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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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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"""
You'd be surprised what kind of effect ship wake can have on ocean albedo. You should give that study a read! It's really interesting, even if you're not typically into geophysics.
TFA says the fitting was already being researched for fuel efficiency reasons, so that may throw a bone to the "what will it cost" crowd, results pending.
Well, here is what we do. We get a bunch of poor people, right? Then you give them water skis and hook them up to the back of the ships. They then water ski behind the ship creating the needed bubbles. Climate change reversed and unemployment drops. A win-win!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Ideally, nothing. Groups are already investigating the use of cavitators along the hull to reduce surface friction and fuel consumption. If that pans out, this would basically be a bonus effect.
0.5C this year? Next year? Every year?!?
It is obvious that they meant the surface temperature would cool by 0.5C one time, and then stabilize and stay 0.5C cooler than it would otherwise be, as long as the system was used. I don't see how you could interpret it any other way.
Shutting down air traffic after 9/11 had a measurable impact on weather over CONUS from the lack of contrails in the sky. It isn't unfathomable that ships can also have a measurable level of impact.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
all will spend a significant amount of time in port.
Efficient ports can turn around a containerized cargo ship in less than 12 hours. They use multiple cranes, and load, unload, and refuel simultaneously. By comparison, the Pacific transit time from Shanghai to Los Angeles is 17 days. So the time in port is only 3%.
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?
Damn straight! I'm sure none of those marmy smarmy researchers thought about nighttime!
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
people should be careful before they try to tinker with the climate.
People are already tinkering with the climate on a massive scale.
caution, caution, caution.
Every day of "cautious" delay, another 50 million tons of CO2 goes into the atmosphere.
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
If the savings from lower operating costs are higher than the amortized capital costs, then shipping rates will go down, not up. If they are not, then the ships will NOT install these devices unless someone else pays for them (e.g., taxpayers). In neither case will shipping costs go up.
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
To be fair, that's not a universally accepted answer.
World’s 15 Biggest Ships Create More Pollution Than All The Cars In The World
This is nonsense. It is only true for sulfates and nitrates. But sulfates and nitrates are only a concern on land, where they are inhaled, or damage buildings or crops. When emitted by ships, they are funneled to the side where they stay low and quickly settle onto the ocean surface. Since the ocean already contains quadrillions of tons of sulfur and nitrates, this addition is utterly inconsequential.
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.