains in biomass due to temperature rises. But in any case, these numbers are really insignificant. There is about 600 Gt of carbon in all of the biomass on the planet. There is about 760 Gt in the atmosphere. There is about 37,000 Gt dissolved in the oceans. There is about 10,000,000 Gt stored in sediments on the ocean floor. And there is about 40,000,000 Gt stored in limestone.
Any description of changes in CO2 needs to take into account all three carbon cycles: the organic carbon cycle, the inorganic carbon cycle, and the geochemical carbon cycle. To the climate scientists who have actually done the calculations with knowledge of all three cycles, there is virtually no support that plants and algae are going to have any significant effect. The consensus is that the method that CO2 will eventually be removed is by slow sedimentation. The efficiency of this will be slightly reduced by increased weathering of carbonates and will be almost completely unaffected by the organic carbon cycle. The timescale for optimists is several thousands of years.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Since that amount of carbon has never been in the atmosphere at once we have no idea what it would be like.
There have been many times that amount of C in the atmosphere. About 500 million years ago, Earth went through an ice age with CO2 levels 8 to 20 time higher than they are presently.
The largest sink of carbon on the planet is not organic. It is limestone and dolomite. Those two absolutely dwarf the C locked in fossil fuels. All the fossil fuels on Earth sum up to about 9x10^15 grams. Total mass of C in limestone on the other hand is around 3x10^22grams. Soooo, about 3 million times as much C in limestone as in fossil fuels. Most of that was in the atmosphere. Most of that is now in the ground as a result of plankton and ocean sedimentation.
It may be enough to tip the atmosphere into a runaway state that would result in a Venus-like atmosphere. But that's beside the point.
It isn't beside the point... it is one of the stupidest thing you could possibly say. Who fed you that? Just saying something like that damages any credibility you might have. The atmosphere of Venus is 96.5% CO2. The atmosphere of Earth is roughly 380 parts per million (0.038%). In a hundred years of burning fossil fuels non stop, we've witnessed a rise in atmospheric CO2 of about 100ppm (0.01%). In the link above, you'll see that if you burned all the known fossil fuel reserves today, it would add roughly 77% more CO2 to the atmosphere for a total of what.... 0.07%? That's not even close to the Ordovician atmosphere, much less the Venusian.