Thanks Gregory and Greg, good comments and links. There are obviously many oceanographic and other scientific issues here - I would welcome expert comment. My interest in floating plastic systems for industrial algae production at sea arises from efforts to implement waterbags as described at http://www.waterbag.com./ These modern flexible polymers have strong UV resistance and salt water tolerance and are likely to be suitable for profitable applications at sea, although the water transport method promoted by Terry Spragg has not yet found any backing. My aim in raising use of plastics here as a geoengineering method is to describe simple application concepts with potential to help mitigate climate change where small prototyping can guide feasibility. My suggestion here for the Arctic would only work in summer, with 24/7 operation during midnight sun. Analysis would indicated to what extent it could be paid for by fish farm below - larger entering fish would be unable to escape and would feed on small fish attracted by algae. The whole system would float along the Gulf Stream current to a processing ship in the Barents Sea, steered by combination of small accompanying vessel and wave system. With rich deep cold water pumped by wave action across a reflective sheet just below the surface, the CO2 in the water would optimise algae growth rather than escaping to the atmosphere. The reflective sheet would send incoming solar radiation back to space while also promoting surface algae bloom, significantly cooling the surrounding current. The sheet would be folded up and sunk during storm. Optimal sheet depth might be anywhere between ten centimetres and a few metres, but I would expect about one metre. If the whole system pumped water out in a spiral around a sheet of diameter say 500 metres, it might be possible to collect the warm algated water at the outlet, and either use it for commodity production (food/fuel/fertilizer/fabric) or just sink it to the ocean floor below the halocline to quarantine the heat and carbon, although that would not pay. The site http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/arctic/circulation.html# provide a good summary on arctic circulation. These sort of innovations are in my opinion best driven by a combination of profit and ecology, using market incentives to fix the climate. I fear SRM proposals such as aerosol screening are likely to struggle due to costs and absence of a profitable product. Robert Tulip
________________________________ From: Gregory Benford <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 19 June 2012 11:07 AM Subject: Re: [geo] CDR: Arctic phytoplankton - Nature's little geoengineers? I echo Greg Rau's comments. Good idea to do something, but plastic? Really? I looked at this in 2005 and wrote a piece on aerosol screening the Arctic ("Saving the Arctic," attached in its pop version). I encouraged Ken Caldiera & others to do a simulation. It seems to work pretty well. The cost is ~$200 to $300 million/year, deployed by existing (though modified) KC-10 refueling craft, which are about to be replaced by a fancier upgrade and thus will be even cheaper to buy. Aerosols have none of the side effects Greg mentions, though they may have others. We could do this NOW--my main point then. Alas, we suffer in the hands of a largely incompetent government which could protect its simple national interests (& those of the Inuit etc) by acting. But the executive (which could do this by direct order, since it's already a national defense issue) is distracted. Though the president's science advisor is John Holdren, whom I worked with as a postdoc at Livermore, little gets done on such issues. But the environment doesn't care about politics. Never has. Gregory Benford On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 8:48 PM, RAU greg <[email protected]> wrote: Thanks, Robert. Interesting indeed, including the 85 comments at the end of the article. As for saving the Arctic, if we float stuff out there, won't that block the light for the algae? If we wave-pump water up from the depths, won't that also bring up more CO2? What happens to the pumps in the winter - ice, no waves? We hire the locals to haul them in? And who pays? Anyway, funding aside, I would suggest running this by a few oceanographers before launching. > > >As for why we don't have any effective policies that would support saving the >Arctic or the planet, I can highly recommend a book I just finished; Merchants >of Doubt by Oreskes and Conway. Really impressive how a well funded, tiny >minority can neutralize scientific evidence, and paralyze policy and action on >a whole range of issues. The term "intellectual terrorism" comes to mind, but >I digress. > > >Keep us posted on your progress, >Greg > > > >________________________________ >From: Robert Tulip <[email protected]> >To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> >Sent: Mon, June 18, 2012 6:10:43 PM >Subject: Re: [geo] CDR: Arctic phytoplankton - Nature's little geoengineers? > > > >The Economist Magazine has a special report this week on the warming of the >Arctic Ocean. > >The report is available at http://www.economist.com/node/21556798 and is >highly informative. > > > Originally Posted by The Economist >"A heat map of the world, colour-coded for temperature change, shows the >Arctic in sizzling maroon. Since 1951 it has warmed roughly twice as much as >the global average. In that period the temperature in Greenland has gone up by >1.5°C, compared with around 0.7°C globally. This disparity is expected to >continue. A 2°C increase in global temperatures—which appears inevitable as >greenhouse-gas emissions soar—would mean Arctic warming of 3-6°C. > >Almost all Arctic glaciers have receded. The area of Arctic land covered by >snow in early summer has shrunk by almost a fifth since 1966. But it is the >Arctic Ocean that is most changed. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s the minimum >extent of polar pack ice fell by around 8% per decade. Then, in 2007, the sea >ice crashed, melting to a summer minimum of 4.3m sq km (1.7m square miles), >close to half the average for the 1960s and 24% below the previous minimum, >set in 2005. This left the north-west passage, a sea lane through Canada’s >36,000-island Arctic Archipelago, ice-free for the first time in memory. > >Scientists, scrambling to explain this, found that in 2007 every natural >variation, including warm weather, clear skies and warm currents, had lined up >to reinforce the seasonal melt. But last year there was no such remarkable coincidence: it was as normal as the Arctic gets these days. And the sea ice still shrank to almost the same extent. > >There is no serious doubt about the basic cause of the warming. It is, in the >Arctic as everywhere, the result of an increase in heat-trapping atmospheric >gases, mainly carbon dioxide released when fossil fuels are burned. Because >the atmosphere is shedding less solar heat, it is warming—a physical effect >predicted back in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist. But why is >the Arctic warming faster than other places?" more > >This excellent report prompted me to formulate the following idea. > >Geoengineering the climate can focus on cooling the Arctic Ocean in order to >slow the ice melt and increase albedo, reflecting incoming solar radiation >back to space. One potentially commercial method to achieve this goal is to float large sheets of reflective plastic just below the ocean surface, released from Norway into the Gulf Stream. The design would aim to optimise algae and fish growth, using wave energy to raise deep nutrient-rich water to the surface in 'Lovelock Tubes', and spreading this rich water across the surface sheet to mimic the upwelling of currents that are the source of the richest fisheries. This method would cool the surrounding water, reducing the heat input that is melting the sea ice. The systems would attract and feed fish with naturally produced algae, serving as efficient fish farms. They would float along the Gulf Stream as shown at Arctic Currents into the Barents Sea, where produced fish could be harvested. Small initial prototypes would identify design issues for potential scale up. The primary natural geoengineering impact would be entirely ecologically beneficial, cooling the Arctic Ocean to delay the risk of catastrophic warming. > >Robert Tulip -- >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >"geoengineering" group. >To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >mailto:geoengineering%[email protected]. >For more options, visit this group at >http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. > >-- >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >"geoengineering" group. >To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >mailto:geoengineering%[email protected]. >For more options, visit this group at >http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. 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