Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study suggests that large ocean going ships could help reduce global warming, by pouring surfactants into their wake, to extend the life of the shiny bubbles churned up by ship’s propellers.
According to the Huffington Post;
… Crook and her co-authors maintain that their climate model shows the scheme could bring a 0.5-degree Celsius reduction in the Earth’s average surface temperature by 2069, helping to offset the 2-degree warming expected by then.
According to Crook, the effect is comparable to those achieved by other so-called geoengineering schemes that have been proposed in recent years.
Of course, those bubbles won’t resist popping just because we want them to. The scheme calls for the ocean-going ships to pump out a stream of chemicals known as surfactants as they move along. Surfactants help prevent popping by affecting the surface tension of water — at the same time making the wakes a bit whiter than they would be ordinarily.
But it’s not clear whether the scheme would be safe for marine life. And then there’s the matter of its effect on air quality.
“Previous research suggests surfactants reduce the amount of CO2 uptake by the ocean, which would mean by adding surfactant we might cause atmospheric CO2 to go up,” Crook said. “But by how much and whether the resulting warming from the extra CO2 would outweigh the increased albedo is unknown. This could be a show-stopper.” …
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/ships-ease-global-warming_us_56b0e2cce4b0655877f73d91
The abstract of the study;
Solar radiation management schemes could potentially alleviate the impacts of global warming. One such scheme could be to brighten the surface of the ocean by increasing the albedo and areal extent of bubbles in the wakes of existing shipping. Here we show that ship wake bubble lifetimes would need to be extended from minutes to days, requiring the addition of surfactant, for ship wake area to be increased enough to have a significant forcing. We use a global climate model to simulate brightening the wakes of existing shipping by increasing wake albedo by 0.2 and increasing wake lifetime by ×1440. This yields a global mean radiative forcing of -0.9 ± 0.6 Wm-2 (-1.8 ± 0.9 Wm-2 in the Northern Hemisphere) and a 0.5 °C reduction of global mean surface temperature with greater cooling over land and in the Northern Hemisphere, partially offsetting greenhouse gas warming. Tropical precipitation shifts southwards but remains within current variability. The hemispheric forcing asymmetry of this scheme is due to the asymmetry in the distribution of existing shipping. If wake lifetime could reach ~3 months, the global mean radiative forcing could potentially reach -3 Wm-2. Increasing wake area through increasing bubble lifetime could result in a greater temperature reduction but regional precipitation would likely deviate further from current climatology as suggested by results from our uniform ocean albedo simulation. Alternatively, additional ships specifically for the purpose of geoengineering could be used to produce a larger and more hemispherically symmetrical forcing.
Read more: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015JD024201/abstract
Pouring enough surfactant into the sea, to allow bubbles to survive for 10 days in open water, might kill a lot of sea life. Surfactants are often used in cleaning products, such as dish washing liquid, because they are very effective at breaking up organic matter.
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But it’s not clear whether the scheme would be safe for marine life.
Actually, it is very clear indeed. It is absolutely not safe at all.
As it happens, back when I started in the chemical industry inn the early to mid 1960s, there was a global emergency initiative in progress to remove the vast majority of non-biodegradeable detergents from the World market because they were causing considerable pollution problems, huge build-ups of foam in streams and rivers and worst of all, lowering the surface tension of the World’s oceans, with widespread catastrophic results for the various flora and fauna therein.
Subsequent to that, the very small proportion of non-biogradeable detergents which for technical reasons could not be immediately superseded were licensed, strictly controlled and had to be recovered after use and destroyed.
Interestingly, this initiative attracted little or no attention from the mass media and was undertaken on a huge scale with no fanfare about “saving the World” or similar claptrap.
Compare and contrast with the CAGW situation…
You know this chick had to be sitting in a bubble bath with a bottle of cheap wine when she thought this up !!
And I think she was visiting Colorado at the time, man…if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
*wink*wink*nudge*nudge*
Before the beginning of the Pleistocene ice age, our ancestors were wild animals with intelligence comparable with what we see today in apes, i.e. quite smart compared with hedgehogs, rabbits or donkeys..
Then came the ice age. Severe environmental stress caused the death of the majorities of populations over and over again, This kind of situation where survival rates are very low accelerates the process of evolution by natural selection and it’s reasonable to assume that multiple glacial periods repeated the thinning of populations and the selection of survivors who had incrementally improved their ability to survive in the cold. The result was that a species evolved with the ability to survive glacial periods by: (1) using the skins of large furry animals to keep themselves warm (2) using shelter (initially caves) to stay warm and safe, (3) being able to make, use and control fire to keep warm, (4) being able to make weapons to kill large herbivores for food when edible fruits became scarce due to the cold and (5) developing social structures to act coherently in groups to use those weapons to hunt very large animals. Long story short – the evolution of a species with the intelligence and ability to use and control its physical environment is almost certainly a direct consequence of climate change over the Pleistocene.
If this paper gives us any insight into the current state of human intelligence, there’s no point in worrying about climates of the future. The next glacial period will kill us all off, and we will deserve it.
Good post, but I doubt it. The grown-ups will be back in charge as necessary ….
Look at all of you surfactant deniers!!! Pathetic!! Surfactants are REAL, man!
What about a few trillion tons of calcium hydroxide to save us from ocean acidification ….
……. anyone want to help fund my start-up ? There’s plenty more fish in the sea, as they say.
Where do they find these idiots? These clowns are the Dr. Frankensteins of today.
Off the subject somewhat, but a fun piece by Tim Blair (journalist and Sydney Telegraph blogger:
“Which leads us to the CSIRO, and a stunning strategic error by the national science agency’s climate researchers. During the past decade, researchers at the CSIRO – along with global warming alarmists everywhere – have been telling us that the “science is settled” when it comes to climate change.
In other words, they’ve delivered their verdict. Bad move.
CSIRO chief Larry Marshall has recently been examining his organisation for areas where he might achieve some $110 million in budget cuts. Inevitably, his gaze fell upon the climate change crowd – the guys who, by their own admission, have already finished their jobs. Last week Marshall sent this memo to CSIRO staff:
“CSIRO pioneered climate research, the same way we saved the cotton and wool industries for our nation. But we cannot rest on our laurels as that is the path to mediocrity. Our climate models are among the best in the world and our measurements honed those models to prove global climate change. That question has been answered.”
Reasonably enough, with that question answered, Marshall is now taking steps to throw most of the CSIRO’s climate researchers out on the street like common circus midgets. More than 300 climate scientists are set to be dismissed over the next couple of years. “Climate will be all gone, basically,” one senior scientist told Fairfax as news of the cuts emerged.
Naturally, this caused an immediate reversal of opinion among Australia’s cashed-up climate change community. Suddenly the science wasn’t settled at all. In fact, the science was almost completely unknown! ” (Paywall for the rest of the article).
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/verdict_delivered_jury_dismissed/
Strange how they could consider this while still fining a manufacturer of detergents really heavily for spillage into the river and the wildlife damage it is claimed it did.
The idiocy of such an idea is beyond me. The idea of adding soap to the oceans …. unbelievable …. and the complete impracticality of such a proposal. Human stupidity seems to know no bounds.
Ban black tarmac. Will reduce UHI effects. Green is a lovely colour….or leave it concrete like around California.
Make roofs white as well while you’re at it.
Mirrored parking lots, roads and rooftops?
I’m voting for insuring all plastic that ends up as trash in the ocean be white. That way ocean plastic trash will augment the bubbles, and we can save money by not having to worry about or collect that trash.
These folks must have a real problem with birds. If they can’t kill them with wind-turbines, they’ll drown them in the sea. Dad told us that detergent poured onto the surface of a pond will cause the ducks to no longer float. he didn’t believe it either and he and some friends tried it. The got quite beat up rescuing the ducks who didn’t launch quickly enough.
This idea was dreamed up by Big Shipping. A more slippery ocean would reduce fuel costs.
When I was a starving graduate student in a roach-infested rental, I experimented on my ‘roommates’. They can survive a microwave oven, live for days without a head, for a month trapped in a jar filled with acid fumes, but they were killed almost *instantly* by soapy water.
I can just imagine the effect of pouring surfactants into the ocean surface would have on zooplankton – the lowest level of ‘eaters’ on the ocean food chain.
Putting millions ot tons of detergents into the oceans is supposed to be a good idea- but one indian tribe putting 100 tons of iron sulphate into one ocean eddy led to multiple swat team raids by Environment Canada. These are the Crazy Years.
http://russgeorge.net/2013/03/30/swat-team-swarms-village-science-office-with-overwhelming-force/
The more I think about it, the more I see it as a joke/provocation. It’s just waaaaaay too much crazy (not the normal kind of crazy).
My hypotheses so far:
1. Researcher was bored, just wanted to have fun.
2. Social experiment: researcher wanted to know how much people would reproduce a crazy (and crazier) idea.
3. Researcher lost a bet.
But there is still a climate explanation:
4. Global warming causes neural meltdown (global climate warming causes everything).
I wonder what’s next. Global war to avoid climate change?