The Scientific Method (A Review for the Global Warming crowd)

4. Are we capable of significantly influencing those results positively?

The answer to that is likely yes. To create man-made fog that would cover a square mile of ocean would take about 40 gallons of seawater and less than $1 in energy. Fog can keep the ocean beneath it cooler during the day by reflecting sunlight then burn off and let the ocean radiate heat at night. This web page about cloud water content is interesting: www-das.uwyo.edu

Clouds can also be used as a blanket to keep the ocean warmer at night if wanted. We can increase clouds over the oceans by increasing the availability of condensation nuclei. The salt in seawater can be used to do that. Man-made clouds and snow are likely powerful tools for active climate management. A passive method such as CO2 reduction is probably one of the more inefficient methods.

To create man-made fog that would cover a square mile of ocean would take about 40 gallons of seawater and less than $1 in energy. Fog can keep the ocean beneath it cooler during the day by reflecting sunlight then burn off and let the ocean radiate heat at night.

I'll take your word for it that man-made fog can be created in this way, at this price. I'll take your word for it that this would cool the ocean underneath the fog. (I'm not sure about this. For one thing, water vapor is a greenhouse gas. For another thing, it was my impression that the effects of cloud formation on the greenhouse effect were not well understood.)

My question 4. remains as to whether this action would influence the effects of climate change positively. Even if you prove you've got an easy "cooling" method there are still some missing steps when it comes to proving you've affected the climate positively. At best, if I buy what you're saying, you've essentially created a local heat-sink out in the middle of the ocean somewhere. But climate is a complex system, it's not as easy as "reduce the temperature somewhere". Would your fog-machine really help in the straightforward, linear way you imply, or might it somehow create a feedback of some sort that would negate or even outweigh the local cooling? What would be the effect on weather, on currents? What amount of energy are you talking about reflecting with your method - is it significant, or a drop in the bucket?

And as a starting matter, we haven't even answered my question 3. - is the predicted climate change (global warming) net-bad or net-good for humanity? Even if your method here would work, if global warming is a net-good, then you're harming, not helping.

Anyway, though, you do suggest an interesting technique & I'd be interested to learn more, got a link? (=a link about man-made fog and how/why it would reduce the greenhouse effect)

Again, it was my impression (when I actually worked on climate models, in a former life :) that neither cloud-formation nor what their overall effect was (net reflector, because they're "white"? or do they trap heat, because it's water?) were well understood (or modeled). Maybe things have changed since then (it was probably 10 years ago after all).

To create man-made fog that would cover a square mile of ocean would take about 40 gallons of seawater and less than $1 in energy.

That's one square mile. There are 224,393,542 square miles of water surface on the planet. How much would have to be covered to result in a significant change in water temp? Just 5 percent coverage would require 11.2 million gallons of water and several million dollars worth of energy. One percent would require approximately 2.2 million gallons of water. And even if this could be done, would it be a lasting effect? How long would the fog have to cover the water? Could the fog last long enough to affect the desired change? I doubt that this would be feasible let alone practical.

Just 5 percent coverage would require 11.2 million gallons of water and several million dollars worth of energy.

At that kind of scale it would cost about a penny per gallon to atomize it into fog, which works out to $112,000 per day or $41 million/year in energy costs, less than 1 penny per human per year to increase Earth's sunlight reflectivity 5% and plunge us into an ice age. I've read 1% is all we need to counter the effects of climate change. Solar and wave action could be the source of the energy. The climate change could become self-feeding if more snow forms.

My point is there are many climate management technologies possible. This is just one idea. It might not be practical but shows there could be cost effective methods of active climate management.

The global warming scientists say they don't understand the role of clouds and other aerosols in the climate. I suspect they don't want to know since it short circuits the whole CO2 reduction angle. Until they know exactly the role of clouds in climate change they shouldn't be recommending expensive CO2 reduction solutions that may be much more impractical than a man-made fog idea.

I see. I ran into another posting here the other day that spoke of water in the atmosphere. Here's a piece of that report which supports the notion that man-made Global Warming scientist either don't know or refuse to acknowledge the factor water vapor has on global climate:

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Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?

It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not.

This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

Click here for the rest of the report.

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