Using Barges to Fight Global Warming 347
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quick interview on CBC (Score:2)
Re:Quick interview on CBC (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fe fertilizer -8B tons C, Fossil fuels +4B tons C (Score:4, Informative)
I'll see your five year old national geographic fluff piece, and raise you a two year old government study. [llnl.gov]
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 />
Read your own article... (Score:3, Interesting)
A tanker full of Thermite! 8-0 (Score:2)
I'm incredibly fond of that idea too! Just let me light the strip of magnesium will ya? WoooHooooooo! ;-)
Re:Quick interview on CBC (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, try 'completely misunderstood.' Because to me it seems like the energy used in creating that ice would end up negating the benefits, if any, that its eventual melting would provide.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Quick interview on CBC (Score:2)
Re:Quick interview on CBC (Score:3, Interesting)
ebarge.com ... dammit (Score:3, Funny)
go grab ebarge.com while its still available...
Then I checked and well... http://www.ebarge.com/ [ebarge.com]
Oh goodie... (Score:3, Funny)
Hack? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hack? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hack? (Score:2)
Re:Hack? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:2)
If Europe plunges into a deep freeze then I'm sure they'll find the money to do it, if it doesn't then they don't have to. Rather than spending the money now on things that might have no affect on anything anyway.
So now we can just ignore the whole global warming thing.
Re:Hack? (Score:2)
Re:Hack? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hack? (Score:2)
Re:Hack? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't be better to spend this tiny amount of money with measures to prevent and control the emission of CO2 at the atmosphere?
That depends... would the economic cost of reducing CO2 emissions by the equivalent amount be more or less than $50 billion?
This isn't a completely rhetorical question... if anybody has figures, I'd be very curious to see them.
Re:Hack? (Score:2)
You are right. Nukes would be better (Score:2)
Climate engineering makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hack? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:Hack? (Score:2)
Sweet! We are totally off the hook! Especially when you consider that transportation is responsible for one-third of US CO2 emissions [doe.gov]!
I'm happy to share the bill with the Chinese, but c'mon.
Re:Hack? (Score:2)
Let's try to fix the problems we can instead of not bothering because there are problems we can't.
Re:Hack? (Score:4, Informative)
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:Hack? (Score:3, Informative)
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
the barges? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oblig. Futurama reference (Score:5, Funny)
Suzie: Just like Daddy puts in his drink every morning. And then he gets mad.
Narrator: Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time. Thus solving the problem once and for all.
Suzie: But-
Narrator: ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!
Leela: Well, we just need one of those big ice cubes. Someone should call the losers who are supposed to deliver it.
[phone rings]
Hello?
this explains how the barges work (Score:2)
That's good... (Score:3, Funny)
Or... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Or... (Score:2)
because we are seriously f***ing with nature [planetforlife.com]
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or... (Score:2)
You said: "How about we let nature take its course and we worry about changing ourselves instead of the planet?"
I said: We are not letting nature take its course (re: accelerating atmospheric CO2 concentrations).
Then you accused me of wanting to mess with nature more, which I most definitely did not say. I've been listening to the current US administration too long to fall for that fallacy.
And what's with "worry about changing ourselves instead of the planet"? I presume you are suggesting that we
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true. However, at some of those times this planet has been just about totally uninhabitable by humans. Are you suggesting that in the worst case we just kill ourselves off and then wait for the planet to recover so some new species can evolve to take our place?
Re:Or... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or we spend the of thousands of years it'll take before it becomes uninhabitable to learn how to live for generations in space.
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Okeeedokeey.... You go first.
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real threat is not that the planet will be uninhabitable for humans. That's possible, but unlikely, and we're fairly adaptable. The risk is that the short term changes might be exceptionally inconvenient for humans - and by inconvenient I mean on a scale that makes trying to hew to Kyoto type restrictions* positively trivial. In the long term I expect humans will probably adapt to the changes as
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
"At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities, two Duke University physicists report.
The physicists
Re:Or... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if solar output were to trigger non-linear increases in global temperatures (e.g. by triggering the ~2% increase in percipitation in the 20th century, trapping solar radiation under increas
Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well it would if it was a fact that the poles on Mars are melting. As it happens it's just the southern pole that's melting. In and of itself that isn't even surprising. Mars has a rather different "seasonal" cycle than earth, taking considerably longer, but, as it happens, it is currently "summer" in the southern hemisphere of Mars. Ice caps often melt a little during the summer. Odd that. Now if it were
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'll find the last IPCC TAR concluded much the same with regard to the effects of increased solar output. Of course they also concluded that the majority of observed warming was most likely due to anthropogenic CO2. Take a look at this chart [wikipedia.org] showing how well CO2 correlates with the historical temperature record and realise that on that scale current CO2 levels are almost 5.5: that is quite literally off the chart. Given that we have good reason to believe in causation (absorption spectra of atmospheric CO2) it should be of concern. Yes the climate has fluctuated quite a bit in the past. Yes it is a complex chaotic system. That doesn't mean messing with it more is a good idea.
Nope, we can't talk in this arguement about how the planet's climate has shifted in the past, but must blame the US, George W. Bush and/or Capitalism for Global Warming.
I'm not sure attacking a strawman helps either. I don't think anyone with an actual clue is blaming George Bush and Capitalism for causing global warming, and certainly people with a clue will readily accept that historically the climate has been variable - that doesn't mean the the current trend in variation is going to in any way beneficial (or even necessarily neutral). Sure there are all those people without a clue who follow the issue as a politicised debate. There are equally shrill and stupid voices on both sides of this argument though. Just ignore them - the more attention we pay them the more pointlessly polarised this debate becomes.
Jedidiah.
Temp rise precedes CO2 rise (Score:2)
I also notice that the rise in temperature precedes the rise in CO2 for the most part of that graph.
On that chart, the timeline goes right-to-left, with the older record on the right.
Re:Temp rise precedes CO2 rise (Score:2)
It does, and the interesting thing is that that is actually to be expected. Without some other reason for CO2 to rise (like, for example, creatures burning fossil fuels) something else is required to raise CO2 levels and produce the natural cycles. As it happens warming can often cause an increase in CO2 - warmer oceans hold less CO2. Once a natural warming fluctuation (from, say, solar variation) has become
Re:Or... (Score:2)
And notice how the reversed scale confuses the fact that temperature rises tend to be followed by increased CO2. To the extent that correlation implies causation, it seems that high temperatures cause CO2 increases rather than the other way around.
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Oh, ok, so we should take past climactic shifts into account. So everything's ok then.
Re:Or... (Score:2)
A long-term decrease in the number of pirates.
Because it's not what humans do (Score:2)
We will keep doing it because we have an innate desire to make things better for ourselves. And guess what! That is "nature" taking it's
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Even if we're not bringing about any harm to the Earth, it's still in everyone sbest intrest to find a cleaner resource for our power before it runs out (and we can only dig so far before we hit magma and have no more oil or ores), so we need to start looking for a solution. Not t
wouldn't that require 8000 (minimum) trips by (Score:2)
burning fossil fuels?
Re:wouldn't that require 8000 (minimum) trips by (Score:2)
Sounds like Futurama (Score:2, Funny)
Why not just leave the refrigerator open? (Score:2, Funny)
Wait... you mean the world would actually get WARMER? BAH! The thermal engineers are trying to confuse me!
Re:Why not just leave the refrigerator open? (Score:2)
I'm not a physicist, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
(Ok, now some physicist type needs to come along and correct me, but still...)
Re:I'm not a physicist, but... (Score:2)
Re:I'm not a physicist, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Now imagine if you could somehow paint that square mile white. It'd reflect a lot of heat back into space. That is the hea
well thank god (Score:2, Funny)
Energy required to do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Eight THOUSAND barges pumping enough water to make a layer seven METERS thick? EACH YEAR.
I'm no scientist, but it seems to me we'd be pumping out some greenhouse gases somewhere in this mix...
Would these be nuclear barges? No greenhouse gases, but instead spent nuclear fuel to contain for a really long time.
They estimate $50 billion USD to do this, but they don't say if that is the ongoing yearly amount.
Maybe easier just to genetically engineer all the plants and animals to deal with the new conditions rather than try to control the ocean currents (and for the humor impaired -- that sentence is meant as a joke).
Re:Energy required to do this? (Score:2)
They use nuclear power on submarines, they use it on battleships, they can use it on barges easily.
Re:Energy required to do this? (Score:3, Informative)
There's no one-size-fits-all fix for this mess (Score:5, Interesting)
There won't be a one-size-fits-all fix. Conservation and more efficient vehicles will be a big part of it. Environmental remediation projects, like reconstructing coastal wetlands to help them deal with floods and storms, will be another.
Stange notions like seeding the ocean with iron filings, and this oddball idea, are another possibility for the "arsenal" of fixes. I'd definitely put some money into researching them. Figure out the kinks sooner rather than later, so they'll be available if we need them.
stop being so pompous (Score:2)
There's been global warming since the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago.
Sounds like Brewster's Millions... (Score:5, Interesting)
This scheme reminds me somewhat of some of the (intentionally) money-wasting schemes of the movie Brewster's millions. Large machines sent thousands and thousands of miles to mechanically move an almost unimaginable ammount of water, along with the fuel needed to do all of this large-scale de-facto terraforming (aquaforming?).
That...or the Futurama episode where it was revealed that global warming had to be fended off with giant ice cubes from Haley's comet every once in a while.
What this scheme ammounts to is a color shift of a rather small portion of the earth's ocean, for a rather small ammount of time, and enormous cost.
You could achieve the same dynamic by:
A) Using some cheaper coloring to semi-permanantly paint large portions of land environments with an already severely limited biological environment, including deserts, rocky areas, upper mountain ranges, near-permafrost (permafrost is already white most of the time), etc. Longer-lasting and cheaper than the ice-cube in the ocean effect. Could be undone with darker color later if needed.
B) Genetically engineer and feed cryophillic bacteria with light pigment in near-arctic ocean areas. Either have it continuously expell bouyant light-color material as part of the life cycle, or else have the body stay boyant and un-edible by further bacteria after death. If this is feasible, and self-sustainable, we'd have a meaningful, if limited engineered biological terraforming. Similarly can be undone with darker color later.
Those are just two quick ideas - I'm sure there's a lot others that would work to do color-based terraforming. Are there any special reasons why this barge idea would... hold water still above such ideas?
Re:Sounds like Brewster's Millions... (Score:5, Interesting)
The article also suggests burning lots of sulfur-rich coal in western Pacific island nations, resulting in more clouds over the ocean and a higher albedo.
Re:Sounds like Brewster's Millions... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Ways to combat "global warming" (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Find the fucking Europeans some other place to grow soybeans for their bio-diesel so they don't start de-foresting the Congo.
3. Build nuclear power plants.
4. Build breeder reactors and core re-processing factories so we don't have to bury as much radioactives.
5. Find a fucking use for all the radioactive by-product waste generated from 30 years of unabated plutonium weapon manufacturing. Vitrify it and use the barrel to de-ice sidewalks or
Greg Benford's Suggestion (Score:2, Interesting)
Like his idea, this one will be shot down for the same reason: It might actually do something about the problem, doesn't funnel money to the climatologists pushing Global Warming as a means of securing ever-more funding, and it offends the the civil religion of environmentalism by allowing Western Civilization to escape suffering (in the form
Re:Greg Benford's Suggestion (Score:2)
Humans are spiteful like that.
We don't just want you to be wrong and us to be
Re:Greg Benford's Suggestion (Score:2)
It's the act of a confidence trickster to attack the messenger and not the message - and if we keep doing that scientists will be branded as fanatics and we can forget about people getting a decent education in the mainstream.
Re:Greg Benford's Suggestion (Score:2)
Crichton can be a really nicely-worded misleader when he wants to be. Yes, there are crazed idiots within the Christian faith who believe that the End Days can be accelerated by promoting destabilization in the middle east. And there are idiots in the environmental movement who believe that the problem is doom, the destruction and the rest of the crap that he cites.
Meanwhile, there are Christians working hard to improve the lives of various people on a day to day basis, and there are environmentalists w
Re:Greg Benford's Suggestion (Score:2)
Also, I call you on "It might actually do something about the problem," unless you really understand the meaning of "might". Read this piece [agu.org] by Sally Chisholm, a professor at MIT who kind of knows a thing or two about iron seeding.
Re:Greg Benford's Suggestion (Score:2)
In fact, I would argue that there is quite a bit of logic and science behind the conservative environmental position. It is a fact that humans do not do well outside of a fairly limited range of temperature, light, radiation, and availability of water, oxygen, and food. Many scientists see measurable trends occuring that po
Re:Greg Benford's Suggestion (Score:2)
Why not... (Score:2)
cool (Score:2)
Without taking into account the fuel consumed to actually manufacture said barges...
smash
New Plan (Score:2, Funny)
"Due to all the additionnal greenhouse gases created by having 8,000 barges continuously circumventing the oceans, the Alberta professor now suggests to add more barges... to curb the effect on global warming the old ones created."
most underrated post in this thread (Score:2)
Details from the paper (Score:4, Interesting)
The cost breaks down as a capital outley of 45 billion dollars for the barges and equipment; and operating expenses of 1.3 billion dollars per year. The barges would be wind powered for the pumping operations so no substantial CO2 is generated.
8100 barges, with a wind power system, a low volume pump and two high volume pumps per barge. 32 helicopters, 4 harbors, 4 air bases and 1 control center, for the Thunderbirds, I guess.
Re:Details from the paper (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Wisdom from the TV Sitcom "Dinosaurs" (Score:4, Insightful)
In the final episode [tv.com], a comet is heading towards the planet, and the "We Say So" corporation devises a way of destroying the comet using "modern" technology, only to find that it has a consequence. Each "solution" cause a larger and larger problem, only to be "fixed" with another "solution", causing an ever-growing problem. I forget the entire sequence of events, but in the final stage, they kill all the plant life on the planet. They figure that to bring the plant life back, they need to make it rain. Rain is formed by clouds. Clouds are formed by erupting volcanos. So, naturally, forcing all the volcanos to erupt will cause clouds to form, causing rain to fall and restore the plant life for all the earth. The episode finishes with the corporation detinating bombs inside volcanos, causing all the volcanos to erupt, blackening the sky, causing the start of the ice age.
Words of wisdom from Dinosaur Earl Sinclair: "It's so easy to take advantage of nature because it's always there, and technology is so bright and shiny and new."
Let the Earth take care of nature. We're so focused on manipulating nature for the survival of every single life on Earth, we lose site of the fact that every now and then, nature has to correct our mistakes to restore its own balance, whether in the form of a plague, a change in the weather patterns, or an ice age.
Lowering the river solution (Score:3, Informative)
What about the sun? (Score:3, Funny)
Mother Earth (Score:3, Interesting)
Global warming is not all about taking care of 'our earth'. It's about saving our own asses from extinction.
Earth has endured asteroid showers, meteor showers, major volcanic erruptions that produced ice ages and other effects of extreme proportion. Earth will contineu to self-maintain long after the human race died off, or nuked themselves. When a major earth shifting event happens, evolution begins again.
Leave the glabal warming, ozone holes, melting ice alone - It's evident that since we started reducing ozone depleting chemicals, introduced automobile emmission controls, and a bounty of other reversal efforts, that nothing is helping. I strongly feel that we are not causing these things - rather earth is evolving herself, and unfortunately her future plans may or may not include any of the current species. We're beating a dead horse!
Smoke & Mirrors (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course the operation could be fueled with nonemissions energy sources. But with a contingency plan like that, the petrofuel industry will have even less inhibition in pumping emissions into the Greenhouse.
Any Greenhouse plan has to start by changing the system to reduce its emissivity. The best way to reduce the Greenhouse, and its unpredictable chaotic feedbacks, is to stop building it.
Use the excess CO2 to make dry ice (Score:4, Funny)
Why not just use Sabatier reaction and MCFC? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_process [wikipedia.org]
"Circle of life, Simba, Circle of life."
When the methane is collected and use
Re:CO2 output? (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Dr. Peter Flynn
Re:CO2 output? (Score:2)
The other thing I was looking for was the plan on getting rid of excess global heat that is trapped by greenhouse gasses. How do they plan on making ice out of sea water? Where is the heat going? How is it getting there. Melting ice takes in heat in the process of melting. To make ice, heat must be taken away. Spraying a lot of water in the air may warm the air and raise the humidity due to evaporation. After the air is saturated, where is the heat going? If
Re:as an alternative... (Score:3, Interesting)
This article [reason.com] (admittedly a little dated, 1997) claims that "for about $10 million, this method would offset the 1990 U.S. greenhouse emissions". (It also explores some potential side effects, and similar measures.)
Re:Did I read that right? (Score:2)
I wish I could sit down with a 40oz with you (or whatever drug makes me credible in your mind) and tell you just how wierd, irrelevant, and completely moot a statement like that is.
Any drug, really, I like alot of them.
Re:Did I read that right? (Score:2)
Re:Too late. (Score:2)
Re:Too late. (Score:2)
Wow. You say that almost as if you really know what you're talking about. But, like 99% of the drones, you are making assumptions based on school science classes, what you watched on TeeVee, and what has been written by writers who are also drones.
In a universe where all there is is energy, (matter is an illusion, after all), how do you know which groups of energy are 'alive' and which are not? How do you define 'alive'?