Positive Energy

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Global Heating Mitigation - White Clouds

Very white clouds result when water is suspended in the atmosphere as drops less than a millionth of a meter in diameter. These clouds reflect a large amount of sunlight back into space. We know how to artificially create such clouds with a water sprayer. A cloud produced in this way dissipates in less than a week as the drops evaporate into a gaseous form. Canada should install a number of these sprayers in the North to assess the benefits of this approach. If a cooling effect can be demonstrated it will give us more time to convert our energy culture from dirty carbon to clean fission. If the experiment does not work it won't do any harm either, being both inexpensive and of short duration.

These clouds makers will need a reliable power source - a small nuclear battery would be ideal. They could be placed near isolated Norther communities, thereby providing employment and something for Northern people to do to fight global heating. Being close to a town would offer other advantages such as the provision of electricity for the town. This would eliminate the dirty diesel technology presently used.

The time to act is right now.

4 Comments:

  • There are other upper-atmosphere aerosols that might also work. SO2, for instance, is obviously a waste product as it currently stands but could be used for that purpose.

    By Blogger Stewart Peterson, at 15 October, 2006 16:05  

  • I thought more clouds are the reason for the global warming. I know there are susbtances that can absorb a lot of water , e.g. CuSO4, there are better ones though-some firefighting foams used to protect a house before a wild forest fire burns it. The more clouds there are the more blanketting effect and more global warming and the other climate changes follow as well. The amount of clouds in the upper atmosphere has to be controlled somehow such that the amount of clouds stay constant. Read the article on New Scientist about more cloud formations. The temperature of the world is increasing but the amount of sunlight it is receiving is decreasing...only one explanation..more clouds.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 15 November, 2006 13:34  

  • What I would like to see used are "white" clouds made with very small droplets. Such clouds reflect light very well. Heavy clouds made with large droplets are insulating. An ideal arrangement would place the white clouds on the side of the Earth facing the sun, and no clouds on the side facing away from the sun. This would be a bit difficult to coordinate, but we could probably start in the polar regions where the heating problems are the worst, and the periods of time spent facing the sun are the longest.

    By Blogger Randal Leavitt, at 15 November, 2006 14:44  

  • Global dimming will reduce global crop yields considerably. Blocking the sun is not the answer to the problem of global warming.

    Click here to see this video: BBC - Global Dimming

    By Blogger camsax@gmail.com, at 27 June, 2007 01:10  

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