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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."
Lets also ignore the possible impact of having that much salt pumped into the air...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
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.
Water vapor traps in a lot of heat on the earth, but water vapor in the form of clouds reflects a lot of energy; raising albedo by seeding clouds for a net loss of heat could actually work. Better yet the amount of water vapor in the air is naturally regulated, so excess water vapor and clouds are not so difficult to remove as CO2.
Let's also ignore the magical energy source required to pump all this water into the air.
Clean Coal, with the magic of Mr. Clean! =D
What could possibly go wrong? Where can I buy stock? /sarcasm
Yeah, cus Bill Gates has never been wrong before! Wait, what was that about a chasm? Yaaaaaaaah!
The enemies of Democracy are
How were you modded insightful? The simple fact is, that the h20 is not the issue. It goes up, it comes down. In addition, when water is in the form of CLOUDS, it COOLS the planet. It is when it has a high vapor, but not enough to form clouds, that you get warming. OTH, the CO2 is an issue because it stays around and around and around. As such, a VERY small amount goes a long ways. So, the global warming issue is just garbage.
I will say that there are OTHER possible side effects, for example, the clouds WILL block sun from getting to the crops, so there will be less food. And I am sure that there are other ones that are not thought about.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, water vapor is a greenhouse gas. But putting more water vapor in the atmosphere will not contribute to global warming, because any excess water vapor put into the atmosphere precipitates out as rain, snow, or dew within about a week. In other words, water vapor is not a forcing.
Excess carbon dioxide, on the other hand, can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. That's why burning fossil fuels has the effect of increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to warming.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Because last time I checked, when I stuck my tongue out when it rained, I didn't taste any salt at all, and I am 99.9% sure that the rainwater I drank used to be in the salty seas not too long before. Just because it seems to fulfil symbolic logic doesn't mean it's true.
You obviously have never lived near the ocean. The rain isn't "salty" enough to be tasted, but there is salt in the air. Anything that can be corroded will be corroded faster near a body of salt water.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The rainwater you drink is condensed water that evaporated naturally. Unless they forgot to mention a filtering step they're talking about shoving atomized saltwater directly into the air.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Could be interesting; microscopic salt crystals from the ocean are a major source of the nuclei that precipitation condenses around. Deliberately throwing more could have some unexpected results.
How's about an expected result? It cools the atmosphere as water condenses and forms rain? Do this out at sea and you get cooled zones. Certain cooled zones, part of a process known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), alter the weather over the U.S.
Believe it or not, the concept is based upon observations of ongoing, present-day phenomenon.
Best regards.
Fortunately, they're not suggesting that increased evaporation is the important part. It's an increase in cloud cover.
If you'd put down the Ayn Rand book for a minute, you'd really that your statement is absurd.
Wars? Civil rights? International relations? Law enforcement? Disaster rescue?
You, sadly, don't know what you are talking about. The air on areas which are adjacent to the ocean has a high concentration of chlorides which, if not designed with this in mind, can get reinforced concrete structures to completely corrode and crumble in a span of 3 to 5 years. The high concentration of chlorides in the air vary according to multiple parameters, including the topology and some papers have been written that show that high chloride concentrations can be found in areas which are up to 10m above sea level, which means that in some flat areas such as river deltas and flood plains you can find concentrations of chloride a couple of km inland which are practically as high as right in the beach.
But never mind that. Just stick your tongue out, lick the funny rain and let the truthyness of that guide your reasoning. After all, who the hell needs those idiot scientists who have proven multiple times the exact opposite of what you claim?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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.
No. It will be down moderated because it is a moronic post, and it uses way to many words to convey the BS.
The Yellowstone Caldera will take many years, probably hundreds of smaller eruptions before any major super-volcanic eruption. Your statement that it is 40 thousand years overdue is not based on any reasoning and no geologist would agree with you.
Global warming is real. It is caused by humans contributing shit-loads of Carbon to the atmosphere. It will have consequences on the human race. There is probably a tipping point where the changes in the planet will be dramatic.
p.s. It serves me in no way to be taking this position other than the fact that I kind of give a shit about the future of our species.
As someone doing a PhD in weather/climate type stuff, I can give you some feedback:
To start, you're correct in your critique of the plan. 3000' is not far enough. Nor will they be able to get proper cloud aerosols up there, to form cloud nuclei, without them falling back to earth. And should all that work out well, their budget is an order of magnitude or two too small. And even if they had that money, it's a crap shoot if the clouds will warm or cool the earth.
To try to do this more "simply", using 10 football pitches, would fail. That sort of surface area is way too small. If we could form clouds like that, after every rain you'd have clouds above every major city, and even large roadways! Check out some satellite water vapor imagery of the US and you'll see that's not the case.
To create weather like that, you need a couple of square kilometers of water to be evaporated. And that's called......a lake. While salt might be an issue, you could simply keep the water circulating, and a few cm deep. It won't give you the exact same evaporation rate, but it would be lower maintenance, and far simpler.
But again, some clouds reflect sun and cool us, some trap outgoing longwave emissions (heat) and warm us. Just making clouds could freeze the planet, or it could make us something like Venus. The science is definitely not settled on those mechanics yet - I'm working with people trying to figure that out!
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
The CO2 from volcanoes does count. It's just that there's not enough of it to worry about. On average volcanoes emit about 1-2% as much CO2 as human emissions.
They're not really trying to add more water vapor to the atmosphere. They are trying to add more condensation nuclei to help in the formation of clouds. The concentration of condensation nuclei over the open ocean can be pretty low at times inhibiting the formation of clouds.