Slashdot Mirror
Scientist Patents New Method To Fight Global Warming
SUNSTOP writes to tell us that a relatively unknown Maryland scientist has proposed a public patent that he claims could combat global warming. The proposed plan would require massive amounts of water to be sprayed into the air in an effort to bolster the earth's existing air conditioning system. "First, the sprayed droplets would transform to water vapor, a change that absorbs thermal energy near ground level; then the rising vapor would condense into sunlight-reflecting clouds and cooling rain, releasing much of the stored energy into space in the form of infrared radiation. Kenneth Caldeira, a climate scientist for the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University whose computer simulation of Ace's invention suggests it would significantly cool the planet. The simulated evaporation of about one-half inch of additional water everywhere in the world produced immediate planetary cooling effects that were projected to reach nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit within 20 or 30 years, Caldeira said."
A Little Known Maryland Scientist Has Made Public
YES! We have a new winner for most descriptive Slashdot headline EVAR!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Isn't water vapor one of the biggest greenhouse gasses?
Mind the frickin' laser...
" A Little Known Maryland Scientist Has Made Public-" SUNSTOP
or maybe it's supposed to mean that he made a new device called "Public."
I'm confused!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
and as for the idea itself, omfg what could go wrong? luckily such crack pot schemes don't get off the ground.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
That really does take the cake for a poorly written title. Seriously - how long does it take to write a dozen thoughtful words, then check it??
If it's getting warmer, wouldn't this happen all by itself?
And where is all the energy for misting this water into the air coming from?
1) Where does the energy come from to spray this water?
2) Clouds are fickle where temperature is concerned. Depending on the type of cloud, they can either raise or lower the temperature. (The article, I see, also notes this.) This is one of the trickiest points of climate modeling, if memory serves.
3) Water vapor is also a particularly powerful greenhouse gas. Pumping a lot more of it into the air could exacerbate the problem rather than fix it. (Also noted in the article, but not actually discussed.)
"No sir, I do not believe you are 'doing your part to prevent global warming.' Now please stop spitting. No, I don't believe the other patrons need to be cooled."
And how would you spray the water? Where would the energy come from? And what about the resulting carbon emissions from the energy used to spray the water?
clouds
Yes, let's fix the planet by changing the environment in more weird ways. That ought to work.
if he wasn't public till now...
Obama has appointed him as Secretary of the Absurd.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
They are going to turn Earth into a giant mist tent! Goodbye summer heat and sorrows.
Water vapour is generally considered to be a greenhouse gas, ie it makes the planet warmer than it would otherwise be.
It isn't as much of a problem as CO2 or methane only because it doesn't stay in the atmosphere for long.
As I dig out from several feet of snow, I'm not entirely sure I want the earth cooler.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
... the energy expenditure of putting the water into the air?
Unless he has a carbon-neutral method of doing that, too...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Ok but what about side effects. How will it effect rain fall if we are adding to the current evaporation. Also it seems like this would or could possibly change the ecosystem of the areas it is done in. And finally who would foot the bill and what would be an approx. cost on it. The story paints a nice pic but there isn't enough info to tell if this is even realistic other than the "practical, nontoxic, affordable, rapidly achievable" comment there isn't much info on what his comparisons are.
I know, it's just as silly as dropping a big ice cube into the ocean.
The OP is a brilliant literary artist.
I kept waiting for the second half of that sentence, but then *BAM* period. End of sentence. I was all like, "WOAH! This guy's messing with my brain by defying the convention of the written word!"
If you don't understand the OP, then you don't appreciate avant-garde literature.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
I was there a few weeks ago. When the waters are in operation, the air gets noticeably cooler. This only works because Vegas has very dry air. He would get pretty much zero evaporative cooling in Washington DC during the summer.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Now I can get rid of my humidor and let my cigars sit out!!!
It's not the heat... it's the humidity!
anyone remember when this came out last year? http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070530/66362712.html
The problem with mitigation techniques that rely upon some ongoing activity is that when it is disrupted for any reason, the accumulated upward pressure on temperature is still there which could have sudden, catastrophic effects. (Regardless of whether I'm conviced of the anthropogenic causes of climate change.)
Right! We just rely on voluntary emissions reductions from the people of the world to counter global warming! Not an impractical crackpot scheme at all!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Someone has gone and done it. They have PATENTED vaporware! Now every company that promises to deliver software and never does will be sued by this clown!
Before you go bashing the headline here, I just wanted to point out that it was probably submitted by the author of the story:
Scientist proposes 'colossal refrigeration system' to stave of global-warming
I think, that if you can't communicate, the least you could do is SHUT UP. //apologies to Tom Lehrer.
When a loner who suggests altering the weather in a massive unpredictable manner would be a mad scientist from a crappy b-flick.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
I couldn't find any books by either this Ron Ace (the inventor of this "idea") or Kenneth Caldeira. However I did find some books in which Caldeira is quoted.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Sounds mysteriously like a proposal by someone else see here:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/35693
Some biblical scholars believe that the Earth was once surrounded by a water canopy. This later came down during the great flood. One could think of this as basically a super-humid environment, with the majority lying on the outskirts of our atmosphere. That science would find returning the atmosphere to that state beneficial is no surprise.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
Have huge sheets on rollers that show a white side during the day and are rolled over to show the black side at night. Cover large areas of deserts with these. It would cool the desert and the air that blows over them.
What like the plan to cover the ocean with little reflective particles that seems to be almost as popular as the giant space mirror?
I see a few problems with this:
1. where does the energy come from to spray gigatons of water in the air
2. any cooling from vaporization of water would be local since the heat absorbed through vaporization would be released as it condenses.
3. water vapor that does not condense immediately acts as a greenhouse gas
4. the increased relative humidity across the entire planet would likely cause more extreme weather
This kind of idea is why the sensationalism of global climate change is evil.
I wonder if this idea will ever
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"A Little Known Maryland Scientist Has Made Public" .....And then he ACCIDENTALLY THE WHOLE THING
I made in public once.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Kenneth Caldeira, a climate scientist for the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University whose computer simulation of Ace's invention suggests it would significantly cool the planet.
What? Where is the verb and the rest of that sentence? The above reads as "Kenneth Caldeira."
We have another winner - the most descriptive Slashdot sentence EVAR!
Even more fun, wator vapor provides the vast majority of the greenhouse effect (95%?). CO2 is more like 2% of the greenhouse effect. Somehow, combatting CO2 emissions by adding water vapor emissions doesn't quite seem like the right answer.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And we all know how that worked out...
Give them a break.. so they misspelled pubic. Does that really detract from the ambiguity of the headline?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Are we even sure that Global Climate Change is something that we need to stop? If this is all part of a cycle (all signs point to yes), then isn't f*king with it sortof the last thing that we should be doing?
The earth isn't a computer. We can't just reimage it and try again. There are no backups. If we fuck this up, we have to live with it. Seriously, all of these ideas like poisoning the ocean with C02 or spraying tons of extra water into the air seem to be completely and utterly retarded.
Are cars and mankind contributing to the change in climate? Yes.
Has the earth been going through a similar climate change every few thousand years for as long as we can tell? Also yes.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Failure would be awful. The earth naturally grew hotter and we made it more humid.
The "upward pressure" comes from the sun. If we reduce the energy from the sun, the upward pressure is also reduced.
This isn't like capping a geyser, it's like diverting the underground pressure that drives the geyser.
I don't know why we worry about global warming, we should just go out to Haley's commet once a year, collect a bunch of ice, and drop it into the ocean. Of course, since the warming gets worse every year, the block of ice would also have to increase in size. Thus solving Earth's problems once and for all... 'but what if-' ONCE AND FOR ALL!
wasn't this the plan from futurama? it even failed in futurama. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqPjxsAuUxk
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
I can see the lawyers chomping at the bit, hoping with a big court win, they could be entire to 30% of the planet (but no more as per Maryland law). I mean is he is trying to patent a naturally occurring process, cloud formation is clearly in the public domain.
Respect the Constitution
That would only give a one time effect. What we really need to do is replant the thousands of square miles of forest that we've cut down. Trees are a big part of the lungs of the planet. They put a lot of moisture back in the air. They suck up CO2 and emit Oxygen as well.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This project is simply another... Vaporware!
luckily such crack pot schemes don't get off the ground.
There, added a couple of links.
Free Martian Whores!
Here's the thing that kills me about his plan... What energy are we going to use to get all that water in the atmosphere? Solar? Didn't he say that the vapor would reflect sunlight?
"Just like daddy puts in his drink every morning. And then he gets mad." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqPjxsAuUxk
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
indeed.
where's the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag?
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
So this guy has patented mist-ers in quantity?
Besides, this only works either temporarily or in discrete locations. If the whole world gets misty it's going to be humid and feel hot and sticky. Also, since there's no way that the water vapor and clouds (back to mist again) would stay uniformly distributed, this will probably make for some very powerful storms.
water vapor would lead to a warmer climate not a cooler one http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19990904032112data_trunc_sys.shtml
...ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!
I think this gem earns a "whatcouldpossiblygoright".
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
What about all the new tropical storms and hurricanes this will cause?
There is probably a good reason he has avoided the public. You should not pick on people who may have a social disorder like agoraphobia.
In case you don't want to follow the link and learn something, agoraphobia means a person is scared of large open spaces, much like the space between your ears.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I could swear it's December 19th but somebody is playing April Fool jokes. Really, the solution to global warming is that the earth will get too hot, humans will either die from the heat, kill each other for the little remaining habitable land, succumb to some terrible pandemic due to compromised immune systems, or starve because we can't grow any more food. In any case gobal warming will be solved because there will not be nearly enough humans left to screw up the world any more. So what's the problem? Nature will take care of things.
I really don't see what the problem is. We don't even have to worry about the energy needed to make this work, all we have to do is get those aliens from Star Trek IV.
Now all they need to do is figure out how to make that much water airborne in case of forest fires. Of course targeting the root of the problem would yield much better results (on all timescales). (Potential flaimbait -100%).
that thinks 1\30th or a degree per year isn't anything to get excited about how the hell do you even track that?
juenger1701
Venus anybody?
I'm not that this would work. Look at Venus, while it's atmosphere is not made of water vapor its cloudy atmosphere traps heat rather than reflecting it back into space. Why would water vapor clouds act any different other than that of a greenhouse environment that Venus exhibits?
The best way to remove the increasingly hotter air around the earth is actually quite simple.
Execute all of the lawyers and politicians. I've calculated a reduction of 2 degrees within the next year increasing by an order of magnitude per year if we prevent people from becoming lawyers or politicians.
A related bonus is that they are the ones in control of the debate anyway so it's a win-win situation.
or powering our vehicles with corn.
!#&*
Water has one of the best heat transfers, so by having the water evaporate, you cool the surrounding area. This is what happens when you sweat, for example.
The other thing is that clouds are highly reflective, so the sunlight would never even reach the ground in the first place.
So I can see how these two effects would offset the greenhouse effect.
In any case, doing this would be catastrophic for another reason : what goes up must come down. And where will all this water vapor come down as and where, exactly ? Does southern asia really need more rain ? Does buffalo need more snow ? Can an arid region cope with a high increase in rainfall without causing massive mud slides and other nastiness ? What other unforeseen consequences will putting vast amounts water vapor in the atmosphere have ? These are all questions I hope we never have a definite answer for.
Wasn't this idea already invented by Shampoo?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Capture a 150ft (50m) asteroid and throw it into the middle of the Atlantic. That will rise A LOT of water into the atmosphere. Remember, you heard it first from me.
fixed
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Seriously - how long does it take to write a dozen thoughtful words, then check it??
Find out in the upcoming /. article "Slashdot Editors Have Checked"
H20
He's the ee cummings of /. I never really appreciated the oppressive limitations that the English language forces on us until SUNSTOP opened my mind to the possibility of a new way!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I, a little know scientist, have invented a method to reverse global warming. Computer simulations suggest that it can reduce global temperatures by 2 - 3 degrees C in only 10 years.
If everybody would just stand in south China, then the accumulated weight of all those people will change the Earth's axis to point up and down making sunlight never hit the poles making them real real cold.
And this is my idea, which is mine, and I call it "My Idea".
I have another idea. I call it "My Second Idea". And it's mine.
We're freezing our asses off here in Chicago and getting dumped on by blizzard after blizzard. Global warming my ass.
Also, has anyone considered the consequences with trying to fiddle with mother nature? What if we cause an ice age, how are you going to fix that?
I don't know if we should play juggle with the environment and hope we don't drop the ball.
This would work well in a place like China or India, where 1 billion people could do this, and cause a tidal wave...?
Idea stolen from "Futurama" episode 62 "Crimes of the Hot" !
The effect of water vapor is complicated. As TFA notes:
"Among the side-effects: It absorbs latent heat near the earth's surface and transports it to higher altitudes, for a cooling effect. When it condenses at higher altitudes, it releases the latent heat, which then can radiate into space, producing more cooling. It's a greenhouse gas, trapping heat and causing warming. It can form low clouds that reflect solar energy, a cooling effect. It can form more high clouds, which block some sunlight but mostly prevent the release of infrared radiation from below, another warming effect."
That's why you need to do Earth system modeling to see which effect wins out in this particular scenario. As another article remarks, "Caldeira's computer results could surprise many scientists because water vapor is a greenhouse gas widely recognized to be more powerful than carbon dioxide. The simulation suggests, however, that water vapor's cooling effects overwhelm its heat-trapping properties."
The same computer model finds a net warming effect from excess water vapor evaporated due to global warming. I suspect the effect is different whether you're evaporating it directly from surface warming or spraying it into the air and letting it evaporate there.
As I sit and stare out the window at a layer of snow, ice, and frigid temperatures, I'm pretty much thinking now would be a good time to burn some coal, cut down some rainforests, and club some baby seals for good measure.
As aircraft are known to trigger cloud formation, surely we should be putting every last jet into the air, passengers or not, and get them pumping out polution to save the planet...
So all we need to do to save Greenland is to... Nuke Greenland?
so what he's basically saying is, we should turn on all of the world's sprinklers at the same time and see what happens?
A little known scientist? I can believe that. Well, the "little known" part at least.
There was a time when people ran their sprinkler systems in the morning in S.Florida. We could clearly see the steam rise during the hot months here. By afternoon that steam would form clouds and actually seed the sky in such a way that a good drenching was sure to follow, As local governments posted more and more rules for lawn watering the rain following over the populated areas diminished to about half of what we used to get. That triggered a so called water shortage in which even less lawn watering was allowed.
What scares me is that genuine concern over global warming could spur popular support for one of these crackpot schemes.
"Green" activists, in their self righteous zeal to save the planet, have latched on to global warming as a means to further their anti-pollution, anti-industrial political agendas. These self appointed do-gooders *know* they're right, since their well-meaning desire to help others justifies any means to their end. This movement echos the "silent spring" hysteria used by the environmental movement to ban DDT in the 1960's & '70's. In that case, while increased regulation of industrial chemicals was undoubtedly a good thing, unscientific hysteria designed to move public opinion at all costs was definitely not.
Planetary climatology is an extremely immature science at best, and I sincerely doubt that any climatologist worth his salt would back any action other than reduction in the gas emissions believed to contribute to climate change.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
To all the thousands of geniuses and assorted rocket scientists who, upon first hearing of "global warming, have had this exact same idea over the last twenty-odd years, I say:
"See, you should have spoken up... now this johnny-come-lately feller gets all the credit for stating the obvious."
That's a feature
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
The poster uses Microsoft Word file naming strategy. In other news, no more drinking water.
Now I have an excuse to leave my sprinkler on for days on end. I'm not only combating global warming, but I'll have a really green lush lawn as well. Never mind all this water conservation nonsense, its just bad for global warming.
Is this Scientist's Alter-Ego Captain Chaos or has General Disarray finally gone rogue?
or
I made. In public, once.
I disagree, I think he's thinking things false. Once he starts thinking things true, then he'll wish he'd kept the whole thing to himself.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Actually, if you live in a very dry, desert climate, this works. All across Sun Valley in arizona (Phoenix, Scottsdale, etc), you'll find misters, a kind of out door A/C which sprays mists of water into the air. It uses very little water, but makes a very noticeable difference in temperature. The temperature in coverage area becomes comfortable enough for out door dining in summer. On a small scale, this works well... so isn't this prior art?
Oh boy, 3D Realms is in DEEP trouble!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I haven't heard anyone mention anything about the affects of taking 1/2'' of water from all over the planet, I'm sure that will create some changes.. Advances in Desertification? Altering the water:salt ratios.. perhaps we take all the trees in the world and build a great ladder and climb up and move the sun a bit and worry about breathing later..
if the earth has a surface area of 5.1x 10^8 square km and they want to spray up enough water to cover the earth to a half-inch depth, that's 6.12 x 10^12 cubic meters or or 6.12x10^15 kg of water.
If you spray it into the air, let's say 100m. It requires around 6x10^18 joules of energy or 1.7TWhours.
What effect on global warming will it have generating all that from clean coal ?
Nullius in verba
fix other problems that could touch the global warming as side effects. Maybe a small percent of banks bailout money would be enough to eradicate several of the biggest deserts. That will give more habitable land, help the people that lives around there and, probably, help with the global warming.
If we computer-model the effects on agricultural output, public opinion, and public policy, I think we'd see that gimmicks like this would stabilize temperature in the short term, but increase energy consumption, without any built-in preference for clean sources of that energy, which in turn will worsen the root problem it purports to help "solve" in a long term that is less than two decades. That timeframe is only an estimate, but this looks like a stupid idea that will only benefit partners/shareholders/patent holders and the like. Besides, solar energy is now competitive in price with petroleum and its advantage will only grow as oil reserves continue to be depleted, reducing the total amount of easily-available petroleum.
This [original "peak oil" theory, or "Hubbert's peak"] does not mean that the world is running out of oil: it means that we are running out of the cheap pumpable oil that has fueled the economic development of the 20th Century.
The global oil production curve is simply a composite of the contributions of individual nations. However, different countries are in varying stages of production. Some peaked long ago (the USA peaked in 1970 -an event predicted by Dr. Hubbert in 1956), some will peak very soon (the UK in 1999), and some are a long way away from peaking - see graph below. These latter countries will soon find themselves supplying an ever increasing proportion of the world's oil needs as we pass the global Hubbert Peak.
They are of course the major Middle East producers, the largest of them being Saudi Arabia. Their share of the world oil market will probably exceed 30% in 1999. The last time this happened, in 1973, it allowed them to trigger a world oil crisis. In contrast with 1973, the changes in 1999 will be permanent, as they will be based on resource constraints as opposed to politics.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
You see, global warming is exacerbated by the inefficient fuel-burning capabilities of robots. So if we have all the robots gather on an island and make them all fart in unison, this should put a big dent in global warming. The rest we can solve by dropping a giant ice cube in the ocean. I can't remember where I heard about this but it sounds foolproof.
I wasn't under the impression that Maryland was little known, but I thank the scientist for his effort, and wish him well on his next endeavor to discover Connecticut.
starting your comment in the title field.
Like Borat has made toilet...
The original poster is correct; with this method, if you stop evaporating excess water vapor to cool the planet, the climate rapidly returns to its warmer state. This is also a deficiency of other transient geoengineering schemes like stratospheric aerosol injection.
...and they arrested me for crimes against nature.
--
BMO
Thats because everyone here (obviously except you) knows about Kenneth Caldeira, which in one point during last year.
839*929
Because a chemical in small quantities inside a house can have very different effects from that same chemical in the atmosphere.
Just look at ozone: in a house, it is toxic with no benefits unless you want to sterilize a room.
In the upper atmosphere, it is a very important protection against UV.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Excuse me? Someone's patented this? All this is is one of those PVC misters that you see everywhere in the southern US during the summer, just on a bigger scale. What's so unique about that?
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
Instead of using water vapor, another scientist proposed building a massive umbrella system spanning 5000 square miles each. This umbrella system will shade the earth and prevent global warming.
The brilliant minds there have also designed sun shades.. These are massive sets of sunglasses that will shield the more populated regions of earth. An added benefit is that it looks awesomely cool from space. "That Earth is one hoopy frood" aliens will say.
No, the original poster said there'd be built-up pressure. There is no built-up pressure, as the pressure comes from the sun. The sun won't "build up" pressure that, once uncapped, will fry the planet.
This is nothing more than a clever mirror. Pressure does not build up.
As for whether the Earth would heat back up, that depends on other factors. The mirror could be used until greenhouse gasses are brought under control. Additionally, it's possible that the cloud cover would be self-sustaining (i.e., would be in equilibrium) with our current greenhouse gas levels. This whole scheme reminds me too much of Venus (even though the specifics are vastly different).
The "transient geoengineering schemes", as you call them, don't solve the problem, but they do dampen the effects, which may buy us precious time. This is like using first-aid to keep someone alive long enough to get to the hospital.
I see this tag on nearly 50% of slashdot stories now, and I'm pretty sick of seeing it. Yes, we should be cynical of new ideas, but this tag is completely unconstructive, and now with overuse borderline juvenile. By all means make your point through intelligent posting, but a tag like this is just lazy.
When are you grammer nazis going to learn, english doenst have rules of grammer, they are more like suggestions than rules.
Ah but as we don't know there will be any ill effects, then they will go ahead anyway, until we do have evidence that proves its dangerous, (by which point, its too late). The problem is, this methodology falls down, when the experiment is scaled up to a planetary scale. Trial and error learning works fine at all other scales, but not at a planetary scale. We only have one planet to experiment with at this scale.
No, the original poster said there'd be built-up pressure. There is no built-up pressure, as the pressure comes from the sun. The sun won't "build up" pressure that, once uncapped, will fry the planet.
It's just a poorly worded metaphor. The underlying point is still correct: the radiative forcing from CO2 is still there, even if it's being cancelled out by some geoengineered cooling. If you take the latter away, the planet starts to warm again, and rapidly (if CO2 levels continue to increase).
Additionally, it's possible that the cloud cover would be self-sustaining (i.e., would be in equilibrium) with our current greenhouse gas levels.
No, the current cloud cover is close to equilibrium with the current radiative forcing (clouds respond quickly).
The "transient geoengineering schemes", as you call them, don't solve the problem, but they do dampen the effects, which may buy us precious time.
It depends. You're right that their main purpose is to buy time. However, if they suddenly fail, then we can see a large amount of warming which occurs more rapidly than any scenario currently being contemplated, since the forcing changes instantly. That means that we have to be very sure that they won't suddenly fail (or we won't discover some bad side effect down the road that requires us to quickly stop).
Check it: I know everyone is dissing him on his solution to global warming as it doesn't work... But what if it did work? He has it patented. This means we couldn't make it unless we payed him royalties. He'd have the fate of Earth for ransom.
God spoke to me.
Admittedly I am out of my element here but there seems to be a couple of potential problems with this.
1. Water vapor is the most significant of the greenhouse gases.
2. Cloud cover prevents heat from being re-radiated into space.
I guess if you covered the whole earth with clouds it might reflect more sunlight and lead to a net temperature decrease. Not sure about that being a Real Good Idea.
Wasn't someone already making ships to shoot jets of water in the air from the ocean?
You realize we are talking about water, right?
Although I understand most folks do use dihydrogen monoxide in their evaporative coolers and misters. Not that is scary stuff! I sure wouldn't want to aspirate too much of it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Seems like kindof a lose/lose situation: either the water vapor stays up in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming as a greenhouse gas, or it precipitates out and warms the air right back up in the process.
I don't get the patent part of this. TFA says "he made public a patent..." This guy owns the patent on Cool Zone [http://www.coolzoneusa.com]? Or he built one of these massive "thermostats?" Or is he just trying to patent the idea that evaporation lowers heat?
The climate models used in this study are based on the laws of thermodynamics, you know.
Seems like kindof a lose/lose situation: either the water vapor stays up in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming as a greenhouse gas, or it precipitates out and warms the air right back up in the process.
Not if the vapor cools and radiates enough heat to space before it precipitates back down, or forms clouds which reflect more sunlight than they absorb.
luckily such crack pot schemes don't get off the ground.
It'd be hard to get off the ground, half an inch of water evenly distributed across the globe ends up around 1500 cubic miles of water-- a bit more than half the volume of Lake Superior, and substantially more than any of the other Great Lakes. Oh, or in other terms, about 7% of the total freshwater in the world. The world is big.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
When are you grammer nazis going to learn, english doenst have rules of grammer, they are more like suggestions than rules.
Same goes for spelling and punctuation, I suppose.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
So should I water my lawn and wash my car or not? I'm so confused!
So, since he's patented this, any use of water vapor for large scale cooling would have to pay him?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Given that about 95% of the world population uses the international system please use it. That awkward broken US units is a pain and tells basically nothing to most humans. Thanks!
But my biggest thought is, if you pump all this sea water into the air, where does the salt end up? Couldn't that be a bit of an enviornmental problem?
Course, I am not convinced Global Warming is real, after that I would need to be convinced the warming is unnatural and then after that I would need to be convinced the "cure" isn't worse then the "disease". After seeing this article and another that suggested putting trillions of tiny mirrors in space to deflect the Sun's rays (I mean what could go wrong), I now just look at Global Warming believers much the way Galeleo looked at people who rejected his ideas, mistaken at best, profoundly ignorant most likely.
Respect the Constitution
...Does buffalo need more snow ?
Probably not, but Kilimanjaro could use some more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilimanjaro
The kind of AC he was talking about was out-door, not inside a house.
Also, ozone works just the same on the ground as it does in the stratosphere; it destroys your lungs and absorbs UV rays.
Wait. So you're saying the SW US has been trapping their heat in water vapor and then "exporting" it to the rest of the world for a while now. Well THERE'S the problem. Global warming is your fault.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
You do know that the CO2 forcing that is "proven" only occurs in closed systems with uniform CO2 distribution?
Untrue. In closed systems with uniform CO2 distribution, the phenomenon is simplistic enough to show first-year science students, being taught for the first time the reason for a "control" system or group, and an "experimental" one that differs by just a single variable, to positively identify the cause of observed differences in the two groups. A real scientist, before humiliating yourself by opining publicly about things you don't understand, would have considered that absorption and emission spectra of substances are identical for all particles of any given atomic composition, whether atoms or molecules. Every carbon dioxide molecule, therefore, has the same non-emission behavior in the infrared band regardless of its location and regardless of what other substances are in its vicinity. CO2 concentration matters, not distribution.
Having non-uniform distribution means there are escape routes OUT of the Earth's atmosphere
Liar. "Having non-uniform distribution" only means that some types of particle are more or less prevalent in some regions than others. Gases mix very efficiently, and do not vary by location much anyway, as the NASA AIRS study you cited actually proves. What such a variation does not change is the total number of carbon dioxide molecules, and the behavior of all carbon dioxide molecules with respect to infrared radiation. It does not matter how they are "distributed". The cumulative effect is identical. Even if Some areas are perceptibly worse than others, the least CO2-dense areas today are worse than the most CO2-dense areas just six years ago.
Given that we have multi-decadal weather patterns, and the sun itself (where we get all the damn heat to start with) is on a 11-year pattern, and with the data we have, we cannot yet break our temperature down into what cycle is responsible for what amount of temperature variation.
I can.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensofaq.shtml#pred_mon
Identifying long-term statistical trends in data that include short-term statistical variations is not as complicated as liars like you try to make it seem. I refer the interested, honest reader to a detailed discussion of statistical methods in climate science:
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-appA.pdf
The warming trend is clear and honest people know it. Last month:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20081216_climatestats.html
Read the recent NASA AIRS satellite paper that describes two hemispheres with completely different carbon cycles and distributions.
NASA portrays those data as potentially helpful in further improving the accuracy of climate change predictions, which are already very accurate. 'Our results show carbon dioxide there can vary by nearly one percent and that the free troposphere is like international waters--what's produced in one place is free to travel elsewhere,' he said. Summary: (1) The variation you mentioned is "nearly one percent" (2) the wind mixes it very efficiently (3) as I already explained, as long as the average concentration remains elevated, a little local variation is irrelevant. NASA, its data, and its analysis do not say what you claim they say, liar.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
Not to mention that the heat doesn't just go away, but just transfers to the water vapor, making "somewhere else" that much warmer. And since spraying the water requires work, you produce more heat than you move.
Sounds like a rainmaker scam to me.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
What about the heat produced by the equipment that does the spraying ?
Believe it or not, climate model physics includes thermodynamic heat transfer.
The point is that some of the heat in the water vapor gets radiated to space, when the vapor is lofted to higher and cooler altitudes. Also that it can induce sunlight-reflecting cloud formation.
Any sign of last year's expedition? They were supposed to build a bridge between the two peaks of Kilimanjaro.
Find out in the upcoming /. article "Slashdot Editors Have Checked"
At least we never have to worry about them moving on to mating.
Yes, let's combat global warming by fucking over the environment even more. After all despite almost everything living on this planet depending on sunlight for energy what could possibly go wrong by removing a chunk of it. It's not like some parts of the world are already have problems with food production.
You would be fighting symptoms. Warming is not so much the problem as the greenhousegasses are. Besides, the greenhouse gas effects of water vapor are unknown..
I surprised we have that much freshwater!
We should totally drain lake superior. It rains so much in that area that it might fill back up in a decade or two.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We already have one. Unfortunately, someone dropped it a little too far south.
I've seen the 3rd concern listed over and over again on this forum. Water vapor certainly is a greenhouse gas, reflecting Earth's infrared back down, but I don't buy the idea that more water vapor means more heat. Are we gonna have all this vapor up in the air with no more clouds? With little sunlight making it all the way down, there will be little infrared coming back up. Continued extensive cloud cover would only make the Earth cold, probably giving us our overdue ice age.
More time than they can spare from playing lesbian sims, I reckon.
Since it will actually INCREASE the greenhouse effect (after all, it takes a LOT of energy to spray a half-inch of water into the air), you won't have to worry about tropical storms - they'll no longer be confined just to the tropics.
We'd be more interested in a /.'er who made in public with a girl.
Dr. Evil's clone is a little, well known scientist.
"computer simulation of Ace's invention suggests it would significantly cool the planet."
So a simulation which thinks carbon dioxide is a significant factor thinks water vapor won't heat the planet. In the real world, water vapor causes most of the greenhouse warming. In computer simulations, the effects of water vapor and clouds are uncertain. So the simulation is trying to prove something which it does not understand.
I've said it before. Read The King, the Mice and the Cheese. Global scale engineering solutions are not going to help.
It won't matter what we do we're going to burn all of the carbon that we can.
I had a plan to drill into earths core to release some cooling volcanic ash. Maybe we should let go of millions of mylar balloons so they reflect the sun's harmful rays!
I am going to guarantee that the heat generated from the pumps and the power plants that power the pumps (not to mention the carbon emissions) will vastly outweigh any visible reduction in cooling.
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy I don't mind, I think they're crazy
Clouds also help to trap heat near the ground, which is partially why the coldest days up here started on the clearest days. As such, any cooling caused by increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere would be temporary at best and in the long run would be quite detrimental indeed.
Aside from Global Warming, and by association those that work with it, being ridiculous; please note that the greatest contributor to the greenhouse effect is water vapor. This is ignored frequently, since it isn't a gas coupled with the popularity of the phrase "greenhouse gases."
So yes, he can use water to cool down some mass (which will heat up the water, you know the whole conservation of energy thing) but will end up trapping more heat from the sun...
This guy simply has his facts wrong.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
Moreover even if it wasn't silly, and really worked well it would forbid the general public from fighting global warming this way unless a license is obtained from the patent holder, or 20 years wait time expires. How about we want to spend tax money to fight global warming, but an idiot patented the process and wants to charge us 100 trillion dollars - after all what's the planet worth to us? - that we can't afford, so we're forced to wait 20 years to let his patent expire and let the problem grow worse while we wait. But in the name of justice, it's a matter of principle, isn't it?
Aside from Global Warming, and by association those that work with it, being ridiculous; please note that the greatest contributor to the greenhouse effect is water vapor. This is ignored frequently, since it isn't a gas coupled with the popularity of the phrase "greenhouse gases."
This is not ignored by the scientists in TFA, as you would know if you RTFA.
This guy simply has his facts wrong.
No. The climatic effects of water vapor are more complicated than you think, and you have to actually sit down and calculate to tell which effect dominates.
"First, the sprayed droplets would transform to water vapor, a change that absorbs thermal energy ... were projected to reach nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit within 20 or 30 years."
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
You don't actually know what the net effect is until you calculate it. Caldeira calculated it, in a state-of-the-art climate model, and found that the net effect of the latent heat release coupled with cloud albedo outweighed the heat trapping effect. It's possible this model is wrong, but proving it would require a much more nuanced calculation than "clouds trap heat".
Seems like misters would be a great target for biological warfare. No need to worry about disseminating your payload, let the misters do it for you. Oops.
http://www.tenjou.net/
"Green" activists, in their self righteous zeal to save the planet, have latched on to global warming as a means to further their anti-pollution, anti-industrial political agendas.
I'm not sure I know anyone who is "pro-pollution", but clearly you are directly insinuating that "Green Activists" are anti-industrial. Are you aware that what this person is proposing would probably create an industry - even if it is a crackpot scheme? Are you unaware that you are making the illogical assumption that all industry necessarily creates pollution? Are you further aware that you are insinuating that all "Green Activists" are attempting to "stop our economy", as evidenced by your association of "anti-pollution" with "anti-industrial"?
My guesses to questions, in order, because I doubt you will answer them: No, Yes, Yes.
Planetary climatology is an extremely immature science at best, and I sincerely doubt that any climatologist worth his salt would back any action other than reduction in the gas emissions believed to contribute to climate change.
Uh, you mean as immature as Physics right? Climatology started a long time ago - 10th or 16th century, depending on who is counting - about when people started studying that thing we sometimes call "Gravity" (again, depending on who is counting).
/.) is pretty "immature" in itself.
Just because a Science is not as popular as other sciences (which is usually caused more by economic incentive rather than the merit of the science itself) does not make it "immature". There is a lot of evidence to back up many of their claims.
It's really sad that your point - a concern over waste of money fostered by a skeptic attitude towards the effectiveness of the method - was completely clouded by very obvious under-supported biases against environmentalists, environmentalism, and all related sciences. Because honestly, I share that concern. But to voice your concern in such a manner (and yeah, I know, its
What scares me is that genuine concern over global warming could spur popular support for one of these crackpot schemes.
Geoengineering is not a crackpot scheme. There are various options on the table that would almost certainly work as far as halting global warming. Whether their side effects are worth the benefits is a matter of cost-benefit analysis. In my opinion the answer is likely "no" unless something really bad happens climate-wise, in which case it may be a choice between bad and worse.
I sincerely doubt that any climatologist worth his salt would back any action other than reduction in the gas emissions believed to contribute to climate change.
There are some very prominent scientists who support or at least are investigating climate geoengineering. One of the seminal geoengineering papers was written by a Nobel laureate in atmospheric chemistry (Crutzen), although he's not strictly a climatologist. Ken Caldeira in TFA is a rather well known and respected climate scientist. However, geoengineering proponents are often given a hard time at conferences; there are many people who think the whole idea is immoral. I personally think it has legitimate uses, but only as a last-resort safety valve if things get worse than we expect.
Significant reduction of emissions may not be a realistic solution.
If people believe global warming is really caused by humans and a problem, they will seek the most convenient and immediately effective solution available that won't break their way of life.
Reducing global emissions in such a way is long, and inconvenient.
It's not surprising that there be efforts to counter global warming without reducing emissions. They may be successful: a viable solution may be found that reduces warming or causes cooling, even while actual emissions are only increasing.
In fact, in the long run, such a solution may win out, to the extent the short-term costs and inconveniences are smaller.
You can accept that global warming is a problem to be solved without accepting that emissions need to be reduced.
Just because emission reduction is the only concept for a solution readily available, doesn't mean it's the only one.
In fact, so far it's not a solution -- it has yet to even be shown that emissions can be realistically reduced; short of massive costs, like encouraging the proliferation of new nuclear power plants and closing coal/oil burning power plants.
Why not just put Duct Tape over the mouths and asses of Congress? Not only would it reduce the amount of useless hot gasses being expelled into the atmosphere, but it would also save everyone t he headache of having to put up with them!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Regarding prior art: I saw something on TV (probably Discovery Science) where people were trying to do this from a barge they had built and designed. It would pump the water straight up and atomize it as finely as possible.
Maybe it's the same guy though?
A red herring.
In this case, the effect is the same idea, the operation, and the invention are the same.
The only difference is the scale of application of the method required, and the scale of its effect.
Ozone is toxic no matter where it is; in small amounts it won't kill you, but you won't find anyone surviving in the upper atmosphere where the ozone is, either.
Ozone at the surface doesn't do anything about UV, in part, because most UV is already absorbed or deflected by the time it gets to ground level.
If I own a patent on the concept of a 21" LCD monitor, you can use from your desk.
That's prior art against you patenting the same concept for a 500" monitor that can be seen half a mile away.
A difference in scale is not a difference in the concept: when a new invention is nothing more than the sum of its already-invented parts combined, then it is not novel, and thus not patentable.
Yes, it would be a lot colder without water vapour, but water vapour in the atmosphere has more or less reached it's saturation point and has left huge puddles in the form of oceans. As far Earth's climate is concerened, water is a feedback not a forcing. When something forces the temprature of the atmosphere to change (eg CO2 emmisions) the saturation point will change and water vapour will amplify the change in both directions by increasing/decreasing to the new saturation point.
In other words you need to change either the temprature or pressure of the atmosphere as a whole for it to hold more water vapuor. You can't pump significant amounts into the atmosphere without it falling out as rain/dew elsewhere over the next few days. As for dissipating heat into space, water vapour rarely gets higher than a jet liner since the temp/pressure thing makes it form clouds and it falls down again. Even if the sprinklers blast the vapour directly into space there is that conservation of enery detail to think about.
Although I support pure research I find it sad that someone let this guy have time on a supercomputer to play with his idea.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You, for one, welcome our new toxic corporate overlords.
30 years to achieve 1 degree cooling?
While I'm glad that people are thinking outside of the box for solutions to global warming, if world powers became REALLY serious and adopted all the "Radical R's" on this site then, as Al Gore stated, we could have a serious shot at getting OFF the fossil fuels in 10 years. We would of course probably need 20 or so to become truly carbon neutral but at least society would be heading in the right direction, living "light and local".
Then with Biochar sequestering 6 gigatons of Co2 a year (according to Tim Flannery's estimates as stated to BeyondZeroEmissions) we'd gradually REVERSE global warming. Not only that, we could have rebuilt our cities, be living with far less traffic and far less cars, be independent of world oil markets, have a healthier, slimmer population, have richer community lives, trendier cities, energy security, healthy local ecosystems and farming, and be enjoying a "Cradle to Cradle" or "Waste = food" society where all "waste" (outdated concept) becomes an input into the next product.
Burning through energy to spray water for a 1 degree lower temperature seems trite by comparision.
In any case, doing this would be catastrophic for another reason : what goes up must come down. And where will all this water vapor come down as and where, exactly ?
Concentrate the vapor increase over the oceans.
They don't notice some extra rain all that much...
Still, the increased energy requirements to emit all this vapor might actually outweigh the cooling effect (in the form of greater emissions and power consumption)
Once everything washes in to the sea it will all work itself out. Ye of little faith!
(Brought to you by Stanley's Waders!)
This "little known scientist" seems to have twigged onto the amazing feature of planet earth that water evaporates when it gets warm, condenses when it cools and is the major regulator of that part of the "greenhouse" effect that keeps the planet from alternately freezing and baking (like the moon) as it rotates in the sun's light... Clouds reflect energy when it gets warmer and dissipate to let more hit the surface below when its cools out... His "misters" seem to be doing nothing more than emulating natural precipitation... I wonder if he already has plans for suing the planet for "infringing" on his patented process??? Couldn't this be an example of "prior art"?
Marketing note to those with brilliant ideas to reverse global warming: don't publish/publicize in winter.
*hunkers down in -25 windchill*
Or we can do as the Indians used to do and burn Oklahoma every year.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217190439.htm
Nice job there with the links. I guess the syphilis that you contracted from one of your prostitute "friends" has finally gotten into the grey matter! I am sorry for your "loss".
Uh, you mean as immature as Physics right? Climatology started a long time ago - 10th or 16th century, depending on who is counting - about when people started studying that thing we sometimes call "Gravity" (again, depending on who is counting).
Oh please. You know what he meant by "immature". He means that the climate is not understood well enough to predict the climatological effects of the industrial revolution, much less how deliberately trying to counter those effects will affect things.
Although I support pure research I find it sad that someone let this guy have time on a supercomputer to play with his idea
I feel that way about all the climate modeling that's wasting supercomputer time these days. Woo hoo, the model based on our assumptions validated our assumptions! We've yet to see a single climate model successfully predict something unexpected - it's right up there with string theory for usefulness.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Or we could just persuade a massive volcano or three to cook off.
Krakatoa did wonders for reducing temperatures world wide. No muss or fuss, just some high explosives in the right spots and in sufficient quantities.
I think that water vapor, which you can't see, is a greenhouse gas, but clouds are not that, they are tiny water droplets or ice crystals, and are quite reflective.
So I guess the tricky bit is to make sure that the increased water vapor rises and turns into clouds.
what goes up must come down
I seem to remember from my industrial gas engineering days that CO2 is heavier than air (that's why we'd put powered vents near the bottom of enclosures that air breathers might go into). Can we please all just move on to the next 'the-sky-is-falling' media-hyped scenario like the scarcity of fresh water? It's probably a scarier situation but many of the invested AGW people haven't caught on yet. Or at least not enough of them to build a "consensus" and unilaterally decide that the "science is settled".
Your post may be accidentally misleading. I have many people exclaim that they needn't worry about reducing their GHG emissions because water vapor has such a larger effect. What they forget is that increased temperatures from Co2 has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. (Warming has melted glaciers and increased evaporation.)
So the warming effect of each ton of co2 is greatly multiplied by the increased evaporation. Meaning, we probably have to reduce our ghg more and faster.
"We've yet to see a single climate model successfully predict something unexpected - it's right up there with string theory for usefulness."
Leaving aside the tautology of "predicting something unexpected", you may want to have a look into polar amplification.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If a computer model, or any hypothesis really, only makes predictions that are in line with the current consensus, it's not very interesting. A hypothesis that make divergent (and falsifyable, and testable) predictions is far more interesting, as it will either get falsified, or move things in a new direction. Since it's nearly impossible to get funding for any sort of climat change project unless you're narrowly in line with consensus, a ton of money has been wasted on basically masturbatory modeling.
If we weren't pissing away 1000x as much money on unecessary bailouts I'd be pissed about that.
New rule: no individual comanpy can recieve a bailout larger than NASA's budget for the year. At least NASA gives me good images to use for my desktop!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
... to pump this water would of course be 100% free
ok i am sure that this is accounted for but i want to hear the solution. what happens to all that salt that is left over in the land from the "gigatons" of sea water. last time i checked soil doesn't like salt.
"Since it's nearly impossible to get funding for any sort of climat change project unless you're narrowly in line with consensus a ton of money has been wasted on basically masturbatory modeling.
Maybe it's not a complete waste after all, it does serve as an anecdote to help your brain shake off that politics thing. Unless of course you can point to an enduring global consensus among the world's scientists that recomends policy makers should look at giant sprinklers?
That's the problem with politics, it's like a brain tumour that sucks away any awareness of the contradictions coming from your own mouth.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Need I mention that their wear too mispled worlds? Behinds, you cans till incinerate them eaning thouh even that for the speeling not correcting and tense, as it were, however, correcting will exhaperate.
So their!!
And lets not forget that water vapour is a greenhouse gas. Making this the equivalent of trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline onto it.
There's always been small tornadoes outside of tropics. They're rare, short-living and too weak to doo much damage besides damaging some roots, but they exist. Of course, even real tropical storms would likely be less of a problem here in North, since the structures tend to be sturdier in the first place; however, I wonder if tropical and sub-tropical regions simply become unlivable ? You can't rebuild New Orleans every year, and most big cities of the world sit on a shore, so they would also flood when hit by a major storm. And, since most scyscrapers seem to have an exterior made entirely of glass, they'd be ruined; the superstructure would withstand wind forces, but the insides would become a gutted skeleton.
Should us on the subarctic begin stocking up with weapons and supplies to deal with the hordes of refugees from the warmer regions ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
How is water a greenhouse gas? I thought Co2 is because it's lighter than most molecules so it stays in the upper atmosphere and reflects light back down to Earth, whereas H2o condenses and falls back to Earth. So water may reflect light back down to Earth but it eventually goes away due to condensation, but Co2 never condenses
There were a bunch of articles a few months ago about the same sort of thing:
Like this one which includes a link to a paper from 2005 with the same idea.
"To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.
I am no expert, just a fan of science on TV and this solution reminded me of a (I think Nova) program I watched about Global Dimming. Essentially, an effect of more clouds in the air caused by the heating of global warming and the by-product of jet engine exhaust thereby dimming the earth by blocking the suns radiation. This lessens the water evaporation on the earth's surface and causes days to be dimmer. All of which would be a detriment to the earth's ecosystem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Actually, the main competitor to the geoengineering approach described in TFA is stratospheric injection of aerosol precursors, i.e., artificial volcanoes. It has drawbacks.
If more water in the air causes cooling, then when the planet warms, won't that naturally cause more evaporation and hence more water in the air at once?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
In other words you need to change either the temprature or pressure of the atmosphere as a whole for it to hold more water vapuor. You can't pump significant amounts into the atmosphere without it falling out as rain/dew elsewhere over the next few days.
That means you have to continually keep spraying water to keep the scheme going, but it doesn't mean that the scheme doesn't work.
As for dissipating heat into space, water vapour rarely gets higher than a jet liner since the temp/pressure thing makes it form clouds and it falls down again.
The point is not to inject water into space, just that if you shoot it into higher and therefore cooler air, more of the latent heat will be radiated than if it evaporates at the warmer surface. Some of that radiation escapes to space.
Although I support pure research I find it sad that someone let this guy have time on a supercomputer to play with his idea.
Why? The model supports the validity of his idea. Whether it's practical to continuously spray that much water is another matter. It would be easier to do aerosol geoengineering, but that may have more side effects.
I seem to remember from my industrial gas engineering days that CO2 is heavier than air (that's why we'd put powered vents near the bottom of enclosures that air breathers might go into).
Yes, but it takes a century or two to start coming down, and much of it will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years until natural sinks can scrub it.
Can we please all just move on to the next 'the-sky-is-falling' media-hyped scenario like the scarcity of fresh water? It's probably a scarier situation but many of the invested AGW people haven't caught on yet.
Those who study climate change impacts are well aware of scarce water supplies, which climate change is expected to exacerbate in some regions.
How is water a greenhouse gas?
It absorbs infrared radiation, just like CO2 does.
So water may reflect light back down to Earth but it eventually goes away due to condensation, but Co2 never condenses
Water vapor doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long as CO2 does, but that doesn't mean that it's not a greenhouse gas. And since water vapor is continuously evaporating, there is always water vapor in the air, even though any particular molecule of it may not stay there long.
I do not know how an idiot can be labeled as a scientist. "Global warming" seems to only affect large cities ignoring the small towns in between. Let's say we can cool to world, what happens to the poor bastards in the north who have seen no temperature variance in over 50 years? Maybe the scientists should do some reading before wasting time and probably tax money on a hair brianed ideas.
Oh the humidity!
Say hello to my little sig.
There was a study in the '70s that predicted the collapse of much of the southern US in the early part of this century due to it becoming too hot to live in, and too dry to farm. The US absolutely *has* to get a handle on its' population growth, and reverse it. The alternative is really ugly - a 3rd-world standard of living for most of the population.
The prediction was for 50 to 150 million Americans to be displaced, out of a total population of 450 to 665 million. That's pretty grim.
Also, how much energy will all this spraying consume? A huge (GT) amount of water has to be pumped.
Not that I want to pour rain on their parade.
Maybe the energy consumed in pumping, and any heating that produces, will be more than balanced by the evaporative and reflective effects. I suppose solar-powered pumps might be the answer, and probably very useful for a scheme that would need worldwide usage.
I think the calculations need doing.
And in the spirit of the OP, I'd also just like to say.
No it isn't the same effect. On the small scale, water cools immediate surroundings by evaporation. This is all there is to it. On planetary scale, the mist do cool immediate surroundings by evaporation too. However, if it were to condense in the lower atmosphere, it would release heat while condensing and would have no overall cooling effect. The patentable idea in the planet-scale application is that, it is possible to dump the heat into space by controlling where the water condenses.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Play logic games if you want, the fact of the matter is that the environmental movement is political, not scientific. They use, or misuse, science to bolster their cause as they see fit, but well-meaning intent does not automatically mean that their interpretation of the science is correct.
Climatology is immature in the sense that we don't have a solid base of data that reliably tells us the consequences of a schemes like the one proposed in TFA. A simple check of the accuracy of your local weather forecast reveals the likelihood of a given outcome, e.g. rain, is expressed in percentages. This is a simplistic example, but reflects our current inability to accurately predict even common climatic events. Additionally, these predictions are based more on direct observations rather than an abstracted mathematical model that accurately predicts climatic events - that model just doesn't exist.
Why bet the planet if there is no way to prove a geoengineering scheme will work? It's hubris at it's worst! The climate has changed before and will change again regardless of human actions. Personally I'd much rather focus on things we can prove are dangerous like the presence of toxic industrial effluent in the water supply. The focus of global warming has detracted from many other legitimate and PROVEN hazards that can be more easily and directly dealt with. Besides, the simplest and most direct method of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce them, not introduce a new and untested variable into an extremely complicated system. You DO know the difference between dependent and independent variables, don't you?
My point was not about money, but the potential negative planetary effects of an untestable geoengineering scheme. I'm not biased against environmentalism but rather the confusion of politics and propaganda with hard science.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Let's take a look at this. To be viable you would have to evaporate an amount of water that is significant compared to the water that is already evaporated. Given that a largish thunderstorm cell has energy content on the order of an H bomb, methinks that the budget is going to be a bit stretched.
For houses this works well. For planets, no.
Also evaporating water may drop the temperature, but it doesn't drop the heat. You're just storing it as latent heat of water vapor. In that form it can still play with the rest of the climate engine.
Even if it were possible, there are good reasons to think that it MIGHT be counter productive.
1. Water is a potent greenhouse gas, blocking different IR bands than CO2. Increasing the average water content of the atmosphere may well cause the average temp to go up.
2. Enough water vapour and you increase the number of clouds. Increasing the number of clouds can push the climate either way: Thick clouds tend to cool the earth, thin clouds tend to warm it. Last time I checked (some years ago) cloud modeling was one of the sticky points in climate models.
3. If you used fresh water for this, it's going to put a major drain on our fresh water supplies. If you use salt water for this, you will put a huge amount of cute microscopic salt crystals in the air. These act as condensation nuclei for water droplets. The formation of rain is dependent on the number of nuclei. Too few and you get a few large drops of rain that result in light rainfall. Too many and you get masses of cloud with drops too small to fall, or that evaporate on the way down.
A possibly more viable form of climate control would be to use H bombs to turn mountain tops into stratospheric dust. We have significant data that large volcanic eruptions can cool the atmosphere for a few years. I don't know if anyone has figured out how much of this is due to dust, and how much to sulfates. Sure this method increases the background radiation. But I think most people would take a 1-2% increase of cancer in 20 years rather than become a refugee of rising ocean levels.
(Caveat: I've not done the math. How many bombs a year does it take to do a Krakatoa? What is the radiation release of an H bomb designed to pulverize the maximum amount of rock and inject it into the stratosphere? I submit that the math for this is less than trivial.)
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
I noticed that you said there are geoengineering schemes that would "almost certainly work", "almost" being the word that catches my eye. Are you that confident in the odds that you're willing to bet the planet?
Besides, we aren't talking about saving the planet but saving ourselves - this assumes we are more important than everything else on the planet. I'm not trying to imply anything about a "natural order of things", but merely attempting to keep things in perspective.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
No it isn't the same effect. On the small scale, water cools immediate surroundings by evaporation. This is all there is to it. On planetary scale, the mist do cool immediate surroundings by evaporation too.
You realize that statement is a self-contradiction? It has the same effect, you have admitted it.
The choice of where to use an existing invention is not patentable, because there's nothing novel or non-obvious about choosing to use an existing invention in the upper atmosphere instead of the lower atmosphere.
This is like taking the idea of an "ice bag" commonly placed on the head by people with a headache, and patenting the idea of putting an ice bag on the backs of people with backaches.
Coming up with a brand new invention is patentable. Coming up with a new application for an existing invention is not.
I'm still not convinced that it would be a good idea. I'm not comfortable with the idea of trying to cover up warming caused by human emissions with even more emissions. Reduction of emissions is the only answer I agree with -- which capturing and this covering do nothing to encourage.
What do you want!
GLOBAL WARMING
When do you want it!
NOW
What do you want!
GLOBAL WARMING
When do you want it!
NOW
As it write it's a day or two to the official start of winter, and the temperature on the front porch is -34 C.
This is some 20 degrees C (36 F for the metricly disadvantaged) below normals for this time of year.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Play logic games if you want, the fact of the matter is that the environmental movement is political, not scientific.
This is a gross overgeneralization.
They use, or misuse, science to bolster their cause as they see fit,
Some misuse science, and some do not.
Why bet the planet if there is no way to prove a geoengineering scheme will work?
There is a way to prove it: you can try it. If further modeling studies bear the idea out, and anyone deems it worthwhile, the next stage is real-world experiments. One advantage of this kind of geoengineering scheme is that it's relatively easy to control the strength of the effect, and dial it back if it doesn't work. The excess water vapor precipitates out very quickly. The corollary, however, is that if you don't keep doing it (e.g., you run out of money), and allow too many greenhouse gases to build up in the meantime, then you're in for a lot of warming once you stop. Of course, testing would be expensive, but the negative consequences of a test probably are not devastating since the effects can be quickly undone. It's not necessary to "bet the planet".
Besides, the simplest and most direct method of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce them, not introduce a new and untested variable into an extremely complicated system.
This is true. Geoengineering schemes probably work as far as temperature is concerned, but there may be unpredictable side effects. Even building a large-scale test is probably not worthwhile. The only time you'd probably try this is if we detect something really bad coming, like crossing the threshold for a Greenland ice sheet collapse.
Whenever I've flown over the landscape it seems to me that forests are much darker than either grasslands or most crops.
If you plant forest, it has a one time 50-100 year impact soaking up CO2 before the biomass reaches an equilibrium between growth and decay.
The only biosystem I'm aware of that sequesters carbon indefinitely are peat bogs. The little beasties create enough acidity that the previous generations don't rot. Of course they ahve to be in a situation where there continues to be standing water as the layers get thicker.
This is one of the reasons that climate warming affects arctic regions to a greater degree than tropical regions. Warm up the arctic, and the treeline moves north. Spruce (predominate tree line species) has a very low albedo. This in turn means that the net reflectivity of the region drops, which further warms the region. Positive feed back loop.
A better plan generally is to harvest biomass for energy, but instead of burning it all, use gassification systems,to make much of it into charcoal. Return the charcoal to the soil. Pure carbon has a very long residence time, and acts as a surface for nutrients to cling to. Some experiments with doing this in tropical rain forest slash and burn agriculture have found that the soil become quite productive for long periods.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
I noticed that you said there are geoengineering schemes that would "almost certainly work", "almost" being the word that catches my eye. Are you that confident in the odds that you're willing to bet the planet?
As I noted in another response, we don't have to "bet the planet" in order to test geoengineering. We can do as little or as much of it as we want in order to study the effects, as long as we don't commit ourselves to doing it for a long period of time.
We agree; I'm far from convinced that it's a good idea myself. But I think it and other geoengineering schemes are worth investigating, as a worst-case backup solution in case we fail to reduce emissions enough.
This was in a recent Scientific American. There aren't easy solutions to climate change.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=geoengineering-how-to-cool-earth
and it will cost us only some xxx bln $
The cooling of immediate surroundings by evaporation is not scalable to planetary level. The misters rely on this effect and on this effect alone, which is fine for an open system like a house's backyard. However, it doesn't work at all in a closed system, such as a room or a planet. Regardless of where you place misters, or how big they are, the water vapor is just a carrier of heat. The heat doesn't get magically destroyed once it is used for turning water in vapor. It is released in exactly the same amount, when the vapor turns into water. This fact is irrelevant when designing or using a garden mister, as you wouldn't care where or how far the heat goes as long as it goes away from you. Once the heat is removed from the target area, the mister has fulfilled its purpose.
The means of cooling Earth is by making sure the water condenses where it loses some of its heat into space. The physical mechanism for this is radiating some of heat to space, by making sure the condensation occurs away from potential absorbers. This is fundamentally different idea from cooling by evaporation. Also this idea is independent of the way how you produce high altitude condensation. It would work as long as you control where the condensation occurs, even if you haven't produced the vapor yourself.
However an idea isn't patentable, while an implementation is. Their chosen implementation is using carefully located misters such that vapor they create condenses where some heat would be released into space. The primary use of misters in the previously known setting (local cooling by evaporation) is just a step in a longer process for a different purpose (dumping heat into space by radiation), when misters are used for cooling the planet. This is why it is an invention.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
as a method of increasing rain fall and decreasing temperatures in the Sahara, California, and other hot places, wouldn't this be considered prior art?
I'm quite astounded that he manged to patent the idea of spraying water into the air to begin with. How come somebody in the patent office didn't laugh himself to tears, photocopy it and post it all over the building for everybody else to laugh at, and outright reject it?
The runcible rhythm of ravenous raisins rolled through the rookery rambling and raving.
The best solution is to produce a cloud in space so it reflects the energy before it gets to earth. Eventually we will have to be more energy efficient .
Isn't there prior art in things like wind blowing over the surface of open water?
I was just thinking the exact same thing. Isn't this making a temporary correct and making a worse long term problem?
I've had the same idea myself but didn't write it down, I'm smart but not that smart so there will likely be others who did. I suspected it didn't have enough novelty to be patented anyway, how do you patent what's basically a power-plant cooling tower?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It has been (nearly) impossible for about 10 years now to get NSF funding for any research that questioned the existince of global warming, or it's cause. That's not science. The scientific method is an *adversarial* process. If by "political" you mean US election politics, I don't see it here: the executive branch for past 8 years has hardly been leading the global warming charge. This is far more insidious: deciding that a hypothesis is "settled science" and any attempt to question it is a waste of funding before the hypothesis has even been *tested*.
As Karry Mullis puts it: Science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they *attempt* to discover, not for actually discovering the truth. Mullis is a Nobel-prize winning biochemist, not some kook. Yet when he questioned whether the HIV virus causes AIDS, he was physically ejected from conferences. Note that there is no actual science showing that HIV causes AIDS (though the correlation is beyond doubt, the correlation is a bit self-fulfilling). It was simply accepted as "settled science" -- without ever having been the subject of the scientific method -- and anyone who dared question this "fact" was branded a heritic and removed from the discussion, even a Nobel laureate in the field.
The same thing is happening with global warming. Sure, it seems like a reasonable hypothesis, but it *hasn't* been the subject of the scientific method, because the contrarian position hasn't been funded (or, when funded by the private sector, the research is dismissed out of hand). It is accepted as the Unquestionable Othodoxy simply because, if it were true, it would further a common political agenda. "It seems reasonable, and the ends justify the means" is not how science is supposed to work.
But maybe that's what you meant about politics and clear thinking?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Isn't water vapor a greenhouse gas?
Learn something new.
All you have to do is pass a law stating that all men are hereby required to pee freely into the air instead of into toilets. Completely carbon-neutral and energy efficient. Of course, this could get a little messy...
Um. It's exactly the same.
The earth is just a very very large room.
You wouldn't install misters in a place where they would release all the heat back into your house, would you?
Elements of a specific implementation that accomplishes misting into space may be novell and deserve patent.
The concept applying a mister to the same problem (getting rid of heat) is not new.
This invention is not about using a fork to tie shoelaces.
It's using a massively enlarged fork to transport a much larger meal over a much longer distance.
It has been (nearly) impossible for about 10 years now to get NSF funding for any research that questioned the existince of global warming, or it's cause.
Says someone who has no doubt never applied for NSF climate funding.
You don't write in your grant proposal that "I intend to prove (or disprove) anthropogenic global warming". You write in things like, "I plan to explore the influence of solar activity on climate", or "the role of natural variability in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation on climate", or "the role of the greenhouse effect on climate", or whatever. Such grants do get funded.
Mullis is a Nobel-prize winning biochemist, not some kook.
Not some kook? This is the same Mullis who believes in astral projection and that a glowing raccoon spoke to him.
Yet when he questioned whether the HIV virus causes AIDS, he was physically ejected from conferences.
Poor persecuted Mullis. A brave Galileo being silenced for his heresy. I'm sure it had nothing to do with his behavior. It must have been his genius that lesser minds couldn't accept.
From PCR: A Story of Biotechnology):
"Mullis and a scientist named Mike McGrogan got into an increasingly surly match of wits, hurling accusations of scientific and technical incompetence back and forth. The escalating confrontation brought Gelfand's party to an end. Mullis wasn't done, though. He pursued McGrogan to the balcony outside McGrogan's room, where a shoving and shouting match ensued. At one in the morning, John Sninsk, who had recently come to Cetus, found himself physically mediating between the two scientists. Reluctantly, Mullis returned to his room. Still riled, Mullis called Tom White several times to tell him in an abusive tone that White had been a `jerk' for insiting that Mullis experimentally demonstrate that PCR worked when he knew perfectly well that it did. Finally, at three in the morning, White called hotel security, who escorted Mullis to the beach for a long walk."
From the NYT, about the Toledo conference where he lied about the subject of his talk and instead presented his HIV "theory":
"His only slides (on what he called 'his art') were photographs he had taken of naked women with colored lights projected on their bodies,'' Dr. Martin continued. `He accused science of being universally corrupt with widespread falsification of data to obtain grants. Finally he impugned the honesty of several named scientists working in the H.I.V. field.'"
Sure, it seems like a reasonable hypothesis, but it *hasn't* been the subject of the scientific method, because the contrarian position hasn't been funded.
All the well known skeptical climate scientists are regularly funded. And the NSF does not give funding either for or against "a position" on global warming. It gives funding for a specific investigation. The mechanics of natural climate change most certainly is funded.
> There's always been small tornadoes outside of tropics. They're rare, short-living and too weak to doo much damage besides damaging some roots, but they exist.
I'm sure I'm misreading you, but tornadoes in the Midwest US do quite a bit of damage, and are not rare.
Or did you mean something entirely else?
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
Scientists can say the dumbest things sometimes. You want to stop global warming? QUIT CUTTING DOWN TREES!!!!!!! Just as most people have been convinced that they aren't biological organisms, (and still subject to all maladies associated with this state) they have also forgotten that trees are big sponges. They capture and hold airborne water (dew, rain, snow...etc) close to the ground. The additional water at ground level increases the local humidity as well as having a cooling effect as the water evaporates. It also provides a cushioning effect on approaching pressure displacements in the atmosphere. Without trees, storms rip through previously treed areas with very little or no ground resistance, often intensifying the effects felt on the ground.
So you want to stop global warming? Quit breeding like bacteria and go plant some trees!!!!!
Well, the Gov't could just seize the patent as relating to "National Security." They do that on occasion, but I belive it's been basically limited to cryptography.
..but where do we get all this water?
I assume it would have to be fresh water- I'm not sure what would happen if you started spraying massive amounts of salt water into the atmosphere, other than cars in Arizona and such places would no longer be free from rusting.
Speaking as a freshwater-rich Canadian, I suspect our natural resources may be on the bleeding edge.
Maybe we could start hurling glacier ice upwards. It would be ground up into ice dust first.
Oh, wait. That's Greenland's resource.
.
.
- aqk
F U
A "study in the 70s"? The same time period where they were predicting Global Freezing? Got a cite for that?
Climatology is immature in the sense that we don't have a solid base of data that reliably tells us the consequences of a schemes like the one proposed in TFA. A simple check of the accuracy of your local weather forecast reveals the likelihood of a given outcome, e.g. rain, is expressed in percentages. This is a simplistic example, but reflects our current inability to accurately predict even common climatic events. Additionally, these predictions are based more on direct observations rather than an abstracted mathematical model that accurately predicts climatic events - that model just doesn't exist.
You are confusing Climatology with Meteorology. They are not the same. With regards to Climatology, the model does exist, and it has accurately predicted what has happened in the past - this would be the "solid base of data" that you are declaring to be nonexistent. To reiterate: Climatologists came up with a model based on data they discovered, and then found more data that largely backed up the model.
Besides, the simplest and most direct method of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce them, not introduce a new and untested variable into an extremely complicated system. You DO know the difference between dependent and independent variables, don't you?
I agree with you here, but I don't think anyone is seriously considering building a device that works on TFA's subject's principle as a near-term solution for... greenhouse gases... or altering the course of the Earth's climate. It's probably more of a desperate measure.
Yes, I do know the difference between a dependent and an independent variable. I would not consider "Water Vapor" to be a "new and untested variable" in our Earth's climate, however.
Sorry, it was a dead-tree item. Also, they weren't predicting "Gobal Freezing" - they were predicting global warming back then as well. You may be thinking of "Nuclear Winter" ... :-)
As you can see from this link, scientists wren't predicting global freezing ...
1970's ice age predictions were predominantly media based with the majority of scientific papers predicting warming.
Most predictions of an impending ice age came from the popular press (eg - Newsweek, NY Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine). As far as peer reviewed scientific papers in the 1970s, very few papers (7 in total) predicted global cooling. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of global cooling, significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming due to CO2. More on 1970s science...
Rasool and Schneider's ice age "projection"
The main study cited by skeptics is Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate (Rasool 1971). The paper doesn't actually predict an ice age. Instead, it projects a possible scenario - if aerosol levels increased 6 to 8 times then sustained those levels for several years, it may trigger an ice age. Historically, what happened was aerosol levels fell. While it's unclear whether Rasool's calculations re aerosol cooling were accurate, one inaccuracy was they underestimated climate's sensitivity to CO2 by a factor of 3.
In the decades since their 1971 paper, many studies constraining climate sensitivity calculate that if atmospheric CO2 was doubled, global temperatures would rise around 3C. These studies employ different methods (modelling, calculations from empirical observations) looking at different time periods (the 20th century, the Holocene, past ice ages), different aspects of climate (surface temperature, mid-tropospheric temperature, ocean heat intake) and response to different forcings (volcanic, CO2, solar). More on climate sensitivity...
Or better yet, read this.
--They use, or misuse, science to bolster their cause as they see fit,
-Some misuse science, and some do not.
How does the layman tell the difference? The people I object to misuse the science.
-There is a way to prove it: you can try it.
Not on my planet. How can you possibly "try it" in any valid, reproducible and meaningful way when the goal is reduction in mean global temperature? Why not just attack it at the source rather than screw around with things we don't understand? Besides, where does the water come from and where does the energy come from to power the sprays? In order to do this on a scale that will have a planetary effect how many of these things would be needed? Pie in the sky bullshit!
-Geoengineering schemes probably work...
A completely unsupported assertion. Unpredictable side effects? Are you SURE these would be better than the sea level rising? You certainly seem confident. I'm not.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
You are confusing Climatology with Meteorology. They are not the same. With regards to Climatology, the model does exist, and it has accurately predicted what has happened in the past - this would be the "solid base of data" that you are declaring to be nonexistent. To reiterate: Climatologists came up with a model based on data they discovered, and then found more data that largely backed up the model.
Of course they're not the same - As I said, it's a simplistic example. Sure there's a "model", but to assert that we can use it to accurately predict the effects of random geoengineering schemes is nonsense. While I'm willing to buy into the idea that the CO2, etc., that we've been dumping into the atmosphere is driving up temperature, it's a massive leap of faith to assert that we understand the system well enough to screw around with it. I'd suggest that we know less than you think we do. The first and best measure to be taken is to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the source.
It's probably more of a desperate measure.
Probably?
Yes, I do know the difference between a dependent and an independent variable. I would not consider "Water Vapor" to be a "new and untested variable" in our Earth's climate, however.
The massive amounts suggested in TFA certainly are new and untested, but I'm also worried about the heavy metals, radioactive isotopes and other non-degrading chemicals being spewed into the atmosphere by burning coal and oil. The best response to all these concerns is to burn less fossil fuel.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
How can you possibly "try it" in any valid, reproducible and meaningful way when the goal is reduction in mean global temperature?
Easy: you turn it on and see if the temperature goes down. The effect is fast and so should be quickly noticeable. You don't even have to start at a global scale; you can do it regionally.
Why not just attack it at the source rather than screw around with things we don't understand?
If by "attacking it at the source" you mean "reducing CO2 emissions", I agree that's the better plan. Unless we can't reduce them fast enough. I'm merely pointing out that geoengineering schemes are testable and we don't have to "bet the planet" on them.
Besides, where does the water come from
The ocean.
and where does the energy come from to power the sprays?
It can come from any energy source. If you're worried about the energy coming from fossil fuels, the real question is whether the temperature reduction is greater than the warming induced by extra fossil energy consumption. (The answer is likely yes, considering the amount of fossil fuels that had to be burned to raise current temperatures by less than 1 C.)
A completely unsupported assertion.
You cut off the part where I said "as far as temperature is concerned". And that is not completely unsupported. Aerosol geoengineering would certainly work to reduce temperatures, because volcanoes already do that. The current scheme discussed here is less well studied.
Unpredictable side effects? Are you SURE these would be better than the sea level rising?
No. I'm not in favor of geoengineering unless it's to prevent something really severe, like runaway melting of Greenland. I'm merely pointing out that geoengineering is feasible and it can be tested in a controlled manner, should anyone want to do it. I have not endorsed actually doing it.
Dude, you have read one too many Michael Chriton books. Politicians and their pet pundits are leading you around by the nose, you rant about a lack of adherence to the scienctific method yet there's not a single scrap of science in your post, just more unsupported conspiracy drivel.
"But maybe that's what you meant about politics and clear thinking?"
No. Never heard of Mullis', [google] hmmm impressive Nobel Prize. He thinks there is nothing linking HIV to AIDS other than a strong correlation ---hang on---- isn't that basically true of any virus and it's symptoms? Reading further he belives this means that AIDS is not transmitted by HIV.....Now I am starting to see why other equally impressive Nobel laureates would chuck him out of a meeting.
Nobody enjoys listening to people state the obvious in support of willfull ignorance, sadly over the hill Nobel laureates do it just as regularly as politically myopic laymen. Science informs politics not the other way around as you seem to believe. If you can't get your head around that then I feel sorry for you sitting inside that political cage of your own making.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There was recently a show on Discovery Channel called "Discovery Project Earth" where they investigated different geo engineering solutions. One of them was spraying water into the air in order to make clouds reflect more sunlight. This idea is headed by physicist John Latham and engineer Stephen Salter.
See Discovery Project Earth, a Brighter Earth for some more details.
So . . . then the rain falls and causes massive flooding . . . And what about the CO2 created when pumping the water onto land?
Couple ideas come to mind. First, you could build floating humidifiers that would pump the water into the air over oceans. When it comes down after evaporating, it comes down over water. You could do the same thing above the Arctic circle or around Antarctica and get the same result, plus adding to the snow cover and ice at the poles that is melting so fast. It all depends on where you put the machines.
That's interesting because James Hansen of the NASA global warming fame wrote his first paper on the global temperatures in the 1970's and it actually called for global cooling.
Anyways, the paper itself said that Co2 effects surface temperature but it's effect don't scale well where aerosol increase by a factor of 4 and "If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
This supposedly came directly From Mr. Hansen's work. I'm sire the media outlets rant the story but they didn't make anything up. This investors.com story seems to have a couple of good questions on it.
Easy: you turn it on and see if the temperature goes down. The effect is fast and so should be quickly noticeable. You don't even have to start at a global scale; you can do it regionally.
Any regional effect you could produce would be a far different thing than the long term effects on the entire global system. You're making a lot of assumptions.
I'm merely pointing out that geoengineering schemes are testable and we don't have to "bet the planet" on them.
By definition you do. Regional effects within a global system and global effects are two far different things.
By the way, if you DID try this in the ocean, I can conceive of simple mechanical designs for buoys that would use wave energy to store and spray the water, but you would still need to make the buoys - think of the time, money and energy required. By contrast, we have virtually the entire world's population eagerly spending money and effort to purchase, operate and maintain the very devices that are spewing greenhouse gasses into the air, namely oil burning vehicles and electric things like lights and A/C, which in turn need electricity which is most often produced via burning coal. Basically, I'm against any scheme that doesn't address the runaway worldwide increase in fossil fuel use first-otherwise we are fighting the symptoms but not the source of the problem. There's a fundamental difference between the simple reduction in emissions and a planetary scale effort to compensate for those emissions. They are two completely different things.
Aerosol geoengineering would certainly work to reduce temperatures, because volcanoes already do that. The current scheme discussed here is less well studied.
Volcano eruptions reduce temperature by solid particulate, not aerosolized liquid - the definition of aerosol include both but it's two different things. The global effects of the scheme in TFA cannot be studied unless tried on a global scale.
Two points: First, that any effort to compensate for the global effects of greenhouse gas production is doomed to failure without first addressing the core issue of greenhouse gas production itself. Second, that geoengineering schemes are intrinsically untestable because the ability to produce regional effects within the global system and altering the global system itself are completely different things.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Any regional effect you could produce would be a far different thing than the long term effects on the entire global system. You're making a lot of assumptions.
A regional test would precede a global test, obviously. You try it in stages, and if each stage works with no ill effects, you scale it up.
By the way, if you DID try this in the ocean, I can conceive of simple mechanical designs for buoys that would use wave energy to store and spray the water, but you would still need to make the buoys - think of the time, money and energy required
Duh, it costs money. So does reducing fossil fuel emissions. Geoengineering typically costs far less than abatement.
Basically, I'm against any scheme that doesn't address the runaway worldwide increase in fossil fuel use first-otherwise we are fighting the symptoms but not the source of the problem.
Your main point is valid, but the caveat is that we may end up needing to fight the symptoms if we don't successfully fight the source. As I said, I view geoengineering as a worst-case backup, not as the first line of defense.
Volcano eruptions reduce temperature by solid particulate, not aerosolized liquid - the definition of aerosol include both but it's two different things.
No, volcano eruptions primarily reduce temperature by aerosolized liquid, from SO2. Particulates also contribute, but not as much.
The global effects of the scheme in TFA cannot be studied unless tried on a global scale.
Again, duh. And again, that doesn't mean that we have to "bet the planet", or that geoengineering can't be safely tested.
First, that any effort to compensate for the global effects of greenhouse gas production is doomed to failure without first addressing the core issue of greenhouse gas production itself.
It's not "doomed to failure". It has side effects, but it's an open question whether those side effects are worse than the costs of dropping GHG production.
Second, that geoengineering schemes are intrinsically untestable
This is, as I noted, false: you can test them by implementing them. If they don't work or side effects start appearing, you stop.
That's interesting because James Hansen of the NASA global warming fame wrote his first paper on the global temperatures in the 1970's and it actually called for global cooling.
Like most of what you write about climate science, that's wrong.
Hansen's first paper on global Earth temperatures (he wasn't the first author) did not call for global cooling. It concluded that global warming was likely: "The overall impression left by Table 3 is that anthropogenic perturbations of the gaseous anthropogenic composition are likely to eventually warm the earth [...] That impression is supported by the likelihood that the potential counter-effect of atmospheric aerosols will either be sporadic (in the case of volcanic aerosols) or limited by the short lifetime of airborne particles subject to fallout and rainout (in the case of tropospheric anthropogenic aerosols)." They then note that this is a tentative result which requires better modeling capabilities to arrive at reliable conclusions.
The Rasool and Schneider paper - which was published BEFORE Hansen's first paper on Earth temperatures - did call for global cooling. But that was only ASSUMING that, as you note, industrial activity would cause anthropogenic aerosol emissions to increase by a large amount (4x). That hasn't happened, but that's an error of economic projection, not climate projection. Nor is does it have anything to do with Hansen. The R&S paper did use Hansen's Venus scattering code, but that code is not what led to their prediction of cooling. There wasn't anything wrong with Hansen's scattering calculations. What led to the prediction of cooling is R&S's assumption of large future aerosol emissions (much larger than Hansen's paper assumed), coupled to their very low estimate of climate sensitivity to CO2 (which again had nothing to do with Hansen, who hadn't even published anything on the subject yet). Hansen's later climate sensitivity estimate was 2-3.2 K, converting from his 25% CO2 increase to the reference CO2 doubling, which is within the modern IPCC range. R&S used only 0.8 K, well below modern estimates.
Perhaps someday you will learn to read the primary scientific literature instead of getting all your "science" from skeptic blogs and the mainstream media.
Now don't go and save the planet, he'll sue the crap out of you!
The water vapor is cooler than the surrounding areas. Why would it be radiating into space?
The water vapor is cooler than the surrounding area. Cool air sinks. Hot air rises. How is this vapor going to be lofted to higher and cooler altitudes?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
This supposedly came directly From Mr. Hansen's work.
Hahaha, you're funny. Not only do you cite a paper that is not Hansen's as his, it's the very paper the previous poster quoted as being a favourite cite of folks who peddle the 70s iceage myth. Not only that, he took the time to explain how these propagandists misinterpret that paper.
Man, you are not just ignorant, you are stubbornly so.
No one (in the comments I've read, seems to have mention the role that rain plays in washing CO2 out of the atmosphere. Its part of the feedback cycle. Increase CO2 warms the atmosphere, so there is more water vapour capacity in the atmosphere, more rain, and more more CO2 is dissolved in the rain water. Of course I think we get a build of dissolved CO2 in the oceans, so maybe that's a problem too. Also, the increased rain washes other particulate matter out of the atmopsphere, particles which are currently reflecting sunlight back into space. So the atmosphere washing effect will probably increase incoming solar radiation. Maybe we should just tackle the root cause?
The best plan is to start reducing what we contribute immediately and if we have to do something to counter the effects of previous emmissions is to build something that can be easily removed in case we have major unintended consequences. Then we work on a plan of cleaning out what we already put in.
So we need MORE clouds? The Earth is already about 70% covered in clouds.
I think the Earth already does a pretty good job of putting water vapour into the atmosphere on a daily basis.
The cloud cover is in dynamic equilibrium. I don't think that spraying some water air changes that equilibrium. Because, like I said, it's already dynamic equilibrium!.
We need to find the Earth's thermostat and turn it down a bit. I think it has to do more with the composition of the atmosphere.
The water vapor is cooler than the surrounding areas.
No, it's not. It's warm surface water which is injected high into the cool atmosphere. It cools there and radiates heat. Some of that heat escapes to space.
How is this vapor going to be lofted to higher and cooler altitudes?
It's mechanically injected. That's the point of this proposal.
We could go back and forth about whether geo-engineering schemes are ever a good idea or even remotely feasible. Thanks for an interesting conversation, but keep in mind the limits of science as it stands today. I can't help but be reminded of how eggs used to be considered a nearly perfect food, then were demonized for years over their cholesterol content, only to be (at least partially) rehabilitated once the role of cholesterol in he body was better understood.
Be careful not to trip over the piles of bullshit.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
The only way to 'inject' water into the atmosphere and have it radiate heat is to boil it. Misting water is an incredibly endothermic reaction. If you can mist enough air into the atmosphere to make a difference, you create a local cool spot which will sink...fast and hard. Cool air is heavier than warm air.
Now there needs to be some other force added to 'loft' this cooler air to higher altitude. I'm sorry, but around here we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The only way to 'inject' water into the atmosphere and have it radiate heat is to boil it.
Uh, no. You spray it at high velocity. If it reaches high altitudes before it has had time to cool, it will be warmer than its surroundings and will cool there. It will radiate its latent heat.
Uh, yes. Find a dictionary, and look up the term 'endothermic'.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I know what "endothermic" means. And you don't know what the hell you're talking about. We're not talking about cool mist wafting up from the surface due to circulation. We're talking about sudden transport to a cooler environment before the water droplets have time to cool or evaporate. Your ignorance of thermodynamics doesn't change the fact that water has been transported to a cooler environment, and not in a slow way that allows it to re-equilibrate before it gets there.
[Global warming] has the strange affect of causing the earths average temperature to drop over the last decade instead of rise.
If you're not being facetious...
Denialists keep saying: Hey you clueless sheep, there's been a recent drop in temperatures, so global warming is bunk. But where's the data for this alleged drop?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html has the graph, here's the data set:
Anomalies are now provided as departures from the 20th century average (1901-2000). ...
The Annual Global (land and ocean combined) Anomalies (degrees C)
1997 0.4615
1998 0.5765
1999 0.3948
2000 0.3631
2001 0.4935
2002 0.5574
2003 0.5566
2004 0.5338
2005 0.6066
2006 0.5524
2007 0.5491
1998 was awfully hot, then it wasn't so hot for a while but then it got hotter still. Soon denialists will shift to "It's gotten cooler since 2005, so global warming is bunk."
In other non-news, "Swimmers have gotten slower since Michael Phelps' world records in China"
=S