“In anticipation of extreme heat during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, scientists and engineers at Qatar University have developed a solar-powered gas-filled cloud that will shade spectators and athletes from the intense sun. The $500,000 artificial clouds can be positioned over any of the stadiums in Qatar and can be maneuvered with a remote control from the ground to keep the passing sun off the field.”
From the DailyMail Online article:
Saud Abdul Ghani, head of the mechanical and industrial engineering department, told Gulf News the ‘clouds’ are made from a lightweight carbon structure carrying a giant envelope of material containing helium gas.
Four solar powered engines move the structure via remote control.
All I can say is: with their recent track record in launching climate related missions, don’t let NASA build it. Beyond the artist rendition below, I have not found any actual plans, drawings, or other indications that the ‘port-o-clouds’ are even engineered yet.
Solar powered? I guess nobody noticed the megawatts worth of electrical transmission lines nearby to run a/c unit if needed, as seen below.
From the Guardian, it seems there is even more trouble:
Al-Rayyan stadium, Qatar. Preparations for the 2022 World Cup will involve the ‘possible enslavement of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of impoverished south Asian migrant workers’. Photograph: Fadi Al-Assaad/Reuters
See more at: whyqatar2022.com
have developed a solar-powered gas-filled cloud that will shade spectators and athletes from the intense sun.
I want one. Are there any DIY plans on the world wide web?
A far cheaper solution would be to simply have Al Gore attend, and bring the Gore Effect with him.
You can probably get a block-booking discount for $30,000/day. (plus parking for his idling limos…)
My guess is that they’d save more “carbon” if they could convince the yoyos who play the game to stop shaving their private parts.
We’ve already got that in Toronto. We call it the Domed Stadium.
…yet another reason to hate soccer.
The people behind this must spend all day, everyday inside in front of a computer model. They will fail in the same manner that every blimp and dirigible program has ended. They keep forgetting one part of the weather. Everything will be fine, until it gets windy.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/climate/Qatar.htm
“A hot, dust-laden wind, the Shamal, blows in the spring and summer-period, from March till August. sometimes these winds can be very strong, and cause Sandstorms”
This assumes that there will BE a Qatar in 2022.
Obscene waste of money that could be far better spent on so many other far more worthy things.
Dome???
They are the highest per-capita income country in the world….
…that’s why the UN considers them developing and have to do nothing about emissions
Holding the World Cup in Qatar is sheer lunacy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Black Sunday-like plot to crash the cloud into the stands. Assuming Qatar is still around in 2022.
Move the da#ned thing to England. Germany gets it twice in 32 years and England only once in 1966?
Frank Lee MeiDere says:
March 27, 2011 at 5:48 pm
We’ve already got that in Toronto. We call it the Domed Stadium.
Surely there’s a misspelling there. Another “o” missing in “Domed.”
!!
Richard Day says:
March 27, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Holding the World Cup in Qatar is sheer lunacy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Black Sunday-like plot to crash the cloud into the stands. Assuming Qatar is still around in 2022.
Move the da#ned thing to England. Germany gets it twice in 32 years and England only once in 1966?
One particular trouble.
England was/is not prepared to pay Blatter and his acolytes enough spondulicks!
luckily by 2022 nobody, except Al gore, and Jim Hansen, will care about CO2 and Qatar can build domed stadiums and air condition them like normal people would do.
If you want to block the sun, build a freakin’ domed stadium !!
@Tom Konerman
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090283630.pdf
An engineered cloud. Right. Don’t the engineers know that current climate models have difficulty modeling clouds? Made of carbon fiber, too. That’s a bazillion bucks in carbon credits down the drain.
Why waste all that money on a kickball game? They could waste it better on US Govt Bonds, TARP notes, and help us with all that Quantitative Easing that’s wearing out the Regime’s printing presses.
How better to make sure the world knows that Qatar is a new world supplier of helium than to sponsor a series of freakingingly giant helium ships?
A press release from 2003:
===========
Qatar will become one of the world’s leading helium producers by 2010, with the launch of a $115m helium joint venture plant. It will be located at the Ras Laffan Industrial City, with Qatargas, RasGas and RasGas II supplying the helium. The contract for the design and construction of the plant was awarded to the French company Air Liquide Engineering SA on 21st May, 2003. The Minister of Energy and Chairman of Qatargas, HE Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah signed on behalf of Qatargas and Dr. Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, Vice Chairman on behalf of RasGas.
The plant owners have also concluded two separate long-term agreements with BOC Group Inc. and Air Liquide America LP for the installation of facilities required to extract helium from natural gas, purify and liquefy it for export.
http://www.qatargas.com.qa/PressReleases.aspx?id=814&tmp=88&folderID=120
===============
I don’t know the current status of the helium production, but with their natural gas coming online now, it stands to reason their helium production is ramping up now as well. (Helium and large deposits of natural gas are sometimes related)
It seems to me that it is hot even under shade when the temperature is over 100 ° F [in June] as happens frequently in Qatar.
The average Qatar temperature seems to be 106 for June, 106 for July, and 105 for Aug.
Am I missing something ?
i say let them have fun with the idea. what harm can come from it and it will be something to talk about if you go there.
Whose dumba– idea was it to have the games in a place where the temperatures get to 50c ( 122F) ? That’s a tad warm for the spectators even if they have a flying sunscreen. So why not just use the A/C?
Been around LTA some. Mainly hot air ops, a bit with small commercial blimps.
This thing gives me the willies unmanned, untethered no ground crew. Wind is the enemy of Balloons…
As the top drawing shows, there will be full stadium lighting. Just play the frogging games at night. Duh.
Come on, guys! Qatar will still be around in 2022, but they won’t be hosting any World Cup.
Those FIFA officials who voted for Qatar will come to realise what a stupid decision it was once they’ve spent all the bribes they received.
The contracts with Qatar will be terminated and England will be given the right to host the World Cup in 2022.
Then Qatar will disclose all the bribes they paid to FIFA officials and hell will break loose.
It sounds like they’ll be holding a giant Zeppelin like structure above a stadium full of people. It’s hard to imagine how this will get off the ground.
So do I have this right, some super-duper device run on solar power with giant helium filled balloons, remotely controlled and untethered, where any wind is a risk, very hot sun and temps, all to provide ‘shade’ over a large group of people at a sports event?
What could go wrong?
Does the proximity of April 1st have anything to do with it?
By comparing the size of the baloon thingy with the size of its shadow it appears that the sun is at most three or four kilometres away.
Looks like it would shade only about 1/10 of the stands.
I’d imagine that InTrade will have a “wager” going on that blimp at some point!
They’re going to be like Canada and have to fly in a real Zamboni.
I would remind you that many do not really care about impoverished South Asians. See: Walmart.
Do we fly in Zambonis? I rather thought we pretty much had them lying around.
I blame Sepp Blatter , president of FIFA. The UK bid for 2018 was rejected in favour of Russia, which is fair enough. Then Australia’s bid for 2022 was beaten by Qatar! You can’t make this stuff up.
The world cup will be reduced to a laughing stock after this. In my opinion the Champions League is a better competion. All the world’s best players are there and the final this year is at Wembley. With any luck it will be Barcelona v. Chelsea, a game and a venue worthy of the contest’s name.
Sure. This will work. ///
What a bunch of bullshit. Just like those silly sand and coral islands off of Dubai now falling apart. If the country is not undergoing some bizarre Islamic revolution when the Olympics are scheduled, I still would not have these morons hovering anything over me.
Solar powered engines do not work at night! Does this cloud land at night? Is it tethered at any time to prevent it floating away? Will they use searchlights to power the engines in the same way that the Spanish use strong lighting to generate electricity at night from solar panels,because the solar panel electricity earns more revenue than the cost of the fossil fuel generated electricity used to power the lamps at night.
We will know the answer to that question, if the cloud is built with solar panels on both upper and lower surfaces.
P
Unfortunately there is as much corruption in Fifa as there is in climate science. If you have enough cash then you can buy the right to host the world cup even if the bid is full of flaws.
@ John Edmondson – Chelsea in the champions league final?, I think not. Spurs will be the only english club there 🙂
I can attest to the truth of GarryP’s statement about the Shamal. Dull cloudy very hot and very humid days full of wind blown sand. Great atmosphere to play football.
Or they could just buy some of the LEMVs being built by Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd for Northrop Grumman. http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/
Must be some solar panels. To produce enough electrical power to lift themselves, plus motors and chassis and stuff, of the ground.
Might be easier to move it to England and build an artificial sun!
Since they’re going to spend trillions of oil dollars in any case, why not just move the stadium underground? Bring in air through long subsurface pipes. They’d need little if any air conditioning, just a lot of flow.
at least they’re using Helium, so we’ll be spared a “Hindenburg moment.”
although it would probably raise ratings substantially.
Given that this is the middle east, how long before someone remembers “Black Sunday” (1977)? yep, Bruce Dern as the crazed Vietnam Vet who wanted to blow up the Super Bowl with a blimp.
… enslavement … employment …
We are all slaves to our employment one way or another.
that first pic looks like something out of harry potter!
They could just get a hold of Goodyear , Met-Life, and all the other companies that have been flying blimps over over sporting events on a daily basis for decades. A small fraction of the existing global fleet could handle this function and it wouldn’t cost them a cent.
I just hope that its really windy that day.
BTW, What are they going to build those “12 eco-friendly, carbon-neutral stadiums” with. Cement production is one of the leading contributors to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Steel is hardly carbon neutral. I have no plans to attend, but if I was, I’m not sure how confident I’d feel sharing my place with tens of thousands of soccer fans in a stadium built from recycled soda bottles.
They could save billions if they simply held the World Cup there in January instead of July.
January is nice in Qatar. Typically a max of 70F to 80F and dry.
Nothing like a story about stupid, dumb ass ideas to bring out the anti-soccer crowd. Oh well you can have your opinions but do yourself a favor and watch a Barcelona game sometime. Pure bloody poetry in motion! This ball is ours, you want to play go find one of your own! Damn brilliant.
Diving isn’t limited to soccer. Wayne Gretzky in hockey and Michael Irving in football just to name a few also did it to great effect.
As to the story I suppose it is too easy to suggest playing the World Cup at night or in the winter break when temps would be bearable? Why do the easy, practical thing when you can float a dirigible around and shade things.
Seriously that is all this is. One big honking dirigible….. oh yea WITH TONS OF SPACE FOR ADVERTISING. Now it all makes sense.
Cheers
At the rate of political instability in the Arab World now demonstrated, I doubt that Qatar will even exist as a country in 2022. Certainly there will be a re-appraisal by FIFA concerning security, and it would be prudent of them to make alternative arrangements.
So far as the magic solar powered cloud is concerned, it looks too small in the artists illustration in your article. The Qatar authorities should have involved someone like Richard Branson to build a giant airship which could not only have served the purpose of shading out the sun, but he could have sold hundreds of passenger seats with a bird’s eye view of the matches. $$$$$ bucks banked by Branson and zero cost to the Qatar soccer authorities. Branson would personally pilot the craft, and power it by refelecting the suns glare from his own dazzling teeth, onto a super-efficient solar array which is yet to be invented, let alone manufactured.
…….. or why not get those “chemtrail” guys over from the old US of A to lend a hand. Just a few hours work with a couple of dozen wide-bodied jets, can fill the entire sky over Qatar with chemtrail spiders webs of “clouds” and obscure the sun completely.
The added bonus could be that we could drug the entire Qatar population with the chemical fallout from such “clouds” and make them easier to control.
– Hat tip to Mssrs. Kissinger & Brzezinski.
‘A lightweight CARBON structure’…??
How very DARE they…!
I think I’m going to have an attack of what Victorian ladies called ‘the vapours’….
Why not a bunch of surplus WW2 barrage balloons tied together in an array and tether it to a bunch of camels that position the array to keep the shadow over the stadium? KISS…
Wouldn’t a flying carpet do the same thing at less cost?