Five Ideas To Save The World!

Now these ‘duct tape’ ideas from scientists to save the world from global warming seem crazy! But these are scientists who are generally licensed to propound crazy ideas. Looks like it anyway!

So what are these? Here’s an interesting article from Popular Science which is both serious and amusing at the same time. Click on the link below for the full read.

Re-Ice the Arctic

As we are aware, Arctic ice is melting fast, diluting the salty seas with freshwater. This would result in weakening the ocean currents that help regulate the global climate by transporting heat around the globe. Any change to this would have disasterous affects on life in general. But according to Industrial engineer Peter Flynn of the University of Alberta, the idea is to make more Arctic ice, and make it salty ”by towing 8,000 ice- making barges to the Arctic, and make a salty ice cube the size of New Mexico!” (popsci.com)

Tame Storms With Cold Water

Climate change they say is warming the oceans which in turn fuel hurricanes. So what do you do? Simple. Cool down the warm surface water. New Mexico inventor Phil Kithil has hit upon an idea to put 1.6 million ocean-cooling "pumps" into the Gulf of Mexico, anchor them to the seafloor, and presto! The storms attenuate to almost nothing. But then it would take four months, some 100 barges and $5 billion to install! (popsci.com)

Grow Super-Trees in Factories

It is said that the world's rainforests lose about 100,000 acres and as many as 100 species every day. Experts predict that the rainforests could be wiped out by 2050, with disastrous consequences. ArborGen, a biotech company in Charleston, South Carolina, is conducting research that will help farmers mass-produce genetically modified trees. They plan to mass produce designer seedlings in fully automated tree factories. Needless to say the transplanting will be carried out by robots that will be designed by them! Cost? Unknown. (popsci.com)

Build Wetlands From Scratch

Wetlands, home to thousands of bird and animal species are fast depleting. This will result in loss of water quality, increased flooding of surrounding areas and the consequent extinction of many species. But there’s hope. As per inventor Bruce Kania, all one has to do is ”construct small archipelagos/islands the size of basketball courts out of recycled plastic and foam, plant habitat-specific vegetation, and set the islands afloat wherever natural wetlands once thrived.” (popsci.com)
Time line? Unknown. The sun would’ve probably become a red giant by then!

Insulate the Glaciers

Glaciers, which are earth's largest freshwater reservoirs, are melting at an alarming rate, shrinking by up to hundreds of feet per year in some places. Probably 75% of all glaciers would have completely melted by 2050, and perhaps nothing would be left by the end of the century. All you’ve got to do is ”wrap the thawing glaciers in football-field-size synthetic blankets that keep the cold in and the heat out”, as per Fritz Landolt, a textile manufacturer. (popsci.com)
How many millions of square feet are required for covering the thousands of glaciers? Cost? Time? (The darn outfitters took 3 weeks to make a party suit of mine. And I’m just about 6 feet tall! )

Great ideas, but how practical are they? How many billions is it going to cost and of course, there’s the time line to contend with! Why don’t we come to grips with controlling climate change in the first place, by reducing GHG emissions? Why don’t we spend those billions on control instead of trying to shut the stable after the horses have bolted, and spending billions more? I gotta ask Bush this. But darn! Dubya’s busy fighting that war in Iraq and chasing his friend Bin Laden all over the place.

Global warming? What’s that?

Cheers!

Excerpts from the article here



[edit on 3-8-2007 by mikesingh]

even if i care i dont think thats gonna do anything godd when the other 284287492748 people dont care.
just use the earth resources until they dissapear then go suck out the life from another planet^^

I'd like to add an idea.

Eliminate the form of capitalism that marries the corporations to the government which allows the rape of this earth + the exploitation of "the poor".

That'd help A LOT !

So long as this form of "capitalism" exist very little we do can properly counteract the horrors they bestow upon us.

Case in point : The "capitalist" simply can not wait for the poles to break up so they can use them as shipping lanes. That's going to be fantastic !

My plan is... to do absolutely nothing and hope everyone else does something.

That should be everyones attitude and we should all assume everyone else is doing stuff so we don;t have to, I'll be living life and choose not to wipe my ass with leaves.

Originally posted by mikesingh
.............
Re-Ice the Arctic

As we are aware, Arctic ice is melting fast, diluting the salty seas with freshwater. This would result in weakening the ocean currents that help regulate the global climate by transporting heat around the globe. Any change to this would have disasterous affects on life in general. But according to Industrial engineer Peter Flynn of the University of Alberta, the idea is to make more Arctic ice, and make it salty ”by towing 8,000 ice- making barges to the Arctic, and make a salty ice cube the size of New Mexico!” (popsci.com)

Perhaps some people want to think something like this would work, but sorry to tell you that sometimes even scientists make stupid statements and remarks. 8,000 nor 80,000 "ice-making barges" are not going to do anything at all.

Remember that these ice-barges use guess what?... diesel, a derivative of oil...

Second of all you would have to add a few tons of steel to these barges to reinforce them against the icebergs, and then this increase in weight means that more oil will be used to move these barges..

Then, you have other problems such as barges getting stucked, or even causing a geological catastrophe if their hulls are breached by icebergs and the barges spill diesel on the ocean.

Originally posted by mikesingh
Tame Storms With Cold Water

Climate change they say is warming the oceans which in turn fuel hurricanes. So what do you do? Simple. Cool down the warm surface water. New Mexico inventor Phil Kithil has hit upon an idea to put 1.6 million ocean-cooling "pumps" into the Gulf of Mexico, anchor them to the seafloor, and presto! The storms attenuate to almost nothing. But then it would take four months, some 100 barges and $5 billion to install! (popsci.com)

Actually the oceans have been "cooling" for some time.

Thursday, August 17, 2006
New data shows ocean cooling
By DENNIS AVERY and ALEX AVERY

The world's oceans cooled suddenly between 2003 and 2005, losing more than 20 percent of the global-warming heat they'd absorbed over the previous 50 years. That's a vast amount of heat, since the oceans hold 1,000 times as heat as the atmosphere. The ocean-cooling researchers say the heat was likely vented into space, since it hasn't been found stored anywhere on Earth.

www.ocregister.com...

Then, there is also the fact that most of the warming has been occurring at night, which brings doubts to the claims that it is CO2 which is causing the warming.

“Heat waves are becoming more common, intense, prolonged, and widespread, and disproportionate warming at night and higher humidity as a result of climate change are exacerbating the health consequences. This study by U.S. PIRG dramatizes the issue for the United States, which must prepare for more summers like that of 2006, while taking concrete action to reduce harmful emissions,” said Paul R. Epstein, the Associate Director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.

www.uspirg.org... e-country2

Title:
Responses to Global Warming Over the Eastern and Central Tibetan Plateau as Reflected in Day-time and Night-time Temperatures, Extreme Temperature Events, and Growing Season Length During 1961-2003
Authors:
Yin, Z.; Liu, X.; Shao, X.
Affiliation:
AA(University of San Diego, Department of Marine Science and Environmental Studies, 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, CA 92110 United States ; [email protected]), AB(Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, 710075 China ; [email protected]), AC(Institute of Geographical Science and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101 China ; [email protected])
Publication:
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #A53E-0255
Publication Date:
12/2006

This study examines the trends and variation patterns in daily maximum (day-time) and minimum (night-time) temperatures (hereafter referred to as Tm and Tn), extreme events, and growing season lengths over the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau (TP), in comparison with the results from other regions. Data during the period 1961-2003 from 66 weather stations over the eastern and central TP with elevations above 2000 m are used in this study, after going through rigorous quality assessment/quality control procedures. Statistically significant warming trends are identified in various measures of the temperature regime, especially in night- time temperatures, extreme warm/cold events, and diurnal temperature range (DTR).

adsabs.harvard.edu...

This trend of "the warming occurring mostly at night" is nothing new, in fact it has been happening for decades, which does bring doubt to both the Sun or GHGs being the main causes of this warming.

I saw an article about this about two weeks ago and decided to investigate a bit more. Here is an older article which proves that the warming is occurring mostly at night.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RECORD September 3, 1993 Vol. 19 No. 1

GLOBAL HEATING FOUND HIGHER AT NIGHT

Global warming is occurring mostly at night, a new study has
confirmed, and scientists caution that we had better find out why,
or the earth's climate in the future may turn out to be far from
what we expected.

Over the past 40 years, temperatures have been rising much faster
at night than during the day, scientists from Columbia's Lamont-
Doherty Earth Observatory and the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration report in the August issue of
"Environmental Science Technology." Using data from more than
1,000 weather stations in 12 countries, mostly in the Northern
Hemisphere, they report:

www.columbia.edu...

Originally posted by mikesingh
Grow Super-Trees in Factories

It is said that the world's rainforests lose about 100,000 acres and as many as 100 species every day. Experts predict that the rainforests could be wiped out by 2050, with disastrous consequences. ArborGen, a biotech company in Charleston, South Carolina, is conducting research that will help farmers mass-produce genetically modified trees. They plan to mass produce designer seedlings in fully automated tree factories. Needless to say the transplanting will be carried out by robots that will be designed by them! Cost? Unknown. (popsci.com)

Do you know what it would mean to have bigger forests? When the Earth has been the "greenest" were times when CO2 leves were at it's highest...Much higher than now...

Originally posted by mikesingh
Build Wetlands From Scratch

Wetlands, home to thousands of bird and animal species are fast depleting. This will result in loss of water quality, increased flooding of surrounding areas and the consequent extinction of many species. But there’s hope. As per inventor Bruce Kania, all one has to do is ”construct small archipelagos/islands the size of basketball courts out of recycled plastic and foam, plant habitat-specific vegetation, and set the islands afloat wherever natural wetlands once thrived.” (popsci.com)
Time line? Unknown. The sun would’ve probably become a red giant by then!

So this scientists is proposing to put more plastic and foam in the oceans?....

There have been several ecological disasters and birds and animals died because of plastic, some animals have ingested plastic, and others were killed when the plastic wrapped around them....

Building "plastic and foam islands" will only produce a geological nightmare in our oceans.

Originally posted by mikesingh
Insulate the Glaciers

Glaciers, which are earth's largest freshwater reservoirs, are melting at an alarming rate, shrinking by up to hundreds of feet per year in some places. Probably 75% of all glaciers would have completely melted by 2050, and perhaps nothing would be left by the end of the century. All you’ve got to do is ”wrap the thawing glaciers in football-field-size synthetic blankets that keep the cold in and the heat out”, as per Fritz Landolt, a textile manufacturer. (popsci.com)
How many millions of square feet are required for covering the thousands of glaciers? Cost? Time? (The darn outfitters took 3 weeks to make a party suit of mine. And I’m just about 6 feet tall!

)

This man is insane. i am talking about the "textile manufacturer"...maybe he is just trying some propaganda/advertising to get more clients and make more money...

Originally posted by mikesingh
Great ideas, but how practical are they? How many billions is it going to cost and of course, there’s the time line to contend with! Why don’t we come to grips with controlling climate change in the first place, by reducing GHG emissions? Why don’t we spend those billions on control instead of trying to shut the stable after the horses have bolted, and spending billions more? I gotta ask Bush this. But darn! Dubya’s busy fighting that war in Iraq and chasing his friend Bin Laden all over the place.

Those are not great ideas... remember that even NASA scientists sometimes make the darnest claims and statements.... One of NASA's way to save the Earth is to nudge a comet close to the Earth so it will attract the Earth out of it's current orbit and take it farther away from the Sun.... need i say more?

[edit on 5-8-2007 by Muaddib]

BTW the statement that "the warming is occurring mostly at night" doesn't mean that nights are much warmer than mornings, but rather that the increase in warming has been more dramatic during the night, which brings great doubts to both CO2 and the Sun being the main cause of the current warming.

I wasn't aware of these research works until I stumbled upon some research a couple weeks back, been researching and found quite a bit of documentation which proves the current warming we are undergoing is for some strange reason increasing more dramatically at night.

[edit on 5-8-2007 by Muaddib]

Muaddib! Well brought out!

I personally feel that global warming due to GHG emissions is not the only culprit. In fact it may have only a small part to play. I feel it's due to the overall change that's taking place in the Solar System. There are a couple of threads on this. The ice on the poles of Mars is melting too, as well as the increase in Martian dust storms, which is a recent phenomenon. And there are other queer signs on other planets too.

So this could be part of a repetitive universal cycle affecting not only earth, but other planets as well.

Darn! Does smoke from my cigarettes increase global warming?

I am going to say this for the umpteenth time now, I dont care if there are laws against it, theres laws against alot more mundane things that constantly get recognition for their irrelevance, but here goes....

Instead of wasting more and more money polluting the earth and creating a giant ecodumpster that will eventually wipe us out if we dont wipe our selves out.

We should take all that money to build giant rockets and maybe 2 times a year launch them at either A) the sun or B)a course for the nearest Star other than the sun. Option A is very suitable since chances are the rocket containing garbage and nuclear wast would either A)burn up before impact or B)Burn up upon Impact we would be safe.

Then we could focus on using renewable energy like 1)the sun(Solar) 2)wind 3)water 4)Geothermal 5)Magnets 6)fire 7) Gravity and lastly if worst comes to worst 8)Electric eels!!!! if all of these ideas were put to use and everyone
stopped thinking about them selves then the world would be a better place.

as far as re freezing glaciers why not just build some type of dome over them much like the Disney land epicenter that way the hot is out the cool is in and an entire ecosystem can survive.

Cooling the oceans is very plausible but not practical, think about the marine life that requires that set temp to survive, why not just use some type of super heating device to evaporate the storm from within the eye....

Trees in factories? not the greatest idea but I guess even the kids who ate glue need recognition.... Why not mas produce trees normally, or even better, since the government is telling us its our job to do our part, why not lead by example and use a large masses of land to plant vast amounts of vegetation, that way they could regulate the whole tree thing. Think of a continent like Australia but only its inhabited by farmers producing vegetation to be exported throughout the world.

Missing wetlands found......, try searching the grocery stores, walmart, zellers,kmart, and any other store that sells mass amounts of bottled water. Theres your wet lands, filtered and bottled to be sold and consumed.

That concludes my opinion, tell me what you think of my ideas to save the earth.

[edit on 5-8-2007 by parry noid]