Yeah, that'd work
More bonkers geoengineering proposals from the UK, puffed by the ever willing Richard Black at the BBC. Reading the BBC is like reading Fairfax or the ABC. All the environmental journos have drunk the climate change Kool-aid and are fully paid up members of the alarmist community.
So we shouldn’t be surprised when Richard Black plugs some crazy geoengineering idea to “save the planet”:
An eminent UK engineer is suggesting building cloud-whitening towers in the Faroe Islands as a “technical fix” for warming across the Arctic.
Scientists told UK MPs this week that the possibility of a major methane release triggered by melting Arctic ice constitutes a “planetary emergency”.
The Arctic could be sea-ice free each September within a few years.
Wave energy pioneer Stephen Salter has shown that pumping seawater sprays into the atmosphere could cool the planet.
The Edinburgh University academic has previously suggested whitening clouds using specially-built ships.
At a meeting in Westminster organised by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (Ameg), Prof Salter told MPs that the situation in the Arctic was so serious that ships might take too long.
“I don’t think there’s time to do ships for the Arctic now,” he said.
“We’d need a bit of land, in clean air and the right distance north… where you can cool water flowing into the Arctic.”
I love this bit:
In summer, seawater would be pumped up to the top using some kind of renewable energy
Which kind? Sunbeams? Wind? And then the alarmism just piles on:
“With ‘business-as-usual’ greenhouse gas emissions, we might have warming of 9-10C in the Arctic. [might – Ed]
“That will cement in place the ice-free nature of the Arctic Ocean – it will release methane from offshore, and a lot of the methane on land as well.”
This would – in turn – exacerbate warming, across the Arctic and the rest of the world.
Abrupt methane releases from frozen regions may have played a major role in two events, 55 and 251 million years ago, that extinguished much of the life then on Earth. (source)
It’s amazing that even with the BBC spinning such climate astrology, the public are still more sceptical than they were five years ago. Fail.
And while we’re on the subject of Richard Black, there’s a new blog dedicated to exposing his climate alarmist agenda: Black’s Whitewash. Add it to your bookmarks.
Australian Climate Madness 
Wow all that engineering and that is all they come up with!! Wouldn’t it be easier to build a fridge/Freezer..That runs of the planets magnetic field or a thermal energy plant, by drilling almost to the center of the earth and using the natural heat of the earths core for energy. Were is all our technology gone? Were is our Inventors? It seams like technology has just stopped. And if this sea water spray don’t work and it won’t, Cause the ocean is too large for that tiny thing to have an effect. That’s billions of dollars wasted. You will need at least 5,000 of these thing built to have an effect.. How about we just go with the thermal energy thing. Use the earth natural heat source to produce electricity..
I thought the Global Alarmist’s had it in for CO2!!…now poor “ole” methane is copping it!!
One would have thought this kind of quackery ended in the 19th century with brilliant concepts such as the rain making gun see below:-
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=rain+gun&view=detail&id=4BFC8266067C750AFF2499CE09D07AA151C8C0B4&first=31&FORM=IDFRIR
But no. The voodoo quackery is alive and well amongst the Carbon Dioxide headbangers…
Actually, I think the term “contraptions” would be far more suitable than “concepts”… feel free to insert the term above.. 🙂
Spot on. As I read it I thought this bloke would have been the typical fairies at the bottom of the garden 19 centry scientist.
Sucked in! It was actually John Cleese masquerading as Richard Black, doing a promo for the new BBC satirical TV program.
yeah like water vapor is not the end all be all of greenhouse gases. Even the scientists behind this are morons.
It’s a shame Richard Black didn’t mention the conflict of interest Professor Stephen Salter, the proponent of this hair-brained scheme, has with geoengineering.
Professor Stephen Salter is a technical advisor for the Aquamarine Power company, which is a subsidiary of Scottish and Southern Energy, “one of the largest and fastest growing energy companies in the UK.” Which is doing quite nicely on the London Stock Exchange, thank you very much.
So unfortunately for Mr. Black, his emeritus professor does have an ulterior motive in wanting to highlight the use of geoengineering technologies.
And just how much sea spray do they think they could “produce” compared to the seaspray already created by waves breaking on the shore.
i would guess.. point several zeros 1 %
Polar bears may not be so lucky.
According to Dr Ted Scambos at the USA National Snow and Ice Data Centre
That threat is clearly evident in the 2012 trend (in red) to date.
/sarc
This sort of pathetic nonsense will only ever end when the politicians finally understand why the IPCC’s alarmism has been one great costly hoax.
The one way to do this is to get the IPCC in a court of law to defend its claims.
We know the IPCC cannot defend its claims because for starters, it has never cited even one peer reviewed study that supports the theory that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity is causing catastrophic global warming.
We also know that the peer reviewed literature in relation to ice core sample tests indicates temperature movements influence the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, contrary to the IPCC’s unsupported claim that it is the other way round.
We also know that the IPCC’s greenhouse theory has been debunked by physicists who have demonstrated that the greenhouse effect contradicts the laws of thermodynamics.
Unfortunately, until the IPCC is forced to provide its evidence to support its case, the nonsense being promoted and proposed by global warming alarmist wackos will continue, and politicians will just be further sucked deeper into the climate change whirlpool of deceit.
[snip – sympathise with your views, but we have to be careful what we say – Simon]
I thought that it was only the climate ‘scientists’ who are loonies. This bloke is an ‘engineer’? I hope for everybodies sake that the never gets anywhere near any practical engineering.
AndyG55 has got it right only he has left out the sea spray from the waves that are NOT breaking on the sea shore. I think that he should be considering a lot more zeros after the decimal point than he was imagining.
Could the coalition add this lunacy to their crazy direct action climate cooling policy?
Well it would be OK if Richard Black and the BBC paid for the supply, installation and running costs for this piece of planet saving snake oil, out of their own budgets, instead of from public funds.
That may reduce their finances enough to shut ’em down.
Meanwhile in support of “the cause” Black jets about the world belching who knows how many tonnes of CO2. But the BBC it seems is quite coy when it comes to FOI requests about the “carbon footprint” of their Mr Black and other members of their alarmist brigade.
Don’t forget the law of Unintended Consequences. If they got the degree of “whitening” just a little bit wrong, it’d have the opposite effect, as it says in the original paper. This is no more or less “loony” than CCS (Carbon Capture & Storage). With well over 30 billion tons emitted every year, capturing even a small fraction of that would have a staggering cost. Then there’s atmospheric capture, or “sucking it out of the air” – vastly more costly than CCS, and a version of “shutting the stable door”, where CO2 is emitted, then you spend megabucks trying to capture it. Having captured your CO2, then comes the “now what?” moment – what to do with it. Apparently none of the loons who discuss this nonsense in all seriousness have heard of trees.
Why are all these “engineers” so keen on building tall white towers which don’t do what it said on the box? You can build a wind tower which generates some power some of the time, and its its rated output a tiny fraction of the time, but you can’t build a tower which generates its rated output all of the time. Similar to “fooling the people” – which is what it is. Sounds good – let’s build lots of ’em.
Black absorbs all this warmist crap and re-radiates it on a different wavelength, just like a black body should.
Sounds like urinating into the wind…..