Slashdot Mirror
Geoengineered Climate Cooling With Microbubbles
Rambo Tribble writes: Scientists from the University of Leeds have proposed that brighter ships' wakes, created by reducing their component bubbles' sizes, could moderately increase the reflectivity of our oceans, which would have a cooling effect on the climate. The technology is touted as being available and simple, but there could be side effects, like wetter conditions in some regions. Still, compared to many speculative geoengineering projects, "The one advantage about this technology — of trying to generate these tiny 'micro-bubbles' — is that the technology does already exist," according to Leeds' Prof Piers Forster.
...what percentage of the earth's oceans are currently ship wake?
One millionth of a percent?
Wetter conditions are not overall bad but people should be careful before they try to tinker with the climate. Considering how many factors of climate change we don't understand yet (not denying it exists, but...) there's a reasonable potential for worse side effects than we'd anticipate. Geoengineering is powerful and should be explored, of course, but caution, caution, caution.
How will this solution redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Chemshiptrails incoming!
Skinner: "No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
Not saying I believe the magnitude of the effect, but from the article:
"""The team used a computer model to calculate what would happen if 32,000 large ships - the current estimate of large vessels on the high seas - produced tinier bubbles.
"If we were to successfully put these generators on to these ships, and the ships just went about their normal business, we did find there was potential to reduce the surface temperature by about 0.5C," Prof Forster said"""
Drive less. Ban incandescent light bulbs. Recycle more. Eat a little less meat. Turn down the heat. Turn up the AC. All which can be done with existing technology.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
That's what she said.
got any research to back that up?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
World’s 15 Biggest Ships Create More Pollution Than All The Cars In The World
http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/8182
Making a pollution-spewing behemoth slightly cleaner is probably not our best use of time and effort. How about we buy less crap from China so we can mothball a few of these ships?
So, at most, this would help ameliorate 10 percent total of the increase in temps just this decade, which would still result in 25 to 50 percent crop failures?
Great. But stop using fossil fuels. We have cheaper technology already.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes, because having to think a little is a way worse fate than eating toferky, in the dark, cold, 200 sqr ft apartment such people want to reduce everyone to...
FTFA,
"these powerplants are some of the most fuel efficient units in the world"
"the 15 largest ships in the world emit as much nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide as the world’s 760 million cars"
So it's not really the climate-affecting carbon emissions that make these vessels "polluters" but rather that they use a fuel which contains excess sulfur and inefficiently scrub nitrogen-based compounds from the emissions, things that autos don't contend with or do because of regulation. It turns out that instead of 50 million cars, the biggest ship in the world put as much carbon into the atmosphere as about 15000-18000 cars. (109k HP @ super high efficiency vs 100HP in your typical automobile, factored for 280days@24h/dy vs average car at 400h/yr)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
These bubble generators aren't free, sweetie! These things cost money (capital) and, even if they have a payback in lower operating costs, the capital cost will be reflected in shipping rates and be added incrementally to shipped goods which are bought by poor people. It's a way to take pennies from the minimum wage worker and aggregate it into hundreds of millions of dollars for the rich.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Something like that might actually work and not bankrupt the world. You can solve global climate change with something like that! You need vast bureaucracies, huge sums of freshly printed money, millions of slaves - I mean - taxpayers...
Will tinier bubbles kill fish?
What could possible go wrong............. We don't even have the computerpower to precisely predict the weather, and they think they can change the climate with this without real consequences?
http://iagp.ac.uk/sites/defaul...
Simulations of solar geoengineering
Increasing the reflectivity of crops
All grassland was made as reflective as possible in the model
Increasing the reflectivity of deserts
The model was altered to act as if all deserts were covered
in highly reflective material
Increasing the reflectivity of the seas
The model was altered to act as if all open sea was covered in micro-bubbles
Increasing the reflectivity of marine clouds
Potentially cloud-altering particles were released over all tropical seas in the model
Forming particles in the stratosphere
Particles were formed in the stratosphere at the equator in the model
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Dropping a giant ice cube into the ocean is still more feasible.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They modeled the thing for ALL of the open sea being turned into bubbles.
It's not happening.
Geo-engineering is not the magic bullet.
Nor do we have it, the gun to fire it from, the target to shoot it at and on top of it all we don't know how to shoot the said gun nor on which side of the gun do bullets go in and on which side of it do they come out.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
People have inadvertently found while trying to make their computers look like aquariums that introducing bubbles (via a normal aquarium pump) reduced temperatures. The theory is that some of the heat is transferred into the air which rises to the top and allows it to escape the system faster.
paint your roof, yard and roadways white, if you're so silly as to be worried.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There may be secondary benefits of doing this such as oxygenation of the oceans. Nanobubbles can be produced very inexpensively using the technology shown here here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Anyone?
The climate is already changing, the goal is to reduce the amount of change.
The problem is the effort is not to reduce the amount, the effort is to send change, however slightly, in a VERY BAD direction.
We already know the Earth will enter a glacial period again. It may even be tending to do so now, we really don't have the understanding of climate to say for sure.
What we do know is that entering a glacial period is something we would vastly rather avoid over any of the climate warming models to date (now that we know runaway warming is simply not going to happen as the doomsayers predicted). Glacial periods will mean mass extinctions all over, and a huge shortage of arable land unlike the greatly expanded land that can be used for agriculture in a warmer Earth scenario.
It's fine to come up with ideas that promote the reduction of things that in theory increase warming, but it's extremely dangerous (or at least stupid) for life on Earth to do anything on a large scale that promotes global cooling of the atmosphere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
oh gawd, you're not one of those climate apologists, are you?
No need to wast electricity on keeping my beer cool anymore!
Yes, lets fiddle with the environment, these are the same scientist who in the 70's wanted to try and heat the earth because they thought we were all headed to an ice age. Just think if we had let them do that!
We ARE headed into an ice age. Look at the last million years of temperature history of the earth, and you'll see our current warm period is scheduled to end sometime in the next thousand years or so, at the latest.
It's not a question of if we'll get to another ice age, but when. As in, will the people who are alive when the next ice age starts still speak a recognizable version of my language, or will it have changed enough that I wouldn't be able to communicate with them? Yes, we're potentially that close.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Was this the technique they used in the movie "Snowpiercer" to stop "global warming", the one that totally fucked up the climate by driving it into an ice age?
Beware of tampering with non-linear chaotic systems you do not understand.
Even if we humans ill-advisedly bugger around with geo-engineering things we don't understand, there will still be change. So why the drive to resist the change?
The only logical answer is: for money. The people who are profiting from the status quo, want to continue to do so. Another group of people are seeking to profit from the fear mongering.
We should be wondering why there isn't a push to come up with means of adaptation. If sea levels rise, how can we reasonably evacuate lowlands? What is the impact on power generation and how do we manage that? Will there be an impact on food production and if so, what can we do about that?
Think about that last one: which is seems more reasonable, stopping the (poorly understood) climate from changing, or the (well understood) adaptation of crops to a new climate?
Fact: whether we geo-engineer or not, the climate will change, as it has always changed. So, do you want to spend your money on trying to prevent the inevitable, or do you want to spend it on something achievable?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.