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Solution to Global Warming or . . . ?

Gord_in_Toronto

Penultimate Amazing
Gord_in_Toronto
Joined
Jul 22, 2006
Messages
26,461
Since we are "riding the tiger" of Global Warming (A or null A) this may be a solution.

The Independent

Norfolk volcano experiment offers hope in fight against climate change.

The project could result in 20 balloons, each the size of Wembley Stadium, firing tonnes of dust into the air at 20km up

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Scientists and engineers plan to test the "geoengineering" idea at Sculthorpe Airfield near Fakenham next month by launching a helium-filled balloon tethered to a strengthened hosepipe which will spray tap water into the air at a height of 1km.

. . .

. . . a fleet of 10 to 20 giant balloons moored over the ocean and spraying at an altitude of 20km could cool the planet by about 2C at a cost of between £5bn and £50bn.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-in-fight-against-climate-change-2354305.html

Tap water? I wonder if it's fluoridated?

:cool:
 
The way things are going I suspect that something like this is inevitable: it's the only cheap solution to climate change, the only solution that doesn't require overcoming major political obstacles, the only solution that can be implimented and effective over a short time span.

As for unintended consequences, we'll see, but I think its likely that as we learn more about geoengineering, and the earth's climate, the benefits will be major. (negative unintended consequences could be major as well, but I suppose we'll have to face those as they arise.)

At present doing nothing seems to be an option to some. I suspect that will change within the next couple of decades, and by that time we won't really have any options but geoengineering.
 
From TED:
http://blog.ted.com/2007/11/13/david_keith/
So this problem is absolutely soluble- this geoengineering idea, in it’s simplest form, is basically the following. You could put signed particles, say sulfuric acid particles- sulfates- into the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere, where they’d reflect away sunlight and cool the planet. And I know for certain that that will work- not that there aren’t side effects- but I know for certain it will work, and the reason is, it’s been done. And it was done not by us, not by me, but by nature.
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Cool idea but, feasibility aside, I dig a sort of Dyson Sphere concept I read about in SciAm a few years back.

Interesting piece but how will they be able to determine that the particles remain suspended?

This says volumes about our society: We are so unwilling to fundamentally change our suicidal emissions to the point where this would even be a concept let alone an experiment.
 
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foxholeatheist said:
Cool idea but, feasibility aside, I dig a sort of Dyson Sphere concept I read about in SciAm a few years back.
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What does a Dyson Sphere have to do with this?

Interesting piece but how will they be able to determine that the particles remain suspended?
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The particles remain suspended for a while, then they come down, so to maintain the same level of cooling effect you have to keep putting this stuff in the upper atmosphere. The good thing about that is that if we find, for whatever reason, that we don't want to continue this it's reversible over a short period of time by simply not putting the stuff up there anymore.

This says volumes about our society: We are so unwilling to fundamentally change our suicidal emissions to the point where this would even be a concept let alone an experiment.
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It seems to me that we should do whatever offers the best outcome when considered with a cost-benefit analysis. Of course, its difficult to take into account the risks inherent in something that we have never done before (there may, as I said above, be unintended consequences), but I don't think there's any reason to rule out geoengineering solutions simply because they are geoengineering. Should we be switching to nuclear? Yes. Should we be doing everything possible to limit emissions? Yes.
Should we ignore what may be the most cost effective solution to climate change? I certainly don't think so.
 
Roboramma said:
The way things are going I suspect that something like this is inevitable: it's the only cheap solution to climate change, the only solution that doesn't require overcoming major political obstacles, the only solution that can be implimented and effective over a short time span.
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No political obstacles as some nations change the weather for all !
Wow are you a optimist.
Why not ask a cross section of ppl if that want the climate warmer, cooler, drier or wetter and see if you get any concensus.
 
The only permanent solution would be finding ways to generate sufficient energy for our needs without significantly changing the enviroment.
However, as a stop-gap measure, this should also be looked at. It will probably be discarded due to costs and side-effects it would cause in any event, but it just might offer us the lesser evil at a critical moment.

McHrozni
 
It seems to me that every nation in the world is already engineering the climate, only accidentally. If we can't stop each other from doing that, I'd find it surprising if we could stop each other from a deliberate (and much likely more benign) engineering to cool the planet, particularly as the problem starts to have real major effects on some nations.
 
Roboramma said:
It seems to me that every nation in the world is already engineering the climate, only accidentally. If we can't stop each other from doing that, I'd find it surprising if we could stop each other from a deliberate (and much likely more benign) engineering to cool the planet, particularly as the problem starts to have real major effects on some nations.
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There are a lot of SAG issues, which seem to indicate that such schemes should be considered as a last possible option to only be implemented when all other addressments have proven insufficient.

Climate engineering:Technical status, future directions, and
potential responses
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1171.pdf

Sulfate Aerosol Geoengineering: The Question of Justice
http://www3.geosc.psu.edu/~kzk10/Svoboda_PAQ_11.pdf
 
OnlyTellsTruths said:
How much energy would be required to pump water 1km up? What about 20km up?
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Not a huge amount. It sounds like they're using an off-the-shelf pressure washer. Not that hard a calculation though. A column of water with a cross section of one square centimeter and one kilometer in height should have a mass of 100 kilograms. Since the pressure washers I'm familiar with are rated in imperial units, lets call that a weight of 220 pounds on an area of .155 square inches, or a pressure at the bottom of the column of 1419 pounds per square inch. A brief foray into google showed me pressure washers with outputs in excess of 3000 pounds per square inch, but those were gasoline powered, so hard to rate in terms of output. I found an electric washer with an output of 2000 PSI which should be sufficient to pump water to 1 km with enough reserve pressure to spray through a nozzle, rated to draw 13 amps at 120 volts, so I'd give a ballpark figure for energy needed as somewhere around 1500 watts.
 
Andrew Wiggin said:
Not a huge amount. It sounds like they're using an off-the-shelf pressure washer. Not that hard a calculation though. A column of water with a cross section of one square centimeter and one kilometer in height should have a mass of 100 kilograms. Since the pressure washers I'm familiar with are rated in imperial units, lets call that a weight of 220 pounds on an area of .155 square inches, or a pressure at the bottom of the column of 1419 pounds per square inch. A brief foray into google showed me pressure washers with outputs in excess of 3000 pounds per square inch, but those were gasoline powered, so hard to rate in terms of output. I found an electric washer with an output of 2000 PSI which should be sufficient to pump water to 1 km with enough reserve pressure to spray through a nozzle, rated to draw 13 amps at 120 volts, so I'd give a ballpark figure for energy needed as somewhere around 1500 watts.
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That's at the 1km test height, considerably higher at the 20km effective operations height, but even with a series of small booster pumps to pressurize the fluid sufficiently to produce efficient operating pressure at atomization nozzles, it isn't a huge voltage requirement and might even be operable from thin-sheet printed solar cells applied to the surface of the lift balloon. THis balloon, however is getting much bigger, its not just the thin tube & tether it is lifting, its mooring lines, the air-traffic navigation/safety lights, and either a power line or the solar cells to energize lights and booster pumps. And one balloon isn't going to do it, we are talking fleets of these systems. That said those are mostly technical (and financial!) issues rather than fundemental concept stop-blocks.

The real issues are about the billions of people who mostly are not responsible for the CO2 rises in our atmosphere whose lives and economies are going to be ruined by the shifting of global rain patterns by this engineering, the increase of sulphur acid rains further damaging crops/wildlife/health/infrastructure, and the continued die out of the increasingly acidified oceans from the ever growing CO2 fraction of our atmosphere.
 
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Puppycow said:
I hope something like this is tried soon.

I wonder if they could make it rain in the Sahara too as a bonus
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THE BENEFITS, RISKS, AND COSTS OF STRATOSPHERIC GEOENGINEERING
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/GRLreview2.pdf

List of some important drawbacks:

Increased Ozone distruction

Enhanced drought conditions in Africa and Asia

Continued acidification of oceans from CO2

no more blue skies

environment impact of acid rains

Extremely rapid warming if process is discontinued after begun

the conflict that such efforts would be expensive and effort intensive, while the impacts are slow to realize, and there would be decreased incentive to stop using fuels that would actually become cheaper as demand falls thereby exasperating the problem stratosulpfur injections are trying to ameliorate.

Reduction of surface solar energy potential by significant amounts (30-40% decrease)

Virtual end of most ground-based astronomy

Damage to aircraft flying through the highly acidic residues

damage to buildings, roads, exposed structures

sulfur pollution of air, water and soil

problems with agriculture and livestock production

and these are just among the known and definable issues, what about the issues we don't know about, human error, etc.?

Don't get me wrong, we certainly need to investigate all of our options, but there doesn't seem to be any real viable and desirable alternatives, right now, to simply ceasing to release the combustion products of fossil fuels into our atmosphere as quickly and completely as possible,...yesterday is the goal.

It's strangely and sadly ironic that, in the long-run, a global thermonuclear war might have been kinder to our species and civilization than unfettered production and prosperity in a fossil-fuel powered society!
 
I don't want to see anything done to reverse global warming. The chance of overshooting and initiating an ice age is far too great.

Global warming will almost certainly be a boon, not a drain to humanity. But even at its worst, it is magnitudes less problematic than a new ice age.
 
Beerina said:
I don't want to see anything done to reverse global warming. The chance of overshooting and initiating an ice age is far too great.

Global warming will almost certainly be a boon, not a drain to humanity. But even at its worst, it is magnitudes less problematic than a new ice age.
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How will it be a boon?

Climate change of any type would be likely to lead to unrest and conflict, as the associated change in rainfall patterns cause migration as millions of people would be living in unsustainable areas.

If you accept that warming also means rising sea levels, then BangladeshWP (for example) is in trouble.

Changing rainfall patterns and associated alterations of water resources might also make the Middle East less stable politically.

In short, even if a changing climate increases the theoretical amount of food that could be produced*, the infrastructure would be in the wrong place so that the immediate effect would be a fall in food production.


Note that I am talking about any change in world climate, with the exception of the specific effect of rising sea levels on low-lying populations in politically unstable areas.

*Which is a moot point
 
Beerina said:
I don't want to see anything done to reverse global warming. The chance of overshooting and initiating an ice age is far too great...
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Please demonstrate and support the analysis you performed to evaluate the available data which resulted in your asserted "too great""chance of overshoot."
 
Beerina said:
I don't want to see anything done to reverse global warming. The chance of overshooting and initiating an ice age is far too great.
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If things appear to be going that way the system can be shut off. It takes an effort (and expense) to make it happen.

Unless the climate is exquisitely sensitive to perturbation and could suddenly swing out of control into a new ice-age, even if we shut the sytem down.

Global warming will almost certainly be a boon, not a drain to humanity.
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If the climate is so sensitive to perturbation how can you predict any aspect of AGW? It may lead to massive expansion of deserts and complete destruction of tropical forests. How are you "almost certain" that this won't happen, and so troubled that a geo-engineering project might trigger some tipping-point?

But even at its worst, it is magnitudes less problematic than a new ice age.
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We can deal with a new ice age - it won't happen overnight. It takes thousands of years for that water to get up onto land from the oceans. It can go back again much faster, with the gravity-assist, but it's not suddenly going to leap up there.

Forget an ice-age. The next one has been postponed, and even that was scheduled thousands of years ahead. Look around and see what's already happening in a warmed (and warming) world. AGW is no longer a prediction, and your "almost certain" boons are not much in evidence.
 
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