Posted on 05/12/2010 8:26:26 AM PDT by NYer
The first trials of controversial sunshielding technology are being planned after the United Nations failed to secure agreement on cutting greenhouse gases.
Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.
The British and American scientists involved do not intend to wait for international rules on technology that deliberately alters the climate. They believe that the weak outcome of December’s climate summit in Copenhagen means that emissions will continue to rise unchecked and that the world urgently needs an alternative strategy to protect itself from global warming.
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. Most would be prohibitively expensive and could not be deployed for decades.
However, a study last year calculated that a fleet of 1,900 ships costing £5 billion could arrest the rise in temperature by criss-crossing the oceans and spraying seawater from tall funnels to whiten clouds and increase their reflectivity.
Silver Lining, a research body in San Francisco, has received $300,000 (£204,000) from Mr Gates. It will develop machines to convert seawater into microscopic particles capable of being blown up to the cloud level of 1,000 metres. This would whiten clouds by increasing the number of nuclei.
The trial would involve ten ships and 10,000sq km (3,800sq miles) of ocean. Armand Neukermanns, who is leading the research, said that whitening clouds was “the most benign form of engineering” because, while it might alter rainfall, the effects would cease soon after the machines were switched off.
(Excerpt) Read more at technology.timesonline.co.uk ...
A novel solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
In more enlightened times a straitjacket would be in order.
Gates and friends hope to make money somehow.I don't trust him.
Well, it’s his money. Then again, this solution is as effective as Vista.
I thought cloud cover on a planet keeps the warm in ...
Yes. There will surely be unintended consequences from this endeavor.
Could they bring down the temperature here in Texas every summer by 10 to 15 degrees? That would be perfect.
Kooks give money for kooky science. Liberal wealth redistribution is a good thing.
So his plan is to basically convert as much sea water as possible into water vapor — the most prevalent greenhouse gas in our atmosphere? BRILLIANT!!!
A fool and his money...
I wonder if I will be able to sue Bill Gates when the excessive raining floods my basement?
"What's your carbon footprint?"
I had to restrain myself from writing in parentheses beside it:
(Not as big as Al Gore's "carbon footprint".)
Gates has been living in Washington coast too long. his brain is soggy.
Water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, so it is a brilliant idea to see how much of it we can put into the atmosphere and hope that clouds form. For that matter, couldn’t cloud cover lower the growth of carbon consuming photoplankton and thereby increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2? This could lead to a warmer, more fertile environment for most life. Say hello to the law of unintended consequences.
Bill GodGates wants to mess with things no man can understand. The arrogance and hubris of some men is unbounded.
Personally, I believe the idea would have little or no impact except to the ego of those supporting it.
However it does produce a unique opportunity to sue a billionaire the first time someone claims to be harmed by unusual weather that results from his meddling.
Of course I would spend some of this cash for Gatesophobia Research!
Don’t worry, Justice Kagan will write the majority SCOTUS opinion that individuals can not be sued when their actions are intended for the benefit of the global community.
***It will develop machines to convert seawater into microscopic particles capable of being blown up to the cloud level of 1,000 metres.***
The technology already exists and is in use now! They are called POWER PLANT COOLING TOWERS!
Wonder what fuel will drive those ships. Sails?
And for his next sunshielding technology idea he will put trees on all ships at sea.
If the law was just and blind, sure.
But then, Cal EPA, CARB, EPA and the late Rachel Carson would be in prison for MTBE, ethanol, and mass murder of children by a biological WMD.
(1) Pure insanity to start messing with the climate based on a hoax.
(2) Assume arguendo that AGW is real. Well, here’s a £5M solution from the private sector that solves the problem. Compare to the multi-trillion dollar and freedom crushing government solution.
How much diesel fuel will these ships be burning to pump all this water up into the sky? Are they run by solar collectors? Windmills? jesh
The big question now is “Who is getting the money?” Another good ole boy club member?
At least he’s spending his own money on it, though...
Love the Kate Bush album cover!
I’ve got a garage full of clouds I’d be happy to sell.
Me too. We live in the humidity belt.
People are friggin’ nuts. That’s about all I have to say about that.
I’m not a marxist or anything like that but has anyone considered the possibility of taking money away from stupid people for their own safety?
Here’s a good link explaining the lunacy:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/12/every-silver-lining-has-a-cloud/#more-19413
“what we have here is a non-viable non-solution to a non-problem. I wouldn’t want to comment either, especially since this non-solution will burn about 27 billion litres (about 7 billion US gallons) of fuel per year to supposedly “solve” the problem supposedly caused by CO2 from burning fuel …”... Willis Eschenbach
I don’t agree with the basic premise of intervening to deliberately affect world climate at all, but what the heck, these people just can’t help themselves. So, here goes.
Why don’t they just spend $5 billion on desalinization plants, to send seawater to arid regions? No need for “artificial” trees in that instance. A side benefit would be agrigulture to feed those incapable of feeding themselves, and it would help prevent shortages and keep prices in check for the balance of the population.
Of course, this is just too rational and too simple. We’re talking about lofty, self-absorbed types here, enraptured by their own presumption of brilliance, who have always greatly preferred a goldplated boondoggle. So, we’ll probably be deploying space mirrors and artificial trees and artificial clouds. Such fakery doesn’t aid in supporting the current population, let alone enable an increase in that population, and that’s a good thing for these neo-Malthusians.
On top of it all, this stuff comes from the putatively concerned, over manmade climate change. Grasping irony is just not their strong suit, but creating it is.
I think you’re right about water vapor being the most plentiful GHG.
THen again, definitions do change.
Who said it first, this Algorism: Words mean exactly what I want them to mean. ANd they do change.
$7 billion is chump change compared with every other tax/fee proposal that is floating around.
I say — “Evaporate, Bill, Evaporate”.
It will be cheaper for all of us...:^)
Now since then, we have heard about how the planet will practically autoignite because of plant food in the atmosphere, as if there were no biological controls either on land or in the upper 300 feet of the oceans where phytoplankton thrive and eventually will form the ooze which makes the oil of the distant future provided all goes well.
Now, in an attempt to mitigate a problem which we have been assured exists, despite problems with flawed data, severely edited datasets, obvious profit motives and agenda pushing, people propose to physically mitigate a problem which does not exist, not just profit from their lunacy and go home.
Let's say the climate does get warmer, the temperature (globally) rises by 5 degrees celsius, and the sea levels rise by a few meters.
Okay, some people are going to lose a bunch on their real estate investments and will have a hard time buying flood insurance, but people aren't cemented in place. The population of low-lying areas will move to higher ground, which will, by definition, become the new low-lying areas.
Millions of acres of previously untillable land, however, will become arable, by virtue of shifting temperatures, and even Greenland might be a bit more, well, green--in the literal sense.
Areas of the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, far Northern Europe, Siberia, and even Antarctica might become a bit more habitable, and as the foundations for new cities are dug, doubtless the remains of previous occupants will be discovered--all without the archaeologists having to wear parkas, just lots of bug spray.
Let's look at the opposite scenario, an Ice Age, where a third of the lower 48 is covered in ice, (and vast regions elsewhere) the amount of arable land decreases significantly, and the human population is squeezed into relatively narrow bands of habitable land.
Even with the expansion out onto the Continental shelves, (bared by falling sea levels) where doubtless there are remanants of past civilizations, or at least human occupation, things are going to get a mite crowded.
If you had waterfront property, you will be up hill from all that now.
Given a choice between the two scenarios, and keeping in mind that living in North Dakota has taught me that it is easier to stay warm where it is warm, that despite discomfort, heat is survivable, and cold not so much, I'd take a chance with the possibility that the climate is warming over inducing cold, cold which may well be added to a natural downtrend in temperatures and which will kill.
It is the ultimate human folly to tamper with a dynamic system we do not understand well enough to predict, especially when our flawed understanding of that system relies on questionable data taken over an incredibly short term, when compared with the life of the system.
To do so in a manner in which the (unpredictable) results could possibly invoke the worst-case scenario for the species is stupidity at its finest.
> I thought cloud cover on a planet keeps the warm in ...
I does if the object is to reflect the heat back to the earth. In this case, it reflects the sun’s heat back into outer space.
I don't think that's a good idea.......There are certain things in nature that should be left alone and this is one of them.
A FOOL and his money are soon parted!
Hey Billie,
Try playing with Mother Nature along with all your little friends who all of you now believe you’re God, and she will blow you straight to hell.
It’s a promise.
I think Bill should invest in tin foil hats to reflect the sun. We’ll know every liberal by their tin foil hat.
What will happen to the Dolphins and fish that get sucked up in the seawater? Starkist should build a factory next to the pump.
Water vapor is invisible. Clouds you can see and are made of water droplets, not water vapor, and have very different thermal properties.
"Commence Operation... Vacu-suck."
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