Using Barges to Fight Global Warming

An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Peter Flynn, Poole Chair in Management for Engineers in the University of Alberta Department of Mechanical Engineering, has developed what he would like to consider a fall back plan to help combat the effects of global warming, in northern Europe. Flynn proposes using 'more than 8,000 barges moving into the northern ocean in the fall, speeding the initial formation of sea ice by pumping a spray of water into the air, and then, once the ice is formed, pumping ocean water on top of it, trapping the salt in the ice and reaching a thickness of seven meters. In the spring, water would continue to be pumped over the ice to melt it, forming a vast amount of cold, salty water that sinks and adds to the down-welling current to re-strengthen it.'"

Quick interview on CBC

[Mrs. Grundy]

Whatever the virtues may or may not be in micromanaging an incompletely understood global chaotic system by adding further human input, you all might be interested in hearing it from the horse's mouth. In this radio interview. [radio.cbc.ca] (scroll down for links) the good doctor makes the point that he is not advocating doing this now, but rather studying the possibility in the case that we find ourselves in an emergency situation where the currents get out of whack and crazy things, like the freezing of the Thames, start happening.

Re:Hack?

[belrick]

The estimated cost is about $50 billion.

Wouldn't be better to spend this tiny amount of money with measures to prevent and control the emission of CO2 at the atmosphere? This barges things looks like a hack to me... a really expensive hack. Would this have to be done every year? I think it is better to leave this kind of "ultimate" solution to when there is no option at all. Until then, let's try to fight the roots of the problem, not just patch it from the outside and adjourn the disaster for a few years.

If you researched the research, you would understand that they are not proposing this (at this time) as a solution, rather they are doing calculations to understand what it would cost to fix the problem (in this case the broken circulation of ocean water) after the fact. That is useful to be able to compare costs with those preventative measures you refer to.

Re:Hack?

[FooAtWFU]

Perhaps some other hacks would be better. I recall this article on climate controls [reason.com] which covers a wide variety of ideas, dismissing some as obviously impractical (orbiting mylar screen? Haha!) but ultimately concluding there are plenty of things we can do on a variety of levels to begin to help counter warming.

Re:Details from the paper

[MichaelSmith]

The barges would be wind powered for the pumping operations so no substantial CO2 is generated.

Yes, but the energy used on the barges could be used to replace energy generation which currently produces CO2.

In high northern and southern lattitudes wind generation at sea is actually one of the better sources of non-polluting energy.

Re:Hack?

[FleaPlus]

All I know is, the bill had better be sent to the Americans.

Why's that? Coal fires [worldchanging.com] in China release 360 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, as much as all the cars in America.

Lowering the river solution

[Belseth]

Sure sounds easier than increasing gas mileage and cutting greenhouse emissions. Amazing some of the bone head solutions for avoiding dealing with the real issue. I remember a proposal of digging tunnels in the mountains around LA to blow the smog out. Gee let's spend tens of billions so we don't have to be responsible and cut emissions. When LA actually starting passing laws against polution it got radically better. Then a little thing called the SUV showed up and most of the gains were lost. Back in the late 70s you could hardly see the mountains at all for months at a time. By the early 90s heavy smog days were rare. Ten years later they are common again. We can make a difference it just requires effort and responsibility. People don't want to make sacrifics or accept change. Well things are changing so you better get used to it.

Re:I'm not a physicist, but...

[FooAtWFU]

It's not the heat caused by expending energy that's at issue here. It's the heat from the Sun- absorbed by the Earth or trapped by the atmosphere or reflected off into space somehow. At high noon, the sun delivers about a billion watts to a square mile of the Earth's surface, give or take (it varies by latitude and stuff like that). That easily eclipses pitiful human energy expenditures.

Now imagine if you could somehow paint that square mile white. It'd reflect a lot of heat back into space. That is the heat we're concerned with here - heat which will no longer be absorbed, but instead reflected. Enough reflection to compensate for the greenhouse gases which are causing absorption of heat? Depends on how much you can paint. And the painting in this case isn't done with paint, it's done by moving water about. I don't have much clue how effective it would be.

Re:Hack?

[Martin Blank]

Coal seam fires are regularly extinguished. It's difficult and expensive, but the value of the coal burned is higher than the cost of extinguishing it -- and that's in the US, which has centuries of coal remaining to be mined.

There's no reason that many of the coal seam fires in China could not be extinguished, other than that China does not care to spend the money on it.

Re:Energy required to do this?

[Martin Blank]

Battleships? When did this happen? The Soviets built some nuclear-powered heavy cruisers, and there are quite a few nuclear carriers, but the Iowas (the only battleships still active in the past almost half-century) are and always were conventionally powered.

Fe fertilizer -8B tons C, Fossil fuels +4B tons C

[MacDork]

this article says, it's not clear that small quantities of iron will do the trick.

I'll see your five year old national geographic fluff piece, and raise you a two year old government study. [llnl.gov]

simulations of iron fertilization of the oceans in the Southern Hemisphere initially showed that almost 8 billion tons of carbon would be absorbed by the ocean each year. Yet, after 500 years of continuous fertilization, the net increase in absorption would be less than 1 billion tons of carbon per year.

Now, considering that fossil fuels contribute roughly 4-5 billion tons [montana.edu] of C to the atmosphere annually, and we've got about 100 years of fossil fuels left... How in the hell is this not a perfect solution? Oh yeah, that's right... too many global warming chicken littles out there are going to have egg on their face if atmospheric C is reduced to pre-industrial levels and global temps are still rising thanks to the simple fact that the sun is getting hotter. [space.com] We wouldn't want to actually test that "greenhouse gases cause global warming" theory, now would we? Better just stick to those computer models...

Oh no! I'm challenging global warming rhetoric with scientific studies! Damn!! There goes my Karma! *sniff* Goodbye sweet Karma <sarcasm />

Re:Hack?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

He wouldn't have to be Grand Dictator. Could probably manage it with being a senator with some clout, assuming it doesn't take a total absenece of ethics to become such.

Last job I worked at, we had an entire call center that could have easily worked at home. Telephone company, and they gave away free phone/DSL to employees, because it was so cheap for them (obviously, not because they were good guys... but what's an extra few pennies for you, if you get to play it up as a perk).

If they can give it away as a morale booster or incentive to work there, then surely they can install an ISDN if it saved them money. Imagine the building costs of 100 person cube farm reduced to 10. Those employees never able to use the excuse (real or fake) of car trouble. Never being late because of traffic. Able to fill in on a moment's notice for an hour if needed.

But apparently they're too dense to see the savings in that. Then again, maybe some tax incentives would be enough to tip things in favor of it.

100 employees not wasting gasoline, driving to work. No need to air condition a large building (would still keep a small one, to train people at, maybe ask each person show up once every 2 weeks or month). No need to heat a large building in winter. Less use of roads, less wear and tear on them, less traffic congestion. Higher effective wages (when you're paying them $12-14 an hour, not having to pay for a tank of gas a week is significant to them).

And this is far from an unusual case. Even now, my current job, I'm doing a software install over a remote connection. 25 miles to work every night, one way.

Of course, it would help if the telecom companies would get off their asses, and give this nation an infrastructure that isn't straight out of the "gouging us for every penny for 1970s technology" era. Again, something congress could fix, if they had half an ounce of sense.

Re:Sounds like Brewster's Millions...

[arkhan_jg]

Because he's not suggesting this as a 'fix' to the albedo, but a way to provide a big stream of cold salty water at the north end of the global conveyer. Why go to all that trouble?

The global conveyer transports hot water from the equator to and western coast of europe, including the UK, keeping that part of europe warmer and more temperate than it's latitude would otherwise make it. The warm water cools, drops down, and returns in a reverse current going south. Too much fresh water at the northern end of the conveyer, from melting fresh water ice at the pole, and russian rivers, dilutes that heavy salty water, and weakens (and could eventually stop) the return trip of the conveyer. The conveyer weakens or even dies, and the UK gets a lot colder, causing all sorts of problems. This 'fix' would strengthen or even restart the conveyer. The 50 billion gives you an idea of how much it might cost us in the medium term if we ignore global warming, just to 'fix' one part of the problem.

Hopefully, politicians will look at this idea, not as something to do now, but something to convince themselves to do something about global warming (i.e. CO2 and methane emissions) before we have to start planning on projects like this. There's a good chance that the global conveyer shutting down will happen in my or my children's lifetime if we do nothing, and I'd rather not have to seriously face a plan like this.