Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud

Great idea! Not only will we have more clouds and a colder planet, but the sea level should drop as well!
Living in Pennsylvania, however, I’d like to see less clouds and more warmth for a change. But hey, I’m willing to make the sacrifice to save the planet!!!!!!

Boy, you thought it was cold this last winter, just wait till they block a sizeable portion of the incoming radiation at the tropics and then the volcanoes blow. Anthropogenic Global Ice Age!
And just exactly how are you going to warm us back up? Come on Mr. Gates, got an answer for that in the pipeline? Well if you don’t you need one, kinda like a B.O.P. on a well.

Aaargh,
Coises foiled agin.

“$11 million per ship for annual pumping fuel costs and labour”
Unless the pumps are wind-powered and the crew are magic robots with windmills sticking out of the top of their heads.

Like most green and geo engineering projects this one isn’t practical. The concept might be valid on a small scale (re:cloud/fog forests), but practicality is the BSOD.
Another nagging question, if they do manage to change the climate, will they be liable when their new and bigger storm swamps a metro area/wipes out crops/causes other disasters, or when our -30F January nights go -50?
We are in a 6 year drought, can I order a foot or two of rain for this summer, with service pack 3 please? How much extra is it for the ‘Make My Whitewater River Roar Again 7 Professional’ and the ‘Snowmobiler’s Paradise 3.1’ packages?

Just what Planet Earth needs – Service Pack 1 from Bill Gates

Since seawater contains about 3.5% by weight salt, what happens to the salt content of rainwater should this Silver Lining project actually happen? It goes up accordingly. Plants would be subjected to a lot more salt than usual, and runoff from rivers would see a significant increase in salinity. I can’t see where this is a good idea at all. They should rename the project Unintended Sea Salt Rain (USSR).

Don’t be so negative. Time is running out. We have to do something. Anything.

And when Melinda Gates breaks the champagne bottle on the bow of the first ship, this is what the assembled crowd will hear over the public address system:
“A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0028:C0011E36 in VXD VMM(01) + 00010E36. The current application will be terminated. Press any key to terminate the current application. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.”

Then there’s the small matter of pumping the most powerful green house gas of all into the atmosphere to mitigate the green house warming of a bit player.
Oh, and then there is the other small matter that we don’t really have a complete understanding of cloud formation to begin with so who knows if this will change albedo anyway.
And oops, how about that virgin rain forest subjected to salt water rain. That can’t be a wonderful thing for the earth’s lungs can it?

I wonder what would happen when they spew that much salt into the mid to upper troposphere. — John M Reynolds

I think they should all be placed off the coast of Northern Washington State to enhance the Quality of life in Washington State. If the ships utilize solar to power the pumps then what little sunlight Seattle receives would go into making clouds to eliminate the sunlight. We all know the wind always blows at 10 knots in that region so theses ships along with wind turbines should definitely enhance the scenic views off the coast.

They must be barking mad – it’ll never fly!
So, man has caused deadly global warming (irrefutable fact), by contaminating the atmosphere by emitting polluting greehouse gases by burning fossil fuels, so they want to experiment on global cooling by pumping millions of tonnes of some kind of fuel effluent into the atmosphere along with lots of little water droplets to produce more clouds to cool the planet. The logic is perfect I suppose? Is this just another attempt to show how mankind really rules the planet & not weak, feeble, ineffectual, mother nature? The next ice age is around the corner in all probability too in a couple or three thousnad years time! Now, where is there a volcano I can play games with?

Another lunatic idea. Their cloud spraying probably wouldn’t even make up for the CO2 it would take to create the clouds in the first place.
There is no end to the stupidity…

wind powered only for the first fight, the second flight will be powered by tapping the Rainbow Power of the wonderful rainbows produced by the spray. As for the crews, the ships will be manned by trained unicorns, who as we all know need no sleep and are beautiful as well! The ships, of course, will be built by elves and lawn gnomes in their magical factories that produce no pollution and emissions smell like wild flowers (and profits don’t line the pockets of evil capitalists). And the fantastic byproduct of this happy product is: Stop global warming and lower the average temperature by 10 C.
Hope I didn’t miss many fantantic ideas, those mine pale to the original concept. Will this *snip* get any more stoopid?????

Not good for surface sealife … airborne plankton?

At least it is an improvment on the massive Sulphur Dioxide pipe that the Freakonomics Twins wanted!

That this idea went for more than 10 microseconds indicates the dearth of critical thinking by people who are wont to call themselves engineers and scientists.
This sort of thing really makes me despondent.
Willis, your summing up is right on the money “non-viable, non solution to a non problem”.
Says it all really doesn’t it ?

3 bars is about 43.5 PSI, not 100… Time to double the fuel costs. If this were a government project, this would be discovered after the pumps are built, of course, tripling the cost of those.

I think it would take more than a dozen crew for one of those tubs. More likely around a hundred, especially if they are sail boats. If it were me, I’d skip the sails and go straight for oars and drummers. It’s a proven green propulsive technology and would provide gainful employment and much needed exercise for progressive pencil necks.

The original paper.

Now we see if the html works.
Not so hard to find folks.

Sea-going hardware for the cloud albedo method of reversing global warming
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1882/3989.full.pdf+html

Not to split hairs here but it would take considerably more than 3 bar pressure to pump water 3000 feet into the air. Probably more like 300 bar.

Rocky Road and others already talked about the salt problems, but my other question is wouldn’t these low-lying clouds be the wrong type of clouds? I thought that higher clouds did a better job of reflecting than low clouds. Please enlighten–thanks.

Alan the Brit says:
May 12, 2010 at 4:10 am
They must be barking mad – it’ll never fly!
(…)
Now, where is there a volcano I can play games with?
————
Reply: Got one just 80 miles north of me–Yellowstone! When I was a grad student at the U of U, professors there had just finished up a study of the heat gradient under Yellowstone Lake using borehole data. It was calculated that if somehow the lake level dropped just 4 feet instantly, the whole thing would go up like a pressure cooker with the top popped off.
So, I propose if they REALLY want to cool the planet, they’ll induce Yellowstone. Use nukes if you want; at that point it becomes immaterial. Hey, it won’t matter that the earth will be plunged into 2 or 3 years of no summer (hence elimination of much of the CO2-spewing population due to starvation), at least we’ll get this BOILING EARTH PHENOMENA under control! And it would be a lot cheaper than continuously pumping a gazillion gallons of seawater into the atmosphere. (Just think of the tickets you could sell to spectators to watch the Yellowstone show, although finding a safe site might be difficult!)
My vocabulary can’t begin to denigrate these “AGW geoengineers”, but suffice it to say the same unprintable description applicable to our politicians also applies to them.

Willis,
Your 3 bar pressure on the discharge side of the pump will only get the water 30 metres up in the air. They are talking about 3000 feet (900 metres). This would require 90 bar pressure. That is one serious pump…

Jon says:
“Not good for surface sealife … airborne plankton?”
Not a problem. Gate’s will fund a project to genetically engineer flying whales.

Gawd, you would think it would be easy to block out the sun. They did it in the Matrix. But then again they all had to live 4km underground where it was warm.

The problem is that those droplets are not ionized as water droplets in clouds. For a more crazy idea:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31252283/Electric-Tree

I think this must be run through IPCC’s climate models first…. heck, for all you know, the temperature could go up!
Wasnt the roof of that Wood-guy’s greenhouse-experiment made of Salt-chloride or something? (You remember, that experiment that debunks the AGW theory….)
hehe

You guys have all missed the real point – this is not about reducing CO2, it is a conspiracy designed to increase biodiversity. Spraying trillions of living plankton and fish larvae into the air for years on end is bound to result in the evolution of plankton that live in clouds and fish that can truly fly! Imagine that, green clouds and schools of fish swooping and diving around our yards. And all that airborne plankton would suck up LOTS of CO2. Of course, we would then be living at the bottom of the atmospheric “ocean” and would have to deal with the rain of dead plankton that would probably kill off many of the surface plants.
I live in the tropics where we have lots of clouds and I say, GO FOR IT!!

[snip… 5 sentences of snark deleted. ~dbs, mod.]
Five sentences of snark in response to a post filled with snark… Willis is tougher than that, mod

Cloud seeding has already been tried in some cases with disastrous results, massive snowstorms in China for one. It’s possible but incredibly dumb…so might as well laugh at the idea… http://www.scienceinseconds.com/video.php?vId=91&tId=

For $40 Billion I think it would make more sense to build transporters. I know, sounds like science fiction, but for that kind of cash, I think it could be done. Just beam goods and services around the planet. I think I could build a small demo system for about $1 Billion. Big enough to move a single person across an ocean. I have the bill of materials already:
2 large cardboard boxes, $12 million each
2 gallons green paint (it has to be green, that’s the default) $8 million
2 painting crews, one day each, $4 million
Safety inspection and certification, $96 million
Management fees, $899 million
Of course the leaves the test subject, who is going to want to be the first to try it given all the things that could go wrong? I think we could find someone though, and ad in newspapers like this ought to work:
One time job testing prototype transporter. $1 million. No experience with transporters required. Strong preference for persons with “pulling rabbit from hat” and “escape from padlocked trunk” experience. Must supply own identical twin.

You could get the same effect at much less cost by just putting an additive (silver iodide?) into aviation fuel. Turn every international air flight into an efficient cloud seeding operation. No need to build a specialised fleet. Use one that already exists.

Willis, I have been bringing this project up since last year.
http://www.eta.co.uk/2009/08/07/cloud-making-ships-tackle-climate-change
I was all for it.
1) it does not use pumps. It has a
A rotor-powered ship replaces conventional sails with spinning rotors. It works because a spinning body in a moving airstream experiences a force perpendicular to the direction of the airstream. In the case of the Dr Slater’s design, propeller-like turbines in the water beneath the ship power both the spinning rotors and the droplet-generator.
2) It would use solar energy for the rest, and will be robotic on a grid.
3) It is nondestructive non permanent and thus a nice toy to give geo engineering people to play with until the world realizes that there is no problem to solve. It can be stopped on a penny.
One need not increase rain by 15%. A 1% change in albedo drops the temperature appreciably.
more:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4648680.ece
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/35693

The natural method is far superior. A thunderstorm only gets started at 3,000 feet altitude and hits over 40,000 ft. A thunderstorm is distilled water and has no salt. Tell Gates we don’t want acid rain or salt rain. The power of the thunderstorm in my county yesterday has more water and power than all the boats his 60 billion dollar$$$ could buy. It will happen again today.

wesley bruce says:
May 12, 2010 at 4:00 am
“Sorry Willis you missed a key point the ships are solar and wind powered and so no is fuel is required. I studied renewable energy based ships. They can generate this level of power per day but don’t move far or fast in the process….”
____________________________________________________________________
Willis , I hope they really do make these ships ” solar and wind powered” with no diesel engine back-ups. Think of all the wide eyed idealists who would sign up to sail these ships and the large dose of reality they will receive. English impressment gangs and “shanghiad” come to mind.

Yes, combat global warming, supposedly caused by greenhouse gases, by pumping the most dominant greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. These theories all make sense.
Of course, global warming would increase if we sucked water vapor out of the atmosphere. In other words everyone, it’s a lose-lose situation. It’s going to warm up no matter what we do.

Interesting post. However I think you greatly underestimated the power required to run the pump. It requires a minimum of 1300 PSI or 90 Bar to raise a column of water to 3000 ft, ignoring losses fue to friction. This multiplies the energy required and fuel cost and polution by a factor of 30!

A lot more than that, Willis. You’ve not only got to move this water, but LIFT it.
To propel 10,000kg of “tiny particles that can be shot up over 3,000 feet in the air” (let’s say to 1000 metres) requires energy as follows:
Energy = force x distance = mass x gravitational acceleration x distance
= 10,000 (kg) x 9.81 (m.s^-2) x 1000 (m)
= 98,100,000 joules, say 100,000,000 joules.
So to propel 10,000 kg of seawater per second to that height, with no losses, by any method of propulsion you care to choose, would require a minimum of 100 megawatts of power. Add in all the inefficiencies, air resistance, atomization and the rest, and I doubt you’d get away with less than 500 megawatts per ship. That’s of the order of 100 times what you calculated.
So, if your subsequent calculations are correct, that’s 15 million x 100 = 1.5 billion litres of fuel per year, per ship. If using oil distillates, that would require the output of well over 10 million barrels of oil per ship, per year. Let’s say around 1 billion dollars of fuel per year, per ship. Or, for a fleet of 1,900 ships, around 2 trillion dollars-worth of fuel per year, and consuming approximately the world’s total annual production of oil. Methinks that might produce a few ‘greenhouse gasses’.
It doesn’t matter whether we are a bit out in the estimates, when you look at these numbers, it is obvious that anyone who is trying to get investors to part with their money to support such a scheme is a complete charlatan.

Curiousgeorge says:
May 12, 2010 at 4:50 am
“… If it were me, I’d skip the sails and go straight for oars and drummers. It’s a proven green propulsive technology and would provide gainful employment and much needed exercise for progressive pencil necks.”
___________________________________________________________________________
George, you forgot a few very essential parts, the leg shackles, whips and the big enforcers who bring the geeks on board one at a time.

Since a lot of marine life lives at the very top of the water column, one would think this machine would be excellent at killing the microbes and krill which form the root of the food chain. Brilliant.

According to our wide eyed optimist the ships will also use solar power (and batteries). these I presume are supposed to power the pumps. How effective are these solar cells going to be given all the salt water that is being sprayed and the clouds this ship is supposed to create?
For Clouds and haze this backyard type study says about 75% compared to full sunlight. http://www.greentoronto.me/effects-of-hazy-sun-and-cloud-cover-on-solar-cell-output/
But who knows what a constant bath of salt water will do.

I find this idea rather interesting, but not very practical.
There is a one hour TV show on this topic. I think the show is called like “Discovery Earth” The show was able to get clouds to form using flares, but was not able using water droplets. Evidently, it is hard to get the water droplets to the right size and right elevation.
The numbers i remember is that it will take 1 million ships to cool the earth, so a couple of 00’s need to be added to the cost estimates of these ships. Unless the ships can be solar/wind powered and run by computers, they will be cost prohibited.
I do think someone will build a few of these ships for things like climate control on tourist beaches, and over islands of the super rich. Dubai would seem a likely early adapter to me. They might also have some potential use as a “rain maker” to replace desalinazation plants. I can see say a few of these in the Red Sea increasing the rain for selected Saudi towns.

Just the plan to cool the planet is already producing results. Boulder, Colorado, home to many warmists, had a record snowfall for the date.
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_15067279#axzz0nixcklxU

“”RayB says:
May 12, 2010 at 3:10 am
Another nagging question, if they do manage to change the climate, will they be liable when their new and bigger storm swamps a metro area/wipes out crops/causes other disasters, or when our -30F January nights go -50? “”
Also, what happens when say in Israel 20 of these ships to increase rainfall in the Jordan River Valley, and these ships also cause severe floods in Syria. Does Syria go to war?
Also Generals and Admirals have dreamed of ages for being able to use the Weather as a Weapon. If this technology works, a few hundred ships might be able to adjust the weather over a critical battlefield. I can image Adm Nimitz trying to flood Okinawa, to drown the Japanese in their tunnels, or Hitler trying to flood out Leningrad.

“hunter says:
May 12, 2010 at 5:56 am
Doesn’t salt, when carried high into the atmosphere, form ozone destroying chemicals?”
I believe they are targeting clouds very near the surface, say under 1500 feet.

Bill Gates is a prime example of someone who made his money by using the mind yet denies it’s efficacy outside of computer software. He should be ashamed of his narrowness.

We could eliminate the plankton and the salt by building massive desalination plants. Then mount these towers in shallow water a couple of miles off the coast. If we build a line of them, say 1 every 10 miles along the coast of California where the trade winds blow to the east we can control which ones we fire up each day to increase cloud cover and rainfall into the valley, and snow pack in the winter months, thus eliminating the threat and fear of drought ever again in california.
If the technique works, we can do the same thing in Egypt. Draw water from Lake Nasser, no desalinaton required, shoot it into the air and create clouds and increase rain in the sahara, thus regreening the desert.
Potential side effects are increased moisture in the tropics. Storm systems the travel west off of the African continent are the Hurricane makers that devastate the gulf coast and the eastern seaboard. Do youthink this might increase the severity of the se storms by loading the atmosphere with more H2O?
Fun to think about. Ok back to work now.

The man who gave us Vista? Oh give me a freaking break… If this plan worked as well as XP-which they killed they might have a chance,BTW I agree with Willis having done a bit of Blue water sailing -I would not want to ride a storm out in one of those ships.
Having been around Catamarans and Trimarans some, this screams “Pitchpole!”….

A fool and his money are soon parted….

See this the problem with skeptics website, you are skeptical, don’t you know that this is the age of “yes we can”. So get on board and drop the negativity. You must be one of the people who when the first rockets from NASA failed said ” man will never walk on Mars”. …… well ok . But just look at how far we have come with cold fusion since it was discovered….ok then how about… Oh never mind it won’t work.

I strongly suspect the only real sucking involved here is a (so far successful) attempt to suck millions of dollars from Bill Gates’s wallet. A con man’s best mark is an arrogant dude like Bill who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.

Or we could just take the salt that New York City restaurants will not allow to serve, and throw it in the air.

The figure of ten tonnes of spray per second was NOT per vessel but was the estimate for total spray from a fleet of 300 ships and, depending assumptions for initial nuclei concentration and drop half life, we think would be enough reverse the cumulative warming since pre-industrial times. Vessel displacement is 300 tonnes and plant rating about 150 kW all of which would come from the wind. This gives a rough cost estimate of $2 to $3 million each. Plankton have to be filtered from the water and will be returned to the sea. More detail from
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs/Climate%20change/Phil.Trans.%20Seagoing%20hardware.pdf

hey.. you guys don’t see the value of it… they tackle multiple problems at the same time: at least cooling by introducing more clouds and sea level rising. And this for a mere 9 bn with a govmnt and non-profit NGA over-running the budget 300%.
it sounds like a plan to me. being sarcastic of course.

Well, if I could control the climate, I would also warm it up by 5 degrees Celsius or so, and reduce the clouds.
And like others, I have been disappointed by Bill Gates’ attitude to the AGW – because I am a big Bill Gates fan.
On the other hand, this stuff is not that bad. If I had dozens of billions of dollars, I would also play with similar stuff. Whatever signs are, playing with the weather is clearly a fashionable goal for ambitious and rich players. And i do think that it makes sense to attack this problem via the influence on the cloud cover: I wanted to approach the problem in the same way. 😉
So Bill Gates, I am not gonna criticize you here. Willis’ practical comments are surely useful – but I guess that with one amount of money or another, all of them can be resolved.

Anthony:
I thought you were interested in honest science. If you, and the rest of the folks weighing in on this idea, want to do your homework, you might begin with this paper and peruse the citations in it. The concept is valid, cost-effective and sensible as an insurance policy should we ever need it.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/4/045112/fulltext
Geoengineering by cloud seeding: influence on sea ice and climate system
Philip J Rasch1, John Latham2,3 and Chih-Chieh (Jack) Chen2
1 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, PO Box 999, MSIN K9-34, Richland, WA 99352, USA
2 National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80303, USA
3 SEAES, University of Manchester, PO Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD, UK
Received 10 August 2009
Accepted 20 November 2009
Published 18 December 2009
Abstract. General circulation model computations using a fully coupled ocean–atmosphere model indicate that increasing cloud reflectivity by seeding maritime boundary layer clouds with particles made from seawater may compensate for some of the effects on climate of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The chosen seeding strategy (one of many possible scenarios) can restore global averages of temperature, precipitation and sea ice to present day values, but not simultaneously. The response varies nonlinearly with the extent of seeding, and geoengineering generates local changes to important climatic features. The global tradeoffs of restoring ice cover, and cooling the planet, must be assessed alongside the local changes to climate features.

The people problem here is you put emotional people onto technical problems. Hoping and anxious behavior will not get the water pumped. For every wild idea from an eco weenie, there come up obvious eco weenie problems.
I do not see people on this board favor dirty air , water or harm to wild life.
The vacum pumps will draw in and kill the tiny fishies. Who wants to kill the fishies? That is why they shut down irrigation pumps in California because of the little fishies being killed by the pumps. Now the same pumps for this wild notion will also kill little fishies. Sea kittens.
With negative pressures that draw 10,000 tonnes persecond, it will pull the whiskers off a catfish from 1 kilometer away from the boat water intakes.

Shame!
It is entirely unfair to subject the ideas of “Liberals” to logical and rigorous analysis. Such schemes are not ever intended to actually do anything effective, are they?

“”” The machines, developed by a San Francisco-based research group called Silver Lining, turn seawater into tiny particles that can be shot up over 3,000 feet in the air. The particles increase the density of clouds by increasing the amount of nuclei contained within. Silver Lining’s floating machines can suck up ten tons of water per second. “””
So quick now; here’s the third grade science question. for $1500.
Assuming just gravity (no air resistance drag); calculate the required launch velocity to fire a water particle to a height of 3000 feet.
And for $2000, the 4th grade science question, is; assuming the machine is operating properly at the ten ton per second rate, calculate the downward force on the ship, and estimate how fast it will sink deep enough to shut off the contraption.
How about a demo right in front of the Golden Gate Bridge; sink that sucker right in the middle of the shipping channel.

Wow.
By the way, isn’t water vapor considered a greenhouse gas?
Don’t things like hurricanes/typhoons feed on water vapor? While we may (and I stress may) be causing warming, do we really know enough to try to cool the planet?

“”” Milwaukee Bob says:
May 12, 2010 at 7:35 am
Solar and wind power? Where are the solar panels and wind turbines? and solar panels need the sun – – – this ship creates clouds – – the bane of solar panels – – and no onboard crew members? complicated electronics, hugh turbines, a maze of pipes – valves -filters, totally unpredictable ocean water conditions and volatile/dynamic weather…. and they think they can control/maintain these remotely? “””
Come now Bob; you should be more up to speed than that; ain’t you never heard of negative feedback from clouds. There’s no electronics at all on this thing; it is completely self regulated by hydraulics.
Damn thing just keeps on making clouds till it shuts down enough solar power to turn itself off. Totally brilliant if you ask me.
Hey I keep trying to tell Y’alls; IT’S THE WATER !

Who would secure this fleet from pirates? Factor in some navy to the costs.

“”” Theo says:
May 12, 2010 at 6:11 am
Isn’t water vapour a more effective “greenhouse gas” than CO2??? “””
Well no, Theo; haven’t you heard that water is only a feedback factor for amplifying the anthropogenic warming effect of man made CO2 emissions.
So this Rube Goldberg gizmo is going to cause man made global warming like you wouldn’t believe with all that feedback enhancement of anthropogenic fossil fuelled CO2.

Grant B:
“Don’t be so negative. Time is running out. We have to do something. Anything.”
Your very own sentence contradicts itself! (Just to explain so you understand, the phrases “Time is running out” and “We have to do something. Anything.” are incredibly negative.
Now, if you want to try POSITIVE thinking instead, try this:
“Climate is a vast system with literally thousands of variables. Throughout history, whether man has been on the planet or not, the climate has CHANGED CONSTANTLY. Sometimes it has been EXCEPTIONALLY hot, other times it has been so cold that it is a wonder any life survived! I am a mere human. To the earth we are but ants. Our ability to cause any measureable change in something as huge and complex as “the climate” is completely negligible. No matter what we as humans do, the climate will go on. In addition, the climate will go right on CHANGING, and sometimes terribly dramatically, just as it has throughout the life of this planet.”
Stand in front of a mirror and recite that aloud at least once per hour for the next 3 months. I guarantee you that you will feel a lot better.

I’m tired of winter. The greenhouse gas geoengineering scheme is not working.

“”” Luboš Motl says:
May 12, 2010 at 8:12 am
Well, if I could control the climate, I would also warm it up by 5 degrees Celsius or so, and reduce the clouds. “””
Actually; I believe that it is Lubos, who has stumbled over the Rosetta Stone here.
The really fundamental question here, is if you could control the world’s thermostat knob, just where would you set it; and who should make that decision ?
I can see whole libraries of books being written about the unintended consequences of turning mankind loose with the tools to mess with Gaia’s system.
What for example is the consequence of implanting water droplets at 3000 feet, without the latent heat of evaporation that would normally accompany that water. Wouldn’t it simply rain immediately, and have all that water simply crash back in the ocean ?

It is not as if these people really care/believe that CO2 is causing global warming – their main motivation is population control and the decrease of our species. This is why they are against use of DDT and genetically modified foods. Obviously a warmer world promotes sustainability for a larger population. They want to cool it, which has very clear and opposite effects. And of course, this brain-dead idea, along with others (like covering the arctic with white blankets), will certainly have unintended consequences. You cannot stop climate change.
Furthermore, if the problem is really CO2, at least stick to your principles and try to remove it from the atmosphere. Of course that would reveal a continuation of warming and cooling cycles.

So, anyone know whether the greenhouse effect of the water vapor or the solar radiation reduction of the supposed cloud formations will win this lunatic lottery? Someone said it very well in an above comment. What kind of minds can even dream this crap up? My bet is that the glaciers are coming back in any event. I predict continuing low sun spot cycle and increased vulcanism with glaciation setting in sooner rather than later. The ice core data says it’s about time. There, my prediction cannot be any worse than anyone else’s since NO ONE really knows to any statistically significant level.

Willis –
Did they even test the feasibility of accelerating the water to 3,000 feet? Pumping 10,000 tons of water per second at a single elevation is one thing. Getting water lifted to 3,000 feet as a stream/fountain is one thing. Turning it into a mist and getting the mist to an elevation of 3,000 feet is another thing altogether. I don’t think it is remotely possible. The air resistance to the mist will be enormous. It will lose upward velocity almost immediately.
They aren’t proposing the towers shown are going to be 3,000 feet high, are they?
And pumping/lifting water upward has always been a problem. Getting enough “head” has – to my knowledge – been something that needs to be done in stages. There is just too much weight of water if it is liquid. If it is a vapor, almost as soon as it leaves the top of the stack its upward velocity will be near zero. And that is if they can get it to the top of the stack. Heat would help, but then that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
Ther are all KINDS of reasons why this is a stupid idea. Do the people know ANYTHING about reality?

We already have thousands of ships covering the globe daily making clouds. They are called jets. Yes, those clouds do have an effect on radiative heat transfer. On 911 when they did not fly, the day/night temperature difference increased 1.1 degree C. Clouds block incoming radiation from the sun and also block outgoing radiation from the earth. I believe the net effect is insignificant.

@Drew. Good luck with that. The greenies in power do not care about renewables or nuclear. They know we will burn fossil fuels until they are no more. They aren’t going to start selling carbon permits, or start making money in the carbon markets, only to voluntarily make those revenues and profits disappear “in the name of the environment.”

I can just see the error message now “General Earth Fault: Please re-run the Big Bang…”

Ridiculous. They’ll end up destroying plant and marine life that requires sunlight and lower temperatures, which kills FAR more than a poxy 1C warming does.

Mozilla betook me browser to:
UN Ban Moon’s whine list: “wants”, “wants”, “wants” “in earnest”.
“An advisory panel has told Harper to play down climate change at the G20.”
Go see Ban’s waggy finger.
Moon’s “want” list is Moon’s whine list.
…-
“Put environment on G20 agenda, UN chief tells Harper
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon delivers a speech at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa on Wednesday May 12, 2010. The Canadian Press
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says Canada has essential role to play in fighting climate change”
“UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants climate change on the agenda in earnest when Canada hosts the G20 summit next month in Toronto.
He also wants Canada to live up to the greenhouse-gas reduction targets it negotiated under the Kyoto Protocol.
And Mr. Ban wants the prime minister to work the phones with his fellow G8 leaders to persuade them to live up to their previous aid commitments to poor countries.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/news/put-environment-on-g20-agenda-un-chief-tells-harper/article1566211/

The few times I have been at the Gulf of Mexico, I was impressed by the haze. The only time I could see very far out to sea was first thing in the morning. The wind seems to blow at a good clip, and evaporation and spray got the air full of moisture quickly. I also noticed abundant cumulus clouds reaching very high. I think natural systems can take care of the climate very well, and even if our increasing CO2 contribution brings the temperature up a bit, the existing system will equilibrate at no cost. Attempts at geoengineering will undoubtedly be costly and most likely ineffective.

David Schnare says:
May 12, 2010 at 8:37 am
This is the first time I’ve been disappointed by this blog.
Humor is fine. Failing to do your homework to know whether the idea deserves the humor is not.
The idea definitely deserves the scorn it is getting, and more. There is not a single positive outcome that can come from it. There’s a saying; if it ain’t broke, don’t “fix” it. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? The climate is doing just fine, thank you very much. Trying to mess with it is a fools errand, and an expensive one, with actual negative consequences very likely.

I like this paragraph:
“Smart move … what we have here is a non-viable non-solution to a non-problem. I wouldn’t want to comment either, especially since this non-solution will burn about 27 billion litres (about 7 billion US gallons) of fuel per year to supposedly “solve” the problem supposedly caused by CO2 from burning fuel …”
And how much more fuel will we burn here in Michigan (and other northern parts of the world) to keep us warm with the decreased temps in the winter from blocking what little sun we get then. I have been waiting for the lower winter heating bills that should come with promises of “global warming”. So far the past several years we have had to fire up our “CO2 generating equipment” (aka furnaces) a lot more than we used to.

It’s raining poor little fish !!! And look over there, there goes a dolphin !!!

Bill Gates is heavily into carbon trading schemes, and likely a supporter of international efforts to suck money from “rich” nations to support, among other things, dubious non-commercial schemes such as this. Could it possibly be that he would stand to profit from “supporting” such enterprises?

As an interim measure, before the first ships are ready, I suggest mounting the spray thingies on bridges. It so happens I own a really nice one in San Francisco that’s for sale…cheap.

Thanks for this Willis…
So the saying goes, a fool and his money are soon parted…
But Bill is no fool, and he is funding many such “studies”, some of which, like this one, will never see the light of day in reality. Your “back of the napkin” figuring is the best kind of figuring and is certainly the most effective. Heck, Bill Gates ought to just fund you with a supply of napkins and pens, and let you have the first shot at the feasibility of some of these outrageous proposals.
As a person who is currently only about 75% convinced that AGW is happening, and then fairly neutral on whether or not it will be a problem anyway, I grow very uneasy at all of these geoengineering proposals. First of all, they might be a huge waste of time and resources, but second of all, what gives any company or government the right to tinker with something that can affect the entire planet? I don’t actually think anyone has that right, and if I was going to get “up in arms” about something, it would probably be those who would assume the right to even attempt to tinker with the planet. I oppose such efforts on many ground, legal and ethical, and go back to the old saying, “sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.” Such may very well be the case for geoengineering…

#
Gail Combs says:
May 12, 2010 at 6:47 am
Curiousgeorge says:
May 12, 2010 at 4:50 am
“… If it were me, I’d skip the sails and go straight for oars and drummers. It’s a proven green propulsive technology and would provide gainful employment and much needed exercise for progressive pencil necks.”
___________________________________________________________________________
George, you forgot a few very essential parts, the leg shackles, whips and the big enforcers who bring the geeks on board one at a time.

Well, we might need a few sharp HR/Marketing people, but I suspect we’d get a lot of volunteers initially if it were properly marketed: “International Green Rowing Teams Needed to save the planet. Free room and board, and your name on an oar! Career path to management”. 😀

“A true climate model should be able to replicate and make all kinds of climatic predictions beyond temperature. Such as: humidities, pressures, precipitation patterns, wind patterns, diurnal patterns, seasonal patterns, cloudiness, additionally it should not only replicate averages but it should be able to predict distribution and extremes around the the averages. If the models don’t replicate such things ….. it’s a travesty that they don’t.”
HankHenry for the win!

Great post. And well done following the trail to get some facts. But who cares about the awkward details, the artistic impression of the ships involved looks suitably Jetsonish.

Meanwhile, scientists claim farming in the North-American Midwest has caused late-summer days to be cooler:
[ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/weather/ct-met-weather-crops-20100511,0,1217706.story ]
Quote: “(…) more densely planted corn and soybean fields scattered across the Midwest are changing the regional climate by releasing more water vapor into the atmosphere. The more water vapor that reaches the atmosphere, the higher the dew point, and the fewer extremely hot summer days.
In other words, while some still question whether people are to blame for changing weather patterns around the globe, farmers around the Midwest are already altering the region’s climate in significant ways (…) ”
So, why worry? I presume Bill Gates’ machines are obsolete, already. Farming is the answer. More farming=more water vapour=more clouds= a cooler planet! No more problems, no more global warming. 🙂 !!

Stephen Salter says: “The figure of ten tonnes of spray per second was NOT per vessel but was the estimate for total spray from a fleet of 300 ships”
Goodness! 10 tonnes per second sounds like peanuts to me – are you really sure of your figures Dr Slater?
There are thousands of enormous nozzles dotted around the globe, propelling huge quantities of water vapour high into the atmosphere. They’re called cooling towers.
And these will pale into insignificance compared to the plumes of water vapour being propelled high into the atmosphere from the associated burning of fossil fuels.
If it is to be argued that 10 tonnes per second of water being elevated to a height of 1000 m will cool the globe, how much cooling should we attribute to the millions of tonnes being sent aloft from the global power industry?

So, again I ask, anyone out there who can at least conjecture as to the answer of the question as to which will win out, the greenhouse gas warming effect of the water vapor (much stronger than co2) or the solar radiation reflection of the supposed clouds to be formed? Would this “idea” warm us or cool us? What about increased rain fall from all of these clouds? Where will that occur? Floods? Hurricanes from the higher moisture unsettled air? Blizzards? Tornados? Are there any weather people on this blog?

anna v says:
May 12, 2010 at 10:39 am
I too am very disappointed at the lack of critical thought in both the article, which sets up strawman hypotheses and goes on to refute them and ridicule them, and with the readers, who have been provided with serious and rational links by myself and others, as the one by Stephen Salter below, which does describe the ingenious method of increasing albedo non destructively.
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs/Climate%20change/Phil.Trans.%20Seagoing%20hardware.pdf ,
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REPLY: Thanks for the link. In part, it says:
“The vessels will drag turbines resembling oversized propellers through the water to provide the means for generating electrical energy. Some will be used for rotor spin, but most will be used to create spray by pumping 30 kg sK1 of carefully filtered water through banks of filters and then to micro-nozzles with piezoelectric excitation to vary drop diameter.”
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You can’t be serious!! The energy consumption of this plan astounds me….I’m not aware of any source of renewable energy that would enable this, except perhaps nuclear reactors aboard the ships. And, “carefully filtered water through banks of filters…” etc. opens a new can of worms in terms of energy requirements, capital investment, labor etc..
We are undergoing a grand solar minimum, the US carbon dioxide emissions in 2009 dropped by about 7%, and you seriously propose this?

What if the increased cloud cover actually increases the temperature?
Don’t worry, nobody knows enough about climate forcings to be able to prove that! :^)