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Bill Gates Funds Seawater-Spraying Cloud Machines
lucidkoan writes "Environmentalists have long argued about whether geoengineering (using technology to alter the climate) is a good way to tackle climate change. But the tactic has some heavy hitters on its side, including Bill Gates. The Microsoft founder recently announced plans to invest $300,000 into research for machines that suck up seawater and spray it into the air, seeding white clouds that reflect rays of sunlight away from Earth. The machines, developed by a San Francisco-based research group called Silver Lining, turn seawater into tiny particles that can be shot up over 3,000 feet in the air. The particles increase the density of clouds by increasing the amount of nuclei contained within."
OK, let's ignore for a moment the fact that water vapor is a greenhouse gas responsible for up to 76% of the greenhouse effect (as opposed to CO2 which is responsible for 1/3) of that. Let's also ignore the magical energy source required to pump all this water into the air. What could possibly go wrong? Where can I buy stock? /sarcasm
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
finally, he's acting like a proper evil mastermind...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I believe the phrase is "What could possibly go wrong..."
SNOW in the month of May. It's too darned cold here!
Warren Buffet and Dr. Evil are on the board.
This reminds me of an application user who has no idea what they're doing. Once things start going wrong and the app starts doing unexpected things, they just try a bunch of random actions and hope that by pushing enough buttons and clicking enough things on the screen, they will eventually solve the problem.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Great idea! Should do wonders for crops.
Undersea computing?
Really, how many of these would be needed to actually make a measurable difference? And how much energy is required to build and run the damn things?
Unfortunately, the machines are solar-powered.
... also considered a greenhouse gas?
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Awesome.
How about we fund research into not messing up the biosphere instead? Reforestation and pollution cleanup will go a lot further towards restoring nature's balance than spraying a bunch of water into the air.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...700 feet into the air
I just don't see why we can't have lawsuits over the the stuff that caused the warming in the first place?
Oh yeah, all those people fighting to not have CO2 be a controlled emission.
Seriously, there are far to many people on this planet and we need to be careful of everything we do. It all has consequences.
Since this will decrease solar cell efficiency, is he signing off on a coal-burning plant nearby to power this wonderful device?
Self Defense - A Human Right www.a-human-right.com
Instead of Acid Rain we'll now have Salt Rain, what a lovely thought is that :D Wonder what kind of effects the salt will have on the environment...
As someone that has lived near the ocean for his entire life; I am not exactly happy about having salt infused water vapor in the air. If you live near the shore, you have to deal with house paint, car finishes, wooden surfaces decaying, wearing away and failing...
Anybody from an area of the world that has salt applied to their roads in the winter care to share stories about salt corroding their car's undercarriage?
Vaporware -- the perfect business for him to be investing in! He has some experience.
...should be enough for anybody.
I did my senior thesis work on this topic using coupled climate models. Long story short, the dynamical responses are significant and have hitherto not been explored in the literature (See Jones et al 2009 and Rasch et al 2010). Hopefully I'll get published soon and the climate science community will realize more of the risks associated with this kind of geoengineering, including heightened risks of Atlantic hurricanes.
Many methods of cooling the planet, collectively known as geoengineering, have been proposed. They include rockets to deploy millions of mirrors in the stratosphere and artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide from the air.
You're joking...right? Rockets deploying millions oof mirrors into the stratosphere? Artificial trees??? What about the real one's which do the job just fine? Seriously though, who let the mad scientist out of his lab?
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Where's my artificial red atmosphere?!
The article says that 3 ships is nothing. We need $7 billion worth of ships to stop the temperature from increasing.
WHAT? We can stop warming in its tracks for just $7 billion? That's very little money.
Here in the west USA, we have long droughts. We count on reservoirs having enough water. The problem is that we have also been depending for far too long on aquifers. So, we regularly talk about pipelines. Well, there is ZERO chance that an economical large pipeline can be developed. HOWEVER, this has the ability to put a lot more moisture in the air. When it is known that a cold front is going to hit an area, then we simply bump up the amount of moisture in the air. It will mean LARGE snow dumps, but that is needed. It will allow us to fill the aquifers as well as reservoirs.
Generally, I think that Gates is causing more issues than solving (trying to stop hurricanes is a HORRIBLE mistake; it brings up nutrients from deep down; likewise, killing mosquitoes may actually stop evolution), but this one will help bring fresh water throughout the world as well as temporaly help with the global warming issues until we switch off of fossil fuels. Interestingly, if China, the worlds largest polluter of nearly everything, was to clean up their h2so4, then it would raise global temps quickly. With the clouds, it allows us to not worry about temps, while we go back to encouraging all nations to clean up their act.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You know, I really hope that he does not test this using the waters of the Puget Sound, which is stupidly close to where he lives - the greater Seattle area. Besides, it's not like we don't already have enough clouds around here.
This sig no verb.
That explains how i get hit with fish while hang-gliding.
Good lord - he wants to BSOD the whole damned planet.
Sea water sprayed into the air, salt drops on land, crops die.
This is what they mean when they say cloud computing!
The idea that spraying some water 3000ft into the air in the hopes that it will aid cloud formation seems ... stupid.
3000ft isn't very far and if there isn't enough convection, it isn't going to go up much further... The colder denser air would descend and stay near the ground. This idea sounds about as smart as setting up thousands of Van de Graaff generators all over town, hoping that the ozone generated would plug the ozone hole.
I think a much simpler solution would be this:
1. Cover a large area, perhaps the area of 10 football pitches, with good old fashioned black tarmac.
2. Have a simple sprinkler system, not too dissimilar to a lawn sprinkler system, covering the entire area.
3. When the sun shines, turn on the water.
4. Hopefully, the large area, heated by the sun, will cause enough convection to carry the water vapour up through the atmosphere, where it can form clouds.
There is a problem with salt buildup if using seawater, changing the albino of the tarmac ... but I'm guessing that if there is some form of drainage system in place where slightly saltier water could drain away, that should suffice.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
In many places on the Earth, air moves (on average) in predictable ways. This leads me to a number of questions.
Can we put these ships in a position so that those clouds pass over areas which need more rain?
Would that cause rain there?
Would that rain be salty?
Is this a way to (as a secondary benefit) bring fresh water to areas needing rain, or would it destroy the land downwind by slowly coating it with more and more salt?
Is he short selling solar? More clouds, less light, etc.
Yep, it turns out that con-trails are a great way to seed cloud formation. NASA already has data that shows the daily temperature variation in the no-fly week following 9/11 increase quite a bit. And then there's my anecdotal evidence of the crystal clear blue sky over Michigan that week (very unusual). Yes, I am of the position that air travel has caused most of the "climate change" over the last 50 years - if there is such a change. Adding water to the atmosphere would just increase this effect, not reduce it. I like the people asking what the salt would do too...
Sorry, responding to my own post: I wonder what the operational cost would be for this. What fuel are these things supposed to use? Shoving all that water into the air would take a crapload of power.
They can't take fossil fuels -- that would be a logistics issue, and would be counter-productive (though possibly still the most efficient approach).
I have this image of 3000 nuclear-powered boats, and I wonder what the mean-time between failures on such a system would be.
California is hit with record rainfall and flooding. Did he miss the record snowfall that paralyzed the central US or the heavy rains that hit the west coast? There already IS more cloud cover due to warmer oceans. Record rain and snow are a side effect. The problem is too much rain can be just as bad as too little. The real problem is we keep expecting technology to save us from our bad habits. Why can't they just come up with an anti fat pill so we can keep eating junk food? How about a way to remove CO2 so we can keep driving SUVs and using coal? Earth warming up? How about less sun? You know the thing that makes plants grow. The fix always seems to come down to instead of spending millions to correct a problem lets spend billions bandaging it hoping it'll go away. We as a civilization have learned to treat symptoms and not the root disease. If the music is too loud we take asprin for the headache and buy hearing aids when it damages our hearing instead of turning the music down. It's how we handle sickness and the environment. It's obvious cloud machines will cause as many problems as they correct and they in no way address the root problem so why spend millions and more likely billions on something we know won't help?
Is this a joke?
The rate of evaporation from the oceans is about 400,000 cubic kilometers per year.
To increase that by just one percent would mean pumping 4,000 km^3 of water.
Just raising that much water to 3,000 feet would take approximately, oh let's see, carry the 0x100,
about 1,651,445,966.51 horsepower. One Point Six BILLION horsepower.
I'm publishing a paper quite soon, hopefully, which examines cloud whitening and the dynamical responses. Previous researchers (eg Jones et al 2009, Rasch et al 2010) have examined the potential surface response, which gives a fairly rosy picture. I found that when you look more closely at the dynamical responses in the atmosphere, there are significant changes associated with this kind of geoengineering, including possible enhancement of Atlantic hurricanes. I hope Gates reads the literature on this before undertaking the proposed course of action. -- from a student in meteorology & climatology at Cornell University. Thesis work performed at Princeton University & Cornell, presented at AMS conference in January.
This article from the BBC talks about doing something similar to make rain rather than just clouds.
Been there, done that. Also pissed out the Window, perhaps never to this scale.
No relataionship to the Microsoft Cloud Services advertized here on /.
They are talking about spraying SALT water into the air. Normally when clouds form it comes from normally evaporating water that leaves the salt behind. That is the reason the dead sea is so salty and for that matter how salt planes form.
So, what does this system mean for salt in the rain? I seem to remember that to make a point you tear down your enemies city, plow the ground and sow it with salt so that everyone gets the point. Salt and agriculture don't mix.
It is possible that the salt will fall down quickly into the ocean, but this is not mentioned. In fact the article is very light on the details. How does it shoot water so high, how much energy does it cost? What is going to happen to our planet when it is covered in clouds? More clouds might mean more rain, rain isn't always good. Or it might fall back as snow and be locked up for millenia on a cooling planet with ever saltier seas.
I also get the feeling that it is indeed very cheap. Sea going vessels ain't cheap especially if they have to run on auto on the ocean. Manning so many vessels alone would cost a fortune alone. 3 vessels with 300.000? You can barely get a sail boat, a small one.
And a move along this path would give the US even less reason to cut its emissions, 7 billion to curb todays emission, but how much if that keeps on going? It reminds me of the futurama episode where the problem of global warming is solved FOREVER by dropping an ever larger ice-cube into the ocean. Is Bill Gates under the impression that Futurama is a howto guide?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
We need to investigate technical solutions to global warming so that we will have a working Plan B when the crazy and doomed austerity policies fail utterly.
...that comes after ward? Once the salt water rains down and kills half the vegetation how much Elymus mollis (salt tolerant wild rye) are you willing to eat? Hint: to get enough salt into the clouds to do any good in dry areas that need it you are going to move a large quantity of the stuff, and where does it go? Into the poor soils that are had to cultivate. Is there a plan on how to grow plants in wet salty sand? Thought not....
... who instantly thought of this Superfriends episode?
http://www.tv.com/superfriends/the-weather-maker/episode/207817/summary.html?tag=ep_guide;summary
Not solar power at all. Flettner rotors.
The only NEW thing about this plan is that they claim that they've actually received $300.000 from Bill Gates.
They have been going around with this idea for years now.
And from what I can tell - all they have to show for so far is the study linked above and this concept rendering.
Looking at "estimated costs", $300.000 seems like about the amount someone with Bill Gates' money might donate to get rid of them politely.
Very few uncertainties will remain after the expenditure of the first £2 million over 2 years.
It will need perhaps £25 million and a further 3 years to complete research and development of the reliable hardware for spray vessels including the first fully instrumented, full-scale, crewed and sea-going prototype.
Once there is experience of its operation, it will cost approximately £30 million for tooling, which will allow a large number of spray vessels to be built rapidly in the event of a global emergency.
About a year later...
The Copenhagen Consensus Centre, which advises governments on how to spend aid money, examined the various plans and found the cloud ships to be the most cost-effective.
They would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and launch within 25 years, compared to the $250 billion that the world's leading nations are considering spending each year to cut CO2 emissions, and the $395 trillion it would cost to launch mirrors into space.
Is it vaporware? Not really sure.
The idea is to just spray the seawater into the air, not actually turn it into water vapor.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If only this could be combined so that it sucks up oily water from the gulf of mexico, cleans off the oil, then makes clouds with it.
"unicorns on a treadmill"
That's not the only foolishness. The people who run the investment company use Bill Gates's name because it gets attention.
"But the tactic has some heavy hitters on its side, including Bill Gates."
Bill Gates is not a "heavy hitter". There is no evidence that he is knowledgeable about technology. Read the book he wrote with Nathan Myhrvold, The Road Ahead. The book contained nothing of interest, and no evidence that Bill Gates thinks about technology.
Bill Gates is apparently just a bored billionaire looking for something to do. He made his money by having a virtual monopoly. Others did the technology for him, and Microsoft technology has always been very poor, or imitative. Windows 7 is an example; it has a lot of menus moved around by people who seemingly have no understanding of user interfaces.
Perhaps they should seed clouds with Brawndo - The Thirst Mutilator
"Brawndo's got electrolytes. And that's what plants crave. They crave electrolytes. Which is what Brawndo has. And that's why plants crave Brawno. Not water, like from the toilet."
Last year it was $9 billion.
Though, the year before that it was £1-2 million per ship, with about 1500 ships needed.
With that $300k they might actually make a working scaled model. .jpg that has been going around all this time.
Or a better rendering of that one
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Haven't we learned anything from The Matrix? Darkening our skies will only result in human beings used as power sources....
We need to also investigate in technology that cleans up the oceans of toxins. Especially in light of what is currently happening with the oil platform incident. I've always wondered how viable it would be to make a massive filter that collected crap from the ocean waters that would be constantly cleaned or cleared out daily by massive barges that would take the toxins to landfills.
Science fiction stuff maybe.
Why does it smell like sea water in here?
*slight crashing sound*
Scary thing is... they are way ahead of you...
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1882/3989.full
If world temperatures are to be kept steady with no carbon reduction, the working fleet would have to be increased by approximately 50 vessels a year plus extra ones to replace any lost.
If the assumptions used for figure 3 are correct, the cancellation of 3.7Wm2 associated with a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 will need a spray rate of approximately 45m3s1 and perhaps less with skilful vessel deployment.
If 0.03m3s1 is the right design choice for one spray vessel, this could come from a working fleet of approximately 1500.
And from what I can tell from a cursory look at the study - all they need are enough wind and "efficient generators".
These crude engineering lumped calculations should be performed with the actual values at a representative sample of times for every cell that has not been excluded on grounds of being downwind of land with dirty air, upwind of drought-stricken regions or too close to busy shipping routes.
The wind speed data for each cell should be checked to ensure that there is enough input power for, as will be developed shortly, wind energy provides the principal source for driving the vessels and creating the spray.
With an efficient generator, the 30kgs1 flow rate will be reached at 8ms1 wind speed.
If the nucleus lifetime was the longest estimate of 5 days (Houghton 2004), this would bring the concentration up to levels found over land and lead to much reduced effectiveness.
Cells will be placed in rank order to see how many are needed to achieve any target cooling and either how many vessels should be put in each cell or how many cells should be treated by one vessel.
Vessel movements can be planned by looking at the best-cell list for the next month.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Great. So he's going to send salt up into the clouds so it can rain down on the land killing off plant life. Brilliant. With evaporation, the normal method of water getting up from the sea, the salt is left in the ocean. In the Gatesian method the salt will be shot high up in the air to be carried inland where it will rain down causing ion imbalances in the soil. This salt increase in the soil will kill plants and promote desertification. Idiot.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Queue the Mr. Burns jokes...
Would all that atomized water flying through the air absorb CO2 faster than the relatively-flat ocean? If so, this might reduce CO2 concentration in the air somewhat, at the significant expense of added ocean acidification,
He probably found that under the cushions of the sofa in Family Room 4B.
One Point Six BILLION horsepower.
Interesting number... that's roughly what I would estimate the amount of energy put out by all the cars in the Los Angeles metro area, revving their engines at the same time.
Perhaps they have it backward, though -- how many degrees warmer does the earth need to get in order to increaes evaporation by 1%? Maybe we should just heat up the earth to get that!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
BSOD = Blue Sky of Death
John Latham is working with several collaborators (including Prof. Tom Choularton, University of Manchester, UK; Prof. Stephen Salter, University of Edinburgh, UK; and Prof. Mike Smith, University of Leeds, UK) on a proposed geo-engineering technique for global warming mitigation (Latham, 1990 and 2002 , Bower et al. 2006). A detailed account of this work is presented in the three papers linked, above.
The basic principle of the scheme is advertently to increase the droplet number concentration N in maritime stratocumulus clouds, thereby increasing their albedo (reflectivity) for incoming sunlight and also their longevity. This would produce a cooling effect, the magnitude of which could be controlled, and calculations and GCM computations both indicate that its magnitude could be sufficient to balance the warming due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. It is proposed to increase N by atomizing seawater at the ocean surface (producing copious quantities of droplets of around 1micron in size), and the significant fraction of these which rise into the low-level clouds above would act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), thereby creating additional droplets and enhancing N. The seawater droplets would probably be disseminated from a fleet of satellite-controlled unmanned vessels, deriving their required energy from wind or wave-power. Control over the degree of planetary cooling could be achieved via albedo measurements linked to a global climate model.
Technological questions regarding the production and dissemination of these particles remain to be resolved. Also, detailed examination of the meteorological and climatological ramifications of this proposed geo-engineering scheme would need to be conducted before justification would exist for its operational deployment. Two advantages of the scheme are that: (1) it is relatively benign, the only raw material being seawater; (2) if the disseminators were switched off, the droplets introduced into the atmosphere would fall back into the oceans within a few days.
At first, I was curious why it's even considered news worthy when Gates spends this kind of money on something.
A quick google search tells me that Bill Gates is worth over $50 billion, so $300,000 isn't even the merest fraction of what he's worth. This would be less than those people we've all met that toss away a penny because it's not worth having in their pocket. The Gates Foundation gives out over $1.5 billion a year but I don't recall seeing anything on ./ about that.
Then look at what it is he is doing with this pocket lint amount of cash - paying for RESEARCH into something. Did you read the article? He's not paying anyone to shoot salt water into the air, he's not even paying for research into shooting salt water into the air; he's paying for research into "converting salt water into tiny particles" and pumping that into the air. The navies of the world have been evaporating salt water to produce fresh water for decades (used to be my job). It should be noted that this isn't Gates' idea, it comes from a group of climate researching scientists who are concerned that governments are not going to do anything about global warming and greenhouse gases and don't think it is wise to sit around and wait.
I've certainly never considered myself a Bill Gates fanboi, but let's call this what it is, Gates bashing. Personally I despise a lot of the business practices I have seen reported about Microsoft in general, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Gates doesn't appear to be hiding out on a private island in the tropics enjoying his ill-gotten gains. He is considered one of the world's most generous philanthropists and in this case, appears to have done more research and put more energy and effort into considering global warming and what can be done about it than I would be prepared to believe most commenters in this forum have.
Ridicule the man for believing in pipe-dreams or buying snake oil if you feel the need, but I don't think you can vilify him for this one. You'll have to wait for the next version of MS Office for that.
It's obviously part of Microsoft's Plan for World Domination!
What? Did you think that picture of Gates with a monocle and white cat was just Photoshop?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Those few hundred millions of corpses come from third-world farmers, none of which own SUVs. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide goes on unchecked.
Gates should have paid Steve Jobs to propose it. That way the summary would have said something like "Jobs discovers breakthrough solution to global warming".
Hmm. Now that I think about it the iPad displays are pretty large and shiny. If we spread a million of them across the sky...
I know nothing about climate so I figured I'd throw this out there for someone to answer. Wouldn't this just cause more rainfall? I mean, I know they love the rain in Washington and all, but damn.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Ships are to be completely automated.
Unobtainium probably plays a role somewhere in their plans, but it is not exactly certain where. At least at this point in time.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
use ocean level solar cells to generate the energy to put such saltwater vapor in the air. it'll work like a self regulating machine. More water vapor, less sunlight, less energy... less water being pumped.
And so long as its salt water, when it rains what happens to us and plants getting no fresh water. So even there less people less co2... cept for less plants to eat it up.
see the pig picture?
We're doomed...
Did I miss the part of the article where it says that they desalinate the water first? Wouldn't salt water rain be very bad for farming, fresh water fish, and contaminate reservoirs, streams, and lakes?
Bill Gates Misunderstands what "global warming" is all about. His solution (whether it would work or not,) misses the point and will be automaticly rejected.
Bill Gates seems to be thinking that "global warming" represents some threat to humanity, that needs to be solved by some method, in order to protect humanity. This is not the case. If global warming were about the good of humanity, then global warming advocates would be equally concerned about the Yellowstone supervolcano as they are about "global warming".
The Yellowstone supervolcano is 40 thousand years overdue and has the potential to wipe out 90% of the population of the US. The Science behind the Yellowstone supervolcano is much less speculative that "global warming". It is definely known that this MF will go off.
I believe that with a concerted effort and spending a lot of money the American people could reduce the death toll to only 50%! The area of total devastation will probably only be 4 states. Most people will probably be killed by cascade effects that could be planned for and prevented at a huge cost. Things like starvation from not having stored enough food for the "volcanic winter" when several years harvests are lost. Things like the power being out for years because of volcanic dust shorting out the power lines. Things like massive riots by starving people because of economic and political collapse because the physical economy was not built strong enough. Many of these things could be planned for and prevented.
But it is not going to happen. There is no way for a politician to buy votes, or a bureaucrat to collect bribes, by solving a problem that most people do not want to think about.
But to return to "global warming" and Bill Gates' mistake. "Global warming" is not about the good of humanity. If "global warming" were about the good of humanity then the global warming advocates would be equally concerned about the yellowstone supervolcano and they are not.
"Global warming" exists as an issue because it provides the pretext for a massive power grab. Imagine the campaign contributions that a politician can collect if the politician is going to control everyone that needs to have a fire, directly or indirectly. Imagine the bribes that can be collected if you are a bureaucrat regulating everyone with a fire! This is why the global warming issue exists, not the good of humanity.
Bill Gates' solution does not require the massive power grab to solve the global warming problem. Indeed it undermines the perceived need for such a power grab. It would be the same with any cheap purely technological solution that does not require a bureaucrat regulating everyone with a fire. Gates' solution threatens the true goal of the global warming advocacy. It therefore will be automaticly rejected. One wonders how someone so smart and cynical as Bill Gates could miss the point so badly.
This post also does not serve the interests of the global warming advocacy. It therefore will be down moderated.
Since when does "heavy hitter" mean nothing more than "really rich guy?" If we're talking tech, then I can see Gates as a heavy hitter, even if he seems to be more experienced in the hitting department than the technical department. But just because he's dripping a tiny amount of money on something, that makes him a heavy hitter in whatever he happens to mess around with?
I'll bet he's spent more money on a single car than he's spending on this, but few would call him a heavy hitter in the automotive world. Big spender, yes. Heavy hitter, no.
See -- I managed to attach a car analogy.
Now Bill Gates is controlling the weather! Buy windows 7! or I will get rid of the sun!
Cuz SF really needs more fog...
CO2 in the air has already started to increase the growth of plants. You have no evidence that it stays for hundreds of years. Water even if it only stays up a week will act both as a reflector of sunlight and a blanket (reflector back to the ground). Thus it will increase the stability of the temperature - see the NASA info on how the daily temperature variation increased the week after 9/11 when there were no planes flying (and hence fewer clouds). A larger variation will result in more energy radiated from the earth, as radiated energy goes up nonlinearly with temperature. This is all basic stuff, and is documented, unlike claims that CO2 stays aloft for 100 years.
What could possibly go wrong?
Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
Plants take in CO2 and grow. Part of their growing is also absorbing water at their roots, which is (partly, but mostly) transpired from their leaves. ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evapotranspiration
More co2, the faster the plants grow (up to some level of which I am not sure, but a lot, and it varies plant from plant anyway). So, we already will be getting a lot more water vapor up into the air as co2 levels rise, plus the plants can use all the sunlight they can get. More plants and trees growing, better for all concerned.
Encourage more planting. And that's it to help the environment, along with slowing the use of fossil fuels as much as possible. More stuff growing all over, the better it gets. More to eat, more shade, more forest products, and etc. Much better than Gates contraption. And the planet regulates itself better.
The way to stop man made climate change increases (such as there are, whatever percentage that is), is simply to stop doing that, instead of doing it more. Gates contraption is just doing more man made busywork nonsense. They'll claim, using many arcane scientific sounding phrases and pretty graphs, "wow, it works, now give us a trillion bucks to build thousands of them now" Cha Ching, profit!! That's all this thing is, IMO
The planet appears to be pretty good at this self-regulation stuff, given half a chance.
If this takes off, and we actually do manage to contain the global warming problem, then no doubt we'll continue merrily burning fossil fuels... and gradually lowering the pH of the ocean. We know this will be fairly devastating to any creatures with carbonate shells, but we don't know what other bad effects will result.
Radical changes to ocean ecology: totally bad idea, folks. Not only do we get a significant amount of food out of the ocean, it produces a fair amount of the freakin' oxygen we breathe everyday. There's really no choice but to stop burning so damn much fossil fuel.
Gates ought to ask for his $paltrysum back.
Spraying water a few thousand feet into the air is not going to lead to any significant increase in cloud formation, not on any scale that would matter more than in the very specific locality the spraying is being done in, and probably not even there, either, unless it was a arid location. Not even if we were doing it on a really massive scale. A few thousand feet? Come on... it's all going to just fall back to the ground, it's not going to form any clouds. Who were these assholes?
He just got screwed - out of a pretty small sum of money, true, but still screwed.
I hope he takes that "company" to court and wins back his money. Of course the lawyer's fees for the court case will likely cost a lot more than what he invested in the first place.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
are you aware that, should the experiment fail, the Earth cannot be rebooted ?
You can tell he really cares... Billy G for prez!!!!!
you're doing it wrong.
read this book for an interesting discussion of this and other approaches to climate change (from one of the original "greenies"):
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
best book I've read in a long time
Well, I was thinking about exactly this problem, and I think I have come up with a pretty good solution.
When things get a little too salty, we can spray some sweetened water up there to sweeten things up a bit.
Then when things are sweet enough we can switch back to salt water again for a while. Makes sense.
music lover since 1969
So .. the best suggestion is ... to stop breathing all together to make the world a better place ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Through history, I recall only one group of conquerors doing something similar: the Huns. They were known to sow salt into the fields and poison wells of the lands they conquered. Did anyone else reign such destruction?
Just when I thought that the human race could not do anything stupider and more destructive to the planet it lives on.
So are you saying that Mr. Gates is building a giant device to block out the sun?
Bill Gates Funds Seawater-Spraying Cloud Machines
I think he's just pissing in the wind.
Coal fired steam!
There is no more recent evidence that Bill Gates has taken an interest in technology. If you have some evidence, please share it.
Windows was written by Microsoft employees, and was a useless mess in the beginning, according to reports. Windows became a virtual monopoly due to lying by Microsoft, the book says.
1. black pipe in the middle of sea (1000ft tall)
2. sun heats up the pipe -> air starts flowing up (stack effect)
3. spray water in
my two cents
When Yellowstone finally blows the entire continental US will be an uninhabitable wasteland. The shock will rock the planet on its axis and the ash cloud will block the sun for months if not years. It has the possibility to be an extinction event.
Does it play Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting" backwards?
So let's see what's the global equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death? The Blue Planet Of Death? Dear Mr. Bill Gates please die already you're an imbecile.
Hope is the currency of fools
I'm buying stock in wood burning stoves. If these morons keep it up there will soon be a man-made ice age coming to a neighborhood near you.
Save the forest by preventing all forest fires. Then, deal with unbelievable wild fires after interrupting the balance of regular smaller fires that nature has to clean up old timber. Why must they phuc with everything.
I say we forget about all this research nonsense and just go out and do something. Let's dump huge quantities of silver glitter all over our existing clouds so they are even more reflective! Then, when it rains, the clouds make whatever they rained on shiny too! All we need to do is just keep seeding the clouds with more glitter until the whole world looks like Lil Jon's record breaking diamond pendant.
And if so, won't this mess with the water supply that nearly all land-based life depends on?
Gates heard the term 'cloud computing' and immediately he went into embrace,extend, extinguish mode...
Respect nature. Respect each others.
It is not that you have power or money could change the world at your will.
How well you understand the nature? How it will goes on for 5 years, 15 years, 50 years, 500 years if you turn on that machine?
How well you known the history of our plannet? How well you known the history of weather on this plannet?
learn to respect please.
Since nuclei is a plural (think 'dollars' vs 'money'), shouldn't the article read 'number of nuclei' instead of 'amount of nuclei'?
Let's put the genes back in Genesis.