If you'd need a higher particle density, you'd using flying platforms, not satellites. These are highly steerable, so you'd not point them at inhabited islands.
As Russell pointed out, I might be orders out (GW not kW) - so an increase in the number of accelerators wouldn't necessarily correlate with an increased in the human exposure. Andrew On Tue, 21 Aug 2018, 17:42 Maggie Zhou, <[email protected]> wrote: > So I must have misunderstood something. Why did you write: > > "As discussed in my original post, a significant scaling of synthetic > cosmic rays is possible, over background levels (3-5 orders) This may give > a large climate signal, sufficient to analyse the effect with a view to > using it for CE." > > I re-read your original post and it didn't seem to reconcile the "3-5 > orders" increase vs. what you just wrote. Could you clarify further? > > Thanks, > Maggie > On Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 8:59:24 AM GMT+2, Andrew Lockley < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > The original proposal would be a doubling of low energy cosmic rays. > That's equivalent to a 30pc increase in background radiation (particle > number, not energy), for anyone under the beam. It would be limited to > those people who lived in or travelled through in the ocean. There are many > ways to mitigate this exposure, such as sod roofing. Such shielding could > well reduce exposure below background. Lower-flying platforms would be able > to avoid islands, shipping, etc. In any case, most of the background damage > is likely to be from higher energy rays, which I've not proposed. > > Balloons used for this purpose would be no more dangerous than those > proposed for data. > > Direct effects on plankton would be negligible, the chances of any one > plankton encountering a particle would be of the order of millions:1 or > more. > > > > > On Mon, 20 Aug 2018, 15:07 Maggie Zhou, <[email protected]> wrote: > > A 3-5 orders increase of synthetic cosmic rays over background levels? Am > I missing something? > > Even if technically feasible, what about impact on life on earth? Birds, > airliners, marine life... > > Phytoplanktons emit dimethyl sulfide (DMS) which eventually leads to > aerosol formation and cloud cover. The CLAW hypothesis postulates this as > part of planetary homeostasis. So what would a 3-5 orders increase of > cosmic rays do to phytoplanktons, and the natural cloud coverage they > enable? And to the oxygen that phytoplanktons provide us with? > > Even if shooting from below, what's the fate of millions of balloons in > the atmosphere? What goes up must come down... And the footprint of > millions of jets? Again, danger to birds and airliners? > > Maggie > On Monday, August 20, 2018, 11:23:19 AM GMT+2, Andrew Lockley < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > Thanks for your question, Oliver. > > The reason to use a space based system is similar to the approach for > earth observation satellites - even coverage. A satellite in GS orbit can > 'see' roughly a third to a half of the world. Because the atmosphere is > thin, compared to the size of the earth, most beam attenuation is likely to > occur in the troposphere, where 75pc of the air is. That means a satellite > mounted system would only have to penetrate a few kms of thick atmosphere, > at most. > > Crudely, I'm assuming beam range and power scale together. A kW system > gives you kms, MW gives you thousands of kms. (I said GW in an earlier > email, which would be the case if you relied on lossy accelerators for high > particle energy, not high density, as Russell helpfully pointed out.) > > By contrast, a ground-mounted system would have to work over distances 3-4 > orders greater. A ship-based system would be technically viable, but its > slow speed would inhibit its coverage, quickly reaching local saturation - > unless you used a high energy beam to reach 1000kms or so. A high-energy > system would need to be mounted on a ship the scale of an aircraft carrier > (which has a similar power output to a 747, although much more available as > electricity). A jet or balloon system would be plausible, but would have a > beam range of perhaps ten of kms (balloons) to hundreds of kms (large > jets), necessitating potentially millions of platforms to provide global > coverage. > > I'm neither a satellite engineer, nor a cosmic ray expert - so multi-order > errors are inevitable in my reasoning. > > Andrew Lockley > > On Mon, 20 Aug 2018, 09:29 Olivier Boucher, < > [email protected]> wrote: > > Dear Andrew, > > as I stated before, I have some doubt about observed relationships between > cosmic ray and cloudiness and if real, the physics is very unclear. However > I do not understand your post. If there is such an effect, then why would > you want to shot these particles downward from space rather than upward > from the surface. The objective would be to increase low-level cloudiness, > wouldn't it ? > Regards, > Olivier > > There appears to be some confusion here in terms of the numbers to use. > Most of the particles are atomic nuclei (overwhelmingly hydrogen). These > are therefore charged, and thus are substantially attenuated by the earth's > magnetic field. I've been unable to determine the extent, from a quick > Google. > > Furthermore, a proportion of scattering attenuation occurs in the high > atmosphere, where it's too dry to produce clouds. It may therefore be more > effective to use lower-flying aircraft, which are less lossy by this > mechanism - although they may have very limited beam range. Nevertheless, > Google's project Loon shows that mass production of non-high altitude > balloons is at least worthy of consideration - numbers can potentially > overwhelm range disadvantages. > > Finally, there's the issue of energy distribution. I've been unable to > find a source that links particle energy to cloud CCN. The number peak at > 0.3GEv may not be representative of an efficacy peak. Certainly, highly > energetic particles are disproportionately effective, but it's not clear > whether their numerical rarity makes them irrelevant, overall. There are > significant technical issues with producing high-energy particles in orbit. > Individual particles are travelling at near light speed, and they > experience significant relativistic effects. It therefore requires serious > infrastructure to produce them. That's impractical for a satellite. > However, intermediate energy accelerators could be mounted on 747-type > platforms, and full sized accelerators could be land based. One problem > with very high energy particles is that they're *individually* dangerous. > The highest energy particles have the energy of a baseball travelling at > nearly 100kmh. You can't go shooting those at airliners. > > Further thoughts welcome. > > Andrew > > On Mon, 20 Aug 2018, 01:55 Russell Seitz, <[email protected]> wrote: > > The grid-to-beam efficiency of greater than GEV particle accelerators > ranges from kess than 5 % for high current systems , to as little as 0.02% > for superconducting colliders like the LHC. As the global cosmic ray flux > is of the order of 5 GW, matching it might therefore take anywhere from a > hundred GW to several tens of terawatts. > > At the high end of that power range one runs into a serious feedback- the > cloud nucleation cooling might be overwhelmed by extra CO2 radiative > forcing from the thermal plants in the grid powering the accelerators. > > On Sunday, August 19, 2018 at 10:17:58 AM UTC-4, Andrew Lockley wrote: > > Cosmic rays cause cloud condensation nuclei. They are therefore believed > to affect cloudiness, and therefore climate. If we made more cosmic rays, > that would likely make it more cloudy. Whether this was a warming or > cooling effect would depend on whether it was cirrus or cumulus clouds (NB, > sometimes making cirrus ultimately removes water, resulting in less > cirrus) > > Cosmic rays are almost all protons, with an typical energy peak > distribution of 0.3GEv. (4.8×10−11 J). No idea if that's the right energy > for CCN, but we can tweak that later. > > Creating artificial cosmic rays is possible, using a linear particle > accelerator. This is similar to an ion thruster, as used in space probes. > > To affect climate, you'd probably have to get densities of the order of > 1/s/sqm (more on that, later). > > 360 million square kilometers of ocean is 360tn sqm or 3.6x10^14sqm. You > don't really want to send particles into people, and the cleaner air over > the oceans makes them more effective. > > A kilo of hydrogen contains 6x10^26 protons. > > That means 1kg of H2 gives you enough material for 1.6x10^12s = roughly 50 > years - so a satellite could easily carry enough material to do the job. > > Power is 3.6x10^14 x 4.8x10^-11J/s = 17kW - again, well within what a > satellite could muster (roughly 100sqm of solar panels, at around 20% panel > efficiency (conservative) and 50pc conversion (made up) efficiency). > > Cheap satellites are about $50m - well within the capabilities of a rich > philanthropist. Even if this is not cheap, it's still only perhaps 500m > > If I'm out by 5 orders (1 ray per sq cm, not per sq m each second), then > that's only 10,000 satellites. That's expensive, but not outlandish. > Superficially, that would be $500bn at the lower cost, but there is likely > a 10x or 100x experience curve cost reduction, meaning the whole programme > would be about $5-50bn max. > > As an alternative, you could use aircraft or balloons, but beam > attenuation would be a serious issue. 40km balloons can be launched, albeit > with small payloads. They would fly at the bottom of the mesosphere, over > 99.9pc of the atmosphere. So maybe beam attenuation would be tolerable, at > that height. I don't know how to calculate it, but I'm guessing it would be > cms to kms - so not really far enough to make a difference to climate. You > could perhaps have mountaintop accelerators with very high powers, and a > sweeping beam (like a lighthouse). If the power requirement was GW-range, > then maybe the beam range would be a hundred km, or so. That might be > enough to work, but it would have some pretty significant effects on local > atmospheric chemistry - so probably not a good idea. > > Any thoughts from anyone? > > Andrew Lockley > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > ------------------------------ > BAMS State of the Climate 2017 > <https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/> > has an aerosol section in the Global Climate chapter > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. 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