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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."
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.
Water vapor concentration depends directly on the temperature of the air, and has a life cycle of about 2 weeks. In other words, it is not part of a positive feedback loop. If you pump too much into the air, it just rains out. Once the sun goes down, water vapor condensates out.
You can make Global Warming worse by adding water vapor to the air, but if enough sunlight gets reflected back out through cloud formation, it's a good deal. The cost of putting enough water into the air though.... is a different matter. Not sure if that's a cost-effective way of going about it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Heh, the best part is that we might be trapping more heat than we're reflecting...
I'm doing a PhD in a climate area now, and the science is DEFINITELY not out on whether increased clouds hurt or help us. It depends on the height, location, water content, droplet size.....
But I agree with Idiomatick below - it's clear that we're into at least 40 years of warming, even if we turned off every last CO2 source today! As I posted above, we're on the ride, while we're still building the track ahead of us. The first 40+ years of the ride has been completed. What the next 80, 120, 160 years looks like is still a bit up in the air. However, it's hotter, with climate like we humans have never seen since we invented writing.
Our last chance to keep our climate like the last 10-15k yrs is to geo-engineer. Our only chance to get off this ride in the next 40 years is to put all our chips on 00 and spin the wheel. They aren't good odds, for sure....
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
First, the fun thing this and nearly all of the serious geoengineer proposals that I have seen is that they are easily turned off. If there is some horrible consequence to making the ocean a little more cloudy? Ok... turn them off. We are already geoengineering through industrial pollutants. We might as well geoengineer some more to try and fix the problems. The path to using this techs is pretty clear. Start small, work up to the effect you want, turn it off if you don't like where it is going.
As far as "masking" the problem, what is wrong with that? So we need to run a bunch of sprinklers in the ocean. Is it cheaper than the substantial costs of reducing CO2 output now? If it is, then we should seriously think about doing it. That isn't to say that we shouldn't work on removing CO2 in a more permanent way or work on emitting less, but it could be a hell of a lot cheaper and political far more feasible than the alternative. Do you have to maintain these and replace them? Sure, but that goes with almost any technology. It isn't like the fact that power plants wear out stop us from building an electrical grid. You just include replacement in the cost. It is hardly an insurmountable problem.
If you really believe that climageddon is upon us, geoengineering really is shaping up to be the only way to level off the warming. The cost to reduce CO2 emissions now at levels high enough to stop global warming are through the roof. The political cost is even higher (if not utterly unpayable). We are going to fail at reducing CO2 emissions in the short term. Why not deploy technology to counteract our unintentional geoengineering at a fraction of the cost of "fixing" the problem. Don't stop working on the problem, just give the world some breathing room. Transitioning over to clean and renewable energy is the direction we want to go regardless, making it so that we need to make the transition in a few generations rather than a few years results in a drastically reduced cost.
Frankly, I think that geoengineering makes hardcore environmentalist pissy because it snatches away the best issue that environmentalist movement has had in decades. When it comes down to it, reducing CO2 emission with today's technology boils down to reduced consumption and energy usage. You can tie those two things to pretty much anything in the environmentalist cause. Global warming makes an good proxy in any fight over the environmental. Arguing that coal is bad because it pumps out toxic crap in the PPM range is a very hard argument to make to your average uneducated dolt. Simply declaring coal is a going to cause climageddon on the other hand is much much easier to understand and get worked up over.