Hi All
A big advantage of ship wakes is that they can work where there is no
cloud but wakes are not all that wide. We can increase the width by
having a hose with a stream-lined cross-section strung between two
wind-driven spray vessels. There will be room aboard for air
compressors and filters and 300 kW of power. Please tell me if this will
be enough.
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering,
University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3DW, Scotland
[email protected], Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704, Cell 07795 203 195,
WWW.homepages.ed.ac.uk/shs, YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 08/03/2016 17:17, Adrian Tuck wrote:
This is not a completely new idea. Naval architects have proposed
emitting surfactants at the bow of a ship to lower viscosity and hence
drag; I believe trials have been carried out. Freeman Dyson proposed
spraying surfactants on the sea to modify the evolution of hurricanes.
In both cases one ought to demand a realistic accounting of both
physical practicality and cost. Any large scale use of surfactants at
sea would modify the atmospheric aerosol, see the attachment:
/Climate Change/, *90, *315-331 [2008].
Adrian Tuck
Adrian Tuck
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/atmospheric-turbulence-9780199236534?cc=gb&lang=en&;
On 8 Mar 2016, at 12:55, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2016/03/using-ship-wakes-to-fight-climate-change-time-to-anchor-climate-research-to-common-sense/
Using ship wakes to fight climate change? Time to anchor climate
research to common sense
An article published in January by the Journal of Geophysical
Research and covered briefly in Naturedescribes how brightening and
extending the lives of ship wakes can be used to alter the albedo of
the oceans, and cool global temperatures. It adds ship wakes to a
growing list of Solar Radiation Management techniques.
The theory is based on extending the lives of the microbubbles
generated by ship movements from the minutes that they currently
last, to days. These bubbles are created by “surfactants”, and their
lifetimes in sea water “are strongly dependent on the amount of
natural surfactant (surface-active carbohydrates, proteins, and
lipids often derived from phytoplankton) and amphiphilic
nanoparticles which help stabilize microbubbles.”
Therefore, the study suggests, to achieve global cooling on the scale
and scope required, extra surfactants would need to be added to ship
wakes, and additional shipping movements would need to account for
the fact that there are far more wakes in the Northern Hemisphere,
than the Southern.
The most obvious flaw is that the study doesn’t mention what these
surfactants could be, or what their effect on the oceans would be.
The “assessment of the amount or type of surfactant required is
beyond the scope of this study, as is the assessment of undesirable
side effects from the addition of surfactant.” However, this is
tempered by the statement that the surfactants would need to be
benign, and not harmful ecologically as, otherwise,“surfactants may
be microbially and photochemically processed with undesirable impacts
on ecosystems”.
Granted, this study was just a modelling exercise, playing with
changes to sea surface albedo. On the face of it, perhaps it’s a good
idea to look into making seemingly small tweaks to already global
phenomena, to counteract global temperature rises. The fundamental
problem though is that ideas such as this one are being taken
increasingly seriously by policy-makers, and encouraged by
corporations wanting to maintain the status quo.
This kind of study could well inform policy decisions, despite the
glaring omissions from it. For example, without knowing what the
surfactants would be, or what volumes would be required, or indeed
what the impacts of substantially increasing shipping in the southern
hemisphere would be, studies like this should not be taken seriously.
Natural surfactants may be derived from phytoplankton and marine
processes, but they can also be highly toxic, and indeed carbon
intensive in their production. Likewise, the contribution of shipping
to global anthropogenic CO2 emissions is close to becoming the
largest single source after cars, housing, agriculture and industry.
The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a case in point. The oil
dispersant BP used was a mixture of two surfactants. BP of course
claimed that the chemicals were safe, and the EPA didn’t even require
any safety testing prior to its use. A record 1.8 million gallons
were used to disperse the oil, and it potentially killed more sea
life than the oil would have destroyed by itself. This is an example
of what “technofixes” of this kind could mean in practice, especially
if put in the hands of irresponsible companies, or unscrupulous
government agencies.
Tags: albedo, brightening, climate
change,geoengineering, mitigation, ship, Solar Radiation
Management, technofix, wake
Categorised in: Solar Radiation Management, Unintended Effects
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