Next to the Gore Effect, the only joy I take from the Anthropogenic Global Warming movement is that it birthed the fad of Geoengineering. It’s kind of like sixth-grade social studies — “we should drag icebergs from the South Pole to Africa to end thirst!” — but it involves adults: soft scientists masquerading as the real kind competing to devise the largest Rube Goldberg device, extra points awarded when the project looks likely to run into the quadrillions, winner gets a mention in the NY Times Freakonomics blog.
My previous favorite was the Fertilize the Ocean! project, in which plankton food would be spread across the waters, stimulating the mildly erotic sea creature, the salp, to come to the surface and feed, during which time it would consume some carbon, following which it would take a s***. The carbon would fall to the bottom of the ocean, thus saving Earth from something or other at a cost of Germany’s GDP in plankton food.
But last week, Freakonomics gave us the wonderful headline: “Finally: A Garden Hose to the Sky”, a title that doesn’t make sense for, like, four reasons:
Well, it’s actually happening. An idea reported extensively in SuperFreakonomics has come to fruition, and some mad scientists are getting their way (and a little government funding) to build a garden hose to the sky — and potentially save the world by cooling it down.
A team of British researchers called SPICE (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) is trying to pump particles of water into the atmosphere as a test run before moving onto sulfates and aerosols that would reflect sunlight away from earth, mimicking the aftereffect of a massive volcanic eruption. SPICE is building the garden hose at an undisclosed location, with £1.6 million in U.K. government funding and the backing of the Royal Society.
Check out Steven Levitt’s interview with Jon Stewart from 2009, where he discusses the idea (beginning at about the 2:20 mark).
(Raise your hand if you sensed that somehow, by the grace of … leftism, the words “Jon Stewart” would show up in that piece.)
Take a look: the article includes some helpful illustrations, including an artist’s rendering of what is described as the “very long hose.”
Things like this scare me to no end. Any reasonable person should be able to come to the conclusion that the science of Man-Caused Global Warming is far from settled. Yet there are half-baked schemes like this which are going to try to “Save us.” This is deadly serious – who gives them the right to dally with our planet like this?
What the ultimate goal for “garden hose” is: to create stratospheric air pollution on a massive scale. How is this good environmentalism?
I’ve maintained for some time that the environmental movement was hijacked, corrupted, and debased by the AGW crowd. What the GOP may want to consider is a campaign to “take back environmentalism from the whackos,” and restore it to the fundamentals of clean air, clean water, curbing overfishing, and reforestation.
The founder of Greenpeace would agree with you. He says that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Green movement became overrun with otherwise homeless and unsupported communists.
The engineering basics of this design are beyond laughable. The water pressure at the bottom of a 20 km of vertical water is about 2,000 atmospheres. You can fix that with multiple pumping stations, but pumps with that kind of head are heavy, and there is no support structure that can hold it. You can fix the weight issue with massive baloons along the length of the pipe, but the wind shear would rip it to shreds. You can fix that with force fields, but those are fictional. Even if you manage to get it aloft, you are talking several kWh per kg of water you pump up. You will quickly go broke.
You can attempt to do this with steam instead of water to reduce the weight, but the energy requirements to keep it gaseous over a huge run like that make the solution equally insane.
They might be able to do the 1:20 model. However, the design as stated is pure science fiction.
Dr. Otto Strangelove: “It would not be difficult mein Fuhrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh… I’m sorry. Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plantlife. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess… that ah, dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.
* * *
“It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.”
“The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state.” –Dr James Lovelock, August 2008
By the way, there is a new clean energy technology that is 1/10th the cost of any other energy technology. Don’t believe me? Watch this video by a Nobel prize winner in physics: http://pesn.com/2011/06/23/9501856_Nobel_laureate_touts_E-Cat_cold_fusion/
Still don’t believe me? It convinced the Swedish Skeptics Society: http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece
LENR using nickel. Incredibly: Ni+H+K2CO3(heated under pressure)=Cu+lots of heat. Here is a detailed description of the device and formula from a US government contract: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GernertNnascenthyd.pdf
Still don’t believe me? A major US corporation has bought the rights to sell the 1 megawatt Rossi E-Cat, and it will be announced late October in the US, with the unit hitting the market in November. How can any fossil fuel compete with such cheap energy (and clean to boot!).
By the way, here is a current survey of all the companies that are bringing LENR to commercialization: http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/08/the-new-breed-of-energy-catalyzers-ready-for-commercialization.html
You are fishing in the wrong pond Brad.
What could possibly go wrong?!
Gents, tittering like a clutch of simpering 18th C. dandies aggrieving a tortoise with the business end of a buggy whip doesn’t help to explain to your readers that the use of aerosol/reflective technology is not a new theory; in fact, it’s a reality. We’ve been dispersing [undisclosed] aerosols & aluminum oxide-barium particle mixtures in an aerosol state from high-altitude planes for years in order to deflect the sun’s harmful rays due to atmospheric anomalies such as ozone depletion. Other aerosol technologies are being used to attract carbon dioxide molecules from the atmosphere.
Whether the problems we face are man-made or not, prolonging the antique use of oil, gas, coal & nuclear energy will not make your unfunny writing more funny.