Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
If you're still spouting this nonsense, I'm sure the following words are wasted. There is ZERO chance that increased CO2 in the atmosphere does not directly result in increased solar energy retention. It is a FACT that we release huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
And I have a hypothesis that you'd staunchly oppose any action long past the time when any action could have been useful.
If it was raining hard for several days, and your yard was under a few inches of water due to flooding of a nearby river, with forecasts of continued heavy rain for the next week, would you wait and see if the rain is actually causing the flood before moving your belongings out of the basement and fleeing to higher ground? I mean, maybe there's a dam upriver that busted, and the flood'll subside before your house is underwater. Maybe an underground river carved a new path and now feeds into the local river, and this is just the new level when you factor in the water from the underground source. Or do you do the prudent thing, and evaluate options for preventing or mitigating the flood damage?
Good point, except that we are not the ones directly deciding by what means electricity is produced. You're falsely equating modern convenience with current levels of CO2 emission. That doesn't mean that Shell or ExxonMobile (you know they are one company now, right?)or any other energy producer is to blame... except they are, for continually lobbying to ensure that their interests in fossil fuel sources are protected, that their interests in selling fossil fuels are protected. Also true for the coal companies. They have made sure that economically, their sources of energy are the best choice for the consumers driving their cars, etc... because they have been able to externalize the costs of all their pollution.
We do not need to get our electricity from fossil fuels. We could use nuclear. We could use a combination of sources like nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, hydro. But decades of lobbying have ensured that we are waaaay behind on implementing alternative energy sources.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
No one ever seems to be able to approach this subject with a cool head (ha ha). perhaps if you distilled your arguement down into something like a sensible arguement adressing actual points, instead of a diatribe about underground rivers and my house flooding.
your points about oil companys being apposed to alternative power is complete bullshit btw. BP are one of the biggest manufactures of solar panels, chevron are heavily invested in geothermal. energy companys don't care where their profits come from, they aren't emotionally invested in one outcome like you.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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...