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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.
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.
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."
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).
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.
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.
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.
Oil may have turned the corner, but there are more fossil fuels than that. There are literally hundreds of years' worth of workable coal deposits. What worries me is that atmospheric pollution is a classic tragedy-of-the-commons. So long as there's a sufficiently industrialised civilisation to dig it up and burn it, we're going to be emitting fossil CO2 at, at best, mid-20th century levels for the foreseeable future. Look out Jurassic, here we come. (Oh yeah, and the water-vapour-cloud-seeding-ships idea fails at the first hurdle, namely that (even if it worked, which I seriously doubt as the clouds would be too low in the atmosphere) the whole thing stops working the day the ships do. Dirty coal does at least produce relatively long-lived and high sulphate aerosols. (Now if only there were a cheap simple way to capture the CO2 at the generator site, but still emit the sulphates...) Over the past 20 years, my level of optimism for the future (vis a vis climate change) has followed a curve very similar to the NSIDC sea-ice extent for 2008 (except that my optimism only flat-lined at the point where I couldn't think things could get much worse.)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
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
Don't forget to add to your list... water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
Name: Mr. Anon E Mouse; SSN: 555-55-5555
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.
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.
Actually, this scheme is totally independent of the exact cause or causes of global warming, it is just a way to reduce the impact of one of the causes: the sun.
This is madness.
THIS ... IS ... SLASHDOT!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like yelling.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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
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.
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?
So much more likely that only fringe scientists believe them?
Carbon Dioxide is the most likely culprit and that is backed up by decades of research and computer simulations.
Eitherway. Your arugment is dumb beyond explanation. If you accept there is global warming at all then you also have to accept that warming is the result of increased energy in our climate system.
The 1500 ship solution does one thing and one thing only. It reduces the input energy from the sun by reflecting it back into outer space.
IF it works as advertised then it would in fact counter every single possible imagineable form of warming by reducing the intensity of the sun.
Which means if it's caused by farts, carbon dioxide, the earth's core warming, an increase in talk show blowhards or even a decrease in pirates the outcome would still be cooling.
Unless you're suggesting that other theories are a lot more likely such "God is willing it."
...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?
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.
Or, maybe, possibly, perhaps, this sort of scheme could result in more cooling than the change in carbon dioxide levels.
That is what you're after, right? a cooler earth? Not just the imposition of some "low-impact"/minimalist lifestyle/philosophy/aesthetic? Because, well, I kind of appreciate the aesthetic a little, I admit, but... there are more important things to worry about, such as the planet's temperature.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
If she doesn't like it we may have to kill her to save ourselves! :(
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
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.
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.
Global warming is a hoax.
And this comes from someone ...
For the past few months, we even have Global Cooling.
An increase of 0.01% in CO2 is never a problem.
Ah, we're dealing in absolutes ("never"). Very scientific. And is that an absolute or a relative 0.01% ? It also doesn't take atmospheric pressure into account - 0.01% at 1 atm is different from 0.01% at 2 atm.
The green house theory only work if only we have significant amount of C02, which is something like 10% or more.
With 10% CO2 in our atmosphere, our worries about climate are over. Permanently.
The experiment can be done by any lay person with enough initiative.
What experiment ?