Wednesday
Apr062011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Cloud of obscurity
Apr 6, 2011 Climate: WG3 Richard Black reports that scientists have got themselves into a bit of a pickle over whether one of their ideas for geoengineering the earth is a good one or not. The proposal being considered is to spray clouds with seawater, which scientists hope will reflect more sunlight back into space cooling our overheated planet.
Well, some scientists anyway. Some think it will actually warm the planet.
Oh dear.
Reader Comments (4)
Brings back memories of the way they wanted to "fight" the new ice age back in the 1970's by dusting ice in the the Arctic and Antarctic with coal dust to increase the absorption of heat from the sun,
Still bonkers, aren't they?
"The trouble is that clouds are very complicated; as soon as you start manipulating them in one way, there are a lot of different interactions," he said.
"We need real-world data and we need modelling that tries to simulate clouds on more appropriate scales, and that means less than 100m or so, because if you look at a deck of stratocumulus it's not one big thing, it has pockets and cells and other features.
"Far more uncertain is the idea that you'd inject a particular drop size, because it won't stay that size for long - it will spread out, and that would be uncertain."
Translation: "We don't know if this will work, but we need grant money."
And I really like the last part - we're uncertain about something we're uncertain about.
"One version envisages specially designed ships, powered by wind, operating in areas of the ocean where reflective stratocumulus clouds are scarce.
The ships would continually spray fine jets of seawater droplets into the sky, where tiny salt crystals would act as nuclei around which water vapour would condense, producing clouds or thickening them where they already exist."
These ships -- specially designed and built ships -- would presumably require a fair amount of energy and resources to build and deploy. I realize it says they would be "powered by wind", so presumably they would be anchored to the seafloor somehow, like a floating platform? Otherwise it might take more energy to remain in a stable location than they would receive from the wind. It seems it would take quite a bit of energy to spray a meaninful amount of water aloft. To what altitude do droplets need to be sprayed to actually form clouds, as opposed to a low-altitude mist that would quickly dissipate?
In addition to the challenges with droplet size and whether it would work in the first place, I'd be interested to see hard numbers on the costs: energy, resources, emissions to make this happen.
So let me get this straight...
The Earth's climate, that has been pretty stable (just look at the other planets/moons in the solar system) is sensitive to CO2 over a 50 year period. Such sensitivity means we are all going to die within 100 years.
Then...
We are planning on ****ing around with such a sensitive system without any knowledge of the effects?
Welcome to the logic of the Environmentalists...