Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – just in case you thought the climate community had run out of absurd ideas to waste taxpayer’s money, here is an academic plan to rebuild Arctic ice, by deploying 100 million wind turbines into the Arctic Ocean.
Save the Arctic with $5 trillion of floating, wind-powered ice machines, researchers recommend
Tristin Hopper | February 16, 2017 | Last Updated: Feb 17 9:34 AM ET
With the Arctic warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, a new scientific paper is proposing a radical scheme to thicken the ice cap: millions upon millions of autonomous ice machines.
Specifically, between 10 and 100 million floating, wind-powered pumps designed to spray water over sea ice during the winter.
“These are expensive propositions, but within the means of governments to carry out on a scale comparable to the Manhattan Project,” reads the paper published in the Jan. 24 edition of Earth’s Future, a journal published by the American Geophysical Union.
The plan would be one of the most expensive single projects in world history, an endeavour on the scale of the International Space Station, the entire U.S. auto industry or a major world conflict such as the Iraq War.
In the most ambitious version of the plan, 100 million devices would be deployed across the Arctic.
…
Nevertheless, given the end goal, the researchers from Arizona State University call the cost “economically achievable” and the environmental impact “negligible.”
However, they also costed a scaled-down, $500-billion plan that would deploy ice machines to only 10 per cent of the Arctic.
…
“The need is urgent, as the normal cooling effects of summer sea ice are already lessened and may disappear in less than two decades,” reads the paper.
The fleet of ice machines would be designed to add an extra metre of sea ice to the Arctic every winter.
The report contains no specific designs on the water pump, but described it as wind turbine and tank assembly mounted atop a buoy.
…
The abstract of the referenced study;
Earth’s Future Arctic ice management
Steven J. Desch, Nathan Smith, Christopher Groppi, Perry Vargas, Rebecca Jackson,Anusha Kalyaan, Peter Nguyen, Luke Probst, Mark E. Rubin, Heather Singleton, Alexander Spacek, Amanda Truitt,PyePyeZaw, and Hilairy E. Hartnett
As the Earth’s climate has changed, Arctic sea ice extent has decreased drastically. It is likely that the late-summer Arctic will be ice-free as soon as the 2030s. This loss of sea ice represents one of the most severe positive feedbacks in the climate system, as sunlight that would otherwise be reflected bysea ice is absorbed by open ocean. It is unlikely that CO2 levels and mean temperatures can be decreased in time to prevent this loss, so restoring sea ice artificially is an imperative. Here we investigate a means for enhancing Arctic sea ice production by using wind power during the Arctic winter to pump water to the surface, where it will freeze more rapidly. We show that where appropriate devices are employed, it is possible to increase ice thickness above natural levels, by about 1m over the course of the winter. We examine the effects this has in the Arctic climate, concluding that deployment over 10% of the Arctic, especially where ice survival is marginal, could more than reverse current trends of ice loss in the Arctic, using existing industrial capacity. We propose that winter ice thickening by wind-powered pumps be considered and assessed as part of a multipronged strategy for restoring sea ice and arresting the strongest feedbacks in the climate system.
Read more: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000410/epdf
The whole idea is absurd, but even if we accept that for whatever reason it one day becomes necessary to pump water on to sea ice on that scale, it would be much easier to use nuclear power than wind power.
The energy budget mentioned in sections 1.3 of the study is 1300GW of power, 7% of the current global energy budget. The largest nuclear reactors currently in use produce around 8GW of power. If you assume $5 billion per reactor construction cost (think mass production), the total construction bill would be $800 billion – well short of the $5 trillion estimated by the study.
In addition, nuclear plants would be less likely to ice up, like the turbine in the picture above.
I’m not even going to consider the prohibitive cost of maintaining all those wind turbines in the harsh, unforgiving arctic environment.
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“A scientific paper” the abuse of science just doesn’t end. The Iraq war did not cost the US a trillion dollars folks. That is a false political talking point. Although the tab is still running.
“Only two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity.” — and the cardinality of the infinite human set of stupidity is greater than that of the universe’s.
The mere fact that they think it is necessary to maintain a certain amount of ice up there seems absurd. Wasn’t there a time when Greenland was without much ice/snow? Seems like the world kept on going despite that. The only positive thing you can say about it is it will keep a lot of people employed especially for maintenance. At what cost and who will be paying for it all?
Satire, has to be … there’s no other sane explanation, it’s not April 1
And it took 14 authors to refine the plan. What else do you do with the plethora of grad students, post-docs and young profs – gotta keep em employed. Must have been one helluva grant to keep 14 “professionals” alive.
On a late Friday night. in a bar with a funny smelling smoke and a few envelopes?
We all need some of whatever these folks are smoking. . . will it make sense then? As an engineer, the problems with the concept and everyday operation of such a boondogle make Rube Goldburg like like an amateur circus curiosity. Are these really professors or is somebody just pranking us all??
With all the climate changes that have taken place through the centuries why oh why is it now the perfect temperature that must be maintained. What arrogance, stupidity, etc of those who think they can change what is continually changing anyway.
There is a hardly talked program mostly funded by the USA that works to replace sources of particulate carbon, mostly from old Soviet era diesel engines. Most of the sea ice lost has been off the coast of Northern Russia. Been going for at least 10 years and is generally considered a success.
In my view, the main cause of Arctic sea reductions is particulate carbon and increased insolation from reduced clouds.
Just ship all the liberal lunatics to the Arctic. Problem sorted.
This would certainly help to increase the polar bear population.
I’ll solve it for free.
Stop feeding the beast.
They may bitch and whine at first, but ya gotta teach em.
Maybe the Arctic sea ice is shrinking but the Greenland Ice Cap is increasing according to the Danes:
https://www.iceagenow.info/greenland-ice-sheet-defying-alarmist-predictions-showing-massive-growth/
That’s real ice not rotten ice.
-JPP
Maybe put the 100 million wind-powered ice machines on Greenland…
Put them on the moon where they’ll be even more effective.
SOMEONE ANSWER THIS.
The “1-to-5 stars” article rating system is now officially overwhelmed. We need a “WTF” button somewhere to supplement the five stars.
Make that a WUWT? button. 🙂
Climate change, in a sense, is man made: It is created by, and exists in, the minds of the climate obsessed. The absurd, near psychotic idea discussed by this blog post is so insane as to be beyond parody.
There is absolutely nothing particularly unusual about present day sea ice extent in the Arctic, and the alarmism is because the modern presentation is cherry picked from the high of 1979.
If one looks back further in time, one can see that today’s sea ice extent is not unusual and simply part of what appears to be cyclical changes. See
In the 1940s and 1850s was around about 6 million sq.kilometres which compares favourably to that seen today.
Final paragraph should have read:
I don’t recall anybody scrapping 100 million windmill pumps from that area after sea ice recovered.
These guys have to in the pocket of “Big Green”
Begs the question, can you drain a frozen swamp?
Outdated politically correct neo-Gillardian-Clinton-Obamist-Merkel-Cameron-Trudeau thinking. World, move on.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xueOyzWuJ9k/UvKEqn_M3qI/AAAAAAAAJy8/IRIjir7dlZE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-02-05+at+11.34.34+AM.png
It’s just a joke. Don’t get sucked in, they are not being serious. Unless it’s a ruse to distract attention from some other plot being hatched.
Climate scientists are similar to doctors: If you have one take out your gall bladder, it’s because he’s behind in his house payments or he just bought a big boat.
Climate scientists write silly crowd-sourced (to spread the liability around) yellow papers to keep that cash rollin’ in.
The brilliant minds which promulgated this “plan” should be assigned to a pilot project on the ice building and maintaining 3 or 4 of these things in the middle of the Arctic. Go get ’em boys and girls.
But, But….. it’s only February 18th, not April 1st!
This is not stupidity, it is the Greatest Robbery in the history of the World. Already-rich ‘Green Investors’ get to suck TRILLIONS out of the taxpayer for a problem that doesn’t exist. It is a brilliant robbery – but make no mistake, all the people pushing this are criminals as a consequence.
I do not understand why anyone would want to do such a thing. Using sea water to increase sea ice will have no effect on sea levels. During the winter the albedo effect is minimal in the artic because of sun angle considerations and general weather conditions. At the very least if they want to consider such an idea they should start with a single windmill and see how the one performs. The construction and transport of all those windmills will add considerable amounts of CO2 to our atmosphere. How do they expect to pay for such a project? In accord with the Paris Climate Agreement only the rich nations should pay for such nonsense and the USA with its huge federal deficit and huge trade deficits is not a rich nation. Maybe China would like to supply the wind mills and with each windmill a floating Chinese base so they can claim the entire Artic for their own.
The climate change we are experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. The Artic may turn much colder in the future as has happened many times in the past and then there would be too much ice. Ice is a hazard to navigation and they want to add more of it at great cost. How may people would be involved in the artic, transporting, installing, and maintaining the wind mills.? You may not find that many people who would want to work there under such harsh conditions.
Obviously, there wasn’t a lawyer proficient in class action tort claims amongst the authors.
Don’t forget, it wasn’t all that long ago that the late Dr Stephen Schneider was speculating about the wisdom of spreading soot over the sea ice to stop runaway global cooling – 5:56 point of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=nprY2jSI0Ds#t=356
Hmmmm, I thought that the sea ice issue was mostly an indicator of global warming. And it would follow to ask what is the point of trying to reverse this process?
They’ve got their climate feedbacks-regulation completely backwards.
– Energy enter the climate system via SW solar at the tropics to about 65deg N/S.
– The poles are Earth’s radiators, sending energy back into space, as their primary function. The north polar Arctic Sea receives very little insolation in the Arctic summer compared to the lower latitudes.
During winter, if the Earth is warm and needs cooling, long winter darkness and open water means enhanced loss of OHC, thus cooling.
In the summer, the polar north Arctic Sea is at t high a latitude for low incidence angle insolation to make much difference whether it is open water or ice. Making it all ice would decrease an already negligible insolation, but at a huge cost of preventing OHC heat release during the long dark winters. WHen Earth is in a cold climate period, the sea ice remains to provide a thin layer of insulation to limit further cooling.
These guys are absolute, blithering morons who have no concept of how the Arctic Ocean radiates energy back to space to regulate Earth’s heat budget.
A rather obvious problem. The machines would freeze up.