Cloud ships on course to beat climate change, says Copenhagen study [fleet of 1,900 ships...]

Timesonline ^

[Sub-Driver]

Cloud ships on course to beat climate change, says Copenhagen study

It is hoped that the clouds produced by the "cloud ships" could cancel out the greenhouse effect Ben Webster, Environment Editor, and Hannah Devlin

They sound like ideas from a Jules Verne novel, but giant engineering schemes designed to alter the climate offer the cheapest way of avoiding catastrophic global warming, according to a growing number of scientists and green-minded entrepreneurs.

Most of the schemes have been dismissed as impossibly expensive or impractical, such as the proposal to create a space sunshade by using rockets to deploy millions of mirrors in the stratosphere.

One relatively cheap solution, however, is gaining favour among many different groups and is endorsed today by an independent study that compares the costs and benefits of all the main ideas. A wind-powered fleet of 1,900 ships would criss-cross the oceans, sucking up sea water and spraying it from the top of tall funnels to create vast white clouds.

These clouds would reflect a tiny proportion, between 1 and 2 per cent, of the sunlight that would otherwise warm the ocean. This would be enough to cancel out the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions. The ships would be unmanned and directed by satellite to locations with the best conditions for increasing cloud cover. They would mainly operate in the Pacific, far enough from land to avoid interfering with rainfall.

The idea has been circulating for a decade but until now has merely been one of many climate engineering pipedreams. A study commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, a think-tank that advises governments on how to spend aid money, found that the fleet would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and launch within 25 years.

[ETL]

Clouds are liquid water droplets that reflect all wavelengths of light including infrared. They have very different properties than invisible water vapor.

THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

ABSTRACT:

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere [historically] is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.

Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.

If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
_______________________________________________________________

The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red, CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation/ice-age periods. Look carefully at this historical relationship between temps and CO2 levels (the present is on the right hand side of the graph) and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the data indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000-year period actually *followed* temperature increases -lagging behind by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these past glaciations. Yet Gore continually and dishonestly claims otherwise. Furthermore, the subsequent CO2 level increases due to dissolved CO2 being released from warming oceans, never did lead to additional warming, the so-called "run-away greenhouse effect" that Al Gore and his friends keep warning us about. In short, there is little if any evidence that CO2 had ever led to increased warming, at least not when the levels were within 10-15 times of what they are today. -etl
_______________________________________________________________

"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago [Myr]. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present." [also see 180 million years ago, same thing happened]:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M
_______________________________________________________________

So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds [clouds of course aren't gas, but high level ones do act to trap heat from escaping, while low-lying cumulus clouds tend to reflect sunlight and thereby help cool the planet -etl]. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
_______________________________________________________________

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

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 activities 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.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
_______________________________________________________________

Water Vapor Confirmed As Major Player In Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — Water vapor is known to be Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117193013.htm

[Reeses]

It's possible.

[mylife]

LoL!

[mylife]

[catfish1957]

I am trying to figure which is more hilariously stupid. This little stunt, or Bill Gates' plan to put water stiring boats in the Gulf of Mexico to prevent hurricanes.

These envirowhacko schemes get funnier every day.

[Reeses]

Which processes are dominant is still a matter of research.

Most clouds exist below where jets fly and have a powerful cooling effect during the day, blanketing effect at night. We can't control the Sun but we can influence Earth's natural iris cost effectively. Global warmongers hate this subject and always say we know little about clouds.

[dragnet2]

The fleet would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and launch within 25 years. This is a fraction of the $250 billion that the world’s leading nations are considering spending each year to cut CO2 emissions.

The American tax payers will pay for this wave and fountain show, so it doesn't matter what the cost is.

[allmost]

So a clear winter’s night is just as warm as a cloudy one. Yeah right. The clouds hold in the heat. Like I said. They don’t block all wavelengths either. I’m not sure where you get your info from but a person can get sunburned on a cloudy day.

[Reeses]

This is an engineering solution rather than a tax and regulate scheme. Most engineers are conservatives. We couldn’t supply 7 billion people on Earth with food and freshwater without geo-engineering schemes.

[Boardwalk]

My boyfriend calls me “Cloud.” It’s so cute. I call him Cloud too. It’s way better than the usuals, honey, sweetheart, etc. Cloud.

[catfish1957]

In either case, as long as taxpayers money isn’t involved they can design any stupid thing they want.

[EGPWS]

It is hoped that the clouds produced by the "cloud ships" could cancel out the greenhouse effect Ben Webster, Environment Editor, and Hannah Devlin

The liberal word of the 21st century...HOPE!

Change is second in line.

[Reeses]

The morning after a clear winter night is colder than a cloudy one because the surface heat radiates out to space. Whether clouds have a net warming or cooling effect has more to do with their thickness than their altitude. Clouds are Earth’s iris and are the most significant factor in how much solar energy originally enters the oceans and climate. Human activity already influences them.

[allmost]

The heat radiates out because the clouds aren’t retaining the surface heat. Clouds during the day don’t block all the radiation but do, just as during the night, retain the longer wavelengths such as infrared/heat. They also reflect a lot of radio frequencies for the same reason.

[arthurus]

Given the cooling that is reality, should these “cloudships” be implemented and be successful they wiould probably usher in a new Ice Age with attendant famine, etc.

[Reeses]

The heat radiates out because the clouds aren’t retaining the surface heat.

Clouds reflect the surface heat back down, and sunshine back up. It does not matter to the surface what the heat content of a cloud is, only it's thickness and altitude. Blankets don't keep you warm by being warm, but by reflecting your own heat back at you. Due to its inefficiency, a blanket becomes slightly warm from your heat loss, but that has no influence on how warm it keeps you.

[Reeses]

Because clouds are reflective they can be used at night to retain heat. Farmer’s used to use smudge pots to create man-made cloud blankets that kept citrus trees from freezing. Clouds can be influenced to swing the surface temperature either direction. We can prevent an ice age or global warming with cloud control. We can’t influence the Sun, but we can influence clouds.

[RatsDawg]

Oh wow, and they thought Reagan was crazy for his Star Wars plan, something that could have saved us! BUT CLOUD SHIPS? These people just don’t know how stupid they sound!

[allmost]

This not complicated. The higher energy wavelengths penetrate the cloud cover. The lower energy, longer wavelengths do not penetrate as easily. The higher energies penetrate, interact with surface materials and radiate lower energies such as the color spectrum or infrared. These are blocked by the clouds and absorbed by ambient atmospheric moisture. The heat is retained on the earth's surface for that reason. Deserts often vary widely in night and daytime surface temperature for this reason. The water vapor holds the heat. That's why when we build a coal or nuclear plant they are run on steam. Water's ability to store heat energy is converted to mechanical energy through turbines.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Well, that probably means that the ships will actually cost a total of $136 billion. You know how these gubmint costs tend to explode.

I'M BAA-AACK!

Global Warming PING!

You have been pinged because of your interest in environmentalism, alarmist wackos, mainstream media doomsday hype, and other issues pertaining to global warming.

Freep-mail me to get on or off: Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on global warming.

Global warming on Free Republic

Latest from Global Warming News Site

Latest from Greenie Watch

Latest from Junk Science

Latest from Terra Daily