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."
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.
Two days of war?
Or more to the point less than the cost of cleaning up after one hurricane.
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."
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
I wouldn't mind slowing development down to save the world, but I have a lot of things that I could do without. People in Africa or China might not be so keen on that idea though. People who are on the losing side of a statues-que don't really care a lot to maintain it, even if it is the current weather patterns.
Would it be cheaper to just mitigate the change? Build irrigation canals from Alaska and quadruple the levies on the Mississippi? I think we should do whatever is cheaper in the long run. I don't think it will be trying to change ourselves to fit the planet, I think we should embrace global warming and finally take control of the environment itself and put the final nail in Gia's coffin. Stories like this help give hope that there are people out there actually trying to solve the problem by moving forward instead of advocating a return to the 1930's
BTW to the "environmentalists" out there, their isn't a "natural" environment anywhere in the US, small things like the introduction of earth worms and bee's and fire suppression have dramatically changes the very nature of our forests, even before that, the Natives engaged in controlled burns and selective harvesting. The entire planet is a garden people have been modifying. I just want you to know that nature has been dead for a long time. when you protect the trees and the forest it is exactly the same as if you were debating whether or not to pull up the daisy's in your back yard. Environmentalism is a luxury like gardening. Though I still agree with you when it comes to green spaces in cities and arsenic and Mercury in the air.
No, it wasn't all in the atmosphere at the same time. Most of it was in the ocean, same as most of the carbon dioxide is in the ocean now. Isn't this how the scientific theory goes: There was heaps of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Primitive plants developed, which absorbed the carbon dioxide, and produced oxygen. This switched the atmosphere over from a mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a mix of oxygen and nitrogen. Therefore, before the plants, the atmosphere had a huge amount more carbon dioxide than it has now.
And yet, despite the much higher levels of carbon dioxide than we have now, life flourished. Mosses and ferns grew to gigantic sizes in the carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere. Then they died and got squished and turned into coal and oil. So if anybody tells you that we have to "save the planet" from carbon dioxide, ask them why the planet wasn't destroyed when the carbon dioxide levels were much higher than now. Where did the coal, oil, and all fossil fuels come from? From plants and animals which got their carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the ocean. Isn't that the standard scientific theory?
The objection that "it wasn't all in the atmosphere at the same time" is interesting. It implies that back in the olden days, when the coal seams and oil reservoirs were forming, the carbon dioxide was "somewhere else". Where was it then? How did the plants and animals get it into their bodies? Surely it must have been in the ocean or the atmosphere for a plant to absorb it, and from there an animal could eat the plant to get it.
The objection also implies that if we burn coal, oil, and gas, that all of the carbon dioxide will end up in the atmosphere at the same time. Of course, that won't happen. Think about the carbon dioxide from all the coal people have burned in all of human history. Where is it? Is it all in the atmosphere right now? No it isn't, a lot of it has been absorbed by the ocean, by plants, and by rock formation. Therefore, all the carbon dioxide we've released into the atmosphere isn't all still in there. So it can't all be in there at the same time, can it?
Secondly, all of the carbon dioxide from all of the oil, gas, and coal won't be in the atmosphere at the same time, because we haven't burned it all yet. We don't even know where all of it is, and of the stuff we do know about, we haven't dug it all up and burned it. There is still heaps left. For example, you may have heard of coal fields with hundreds of years of supply left. If we've got hundreds of years of coal left, obviously all the carbon dioxide won't end up in the atmosphere at the same time, because it's still locked up in the coal, in the ground.
So what's different about now than in prehistoric times? One difference is that there are much more efficient plants living here. Back when the coal was formed, it was giant moss and suchlike that were dominant plants. Look at moss now, it only grows a few millimetres high. Now we have plants like C4 plants and CAM plants, that can really suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. They are best at absorbing carbon dioxide from even very low concentrations, and when it's hot. When carbon dioxide concentrations are high, then even the not-so-efficient C3 plants can easily absorb it.
Therefore, if we burn the fossil fuels, we should expect to see increased plant growth. If we collect up things like plant fibres and use them for long term things, this will store the carbon from the fossil fuels in a non-atmospheric form. One technique for doing this is to build a house and furniture out of wood. We could grow plantations of trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Then we could cut down the trees and use the wood. So if we have plantations of various plants which produce large amounts of carbon-rich fibre, we can harvest the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Pretty simple huh.
Or we could believe all the doom-and-gloom merchants.