This just in, (h/t to Sonicfrog) the swamp cooler is being re-invented as a global warming solution. No mention of what the increased global humidity will do for the planet’s radiative balance. No mention of what the increased humidity would do for night-time low temperatures.
SUNSTOP writes to tell us that a relatively unknown Maryland scientist has proposed a public patent that he claims could combat global warming. The proposed plan would require massive amounts of water to be sprayed into the air in an effort to bolster the earth’s existing air conditioning system.
Ron Ace, a 69-year-old, has been researching the earth’s climate for years and has found what he calls the most “practical, nontoxic, affordable, rapidly achievable” and beneficial way to curb global warming and a resulting catastrophic ocean rise.
Ace proposes to spray gigatons of sea-water into the air and in effect, build a “a colossal refrigeration system with a 100,000-fold performance multiplier.” He contends a number of positive effects would be in action at the same time to help stave off warming.
“The Earth has a giant air-conditioning problem,” he said. “I’m proposing to put a thermostat on the planet.”
First, the sprayed droplets would transform to water vapor, a change that absorbs thermal energy near ground level; then the rising vapor would condense into sunlight-reflecting clouds and cooling rain, releasing much of the stored energy into space in the form of infrared radiation.
Kenneth Caldeira, a climate scientist for the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University whose computer simulation of Ace’s invention suggests it would significantly cool the planet. The simulated evaporation of about one-half inch of additional water everywhere in the world produced immediate planetary cooling effects that were projected to reach nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit within 20 or 30 years, Caldeira said.
But it appears that maybe they just haven’t thought this through carefully:
“Some complications related to releasing huge amounts of water into the air are not well understood, however.”
In the Slashdot comments there is this that caught my eye:
by cthulu_mt (1124113) on Friday December 19, @04:42PM (#26177863)
I think this gem earns a “whatcouldpossiblygoright“.
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Dear Mr. Ace:
Please, PLEASE turn up the thermostat. Some dummy left it on A/C.
— Freezing in Calgary
(sarc on) I imagine that the pump companies could get behind this. Let’s try this right after putting up one of those proposed 100 sq mile solar reflectors in space! (sarc off)
This would have been used a couple of million years ago.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3867382/Neanderthals-could-have-died-out-because-their-bodies-overheated.html
The levels of stupid attained by the imbeciles that believe they can influence the world climate continue to amaze.
How much energy will it take to atomize gigatons of water? And how is that “practical, non toxic, and affordable”?
Does this guy even understand that evaporative cooling is NOT refrigeration?
Sprayed droplets don’t necessarily “transform to water vapor.” Boreal Ridge sprayed water droplets last week and got snow, but that’s not what Mr. Ace had in mind. He wants water vapor, not knowing apparently that water vapor is the dominant GHG in the atmosphere. If he were able to convert sea water into water vapor at the flip of a switch, he would trap warmth, not create cooling.
We need to bring back the fine art of ridicule . . . and fast!
I have more fear of these yahoos doing more harm to the planet trying to fix the non-existent problem.
Save the planet!
Kenneth Caldeira, a climate scientist for the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University whose computer simulation of Ace’s invention suggests it would significantly cool the planet.
Another computer simulation. Yup.
And that would be a “wetlands” cooler, BTW.
So how will these swamp coolers be powered?
There is a much easier way to create a lot more cooling without pumping a lot of stuff into the atmosphere. If everyone on the planet simply painted their roof white, it would be the equivalent of millions of acres of low-latitude ice. It would reflect a good deal of solar radiation back into space before it had a chance to generate heat. Might trigger an ice age, though …
If people did that, always parked their car out of the sun, and cities included “cool pavements” (usually lighter concrete rather than black asphalt), we could probably reduce temperatures in most urban areas by a degree or two in summer. That would, in turn, greatly reduce energy consumption. As the sun is lower in the sky in the winter months, the impact wouldn’t be as great. Maximum impact would be during maximum insolation during the Summer months.
Re Neil Jones
That must be the silliest theory of neanderthal extinction ever. The neanderthal died out near the Glacial Maximum when temperatures were about ten degrees lower than now, they disappeared from north to south (the last ones lived in southern Spain) and they survived the last interglacial, when temperatures were warmer than now.
The idiocy is reaching a new, unprecendent climax.
This guy is ruining the image of the scientists even more.
…. so, when I’m using a sprinkler to water my lawn…. I’m actually cooling the Planet!….. I’ll have to remember that, if the city council catches me using one during water restrictions….. My defence from now on…. I’m cooling the planet and making more clouds. hehe.
This proposal seems to have the same basis as one I previously read in the New Scientist (UK), which would have had a large fleet of ships spraying a fine mist of sea water into the air (IIRC powered by the sun).
While most of the proposed technological quick-fixes to global warming are barmy, and potentially very harmful, this proposal has one major plus side: If there are problems, then we can turn it off immediately.
I live in an exceedingly humid part of the South African, alongside the coastline. Right now it is a stinking summer, and we are dripping away. This morning you couldn’t see a kilometre, it was so murky. The absolute last thing I want to think about is some nut case squirting sea water into the atmosphere. Apart from the sweltering aspect, what about the tons of salt this wild idea would add to atmospheric pollution? Here we know a good deal about atmospheric corrosion–but if this guy has his way there will be yet more lessons for us.
Actually we had seen here a much better cooling proposal, supposing we need cooling, in those ships which would be solar powered and vaporising sea water so as to seed with salt the cloud layer and increase albedo.
I hope this winter’s ice will stop all such speculations.
If my choice is supporting carbon credits or supporting one swamp cooler….I think I’d take the swamp cooler.
The idiocy is reaching a new, unprecendent climax.
Indeed, I don’t know what’s more disturbing: a Scientist with a ridiculous idea (lets face it, Human Progress is based on Scientists with ridiculous ideas) or a media with Science editors who are willing to entertain these ideas and publish them.
Silly Roy. You’ll be taxed to support BOTH.
This is the age of political and social Uri Geller like spoon bending and disinformation.
People looking for their inner self run around with magnets because it promotes a good karma, engage in paranormal sessions, virtual religions and ceremonies.
Reality and common sense are gone.
This is the age of semi science, semi religion, semi Government working on semi solutions for semi problems, in short: A most effective but dangerous way to waste resources, time and money.
The swamp cooler is a waste of money.
I think that we have a major problem in the field of education.
But it (still) is a free country and people can patent whatever they want.
And I can assure you that patents have been filed for inventions that are even more “waco” than this one.
P Folken,
Since he doesn’t understand that spraying water into the air isn’t ‘evaporative’ in the first place and won’t cause anything but limited local cooling (in the path of the droplets as they settle back to earth) unless you can somehow spray it 3000 feet into the air (even then that most likely is useless) and without suitable amounts of cloud condensation nuclei you’re not going to get clouds no matter how much you spray into the air, I suspect he doesn’t understand.
When I was a kid I read SciFi about ‘terraforming’ Venus. This is right up there with that.
What we need are these huge fusion plants to process the atmosphere, we can call them ‘shake and bake’ .. (from the movie ‘Aliens’)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t water vapor a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide? So with all this extra water vapor wouldn’t there be more heat retained…either way it’s a moronic solution to a non-existent problem.
This idea is not new. It is the subject of an actual peer reviewed paper by at least one scientist from NCAR at Boulder, Colorado.
http://www.primidi.com/2008/09/07.html
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/921mt954r2m2750k/fulltext.pdf
As mankind has been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution with little or no effect how does this fellow honestly expect that if we now start pumping water into the atmosphere that we can affect the climate.
Merry Christmas to all from the Jungles of South Sumatra.
They certainly can’t have it both ways.
Either:
Water vapour has a positive feedback on global warming, in which case the idea’s stupid,
or water vapour has a negative feedback, in which case uncontrolled global warming cannot occur as the seas warm, the alarmists are wrong, and the idea’s stupid and unnecessary.
Clue: The idea’s stupid, unknown Maryland scientist.
From what source will the many, many, many killowatts of electricity be produced to move all these gigatons of water???
Is this the same idea as having everyone piss in the wind?