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."

Comments

That's what?

[matt4077]

Two days of war?

Re:That's what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"a bit" is a bit of an understatement. Billions would die without fossil fuels.

Re:That's what?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Why don't you set the right example ? I'm sure there's a bridge near you. There's only one way to make sure you don't further contribute to the "CO2 problem" ...

Re:That's what?

[jcwayne]

We need to do enough research to make sure it won't cause a hurricane / tsunami first

You don't actually know what a tsunami is, do you?

A Bad Doctor

[Adreno]

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.

Re:A Bad Doctor

[belmolis]

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. Techniques like this should probably be used in conjunction with attempts to eliminate the causes of global warming.

It isn't as if this is so expensive that no money would be available for other approaches. Sure, $5 billion sounds like a lot, but it is only 0.5% of the what the US has spent on the Iraq War so far.

Re:A Bad Doctor

[Anonymous Coward]

A good doctor treats the symptoms as well as the ailment - more so when the ailment itself can't be cured. Quality of life is important.

This is a plan that could in theory be put into practice tomorrow, partially relieving those symptoms while longer term cures are being put into place.

While the relatively rich first world has the money to build new infrastructure - to work towards that cure - development takes time, and current alternatives don't have the capacity to meet current energy demands. That *WILL* change, but not for some time. Here in the UK, there's a lot of emphasis on making this change at the moment, but even if we start replacing everything today it will be decades before we can completely phase out our existing coal plants. In the US, it's even worse as your grid needs to be redesigned and rebuilt from scratch to accomadate wind farms and their ilk. No small task.

The only countries for which this will be 'easy' are those able to tap geothermal reserves.

For the second and third world these green alternatives are currently too expensive, and will likely remain so until the technology is being produces in such quantities as to be considered a commodity. Even then, the third world will likely be unable to afford anything except used hand-me-downs from the first and second.

So, what do you do?
A) Treat the symptoms and buy the time for all of this to happen - affirmative action

B) Treat the symptoms and forget to treat the ailment - what you think will happen

Or

C) Treat the ailment and ignore the symptoms - your suggestion

For the record, taking action C would also be more expensive financially, as treating those symptoms also reduces the amount of damage inflicted.

I admire the idealism, but you need to consider the reality of the situation at the same time or you end up making popular, but ultimately bad decisions.

Re:A Bad Doctor

[GayBliss]

You're now talking about higher frequency of ocean collisions;

Do you realize how big the oceans are? The chances of any ship even seeing one of 1500 ships scattered around the globe is practically zero unless they are placed near a port or on shipping lanes. Ships go from one port to another on very specific routes, they don't wander around the oceans. Keep them out of the shipping lanes and nobody will ever see them.

increased wreckage after damaging storms (and thereby increased maintenance costs all around);

Negligible

the energy expenditure (and CO2 release) required to produce such ships in the first place;

Negligible

what's to stop someone from going out to salvage an unmanned ship in international waters if it is constructed of materials desired?

I think ships are made primarily of steel and not copper. It would be a whole lot cheaper and easier to just raid the local junkyard.

Our Coast Guard can't even track many drug-runners in the Caribbean, and you want to place 1500 ships on the ocean and cross your fingers that no one touches them?

They could track them very easily if they knew where they were in the first place. I seriously doubt they are just going to let these ships wander around aimlessly through the oceans with no way to find them and identify them except by searching for them. If such a plan were implemented, I'm sure they would know exactly where they are at all times.

There are many other, more direct paths to solving this global problem,

Really? This seems like a very cheap and direct solution if it indeed works.

than the construction of a huge fleet of water-spraying ships that *may* increase sunlight reflectivity by a significant amount while likely instigating numerous practical issues in its implementation.

If the best experts agree that it might work, it's worth testing on a small scale and see what happens in terms of cloud reflectivity and any adverse effects. It could probably even be tested to some extent without building a single ship.

Re:For every action...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh? They're talking about enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, not moving CO2 into the oceans.

And Newton's Third Law's reaction to spraying salt water into the air is to push your ship a little deeper into the ocean.

She will.

[BitterOldGUy]

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.