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Cooling the Planet With a Bubble Bath
cremeglace writes "A Harvard University physicist has come up with a new way to cool parts of the planet: pump vast swarms of tiny bubbles into the sea to increase its reflectivity and lower water temperatures. 'Since water covers most of the earth, don't dim the sun,' says the scientist, Russell Seitz, speaking from an international meeting on geoengineering research. 'Brighten the water.' From ScienceNOW: 'Computer simulations show that tiny bubbles could have a profound cooling effect. Using a model that simulates how light, water, and air interact, Seitz found that microbubbles could double the reflectivity of water at a concentration of only one part per million by volume. When Seitz plugged that data into a climate model, he found that the microbubble strategy could cool the planet by up to 3C. He has submitted a paper on the concept he calls “Bright Water" to the journal Climatic Change.'"
Has he cleared that with Don Ho?
This ain't rocket surgery.
Too bad Don Ho's gone...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Tiny bubbles (tiny bubbles)
In the sea (in the sea)
Make me happy (make me happy)
Make me feel free (make me feel free)
Tiny bubbles (tiny bubbles)
Make me warm all over
With a feeling that I'm gonna
Love you till the end of time
So here's to the golden moon
And here's to the silver sea
And mostly here's a toast
To you and me
So here's to the ginger lei
I give to you today
And here's a kiss
That will not fade away
Poor guy, Don Ho... I haven't the heart to tell him, but all the women in his family are Hos!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What about the sea life that relies on that heat?
It can't be that hard... Just put some giant rockets on one side, and boom! What could go wrong?
Everyone knows the new problem isn't warming; the new problem is acidification of the oceans. Ugh. Keep up, please.
a rubber duck. It's not a proper bubble bath without a rubber duck.
Summation 2
Don't all these crazy "reflect back light somewhere in the ocean" have the same problem?
Whether you're covering the ocean with a white tarp, stretching tin-foil over a large number of floaters, or creating loads of tiny bubbles you're still depriving the ecosystem of light it is most likely dependent on.
No light, no plankton, no life.
Am I wrong?
I just pooped your party.
some1 forgot
Now all someone has to do is figure out how make all the water on earth have a concentration 1ppb bubbles.
insert inflammatory comment here!
Now all we have to do is build huge industrial complexes and ships to spend huge amounts of energy pumping tiny bubbles into the entire world ocean.
Well, I guess we've solved global warming. That was easy.
It would also increase evaporation and thusly the amount of water vapor in the air. Water vapor is more effective than CO2 at increasing global warming.
Have you thought of that? No? Didn't *think* so!
He also says that energy is not a limiting factor. He's a kook.
--
BMO
Everyone, jump in the pool and fart... for Science!
Destroy the Sun. There, I fixed that for you.
"Since the dawn of time, Man has yearned to destroy the Sun."
- C. Montgomery Burns
Tiny bubbles are also good for sinking ships. Decrease the density of the water, decrease the buoyant force on the boats. Source
Before you start mucking about with geo-engineering the temperature, you'd better make damn sure you can UN-muck it or we're all seriously mucked!
What this means is:
1) Thousands of gyroscopically positionable mirrors in space allowing you to control sunlight = Good!
2) Planting oodles of trees everywhere we can do distribute the heat that we do have = "Well, OK, it'll work for most of the planet as long as you don't plant trees that are disease vectors for other organisms."
3) Throwing thousands of tons of [Insert favorite substance here] into the atmosphere/Ocean/Volcanoes and hoping it works and not having a clue as to the knock-on effects down the road = BAD, BAD, BAD.
Cheers!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"I’m emulating a natural ocean phenomenon and amplifying it just by changing the physics—the ingredients remain the same." This makes me wonder if cycles of bubbles on a very large scale (and changes in reflectivity) could be a contributing factor to oceanic El Nino / La Nina cycles? Don Ho had it when he sang "Tiny Bubbles."
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
I just put all my money in Mr Bubble futures!
Nearly all sea life resides within a few dozen miles of land. The vast majority of oceans are empty and vacant, even of microbes like algae and krill. True, there are a few organisms that travel the large open expanses of water, but most stay near the coastlines.
light however, hits indiscrimnately. The end result is that in the right locations (far away from coastlines and major currents), large areas of bubbles could be made with no significant effect on any sea organisms.
Ok, so that takes care of one effect of having high CO2 content in the atmosphere. Guess we'll just ignore the acidification of the oceans? And any other effects?
The problem with treating symptoms is you leave the original cause in place. Not the best idea in the world, although kudos for a clever solution to that particular issue.
the stored methane and it will make the bubbles for you...
Dimming the sun is a crazy and interesting idea, that has a great benefit -- you can stop.
Water covers most of the earth, so why would you want to introduce something that you can't ever clean up.
1 part per million is enough to do real damage when there are that many millions. I don't care how many simulations you do, you'll kill something and you'll ruin osmething else. To be clear, that's all fine. I'm ok with killing a few million fish if that what you want to do. But when you want to stop, you've got to be able to do so. And there's just no way to remove 1 part per million.
Easy-to-do, difficult-to-undo is stupid. Difficult-to-do, easy-to-undo is the proper goal.
If it goes wrong, we can shoot equal colored bubbles in the bubbles so they explode.
What if the planet is already (or on the near verge of) getting colder?
Personally, I'm far more concerned about global cooling than global warming.
Global warming, on the whole, is more favorable to growing food / living things. Anyone doubting that need only read up on the effects of the various ice ages in the relatively extremely recent geological past. Even a very minor cooling period, such as the "little ice age" in the mid 1600s, while very minimal, had horrendous, adverse effects for humans...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
The "climate change" folks seeking to cool the earth should be wary - nature may respond with far more cooling than they'd bargained for!
Ron
Geoengineering is such a spectacularly bad idea as to warrant armed revolt in order to prevent it.
I'm as green as the next guy, but that's a bit harsh. It seems you are advocating violence against companies like Shell, Exon, Mobile, and others that are engaged in large scale geoengineering projects such as pumping gigatons of CO2 into the air. While I agree they need to stop, I think legislation should be the first step. Only if they won't take the hint should we send in the government with tanks and bombs and such.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sounds like someone banging his head against the wall all the time, and coming up with the “solution” of taking painkillers... while continuing to run against the wall.
I am baffled by the amount of elaborate ignorant high-level idiocy it takes, to come up with such thoughts.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
No, you're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole.
Soylent green is people! It's People! Ahhh you'll get my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead, bubbly hands.
--
Toro Heston
(Alternately, for the younger generation, "Wrong! No plankton, more money for Mr. Crabs!")
Where's Lawrence Welk and his Fantastic Bubble Machine when you need him?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Wouldn't higher reflectivity of the ocean lead to an increase in the heat absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere, being that a given reflected photon would have twice the chance of striking a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere?
So the day we stop inputting the bubbles, we're all toast, except faster and crispier?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
They're also greenhouse gas emitters now, and they can easily shoot foamy substances at the ocean from those giant deodorant guns.
What amazing insights you have into the environmentalist mind!
Please, tell me more about why I believe things!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Where are our mod points when we need them?!
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
From TFA:
Seitz says adding bubbles to a 1-square-kilometer patch of ocean is feasible, but scaling it up may be technically difficult.
No shit, Sherlock. I'm glad he goes to Harvard!
When Seitz plugged that data into a climate model, he found that the microbubble strategy could cool the planet by up to 3C.
Well I'll be damned. It's too bad he failed to mention how many millions of square miles that need to be filled with bubbles to achieve this (hint: it's more than 1-square-kilometer), and of course like all good theoreticians there is no mention of the energy required to create this amount of bubbles 12 hours per day, what power source will be used, and of course how much equipment and manpower required and what THAT would cost.
I have my own hypothesis: Climate Science research leads to severe degeneration of higher brain functions.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A MAN (apparently Don Ho) and a Satyr once drank together in token of a bond of alliance being formed between them. One very cold wintry day, as they talked, Don Ho put his fingers to his mouth and blew tiny bubbles. When the Satyr asked the reason for this, he told him that he did it to make himself feel warm all over, because it was so cold. Later on in the day the Satyr went to the beach, and but the ocean was sat too warm at the surface. Some other man blew tiny bubbles into it. When the Satyr again inquired the reason, he said that he did it to cool the planet, which was too hot. "I can no longer consider you as a friend," said the Satyr, "a fellow who with the same breath bubbles hot and cold."
tee hee hee
$META_SIG_JOKE
I'm sure this guy is brillant, but he's approached the problem in such a one dimensional way that it's painful. I suspect he's not interested in ever implementing the idea, but the danger is some pressure group or politician might come across it and think it's the best thing since sliced bread.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I even hit the "get more comments" button after I posted, and it still only showed my posting. While great minds often do think alike, obvious jokes like this one go to the fastest fingers...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
+1 Funny, for hypocrisy.
GP made a sensible argument, the only thing it needed were citations. His development of an analogy was for explaining how it is still important to act upon uncertain predictions, though arguably a bit extreme. As for oil companies? They're not stupid! Which is exactly why they could be trying to delay green adoption - more easy oil money will give them an edge with green energy research which will secure their dominance of the green energy field when the time comes. I recently learned that the states forces public disclosure of lobby funds, so you should also show what the oil companies are spending in lobbies and suggest why those costs are necessary.
Now, please get along boys. We're all on the same boat here - and I hope you realise how rocky it is! People have been condescending to whole societies for the entire history of humanity because the end has always been around the corner, whether it was suggested in the name of God or Science.
I remember using what was basically a giant plastic sheet of bubble wrap to help increase the solar gain of our swimming pool, and keep the water a more comfortable temperature than it otherwise would have been.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Plop, plop
Fizz, fizz
Oh, what a relief it is!
Look if we are going to go to the level of planet wide environmental alterations to avoid reducing carbon output why don't we just move the planet further from the sun? Take the climate models, figure out how much sequestered carbon we could put into the atmosphere, adjust the model, then slide the planet into an orbit farther from the sun that negates the effect of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. If we ever stop using carbon based energy we just slide the planet back into the current orbit.
People, planet wide massive alteration of environment is as feasible as my ridiculous proposal. We don't understand the full impact of what we are doing or could do.
Climate models are uniformly complex guesses at best and completely wrong at worst. I believe carbon output is a problem long term, if we put all the sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere the planet will eventually return to the planet of the dinosaurs, very warm, very wet and a lot less land (as sea level rises). It's not going to cause human beings to go extinct, it's not going to really harm the planet. What it is going to do is displace a LOT of people and that's going to cause some rather big catastrophic wars. But the solution is not to try to alter something we have no idea what the other effects would be. Of the top of my head millions of bubbling devices in the oceans is going to cause increased acidity from the additional carbonic acid, what's the effect of that? It's a silly idea at best and catastrophic environmental tampering that could cause more severe problems than global warming at worst.
There is no Gaia or Eywa. It's just a thermodynamic system with no free will.
Given in the next few 1000 years of human life on earth we might have to heat or cool depending on conditions we should have non polluting options for both..
http://www.hawknest.com/
never works with unexpected values
so don't try to 'find' facts within simulations
I heard that the actual planet was going into an ice age, and that the recent global warming by man saved us all from 1000 years of frozen hell.
I had heard that too! Or maybe it was me. Who knows?
The theory of Milankovich cycles is as yet incomplete. If you read the the wiki page, it reads like "there are these definite cycles that we have really good data on. We see the pattern! But no, we don't know what's going to happen next." Imbrie thought that absent anthropogenic effects we had begun our inevitable descent into the ice 6,000 years ago. Berger's more recent work disagrees. It's interesting to me that the origins of written history is almost exactly that long ago. I think maybe the warmists are working this wikipage. Everybody pretty much agrees that the next ice age is going to be quite unpleasant - on that the science is settled. Everybody agrees it's coming eventually no matter what we do - we could use all the remaining fossil fuels to lubricate the fission-powered engines that extract and cook the CO2 out of all the available limestone, and we still could not prevent it. It will be cold. There will be mass extinctions including possibly us, the ocean will drop dozens of meters. All the coral beds we know of will die. Panamanians will erect a sizeable wall to prevent illegal immigration. Hemlines will drop and the market for bikinis will collapse!
Seriously though, more heat is better than less heat, a run away cooling/frozen world is real bad, nothing grows at sub zero temps.
The planet has been warmer than it is by a little bit, and much much colder. Given my 'druthers, I'druther 'twere warmer. From a strict Darwinist philosophy I'd prefer it be warmer until my own offspring had had time to multiply and spread far and wide - across the globe and beyond. Maybe twelve generations (about 420 years). If we can achieve that, then there will be enough of them in enough places that when the climate changes cold again some of them may be resourceful enough, and ornery enough, to hunt your progeny for food and adaptive enough to survive until the end of Man - or until it turns warm again, whichever comes first. In the meantime I'd prefer it if y'all would constrain your population growth. Once the ice comes, there will be no space travel. It will be too late. For that reason if no other, it were best we get our offsite backups established now. From the point of view of human populations, a prolonged drop of 2C would be an agricultural disaster and 4C would have us hunting fellow humans for food. The Vostok cores suggest a mean over the last 400K years of -5C and a low of -9C. -8C for a prolonged period was no more than 20,000 years ago. The places where crops grow best must not move toward the land-poor equator or we're sunk. There's lots more frozen land to thaw and grow crops on further from the equator to support the 3 Billion more people we're expecting in the next 40 years. The outside track has us needing more than 2x the food and other resources we produce 80 years from today and projecting out, it's hopeless. We're bacteria in a dish, consuming resources and reproducing to consume all the energy that's available, and then evolving to best subsist on the effluent of others until the ecology in the dish becomes too toxic to sustain life or we escape the dish. That's how life works. If we don't escape our petri dish the outcome is a foregone conclusion and nothing else we ever do will matter in the long run because we and our progeny will have died out and Nature will try again with a genome that's a little less stupid.
Regardless, this whole article is silly. Bubbles float to the surface and pop. Anything you could add to th
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Pumping tiny bubbles into the whole ocean ? Sure, let's turn the whole Pacific into a giant can of Pepsi ! I wonder how many Jigawatts we'll need for that plan ?
The way I see it, we have the following problems.
1. The ocean is (apparently) too warm. We need a way to cool it down.
2. We are told solar is not a good solution on land, because of the area required, and the fact that underneath the panels, it would be too bloody cold to be habitable.
Solution ?
Someone needs to do some serious research into wave generators that also have solar panel arrays mounted on top as a heatshield.
You get the energy from the waves, you also get energy from the solar, AND you cool down the underlying ocean at the same time.
Oceans are about 71% of the planet, isn't there some way this is feasible ? Or shall we just poo-poo any alternative energy source and wait for the coal and uranium to run out (around 200 years from now) ?
where everybody had to paint their roofs white so sunlight would reflect more ... that one seemes actually plausible AND doable to me given a global media campaign or two ...
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Narrator: [in movie] Fortunately, our handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last-minute way to combat global warming. Ever since 2063 we simply drop a giant ice cube into the ocean every now and then.
[The movie cuts to a shot of a aircraft dropping a large ice cube into the ocean and then cuts back to the classroom.]
Suzie: [in movie] Just like Daddy puts in his drink every morning. And then he gets mad.
Narrator: [in movie] Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time. [There are shots of bigger ice cubes being dropped into the ocean.] Thus solving the problem once and for all.
Suzie: [in movie] But--
Narrator: [angry; in movie.] Once and for all!
Loose lips lose spit.
Or, to make it simpler.
Exploiting the earth is profitable when you don't have to eat the consequences you force on everyone.
The whole point of the post was to point out that so-called "environmental policies" have themselves "exploited" the earth. Frequently much worse than the ill they tried to fix. Oil is what's keeping billions of humans alive. Oil is what's enabling us to do environmental protection. The green policy, biofuels, destroyed a tiny part of that, but even that small destruction caused death, huge starvation, and massive environmental damage. But of course it's only black children dying (for now).
Surely you, as a green supporter, should be forced to "eat the consequences you force on everyone", no ? Of course the punishment for causing famines is no laughing matter. Surely this punishment should be applied to you, for supporting and enabling these life-destroying measures ?
I have little hope of a post that would more succinctly and effectively prove my accusation : that you are not interested in the environment, nor are you interested in the consequences of the policies forced on others by the greens. You are simply interested in the power itself. Your goal is simply to exert power over others, through violence and coercion.
That your policies and ideas cause starvation and environmental destruction is irrelevant to you. It is not even worth a thought in your mind, not worth a single nod in your response. What you did wrong, simply does not exist, and certainly should not be discussed. And God forbid you be held accountable for the results of these policies.
No, everyone else should be held accountable. Not to facts, but to what you think are the facts. The fact that you participated and encouraged policies that lead to devastation and starvation should be overlooked. It does not even exist in your mind, nor do any of your shortcomings and environmental impact. You're perfect and innocent, and if I do not believe you to be capable of instructing me I should be fought and violently subdued.
Of course, not by you, that work is beneath you. You do not care to see the victims of your policies, of your ideas. Just let some faceless government soldier do that for you. Your hands should remain as clean and innocent as any other dictator, who does not care to deal with the messy details of killing himself.
Those bastard exploiters, who do much less damage than environuts' policies should :
"eat the consequences they force on everyone"
But of course, not you.
Thank you for illustrating my point, that the green policies are not meant to actually improve life, either for humans or "for the planet", they are meant as an excuse to force your idea of the perfect social order on others. The results of these policies are not important to you, only that you get to force them on others. Only the violent confirmation of your need to force you onto others is.
I would quite happily eat those consequences if I had any practical choice in the matter.
As it is I mitigate my environmental impact by using mass transit and riding a bicycle.
As it is I mitigate my environmental impact by using mass transit and riding a bicycle.
http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html
If you use both mass transit and bikes for an equivalent distance, you might as well be driving a car.
If you travel larger distances using mass transit than biking (highly likely), you're actually making your environmental impact bigger than if you drove a car.
Again the policy, intention and result problem. You don't care about the result, just the policy. You're supposedly a better human being because of this, even if the consequences of these actions are worse than what you started with.
I would quite happily eat those consequences if I had any practical choice in the matter.
And I'm sure you would accept this response from those corporate "exploiters" of the earth ? No ?
Well then, why would anyone accept it from you ?
There is only one practical way to meaningfully reduce the impact of your existence on others. Since you cannot function efficiently, without harming others, due to the second law of thermodynamics (but don't worry : you're nowhere near the efficiency limit that law imposes : you're thousands of times worse).
The only solution to your impact is also evident from that law : end the energy exchanges between the world and your body, even those inside your body.
Of course, the condition of stopping energy exchange (I believe the democrat term is "stealing") with the environment has a name :
death
You should not fool yourself. "In the limit", as mathematicians like to say to describe the ultimate destination of a certain principle, genocide, on both humans and animals, is the only working "green" policy.
If you have any practical choice in the matter ... would you kill yourself ? If not, why bother with the environuts idiocy at all ?
Ok, now I know you're just a troll.
No more soup for you!
Never let yourself be seduced into actually trying to make a point. After all you are right, just because you're so special.
Note that more people riding the train will increase its efficiency, whereas more people driving their cars won't... unless you're getting more passengers into a single car, i.e. carpooling, which is a good idea, but still won't bring it down to the efficiency of a well used rail system, and has no hope of doing better than a bike. Where the fuck did you get the idea a car uses more energy than riding a bike? Bizarro world?
I also note that the site that you cite shows that bicycling is the second most efficient form of transformation out available, second to an electro-scooter/twike. But I would question that finding... If you are going to calculate the energy used by a rider on a bicycle covering a certain distance, and then compare it to a rider on an electro scooter, you also have count the calories being burned by the rider of the electro scooter in the comparison.
You are apparently being selectively stupid to justify living the fat-ass lazy selfish lifestyle you enjoy. Are you also in the tea-party? You're that guy with the "keep your government hands off my medicare" sign aren't you?
Sounds Very Expensive! There is our tax dollars at work.