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.'"

Comments

Crazy

[WrongSizeGlass]

What about the sea life that relies on that heat?

Re:Crazy

[aurispector]

Geoengineering is such a spectacularly bad idea as to warrant armed revolt in order to prevent it. History has shown again and again that scientists understand far less about the complexity of natural systems than they think they do. Just look at the eggs: back in the day they were considered good, nutritious food. Then suddenly they were demonized for their cholesterol content. Oops! Guess again! They're a good source of omega fatty acids and really are good for you!

The law of unintended consequences comes into play as well. They guy is using a mathematical model. What's the model missing? "Garbage in, garbage out" is not a principle we want to apply to altering the global environment.

Any efforts to reverse "Anthropogenic global warming" should be confined to reducing the supposed causes. What's our incentive to stop polluting if we can "fix" it by blowing bubbles in the ocean?

Re:Crazy

[cheekyboy]

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.

Seriously though, more heat is better than less heat, a run away cooling/frozen world is real bad, nothing grows at sub zero temps.

But a hotter planet with more co2, well plants grow faster, and who knows cows could grow to the size of dinasours :)

Same problems

[Bozzio]

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?

Re:Same problems

[osu-neko]

Well, bubbles might also mean no oxygen exchange. So we'll wind up killing 80% of the planet's ecosystem off when the oceans die, to stop global warming. Yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah... this is why people put bubble-making aerators in fish-tanks: to starve the fish of oxygen.

/sarcasm

Re:Same problems

[roman_mir]

It did not happen before the way that you are implying.

For a civilization to start creating a change in the global climate, the civilization has to be numerous and it has to possess various technologies.

We would have noticed the following:

1. Previous excavations of various Earth minerals starting with metals: iron, nickel, copper, uranium, gold, cadmium.

2. Previous energy production attempts: the oil would have been much smaller if they were pumped before, we know of the exact mass extinctions and time periods where coal, oil and gas were created. So during those times it would not be possible for such a civilization to exist, because it's nearly impossible to coexist with giant lizards and the lizards wouldn't dominate the planet to deposit all those carcasses that formed the oil, gas and coal stores.

3. Our excavations at various rocky mountain sites would have shown this age and we would have found similar excavations from those past civilizations.

4. Certainly some structures would have been found preserved, some machinery, roads, after all, we find skeletons of dinosaurs, so why not tools of the long gone civilizations?

5. Uranium probably would have been gone as well as some other heavy metals, converted to other forms by those energy users, who would have had to use various types of energy to achieve climate level shifts.

Yesbut...

[bmo]

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

Re:Yesbut...

[bmo]

I read the article.

He says the bubbles would slow down evaporation in lakes and streams (i.e., where he's not using the system). This is only because he's increased overall humidity from the evaporation of the ocean with his bubble toy.

Ever see bubbles burst with fast film? They create droplets which increases surface area. Evaporation is dependent upon surface area, temperature, vapor pressure, and barometric pressure. Increase any of these and you increase the amount of water vapor in the air. Doing this over a large area increases the surface area for evaporation to happen by a large amount

It's like you people have forgotten the most basic physics.

And yes, he's a kook. Only a nutjob would come up with something as ridiculous as this.

--
BMO