Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I noted on the news that there is a new plan afoot to cool down the planet. This one supposedly has been given big money by none other than Bill Gates.
The plan involves a fleet of ships that supposedly look like this:
Figure 1. Artist’s conception of cloud-making ships. Of course, the first storm would flip this over immediately, but heck, it’s only a fantasy, so who cares? SOURCE
The web site claims that:
Bill Gates Announces Funding for Seawater-Spraying Cloud Machines
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.
What could possibly go wrong with such a brilliant plan?
First, as usual the hype in this seems to have vastly outpaced the reality. According to CBS News Tech Talk:
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. If all goes well, Silver Lining plans to test the process with 10 ships spread throughout 3800 square miles of ocean. Geoengineering, an umbrella phrase to describe techniques that would allow humans to prevent global warming by manipulating the Earth’s climate, has yet to result in any major projects.
However, this is just a quote from the same web site that showed the ship above. CBS Tech Talk goes on to say:
A PR representative from Edelman later sent me this note from Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science: “Bill Gates made a grant to the University of Calgary to support research in possible unique solutions and responses to climate change. Administrating this research funding, David Keith of the University of Calgary and I made a grant to Armand Neukermanns for lab tests to investigate the technical feasibility of producing the fine seawater sprays required by the Latham cloud whitening proposal, one of many proposals for mitigating some of the adverse effects of climate change. This grant to Neukermanns is for lab tests only, not Silver Lining’s field trials.”
So Bill Gates isn’t funding the ships, and didn’t even decide to fund this particular fantasy, he just gave money to support research into “possible unique solutions”. Well, I’d say this one qualifies …
Next, after much searching I finally found the Silver Lining Project web site. It says on the home page:
The Silver Lining Project is a not-for-profit international scientific research collaboration to study the effects of particles (aerosols) on clouds, and the influence of these cloud effects on climate systems.
Well, that sure sounds impressive. Unfortunately, the web site is only four pages, and contains almost no information at all.
Intrigued, I emailed them at the address given on their web site, which is info(a)silverliningproj.org. I quickly got this reply:
Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:
info@silverliningproj.org
The recipient’s e-mail address was not found in the recipient’s e-mail system. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please check the e-mail address and try resending this message, or provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.
Hmmmm … not a good sign, four page web site, email address is dead … but onwards, ever onwards. Let’s look at a few numbers here.
First, over the tropical oceans, the rainfall is typically on the order of a couple of metres per year. Per the info above, they are going to test the plan with one ship for every 380 square miles. A square mile is about 2.6 square km, or 2.6 million square metres. Three hundred eighty square miles is about a thousand square km. Two metres of rainfall in that area is about two billion tonnes of water …
They say their ships will suck up “ten tonnes of water per second”. That’s about a third of a billion tonnes per year. So if they run full-time, they will increase the amount of water in the air by about 15% … which of course means 15% more rain. I don’t know how folks in rainy zones will feel about a 15% increase in their rainfall, but I foresee legalarity in the future …
Next, how much fuel will this use? The basic equation for pumps is:
Water flow (in liters per second) = 5.43 x pump power (kilowatts) / pressure (bars)
So to pump 10,000 litres per second (neglecting efficiency losses) with a pressure of 3 bars (100 psi) will require about 5,500 kilowatts. This means about 50 million kilowatt-hours per year. Figuring around 0.3 litres of fuel per kilowatt-hour (again without inefficiencies), this means that each ship will burn about fifteen million litres of fuel per year, so call it maybe twenty five million litres per year including all of the inefficiencies plus some fuel to actually move the ship around the ocean. All of these numbers are very generous, it will likely take more fuel than that. But we’ll use them.
Next, the money to do this … ho, ho, ho …
You can buy a used fire fighting ship for about fifteen million dollars, but it will only pump about 0.8 tonnes/second. So a new ship to pump ten tonnes per second might cost on the order of say twenty million US dollars.
You’d need a crew of about twelve guys to run the ship 24/7. That’s three eight-hour shifts of four men per shift. On average they will likely cost about US$80,000 per year including food and benefits and miscellaneous, so that’s about a million per year.
Then we have fuel costs of say US$ 0.75 per litre, so there’s about ten million bucks per year there.
Another web site says:
A study commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, a European think-tank, has estimated that a wind-powered fleet of 1,900 ships to cruise the world’s oceans, spraying sea water from towers to create and brighten clouds, could be built for $9 billion. The idea would be to operate most of the ships far offshore in the Pacific so they would not interfere with weather on land.
My numbers say $38 billion for the ships … and “wind-powered”? As a long time sailor, I can only say “get real” …
However, that’s just for the ships. Remember that we are talking about $11 million per ship for annual pumping fuel costs plus labour … which is an annual cost of another $20 billion dollars …
Finally, they say that they are going to test this using one ship per 380 square miles … and that they can blanket the world with 1,900 ships. That makes a total of around three quarters of a million square miles covered by the 1,900 ships.
The surface of the world ocean, however, is about 140 million square miles, so they will be covering about half a percent of the world ocean with the 1,900 ships. Half a percent. If that were all in the Pacific Ocean per the citation above, here’s how much it would cover:
Figure 2. Area covered by 1,900 cloud making ships.
Yeah, brightening that would make a huge difference, especially considering half of the time it wouldn’t even see the sun …
See, my problem is that I’m a practical guy, and I’ve spent a good chunk of my life working with machinery around the ocean. Which is why I don’t have a lot of time for “think-tanks” and “research groups”. Before I start a project, I do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see if it makes sense.
My calculations show that this will cost forty billion dollars to start, and twenty billion per year to run, not counting things like ship maintenance and redundancy and emergencies and machinery replacement and insurance and a fleet of tankers to refuel the pump ships at sea and, and, and …
And for all of that, we may make a slight difference on half a percent of the ocean surface. Even if I’ve overestimated the costs by 100% (always possible, although things usually cost more than estimated rather than less), that’s a huge amount of money for a change too small to measure on a global scale.
Now Bill Gates is a smart guy. But on this one, I think he may have let his heart rule his head. One of the web sites quoted above closes by saying:
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday, nor did U.S. entrepreneur Kelly Wanser, who is leading the Silver Lining Project.
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 …
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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.
RE: Prof Keith at the U of Calgary. I wrote a “letter to the editor” in January after his grant-fed concepts were in MSM here in the Frozen North. (Where our tulips may finally bloom next week and where commercial potato planting is 3 weeks behind sked because of the cold and snow we have been getting!!) Here is the letter as published:
Lethbridge Herald
RE: Sun screen idea floated January 28, 2010
Readers should be alarmed that their tax dollars are being wasted on the likes of U of C Professor Keith. He is proposing that he get grant money for the concept of seeding the atmosphere with particles to block the sun and make our weather colder than it already is.
Yet the world’s climatologists don’t know how climate and weather change. We now know that the role of carbon dioxide has been overblown by the politically motivated UN IPCC, by the sensation-seeking media and by grant-hungry researchers riding the “climate gravy train.” So bad is the “science” behind the UN’s 2007 climate report from IPCC, that University of Victoria’s oft-quoted Weaver (a global warming alarmist) recently said that the IPCC has crossed the line between political advocacy and science. Weaver has also linked extreme weather with carbon dioxide and yet the IPCC has been forced to admit that their 2007 report’s claim of link between carbon dioxide and media-hyped “extreme” weather was unfounded.
Now Professor Keith is proposing to study the addition of “stuff” to our atmosphere to stop climate change when we don’t even know how the climate changes! The arrogance is as amazing as it is frightening.
We know that volcanoes have drastic affects on climate as witnessed by terrible weather following Pinatubo, Krakatoa and Tambora. Now imagine putting a bunch of particles into the atmosphere, followed by an unexpected and major volcanic eruption. If you thought the past two winters have been cold, and if you blinked and completely missed the few days of summer in 2009, you will not like colder weather that Professor Keith is proposing to produce. Sugar beets and summer-loving folks won’t like it one bit. (Here in Lethbridge, 2009 was the coldest year of the century and the coldest since 1996!)
Ignatieff, Suzuki, IPCC, Gore and their dangerous ilk (including some academics here in Lethbridge) want the world to waste trillions because they wrongly believe they have power over the world’s climate. In the meantime hundreds of millions of the world’s poor don’t have adequate health care and clean water. An immoral crime.
Clive Schaupmeyer
Coaldale, Alberta
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.
Ric Werme and others have pointed out the questionable claim that water vapor can be shot up 3,000 feet. Maybe if the vapor was very hot steam, which would tend to rise [and would add significantly to the energy consumed], but atomized sea water would normally be slowed dramatically by air friction, and winds would tend to send the vapor laterally.
If Bill Gates is intent on shoveling money into this idea, a land-based prototype would be needed to determine the velocity required to shoot a column of water vapor to 3,000 feet altitude; the real world usually has different ideas about what is possible. Mr Gates should first round up a few practical engineers to discuss the feasibility of this steam in the sky idea — something that obviously hasn’t been done yet.
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.
@Theo
That is actually the point. Water vapor is a much better green house gas and the only way to actually show a warming will be to raise the concentration in the troposphere. Soon they will be desperate enough to start this project among others on a global scale to be able to raise the tax on oil. So the demand will not exceed the available amount, because if that happen they would be far better off playing with Yellowstone ….
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.
There are no pumps
People please read the links I provided in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/12/every-silver-lining-has-a-cloud/#comment-388079
before getting on the bandwagon.
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
Something’s gotta be done. I can barely move in all this London heat today. It’s been so warm recently, definitely an indication of climate change. Not like that bad weather we had over the winter. Haven’t you felt the climate warming up over the last couple of months?
“”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.
Interesting that no one has commented on how fish, etc. would be affected by this proposal.
And, yes, while clouds do have an albeldo effect, but some clouds also keep the surface temperature warmer at night.
And more heat-trapping water vapor in the air . . . mmmmmmmm . . .
Ian H says: “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.”
Thinks: When, in a decade or so, we desperately need more warmth, is there any way to achieve the opposite – turn contrails off?
#
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Tony says:
May 12, 2010 at 6:40 am
“Why not build Nuclear power stations on the coasts instead? The cooling towers will boil the oceans and provide the clouds…”
A heck of a lot better idea than the silver lining scam.
“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.
Hmmmm.
I approve of this scheme. May I recommend a vendor? I have had great … er … success with ACME.
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.
Willis, one word describes this project.
FAIL
As a popular website says, “send in the FAILBoat”.
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.
Using the concept of “human pop reduction” from Logan’s Run, we could use this machine to shoot the vapor of eco weenies up in the air 3,000 feet. It would serve two main functions as it would reduce the world population and would eliminate pesky green weenies .. while not adding any new carbon since eco weenies are not carbon-based life forms. ☺
/spoof
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?
Well, I can see why Gates invested in it – sounds like it will work as well as Windows 3.11
The filtering “system” alone is beyond comprehension or technological capabilities in todays world. And even if solvable, the birds killed by all the wind turbines in the world (& that number is in the 10s of thousands!) would pale in comparison to the sea life killed by just one of these suckers!
This is why I switched to an Apple computer. Bill Gates wants to “blue screen” the entire planet!
I pictured the boat shown, for a second, with Sylvester McMonkey McBean on top steering the ship. Sylvester is the character, with the famous red and white striped floppy hat, from Dr. Seuss’s book about the star-bellied sneetches. He invented a star-making machine to put stars on any sneetches that had no stars, so they would not feel inferior to the star-bellied ones. Then the original uppity star sneetches had him invent a machine to remove stars on their bellies, so they would still feel superior to the “nouveau starred” sneetches. Of course, after awhile no one knew who was the original star-belly and who wasn’t. So Sylvester got filthy rich, and everyone gave up putting on and taking off stars, and lived in harmony because stars were now irrelevant. I think Bill and Melinda Gates, once in demand for their original ‘star machine’, have now become marginalized by evil demagogues like Mann and Gore, now funding dangerous AGW and population reduction (genocidal?) programs, and the like. They may have a Seussian fantasy view of the world that, because of their wealth, may also stimulate the imaginations of crooks and swindlers who are waiting in the weeds.
Xi Chin at 7:12 am said:
Something’s gotta be done. I can barely move in all this London heat today.
Xi, that’s friction heat! from all those bodies moving in and out of 10 Downing St.
It’ll pass…
Just seen a documentary on this. Apparently, those towers rotate at about 200rpm, and therefore power the ship along via a wind-enduced benouli effect. But, as the Cousteau family found out many years ago, this is about the least efficient form of propulsion you can get. A standard sail is much less draggy, and does not need a motor to rotate it.
On this documentary they used dry salt in flares, which would probably be much better than trying to lift 10 tonnes a second of sea water. Would it work? Well, we know you can seed clouds and produce clouds with condensation nuclei, but my guess is that it would be a drop in the ocean – literally.
Greenies often fail to visualise how big the Earth really is.
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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!”….