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.
As I recall many years ago there were predictions of a new Ice Age nearly upon us, even with magazine covers and television programs about it. We were assured this by “leading experts” and “scientific studies”. It seems to me one suggested course of action at that time was to promote the melting of the Artic Icecap by covering it with a dark substance, maybe soot or ashes, spread via airplane overflights. Of course this was just a rumor.
Eric and all,
1. Sorry for getting somewhat of track in this thread, except for the ‘stupidity’ label. But woke up on early Sunday morning turned on the ABC channel 20 and what do I see ? an interview by a Ozzie reporter in the ABC Sydney studio of none other but Mike Mann and two other alarmists indicating 100 % renewables should be the way to go. Unfortunately I didn’t see the entire interview. Oz taxpayers paying no doubt for his plane trip (first class?) to OZ?.
I see there is also a 5 part interview of the Mann on you tube via alarmist and biased ABC.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/mann-michael-blakemore-bill-global-warming-science-climate-earth-interview-16732871
2. In addition we have a alarmist letter writer in the Australian newspaper a couple of days ago pointing to Portugal having run 100% renewables for straight 4 days. So how accurate is that comment coming apparently from the Gaurdian? Apart from it representing only 1% of the the time over one year.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/18/portugal-runs-for-four-days-straight-on-renewable-energy-alone
WUWT should investigate and/or cover these two items.
So what? Norway does it all the time. And so can any country with enough hydropower. The only form of renewable that actually works.
Provided, of course, you don’t need anything that won’t run on electricity, like ships or aircraft.
The positive albedo feedback from reduced Arctic sea is is muted by increased cloud cover and a higher ocean albedo at the lower solar angles of incidence at high latitudes. Furthermore the ice cover is an insulator, the open oceans are able to vent more heat well into the Arctic fall and winter night. Less ice and more open ocean in the Arctic may well be a net negative feedback, if more heat is released overall than is absorbed by the ocean in summer. My following paste may be repetitive but it has links to references.
things apparently might be more complex at Arctic latitudes with a lower angle of incidence of solar radiation reducing the net positive albedo feedback because the albedo of open ocean is higher at low angles of incidence at high latitudes, so the decrease in albedo from the ice will be less:
http://cove.larc.nasa.gov/papers/jingrl04.pdf
In addition there are complex cloud interactions with the sea ice resulting in increased spring cloud cover: “This leads to the counter-intuitive effect: for years with little sea ice in September, the downwelling short-wave radiation at the surface is smaller than usual.”
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n8/full/nclimate1884.html
Open ocean persists into the long Arctic night venting its heat and raciating it into space. See figures 2a and 2b, detailing the short and longwave radiative fluxes. When the open ocean in October and November is factored in, the net feedback from the Arctic ice cap melting may be close to neutral or even negative.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n8/fig_tab/nclimate1884_F2.html
“When the open ocean in October and November is factored in, the net feedback from the Arctic ice cap melting may be close to neutral or even negative.”
– higher temperature is radiating that much more ocean heat energy out into space.
I’m convinced it is negative by the fact that the only elevated temperatures we see in the Arctic occur in the dark. There is no indication that temperatures are affected at all by more or less Arctic sea ice during the summer per http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php Obviously greenhouse gases cannot have anything to do with Arctic warming in January –
More clowns at work. Seawater is incredibly corrosive! Arctic ice comes and goes! Free-floating wind turbines would not even turn, the wind would just push them out of the Arctic!
Appreciate this article for the fine comedy, but for no other reason…
Maybe this would be a good scifi flick – a gritty tech outpost suddening plunged into crisis by inexplicable ice movements caused by solar storms. Secondary hazards would be little girs with arcane devices backed by thinking malevolent bears… the cast would be quirky and attractive.
Better yet, we could make the ice with power from the hydroelectric stations that put warmed water out onto the ocean. Not as elegant as digging a hole and filling it up, but close.
Per the articles below, ice coverage starts by Milankovitch and precession cycles and is only ended when CO2 levels drop enough to cause plant die off/desertification with blowing dust covering the ice and causing warming/melting. This implies that extreme cold with mile thick glaciers in the northern hemisphere is the norm that is only broken by a lucky accident of nature. This would mean that some minor CO2 and other artificial WARMING may be needed to keep the earth from entering the next long term ice age.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/28/new-paper-modulation-of-ice-ages-via-precession-and-dust-albedo-feedbacks/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305
So, exactly what ecological effects will occur if environmental “experts” cover the arctic ice with salt water ice?
How will arctic wildlife be affected if the ice surface becomes salty?
If they claim ‘no effect’, then it needs to be proven through experimentation, not “models”, which can be tweaked to produce any output desired.
Blow the wind Northerly……
CHORUS:
Blow the wind Northerly, Northerly, Northerly,
Blow the wind North o’er the Arctic ice sea;
Blow the wind Northerly, Northerly, Northerly,
Blow and bloody freeze the warm Arctic sea.
They told me there might be 10 million blowers in t’offing,
Anthropogenic Global Warming you see;
But my eye could not see it, whatever might be it,
That’s another $500 billion between you and me.
CHORUS
Blow the wind Northerly etc
Oh, is it not sweet to hear settled science singing,
As lightly it comes o’er the peeps trolling creed?
But sweeter and dearer by far when ’tis bringing,
Bankruptcy & indebtedness but no carbon energy for thee or me…
CHORUS
Blow the wind Northerly etc
With apols to Kathleen Ferrier
Sometimes it is quite difficult to remain reasonably polite when reading the dreams these fairies have.
Eco-stupid? Incredibly eco-stupid? Eco-brainless gits!?
All with public school diplomas and sanctuary university dream rooms?
Millions upon millions?
Wind machines? Machines conflating wind turbines, salt water pumps and water spray machines?
Where do these snowflakes plan to find:
A) Sufficient carbon composites for turbine blades?
B) Sufficient salt water resistant alloys?
C) Sufficient quantities of copper, brass and bronze alloys for valves, gates and controls. All alloys are lead free?
D) Sufficient quantities of laborers needed to maintain all systems.
• a) I don’t know who to pity more; the workers up on the turbine body or the workers chopping ice to work on the water intakes?
E) Immense quantities of ice off wash to keep blades from becoming off balance with ice?
The whole Arctic fanspray lollipop ocean dream is missing quite a few details:
A) How do they plan to keep the waterworks from freezing solid?
B) When the wind levels are low, or too high; what will power the pumps and sprayers?
• a) As soon as power stops, anything kept warm, like humans, will be quickly freeze at Arctic wind chills.
B) Since the Arctic is an ocean:
• a) If they plan to float the dribbling wind machines, how will they protect the devices from toppling over?
• b) How do they plan to protect the dribbling windy machines from getting crushed in ice?
• c) If they plan to build on ice packs and ice bergs, how will they prevent ice berg rollovers, or ice pack splitting underneath the machines?
I keep getting this mental image of a wind turbine spraying an ice skyscraper, because it can’t really change where the spray is aimed.
I also wonder who will train the polar bears to live near these things?
Once the sprayer plugs all of the seal air holes and the seals either suffocate or move to the Antarctic; what will the polar bears eat?
Add to the job requirements; ability to run very fast and climb smooth towers.
A good question would be why we should keep the sea ice in the arctic, or why we should keep it at at some specific extension.
Regarding global warming it could be counterproductive. With more open water you would have more hot surface radiating heat to the space. Ice cover would somehow isolate the warmer water from releasing heat to the space. The open water would also give more moist in the air to fall as snow in Greenland and the Arctic in general.
For some time ago scientists believed there were too much ice in the arctic and proposed to use nukes and soot to deminish it. I have not very much trust in those peoble that always believe they have the right answer to their self invented eminent catastrophs. It seems that if you wait twenty or fourty years it is the opposite you have to combat.
Any student who has taken a class in thermodynamics will tell you that every ice machine produces more heat than cold.
Yep.
wow
I would rather melt a NW passage. It would be a boon to world trade.
I find it hard to believe that anyone would take this proposal seriously. What kind of a bizarre reality are these people living in?
So, they make more ice only to be broken up by newer, bigger ice-breakers.
‘Steady state’ floating ice thickness is determined by cooling from above and water temperature below. Artificially added thickness would reduce heat flow resulting in increased melting below. End result, the ice thickness would change little and none permanently. Given that they would be spraying salt water, the ice might actually end up thinner.
1. To make ice, you need to remove energy that’s heat. Where will they put it? Convert to electricity?
2. They’ll need vast amounts of electrical energy to power these ‘pumps’.
Put 1 & 2 together and you have your magical perpetual energy machine (not) – that’s totally useless!
I thought briefly about the thermodynamics of this suggestion. And coffee came out of my nose.
Is it April 1st already?
Why on earth should we care if sea ice decreases? Much less spend trillions to prevent a small drop in sea ice leves?
Stupidity annoys me and there is plenty of it here to go around. The basic problem is that practically everyone speaking about the Arctic is ignorant about it. There is scientific literature that can explain it but no one seems to be interested in it. What they have heard is that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe and they think they know just what to do about that: freeze it up. It is quite true that Arctic warming is twice as fast as the climate models predict and faster than what the Antarctic is doing. But this remains a puzzle to all the participants here. How did it get that way and what is the cause is what should be asked. If you then go to the literature with these questions in mind your chances of learning something useful about the Arctic will improve. These are questions of science of course and perhaps it is too much to ask this group to come up with them. First, let’s find out how it all started. Kaufman et al. studied the sediments in small circum-Arctic lakes and found that almost nothing had happened there for the last two millennia except for slow, linear cooling. At the turn of the twentieth century, however, things changed and a strong warming of unknown origin started. The warming seemed temporary, however, because it petered out in mid-century and an equally strong cooling took its place. Fortunately, it did not last, however, and by 1970 warming was back and is still active today. The source of the warming was still mysterious until it was realized that it had to be the Gulf Stream. Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico as its name says. It then turns north, passes through Florida Straits and flows north parallel to the e4ast coast. Before it gets to Maine it turns east, enters the North Sea as Ben Franklin knew, and warms the climate in Europe. To account for the Arctic warming it is necessary to assume that circulatory changes in the North Atlantic Ocean caused the current system to change such that more of the warm Gulf Stream water was directed into the Arctic ocean. It had to happen during the abrupt temperature change at the turn of the twentieth century. The most likely explanation, I decided, was a change in the North Atlantic current system that redirected the warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean where it began to cause the warming we know of now. Fortunately, just about that time Spielhagen et al. decided to take an Arctic cruise. They measured the water temperature directly and determined that the warm Atlantic water entering the Arctic Ocean was warmer than it ever had been in recorded history. This pretty much ties down the origin of warming to a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system, not to anything related to carbon dioxide greenhouse effect. But so strong is the propaganda that people simply believe that carbon dioxide must be involved. This includes Kaufman himself who discovered the long millennial pause in Arctic warming history. At the present time, the Arctic is warming but the Antarctic is not. The answer to the question: “When will the North and South Pole warming become equal?” is very simple: anytime you can direct the Gulf Stream away from the North Atlantic. Not a very likely occurrence. To learn more, get hold of the journal “Energy and Environment” and read my article in volume 22, issue 8, pages 1069 to 1083 (2011).
How does your hypothesis account for the data showing that nearly all the warming in the Arctic is not at the peak melting season, but in the winter when temperatures seldom get above freezing. Check out the temperature record even for recent “record” years. CO2 seems the better explanation for warming when there is little else going on. I’m not sure why CO2 or black carbon don’t have much effect in the summer. http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Boy, that government contract would sure help subsidize a failing industry.